Webex Employee's Favorite Feature: Virtual and blurred backgrounds

[aahawkin]

My team and I are constantly changing our backgrounds to suit our needs. Whether I'm at a coffee shop and want to use a more professional office scene, my team wants to celebrate with baby backgrounds at a virtual baby shower, or I want to blur my background so my team can't see my roommates, virtual and blurred backgrounds are the way to go.

How do you and your team use virtual and blurred backgrounds during meetings?

We want to know what you love about virtual and blurred backgrounds and any tips you have for fellow users. In less than 100 words, comment below on how virtual or blurred backgrounds help you engage in meetings without worrying about a mess or privacy.

Once we get your response, we'll enter you into our giveaway for a chance to win a Cisco 730 headset. We'll keep this post active through the entire month of July and randomly select a giveaway winner the first week of August. Congratulations to Beverly Rodgers ( @rogersb ), June's winner!

More about virtual and blurred backgrounds

Reduce background distractions and maintain your personality by choosing from a set of built-in virtual backgrounds, your own image, or by simply blurring your background. Once you decide how you want your background to look, Webex will remember your selection for your next call or meeting.

To learn more:

• Download the Quick Start Guide
• Use a virtual background in Cisco Webex Meetings
• Use a virtual or blurred background in calls and meetings
• Select a Webex virtual background or learn about uploading your own

[almakarlin]

Being a new hire, virtual backgrounds allowed me to feel more a part of the team. In various meetings, the team would change their backgrounds to fit the topic we would discuss and oftentimes fit how we would feel. When we just got some bad news about the recent release of our product, we changed backgrounds were 'this is fine' meme; or when we got some good news we put various party backgrounds. It speeded up my onboarding process and feeling welcomed. 

[ariskapageridis]

Functional and nice look! It has helped to make telework a little better!

[mbgianoli]

I love virtual backgrounds. My favorite is an image of the globe bearing a peace sign surrounded by stick figure kids. It makes me smile and also opens up conversations with others. Great feature/addition to WebEx.

[ahmad_tamneh]

I notice it is one of the most used features in all my colleague video meetings

[SH94188]

The virtual backgrounds are popular in our organization. I haven't been using it because I don't have a green screen.

[AudreyPhoenix]

I'm so happy that the Virtual Background feature has been added! I'm able to use either a Webex background or one of several of my own design or photos I've downloaded from royalty free sites. My favorites are the serene beach, green foliage or vacation site backgrounds. My department loves to see 'where in the world' that I am. If it's for a non-department meeting, where a more professional presentation is necessary, I have those available as well. Fun or quirky or totally professional or with a brand logo, the virtual backgrounds give versatility.

[cdevkota-sc]

I tried to use Virtual background few times since I am working remotely from my bed room and don't want to show messy stuffs to others. It is not great for quality wise for me.

[Gures1]

 Blurred background works for me. I had my in laws in town for the weekend, and of course an emergency meeting was called and the house was a mess. My normal meeting background was cluttered with balloons and birthday decorations. Cisco blurred background was a lifesaver as it allowed me to interact professionally in our meeting while the house remained in a state of chaos. Lol, thank you Cisco!!  

[Ahmed Abdulle]

I created my own image  - A typical yet simple corporate background with repeating logos using the company theme. Under virtual backgrounds settings, I browsed for my newly created image.

Now when I am in meetings via the WebEx Meeting app or taking calls on via the WebEx Teams app, the same virtual background is presented.

My colleagues liked it

Great for when I'm working from Home!

[Thomas Leitner]

We are using the virtual background feature for CI purposes - we have a really agile marketing department and they are building several background images for specific events and marketing campaigns. This makes our meetings more professional and the customers are getting the brand all over the meeting time

[angoodma]

When video conferencing was first envisioned, companies built dedicated studio space for TelePresence video calls.  Several years into the future, there is now the option to create a professional look when taking video calls from home.  Great innovating, Webex!

-Andrew

[Jonas Fraga]

I love using background to avoid distracting people of looking on my messy room and not paying real attention what I'm actually saying  

[John Pell]

Through a challenge in The Gateway I was able to download a cool background kindly provided by the Snort team.  They created a fun eBook showing some of the social posts here...  Have fun with Snort (cisco.com)

[Flemming Ortvald]

Great feature, but a little to heavy on cpu ressources. 

[obrigg]

Surprisingly I find myself using the virtual background at the office more frequently than at home. 
I use a realistic virtual background to filter visual noise - people moving behind me, and objects that might catch attention.

While presenting something - I want the attention to be on me and my content. Not my background.