How Do We Build a New or Update Our Existing Conference Room or Huddle Space
We have built a lot of boardrooms, conference rooms and huddle spaces throughout the years, and with all the video meetings taking place now, it has become a big part of our business.
A big conference room upgrade can be a lot to deal with, so, where do you start?
First and foremost, get EOC Audio involved as early as possible.
It cannot be said enough: the sooner you bring your technology partners into the conversation, the better for everyone. The ongoing convergence of technologies means your trades need to be working together and have a clear understanding of who’s responsible for what and when This is traditionally good advice, but it is also contemporarily good practice due to the current strain on supply chains being felt throughout the world.
So now that you have your technology partners in the conversation, what should you be asking for?
Well, hybrid spaces are becoming a huge necessity—and for good reason. Minimizing your footprint and maximizing your space can be a huge swing in the right direction on the balance sheet, but it needs to be well-executed and maintained along the way. We’ve discovered you can maintain a smaller physical footprint and get just as much productivity out of it in exchange for offering people flexibility on when and where they work. Creating a complete and easy to use system is what differentiates EOC from the rest, we partner with the best vendors in the world to create reliable and efficient work areas. Maximizing employee efficiency is just one of the great end results of an EOC System.
Scheduling Solutions for Conference Rooms
Have you ever opened the door to a meeting space and found that it was already being used, this is totally avoidable. A scheduling system is critical to pull this off effectively. The idea is collaborative spaces are flexible, and then you have a mixture of everyday workstations and offices that are both flexible and perpetually occupied. If person A wants to work three days from home and spend the other two days in the office on a flexible schedule, they book a shared workstation for those two days. If you have people rotate days, they can also share regularly assigned workstations. Your conference rooms and collaborative spaces are all bookable space. Ask about EOC Audio’s automation solutions that supercharge your scheduling system by giving people real-time access to the room’s status at any given time.
Conference Room Lighting
In addition to a good scheduling solution, you should also consider a conference room's lighting technologies. The modern space often involves camera use, and it would be wise to design lighting solutions that are designed to light your space accordingly. This is not to say you need to turn your modern collaboration space into a television studio, but if you’re building a new space, it would be wise to opt for something beyond the can lights and ceiling grids of the old days.
And in cases where you have dedicated presentation spaces (I’m looking at you lecture halls), then you absolutely can and should have dedicated lighting for your focus area. As far as I’m concerned, if it is going to be on camera, then do what you can to create as good an image as possible .
Tying lighting into your control and automation systems is a no brainer. This may seem like a luxury, but the goal here is removing variables from the users and people in the room so they can get into the room and start collaborating quickly—all while having a consistently good experience.
Conference Room Audio
In terms of audio, you want your integrator working in tandem with your interior designer to ensure the space has great acoustics. It can be disengaging for people on the other end of your calls to have to put up with poor audio, and it is often said that audio quality is more important for a good experience than good video. While hard surfaces and glass seem to be very popular in conference rooms, there are several design friendly ways to improve your audio experience—for both you and your colleagues on the other end of the call—by making sure your design team takes sound quality into consideration. From there, it’s all about selecting the right audio pickup solution for the space and making sure you support any in-room audio needs.
Ease of Use (An EOC Specialty)
I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a simple to use system. The proper choice and programming of your control system is the difference between a productive work staff or a great presentation and a frustrating bad start to a collaborative effort or an important meeting. Selecting the right controllable components and integrating them into the right control system is critical to maximize efficiency and allows you to focus on the things that really matter.
There are many other things worth considering but given the focus on flex spaces and the surge in video conferencing, these few key aspects should get you going in the right direction. At the very least, if you only took my first piece of advice (get your partners involved as early as possible) then you’ll be in good shape to explore your options and potential solutions before having to commit to a decision.
