Virtual meetings are straightforward enough when everyone participates over video. People join individually from their laptops or computers, and we see each other in small squares on a grid. 

But now that companies are making the move to return to the office (“RTO”), video meetings are presenting new challenges. Some of us may be together in the conference room but are joined by remote participants over platforms like Zoom and Teams. 

At the table, people have the advantage of proximity to pick up body language and spur-of-the-moment conversations. Over video, remote participants may struggle to hear or see what’s going on, and their ideas may not be heard, either. 

How can we ensure the “new normal” of hybrid communication doesn’t create new problems? With an intentional AV design, we build conference room systems that address these issues and make meetings a seamless experience for all. 

Keep reading to see how Level 3 Audiovisual enhances hybrid conferencing for businesses worldwide.

Your business never stands still; it is always evolving and changing. Even if your business is stable and not high-growth, change is inevitable. Industries, partners, suppliers, and customers all evolve, grow, and change, and technology influences much of it. You may still do some business via fax machines, but is that tool as indispensable as it once was 30 years ago? The tools of your trade must grow and adapt with you.

One of your business’s key tools is AV technology. Your meeting spaces, conference rooms, executive boardrooms, and training rooms all employ various communication and collaboration technologies to work internally and with outside constituencies. Is your business keeping up with the investments needed for today’s collaboration? The right AV design and strategy can keep your Tempe, AZ, and worldwide facilities up to speed with the needs and speeds of today's business.

Keep reading below to learn more about how documented AV design standards enable your enterprise AV infrastructure to scale and adapt to current and future business challenges.

It’s easy to think that something is better just because it’s more expensive. And if you are comparing, say, a Kia to a Lamborghini, that might be true. But in a lot of cases, it isn’t. In fact, the cheap seats at the ballpark usually have the best view. When it comes to audiovisual solutions, expensive doesn’t always mean better either. As you are designing new AV systems, understanding what you should spend your money on—and where you can cut corners—can ensure you get the functionality you need without exceeding your budget.

Have you ever started a home improvement project by uttering these famous last words: I bet I can do that myself? Only, you later discover after multiple trips to the hardware store, a string of unforeseen complications, and a lot of swearing that it would have been faster, easier and cheaper to hire a professional in the first place? Now, have you ever been tempted to start an AV integration project the same way? Before you find yourself cursing at your video conferencing system, consider this. Just like you need the right skills and tools to install a new toilet, you need the right skills and tools for a truly successful AV integration and AV integrators have them. Involving them early in the process can help you avoid mistakes and missteps that will be time-consuming and costly to fix later. For example, according to industry standard expert AQAV, the cost of fixing poor quality AV can approach 20 percent of the total cost of the system, while monitoring and maintaining a good quality AV system only costs 2.5 percent of the total purchase price.

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but a lesser known proverb says that on every successful audiovisual systems integration team is an AV design engineer. AV integration projects are rarely the work of a single person—they are a group effort. And making sure the right people are in that group is critical to your AV project. With an AV design engineer on your team, you can rest easy knowing that the planning, implementation, and installation of your AV system is in good hands.

There are as many different professional AV solutions as there are uses for them. With such a wide array of audio visual solutions available today, and as that number increases with the ongoing evolution of technology, audiovisual design and consulting services provide expert interpretation of needs and selection of AV solutions that fit the application and budget of a client.

An AV engineer in the past, had a skill set more focused on (surprise, surprise...) the audio and visual aspects of presentation and communication systems. Properly specifying components like speakers, amplifiers, audio processors, microphones, projectors and displays, were all in the wheel house of the AV engineer. Then control systems entered the space, and those engineers started to add knowledge on how to control many aspects of the system from button panels, then custom designed touch screens. These control systems ran on proprietary communication lines for a while, then they started to add standard network and IP connections. Now the AV engineer needs to understand networking, routers, switches and access points, and especially how to work with IT managers in charge of the customer network. This also comes into play when working with video conferencing codecs, like Cisco and Polycom. Next the "soft codec" was brought to the conference and meeting room arena, which is a term used to describe video conferencing applications running on "BYOD" devices, like laptops. Video conferencing services include Zoom, Skype for Business and WebEx. Now the AV engineer needs to deeply understand incorporating USB devices into their designs.