How I Make A 'Greylock Fever-Tree' Gin and Tonic
Getting a 10/10 rating for my room, as seen on Zoom calls, from Room Rater on Twitter required a lot of work.
Having a background in video production and lighting helped, but what tripped me up was thinking about my office as a workspace instead of a studio.
Room Rater rates the visual presentation of people's home offices, or settings that they place themselves in for online interviews. You'll see lots of people's room being reviewed on Room Rater's twitter account.
Start there to get a sense of what makes a good presentation.
Next, take an honest look at your background, in the context of how it will come across on camera. Frame your view with a camera to see what's in the shot and what isn't.
Here I am, top right, on Streamyard, on Chris Brogan's 'The Backpack Show.'
Some of the things in this shot that are great in an office, but have to go away to make the shot look better are:
- tissue box on the right
- The brewery logo sign got moved to the left, but it's still sitting on top of the paper shredder.
I got a ukulele and added that, plus I moved my webcam, so that I'm now centered between the meeting of the walls behind me. I think that the added depth, of having the corner of the office looks better that a flat wall of books. I also changed webcams to get a wider angle view. Switched from a Logitech C920, which is a very good webcam, to a MEVO V1 in webcam mode.
I submitted to Room Rater and got a 7/10.
After they found out that the 'small guitar' was a ukulele, they revised their rating to 8/10.
Still no 10/10.
What they didn't like:
- Messy cords.
- Wall Calendar.
What I didn't like:
- Binders on the left
- Row of books on the third shelf, not broken up.
- Visible book shelf LED lighting
- Office paper stacker on right.
- All black books on third shelf on left. They don't like color coded books.
I removed the wires and LED lighting, and brought in an umbrella light stand to light up the background more evenly.
I broke up the line of books and replaced the calendar with framed art and album covers.
After addressing these issues I resubmitted and got a 10/10:
This was a fun project and I enjoyed interacting with the Room Rater community on twitter.
