Originally a media buying agency, Adwise has since grown to offer a full range of marketing services including advertising, publishing, campaign analytics and technology solutions. This transition into a full-service digital agency has also coincided with the growth of a portfolio of local and international clients. Collaboration, therefore, both in person and virtually, has always been an important factor in the business for building and maintaining client relationships as well as staff well-being and productivity.

Prior to the pandemic, Adwise ran its business along traditional lines with most staff working full-time from the office and most meetings being conducted face-to-face, whether that was between staff or with clients. The global shutdown in March-April 2020 changed everything and the company transitioned to a remote working model, and since then, as the ‘new normal’ emerged, started (and continues) to operate with a fully hybrid workforce.

The Return to Office Problem

As staff began to return to the office, issues began to emerge around the use and layout of meeting spaces at the headquarters. The standard large meeting rooms were not fit for purpose as they were quickly overbooked and often under-occupied when in use. The reason being, since working from home people had become used to conducting virtual meetings with an element of privacy – hence the heavily booked meeting spaces. Creatively deeper work had also become more difficult for some, as more people returned to the office.

Jeffrey Oelen, workspace manager at Adwise, knew that he needed to find a solution to the problem to maintain staff productivity and job satisfaction. He began to research for a solution that could offer an innovative way to meet these, as well as the evolving needs of the business.

The Hush Pod + Avocor Desk 27  Solution

During his research Jeffrey discovered the Hushoffice range of acoustic office meeting pods. Hush pods are custom-designed, sound-proofed enclosed spaces that offer privacy and noise elimination to create a peaceful environment for productive work and virtual meetings. They also feature a comfortable bench seat and built-in desk, adjustable lighting for different tasks and because they are on wheels, can be moved around the office where and when desired. Jeffrey then had the task of finding a monitor or display that could be used for virtual meetings and videoconferences without the need for peripherals such as camera, microphone and speakers which would clutter up the space. In simple terms, an all-in-one solution.

“I was on a visit to the Google office in Brussels and I saw the Google Meet Series One Desk 27 by Avocor in action – it was then I knew I’d found the answer,” says Jeffrey. “I was inspired – the Desk 27 has no real competitors and occupies a unique place in the market. It is the perfect size for our pods and offers all the functionality we want; it’s a powerful collaboration tool for virtual meetings, a desktop monitor with touchscreen, a laptop docking station and digital whiteboard all rolled into one unit – exactly the all-in-one device we were looking for. Also, Google Workspace is our chosen software collaboration platform so adding the hardware was a seamless process with no extra training or orientation required. The units made a real difference from day one and we haven’t looked back.”

Adwise invested in four Desk 27s – one for each Hush unit in the office. With existing Google Workspace licenses in place, the pods quickly became the ‘go-to’ place for smaller collaboration meetings and distraction-free focused work for individual staff. This development also freed up the other meeting rooms for larger groups to meet and collaborate.

“I’m really pleased with how the Desk 27s have worked out,” adds Jeffrey. “At Adwise we want our workspace to continue to inspire colleagues and clients as well as excite potential new employees who visit our premises. With the addition of the stylish Hush pods and Google Meet Series One Desk 27 by Avocor, I feel that’s exactly what we’ve achieved.”

The post Adwise Transforms Workplace with Hush Pods & Google Meet Series One Desk 27 by Avocor appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The sheer proliferation of platforms, abilities, and features can be a minefield for identifying the best, more secure and user-friendly hybrid working solutions for your business.

The good news is that tech companies are talking to, and working together more than ever, creating partnerships to deliver solutions for a more collaborative future.

So, we know the tools are out there. Choosing the right ecosystem will not only save time and money in the future, but also enable your team to hit the ground running at peak productivity sooner. Let’s look at the most important features to look for.

True hybrid collaboration

While the option to be fully remote will still exist for many companies, in-person collaboration continues to be the benefit that employees enjoy most about the office. According to a survey by Microsoft on hybrid work, more than 65% of those surveyed crave more in-person time with their teams to collaborate.

At the same time, employees have also acknowledged the benefits of physical workplaces and offices that are harder to replicate virtually – one of them being the interpersonal connections and relationships they are able to forge in person.

With these considerations in mind, leaders developing a digital transformation strategy should focus on space design and technology that supports flexible collaboration, leaning on physical office space for in-person collaboration.

