Commercial Integrator November 2021 - 33

as a means of a place to work, or a place to
collaborate, and socialize, and maybe the
place to build culture versus all of these other
ecosystem options that are evolving as a
result of the pandemic, and as result of the
hybridization of work practice, " he says.
" The future of work is hybrid, and the
purpose of the office is shifting, " says
D'Alessandro.
" People have more choice about where
and how they work, and now more than
ever, offices need to serve a clear purpose
and be a place employees want to be. We
are prioritizing optionality and flexibility
when redesigning and reconfiguring our
spaces and how people can access them.
Visits to the office have become more intentional,
with our members looking to the
office to be where they connect and re-engage
in-person with their colleagues, " says
D'Alessandro.
" Moving forward, we see offices as
being designed less for heads down work
at a " sea " of individual desks and more designed
for people to safely work together,
discuss ideas and collaborate. For example,
active areas like WeWork's 'collaboration
hubs' promote idea sharing and collaboration,
whether brainstorming or educating, "
says D'Alessandro. " These areas include formal
meeting rooms, sprint and presentation
spaces, and semi-private, shared breakout
spaces designed to spark conversations and
socialization among coworkers.
" I don't think place is necessarily going
away, but I do think it is getting re-prioritized.
If progressive organizations want
to be successful, they will need to attract
digital talent in the future. Those organizations
will need to engage to some degree
hybrid work practices to attract that talent
and to also retain that talent, as well as to
help that talent manage a lot of the complexity
that we're seeing in terms of both
cognitive fatigue mental health and mental
wellness, " Miscovitch says.
The Future of Meetings
Meetings have never been more complex,
and AI is going to be a key part in enabling
the meeting experience moving forward.
The pandemic has changed how organizations
look at video, how users interact with
video solutions that they need to join and
the thought of inviting other guests into
commercialintegrator.com
meetings. According to Forbes, 62% of
companies use three or more video calling
platforms.
" The meeting of the future is still a
meeting, but a video meeting, " says Jordan
Owens VP, architect at Pexip at Enterprise
Connect. " The meeting is just a meeting.
It should be discussing the work we are
doing, working on the projects we are
leveraging, whatever it is that we need
that meeting to be, but it should just be a
meeting, not a complex technical environment, "
he says.
Complexity needs to be removed from
the meeting of the future. The future of the
" We see offices as
being designed less for
heads down work at
a " sea " of individual
desks and more
designed for people to
safely work together. "
- Carla D'Alessandro,
VP product extensions,
WeWork.
meeting should be the user and how one interacts
with the tools for the meeting. Users
shouldn't have to download anything to join
a meeting, they should be able to join from
any device. Flexibility is going to be key.
AI is important before the meeting,
during, and after. Nobody has time to stop
and switch to a new application for every
meeting.
" The work has become more complex
from a device standpoint and the app must
adapt to that experience not the other
way around, " says Owens. " All of these
features can be leveraged by using AI in
the pre-meeting experience. The system
can understand when it's recognizing I'm
hitting a roadblock and suggest I reach
out to someone for some help. The system
should understand when I join a meeting
what's the right camera, what's the right
microphone, what's the right way to join
into that meeting, " he says.
" The system should understand if I have
the right apps to support the meeting
and If I don't what are the things, I can do
without installing them. The system should
be able to pull that friction away from that
pre-meeting experience, " says Owens.
The ability for users to move from meeting-room
to meeting-room within seconds
and still have high quality audio and visuals
is important for collaboration to happen.
Audiovisual integrators and manufacturers
that can meet the new hybrid threshold
requirements in the next five years are
projected to win big.
The Integrator's Role in
the Workplace Experience
Virtual is here to stay. The pandemic has
proved that work can still be done in a
hybridized manner. " It's also highlighted the
fact that many individuals do want to collaborate
and work in person in workplaces and
that will probably be moving forward in a
world that will be hybrid, " says Miscovitch.
" I think the diversification of work practice
and workplace behaviors will only increase
overtime and I think we've just begun that
journey as a result of the pandemic, " he says.
Integrators will need to help bring people
together in person and remotely.
" Where we stand today, won't work
two years from now, won't work four years
from now, and I would argue won't work
six months from now, " says Owens. " As
we return to the office from this COVID 19
experience, a meeting will be different,
and in the that new normal only with AI can
we drive up the utilization of meetings,
drive up the productivity of meetings, and
shift the burden of the end user onto the
technology to drive the meeting experience
today, " he says.
According to Miscovitch, our next great
challenge is the " ability for people to
perform at new levels and the ability of organizations
to support human performance.
How we work, how we live, and how
technology and audiovisual technology can
support our day-to-day lifestyle and work
style engagement will be significant. Workplace
experience is going to matter a great
deal. The audiovisual sector is going to play
a big role in that. When employees go into a
corporate conference room, they will need
to experience delight versus frustration. " CI
NOVEMBER 2021 Commercial Integrator 33
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Commercial Integrator November 2021

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