Author: Ubiq

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

How to Get the Most Out of Your Conference Room Camera

Posted on

Just as having a high-end piano is no guarantee that you’ll create good music, having a high-end conference room camera is no guarantee that your videoconferencing sessions will be productive. A conference room camera is a complicated tool, and if you aren’t using it properly, it could be more trouble than it’s worth.
Here are 5 tips to help you make sure you’re getting the most out of your conference room camera.

1. Choose Angle Carefully (i.e. Don’t Point Camera at Window)

1
Does your conference room have windows? If so, you could be in trouble, especially if it’s a bright, sunny day. Unless your overhead lighting is somehow more powerful than the sun, the window will appear horribly overexposed. This means that everyone in the shot will appear in silhouette. While this may create an appropriate effect if everyone attending the meeting is a spy, in most cases, silhouettes are not desirable.
Luckily, this is an easy issue to fix. Either close the blinds or arrange the table so that everyone is the facing the window.

2. Choose Focal Length Carefully

00-2001-iris-crop_1000_420_90_c1
One of the hardest decisions to make during a videoconferencing session is the focal length. If the camera is zoomed out too far, it feels like you’re talking to ants. If the camera is zoomed in too close, only one person can talk at a time. Take the time to find a nice middle ground between those two extremes.
Perhaps the best solution is to get a conference room camera with facial recognition software that automatically pans to the person who is talking.

3. Choose Background Carefully

company-best-office-interior-with-art-accesories-on-the-wall-and-wonderful-chandelier-and-orange-chair-plus-table-on-the-gray-rug-cover-the-floor-1024x684
Having art on the walls may enhance the room, but it won’t enhance the videoconferencing experience. A neutral background will allow people to pay greater attention to what’s being said and not on the decor.

4. Get an Oval Table

BoardroomTable_Oval_Threshold_THUMB1
A rectangular conference table is great for in-person meetings, but it can create problems for videoconferencing. If everyone is sitting in a straight line, the people at the back of the line will have to lean forward in a way that’s awkward and uncomfortable. An easy way to avoid this is to use an oval table.

5. Don’t rely on your camera’s built-in microphone

microphones
Most camera’s come with a built-in microphone, and while these are handy, they only capture great audio when the speaker is two feet from the camera. Since this would entail staring at an extreme close-up of the speaker, you may want to explore external microphones.
ADDITIONAL READING
7 Components of a Successful Video Conference System
AV System Integrators: Are They Really Necessary?
5 Must-Have AV Products For Your Conference Room

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Ways To Collaborate In Online Meetings More Efficiently

Posted on

It can be hard to ensure that your team is working to its full potential when they are not in the same room. Web conferencing platforms have been a fantastic tool allowing organizations and individuals to collaborate, no matter where they are in the world. Unfortunately, this does come with some downfalls. By being part of a virtual team, there can be many issues that arise leading to inefficiency. Here, we will explore a few ways to make sure your team stays on task and operates to their highest potential.

Share Your Screens

Wireless screen sharing is a revolutionary technique that helps to make collaboration within teams easy. By using a web-based screen sharing solution, individuals can easily share ideas, documents and links work that members would have otherwise been working on individually. Combined, this increases productivity within a team tenfold.

Time Tracking

By using software platforms that track time, you can easily identify weak spots in your online team by assessing what they do and by setting deadlines, which ensures tasks are completed in a timely and efficient manner. By utilizing online time sheets, you can review every individual team member and see how productively those members are collaborating together.

Implement Cloud Servers

The majority of web meeting platforms allow for file sharing, but what about having a team server? Some of the most popular platforms include Dropbox and Google Drive but there are plenty of other options on the market, all covering their specific niche. By using cloud servers, members of your online teams can share, view and upload documents, making them easily accessible to everyone else. By using systems like these, your organization can save time and complete tasks a lot more quickly.

Make Applications Accessible

When working with online teams, various members may be located around the world. This means everybody is working in different time zones and some people may not be available at the same time as everyone else. By making your applications easily available, either by computers, laptops, tablets and smartphones, team members can access files and communicate, anywhere and anytime. By implementing this across the board, you can increase team efficiency to no end.

