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6 Reasons System Admins Spend More Time in the Conference Room Than the IT Office

January 19, 2017

Q: What’s the difference between a pizza delivery guy and a system admin?
A: Pizza delivery guys deliver pizza to houses, system admins deliver VGA adapters to conference rooms.
This classic IT joke, second only to the one about how CIO really stands for Career Is Over in the repertoire of IT humor, may at first glance seem like a bit of an exaggeration. Surely system admins spend more time on things that are part of their actual job description (like, say, system administration) than on delivering cables and adapters to end users who are having a hard time connecting to the conference room TV or projector?
A few years ago, this may have been the case. But now that everyone brings their own laptops to business meetings, connecting to the TV via cables and adapters isn’t so easy. Laptops come with a wide range of video outputs, smart TVs come with many different video inputs, but sometimes the inputs and outputs don’t match up. This presents a source of confusion for even the most tech-savvy end user. And whenever an end user gets confused by something tech-related, their first instinct is always to call IT.
It’s no wonder then that every system admin, at some point in their career, has toyed with the idea of setting up a tent in the conference room and just doing their work from there.
Here’s a quick overview of the cables and adapters that are responsible for wreaking the most havoc in the conference room, leaving IT departments with no choice but to use their system admin as cable connectivity troubleshooters.

1. HDMI to HDMI Cables

If your goal is to connect a computer to a TV screen or projector through a cable, HDMI cables can be pretty handy. All HDTV’s come with an HDMI input, as do virtually all projectors that were manufactured during the last five years. HDMI outputs are also fairly commonplace on higher-end laptops (although Apple seems to be phasing them out). So if you’re dealing with equipment younger than your average kindergarten student, an HDMI cable should do the trick.
A few things to consider though: Do you buy just one HDMI cable and have your end users share it from a connectivity box in the center of the table, or do you buy multiple HDMI cables and install a connectivity box at each seat? No matter which option you go with, things are bound to get messy, so you may want to look into getting a cable management box to handle the extra slack. And since HDMI cables have a well-known propensity to go missing, you may want to buy a few back-ups.
Is your cable collection starting to get a bit unwieldy? Better brace yourself: It’s about to get a whole lot unwieldier.

2. VGA to VGA Cables

Although HDMI cables have been the standard for the last several years, not all projectors come equipped with an HDMI input. A surprising number of old war horses from the pre-HDMI era still work perfectly fine and are still in widespread use. Likewise, not all laptops come with HDMI outputs. There are still thousands of 2011/12 MacBooks kicking around that may not be able to handle El Capitan, but still run Leopard perfectly fine. Better get some VGA cables to send through that connectivity box (or boxes).

3. VGA to HDMI

What if the projector you’re using only has an HDMI input but the laptop only has a VGA output (or vice versa)? Don’t worry: Buying a handful of VGA to HDMI cables should solve this problem.
You may want to buy a label maker too: VGA cables look almost identical to DVI cables (the next item on this list), which can cause endless confusion.

4. DVI to HDMI (plus 3.5mm male-to-male audio cable just to be safe)

A world in which every single connectivity problem involving laptops, projectors, and TVs could be solved with just three cables would be an annoying one, but at least it would be tolerable. Unfortunately, that’s not the world in which we live. DVI cables also exist, and they can only handle resolutions of 1,920 x 1,200 with no audio, so if your presentation involves sound, a separate audio cable is required. Have fun with that.

5. Thunderbolt to Thunderbolt/HDMI or Mini DisplayPort to Mini DisplayPort/HDMI

Thunderbolt 3 cables have a bandwidth of 5 GB/s and can drive two external 4K displays at 60 Hz. For this reason, they’re pretty much indispensable for people who work with video shot at extremely high resolutions. Will they be useful in the context of a business meeting? Having a couple on standby couldn’t hurt.
And don’t forget to invest in a few Thunderbolt to HDMI/VGA adapters while you’re at it. You never know when those will come in handy.

