A conference room brings together a mixture of hardware, optimised for room sizes from the smallest huddle space to a large boardroom. Whilst guidance exists as to the correct application of hardware, we often see rooms installed to a budget, rather than to meet a technical specification and this leads to a poor user experience.

The hardware assessment looks critically at current meeting room provisions and highlights any concerns. This also feeds into AI readiness.

Ecosystem
Most conference rooms are enabled for virtual meetings. Enablement technologies can be based on an ecosystem like Microsoft Teams, Zoom or Google, or be platform agnostic “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD), or a combination of both.

Ecosystem rooms require dedicated compute resource and licensing. The choice of both here impacts available features and AI enablement.

Peripherals
Cameras, microphones and speakers are added to an ecosystem room or made available to the BYOD user to run their conference. To function efficiently, consideration must be given to this equipment in relation to room size.

Cameras are assessed for their depth and field of view, microphones must pick up throughout the space, but also mitigate unwanted background noise. Speakers should be clear heard too. We assess these points in relation to the current hardware and its installation.

What exactly is an equitable meeting environment? In short, ensuring that all participants, regardless of where they’re located, have the same experience in any given video meeting.

During the pandemic we were forced to work remotely and used Teams and Zoom extensively. At this time, all participants were displayed in their own video pane, as a head and shoulder image with their own microphones, speakers and display. In short, everybody had the same experience. You could see facial expressions, make virtual eye contact with your colleagues and remain engaged.

Today, meetings are often hybrid with some dialling in remotely, some in meeting rooms - the challenge now is recreating the equity seen during remote working times.

Using the data gathered in the survey our team assess and make recommendations on equity improvements. Specifically, we look at:

• Camera system framing, tracking and presentation flexibility.

• Microphone performance to establish whole room pickup.

• Assistive listening systems in support of hard-of-hearing staff and guests.

• Display properties to ensure closest and farthest viewers are accommodated.

• Ecosystem provisions in support of additional features (whiteboards, multiple cameras and licensing where available)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) significantly improves the quality and productivity of video meetings. We specialise in seamlessly integrating advanced AI products and services into meeting rooms, creating smarter spaces where every participant—whether in-person or remote—has an equal opportunity to contribute.

AI does not manifest in some scary, self-driving beast that crashes your IT systems and runs away with your data. Absolutely not. It is a sensible set of features that vendors use to enhance their part of a conferencing system, that when used together make a huge impact on efficiency and user experiences.

As part of the survey, we score your existing provisions against AI benchmarks. Some examples of how AI improves Audio-Visual installations:

Cameras
Legacy camera systems are rudimentary, giving remote participants a fixed, almost CCTV like, distant view of the meeting. It is difficult to actively participate in a conference when the images you see reinforce your remote status. Promoting equity means accessing AI hardware that supports the tracking and framing of meeting room participants, enhances lighting to improve the remote view and even streams people side-by-side, as if they were individual attendees.

Audio
Hearing and being heard, both remotely and in the room are paramount for a productive session. Microphone and speaker system technology continues to evolve, with the latest AI driven systems capable of accurately isolating a speaker amongst background noises to provide the best possible comprehension for all. What’s more, pickup settings can be changed dynamically at the touch of a button and without engineer involvement.

Productivity Tools
Another significant element of meeting room optimisation is to support the mass adoption of AI as a productivity tool. Video meetings are regularly recorded and transcribed for compliance and archive purposes. Taking these into AI tools such Microsoft CoPilot and Chat GPT, they are able draft meeting minutes and analyse productivity and decision making – all significant time savers. Their output however is only as good as the data they are given; inaccurate transcriptions caused by ineffective microphones will lead to a poor AI experience. Our team understand the needs of AI productivity and can also provide training to customers teams on its effective use.