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The Home Office Sector

wfh problemsIn November, Gary Kayye interviewed Crestron’s new president and CEO, Dan Feldstein. The interview was very interesting, especially since Dan is a new public face to Crestron, even though he has “been working there since he was 5.” Take some time over your next lunch break to listen to the interview and get to know the man who is leading a major company in our industry.

This blog is not about that interview but was inspired by something that Gary and Dan spoke about. In particular, when Gary asked Dan about cloud services in the future, Dan told Gary he was very bullish about the role that the cloud will play in our industry and with Crestron. The thing that really struck me, however, was when Dan spoke of the home office. Dan said, “The home office is a whole new sector that we haven’t truly explored.” Many of us who like to think about the future and how technology will change over time have talked about the “new normal” in business. We have talked about how work-from-home or work-from-anywhere IS the future. But, how do you know when that is actually occurring? I think this statement shows that it is occurring. When a company like Crestron starts discussing the home office as a market sector, that shows that the needle has been moved.

I have read and written about some of the changes that we think may happen. There needs to be better lighting in home offices, better cameras and better microphones. Last month I wrote about eGlass, which I believe has a market in the home and classroom. All of those thoughts and comments center around a view of slight improvements to a current home office. They don’t truly embrace what the future of the home office really looks like. I think the most successful organizations are the ones who are able to think beyond slight improvements to today’s standards and limitations and move their thinking to what would be ideal in three to five years. As someone who has spent almost the entire past 18 months working from home, I have some real experiences in thinking about what works and what could use significant improvement.

The AV world has moved significantly towards a cloud model. As we progress to the new home office, there is one roadblock to it all: bandwidth. Many parts of this country do not have adequate bandwidth to host a Zoom call, never mind a state-of-the-art remote office. Since AV is IT, our trade associations should be partnering with other businesses and trade organizations to lobby the government to help fix this problem. Simply put, the future of our economy relies on bandwidth. If you don’t have the bandwidth, you cannot move forward.

Companies in our industry then need to work with other IT manufacturers to develop home routers and switches that go into these home offices and are easily configured remotely. Yes, some of these products exist already, but for the home office to truly function, AV and IT teams at corporations will need to partner to provide quality experiences to their employees. Examples of this would include equipment that will provide high-speed broadband, along with a constant VPN bridge back to the corporate network that separates the home internet usage from the work usage. If the promise of 5G is to be believed, perhaps this is the directions companies can move in. Whether that is a 5G “hot spot” or whether 5G is built directly into devices, I am not sure. But I know there are brilliant engineers thinking about this right now.

As I think about my other experiences working from home, something that is really missed is the physical movement I have lost from being in the office. Even though I would tell you that I have always spent all day on a computer, that was not really true until the pandemic hit. I would get up and walk over to the offices of other team members. I would attend meetings in conference rooms and would have the occasional water-cooler chat session with people. However, in my home office, I do spend 100% of my day in front of a computer. I can sit for hours at a time, taking only very short breaks.

A great home office is going to be an environment that simulates the same experiences I would have in an office. I want people to be able to “pop in” to a colleague’s office just to say hi, without scheduling a 30-minute meeting. I want to be able to have a meeting without staring at people in a small box on my computer screen. I think that holographic images will play a large part in this experience. Being able to meet with someone who is “sitting” across from me in full-body size would be an amazing break from the monotony of staring at a computer screen. “Bumping” into people throughout our day would provide creativity and inspiration. A three-dimensional experience provides a much more conducive environment to working with others.

Speaking of creativity and inspiration, we also need better ways to share ideas and brainstorm. Many pieces of software have whiteboard (or other freestyle writing) features, but let’s face it — they are a pain to use. No one can draw with their mouse. Even a small eGlass would suit this need, but it needs to connect to the cloud and allow the eGlass user on the other side to directly interact with me and me to interact with them.

In case you cannot tell, I was excited to hear Dan mention the home office as a new sector because it shows that the new normal is now just “the normal.” Companies are moving beyond making small improvements to what used to be and moving on to creating entirely new experiences. I cannot wait to see what it brings!

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