Employees should be able to move from each style of work fluidly, whether they’re in a conference room in the office in the morning and at home working after the school run in the afternoon.  Collaboration and UC technology can enable this seamless transition by replicating the in-person experience through video display technology, and vice-versa.

Wherever they are based, employees need to benefit from the meeting equity and interactivity UC tools can deliver, with the same functionalities, regardless of location. They should be able to enter any workspace, physical or virtual, and immediately be able to collaborate with fellow team members without wasting time on set-up.

Another great feature to look for is real-time annotation. The ability to show cloud-based real-time annotations in a meeting with (and from) everyone on a call, and then to save and share the new ideas and edits, gives all participants an equal opportunity to provide input. Features like this help to foster a sense of connectivity by eliminating siloed conversations and opening the possibilities of how teams must work today.  

Scalable solutions to support a wide range of services and platforms

Workspace apps such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Ring Central, and Google Meet have become a standard part of the office IT set up.  Ensuring compatibility and compliance with all of the tools that people are using is essential for business leaders to keep both productivity and employee satisfaction high.

Some of the common challenges with rolling these changes out include an assurance that the installed technology will work seamlessly with an enterprises’ existing OS and applications, that it will be totally secure and that it will be easy-to-use for their entire employee base, including those who are not stationed within the main office.

There are also logistical challenges around system design and choosing products that cut down on the number of devices you have in a meeting room or huddle space. Decision-makers should therefore look for all-in-one displays that feature audio/video capabilities, embedded cameras, and a full suite of native support for all the tools and platforms that employees use across the enterprise.

Data is key

Analytics and data have always been an important driver in decision-making for the enterprise, but with the return-to-work post-COVID, this information is even more critical to ensure operational efficiency, as well as employee comfort and confidence.

Also, commercial real estate and office space are at a premium, from the basic cost-per-square-foot to the amount it costs to manage those spaces. Workspace intelligence analytic solutions built into workplace hardware, such as meeting room displays, allow enterprise decision-makers to take immediate action to re-evaluate meeting rooms, UC hardware and software ROI, as well as guide future planning.

The way forward

Planning a digital transformation strategy that encompasses the multi-faceted needs of the new workplace will position leaders, and their organizations, to have the best chance of success, business continuity and employee satisfaction.

In the initial 12 months of the pandemic, organizations were focused on digital enablement for workers, making sure they had tools to be productive at home and contribute to continuing to drive business with the provision of laptops, webcams etc. We’re now at a place where we need to supercharge these tools and provide all the capabilities of office-based tools, for the home-office home too.

Consistency is key to building company culture and supporting productivity. The enterprise needs a slick and user-friendly hybrid ecosystem that can be rolled out company wide. It’s my view that this approach will be widely adopted by businesses, providing a standardized ecosystem that gives every employee the same view, functionality, experience, and style in meetings, whether in the office, the boardroom or in the home-office. Hybrid harmony is on the horizon!

The post Building Blocks for True Hybrid Collaboration appeared first on My TechDecisions.

With more than 8,200 licensed beds across nine states, AdventHealth serves more than five million patients each year across its 45 hospital campuses. Adam Hennig, program manager at AdventHealth, runs a program called HRO Unit Culture, which trains healthcare teams across all AdventHealth hospitals to communicate effectively and visibly “close the loop” on ideas and concerns shared by frontline teams.

Hennig explains, “We want to ensure that every team member has a voice and feels they have the psychological safety to report any issues, from something as simple as not having enough trash cans to much bigger concerns, such as a medicine being labelled incorrectly and the fatal implications this could have.”

To achieve this open communication, AdventHealth uses a technology called LENS, which is a web-based platform (Learning and ENgagement System) from Safe and Reliable Healthcare. 

Choosing the Avocor Solution

“Choosing the Avocor solution meant that we could install an interactive touchscreen solution that was much tighter to the wall, and this really opened up the options where we could mount these within our units. The Avocor displays were also much lighter than the previous brand we had used in the past, translating in much faster install times because we didn’t have to reinforce any of the walls. The solution enables our frontline healthcare providers access to information, to celebrate team success or engage in multi-purpose meetings, all from the touch of a button,” says Hennig.

Now deployed in more than 100 different healthcare settings, Avocor displays are used by more than 1,000 healthcare professionals every day.

Despite the Avocor solution being originally implemented to drive the LENS application, Hennig is now seeing alternative uses for the displays across the AdventHealth campuses.

