Tech Wire Asia spoke to Niko Walraven, Neat’s Area Vice President for APAC, about the impact videoconferencing has had on the region and Neat’s plan to take things one step further.

TWA: What do APAC businesses typically look to achieve with meeting technology?

NW: “It’s a different playing field in different countries –Japan is very different from Australia, which again is very different from India. Each country has its own unique properties and unique ways of conducting meetings.

“Going back, let’s say, five or ten years, during video meetings, users would ask things like ‘Hello, can you hear me?’, ‘Can you see me?’. But, when Microsoft came out with Teams and Zoom came out with Zoom Rooms, everything became much easier. Then COVID happened, and that changed the dynamic from simply meetings to collaboration. The question, besides, ‘Can you hear and see me?’, then became ‘Can you see my content?’, and people started to work together on the shared documents. Now, as Microsoft Teams and Zoom have matured, we got that sorted as well.

Source: Neat

“Today, the question is about meeting equity. Say I have a team of people around me in the same room, and we’re all discussing things with each other. How do we make sure that the remote attendees over video don’t feel like they are separated from the discussion? We’re trying to solve this with technology as much as we can. Body language and facial expression can be more important than our voices. Neat focuses on technology that brings out the full spectrum of how we as humans communicate and work together. No matter the customer and what they want to achieve with their meeting technology, simplicity and the ability to communicate naturally are key.”

TWA: [How is remote or hybrid work impacting the use of video conferencing technology in APAC? What are the main reasons businesses are adopting conferencing solutions?]

NW: “In Asia, a lot of organisations we work with have brought their staff back in the office at least four or five days a week, and the whole COVID discussion is gone. Therefore, talent is very concentrated in the main cities, so the technology is primarily used for communicating with subsidiaries or external contacts.

“In places like Australia, the situation is similar to the US and the UK with a hybrid model, combining work from home or in the office. There, the technology is really being used to connect people from different locations. For example, great talent could be based in Perth or Cairns, so how do you bring all these people into your organisation so that everybody can perform and feel part of a team? Technology helps to solve that problem.

“From a global perspective, Neat itself is a great example. We started this company with very talented people in 2019 and have grown with a mostly remote workforce. Bringing the development team in Oslo and the sales and marketing teams in Europe, USA and APAC together can only be done over video.“

TWA: [AI is a major consideration for businesses around the world. What do you see as the impact on AI in collaboration for businesses in APAC?]

NW: “There is so much going on in artificial intelligence (AI) at this point, which is why it is amazing to get in this now, compared to last year. We are getting so close to where AI simplifies technology even more and brings people much closer together.

“Products are evolving pretty fast, and AI makes them evolve even faster. For instance, in the Neat Center, which will be out soon, there is a lot of AI trying to understand simple things. For example, in a multiple-screen videoconferencing solution – the remote attendee is visible on one screen, their content on another screen and the in-person attendees could be on another screen.

Source: Neat

“The Neat center has three cameras that take a 360 view from the table in the middle of the room. It shoots people from the front regardless of whether they look at each other across the table or face the screen in front of the room. The strength of Neat is to make this as simple as possible. AI built into Neat Center identifies the people in the room and shows them just once on the screen. Every screen or room layout is different. We feed a lot of room configurations to the AI to learn and understand who should be shown and who should not in the meeting.

“Another example is with framing things properly. I can walk around, sit down and stand up, all while staying clearly in the camera frame. It also ensures that the colleagues next to me are also in the frame and visible in the same way as me, so we get equity.”

TWA: How do you see the role of AI in shaping the future of workspaces in the APAC market?

NW: “The discussion around AI is very focused on handling repetitive tasks so that employees can focus on creative solutions, complex problem-solving, and be more impactful with their work.

“The way that applies to videoconferencing is taking the complexity away so you can communicate and collaborate freely without having to think too much about the technology itself. That is the hardware perspective. Our focus at Neat is thinking about how you incorporate artificial intelligence into the hardware itself. You always have the base layer of the hardware that helps the software become smarter; they go hand in hand.

“On top of this, Microsoft and Zoom have a big role to play in how we incorporate AI in our devices. We work very closely with these two really large providers to make a Zoom meeting or Teams meeting on a Neat device better and smarter, which sets us apart.”

To find out how Neat devices can enable hybrid work for all types of workspaces in your offices, take a virtual tour of ‘The Modern Office’ today or visit the website.