Online Brainstorming

When organizing an online team, it can be difficult to get everybody on the same page, especially when those team members are working remotely. By using a brainstorming platform, you’re ensuring that everybody in the team is seeing the same data as everybody else and that they’re visually all on the same page. By having all your team members in the same frame of mind, online collaboration becomes easy, allowing tasks to be completed efficiently and on time. There are a vast range of platforms to choose from, one of the most popular and most mainstream solutions being mural.ly.
ADDITIONAL READING
Conference Room Design: A Guide For the Perplexed
Conference Room Cable Management Checklist
AV System Integrators: Are They Really Necessary?
 
 

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Camouflaging Conference Room Floor Boxes: 3 Techniques

Posted on

Squirrels, criminals, and conference room designers all have one thing in common: In order to survive, they have to be really good at hiding things.
Just as squirrels must keep their acorns stashed away from the prying eyes of rival rodents, and just as criminals must keep the evidence of their crimes hidden from the police, so too must conference room designers hide mounds and mounds of cables from the conference room’s end users.
HDMI cables, VGA cables, mini DisplayPort cables, USB cables—all of these must be carefully concealed in a professional-looking conference room. Most designers will do this by drilling holes into walls, ripping out baseboards, and purchasing bulky desks with hidden compartments.
But one item that causes particular consternation among conference room designers is the conference room floor box (which, for those not in know, is basically the same thing as a conference table connectivity box, except located on the floor). Most designers try to hide it by making the cover the same color/pattern as the rest of the floor, but this usually backfires. Since the cables need an exit route, the cover has to have a hole in it, which creates the impression your conference room has a termite problem.
Other designers will approach the problem by deliberately making the floor box stand out, just as some architects put ventilation shafts on the outside of their buildings.
But these don’t have to be your only two options. Here are three other methods you can use to hide those unsightly conference room floor boxes.

1. Cover Them With a Plant

2f09e413215d3b62a6a3db55c4b4a624
Most conference room floor boxes are no bigger than a square foot, which is roughly the same amount of space taken up by a medium-sized plant. By using a plant to cover the box, all your end users have to do is move the plant (usually less than 10 pounds), open up the floor flap, plug in their cables, and close the floor flap. When the meeting is over, all they have to do is open the flap, unplug their cables, close the flap, and put the plant back over the box.
The only drawback to this approach is that it almost does too good a job of hiding the floor box. Users who have never been in the conference room before will never be able to find the box on their own and will need to be informed of its location prior to the meeting.

2. Use a Motorized Solution

floot boxes
One way to avoid having an unsightly circular hole in your conference room floor is to not have the cable escape route at the top of the floor box. But if the cables can’t escape from the top, then they’ll have to escape from the sides, which means that the box will have to permanently protrude from out of the ground.
Or will it?
Not if the box is motorized. Rather than open and close a flap, all you have to do with a motorized solution is press a button and your connectivity ports will majestically rise up from out of the ground like Justin Bieber rising up from under the stage at the start of a concert.
It’s a cool effect, but you may want to get approval before implementing: Spending a few weeks’ salary on a motorized floor box (these things go for $2500 and up) could be seen as recklessly extravagant and could land you in trouble.

3. Cover It Completely and Get a Wireless Presentation Solution

ubiq_promo_pic_1_1024-e1475507199466
The best way to camouflage a floor box is to put a carpet over it and nail the to the ground so that it never sees the light of day ever again.
This will make it impossible for end users to connect their laptops to the box’s ports, but if you invest in a wireless presentation solution, they’ll have no need for the box’s ports. All they’ll have to do to connect is
For more on wireless presentation solutions, click here.
ADDITIONAL READING
Conference Room Design: A Guide For the Perplexed
5 Must-Have AV Products For Your Conference Room
AV System Integrators: Are They Really Necessary?

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Do People Even Have Scheduled Meetings Anymore Or Do They Just Hog The Meeting Rooms?

Posted on

There seems to be a re-occurring pattern in today’s office environment: You check your company’s calendar, look into what conference rooms are available, and there isn’t any. Do you always find that when you do eventually find a free slot, once you have already invited your colleagues to join you, you receive countless emails asking if you could change your time as they need the room for something more important?

More times than not, one of those emails comes from your boss, so you inevitably have to re-book and begin the entire process from the start.  This game of cat and mouse continues for a couple of weeks and just as you feel like giving up, you manage to find a room and a time slot that is less than half a year away.

So, you’ve got your room and your time slot. The invitations are sent and preparations for your meeting is well underway. You organize the final touches and head off to the conference room. At this point, you have so much information to share with your teams, it feels like you are going to have to book another meeting regardless!

