Contest We wanted paperless offices, and instead we got people-less – with in-person chats replaced with the warmth and nuance of video meetings featuring people wearing big ugly headphones while trying to get their children to stop building forts out of pizza boxes.
The very best video meetings, however, plaster over the pandemic gloom with virtual backdrops depicting attendees somewhere delightful. The beach, forests, or sitting beside a personal Indigo machine at SGI’s height. But it’s tricky creating or obtaining the right backdrop to use.
Seeing as our readers are a clever and creative bunch, though, we thought we’d invite y’all to produce suitable backdrops to share with your fellow IT colleagues.
The best efforts will be featured on this site, and we’ll pick a winner. If we ever get back to the office, we’ll raid the Register merchandise closet, and send featured artists some branded gear.
What are we after? On the creative side, something you feel would be appreciated by our audience of millions of IT pros, software developers, sysamins, security staff, decision makers, and C-suite types. Feel free to work in some recognizable Reg motifs – some of the usual slang, some BOFH action, our logo or some actual vultures, and so on.
On the technical side, without in any way endorsing Zoom, the vid-chat upstart offers a background-making guide we’ll take inspiration from: images should be 16:9 and between 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080. .JPG or .PNG is preferred. Animated backdrops should be .MP4 or .MPV files at between 480 x 360 and 1920 x 1080, and run about three to five seconds.
Rules? Yeah we gotta have ‘em, so here they are: