Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, many meetings have been taking place online. Thanks to the experience gained over the last 18 months, we have all come to realise that there is more to virtual meetings than just sitting in front of a screen and talking. Our office or our living room have been transformed into meeting rooms and it is our responsibility to make sure that we look and sound professional when connecting to a virtual meeting, especially with external stakeholders.
For SCIC, continuous awareness raising is the best tool to reach this objective. We explain the need for an office-like environment at home, meeting etiquette, the reasons why interpreters require even better sound quality and also indicate which devices are not suitable, as well as those that can help improve the sound quality. Moreover, we also stress the implications in terms of reputational risk of not equipping yourself appropriately for online meetings. To that effect, we have published a considerable amount of material, both visual and written.
Apart from our publicly available guidelines for participants of online meetings, which are regularly updated, we have published several videos and hold information sessions for fellow European Commission staff regularly attending online meetings with interpretation.
Recently, DG SCIC has helped equip EU Commissioners with top-notch microphones for their online meetings whenever they take place, be it their office or when they are on the go. In this way, our Commissioners will be able to connect to high-profile online meetings and events with third parties knowing that their message will be clearly heard and understood by other participants and interpreters. This effort received the endorsement of Commissioner Hahn himself.
Since our experience shows that, unfortunately, most people do not really know how they sound during an online meeting, our latest awareness-raising tool is a video showcasing the sound quality of different devices. We hope that this video will serve as an eye opener for users of our services.
Check it out and feel free to distribute it on your social media.