Just as you attempt to enter the meeting room, you realize that the room is full and you’re already five minutes into your time slot.  Nobody looks up as you enter the room, only finally turning around when you ask if they are nearly done, only to be told that the room has already been booked for this time slot.  Whether that is true or not, you have to leave begrudged.

So why is this a reoccurring situation? You may feel like this is just affecting you but in fact, it’s happening to businesses all over the world.

The answer?

Firstly, companies are having consistently more meetings.  There are studies that found that there are over 25 million meetings occurring every day in the U.S alone. This figure is roughly double what it was in 1999.

With more and more businesses expanding and trying to meet their every client’s request, meetings are a necessary daily requirement.  With that in mind, the buildings, in which these businesses are located, are simply not designed to handle this increasing development. A traditional office used to be row upon row of personal cubicles with a handful of rooms available for meetings. Most office setups only had one or two conference rooms available. Now that meetings are becoming more and more frequent, the physical layout of most businesses simply doesn’t supply this demand.

Luckily, as businesses evolve and look to more modern offices designs, there is a big emphasis on open plan office layouts, many of which provide multiple tables and social areas in which meetings can take place, meaning you don’t have to queue up and fight for months on end about who has the projector room.

ADDITIONAL READING
Conference Room Schedule Display Solutions: 4 Suggestions
Conference Room Technology: 5 Investments You Should Make
Conference Room Design: A Guide For the Perplexed

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

The Path From SysAdmin to IT Director: How Long Is It?

Posted on

A system administrator is one of the most crucial roles in any organization. Responsible for making sure IT departments run smoothly, system administrators are highly skilled and familiar working within a variety of applications and file servers as well as multiple operating systems and, more often than not, must have skills in scripting and programming. If you’re looking to expand your horizons and make your way up the career ladder to the coveted role of IT director, there are a number of steps you have to take. 

Here, we will explore those steps to help get you on your way.

Step One: Qualifications

Depending on the size of the organization, many companies will look for some kind of IT qualification, normally a Bachelor Degree level. It is worth noting that this may not be essential as many companies may accept graduate degrees or give in-house training.

Step Two: Work IT Related Roles

If you’re aiming to secure yourself an IT Director position, you will need to have at least several years experience in an IT related role. Being a system administrator, you will already be gaining experience that will be vital to achieving your goal. You will want to aim for a minimum of five years experience but you will have the freedom to change role to something similar, such as computer programmer, database administrator, or software developer—all of which will help provide you with valuable experience.

Step Three: Gain Further Certifications

To boost your chances at securing a director vacancy, you may want to obtain further qualifications or certificates to prove your skills. This may include certifications using certain operating systems or software platforms that will demonstrate how comfortable you are at using certain systems. You can gain these certificates to any level from a basic level to a mastery level.

Step Four: Seek IT Director Positions

IT Director roles require a lot of skills including strong organizational and communication skills. If successful in securing a role, you will be in charge of handling vast amounts of information as well as setting targets for your teams that are in the companies best interest. Research suitable job roles and what each one requires, matching your personal skills to ensure you fit the requirements. If they are requesting skills you may not have, research ways in which you can obtain education and proof for these skills.

Step Five: Always Be Willing To Learn

As technology progresses on a constant basis, you will need to show the willingness to constantly learn about new technologies and show that you can be flexible to change. You will need to be willing to show enthusiasm to update software platforms so networks can run at optimum efficiency, maximizing opportunities for the organization.

The path from System Administrator to IT Director can take several years but the benefits are worthwhile. With wages for high end organization IT directors averaging $100,000, the career of an IT director can be highly rewarding as well as mentally stimulating and full of job satisfaction.

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Office Equipment: Must-Have vs. Nice to Have

Posted on

When it comes to office equipment, whether you’re outfitting an empty room from scratch or planning a much-needed refurbishment, it can be easy to get carried away. When looking for equipment to buy, it’s too easy to spend a large chunk of your budget on things you don’t really need but convince yourself you do. Here, you can find our list of essential office equipment and some that you really don’t but are nice to have anyway!

Furniture

office equipment
Must-Have or Nice to Have?: Must-Have
Easily one of the most important aspects of any office, the furniture. You’ll need good quality stable desks with chairs that match the height and provide ample workstation space.  When purchasing these items, you’ll want to make sure you’ll be able to sit comfortably and won’t suffer from back pain or hurt your neck when sitting.  Likewise, make sure you have another space on your desk.  There’s nothing worse than buying one, setting up your computer and realizing you have no space for anything else.

