Video conferencing equipment : 6 tips to optimize your teams productivity

That’s it ! You are decided.

No more do-it-yourself videoconferences with Skype in the multipurpose meeting room. You are ready to equip yourself with a videoconference room in order to be able to collaborate more efficiently and quickly with your teams.

The decision to install set up a collaborative meeting room being made, here are six important elements to check before you start investing:

A collaborative meeting room suitable for remote collaboration?

Several specific points must be taken into account before equipping your videoconferencing room:

• The most obvious: the size of the collaborative meeting room must correspond to the number of participants envisaged. Typically, you have to keep at least one meter between the back of the seats and the wall.
• The rectangular shape – the most classic – is suitable for a videoconference room, provided that the ratio between the length and the width does not exceed 3 (clearly, hallways should be avoided); a trapezoidal shape that will take up the V-shape of the table is also possible.
• The lighting of your videoconference room: this is a very important parameter. Natural light must be transverse to the screen: it is absolutely necessary to avoid the effects of backlighting. In addition, participants in the collaborative meeting room should be properly lit (approximately 200 lux); furthermore, interactive screens should not be taken in grazing light.
• The acoustics of your videoconference room: avoid large glass surfaces on four sides of your collaborative meeting room which amplify sound reverberation. If necessary, one or two walls should be provided with a sound-absorbing material.
• The door(s) on the opposite side to the screen: the flow of people entering must take place behind the participants and not cut across the visual field of the screen.
• The confidentiality of the collaborative meeting room: if the videoconference room is intended to host collaborative meetings of a confidential nature, care must be taken that the screen(s) is (are) not visible from the outside of the room.

Collaborative work in the videoconference room

Of course, you will be keen to anticipate the tools that will allow your teams to exchange, co-produce, challenge each other, with powerful tools in your new videoconference room.

What furniture for your collaborative meeting room?

It is important that everyone can see all the screens in the videoconference room without moving and vice versa: the remote site(s) must see all the participants present in the collaborative meeting room. Therefore, a V-shape of the table is highly recommended.

Furthermore, all wiring, electronics and peripherals must be integrated into the furniture and layout, secured against inadvertent displacement (not to mention theft); this is the only guarantee for the facility manager of a certain serenity.

Which remote collaboration equipment to choose for your collaborative meeting room?

There is life outside the collaborative meeting room (yes ;-D).

Because you spend most of your time in meetings (an average executive spends 21 hours a week in meetings, which is more than at their workstation), your remote teams must be easily reachable from the videoconference room. Collaborative tools are numerous but can be grouped around the following three themes: audio conferencing, video conferencing, and content sharing/remote co-editing.

Trust a professional to make you proposals that meet your specifications. Do not hesitate to ask for a POC (Proof Of Concept) or in other words a test with the requested equipment.

Is the internet connection suitable for my collaborative meeting room?

Two points are to be checked here: the capacity of the local connection (wifi most of the time) but more importantly: the quality of the internet access (speed, jitter, latency).

In conclusion, taking these six points into account simultaneously will allow you to balance and control your budget by avoiding frustrations and costly upgrades when you go to equip your videoconferencing room and prepare your video meetings.