“Our Avocor + LENS solution is intuitive for all our users, regardless of their technical ability. The feedback we have received is that the touch experience is smooth and precise with no lag, creating a superior user experience in these critical environments. Furthermore, our teams are now independently exploring additional use cases for their Avocor interactive screens. I recently saw one unit using the Avocor display to show a YouTube video of an aquarium, which was a very calming visual for patients and staff alike, brought to life in 4K resolution. I know that other teams find the native integration with Microsoft vital in their day-to-day work.” Hennig explains.

The post AdventHealth Equips Facilities with Interactive Avocor E Series Displays appeared first on My TechDecisions.

As offices reopen as part of a distributed work strategy, IT teams are getting even more responsibilities as organizations look to build out new or refreshed conferencing spaces to accommodate their hybrid workers.

However, in this new environment where smaller conferencing spaces or huddle rooms are in demand to meet the needs of the hybrid workforce, not every conferencing spaces needs elaborate and complex videoconferencing systems. Especially as the software platforms are introducing more intelligent video and audio features, these smaller meeting spaces need only simple hardware solutions that IT can easily deploy and manage.

That is where all-in-one videoconferencing displays comes in. These devices, from manufacturers such as Microsoft, LG, Cisco, Neat and others, come packaged with everything an organization needs in their conference room. The displays typically include a high-quality display, camera, speakers and microphone all in one.

This takes the complexity and cost out of meeting room solutions, eliminating the need to install and integrate sperate displays, microphones, cameras and speakers.

Many  displays come with built-in intelligent audio and video features that filter out unwanted noise and automatically frame in-person participants so everyone is heard equally.

Click the links included in each slide to learn more about each product, including pricing and availability.

The post 8 All-in-One Videoconferencing Displays That Make Meetings Easier appeared first on My TechDecisions.

The collaboration industry and the hardware and software companies that provide the innovative solutions that make remote and hybrid work possible have adapted to make those transitions possible while keeping employees productive – regardless of where they are.

TechDecisions saw this on full display at InfoComm 2022, where some of the biggest names in unified communication and collaboration were showing off their newest solutions.

Zoom, now a world-famous brand that has become synonymous with videoconferencing, was showing off its newest Zoom Rooms features, including its Workspace Reservation tool that enables users to book meeting spaces via an interactive map of the office.

Hybrid work, meeting equity and all-in-one devices

However, the name of the game at InfoComm was hybrid work and meeting equity, and Zoom was also highlighting its intelligence video technologies, such as Smart Gallery, a feature that displays multiple video feeds from a single conference room camera, making it easier for remote meeting attendees to see everyone clearly.

During a demonstration at Zoom’s booth, Smart Gallery displayed three video feeds: the whole room and one each for myself and Mark Barragan, Zoom’s manager of Zoom Rooms for the Americans.

Zoom has struck up countless partnerships with makers of videoconferencing cameras, such as Poly and Logitech, both of which were showing off their devices and highlighting their relationships with the world’s largest software providers and their purpose-built devices for collaboration platforms.

Poly, in addition to their suite of videoconferencing cameras and speakers, recently released the R30 USB video bar for small conferencing spaces that combines enterprise-grade video and audio tools into one small, easy-to-deploy form factor. The device features intelligent audio and video technologies for speaking framing and noise reduction to ensure all in-room participants are heard equally.

Logitech, a longtime videoconferencing hardware market leader, was also showing off its lineup of all-in-one Rally Bar devices, in addition to its full suite of remote and hybrid work essentials, such as headsets, personal conferencing cameras.

Also highlighting its newest all-in-one conferencing device was Bose, which is marketing its decades-long expertise in audio as the reason its VideoBar VB-S stands out from its competition with six beam-steering microphones that filter out unwanted noise and intelligent video-framing capabilities.

For advanced conferencing experiences where hybrid work meeting equity is a must, Crestron — a brand ubiquitous in enterprise conferencing spaces and other audiovisual installations — debuted its new Sightline technology that tracks the active speaker and displaying the view of the entire room while simultaneously framing individual speakers.

While designed with hybrid workers in mind, Sightline also makes it easier for in-room participants to follow along with remote participants by keeping their video in the line of sight.

For enhanced audio intelligibility, Shure displayed its MXA920 Ceiling Array Microphone featuring the company’s Automatic Coverage technology, the microphones pre-configured audio capture with minimal set up required, dramatically reducing the time and cost of deployments. The conference room microphones include the onboard IntelliMix DSP for noise and echo-free performance.