What you might not need is desk accompaniments. This can include anything from cup holders, built-in USB sockets, wire organizers etc.  Many desks come with a lot of added features that you might think you need at the time.  Clips built in to hold and organize your wires might sound like a great idea but if you’re only going to be putting a laptop on your desk, you’re paying for features you won’t use.

Computer

office equipment
Must-Have or Nice to Have?: Must-Have (except for super expensive ones, which fall in the Nice to Have category)
Another vital piece of office equipment is your computer. Whether using a desktop or laptop, getting your computer right can make a huge difference in your productivity. Make sure when buying your PCs, research what is the best decision for you. What sort of tasks are you going to be completing and what kind of power does the computer need to handle that sort of workload?

As nice as it would be to walk into the office and see each workstation lit up by the latest Macbooks or high-performance PCs, if you’re going to be working on spreadsheets and answering emails, that kind of computing power is just unnecessary and investing in them would be a huge waste of money.

Core Electronics

office equipment
Must-Have or Nice to Have?: Must-Have
Leading on from computers, you’re going to want a printer. Searching online, you can see so many printers, each with their own range of features from basic printers to full scaled fax & photocopier printers. Do your research! Will you need to fax other companies or clients? Are you going to need a photocopier or are you working solely online? The price difference between a basic printer and a fully functional one is huge and you don’t want spend unnecessary amounts of your budget.

Other Electronics

office equipment
Must-Have or Nice to Have?: Nice to Have
When looking to invest in office equipment, it’s important to take note on what you need for your office to run smoothly and to maximum efficiency. Think of electronic hardware that you’ll need. Projectors? Fax machines? Laminators? These are all facilities that you would expect to find in a fully functional office and there’s no better feeling than walking into a full equipped office that is ready to run.  Ask yourself, do you really need these appliances? You could waste huge amounts of your budget investing in these appliances, especially if you purchase top-of-the-range brands.
ADDITIONAL READING
Top 5 Conference Room TVs of 2017
Conference Room Design: A Guide For the Perplexed
Top 10 Conference Room Cable Management Fails of 2016

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Conference Room Tables: 10 Styles to Choose From

Posted on

When purchasing a new conference room table, the first thing you need to do is to measure the conference room. The single biggest mistake you can make during this entire process is to put a tiny table in a gigantic room or a gigantic table in a tiny room. If your conference room looks anything like this, you’ve goofed.
Conference room tables come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. Here’s a brief overview of some of the makes/models that are out there.

Barrington Table (National Office Furniture)
conference room tables

A classic table which–if it weren’t for the laptop sitting on it in the picture to the left–would be perfectly at home in an elegant 1930s boardroom.

Epic Table (National Office Furniture)

conference room tables
On the opposite side of the spectrum, the Epic Table offers a clean, minimalistic design that’s perfectly suited for start-ups that want to replicate the vibe of Facebook’s Frank Gehry-designed open office space.

Arrowood Table (National Office Furniture)

nof_01_TS09_Arrowood_Table_Triumph_Conference_Rev16
National Office Furniture’s sleek Arrowood line features a mitered rim and clean lines. Like peanut butter or Guile’s Theme from Street Fighter 2, this is something that fits in everywhere it goes.

Lean Desk (Opendesk)

lean-desk_index_front-view_ply_2880x1620.lead
Rather than purchase your conference room table the traditional way, you may want to consider checking out Opendesk, a UK-based company that allows you to download your table so you can have it made locally, regardless of your location. Their Lean Desk–notable for its spacious surface and modular covers–works well as both a work station and conference room table.

Barrel Shaped Glass (Calibre Office Furniture)

5000x2100_Barrel_Shape_glass_boardroom_1024x684 (2)
Who says that conference room tables need to be made of wood? Not only do glass tables make the room appear larger, they are also much better at handling coffee spills, which–let’s face it–are going to occur at a rate of 5-7 per day.

Modular Table (Calibre Office Furniture)

category241
For meetings which involve a speaker standing in front of a podium, a U-shaped conference room table can go a long way toward reducing neck-strain.

Conti Table (Krost)

Conti-Boardroom-Table
If you want your table to be an exact height, width, or length, you can save yourself the hassle of searching high and low of looking for a pre-made table and just go with Krost, who will custom build your table according to your specifications.

Apollo (Boss Design)

Apollo 04
For meetings that draw in larger groups, a table that can comfortably seat up to 14 people is essential. Boss’s Apollo is one such table.

