Although shouldn’t working from home be considered the ultimate act of personal expression?

Virtual backgrounds assumed a role in leveling the home office playing field, helping cement a company’s brand stand out in a gallery view, or even filling a lost void of an employee’s personal expression. In 2021, as we stayed at home and converted kitchens (and bedrooms, basements, and closets) into workspaces, web conferencing preferences (remember the first moment you discovered you could blur your background, EUREKA!) began educing a small library of stock background choices, that eventually became more customizable and adaptable. In the waning days of 2019’s normalcy, a Forbes article featured Zoom’s CEO Eric Yuan fresh off his company’s clamoring of the Dow’s opening bell, displaying “his video tool’s virtual backgrounds…in locations from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge to the beach in Santa Barbara.” While there’s an eerie hindsight to this original story that borders on feeling remarkably prescient, it more accurately captures the jumping off point in the adoption trajectory of web conferencing technology.Īfter the pandemic began forcing temporary office closures into part-time, full-time, and permanently remote positions, the tools needed to enable a fully functioning virtual workforce sprinted to catch up. You don’t have to dig back through too much digital soil to find the roots of today’s pervasive garden variety virtual background. So, we asked our team of creative thinkers to ponder a question as a point of both introspection and learning: what does your virtual background say about you? Virtual backgrounds are more than a digital curtain hiding our backstage lives.Įven as some of us eagerly choose to get back into an office, collectively most employees will remain scattered across different countries and time zones opting to stay fully or partially remote indefinitely (SAP’s “Pledge to Flex” model launched in June of 2021 lets employees choose).

The strange cold comfort of a sterile space station airlock?

A secret garden surrounded by rambling wisteria.

Virtual backgrounds for zoom the office