The post Meeting equity in 2024: Overcoming challenges through videoconferencing innovation appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

Research has found that 91 percent of remote-capable employees prefer a hybrid or fully-remote model, and 88 percent of hybrid workers prefer three days or fewer on-site. One of the main reasons for this is the quality time people are getting with their families as a result. Before the Industrial Revolution, the family was together all the time, working and living in the same space, but the advent of industrialization led to a separation of work and home life. However, when the pandemic forced all of us to stay indoors, it brought families back together under the same roof for work and education.

Source: Shutterstock

While it was a difficult period for many reasons, a lot of people enjoyed the extra quality time they had with family and friends thanks to saying goodbye to a lengthy commute. When restrictions were lifted, there was little motivation to head back to the office, particularly when productivity was actually boosted by working from home. Indeed, working parents, people with disabilities who struggle to commute or sit in an office all day, and people in remote areas could suddenly take on roles from home that were previously not open to them. As a result, more than a quarter of employees say they will likely switch jobs if forced to return to work on-site full-time.

Unfortunately, many employers have not shared this positive attitude towards home working. In fact, many companies are strengthening their return-to-office policies after initial attempts to tempt back their workforces failed. One report found that 75 percent of business leaders want their employees back in the office full-time, but this is not without reason. Over 66 percent of CEOs say they struggle to maintain a sense of company culture with a disparate workforce, and over 62 percent say the biggest challenge is fostering collaboration and good communication.

Employees have also faced some difficulty with the new working style. Just over half of those who work remotely feel their colleagues don’t treat them equally when they are at home due to proximity bias. Indeed, those workers who have returned to the office voluntarily are doing so to collaborate more effectively with their co-workers, brainstorm creative ideas, and share information.

The answer for employers trying to entice their staff back into the office is, therefore, not laying down the law through a strict return-to-work policy but promoting the elements that make on-site work desirable. After all, an Oxford University study did find that happy workers are 13 percent more productive. Setting up flexible workspaces, like huddle rooms, equipped with top-of-the-range video conferencing solutions is a good place to start as these can eradicate instances of ‘meeting inequity’. With greater audio-visual capabilities, remote workers can collaborate more effectively with those in the office and feel connected, regardless of the distance between them.

Neat Board can inspire collaborative sessions and agile team exercises for people at the office when working from home. Source: Neat

The technology that workspaces are equipped with can inspire employees to do their best work, whether that be in a one-on-one chat or group brainstorming session. The devices offered by Neat are designed with this in mind. All Neat devices include a patented technology called Neat Symmetry that can accurately detect the location of every person in a meeting room. It can zoom in, auto-frame a speaker, and even follow them as they move around the room. This ensures they are always in focus for remote attendees and can gauge both verbal cues and body language for improved communication.

Neat also offers devices such as Neat Board and Neat Board 50 – large touchscreens with high-quality cameras and microphones that fit just as well in a communal area as in a meeting room. They can be easily moved around to create collaboration spaces in open areas. This means that a conversation between a remote participant and an office worker can easily be initiated even in a casual setting, like a kitchen or break room, helping maintain that all-important company culture.

Neat Board 65 Source: Neat

It is difficult to predict what the future of work will look like, but while it will likely be different for every company, hybrid and remote work are here to stay. Find out how collaborative technology from Neat can bring your workforce together, wherever they may be, in the free ‘Neat Guide to the Modern Office’ or by exploring its award-winning product range today.

The post The Neat Escape: How meeting room tech can end the ‘returning to office’ battle appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The widespread adoption of hybrid working patterns means that employees can now attend meetings from anywhere and even continue with other work while listening in. Attendees hop in and out to give their input only when necessary, saving time for other important tasks. All this can be done from the comfort of the home office, kitchen table, or even sofa – wherever they work best.

While we learned quickly how to schedule meetings, mute our microphones and turn off our cameras, there were certainly some teething problems with this new way of collaborating. Viral clips of children causing chaos and serious wardrobe malfunctions in the background of virtual meetings illustrate how the video conferencing solutions we had to quickly learn to use were not perfect straight out of the gate.

When fully remote meetings started transitioning into hybrid ones, which involved a group of attendees huddled uncomfortably in front of a camera in the boardroom, a new issue emerged – ‘meeting inequity’. While remote attendees were perfectly framed in front of their webcam, the view of the people in the office was poor; at worst, just a cluster of pixels. On the flip side, when the people in the office spoke amongst themselves, those joining remotely had to lean deep into their laptops, straining to hear what was being said.

