My first video chat

I always had a speculation that video chatting was particularly well suited for less legitimate internet purposes, but I cast that close-mindedness aside when I first used my computer webcam this past week for a little chat with an old roommate. The experience was actually pretty cool, but it led to me learning very quickly, or slowly in some cases, things that work well for video chatting someone and things that don't so I thought I'd share a few.

Like many things on my computer, my webcam automatically starts up when triggered by another program. In this case I was called to video chat and my computer responded by opening up that program without even telling me. I came face to face with someone before I even realized they were calling. In this case that was ok, but in the future I plan to have something set up that requests permission before acknowledging and definitely before answering a video chat with video feed. It would be really weird to me to suddenly find out I'm video chatting with someone I don't or barely know. On a side note to that, during the call my video link fell out. That left Tony with just a picture of me but I could still see him; very weird.

Second is where the camera is pointed, etc. I usually sit pretty high above my screen and with the limited range of vision that my webcam has it was pretty much pointed at my chest. Again, while this might have uses in other fields of internet use, Tony was calling to speak face to face with me and so I learned quickly it's important to find a range to sit in where the camera can follow your face the whole time. Similarly, it was important not to move around a lot in the picture. Betsy was running around and I kept trying to pet her or hold her on the couch but then I was rocking the computer screen and moving around a lot - the perfect recipe for the other chatter's motion sickness.

Another important detail is eye contact. I have a strong tendency to multi-task, but answering emails and trying to work on other things at the same time as having a conversation is kind of rude. Unlike just doing this on the phone or in a normal text chat, they can see in this case when you're not paying attention to them or when you're distracted and this is also something to be considerate of during a conversation, depending on how important the other person is to you.

But all in all, I thought for a first call it went pretty well. The voice is kinda choppy and it reminds me of trying to Skype people in a different language with tons of pauses and delays for reactions, etc. Nice thing about it is eliminating the need for stupid type such as "lol", because I can now see if you smile or laugh and don't need to be told what I said was funny. As I posted on my Facebook, very cool little adventure, but welcome to at least a decade ago. I'm pretty sure everyone I know has used that technology before so shame on me for being so far behind.