Due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak many people are working from home, making face for face meetings impossible. Video conferencing enables you to have virtual meetings, where you can see all participants and work collaboratively on documents, agendas and minutes with all delegates, as if they were sat in the room with you, no matter where they are in the world.

In short, video conferencing can help your business remain operational, allowing you to operate as normally as possible during this challenging time.

To take part in video conferencing you will need:

1. A sufficiently powerful computer/tablet/smartphone - If your smartphone/tablet is under 3 years old, chances are it is powerful enough. However when talking about computers it will depend on the speed of your processors and the amount of RAM your machine has, ideally you want at least 2 GB of ram and a quad-core processor (don't worry if you aren't sure about this, you can always try video conferencing with your computer and, if it doesn't work, switch to your laptop or tablet).

2. A stable broadband internet connection - The exact speed of internet connection you need will depend on the quality of the sound and video you wish to send and receive. As a minimum you will need at least 1 Mbps but ideally should aim for a connection of at least 4 Mbps. This assumes that no other devices are accessing the internet during the call, if they are then you will need a faster connection to accommodate everyone using it.

3. A high resolution web cam - typically these are now built into laptops, tablets and smartphones so if you have one such device you probably have one.

4. A microphone - These days almost all tablets, smartphones and laptops combine with a microphone built it. However if you are using a desktop PC you may need to attach an external microphone to your computer, most modern webcams have these built in though so this shouldn't be an issue.

There are a number of great free options which you may wish to consider using when video conferencing. The one you pick will come down to which one you, and the other people you are conferencing with, find easiest to use.

Here we will showcase 3 of them:

• Zoom

• Skype

• Google Hangouts

Key Features

• • Hold video conferences with up to 100 people

  • No limit on the number of meetings you can hold

  • No time limit on 1 to 1 meetings

  • 40 mins time limit on group meetings (although you can always make a new meting when your 40 minutes are up).

Sign Up Options

If you want to host a meeting using Zoom, you will need to create an account. This is easy to do by logging into the app using your Google or Facebook credentials.

Signup Options

To use Google Hangouts you just need to have a free Google account.

If you are going to use it on a computer then you will need to install the Google Chrome web browser, if you are running it o a tablet or smartphone then you will need to install the Google Hangouts from your device's app store.

The purpose of the live-stream and these notes is not to tell you which video conferencing tool is best for you, but rather make you aware of three free to use options which you may consider using.

It's also worth noting that these are not the only options, there are many other tools which you might wish to consider.

The best thing to do now would be to try some of these tools, see which ones work best for you, and then go from there.