Source: Shutterstock

It’s not surprising that studies have proven what we know intuitively to be true; it’s easier to generate ideas face-to-face, and so dynamic, blue-sky thinking tends to occur more naturally in the physical meeting space.

So, how can we overcome these challenges? With virtual meetings here to stay – they’ve tripled since February 2020 – it’s surely a priority for businesses today.

“Having a device that allows you to build an environment where you can all collaborate is really important,” said Niko Walraven, the Regional Director for the APAC region video conferencing solution provider Neat.

Neat has incorporated artificial intelligence (AI) into all its products to better facilitate hybrid meetings. Take Neat Bar, for instance, a video conferencing device with Neat Symmetry, which accurately detects the location of everyone in the office meeting room with intelligent algorithms that process sensor data. The camera then zooms in and auto-frames each individual, picking them out from the group and presenting them up close on the screens of remote participants. It even continues to follow them as they sit, stand and walk around, enabling people working remotely to interpret their body language much more easily.

Source: Neat

This isn’t the only intelligent software installed into Neat products. Neat Boundary enables users to set the width and depth of their meeting space so that the video conferencing hardware only auto-frames those involved in the video call. This is particularly useful in open-plan offices and glass-walled meeting rooms. Minor distractions like the camera flicking away to an unwilling participant can cause significant disruption to the flow of the ideas, so the feature ensures a focused meeting environment, even in busy settings.

Framing Boundary: ‘How it works’ visual demo Source: Neat

Neat is further bridging the division between home-workers and those in the office by making its video conferencing solutions as simple and user-friendly as possible. Any Neat device can be set up in a communal area, like a kitchen or break room, and it will automatically wake up when someone steps in the pre-set boundary zone. The screen brightens, the mic and speakers unmute, and the camera frames the person so they can connect with a remote worker with just the tap of a button. This helps remote workers participate in brief ‘water cooler’ chats and mini brainstorms they may otherwise miss out on. The same auto-wake feature works in meeting rooms, too, removing the awkward set-up step that often takes place at the start of hybrid meetings and allowing all colleagues to connect immediately.

Research has shown that 64 per cent of employees worldwide value collaboration spaces set up specifically for hybrid meetings, which is echoed in Mr Walraven’s vision of things to come: “I think the future is more flexibility in different workspaces around the office.”

Explore its award-winning product range today to find out how Neat can make this vision a reality.

The post How AI-powered video meetings make ‘hybrid’ more human appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

According to Forrester research, 70% of companies in the US and Europe will operate a flexible working model going forward, and a whopping 93% of business leaders believe that at least a quarter of current employees will be working from home by 2022, as per Frost & Sullivan.

Data indicates that more than half of the 92 million professional jobs in the US are compatible with the move to remote working, with heightened productivity gains of 4.6% recorded by remote workers. This upswing in performance is thanks, in part, to slashed commuting times – a prized outcome in many Asia Pacific (APAC) territories, where staff are often plagued by heavy traffic congestion when commuting to the office, causing marked productivity downtimes and taking a toll on employee mental and physical wellness.

The radical shift in meeting culture has ushered in a new dawn for corporate collaboration. Naturally, such gigantic changes also raise questions and concerns. Like how should companies reconfigure their office space to better suit the way their workforce operates today? How can they do this in the most cost-effective manner? There’s also debate around company culture and employee wellbeing. Is it possible to nurture these things when everyone works remotely? A survey by PWC concluded that most company leaders – and their employees – believe a balance between remote and onsite working will be the optimum way forward.

“47% of executives prefer staff to attend the workplace at least three days a week.”

The devices a company uses also have a significant impact on the success of a blended working model. How do we know? Because we’ve used devices throughout our working careers and have witnessed first-hand how Neat’s more life-like video meeting experience has supported growth. New, next-generation video meetings help close the gap between the remote and onsite experience and better connect teammates distributed around the globe.

Video meetings reinvented: Overcoming barriers for distributed teams.

