30
/ BUILDING DIALOGUE / SEPTEMBER 2016
O
ur day-to-day professional lives are
filled with interaction, and outside of
small, one-on-one conversations, we
frequently rely on audiovisual technology for
communication.
Communication is constant, necessary and,
all too often, a process that is fraught with frus-
tration. We’ve grown accustomed to spending
the first 10 to 15 minutes of a scheduled meeting
trying to connect a videoconference call, or try-
ing to get information from a local laptop to be
viewable by participants at the far end of the call.
We might have to continually strain to adequately
hear remote conference participants, or we struggle
to read the details of a spreadsheet displayed on a
small monitor located at the opposite end of the
room. Maybe there’s so much ambient light in the
room that all of the video content being displayed
appears “washed out,” or there is so much text on
a PowerPoint slide that it’s impossible to absorb.
Maybe participants in a training session hear the
presenter in the adjacent room as clearly as they
hear their own presenter. We can’t continue to en-
dure, or accept, these situations as “normal,” and we
honestly shouldn’t have to.
InfoComm International, the association repre-
senting the commercial AV industry worldwide,
developed a concept called The Exceptional Experi-
ence, which achieves the goal, exceeds expectations
and engages participants from beginning to end.
As much as we AV designers hate to admit it, AV
isn’t the only variable in the equation required to
create an exceptional communication experience.
It is only when content, space and technology work
in harmony that an exceptional experience can be
realized. This requires the entire team – from archi-
tect and AV consultant, to IT manager and end-us-
er/presenter – to commit to working together to en-
sure a successful outcome.
The tendency might be to assume that an excep-
tional experience comes at a cost, or is limited to
high-end, performance-oriented venues like con-
cert halls or theaters. While these types of venues
certainly can provide the forum for an exceptional
experience, in reality, an exceptional experience can
be had in just about any type of space that is used
for communication.
A typical conference room has an obvious, and
Deb Britton,
CTS
Founding
Principal, K2
ELEMENTS
Audiovisual
Poskanzer Skott Architects
A well-designed space is as important to a successful meeting as the audiovisual system itself.