Collaboration displays

Building on the idea of all-in-one videoconferencing bars, display manufacturers such as LG, Avocor, Sharp NEC Display Solutions, Samsung and others were showing off their enterprise-quality displays with built in cameras, speakers and microphones to take the complexity out of conferencing spaces.

Among LG’s new lineup of impressive DVLED displays, the company was showing off its videoconferencing displays, including the One:Quick series, which features the 55-inch One-Quick Works and the 43-inch Flex model. Both are running on Windows 10 and are compatible with a wide variety of videoconferencing apps.

Like other hardware providers, collaboration display manufacturer Avocor is also looking to partner with leading conferencing software companies, evidenced by its new Google Meet Series One displays being highlighted on the show floor.

Read Next: My TechDecisions Podcast Episode 162: What IT Can Learn About Audiovisual Systems at InfoComm

The family of products, developed in partnership with Google Workspace, includes the Series One Board 65 and Series One Desk 27. While optimized for Google’s flagship business collaboration and conferencing platform, both can run any videoconferencing app.

Both include an integrated camera, microphone and speaker, as well as whiteboarding capabilities and intelligent audio and video features designed to reduce unwanted noise and keep on-site and remote participants engaged.

Similarly, Sharp NEC Display solutions showed off its PN-L2B AQUOS BOARD Smart Interactive Display, which it says it designed for hybrid meetings and classrooms. THe displays feature a single USB-C connector for easy startup and built-in wireless connectivity, among other visual features for which this brand is known. Several operating systems are supported, including Windows, Android, iOS, MacOS, iPadOS and Chrome OS.

Samsung, meanwhile, combines its impressive, interactive display technology with tried-and-true conferencing solutions from providers such as Logitech to provide all organizations need to collaborate with remote workers.

For educational settings, Samsung highlighted the Flip Pro, an interactive whiteboard that enables simultaneous collaboration for up to 20 people.

Monitoring and management tools for IT

However, what IT professionals have been calling for as they struggle to monitor and manage their organization’s new conferencing technology and spaces is visibility into those devices, many of which are deployed on the network. To address that need, Logitech highlighted its device management and deployment software, Sync and Logi Tune.

Poly offers similar a similar solution, Poly Lens, to help IT keep tabs on its conferencing devices.

Moving away from brand specific monitoring tools, companies such as software provider Utelogy and global AV integration firm AVI-SPL offer their own monitoring and management tools to help IT ensure conference room systems continue to run without disruption.

Utelogy CEO Kevin Morrison told me that as organizations continue to embrace hybrid work and are building out new conferencing spaces, IT professionals are lacking visibility and management capabilities. The Utelogy platform aims to solve that problem by providing a combination of monitoring, management, control and testing capabilities.

The platform currently supports 2,800 devices, which provides an invaluable tool for IT professionals to manage conferencing systems from the growing ecosystem of hardware vendors.

Meanwhile, AVI-SPL showed off the newest version of its Symphony platform for management and monitoring of multi-vendor collaboration systems and meeting environments.

The new version of the Symphony platform, 6.0, provides a revamped user interface that provides clarify and efficiency for IT administrators and analysts to easily see and understand what is happening across their collaboration technology ecosystem.

What IT can learn from InfoComm

Aside from those vendors, the InfoComm show is becoming heavily tailored to IT professionals, with over 20 sessions this year focused on IT and networked audiovisual systems. That included a panel session focused on the point of view of IT and end users of these products being showcased.

Other sessions explored cybersecurity implications for IoT, AV and workplace technology in enterprise environments, while a three-day course on networked AV systems looked at the impacts of AV systems on networks.

Visit the InfoComm show’s website or AVIXA’s website to learn more about these technologies.

The post The Unified Communication and Collaboration Technology on Display at InfoComm 2022 appeared first on My TechDecisions.

These new feature enhancements come as Google and collaboration display provider Avocor are showing off the new Google Meet Series One displays at various trade shows around the world as Google hopes to push Meet further into the meeting room space.

New Google Meet features announced during I/O

According to Google, the company is introducing several new intelligent features to Google Workspace, including automated summarization for Google Docs that uses machine learning models for text summarization. The company says it will bring a similar feature to Google Chat so users don’t have to read lengthy conversations to get up to speed.