Today the adoption of innovative, far-sighted video conferencing technology like Neat removes the barriers associated with remote working. Headquartered in Oslo, Norway – the so-called ‘Video Valley of the World’ also home to other video software companies like Cisco, Tandberg, and Acano – Neat has developed simple, intuitive innovations that have “pushed the boundaries of the video industry,” says Martijn Blokland – Neat’s VP of Sales, APAC and EMEA. Neat’s mission is a worthy one and right on time for businesses still deliberating how to respond to the ‘new normal’ – and this is it: make devices that are the glue between distributed teams, helping teammates to feel more authentically engaged with each other, and immersed once again in the meeting experience.

Unlike other video conferencing solutions, Neat has a broad stable of devices that are purpose-built to address meeting needs across the whole gamut of locations where coworking can occur. Each solution in the portfolio, including options for personal mobile devices, is designed to enable ‘pick up and go’ collaboration on the move. The tools exhibit deep, rich functionality designed to enhance the meeting experience wherever participants may be – in the home or remote office, in open spaces, or in conference rooms.

Introducing Neat Board

An elegant all-around meeting solution, the Neat Board features a 65″ multitouch screen, powerful audio system, and versatile wide-angle camera to deliver the best ‘in the room’ collaboration experience. There are extra operational elements, too, designed to facilitate more discursive and creative sessions, such as integrated annotation features and whiteboard note-taking, with outputs that can be shared wirelessly with different users.

Neat Bar & Neat Bar Pro

The Neat Bar is a compact and elegant video bar that is perfect for smaller meetings and huddles of less than ten people. Working with one or two monitors as well as the dynamic touch screen Neat Pad, the Neat Bar can be configured as a controller or scheduler but still functions as a meeting unit with superior audio and video quality – enabling teammates to catch every little facial expression, ‘mmm’ and ‘aha.’

Taking things to the next level, the Neat Bar Pro is capable of powering the ultimate immersive video experience on up to three large monitors. The setup includes two extreme resolution cameras and an advanced image depth sensor, which in combination deliver 16x zoom, providing easy viewing of both people and content for everyone in the audience, regardless of the room size.

Neat Pad

The Neat Pad is a touch screen companion to both the Neat Bar and Neat Bar Pro and comes bundled as part of each package. But the unit can also be acquired separately for use as a controller or scheduling display, again operating wirelessly across all manner of meeting spaces.

Award-winning Neat Frame

Last but not least, there is the Neat Frame – a unique portrait-oriented video conferencing device with an eye-level camera that allows for more ‘natural’ conversations between meeting participants. This particular form factor lends itself to a more practical application of present-day collaboration technology, delivering an improved user experience through advanced onscreen arrangement of people and content and sophisticated sound technology with background noise cancellation.

A Red Dot Best of the Best award winner for 2022, the Neat Frame has an intuitive user interface where people in the meeting are automatically tracked and framed onscreen, even as they move about freely during brainstorming sessions. And – like all Neat devices – the Neat Frame has a sleek aesthetic with its shaped cover glass and use of natural materials to give an inviting, accessible feel. Minimal details on the device point towards the unit’s Scandinavian design heritage, emphasizing operating efficiency and making the product easy to deploy across multiple environments while still providing a consistent user experience.

In fact, the inviting aesthetic of all Neat devices makes them feel part of the room, any room – enabling meeting experiences to feel that much more unified and seamless, notes Blokland (Neat’s VP of Sales, APAC and EMEA). Expanding on this, he says his company “designs and builds devices that not only work great in meeting rooms but are also aesthetically-pleasing – looking as good from the back as they do from the front.”

Highly compatible and capable in the best conversations via video

Neat devices offer the best virtual meeting possibilities with leading video collaboration software providers, including Zoom and Microsoft Teams, syncing up ably with these established video conferencing powerhouses. What’s more, the portfolio is backed by key technologies that truly elevate the video conferencing experience.

Design features include:

• Neat Symmetry promotes user presence and engagement, combining advanced AI with a high-resolution sensor to auto frame each person in the room equally, whether they are positioned in front of the device or in the background – instinctively following them around as participants move positions.
• Neat Bubble supplies dynamic noise cancellation to manage unwanted background sounds outside of camera view, enabling distraction-free audio that is focused on the speaker and the others in the session within camera range.
• Neat Boundary gives the user control over who the camera sees, tracks, and auto frames – blocking out any distracting background images and making Neat devices ideal for open-floor locations where those who are not involved in the meeting are not even seen or heard.
• Neat Sense smart sensor technology which – thanks to built-in sensors enabling real-time monitoring of air quality, humidity, CO2, VOC, temperature, and occupancy rates – helps focus on attendee wellbeing and optimal room usage.

