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Webinar Recording: Choosing a Wireless Presentation Solution

AV Everywhere

Get the recording of our webinar, “Choosing a Wireless Presentation Solution: Cut Through the Clutter.” During this event, Tom LeBlanc, editorial director of Commercial Integrator and My TechDecisions introduces the topic by asserting the value of collaboration in today’s work culture.
 
Lieven Bertier, director of go-to-market strategy and services, meeting experience, for Barco, then touches on topics like:
  • What makes a perfect meeting
  • Statistics based on surveys about business meetings
  • How to add value to meetings
  • What we need from our collaboration technology
  • Benefits to expect from collaboration meeting solutions
  • Barco ClickShare and its value as a wireless collaboration solution

Get the recording for “Choosing a Wireless Presentation Solution: Cut Through the Clutter” >

 

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Webinar Recording: Managing Your Networked Audio Systems

AV Everywhere

If you’re thinking about getting new audio solutions for the workplace or want to take better control of those you already have and trust, management of those devices needs to be a key part of your project plan. In this webinar, Chris Fitzsimmons of Biamp explains the value of SageVue, a monitoring and management tool that works with Biamp solutions like Tesira and Devio. He’ll help you understand important topics like:

  • Deployment needs
  • System architecture
  • Security capabilities
  • Key features of SageVue

You’ll also hear from Laurie Berg, AVI-SPL director of services product management, who explains the benefits of AVI-SPL’s monitoring and management application, Symphony.

Get the recording for “SageVue – Manage Your Biamp Solutions With Confidence” >

 

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InfoComm 2019: Take AVI-SPL’s Guided Tour of New Solutions

Audio distribution

Make the most of your time at InfoComm 2019 by taking AVI-SPL’s Guided Technology Tours of select partner booths, where we’ll highlight prominent digital workplace video and UCC solutions. Each of our five tours is curated by AVI-SPL and features the guidance of subject matter experts from our leading vendor partners as well as your AVI-SPL hosts.
 
We’ll begin the tours at AVI-SPL booth 3852 in the Orange County Convention Center. From there, we’ll spend about 15 minutes at each partner booth to learn about solutions that improve collaboration, engagement, productivity, and talent attraction/retention in your workplace. At the conclusion of each tour, we’ll raffle prizes at our booth. 
 
Register early to reserve your space. Registration will also be available prior to each tour at our booth. Tours include:

  • How to Optimize Your Huddle Rooms
  • Enterprise Video Production and Management
  • Connected Smart Spaces
  • Wow-factor displays and projection
  • AV over IP

Our tours will visit the booths for Barco, Biamp, Cisco, Crestron, Exterity, HARMAN, Legrand, LG, Mersive, MultiTaction, NEC Display, Onelan, Poly, Samsung, Shure, Sonic Foundry, and Sony. There will be plenty to learn from these vendor partners, and taking our guided tours is a great way to efficiently allocate your time while at the show.

Register for AVI-SPL’s Guided Technology Tours at InfoComm 2019 >

To view our Partner blog, click here

Q&A on Supporting Productivity in the Workplace

AV Events

Beau Wilder of Poly is an expert in what companies can do to shift their organizations toward the future of work. In the Q&A below, I spoke with Wilder, Poly’s VP of innovation waves and new products, about creating a workplace that enables people to be their best. 

Q: Why is workplace transformation so important?
Wilder: We’re all in this war for talent. The companies winning are the ones recognizing that their most important assets are their people.

We can work anywhere, anytime on any device using UCC technology. Those solutions have allowed work policies to be flexible, so we need spaces where we can make best use of that technology and its capabilities. If you don’t provide those spaces, people will vote with their feet and move on to a better situation.

Q: Considering the ability for people to work from anywhere, how important is the workplace?
Wilder: Even though research shows people are more productive at home, most choose to go back to work because they miss the collaboration. We want people to work together and feel empowered when they’re in the office. It’s that cross-pollination where new thinking happens. We’re always looking for the next big idea, and so we need to make it easier for people in the workplace to work together.

Q: How did the open office take hold as the new template for the workplace?
Wilder: We thrive as humans when we’re outdoors. The open office offers flexibility in creating an environment that mirrors the one outside. In these spaces, we’ve seen huge trends with health and wellness. Biophilic design that includes natural light and greenery sets people up to be their best. When people are happier and healthier, you have more productivity and creative output. But the open office comes with its own set of challenges.

Q: What are some of those challenges?
Wilder: Although companies have raced to open offices, some didn’t do it thoughtfully. It can be hard to work while people are collaborating near you. Therefore, we need to focus on a human-centric design in the office so we can be at our best by using technology that blends distracting speech into the background.

Q: What are the solutions for these challenges?
Wilder: Do your homework ahead of time and bring in your vendor partners early. You’ll also want to include your users in the journey toward workplace transformation. Focus on the human experience above the cost-savings. Collaboration in meeting spaces should be intuitive and easy. When you design for open spaces, consider the activity that will be happening and build in choice that allows for a personalized experience.

Q: What’s a realistic expectation for companies that want to transform their workplaces?
Wilder: Ask targeted questions of your staff. Find out where things aren’t working. As you design open spaces, let the technology do the heavy lifting. 