6. Lightning to HDMI and Lightning to VGA

What if someone forgot their laptop at home and wants to give their presentation through their iPhone? Better stock up on some lightning cables in order to prepare for that contingency. (You may want to buy a few bottles of Tylenol also).
By now, the collection of cables you have in front of you is so big that you may require multiple wheelbarrows to carry them around. Is it any surprise that end users don’t find this web of cables intuitive and need to bring in a system admin to bail them out?
(Editor’s note: To avoid the cable pile-up described in this article, we recommend investing in a wireless presentation system which allows end users to connect their laptops to the conference room screen in 1 second without any hassle. As chance would have it, we offer a free 14 day trial of a wireless presentation system on this very website. Click here for more info).

ADDITIONAL READING
Top 10 Conference Room Cable Management Fails of 2017
Wireless Conference Rooms vs. Cabled Conference Rooms: Which Has the Better ROI?
Conference Room Cable Management Checklist

Want to set up a wireless Conference Room?Try Now

6 Reasons IT Managers Hate Conference Room Cables

October 26, 2016

Like lions and hyenas or dogs and postal workers, IT managers and cables are eternal enemies. And yet despite their mutual inborn animosity, these two foes have somehow learned to co-exist semi-peacefully. Apart from the occasional skirmish during the first 10 minutes of most business meetings, neither side aggressively intrudes on the other’s territory. Borders are respected, and tensions (while high) never reach the point where all-out war becomes inevitable.
But now that wireless presentation technology exists, IT managers finally have the upper hand. By implementing it at your workplace, HDMI, VGA, and DVI cords can all be disposed of in one fell swoop, Red Wedding-style. If any user can walk into a conference room and present wirelessly in 1 second, then cables and adapters lose the source of their political power. Without popular support or special interest groups to back them up, they can be safely tossed in the garbage without any significant repercussions.

It may be a sad, undignified death, but don’t weep for the cables. Here are 6 reasons why banishing cables from your conference room is the best thing that could possibly happen to them.

1. Cables Turn IT Team Into VGA Delivery Team

Your IT team didn’t get their degrees in computer science just to help end users connect their laptops to TVs. And yet every time an end user encounters a cable connectivity issue, IT has to rush to the conference room with a handful of VGA adapters to help them out.

While this may have a positive impact on your IT team’s cardiovascular health, overall it’s a waste of their time. Switching to a wireless presentation system can help your IT team reduce the number of pointless errands they have to perform so they can focus on things that matter, like stopping Russian hackers from installing ransomware on your system and extorting you out of $10,000 worth of Bitcoins.

2.Cables Provide Bad Employee Experience in Meeting Rooms

If your end users had to solve a Sudoku puzzle every time they wanted to send an e-mail, they would likely go insane within one month. And yet by offering them a wide array of almost identical-looking video outputs to pick from prior to each presentation, this is exactly what you are subjecting them to in the conference room.

Switching to a wireless presentation solution will instantly eliminate this problem and restore worker productivity/sanity. Your end users and upper management will both thank you for it.

3. Cables Prevent Conference Room Cloud Migration

According to NASCIO, cloud migration is the second top CIO priority of 2016, right behind security/risk management and ahead of consolidation/optimization. You’ve probably already sent e-mail, ERP, and HRIS to the cloud…why not send your conference room to the cloud as well?

4. Different Cables Interfere With Meeting Room Standard

If Conference Room A relies on HDMI wires, Conference Room B relies on VGA, and Conference Room C relies on Apple TV, you’ve got a recipe for confusion on your hands. Having a central dashboard that can monitor all the meeting rooms will help simplify your business and make meetings easier for everybody.

5. Cables Hinder IoT Implementation

Your business has already gotten rid of its Rolodexes, typewriters, tape recorders, and pneumatic tubes, and replaced them with devices that can connect to the Internet. Ten years from now, your HDMI cords will be just as obsolete as any of these items. Better get rid of them soon or risk becoming known as “that company that still used HDMI cords in 2020.”

6. Bad Meeting Room Experience Undervalues IT

IT already gets the blame for everything. Every time a printer runs out of ink, every time a piece of toast gets burned, every time an end user puts their laptop too close to a magnet, IT takes the rap. By switching to a simple, reliable piece of technology in the conference room that any child can use, you can help restore IT’s reputation.

ADDITIONAL READING
7 Must-Have Video Inputs For Your Conference Table Connectivity Box
Top 10 Conference Room Cable Management Fails of 2016
Conference Room Cable Management Checklist