JLF Video Conferencing: a board room revolution
Local Bozeman architecture firm JFL & Associates approached us about outfitting a video conferencing system for their contemporary facility last year. During design meetings we were asked about our experiences attending video conferencing sessions; from an audio-video standpoint, our eyes and ears were usually underwhelmed by the experience. The audio system usually sounded unnatural and thin to our ears, echos often distracted from the dialogue due to poor acoustics and old outdated equipment. The video was usually of poor quality too, low quality cameras, bad lighting. Times have changed; technology, bandwidth and compression formats keep evolving. We've been keeping a keen eye on these technologies, we can now provide an easy to operate system that allows people to work effectively while saving everyone time, money and travel aggravation.
We provided a document camera in this room allowing those who prefer to work with a pencil or pen the ability to work as they wish. For those who prefer to design with computers, it's simply a matter of plugging in a PC or Mac and your screen is shared locally on the big screen and to those watching on the other side. The document camera appears there as well. The "doc-cam" also has it's own IP address so anyone with a computer or smart phone may peek at the plans on the table. Up to 4 different rooms may be connect together at once plus phone calls may be added into meeting. The sound of phone callers emanates from a dedicated ceiling mounted speaker so we're offering some logic and a better natural sense as to who is doing the talking during a meeting.
We try to build systems that are flexible and reliable. The equipment and the control system installed has made this meeting room into a collaboration space where designs are showcased, ideas are shared and projects are hashed out between co-workers, clients and contractors. The room also works well as a place to surf the web, watch a (work related) video or a spot to entertain within as music is playing.
