5 Ways to Upgrade Your Conference Room

Conference rooms are where corporation and government directors draft policies, teams and departments discuss projects, and executives plot operational decisions. It’s a place where grave matters are discussed and significant resolutions are formulated, so shouldn’t clear and impactful communication be paramount?

Consider upgrading your conference room setup to incorporate cutting-edge audio-visual solutions and the best conference room technology. 

Imagine how much more engaging and productive meetings can be if participants are properly equipped to present their ideas, argue their points, and, more importantly, hear other people’s proposals and points of view.

At the very least, a highly functional conference room setup should make protracted and highly complex meetings—if not enjoyable—at least easier to get through. By enabling clearer and more effective communication, you and your organisation can prevent critical issues from arising from miscommunication.

As a case in point, do you remember the collapse of two suspended skywalks in Hyatt Regency Hotel, Kansas City, in 1981? That skywalk failure killed 114 people, and it was due to a structurally unsound design change, which might have been avoided if the steel fabricator sat in a room with the structural engineering team before making its fateful (and ultimately fatal) fabrication decision.

Context: Havens Steel, the steel fabricator, supposedly checked with Gillum and Associates’ structural engineering design team via phone call. However, the two companies did not meet in person to approve and test the new design.

Below are examples of modern conference room technology upgrades you can implement to transform regular meeting rooms into smart conference rooms. Use them to make meetings better in your organisation.

1. Interactive Displays

Install interactive screens in your meeting rooms, and use them as displays for multimedia presentations.

Presenters can also use interactive displays as digital whiteboards, where they can write, compute, draw on the fly, annotate documents, or do many other things. Collaboration is also possible if meeting participants can annotate what’s on the display from a connected tablet or notebook computer.

2. Video Conferencing Solutions

You can turn one of your meeting rooms into an immersive video conferencing room. In this setup, the long wall holds an ultrawide monitor that displays video meeting participants and any shared digital content.

Install a wide-angle, high-resolution video-conferencing camera on the wall underneath the monitor but at eye level of the meeting participants seated around the curved meeting table. This will capture the in-room meeting participants for the benefit of those attending online. Best use a pan, tilt, and zoom (PTZ) camera, which enables focusing on the group as a whole or on individual speakers, as needed.

There should be microphones in the room. Your system integrator can set up your video conferencing room with a powerful central microphone and mic pods distributed all over the table for convenient microphone audio pick-up and in-room participant mic access. Every seat on the table could also have its own microphone.

The speaker (from which to hear audio material and video conferencing participants speak) can be located beside the web camera under the monitor. A video conferencing controller can sit on the table or be attached to the wall. You can initiate video calls, share content from connected screens, adjust camera focus, and control the microphones with a single touch on the controller screen.

3. Room Scheduling or Booking Systems

Make booking a meeting room easier for your departments and teams with a room scheduling system.

Those who have the authority to book meeting rooms (this could be everyone in the company) could access the meeting room booking interface on an app or a webpage (e.g., the Google Workspace Calendar). All the company’s conference rooms and the meetings already scheduled (and when) would be listed there.

Personnel could then pick their preferred conference room from the options and indicate their meeting date and time. This should automatically block off the chosen room for that date and time on the unified booking dashboard.

4. Visitor Management

A visitor management system can help you provide an excellent guest experience for the clients visiting your office. You can add and pre-register guests to your meeting calendar, and the system will send personalised email instructions and reminders to the people you’ve added.

Once they’re in your building, they can check in with the building’s reception or via a self-service check-in kiosk. You may also be notified so you can get them from the ground floor.

If you opt for the self-check-in system, checked-in guests will receive more instructions on where to go and how to get there; they may even be asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, as needed. The system will also send them a digital pass they can use to ride secure-access elevators and get past the security doors on your floor.

On your end, the visitor management system will notify you of your guests’ progress so you can be right there at the door when they arrive.

5. Meeting Room Automation

Automate your meeting room. Lights and air-conditioners can turn on or off, and window shades can open or close:

• during set times;
• when motion sensors detect activity in the room; 
• when a meeting has been scheduled (based on input from the room scheduling software); or
• in response to voice commands.

With smart meeting room technology, moreover, you can use a single platform to initiate video conferences and control the following:

• room scheduling
• the microphones
• the cameras
• the speakers
• the lights
• the room shades
• the air-conditioners
• the projectors
• the display monitors
• room access

Such complex work requires the input and expertise of a systems and technology integrator who can link all your meeting room features and technologies for automation and unified control.

Upgrade Your Conference Room Setup

Your meeting room can be so much smarter with an interactive display, video conferencing software and equipment, a room scheduling system, a visitor management solution, and meeting room automation.

MVP Tech is a leading provider of systems integration solutions.

We offer turnkey audio-visual solutions and services, incorporating software and hardware and connecting them into a unified system to turn your regular meeting rooms into smart conference rooms.

Contact us now to learn about modern conference room technology you can use to upgrade your conference room setup.