Presentation Coach Ray

09/14/2026

https://youtube.com/shorts/nAwU3RCvRm4

Everyone watching your webinar is watching alone. Maybe they're h...

09/14/2026

L&D can finally measure how a team shows up on camera.
Not a vibe. Not a gut feeling.
Five skills you can see, assess, and coach.

Last week, I watched a sharp manager present to her team on Zoom. Her ideas were strong. Her eyes stayed down on her notes the whole time. The team felt it before they could name it, and the message landed flat.

Here's what I keep coming back to.

On camera, presence isn't a soft skill. It's five things you can actually see: eye contact, lighting, sound, background, and gestures.

You can watch, score, and coach each one.

The field keeps saying the same thing. As teams push for AI readiness, durable human skills separate a message that lands from one that doesn't.

Ben Eubanks put numbers on the gap: most leaders believe skills are aligned, while only about one in five employees feel it.

On camera, that gap becomes visible.

That's why I start teams with a 30-person diagnostic cohort.

You see each person's gains.
You also see the pattern across the group.
From there, you get a clear map for building capability next.

So here's my question. When your team shows up on camera, can you tell what's working, or only that something feels off?

09/03/2026

Your employees may be on camera every day.

Do you know how well they communicate there?

For L&D leaders, online presence is now a skill that can be assessed.

And what you find may surprise you.

I recently watched a webinar with 150 people attending.

The presenter was speaking to them but rarely looking at them.

Instead, the presenter spent much of the session looking at the gallery view.

Meanwhile, those 150 people were sitting alone with email, texts, phones, and plenty of other places to put their attention.

That is the challenge L&D leaders need to recognize.

Online communication is no longer simply about knowing how to operate Zoom, Teams, or Meet. It is about knowing how to communicate effectively through them.

And those skills are observable.

Eye Contact. Lighting. Sound. Background. Gestures.

L&D leadership can assess these behaviors across a team, identify where people are losing effectiveness, and coach the specific skills that need improvement.

For organizations with 300, 3,000, or 30,000 employees, that turns “being better on video” into something far more useful:

A trainable workplace skill.

09/01/2026

I am hosting a live Q&A on September 16.

The topic is your team's online engagement skills.

Bring your hardest on-camera question, and I will answer it live. The setup that never looks right. The presenter who loses the room. The habit you keep seeing but cannot name.

Wednesday, September 16, 11 AM Eastern. Live on LinkedIn and YouTube. Cannot make it live? RSVP for the replay.

What would you ask?

Most training still treats speaking on camera as something people s...

08/24/2026

When was the last time you looked at the image others see on Teams, Zoom, etc? A webinar guest who is not looking at the we**am is "calling it in."

How about the rest of your team? 5 skills that can be measured.

1. Eye Contact
2. Lighting
3. Sound
4. Background
5. Gestures

L&D leaders who want to test the skills with The Modern Engagement Standard - DM ENGAGEMENT to me for details

I began my career as a broadcast journalist. I started an AV company designing training facilities for large Florida clients. Then they asked me to produce training content from the FBI (Bank Holdup) to Pier 66 Hotel, Lumns Restaurants, Eastern Airlines, and Southeast Bank.

For the early years of hashtag , I was an active member.

hashtag hashtag

08/22/2026

Sunset at Center Hill, Florida

08/21/2026

"The tech industry laid off more than 73,000 workers in the first four months of 2026. In a classroom inside a Hollywood recording studio, a 51-year-old hip-hop artist was teaching 75 college students how to build the AI agents that are replacing them."

Thought-provoking article by Maria Stan

https://thenextweb.com/news/will-i-am-agentic-self-ai-course-asu #:~:text=will.i.am%2C%20born%20William%20Adams%2C%20co%2Dfounder%20of%20the,apply%20agentic%20AI%20concepts%20to%20real%20problems.

will.i.am co-taught "The Agentic Self" at Arizona State University, where students built AI agents for veterans and street vendors. The tech industry cut 73,000 jobs the same semester.

08/17/2026

L&D executives: AI vs. Human
The five online skill assessments AI can't rank 1-5 with user-specific suggestions.

* Eye Contact
* Lighting
* Sound
* Background
* Gestures

How well do team members execute the basics of online engagement?

Type ASSESSMENT in DM to discover the answers.

08/15/2026

Should I use "Auto White Balance" for color temperature on my we**am?

With normal light on your face,

1. Turn on Auto White Balance
2. Place a white sheet where your face is
3. Note the White Balance scale number
4. Turn off Auto White Balance

I suggest finding the right look for your face and sticking with it unless the lighting on camera changes. If you have substantial "daylight" from a window you are facing (not behind you), the sun's color will change during the day.

Share this with someone who has no idea how lighting affects their on-camera (we**am) image.

A practical field guide to virtual presence. Master five measurable we**am skills: eye contact, lighting, sound, background, and gestures. By coach Ray Franklin.

08/12/2026

Looking into a we**am at the top of your screen while trying to read the faces of the people on your call just doesn't work. You end up staring inches below the lens, and to your client, board, or team, it looks like you aren't paying attention.

Using a desktop teleprompter as a direct eye-line monitor changes that completely.

By putting your Zoom or Teams meeting window on the "2nd screen", you can watch participants' expressions, pick up on subtle non-verbal cues, and track shared content while looking every single person straight in the eye.

Over 30 years in television and corporate presentation coaching have taught me one undeniable rule: true audience engagement lives and dies in the eye line.

When you align your vision directly with your lens, you instantly project confidence, authority, and genuine presence. It turns a standard, detached video call into an authentic, face-to-face conversation that holds the room.

𝗞𝗲𝘆 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀
● 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗦𝗶𝘇𝗶𝗻𝗴: A 10-inch to 12-inch monitor provides a balanced viewing area for meeting windows without obstructing your desk space. Anything larger than a 12-inch monitor will cause eye movements that are distracting to others.
● 𝗖𝗮𝗺𝗲𝗿𝗮 𝗣𝗹𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁: Select a USB-C we**am, locked in place behind the glass. AI tracking software is designed for standing presentations or multi-person panels, not for seated desktop calls, where camera movement caused by slight posture shifts only distracts the viewer.
● 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆 𝗙𝗹𝗶𝗽𝗽𝗶𝗻𝗴: Standard screen signals reflect backward on teleprompter glass. MAC or Windows system-level screen-mirroring settings, or a hardware auto-reversing monitor, ensure clean, undistorted viewing.

Upgrading your desktop setup with an eye-line display turns routine video calls into engaging, direct face-to-face interactions.

𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘁𝗲 𝗯𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗱𝗼𝘄𝗻?

For the top teleprompter package options, full pros and cons, software recommendations, and exact pricing details,
DM me with the word 𝗣𝗥𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗧𝗘𝗥.

I do not represent or profit from any equipment recommendations. They are well-researched and trusted sources.