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."

Re:Polycom

[calambrac]

if it's set up and not "fooled with" (people turning it off while its busy, ISDN lines getting unplugged, etc.) This cannot be a criterion for success if multiple people are going to be using it without supervision. If you're willing to have a someone hired to babysit the conference room, it's fine, but otherwise people will turn it off while its busy, people will unplug the ISDN lines, etc. At my old job we had AV racks that could be rolled around to different rooms. On these racks were large, clearly visible signs that read "DO NOT MOVE UNLESS ALL CABLES ARE UNPLUGGED FROM THE WALL SOCKETS". So, of course, people would move the whole rack with all the cables plugged in, all the time. It got to the point where we had to pick permanent AV rooms, but there was no money in the budget to get new equipment racks. So we just removed the wheels from the ones we had. We thought, "surely no one will try to move these huge heavy carts without any wheels and big signs saying 'Do Not Move'" but humans are remarkably adaptive in their stupidity. Not one day went by after the switch before we got a call, saying the AV system wasn't working. When we asked for the room number, it was a room that shouldn't have had a system in it - the professor had gotten the pair of football players in his class to carry the whole cart from the room down the hall...

Re:Tandberg

[shitdrummer]

I am currently working on this exact project at work. We are setting up a dedicated Video Conferencing Room with a total budget of about AU$120K. This included building the room from scratch and buying all the equipment. The tech component has a budget of AU$35K.

We've gone for 2 x 50" XGA Plasmas with a Logitech all in one video conferencing solution. Buying a seperate DVD/VHS, installing a PC permanenantly in a locked cupboard with wireless mouse and keyboard. We also have XGA and audio inputs on the conference table for connection of a laptop. Don't forget a network connection on the conference table too.

For data lines, we are going for 4 x OnRamp2 (or BRI's), the logitech VC system can handle up to 4 BRI's or a PRI. We also decided to use a Video Conferencing hosting company to host multi-party conferences.

Finally, connected an analogue phone line to the logitech VC equipment so it can be used as an old fashioned conference phone if you need to.

My task for next week is to write a complete idiots guide to using all this equipment. There will be lots of big pictures and non-technical terms. I expect the VC hosting company will help with many of the basic user problems when setting up conferences.

Our setup is a bit expensive (I wasn't allowed to shop around for best price), but I'm sure you could get all the VC equipment for around AU$20K or less.

Enjoy.
Shitdrummer

Re:don't mess around

[shokk]

I second his comment. As tempted as some might be, do not skimp anything, especially microphones or mixing equipment. The Polycom VSX systems are nice and powerful for multipoint conferencing and The Polycom stuff should be used for conference phones, too, if you have any other conference rooms that are likely to talk to this one. If it sounds crappy from the source, not even Crestron is going to be able to dress up that pig. And yes, the Crestron displays are going to be expensive, but that's what it's going to take. He will be able to do things like hit a button for Presentation and have lights dim everywhere except for a spot over a podium and turn a screen to projector use. You're likely to have a number of screens so taht people's faces are displayed at the same time as remote and/or local presentation materials. I'm not sold on document cameras anymore as most presentation materials should be of the Powerpoint variety rather than dead tree.

Make sure you get professional guys that are going to hide the wires properly and mount projectors in the ceiling, etc, instead of leaving things laying around or under the table. Lastly the little things like PLENTY of CAT5 ports and power outlets are important. Consider some sort of way to secure ports (VLANs?) if it's a conference room that will handle visitors. And make sure that any WiFi access is practically under their seats with four bars of access all the way around the room. Make sure the pros balance out the sound in the room, and then document all final settings on the mixing boards in case someone comes into the room and ignorantly plays with the slides and knobs.