5 Critical A/V Components for Your Conference Room
5 critical A/V Components for your conference room. Employees may be returning to the same offices they left behind in 2020, but their A/V technology needs have changed.
After the challenges of the past year, many workers are missing their colleagues and in-person collaboration. With the sudden shift to remote work in 2020 and the rise of video conferencing technology, most employees haven’t had to file into their conference rooms for months. But as vaccinations increase and offices reopen, a prompt return to in-person conferencing seems all but inevitable.
What then can small businesses do to encourage productive interactions when employees return to conference rooms? In this blog post, we look at five easy-to-use A/V components that are essential to every company’s meeting space. Not only do these practical solutions make it easier for employees to collaborate, they also make it easier to connect with customers and team members virtually.
Why modern conference room A/V solutions matter
From important pitches to invaluable brainstorming sessions, the conference room is where business-altering conversations happen. Given its significance, everything about a company’s conference room should encourage collaboration, creative problem-solving, and efficiency. That’s where conference room A/V solutions come into play. Modern A/V solutions effectively eliminate the headaches caused by malfunctioning or outdated technology and help businesses connect with clients in new ways.
Face-to-face meetings may return to prominence soon, but that doesn’t mean that video conferencing is going away. Over the course of the pandemic, many business owners have learned that meeting on Microsoft Teams, Webex, or Zoom presents new opportunities, not obstacles. According to a recent Gartner survey, 82% of businesses plan to adopt hybrid schedules moving forward, allowing employees to work remotely at least some of the time.
Whether or not your business is embracing remote work, video conferencing solutions have become vital meeting room A/V technology. A cost-effective alternative to travel, web conferencing allows employees to connect with remote team members and clients. That means modern meeting rooms shouldn’t be limited internal business: they should be dynamic conferencing hubs, capable of hosting in-person and online meetings. With this in mind, conference rooms should provide employees with the technology they need to seamlessly collaborate with team members and adopt a more efficient approach to work.
5 A/V solutions that streamline meetings
Need to update your conferencing technology? These five critical A/V components help businesses quickly adapt to customer needs, improve their local presentations, and optimize their meeting spaces.
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High-quality displays
Arguably the most eye-catching pieces of conference room technology, high-quality displays improve video conferences and presentations. Plus, displays are invaluable collaboration tools. By allowing screen sharing and connecting employees with clients across the world, great displays make video conferencing feel more like, well, in-person conferencing.
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Cameras designed for conference rooms
Just like displays, cameras are vital technology for any meeting space. While simple webcams may work for one-on-one video calls, conference rooms require more advanced technology. Because of this, many businesses choose to install auto-framing or wide-angle cameras in meeting rooms. These types of cameras provide high-quality visuals while capturing the whole room. However, different conference rooms have different audio-visual needs. Talk to an A/V expert to determine which type of camera is best suited to your conferencing space.
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Conference room audio systems
Nowadays, sounding professional isn’t limited to the content of your presentations. Sounding professional also means using headsets and microphones designed specifically for web conferencing. In 2021, many businesses are integrating up-to-date conference room audio systems so that poor audio quality doesn’t derail important meetings.
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Control panels
By allowing users to operate all conferencing A/V equipment from one dashboard, control panels simplify conferencing technology and make meeting rooms easier to manage. Put differently, control panels unite all of a company’s conference room A/V equipment and turn it into a cohesive conference room A/V system. Given that control panels are key pieces of meeting room technology, they should be easy to use and have simple interfaces.
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Interactive whiteboards
Compared to the other items on this list, interactive whiteboards are more of a luxury than a conferencing necessity. They are, however, incredibly useful pieces of meeting room technology. Interactive whiteboards allow users to recreate the feeling of in-person conferencing for virtual settings. By allowing employees to annotate documents and presentations and creatively brainstorm, interactive whiteboards make video conferences more efficient and more fun.
Conference room A/V installation in central Indiana
As employees return to in-person work, business owners across the country are hustling to build safer, more efficient offices. This endeavor starts in the conference room.
Is outdated technology interfering with your team’s productivity? AV Designers can help. Regardless of the size of your project or the constraints of your budget, our skilled technicians will deliver A/V solutions that lead to higher-quality meetings. Contact us today for comprehensive consultation, design, and installation services.