User experience is the key to a successful meeting space investment.  It is only through managing  the user experience that today’s meeting rooms, both physical and virtual, will realize a return on their initial investment and ongoing operating expense. If your collaboration service – regardless of which flavor you choose – is available always and everywhere, providing a consistent operating interface and a rich communication medium, it will be embraced by end users and highly utilized. Conversely, an unreliable, difficult, and limited meeting service will be bypassed in favor ..read more

Over the past few years, I have seen the benefit that AVI-SPL Symphony has provided to my clients.  While I am convinced that Symphony is the best thing to happen to collaboration technology since the Bluetooth headset, I am often having conversations where people ask me about the one, singular reason why they should choose Symphony.  This is a hard question, because there are just so many ways that Symphony can provide real benefit to their organization.  Rather than select one, I have decided that there are 10: Gain enterprise-wide insight into rooms and technology usage with ..read more

For higher education — as with many organizations — the story of COVID-19 has been about disruption, quick thinking, and adaption. During the last few months, the pandemic and its responses have placed major obstacles to continuing the business of education.  Teachers, students, and administrators have adapted to long stretches of closed campuses, distance learning, and remote work for faculty and staff. As guidelines relax, they’re entering a new phase, one that can include a modified arrangement for classroom learning.  Enrollment numbers are expected to decline as millions of peop ..read more

During this time of remote work, many companies have continued their business operations by  giving their employees the technology tools that keep them collaborating.  As we gradually get back to business as usual, what we call “as usual” may have changed as well. The last few months have shut down businesses or hindered their efforts to keep up their operations. Even if your organization was one of those that was already on board with collaboration technology, you’ve seen firsthand just how much people rely on each other when they can’t be in the same office, where they’re just a fe ..read more

As the school year draws to a close, AVI-SPL wants to help your teaching staff and administration stay connected and focused during this difficult time. Our Together We Are series about online learning from home offers helpful ideas and resources. Read all Together We Are posts. By now, teachers across the country have been figuring out how to prepare and teach lessons, assign homework, grade it, and provide feedback — all while working from home. Add to this the effort it takes to understand the supporting collaboration technology, and it’s easy to imagine that nerves can quickly be ratt ..read more

AVI-SPL wants to help your teams stay connected and productive during this difficult time as most of us are working, teaching, and learning from home. Our Together We Are series on working from home offers helpful ideas and resources. Read all Together We Are posts. As companies and their staff adjust to remote work, one of the areas they have to focus on is remote management of employees, a topic we’ve covered in previous posts. Today, let’s look at ways managers can address evaluations, performance issues, and conflict when their direct reports are working remotely. Even when the t ..read more

With so many AV devices now connected to the network, the need for cybersecurity in AV projects has never been greater. In this AVI-SPL webinar, hosted by Commercial Integrator and My TechDecisions, you’ll learn why your AV integrator should be implementing and potentially offering cybersecurity measures. Three Crestron experts will be on hand to offer their insight and guidance. John Pavlik, senior director, systems engineering; Alex Peras, manager, product management, digital media; and Joseph Sarrasin, director, product strategy UC, will discuss many aspects of cybersecurity that AV integra ..read more

For organizations of all types — schools, businesses, government agencies — and millions around the world, the COVID-19 outbreak has seriously disrupted the way we work. Even if your company or institution had already embraced video collaboration among team members, you may not have ever used it to the extent you have to now.  AVI-SPL wants to help by giving you the guidance you need to stay connected with each other and be as productive as you can during this difficult time. That’s why we’ve launched our Together We Can initiative, in which we share tips, advice, and resources for reinforcing ..read more

Today, nearly five million people in the U.S. are working remotely. Well before the coronavirus disrupted work as we know it, we were being told that remote work was an essential part of doing our jobs and that remote workers would dominate the workforce. The proliferation of remote work articles popping up in the wake of COVID-19 have made this an even more salient feature of our work lives. Millions of people around the world have had to adjust to a new way of working — a way that requires them to be at home but perform as if they were in the office.  One of the tools getting high-profile co ..read more

For team collaboration to work and yield benefits in your company, make sure you’ve got the must-have features that compel people to work with each other and do it effectively. Five essential features are explained in a new paper by AVI-SPL and HARMAN: Content sharing Group messaging Recording Annotation Simple start This guide also covers: Important considerations when updating your conference rooms Five ways to encourage video collaboration How AMX Acendo Core and Modero G5 Control work with Zoom Rooms to simplify video meetings At the end of this concise paper, you’ll find a chart you can f ..read more