February 2015
46
D
igital
S
ignage
Turn a meeting room into
a totally new surrounding
By Christian B. Caldarone,
VIA Technologies
This article shows
how modern Digital Signage
technology provides all the goodies
to turn a meeting room
into a totally new surrounding
that speaks for itself: the meeting
room of tomorrow.
Meetings are held in low esteem, so attract-
ing an audience can be quite a challenge.
It does not matter if one sits in a meeting
room with employees or with new custom-
ers. In either case the goal is not simply to sell
information to the audience, but to create an
inspiring dialogue and to exchange thoughts
on a highly creative level. According to a pop-
ular saying, it does not matter so much what
you say, as how you say it.
Many meeting rooms have a history of their
own and some even stir emotions or feel
like home. Maybe staff members used to sit
there for hours: listening, talking, thinking,
pondering, and wondering. This might have
been good times, but sometimes it is time
for a change. Due to new requirements these
rooms often have to be completely reinvigo-
rated, with their museum-like feel turned into
an inspiring room full of energy, conducive
to creative thinking and discussions. Now a
process of creative destruction has to begin,
so that something completely new can grow
from it. The goal is a nice balance between
design and functionality. The setup should
be user friendly and help to clear away much
of the cable clutter present in many meeting
rooms. When planning the system architec-
ture for the meeting room of tomorrow, dif-
ferent scenarios should be considered. For
example it is important to know for which
purpose and which audience the room is to
be used in order to learn about the neces-
sary requirements. And of course the size of
the room matters as well. Besides a central
screen, where usually presentations will be
given, most meeting rooms are equipped with
posters, pictures and most likely even glass
cabinets, where people can look at the lat-
est products of the company. For the posters
and pictures, the most obvious solution is to
replace them best by video screens showing
various content. However on second thoughts,
e-posters could be more effective for this mat-
ter, as they do not distract too much attention
from the central presentation screen. Most
companies already have created adequate
content, usually designed for trade-shows
and targeted email marketing campaigns,
which provides the type of concise messaging
needed. So the strong colors of the company’s
visual identity will provide a pop of color in
the meeting room of tomorrow, but they will
not be too overwhelming.
The central presentation screen, being the
focal point in the room, could be a 2x2 video
wall as a good compromise. Depending on
the size of the room and the height of the ceil-
ing, a 3x3 or a 4x4 video wall could be a good
choice too, but one should bear in mind that
the video content has to be in a suitable res-
olution not to disturb the visual experience.
Most companies already have video content,
used on a daily basis to be fed into the social
media to attract new customers. This video
content can be easily re-used. So a set of demo
videos, customized for different segments and
different target audiences, can be shown to
customers, media and employees in the meet-
ing room. In case no video shall be displayed,
a custom background in form of an image or
text can be shown.
For example VIA Technologies has chosen
to equip its new meeting room with a total
of eight screens, four 46” displays for the 2x2
video wall, three 42” digital signage screens
and one 55” touchscreen panel. After much
careful deliberation, it has been decided that a
total of three systems is required to effectively
manage all the screens. A video wall controller
is used to power the central video wall and to
act as a server to schedule the content to be
played on the digital signage screens. Finally
another mini size embedded PC is used as the
player for the 55” touch panel screen. The fun
part here is to figure out how to get all these
systems working together effectively and
without being seen.
The meeting room table is an important piece
in the overall design, creating a focal point
which ties the room together. Furthermore it
can be used to hide the video wall controller
Figure 1. Example of the
meeting room of tomorrow
