HACKER Q&A
📣 impendia

Technology for a Meeting Room?


Dear HN,

I'm a professor in a math department. We just moved back into our building after a year-long renovation, and one of our rooms -- currently piled high with junk -- is to be remodeled into a seminar room. I'm on the committee that will make recommendations as to what to do.

The room will host: formal seminar presentations (some using a chalkboard; others with PowerPoints); informal math discussions and study groups; various committee meetings; perhaps other things too.

Traditionally everything has been in-person, and for the most part academia is back to in-person. But, since we're planning for the future, we want to make sure that we can accommodate hybrid in-person/online meetings, online presentations where an audience can hear and see someone at the chalkboard, ... whatever use cases might arise in the future.

I'm not sure I'm the best choice for this committee -- I'm something of a luddite and I don't personally like remote meetings. But I've been asked to serve, and I want to make sure I do a good job of planning for the future and anticipating the diverse needs of the department.

Any advice as I go about this? Examples of successful designs (in any setting) that I can read about? Discussions and reviews of various technological solutions? Anything else?

Thank you!

  👤 brudgers Accepted Answer ✓
The formal place to start is by talking to the architect handling the remodel and to other people on campus,

Particularly the physical plant, facilities management, and instructional technology.

Because that will give you a practical starting point of agreement with the professionals who will ultimately make the decision.

Lay a foundation for having an opinion formed from relevant considerations. Satistically you are not the expert here. At best you'll be a trusted collaborator. At worst, sand in the gears.

I mean everything has to fit withing the allocated budget, time frame, and support/maintenance criteria.

Good luck.

👤 bradknowles
Rooms that I have seen that are well set up for handling both local and remote participants include multiple monitors for displaying the material as well as the video feeds from the remote participants, in-room microphones so that the remote people can hear you, cameras so that the remote people can see you (and whatever you might write on the whiteboard), speakers so that you can hear the remote people, etc....

Depending on the room size and shape, these kinds of things can take many forms. Many companies specialize in producing conference room setups that are oriented towards this model. Even old behemoths like Cisco have entries in this space, although they are very expensive.

What works for you may vary based on many criteria, but of course you have to start with the budget, and the timeframe on which the solution has to be delivered.