How to setup a video conference meeting room - The pain of bad video conference meeting
How to setup a video conference meeting room is a question often asked by many. A bad video conference experience can be quite frustrating for both in-person and remote participants that can lead to various forms of pain. Factors such as bad room acoustics, and inadequate lighting, bad video and audio quality from using incorrect equipment, bad network configuration are all contributors to a bad video conference meeting experience.
In this blog, we’ll explore why it is so crucial to envision, design, plan and deploy video conference meeting rooms that provide the optimal experience for any one that uses it.
What is an acoustic treatment on how to setup a video conference meeting room
You may be familiar with the term acoustics as they refer to concert halls and theaters, but proper acoustics are beneficial for offices and conference rooms. Acoustic treatments allow rooms to achieve improved acoustics for a clear sound.
Most meeting rooms have too many hard surfaces or different type of wall material, which deflect or reflect sound waves, which impacts conversation and audio clarity. These issues may appear inconsequential initially, but it can cause significant problems. For instance, sounds such as tapping pens and shuffling papers can bounce around meeting rooms and make it challenging for employees to hear one another.
For example, a meeting room with glass walls will require different acoustic treatments than a room with standard walls. There are a wide range of of solutions best suit each meeting room of all sizes and surface materials.
- Acoustic Panels
- Ceiling Clouds
- Diffuser Panels
- Acoustic Foam
- Fiberglass Insulation
If you’re unsure what type of acoustic treatment required for your meeting room, reach out to our AV design team for assistance!
Select the right gear for the room size
There is no one size fits all solution – Video conference equipment are designed and tailor to the room size to offer the perfect collaboration experience. For example, you wouldn’t use an equipment built for a 20+ seater in a huddle room. One, the solution will be overkill for a small space that doesn’t require high optical zoom or multiple speakers. Two, the commercial cost of installing that into a small space just doesn’t justify. On the contrary, you wouldn’t and shouldn’t use a personal booth equipment in a large meeting room for many reasons.
Every business has unique needs, which is why many video conference application offers a breadth of options, including Windows based system and Android based system.
When it comes to selecting the gear, the below is a series of questions to ask yourself:
1. What is your primary video conferencing platform?
Three major industry platform that organization use are Microsoft Teams Rooms, Zoom Room and Google Meet.
2. What is the size of the room you are setting up?
3. Do you prefer a meeting room computer or dedicated video conference appliance?
4. What additional accessories is required?
- Does the TV need to be wall mounted or trolley mounted?
- Does the room need additional microphone?
- Does the additional microphone need to be table top mounted or ceiling mounted?
- Do you wish to use a touch controller over keyboard/mouse controlled?
- Do you wish to have a content camera in the mix?
It is best practice to ask the above questions to make sure when procuring video conference hardware, the correct equipment is purchased for the meeting room size.
At Cackle, we have inhouse AV/UC solution specialist that can take you step by step of the journey, so reach out to us if you have any questions regarding what type of solution is right for your meeting room.
Network Readiness
This section may be more for the IT personnel/Network team within the company to think about because network readiness also plays a huge part in a video conference deployment. Understanding whether your internet is ample enough to provide a smooth audio and video stream, whether there are network rules enforced to block certain traffic etc. It is crucial to find out the underlying network obstacles. More often than not, we hear from companies that network is the bottleneck that causes a poor meeting experience for the users.
List of questions that you should ask yourself:
- What are the number of sites and rooms?
- Is the business internet centralized or localized?
- What are the bandwidth per site?
- Do you need QoS?
- Do you have existing firewall/restricted ports blocking the traffic?
It is important to prepare your organization’s network correctly for video conference meeting. If you are unsure of the specifics on what is required, talk to our solution specialist to find out how we can help!
