Should you describe yourself and your location in remote meetings?

Absolutely, but there needs to be a balance between the right amount of data and Too Much Information (TMI).

Once, I was on a panel with a moderator and four other individuals scheduled to last 45 minutes. The moderator for the talk and a couple of the other panelists happened to be in Canada, where it is common to do indigenous land acknowledgments at the beginning of presentations.

Author’s note: I am not Indigenous but have lived on land in two countries with a robust Indigenous presence and history, which is essential to honor.

My perspective is purely that of a White person, and I may not have everything correct. I continue to learn and grow in this area and welcome feedback from individuals who identify as Indigenous.

The panel’s topic would have filled an entire day, so the time allotted already felt quite compressed. Also, we wanted to leave time for Q&A at the end. Each panelist plus the moderator providing detailed visual descriptions and their land acknowledgments took up almost 20 minutes of the allotted presentation time. After accounting for 10 minutes for Q&A at the end, we only had about 15 minutes for the main panel discussion, which worked out to one short question…