Similarly, Google is bringing automated transcription and summarizing to Google Meet as well, so users can catch up on important meetings. These new features are designed to help employees stay in the loop and easily reference the discussion at a later time. Transcriptions will be released later this year, and summarizations next year.

The company also announced an update to Project Startline, a new project that combines advances in hardware and software to enable meeting participants to feel like they’re together. Google says it has been testing it across its offices to get feedback and improve the technology, but in the process learned some things that it is now applying to Meet.

Those learnings include new machine learning-powered image processing to automatically improve image quality in Meet, which works on any type of device.

According to Google, a new portrait restore feature uses Google’s AI to improve video quality by addressing low-light issues, low-quality webcams or poor network connectivity. This happens in the cloud without impacting device performance.

Portrait light is another image quality feature that uses machine learning to simulate studio-quality lighting in Google Meet video feeds, and users can even adjust the light position and brightness.

Other new Google Meet features include de-reverberation designed to filter out the echoes in spaces with hard surfaces, and life sharing to make hybrid meetings more interactive.

Google all in on all-in-one videoconferencing market with new Avocor displays

While Zoom and Microsoft Teams became household names nearly overnight in March 2020, Google has been steadily building new capabilities into Google Meet, which is already entrenched in the K-12 education market with many schools running on Google’s operating system and Chromebooks.

Now, Google is making a broader play for the enterprise conference room market, partnering with hardware manufacturers such as Avocor, a maker of all-in-one videoconferencing displays. The companies recently showed off the new Google Meet Series One displays at Google’s New York City offices, at which the company doubled down on its strategy of making Google Workspace and Meet the productivity suite that future generations of executives and business professionals will be using.

The devices, developed in collaboration between the two companies, include a 27-inch Series One Desk and the 65-inch Series One Board. Both feature all-in-one touchscreen videoconferencing, whiteboarding and other capabilities running on Google’s software.

The Desk 27 is designed for personal collaboration via Google Meet, but can also be used as a desk monitor, laptop docking station and digital whiteboard that integrates with Google’s popular Jamboard app.

According to Avocor, the device features an integrated soundbar and mic array with Google’s multi-channel noise cancellation technology TrueVoice, an adjustable tabletop stand and wall mounting capabilities.

The Desk 27 requires just a power cord and Ethernet and a USB-C port for laptop connection, which helps improve cable management. When connected to a laptop, users can access all of their files and apps, including everything in Workspace.

The display can run any videoconferencing app while leveraging the audio and video capabilities with the touchscreen display, digital PTZ camera and soundbar, according to Avocor.

Starting a meeting requires the user to touch either their calendar or the room resource calendar, or they can say “Hey Google, join the meeting.”

The wall-mountable Board 65 is designed for small-to-medium conferencing spaces and includes many features of the Desk 27, including laptop connection, noise cancellation, touch capabilities, integrated audio and video features, Jamboard integration and voice activation.

Google’s play for the conference room

According to David Rosenthal, Google’s global go-to-market strategy lead for unified communications, the company is continuing to pursue hardware partnerships to make a bigger play for the conference room in the hybrid work era.

“The conference room is where the magic is,” Rosenthal said at the event. People joining from their computers at home are going to have a very similar experience, regardless of the meeting solution they’re on.”

With meeting platform providers all innovating quickly over the last two years, it’s the conference room that will set platforms apart, according to Rosenthal, which is why Google is pursuing these hardware partnerships with companies like Avocor.

In addition to Avocor, Rosenthal said Google is also looking to integrate with room controllers from other leading conference room manufacturers.

“Partnering with a company like Avocor, which really knows that the conference room layouts are, what the individual end user requirements are and how to deliver partners to work with to get that equipment in and installed … is very important,” Rosenthal said.

With Google a leader in the K-12 education environment, the company envisions Workspace and Meet growing quickly as those students graduate and become the business leaders of the future.

“Google has been playing the long game with education for 10 years at this point,” Rosenthal said. “K-12 is important because those are the minds of the future.”

For Avocor, it was Google’s list of improvements it made to Meet over the course of the pandemic as every business transitioned to remote work and relied on videoconferencing that excited the company about working on a dedicated videoconferencing device.

“That’s what we’re most exciting about,” said Dana Corey, Avocor’s senior vice president and general manager of Rosenthal’s presentation of a long list of feature enhancements. “We want to see three pages of that.”

The post Google Looks To Grow Google Meet With New Features, Hardware Partnerships appeared first on My TechDecisions.