Or specifically share only the application (or specific file) window, not your screen 👍
(I know zoom lets you do this but not sure about teams/whatever else)
So far I've only had the humorous mishaps... My daughter (in college 3 time zones away) tried to FaceTime in the middle of a lecture once. My class thought I was mean not to answer...
I once saw someone deliberately not do this on the day it was announced they'd been elected an FRS, so we could see what important people were congratulating them
So in 2017 when my eldercare responsibilities were so overwhelming I talked my. dad down from a very bad delirium episode and when it was over I was finishing the dishes and a huge antique platter slipped and I made the mistake of trying to catch it and sliced my finger open badly requiring stitches
My entire department once learned about the lovely date I’d had with my girlfriend the previous evening that way.
It was all entirely SFW, thank goodness, and everyone had the presence of mind not to mention it, but I dissociated a bit when I saw the notification go up on my screen share.
Tips for Windows:
Use a second screen if you have one. Clear everything else off that screen.
Turn on “do not disturb”.
Hide your desktop icons.
With a browser:
Use a new window in a private session.
Hide your bookmarks.
Change your new tab page to be about:blank.
Friend of mine had students do a presentation and a student was typing in a URL to a screen-shared browser window to get her presentation started and it autocompleted to a different site that was clearly devoted to extremely adult content. 😳😳
Good advice for any screen share at all! Or even if you're maybe training someone on your computer, and you've got a coworker that sends gossipy IMs...
Was once in a meeting with Gartner Group where one of my colleagues was presenting. Notifications on. She had her back to the big screen when her husband sent her a seriously erotic message. She was very puzzled by the reaction of the audience to her pitch
If you use Apple products, there is a great feature called Focus that can limit notifications and set some other preferences, and it can be toggled to the device's location. So, when I'm on campus, it automatically sets my focus mode.
The smoothest presentation I ever saw - someone was doing his seminar for getting tenure, and a spam ad for Viagra got pushed to the computer. He closed it and kept going like nothing happened fast enough than 90+% of people in the room had no idea what the window was.
It's just a shame that the software ecosystem is so notification friendly that this is such an issue, and you can never be 100% sure you haven't missed some new setting that appeared in an update that got silently installed last night.
Some applications, like zoom give you the option to only share a specific app, like PowerPoint or Word (& even a specific file within those). Learning how to do this has been really helpful—notifications & other private stuff won’t show, that way.
Also switch off sounds when attending a funeral. A few years ago I was in a funeral, and just a couple of minutes before it started, but after everyone was seated, a phone started ringing. An elderly women frantically tried to stop the noise. A few seconds later, the same phone rang once more...
I once said something snarky about a 3rd party consulting company to a teammate that was away on a business trip, while he was giving a presentation and sharing his screen.
With the entire staff of the consulting company.
It was ten years ago and I'm still dying of embarrassment.
1/
(Thank you for the concern for me personally but I learned this lesson from the example of others many years ago and I always make my devices safe! However it is occasionally made clear to me that many people have yet to learn and I would like to share the warning)
Also, block Youtube ads and download videos to play in PowerPoint. One instructor forgot that last week and a mildly embarrassing ad played loudly to the class. He played it cool and recovered.
