During our video conference I noticed a lot of the mannerisms and personal presentation that was a little more forced than normal face to face conferences or meetings. As Effects of Four Computer-Mediated Communications Channels on Trust Development talks about delayed trust and fragile trust, I feel like this was present during the video conference. The first person we got to met during our conference tried to offset the delay of trust by giving us a video angle of his computer screens to give the impression of being trust worthy. His physical appearance was geared towards business casual, much like the second person we met. This gives the impression of being trustworthy.
I noticed while the man from Michigan University, was trying to give us his whole attention he kept getting interrupted by others needed to get into the area. He would need to leave our line of sight, and seemed disappointed by the fact he was not devoting his complete attention on us. The two final people we talked with positioned their camera to be right above their computer screen. This made it easy for us to feel like they were looking right at us, however they did bring up the problem that it looked as if we were looking away from the camera, kind of off screen.
We talked about these problems occurring in video conferencing in class, and this situation verified the claims. I also noticed that people paid more attention to their physical appearance, by fixing their hair, straightening up in their seat, and the location of their cameras. The persons environment also plays into how quickly we trust them. The Michigan University school logo being apart of the background added to us students accepting the credentials of the speaker, versus a white wall or an office with no way of understanding the persons credentials.
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I agree with your observations of Erik Hofer's mannerism's during the presentation. It definitely seems like when the number of collaborators at the different endpoints is unbalanced there is a tendency for there to be a sort of awkwardness that arises that would not be seen in a FtF meeting. Even if it were just Erik and the class and no other users, it's a bit unnatural to have 40 people focused on one person, while Erik clearly cannot direct his attention to each of us all the time.
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