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In Person or Cloud? Hybrid Meetings Offer New Solutions
- BenQ
- 2020-09-25
The new circumstances faced by all organizations and businesses around the world due to COVID-19 pose challenges to the way we work, collaborate, and create. This has been especially felt by small to medium businesses, which pride themselves on a face to face approach to meetings.
But SMB leaders must face a different reality, one where business travel may not be possible and many team members need to work from home. New technologies and paths to productivity offer ways to overcome the challenges businesses face due to the global situation.
Hybrid meetings promote safer workplaces and make sure productivity is not just maintained, but improved. We’ll take a look at how that’s achieved.
Changes Have Arrived
Where before 2020 global travel made sure the calendars of team members included many face to face meetings with coworkers, customers, and vendors, the new reality makes that nearly impossible. Even local meetings with the entire team in a big room are now rare or effectively canceled. That means hybrid meetings step up to fill these gaps in our schedules, to make sure we can continue working efficiently.
The concept of a meeting no longer has to remain tied to a specific location, thanks to high speed internet access and good quality video conferencing.
That’s a sign of changing times, and we’ll explore how to make the best of it by creating hybrid meetings that are effective. To do that, we’ll help guide you in the general direction of what you need in terms of technology and tools.
Beyond the Meeting Room
Conferences and gatherings now aren’t limited to the people with us in the room. Participants can be anywhere in the world. While this was already a growing trend for before 2020, the global health crisis has accelerated the process of making business meetings a combination of in person and virtual, and the situation is here to stay for a while.
At the same time, managers and team members realize that the diminished role of in person meetings should not become a hurdle to productivity, decision making, brain storming, idea forming, and knowledge sharing.
“84% of respondents do not expect meeting patterns to go back to “normal” before 2021. ”
Source 08.17.2020
Solutions to adapt must be implemented, and hybrid meetings are at the forefront of this effort. It’s sensible for businesses and organizations to integrate better technology and tools to best leverage the advantages of hybrid cooperation.
What’s a Hybrid Meeting?
As the name suggests, it’s a combination of in person and virtual, online, or cloud participation. If several team members are in a meeting room while others join from home or other locations via the internet, then it’s a hybrid meeting.
“At the Pentagon, strategy meetings regularly take place across three rooms, with videoconferencing in each room. ”
Source 05.29.2020
Hybrid meetings revolve around active participation, interactivity, and collaboration, and prove very helpful in even the largest, most prepared organizations. Recent data released by the Pentagon shows that video conferencing now connects multiple rooms with a handful of people, whereas before the entire group would gather in one room.
Why are Hybrid Meetings Important?
Hybrid meetings allow you to overcome impediments imposed by travel bans, lockdowns, quarantines, and the various restrictions implemented by governments around the world.
Collaboration between individuals and teams located in disparate parts of the world becomes doable and effective, ensuring work carries on.
That’s a major phycological plus for team morale. When some team members may be disheartened that face to face meetings are now rarer, hybrid meetings provide a much-needed substitute. As employees realize the new model offers improved efficiency without sacrificing the human aspect, expect team cohesion and effectiveness to bounce back and even grow.
Hybrid meetings prove a good way to save on the costs of traditional meetings. You don’t need to keep a suite of meeting rooms lit up and air conditioned. You don’t need complex presentation systems, and there’s no need for the IT department to spend hours setting things up.
Creating Truly Efficient Hybrid Meetings
One of the biggest things about hybrid meetings is the emphasis on video conferencing and visual content. They’re more efficient because visuals get to the point quicker and lend every session a livelier, more direct feel. With visuals replacing lengthy charts and documents, meetings can be shorter and thus more efficient in terms of team member time. This is why hybrid meetings are often associated with so-called scrum meetings, or gatherings where participants remain standing and get to the point quickly.
A good hybrid meeting is far more dynamic and engaging than a traditional meeting, and may even prove enjoyable. But it all revolves on having the right tools, especially high speed internet, a smart projector (preferably wireless), centralized account management, and cloud access.
Without good internet connectivity, you can’t have a hybrid meeting. Video buffering, lag, sound that cuts in and out – all cause frustration and ruin the session for everyone. Selecting a good smart projector that has internet access and can thus serve as a hub for everyone’s personal devices, from laptops to smartphones, is important. And a centralized content management system plus cloud storage like OneDrive, Google Drive, or Dropbox means everyone taking part can easily share files, update content, and work on projects together. All much faster than email, which has numerous restrictions on file types and sizes.
Get What it Takes
At the core of a good hybrid meeting is the right presentation system. This pillar of bringing people together delivers great video and audio, so those participating virtually feel like they’re effectively in the room. No grainy image quality or tinny sound to break the mood.
For best performance we do recommend investing in a smart wireless projector for work, which offers SMBs a high degree of future proofing and superb return on investment.
We hope your business adapts quickly and successfully to the altered landscape of 2020, and that your team remains safe, happy, and productive. Stay tuned for more info on hybrid meetings and how they can help you.
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