Hope y'all are all safe and holding up well, in what is our temporary new normal. We are now experiencing what "that meeting could've been an email" looks like if it was a person on steroids. Except all the meetings are virtual Zoom meetings with video. Now not everyone has an actual at-home office, or a corner where there isn't a bunch of clutter or other people hanging out in the house. If you've got kids, you're just trying to make sure you're on mute while they throw a party in the background of said call. So here's a hack for you, you can change your Zoom background to something else while you're on the call!
How to change the video background in Zoom
So if you've already joined a meeting, most meetings don't have the video start as soon as people enter, all depends on the meeting organizer or the administrator. Most common practice is to mute people when they enter.
You're going to go to the bottom left side of your Zoom application screen where the video icon is, and click the up arrow, select "choose a virtual background"
(Zoom desktop application screen)
This will bring you to a few built-in options ( I do mean a few there's like 3)
You'll see the 3 included options (the space one looks good right about now). You'll see the box below about the green screen, because this feature works best with it, but it let's the program know to detect the green screen. But if you also look at the end of the options you'll see a small plus sign, to add/import your own images for the background.
Ta-Da! New background that doesn't include your couch pillows, or kitchen lol.
Now the background I used clearly didn't come with Zoom even though you'd think they'd have an office background since they're used across a wide range of businesses *shoulder shrugs*. Of course you could just download a stock photo, or some other image from the internet, or you could create your own! Annnddd it didn't take a ton of creativity to make this background!
How to create your own background to use in Zoom
So I design websites but I am nobody's graphic designer. So I go to my old faithful Canva! If you've been a reader for a while you KNOW I love me some Canva and they are constantly adding new features, templates that keep me happy and creating! So if you go to Canva, templates and then select "zoom virtual backgrounds" you'll get a bunch of templates that you can edit. You can just click Canva Zoom Background Templates if you want to go straight to the templates.
So kick up the virtual meetings up a notch, and this let's you see yourself somewhere else other than your house for a little bit too. Oh and you can really make your virtual happy hours, and parties fun doing this too!