The game-changing video range of Neat devices and solutions for enterprise, education, and broadcast media sectors will be on full display at these regional trade shows in Asia Pacific:

• Integrate Expo in Sydney, Australia, 17-19 August 2022, Booth B55. Register for a free pass here.
• DXPO Japan in Tokyo, 23-24 August 2022, Booth 1-17. Learn more here.
• InfoComm India in Mumbai, 5-7 September 2022, Booth G11. Pre-register to attend the onsite exhibition. Interested parties can also visit the Neat booth virtually.
• InfoComm Southeast Asia, 2-4 November 2022, Booth G09. Register for a free pass here.

The post Line of sight at last for distributed teams with Neat video collaboration appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.

The word “Zoom” has joined “Google” in becoming a verb as well as the name of an organization, and few people today think twice before setting up a Teams meeting in place of a face-to-face conference. But as employees make the return to the workplace, what they discover in the facilities they may not have seen too much of over the last 24 months is that the built-in audiovisual systems in shared and personal spaces are dated. In many cases, it’s quicker and easier to use a single laptop to connect a board room’s inhabitants to a remote meeting than to try and configure the old AV system and screen at the end of the room.

This drama is being played out in workplaces across the globe, leading to a resurgence of interest in the latest video conferencing systems, platforms that combine ease-of-use (and installation) with crystal clear audio, pin-sharp video, and even additional features like autofocus cameras and directional microphones. The Red Dot design organization, for example, has featured several audiovisual systems as winners of their prestigious awards. That reflects companies’ renewed belief that the way they and their employees look and sound on screen is making a significant impact in business terms: smooth professionalism is the goal as many organizations find that online, virtual meetings, conferences, and webinars are now the norm, rather than the exception. There’s also the added impetus of an at least partly remote workforce: collaboration by video chat is now an accepted part of almost everyone’s working day.

If organizations want to put the old practices of video conferencing of “hunt the correct dongle” and “find the end of this wire” to bed, a few criteria need to be filled. Having Zoom and Teams built-in must be table stakes in 2022, as does wireless connectivity. Winners of several of those Red Dot awards for two consecutive years is Neat, whose offerings are both stunning to see and hear but highly advanced in features and capabilities.

Source: Neatframe

Often in technology circles, feature-bloat passes for progress; but there has clearly been a strong emphasis on design, ergonomics, and focused performance for the Neat range. There’s the almost-stereotypical Nordic design in terms of build quality and look-and-feel, plus a great deal of thought has gone into the R&D of the range to make it practical and technically impressive. The Neat Bar and Neat Bar Pro, for example, are understated devices that create immersive video and can drive two or three screens, respectively.

The award-winner, Neat Board, is the type of flagship boardroom device that every organization will want in their most-used public meeting spaces and the exclusive confines of the chairman’s boardroom. Its 65″ (165 cm) multitouch screen with built-in audio is great for brainstorming in collaborative sessions where working groups can thrash out details between participants in the room and remote. It’s also the device that the chairman of the board will specify for the loftier confines of the boardroom, where its neat elegance will be right at home.

Control over the installed wall- or ceiling-mounted devices can be centralized to the cool-looking Neat Pad, shipped by default with the Bar and Bar Pro. For individuals or smaller meeting rooms, there is the Neat Frame that looks like a space-age, portrait aspect tablet and the Neat One: an individual USB camera, mic array, and speaker package.

Under the hood of these devices is where the technologists in us begin to get excited. Cameras leverage AI to follow speakers as they move around a room or shift positions, and activity beyond a room’s space glimpsed on camera, through glass-walled rooms, for example, is automatically blurred out, focusing eyes and minds on the subject matter. There are built-in noise suppression technologies in the microphone arrays, so extraneous noise doesn’t leak into the audio channels. The Neat Company’s ethos is demonstrably focusing equally on function and form, with the Red Dot judges seeming to agree.

Head over to the company’s site to read more about the range and explore the full range to see which models would best serve your purposes. Also, watch this space as our next article in this series takes a deeper look into some of the technology packed into these attractive boxes of AV goodness like environmental monitoring and data gathering capabilities.

The post Neat Designs Win Out for Next-Gen Workplace Audiovisuals appeared first on Tech Wire Asia.