News & Trends

Early in the pandemic as the world shut down, we rushed to convert to an all-virtual world. AV technology was key to supporting that challenge. Now offices, classrooms, and spaces are either open or starting to open, but with new design strategies and implementations. AV technology again plays a key role in these new environments in not only promoting safety and distance where needed, but just as importantly, in facilitating the communication necessary for success.

The following sessions from InfoComm 2020 Connected dive into the possibilities and realities.

Seven Things You Need to Know About the Future of Workplace Design  

A team of designers presented their list of things technology experts need to know about the future of workplace design, especially given the COVID -19 crisis. Examining technology trends through a design lens, what catalyzing factors should the industry keep in mind as they outfit an evolving array of workspaces?

Learning and Teaching in a Distributed Environment  

Digital technology makes it possible to connect students and teaching staff across geographical distances offering the possibility to mix physical and virtual participation, share similar classes between different institutions and allow multi-campus universities to increase the selection of courses at each campus. This session looked at examples and lessons learned using both standard and ‘high end’ AV technologies. We heard about some award-winning examples of hybrid and distance learning and talked about how universities across Europe have adapted their existing technologies in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Higher Ed AV Open Forum  

The Higher Ed AV Super Friends shared their approaches to designing, integrating, and supporting flexible learning spaces in a post-COVID university environment. They discussed quantitative AV, qualitative AV, balancing technology with pedagogy, and the magic of the cloud. What was needed to be ready for Fall 2020? How can we augment the traditional classroom experience to support hybrid-online learning? What do you mean, adding a webcam isn’t good enough?

Related: Podcast: Reshaping the classroom experience  

Designing Contact-Free Building Experiences

The global health care crisis is driving a re-think on how people use and navigate public and commercial building spaces. Concerns about physically touching screens and other surfaces is promoting architects, interior designers, AV professionals and digital signage solutions providers to explore new strategies and concepts for how to make spaces workable and intuitive, but still be memorable.

Read next: How Facebook Manages Collaboration During COVID-19
How are global companies with huge office footprints handling a massive increase in working from home? Experts shared how one of the largest companies in the world is handling remote collaboration, and what they see coming as staff starts to return to its famously well-appointed office space.