How do I improve my communication skills during meetings while working remotely with a team that's mostly in-office?

I've had a variety of roles and have worked with many remote-first colleagues throughout my career. I found that doing strategic virtual "face time" makes a big difference. A few points I try to follow or have seen other remote-first colleagues do:

• Camera on! Your presence can be felt more if someone can see you and your reactions. Especially as a designer, I've found it hard to present to other folks (whether in the office or remotely) without seeing reactions. And imagine how others might feel if they only get if they only see a black box on Zoom? If you get sick of staring at yourself (been there), I believe some video conference tools allow you to hide your self-view.

• Set up recurring 1:1s / offer to pair with your colleagues 1:1. At Uber, I work with colleagues all around the world. Purposefully setting up 1:1s to catch up once in a while, even if a task could easily be done via slack, or sometimes knocking out a few tasks at once while on a video call can help build rapport over time. The allies and friends you can build in person in the office can also be done via video / slack / email...it just takes a little more effort to make a spontaneous interaction happen more intentionally.

• Send videos! When I used to work with colleagues in Ukraine in my first job, our time zones were a complete mismatch. Two of my colleagues were the key front-end developers I needed to work with, and so we'd keep in touch by sending over video voiceovers + notes via task tracking apps to make sure we could catch one another, even if we couldn't do it live. Loom is another great tool for this.

I hope this helps! I'd love to hear what other tips folks have for this experience as we continue to evolve work to be more remote-friendly.