This process continues even after you’ve made the transformation. Understand that you won’t get your building right from day one. But by collecting data like occupancy and use of technology, you can be proactive in refining it.

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The New Microsoft Surface Hub 2S Is Here!

AV Everywhere

The second generation of Microsoft’s Surface Hub is on its way, and you can get yours through AVI-SPL. For meetings of different sizes, the Surface Hub 2S is your pathway to turning any space into a teamwork space and bringing remote teams together. When the first Surface Hub arrived in 2016, it empowered groups of different sizes to collaborate through an interactive display that included their preferred collaboration tools. Colleagues could be in the same room or spread out around the world, and the Surface Hub brought them and their ideas together in one place.

In creating this updated version, Microsoft has listened to its customers and improved the Surface Hub’s physical design and its integration with software applications. The new Microsoft Whiteboard app gives you the ability to find people, and includes image stacks and intelligent ink. Everyone can take part in the brainstorming session, because you can share your whiteboard across Android, iOS, and Windows 10 platforms. And you can pick up from where your team left off. Other features and benefits include:

  • 50% faster graphic performance over the first Surface Hub
  • 40% lighter than the original version
  • More intuitive user interface
  • 50-inch collaborative canvas
  • Fluid team collaboration through Surface Hub Pen and touch
  • Enhanced 4K camera
  • Can be easily moved when paired with a Steelcase Roam™ Mobile Stand
  • Remote collaboration using Microsoft Teams and Skype for Business
  • Integrated with Windows 10 and Office 365

The Surface Hub 2S empowers you with mobile, cordless, uninterrupted teamwork. Any place can be a collaboration space. AVI-SPL is an official Microsoft partner, and we are your source for the new Surface Hub, which is scheduled to ship in June. For more information, and to reserve your Surface Hub 2S, visit AVI-SPL’s dedicated Surface Hub page. >

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The Four S’s Are Your Keys to Collaboration Success

AV Everywhere

You want your workplace to be more than a building where people are obliged to meet for at least eight hours a day. It should be a home where teams can share and build upon ideas that help your company grow. To create the spaces that inspire your workers, AVI-SPL follows the “four S’s”: simple, standardized, scalable and serviceable. Each of these guidelines work together to form the workspaces that help meet your organization’s desired outcomes. Below, we look at what each of these principles means, why they matter, and how they work together.

Simple, Standardized, Scalable, and Serviceable

Simple — Are you going to use a conference room where the technology is an obstacle course of complexity, unreliability, and frustration? If you’re inclined to use a collaboration space, you want to work with colleagues on a project, not wonder why you can’t get the interactive display to sync to your device.

To apply simplicity to a space doesn’t mean you’ve limited its capabilities. Rather, you’ve removed the complex barriers to using and benefiting from those capabilities. This is usually the meaning when you hear someone describe a technology system as “frictionless.” Starting a meeting is streamlined, so that you can quickly start the display, audio, video, presentation, and get the purpose of the meeting underway.

Standardized — Regardless of where you’re working from, the technology experience needs to be the same among similar rooms in all locations. An employee that knows how to use a collaboration room in his or her home office should be able to do the same in another regional office. Applying standards and best practices makes the experience simple for the end user. Some of our clients have room standards that AVI-SPL must deliver reliably and in a way that allows their organizations to grow.

If you’ve yet to settle upon standards, AVI-SPL can help develop and provide them through its Rapid Rooms and Smart Spaces. These are collaboration spaces of various types that have been preconfigured with essential collaboration tools for various group sizes.

Your regional requirements may mean substituting one solution for another based on product availability. AVI-SPL lets customers know how their budgets may fluctuate based on those regional preferences. Because we are aware of differences within the same company, our designers, programmers and integrators ensure that your room functionality is consistent across locations.

Scalable — A scalable set of solutions are easily repeatable from office to office. By keeping room solutions simple and standardized, we can quickly deploy your rooms so that your regional locations stay connected. As your company grows and adds more collaboration spaces and solutions, so does AVI-SPL’s support of those solutions and your user experience through our managed services.

Serviceable — AVI-SPL considers serviceability as a design element when developing standards for your rooms and technology systems. That’s because spaces that are easy to use should also be easy to support. We assess the network topology where the solutions are being deployed so that the IT stakeholders can deliver and support the solutions on a consistent basis.

Serviceability means IT and/or  your managed services provider can proactively resolve issues and acquire the analytics that provide business insights, like how often your collaboration spaces are being used, the quality of the experience, and the number of service tickets that were generated in a particular time frame. From the data analysis of those standardized rooms, your organization continues to adjust its standards and conference rooms, and improve the user experience.

We find that customers are demanding actionable business intelligence about their collaboration solutions. They want to know if their technology systems are delivering ROI by improving productivity and if they need to reconfigure their collaboration spaces. AVI-SPL’s Symphony managed services platform provides the analytics to let you know whether your systems are delivering their intended value.

Work With the Experts in the Collaborative Workplace Experience

By following the four S’s, AVI-SPL creates meaningful spaces and better workplace experiences. Contact AVI-SPL and let us know where we can help improve the business outcomes for your organization.  

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