Just went through this in the last year at my current job. Each conference room had a Mac mini with a keyboard attached and sometimes people used zoom, sometimes gotomeeting, sometimes hangouts. If you wanted to share a screen locally, it involved changing inputs on the TV and making sure you have an HDMI cable with the right dongle. As a result, the rooms were a mess.
Inevitably, it always took some kind of effort to get connected to the correct system and the meeting started.
After evaluating a few options, we’ve moved to zoom rooms. Our sales team was already using zoom and it was an easy decision to roll out zoom to everyone. In my opinion, it was best to have one way and only one way have a meeting. It’s paid off, because it’s now effortless and default. We're really happy with it.
The zoom room setup requires an iPad controller and a Mac or PC to run the zoom software. Everything is setup in kiosk mode and even on reboot, zoom automatically starts up. I don’t even keep keyboards in the rooms because there’s no reason to touch anything but the iPad controller (which is also in kiosk mode so you can't accidentally close the zoom software).
For sharing a screen locally it's done wirelessly and it’s as simple as clicking “share screen” and most of the time it picks up what room you’re in and starts sharing your screen (if not, you just type in the sharing code). No more looking for a cable and dongle. It's pretty cool to be across the room from the TV and be able to share your screen without friction.
We have 15 zoom rooms now in all of our office globally (New Orleans, Austin, Cairo).
We do dual-monitor setups in almost all of conference rooms, save for the smaller huddle rooms. In our new office, I did a 3 monitor setup for a large conference room. To be able to see faces and content being shared is great. Product/dev teams love it particularly because it's easy to review specs or code and see the face of the person you're talking to.
Mentioned elsewhere in this thread, we use Owls (owllabs.com) and have 8 of them in use globally. The team loves them. Particularly for cross-cultural conversations it’s helpful that the camera is in the center of the table and you can see the speaker’s face (vs. being a fly on the wall).
For microphones, we like the VTech VCS704 ErisStation with wireless mics. It’s trained everyone to think to grab a mic before beginning to speak. We put a pricey, high quality MXL AC-360-Z in our new conference room and I think I’m going to switch to a Vtech. There’s just something about the act of grabbing a mic and putting it right in front of your face. People tend to talk with a laptop in front of them, or hands in front of their face, or from the end of the room. There’s something about having a physical object that makes people stop and grab one before speaking. It’s made me think that microphone sound isn’t a tech problem so much as it is a people problem.
This is not my primary job but something I took on. Happy to answer any questions or provide more details about our setup.
Inevitably, it always took some kind of effort to get connected to the correct system and the meeting started.
After evaluating a few options, we’ve moved to zoom rooms. Our sales team was already using zoom and it was an easy decision to roll out zoom to everyone. In my opinion, it was best to have one way and only one way have a meeting. It’s paid off, because it’s now effortless and default. We're really happy with it.
The zoom room setup requires an iPad controller and a Mac or PC to run the zoom software. Everything is setup in kiosk mode and even on reboot, zoom automatically starts up. I don’t even keep keyboards in the rooms because there’s no reason to touch anything but the iPad controller (which is also in kiosk mode so you can't accidentally close the zoom software).
For sharing a screen locally it's done wirelessly and it’s as simple as clicking “share screen” and most of the time it picks up what room you’re in and starts sharing your screen (if not, you just type in the sharing code). No more looking for a cable and dongle. It's pretty cool to be across the room from the TV and be able to share your screen without friction.
We have 15 zoom rooms now in all of our office globally (New Orleans, Austin, Cairo).
We do dual-monitor setups in almost all of conference rooms, save for the smaller huddle rooms. In our new office, I did a 3 monitor setup for a large conference room. To be able to see faces and content being shared is great. Product/dev teams love it particularly because it's easy to review specs or code and see the face of the person you're talking to.
Mentioned elsewhere in this thread, we use Owls (owllabs.com) and have 8 of them in use globally. The team loves them. Particularly for cross-cultural conversations it’s helpful that the camera is in the center of the table and you can see the speaker’s face (vs. being a fly on the wall).
For microphones, we like the VTech VCS704 ErisStation with wireless mics. It’s trained everyone to think to grab a mic before beginning to speak. We put a pricey, high quality MXL AC-360-Z in our new conference room and I think I’m going to switch to a Vtech. There’s just something about the act of grabbing a mic and putting it right in front of your face. People tend to talk with a laptop in front of them, or hands in front of their face, or from the end of the room. There’s something about having a physical object that makes people stop and grab one before speaking. It’s made me think that microphone sound isn’t a tech problem so much as it is a people problem.
This is not my primary job but something I took on. Happy to answer any questions or provide more details about our setup.