We have talked a lot about future of work from an organization's point of view but what does that mean for an employee? For any employee, future of work is hybrid. Employees want to choose the number of days they want to work from office and remotely. As per the recent Flex report, the average of days employees are going to office is 2.53 with employees preferring both two and three days at office. With video-first meetings on the rise during and after Covid-19, everyone preferred getting equal attention or what we know as meeting equity during the meeting. This was easy when everyone was working from home and have complete access to their personal collaboration devices like a 4K USB camera to use virtual backgrounds in a meeting and a noise cancelling headset however now with the hybrid model when few employees are working from office and attending a meeting through a meeting room device, does it still provide same level of meeting equity to everyone? The answer is NO.
What is meeting equity?
"Meeting equity means that everyone in the hybrid workplace enjoys equal opportunity to communicate, contribute and share ideas during a hybrid meeting, regardless of their location." as explained by Barco.
Current meeting platforms and hardware providers recommends the camera placement either above or below the displays on one side or in some scenarios, two sides of the room (for presenter tracking). This helped track active speaker and provided the best view of speaker only when they face the camera but what does it do in a scenario when participants in the meeting room talk to each other versus talking to remote attendees?
The remote participant were left confused on who is talking to whom and most of the time loses track of the meeting. This particular need has now been addressed through meeting platforms and hardware providers coming with their own solution.
How meeting platforms have addressed this problem?
1. Zoom's Intelligent Director: Zoom has recently announced roll out of Intelligent Director feature. This feature built using smart gallery feature allows use of multiple cameras (currently support by few hardware OEMs) to provide best view of participants in the meeting. This means that multiple cameras placed at different positions in the room will collect and send the best angle of participants to Zoom room equipment, which then analyses the data, selects the best view of each participant and sends it across to remote attendees in separate frames.
Please review the best practices guide from Zoom to learn more on the Intelligent Director feature.
2. Cisco's Cinematic Meetings: Cisco will be releasing its cinematic cross view intelligence in RoomOS. In order for this to work, multiple Cisco or third-party cameras will be installed in the room, it could be a Webex Room Bar Pro with Cisco PTZ 4K camera in the room. Video streams from all the camera will be send to Webex device. RoomOS installed on the Webex room device will then select best angle of participants in the meeting room and share it across to remote attendees in different frames.
How hardware OEMs have addressed this problem? 1. Logitech Sight: Logitech introduced its tabletop companion camera named as Logitech Sight. This companion camera works in conjunction with Logitech Rally Bar and Rally Bar Mini and provides best front and center video on in-room participants to remote attendees. With in-built beamforming microphones, Logitech Sight captures best angle of participants from the center and sends the video streams to CollabOS enabled compute which then selects best angle of participants and displays in separate frame to remote attendees.
2. Neat Center: Neat Center is a companion tabletop module which works together with other Neat products like Neat Bar, Neat Board. Neat Center provides unique experience to remote participants by allowing them to be center of the conversation. Neat Center provides best camera angle of in-room participants and picks up their audio clearly so remote attendees can see and hear the room participants clearly.
3. Yealink SmartVision 60: Yealink is bringing an innovative all-in-one audio and video solution to address the need. Jointly created by Yealink and Microsoft, this product brings immersive conferencing experience to all participants. Equipped with a 10K camera and 360-degree pickup microphones, this device removes the necessity of having a front room device. SmartVision 60 has variety of Microsoft's new audio and video capabilities such as multi-stream people feed feature to provide each in-room participant with their individual frame and intelligent speakers feature for people identification with automatic speech-to-text transcription.
4. Meeting Owl 3: Meeting Owl 3 is a great bring your own meeting solution. It works both in a standalone mode as well as it pairs with Meeting Owl bar. Meeting Owl 3 is a tabletop companion that can be used in any space. In-room participants can connect Meeting Owl 3 to their laptop and leverage its camera, mics and speaker on their preferred desktop meeting applications.
This is not all, there are few video bars that provide similar level of video framing to show in-room participants in their individual or group frames. I will discuss Video bars in a separate blog.
Conclusion: With focus on meeting equity for meeting participants, organization can invest in these innovative yet intuitive solutions to bring best experience to their employees whether they are working from office or remotely. Which one would you choose for yourself or recommend to your customers? Please share your feedbacks and comments on this post. Thank you for reading!
Image 1 Source:
https://www.logitech.com/en-in/products/video-conferencing/room-solutions/sight.960-001510.html#better-perspective Image 4 Source:
https://neat.no/center/?example-spaces Image 5 Source:
Image 6 Source:
https://owllabs.com/products/meeting-owl-3
Reference:
https://www.barco.com/in-en/products/clickshare-conferencing-collaboration/meeting-equity
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