Effective Video Collaboration

Effective Video Collaboration in the Huddle Spaces

A “huddle space ” is a communal area where creative teams gather to collaborate with each other, remote colleagues, partners and clients. It is intended for collaboration, presenting and problem solving and accommodates a small number of participants (typically 6 or less) and includes:

  • Small conference rooms
  • Drop-in spaces such as communal spaces or wormholes
  • Dedicated collaborative space such as project rooms, pods and corral

While the majority of meetings occur in smaller rooms, these rooms are not typically fitted for video. Often, meetings that need video for optimal outcomes degrade to using voice only or inadequate PC based conferencing.

Adding video capabilities provides two key benefits to the in-room team collaboration. The ability to see the reaction of the remote party to what is being discussed as well as judging attention and engagement. Equipping huddle spaces and small conference room with a video endpoint should consider the following:

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In-room meeting information sharing and collaboration.

Having a large screen to display information from the participant’s laptop or tablet either connecting via HDMI or wirelessly will enhance the sharing experience.

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Collaboration event evolves to an impromptu video conference meeting

Huddle rooms often have a more on demand use structure. Easy connection into the enterprise’s calendaring and reservation systems facilitates quick understanding of the room availability for impromptu meetings. Easy integration into both existing on-premise and new cloud based conferencing services allows participants to rapidly evolve the collaboration session to include a remote colleague or an external video participant for additional feedback.

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Scheduled Video Collaboration Events

The room needs to be available for pre-scheduling through the company’s video cloud service. Google or Microsoft Office 365 calendar integration will allow participants to instantly join the scheduled meeting with one click from the in-room display. Features such as pan, tilt and zoom while required in a larger room to view all participants are not necessary for smaller huddle rooms. Dual displays however are critical for an effective video collaboration meeting to enable the continued viewing of the nonverbal cues on one screen while the content is being shared on the second screen.



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Value of Video Collaboration