It was a mere 10 people in the conference room, but that was enough.

“The moderator was showing applications on his desktop which means everyone could see everything,” says Lori Howard McCool, an events manager with ReadyTalk.com. “He was also instant messaging with his girlfriend, planning their evening. And it was straight up pornographic.”

McCool attempted to give the guy a gentle reminder that his applications were visible to everyone present, but he didn’t notice.

“I finally had to say, ‘It looks like you have a very interesting evening planned in your chat.’ And he was like, ‘You can see that?'”

Clearly, we have not yet caught on with our own technology. Yes, when you sit at home in your PJs in front of the web cam conference call, your business associates can see the fetching polka dot patterns.

McCool says she’s seen bathtub pictures of kids, customers’ credit card information, and personal reminders regarding doctor appointments (“Remember, no sex – pap smear tomorrow!”).

For your associates’ sake, recall that you and your desktop are on camera.

Muting the Madness
Timberly Marek, a 32 year old IT project manager from Oregon says she recently led a teleconference where one of the participants accidently dropped his unmated phone in the toilet.

“We were talking about coding and then we could hear his heavy breathing and then all of a sudden, we heard a splash,” she says. “That was followed by ‘Oh s—! Just a second! Oh God, this is disgusting!”

Marek goes on to say the entire meeting was stopped as the guy desperately tried to fish his phone out of the toilet, dropping it again as the headset got unplugged. The splashing and cursing only cut off when the phone mercifully died.

“Forgetting to mute is probably where the majority of mishaps come from,” says McCool, who says she’s heard everything from passing gas to crying kids to screaming taxi drivers to snide remarks about speakers during the teleconferences she’s facilitated.

“People will mumble: ‘Man, that person is a jackass,'” she says. “They don’t use their mute button and don’t realize that the filter isn’t there any longer. There are moments when you’re blushing for them.”

Cue-less Conversations
Patricia Wallace, author of “The Internet in the Workplace: How New Technology is Transforming Work,” says these kinds of telecommuting mishaps are a natural result of communication in a new medium that lacks the usual social cues.

“We’ve created a universe in which we can interact with people without being physically present but all the controls that we used to have for our behavior are gone, they’re absent,” she says. “The cues that people are listening or watching are weak. It might just be a tiny little light on your screen.”

Claire McGuire, a 33-year-old freelance writer from Philadelphia, recently experienced this while interviewing some people via Skype. Two people were visible on her screen, she says, but only one seemed aware of the fact.
“One of them sat respectfully listening when I was talking,” she says. “But the other one would look at her companion and roll her eyes as if my question was ridiculous. I finally said, ‘I should tell you that I can see you on video.’ ”

Wallace, who’s also seen her share of oblivious conferencing (including an unmuted colleague who nodded off and began to snore during a remote session meeting) says she considers webcams practically “villainous.”

“If you turn on Skype and the webcam is on right away, chances are, you’re not going to look the way you intend to look when you appear at a business meeting,” she says. “If it’s in a hotel room, people will see weird stuff in the background – suitcases open, pillows on the bed. Plus the person may not have shaved or may have their shirt out.”

Then there are those automatic settings to worry about.

“Anybody who thinks it’s fine to have the webcam on as a default is making a huge mistake,” she says. “But who’s going to look at all those defaults? We’re making blunders because we don’t know how to translate the tools we now have at our disposal.”

Business formalities are more relaxed with modern office mobility and ease of communication. Yet, that can only be stretched to such a point before it meets indecency.

“When I’m video conferencing, I’m often in my underwear,” says Danny Wong, cofounder of an New York-based Ecommerce startup. “I try to cut off my webcam at the neck but pretty frequently my team has seen my chest or if I’m lying on my bed with the laptop, a bare thigh. It’s easy to blur the lines. There’s not a lot of distinction between home and work.”

Getting a Handle on the Technology
Technology has not eliminated the fact that impressions still count. Accordingly, we still need to learn how to compose ourselves over teleconferencing communications.

Wallace suggests that workers take the time to learn the software: figure out where all the mute buttons are, learn the defaults, etc. Also, consider where the camera is placed. It’s a bit awkward to converse with someone’s forehead, or the underside of their chin.

Take into account what you look like from the other end; web anonymity does not apply here. Teleconferencing is a new form of cue-less communication that we all need to take the time to learn. Bear with your associates.

Just make sure you’re not next to have a discussion of sophisticated coding undermined by your son’s undies in the background.

For help picking out web conferencing software, download this free Top 10 Web Conferencing Software report.