Part of:Build a strategy to support hybrid meetings and meeting equity
Hybrid meeting technology helps AV teams address equity
Ensuring remote and in-office workers share the same meeting experience is a constant challenge. Vendors are helping companies solve this video equity problem.
The dust still hasn't settled on the future of work and what it might look like. The debate continues as workers say they are more productive at home, even as a growing number of companies insist on a return to office or at least a partial RTO. Regardless, one thing is nearly certain: Most, if not all, business meetings will include video and remote participants.
Hybrid meeting technology is helping remote workers figure out how to best present themselves in video meetings. On-camera appearance is vastly improved by proper framing, backlighting and other basic best practices. At the same time, many remote workers upgraded their home offices by incorporating better lighting and using camera angles designed to improve their appearance on business video calls.
Additionally, workers have gotten comfortable with a variety of collaborative tools when working from home. Features such as screen sharing, whiteboarding and chat -- as well as AI -- are common in the remote meeting experience.
Meeting room setups struggle with video equity
Unfortunately, the meeting room video experience itself still lags. A typical meeting room video camera captures the entire room. Remote attendees don't get a full-framed view of each person in the room. Instead, they see a bunch of people sitting around the meeting room table. None of them are as visually appealing or effective as the remote attendees.
The industry, however, is addressing video equity. From both a hardware and software perspective, from camera vendors and video service providers, new products and features are improving the appearance of people in traditional meeting rooms. Vendors are taking different approaches, but the result is framing the active speaker in the meeting room to appear like remote attendees.
One big trend in hybrid meeting technology is multicamera systems. These can automatically switch between camera feeds or display a split-screen view to better frame and portray in-room meeting attendees. While these features are impressive and work well in real-world scenarios, they are still primarily in high‐end or specialized meeting rooms. Most businesses have yet to adopt these systems due to cost and integration challenges.
Meeting chat is a problem
In-room meeting attendees often have less access to collaboration tools than remote attendees. Chat is the prime example. Remote participants can share messages, images, files -- even their thoughts and feelings -- via the meeting chat. Meanwhile, the people in the meeting room may not even be able to see this chat. Forget about taking part; they could be completely out of the loop.
There is no accepted go-to solution for this problem, forcing companies to get creative. Some explore integrated software and hardware that displays chat content on in-room screens or through dedicated collaboration hubs. Options range from requiring in-room attendees to have a laptop open to access chat to incorporating an additional room display device that continuously streams remote chat content.
The rise of AI meeting assistants
Many workers have noticed a new type of attendee in their everyday Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings: AI meeting assistants.
These tools are incredibly powerful. Even at their most basic level -- providing meeting transcriptions -- they add enormous value. But many of today's bots go far beyond that, offering detailed meeting summaries and even answering questions privately midmeeting. Workers can simply type, "I stopped paying attention five minutes ago; what did I miss?" and immediately get caught up without embarrassment.
The in-person meeting room experience must be on par with the desktop experience. Otherwise, even RTO workers will opt to join meetings from their desks.
This is yet another equity issue. Most AI assistant capabilities integrate with remote meeting software and are less accessible to participants in the physical conference room. Consider strategies to integrate AI tools into meeting room designs -- ideally giving access at each seat -- to ensure all attendees benefit equally.
Continuous improvement
The new norm of the workplace may not be clearly defined for some time. Many remote workers remain reluctant to return to the office. It adds insult to injury to make them less effective in meetings. The in-person meeting room experience must be on par with the desktop experience. Otherwise, even RTO workers will opt to join meetings from their desks where they can be properly framed, look good on camera and have access to meeting room tools.
Obviously, this outcome is unacceptable. If employees make the commute and are in the same building, they should go to the meeting room. Nothing, not even video, beats the in-person experience.
It's up to industry vendors to improve hybrid meeting technology by further developing multicamera systems, collaborative in-room options and other meeting equity technologies. Until these capabilities are more widely adopted, meeting equity will remain an issue from the huddle room to the boardroom. Meeting attendees will often be better off at their desktop.
Editor's note:This article was updated to reflect advancements in hybrid meeting technology.
David Maldow is founder and CEO of Let's Do Video. He has written about the video and visual collaboration industry for almost 20 years.
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