Foundations Table (Teknion)

prodban-Foundations_Conferencing
 
One benefit of the Teknion Expansion table is that it can be purchased with a matching lectern and wall-mounted display board, making your job as an interior designer that much easier.

Expansion Table (Teknion)

prodban-Expansion_Meeting_Tables-1
Teknion’s Foundations table offers simple horizontal and vertical planes with added option of contrasting finishes for those seeking aesthetic variety.
This blog post previously appeared in the third chapter of our e-book Conference Room Design: A Guide For the Perplexed. To read the full e-book, click here.
ADDITIONAL READING
Conference Room Design: 10 Examples Worth Studying
5 Must-Have AV Products For Your Conference Room
Wireless Conference Rooms vs. Cabled Conference Rooms: Which Has the Better ROI?

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

Stop Wasting Time in Meetings

Posted on

Like dentist appointments, speaking in front of large crowds, and eating large quantities of raw asparagus, business meetings are not something that people generally look forward to. The reasons for this are almost too many to list: Finding an available meeting room can feel like searching for the mythical city of El Dorado, sending a laptop screen to the conference room TV can be as time-consuming as a New York Times crossword puzzle, and Larry from accounting always shows up 10 minutes late and insists on being informed of what he missed.
All in all, meeting rooms are to time what black holes are to matter.
But do you know exactly how much time you’re wasting in meetings? In the below infographic—produced in collaboration with Teem—we outline some of the statistics associated with meeting room time-wastage. If you happen to have a beverage in your hand, you may want to rest it gently against the nearest flat surface before proceeding: Some of the figures may shock you.
Conveniently, we also offer some solutions to help you cut back on some of this insane time-wastage, should you feel inclined to move in that direction.
Infographic Blog Snippet3
 
This is the link that the above arrow is pointing at.

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

5 IT Infrastructure Skills That Employers Are Looking For

Posted on

With businesses updating their IT software platforms constantly, the demand for skilled IT workers has never been greater. As cloud-based solutions and integrated mobile devices become the new standard, businesses are investing more and more money on workers that can maintain, update, and keep IT infrastructure running smoothly. Below, we will explore some of the most demanded IT infrastructure skills that are crucial in today’s business world.

1. Help-desk & Tech Support

IT Infrastructure skills

As the latest technologies are rolled out to businesses around the world, there has been a huge increase in demand for skilled help-desk and IT support workers. The problem with new technologies is that things can go wrong, and even if they don’t, many employees will need a lot of training to know how to use them properly. That being said, when something does go wrong, businesses will want the problems solved as quickly as possible and will need to contact either a help-desk or hire the skills of an IT support worker.

2. Programming & Application Developer

IT Infrastructure skills

The demand for skilled programmers and developers has never been higher. Companies and businesses all require the latest software applications, and all of them want their networks and existing software to work alongside it seamlessly. That’s why it’s so important for these developers to be present and have the ability to test, update, and monitor these systems and platforms, ensuring they are always operating to their full potential.

3. Website Developers

IT Infrastructure skills

Nearly every business has a website in one way or another. Whether it’s just an informational page that states the address and opening times to a fully functional e-commerce store, websites are a business’ first point of contact with the majority of potential clients and it’s so important to get the first impression right.

On top of this, modern day websites have so many options and features that can be integrated to provide a great experience that things can get very technical very quickly. This is why the need for skilled and professional web developers has skyrocketed and demand will definitely continue to rise as the year progresses.

4. Mobile Device & Application Developers

IT Infrastructure skills

The more mobile device technology progresses, the more functions it can provide for businesses, streamlining workflows and giving people the ability to work from anywhere. With this in mind, it can take time and skill to install complicated setups that allow this process to run seamlessly, hence the ever-increasing demand for mobile-based developers. To ensure all systems are running smoothly and operating to their maximum efficiently, businesses are employing more people into this job role than ever before.

5. Cloud Engineers

IT infrastructure skills

Continuing on from mobile developers, there has been a massive increase in the amount of cloud-based platforms that allow businesses to save incredible amounts of money on server space and allow for complete freedom when accessing information and applications. To ensure processes are running at maximum efficiency and remain productive, cloud developers and engineer roles are ever increasingly and becoming a very required part of today’s business model and today’s IT infrastructure.

ADDITIONAL READING
6 Reasons System Admin Spend More Time in the Conference Room Than the IT Office
AV System Integrators: Are They Really Necessary?
Top 5 Conference Room TVs of 2017