Creating a High-Tech Meeting/Conference Room?

papaia asks: "As the network geek in my company, I have been tasked with defining a high-end, fully connected and extremely easy to use conference room, for our CEO, who is your classic non-computer-using person. The requirements are to accommodate 'local' (to the conference room) meetings, as well as interactive sessions with people in other locations, allowing him to discuss/debate various product solutions, on files being opened and available to him to pinpoint issues, without the knowledge of the underlying software used to create them (e.g. CAD drawings where he could make annotations, etc). Do any of you have recommendations for building the 'meeting room of the 21st century'?"

"The solutions I have been looking into, so far, range from various types of whiteboards (Panasonic's interactive whiteboard, or SMART board one), to interactive displays, and software such as Netmeeting, or Cisco's meeting place.

I obviously need to combine any or all of the above with some capability of video (of course), thus I am looking into various webcams, and conferencing capabilities in some equipment - the latter is yet another challenge (VoIP or not?!?). I have also looked at meeting room suggestions, and I cannot really make up my mind."

Tandberg

[Scott Lockwood]

Yes. First, make sure that he's willing to actually spend money on this. Once you're past that hurdle, order something like a Tandberg 6000, and a dedicated T-1 line. Install the Tandberg in the conference room, and install either two large projection screens, or large plasma display units along with it. This will allow you to have the main conference on one screen, and a presentation on the other. Make sure that you have equipment at the remote end that is simmilar, or appropriate to the remote end, I.E. for a small office with 10 or so people, a portable Tandberg 1000 should suffice. For a large office, you'd need another 6000. The small remote officess can likely get by with a fractional T-1, or multiple ISDN lines, since each video connection only needs like 384k symetrical to work. YOU need the T-1 has the hub, and if that becomes insufficient, you can upgrade that to a DS-3/OC-3 type link pretty easily.

You may want to consider...

[0kComputer]

skype [skype.com] A nice, free VOIP solution that plays nice with firewalls and is easy to set up.

Simple

[stecoop]

A computer at each end, a phone and a overhead projector. Share your desktop with the other end, connect via telephone and what with the projector. If you want to see everyone then use a simple camera and share that.

KISS ~~~~

polycom

[jus10]

we have had really good luck with polycom products...

Polycom

[maotx]

I highly recommend using Polycom's line of webcams. [polycom.com]
They feature video auto-tracking (camera follows you) as well as PC integration. Using the H.323 standard, these webcams can connect with Netmeeting, Gnome Meeting, other webcams, and much more allowing you to offer conferencing to a wide range of people. With the PC integration you can share your desktop with your client while holding a steady conversation. H.323 also transmits voice as well elimating the need for phones. In our experiences, however, the clarity of voice is not as nice as a standard telephone call over a speakerphone. The unit will plug into either a monitor or television and can be connected directly into an ISDN line or assigned an IP address to receive phone calls.

Webex

[Alan Livingston]

I think Webex [webex.com] is expensive but it works. You can share applications across a presentation. You can accomodate dial-in capabilities. It takes a little bit to learn how to host a presentation but it's easy for participants.

Macromedia Breeze

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.macromedia.com/software/breeze [macromedia.com]

Re:Tandberg

[Scott Lockwood]

Yes, thank you - that's exactly what I meant. :-)

ichat a/v

[oh_the_humanity]

G5 + ichat a/v apple cinema display.

Re:You may want to consider...

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

I've been using Skype for a few months and never had a dropped call (some times it might take a couple seconds to synch up). The quality is actually better than many of the landline calls I make (I do a lot of over-seas calls).

That said, I don't think I'd be crazy about it in this situation. For just VOIP, yes in a heart-beat. But since he wants to do so much more and its for a boss who isn't very tech savy, I'd say Skype may not really be called for. Skype is dead simple don't get me wrong, but any video conference/presentation package will also include VOIP so unless the quality in that package REALLY sucks I'd just stick with that to avoid the extra piece of software (for the non-tech boss).

don't mess around

[Anonymous Coward]

I do this for a living. Don't screw around with netmeeting or skype or any of that stuff. If you want the meeting room of the 21st century - it's going to cost you. I suggest you get demos of Polycom (the VSX series, not the iPower that's PC based) and Tandberg systems and decide which one is best for you. Polycom offers particularly good microphone and echo cancelling technologies. These systems also offer dual stream technology for sending video and high res content pictures at the same time. For that you need two indepenent front screen projectors with independent control systems from someone like Extron - or control them both with AMX or Crestron - but keep them logically separated in the menus for the user.

Document camera, DVD/VCR and good audio reinforcement.

Skip the traditional whiteboard.

[Chyeburashka]

Make the entire wall a whiteboard. Here is [whiteboardsetc.com] the first thing I found on Google. I'm sure there are more. When I visited Emerson Process Controls recently, they used something like this in their training center. The instructor could draw anywhere, as long as it was on the correct wall.

Re:Tandberg

[TopShelf]

One thing that can help tremendously, while not costing a ton, is to build in power and network access into the conference room table. Ours here has tabs that flip up, providing easy access for laptop-toting meeting attendees.

Re:Polycom

[Heywood J. Blaume]

If you configure your Polycom with both IP and PRI, you can connect to pretty much anything else out there, including Tandberg and netmeeting.

I've done this with the Polycom VSX7800, and it works well. However, note that they recently turned off their camera auto-tracking function because it was causing more problems than it solved (see other comment about jingling change).

Re:Tandberg

[josh3736]

Seconded. I recently took some university courses through a teleconfrencing system ("Distance Learning"), so I can share my experiences:

Avoid NetMeeting like the plague. That software hasn't been updated since Windows 98, and as a result it is completely unreliable. The university is now using TANDBERG's [tandbergusa.com] See & Share software. It allows the presenter to share his desktop and (assuming you are using SMART boards) remote sites can draw on the presenter's screen. I highly recommend the SMART board/See & Share setup. It was easy enough for the professors and students to use, so it should be easy enough for your executives.

To control the whole setup, they had an AMX [amx.com] panel. The panel had a simple tabbed interface that let you turn the system on/off, adjust cameras, select inputs, change the volume, etc.

The video confrencing side is powered by some TANDBERG equipment. I'm not sure what specific box they used, but I can go look at it if you'd like. The cameras were some motorized SONY cams.

The room was set up with a dual display--one big screen TV to see the presenter/far sites and one SMART board. Overall, the system worked very well and was rather seamless. I'd recommend getting in touch with a local university and talking with them. If they have a DL setup, I'm sure they can give you some valuable insight. You can also take a look at this page about DL [uakron.edu] from the university I took my classes from (and a picture of a DL room [wikipedia.org]).

Re:This is the wrong place to ask

[Anonymous Coward]

I work with a large university based network of video conferencing equipment. Many of the conference rooms are well done and others look awful. It's surprising how important the design of the room is.

A good starting point would be this: go with blue. Maybe blue-gray. The walls should be blue, the chairs, basically, anything that will have a person in front of it when on camera. Accent things with white. You'll notice that similar color schemes are used for TV news reports, etc. There's a reason for it. Cameras like blue.

As for the equipment, there are many ways to do it, but I suggest you look at a Polycom VS4000 with an AMX control.