The UCC Panel of our LAVNCH WEEK Wednesday covered some things that everyone has been thinking about but maybe not talking about. “What’s Next for UCC Integrators and Power Users?” It’s one hell of a title because it’s something that keeps us all up at night — we’re living in a weird world right now — so, what’s next?
Jane Hammersley, director of global alliances and collaboration (and rightfully titled collab queen) at Maverick AV Solutions, was our moderator. She kicked us off by letting the panelists introduce themselves, and boy did she keep us on track. Loved the touch of timing the responses to three minutes — but you had to be there. She not only asked the panelists to introduce themselves, however.
“Worlds are upside down and now’s the time to be brave and bold.”
She used this segue to ask the panelists to answer this question:
Jane Hammersly: What skill(s) should we spend time learning during this period at home?
S. Ann Earon: We need to resurrect an old skill: Keep it simple, stupid. What has happened in the workplace is that we have been inundated with the need to provide the technology … We have to set the minds of users what works and how it works. We need to go back to the basics … People need to understand how to do audio effectively, share data effectively and do video effectively.
Dana Corey: Mine is to keep it digital. The skill is to look at the fact that we’re sharing things that all have to be digital to be shared. The advantage of digital is [these things] can be seen and shared in meetings. From documents to personal data to whiteboarding … We think digital in all of our business now — we have to move to this to help everyone see, share and understand.
Jim Morris: What’s the new thing we need to have in the world? Maybe after this, 50-75% [of workers] will actually go back to the office. We need to develop skills that help us with that. One that people need to work on — learn to visually collaborate so that your remote employees can feel like they are in the in-room experience. Don’t think that just having your video conference/application in there will solve the problem — it won’t. What are things that will drive the engagement of the people who are remote?
Hans Dekeyser: Find your own brand for engagement — with the tools you wish to use in this new normal. If you’re an introvert, pick ways that you can engage anyhow. If extroverted, storytelling is great but allow others the time and space as well … Find the tools you like to use but adjust to the objective of the meeting. Maybe incorporate a survey. If it’s more educational — perhaps a meeting tool isn’t the right thing, but you could instead use an engaging educational training tool.
Wayne Driggers: Learning concepts and being able to manage that — exercise shorter intervals between personal and work conversations. It’s all about finding that balance — we’re no longer commuting from work to home. We truly have to learn about mental balance and exercising that attention span to focus on a number of things at a much more rapid pace.
Jane Hammersly: What would we tell organizations to stop doing in this new world of work?
Wayne Driggers: With all the different technologies seen … find comfort. Find what you can do and learn how to do it well without over complicating. Find methods of contacting your remote workers without adding stress in their day-to-day lives … Online meetings, real-time chat, all these ways we communicate can become overwhelming. It’s excellent to have [this] in our toolbag to stay connected to everyone in our remote world … understand the milestones for projects you want to accomplish, help manage day-to-day and when employees need you to, provide the work.
Hans Dekeyser: Marriage between AV and UC must work the right way. People are used to using UC tools every day — it’s a more hybrid environment now — are we going to look at interfaces and say, how does this work again? We’ve been focusing on BYOM, and that’s what ClickShare Conference does, it’s agnostic for UC and peripherals, it’s secure from your managed laptop — in this new world of work let’s focus on tools that allow and facilitate this new way of working to bring a higher productivity to your customers.
Jim Morris: Don’t sacrifice UX — it’s key to driving adoption … Lots of companies will be running around trying to outfit offices with more video equipment, and some workforce isn’t going to be there most of the time, and they’re going to come back and wonder why they haven’t had training on it. It must be super intuitive for the end user. BYOM are hardware systems you can get easy to deploy and are not expensive … Like Single-click to start — we like to drive that in a lot of ways — drive that kind of adoption in your organization.
Dana Corey: Create a “video first” mentality. Interacting creates retention … stop opting out of video calls.
S. Ann Earon: Stop assuming people know how to use the tech after you teach them how to use it. [It may] take more than one try … Don’t assume you should have video for every call. Video has a place, but I don’t think it’s every place. If you use it properly to see the whites of employees’ eyes and watch them sweat, video is great. Interactive collaboration is what we should be using.
Join us for LAVNCH 2.0!
If you’ve enjoyed LAVNCH WEEK so far and are interested in attending LAVNCH 2.0 the week of June 22 (it’s free for attendees!), go ahead and join the list here; spots will fill up fast. Also, you can check out our LAVNCH WEEK microsite here to see all the articles (like this one) and public videos from the week and more.