With the current lockdown in many countries around the world due to the Covid-19 corona virus pandemic there are an increasing number of people using the likes of Zoom and Microsoft Teams for internet-based interactions with each other. Schools and universities in many places have been asking their students to use Zoom for online lectures while working from home with the result that Zoom has experienced a 535% growth in business in the last couple of months. Further growth is anticipated by these vendors as more lockdowns occur and an increasing number of companies start adopting the use of their products. Using such video conferencing apps is proving to be a major win for organisations and individuals as they manage to interact with each other from the convenience of their homes without having to make physical contact. What a lot of people don’t consider though is the fact that everyone in the meeting gets to see them in person and the surroundings of the place that they are conducting the meeting in if they have the video component of the app enabled. Having others visually see your current circumstances can be both advantageous and disadvantageous, depending on how you manage it. Firstly, it makes sense to dress appropriately and groom yourself as you would do normally when going to work if you want to be taken seriously by others. Also make sure that you have some privacy at home during the meeting. Having your pets bothering you, dogs barking continuously during the meeting or children demanding attention and coming and going out of the video frame won’t do you any favours. Conducting the meeting from your bedroom could also result in others in the meeting witnessing your unmade bed, hearing your bathroom’s toilet flushing, the shower running, or seeing your partner wandering around in the background stark naked while they decide on what to wear for the day. And then there are the visual impressions that you give to other people with your particular backgrounds where you have chosen to sit in your house. Tidy bookshelves with books bearing titles related to your business (or subjects you are studying) give you a lot more credibility than porno magazines scattered around the place. You can even orchestrate an impressive work environment by selecting a more suitable place in your house to put your desk so that it looks more business-like with pictures of your various certificates or awards hanging on the wall behind you. Or if you want to give the impression of being a highly successful individual who travels a lot, putting up appropriate posters of foreign destinations could help with this. And if you live in a flat but have always referred to your lovely garden and swimming pool then an image from a projector (if you have one) on the wall behind you showing such a place might prolong your claim to fake living conditions. And then of course there is the aspect of your personal belongings being observed. Others witnessing a monstrous smart TV on the wall behind you or other very expensive items might consider you spoilt rotten and earning far too much. And the reality of the country we live in is that it could put you at risk of being robbed by someone who managed to obtain a copy of your videoconferencing interactions from a hacker if you didn’t secure it properly at the time. Whatever you decide to do when conducting a video-based meeting with others it will more than likely be analysed by most of the participants in the meeting so it makes sense to give the image of your working environment some reasonable consideration.