magazine
businessinfomag.uk
38
Presentations
The message vs.
the medium
Meetings that start late are a major
bugbear for office professionals.
And with good reason. Barco has
calculated that, on average, meetings
in the UK, US, France and Germany
start six minutes late. For a typical
office worker attending four meetings
a week, this adds up to more than 20
hours wasted every year.
And the number one reason for
delayed starts? Technology. Almost one
third (31%) of respondents complained
that delays were due to struggles with
technology, with an additional 16%
citing problems with adapters.
Not surprisingly, technology has
been identified as a big contributor to
‘meeting stress’. In fact, Barco claims
that almost all the main causes of
stress in meetings are technology-
related, including connectivity problems,
compatibility issues and technology
failure.
Analysis by Barco and Vanson Bourne
shows that when office workers struggle
with issues like sharing screens or finding
the right cable their heart rate reaches
an unsettling 179 beats per minute, from
a resting rate of 60-100 bpm .
Presenters are right to be anxious at
such times, as 70% of those surveyed by
Barco said that technical problems cause
speakers to lose credibility.When asked
to identify what makes a presentation
successful, 38% said an absence of
technical problems.
What, then, are the most common
problems encountered by presenters and
what can be done to avoid them?
Connectivity chaos
The difficulty in connecting devices
and getting them to work together
seamlessly is a common frustration for
office workers.
Thomas Walter, product marketing
manager at NEC Display Solutions
Europe, said: “When you’re focused on
business, working to impress your client
and participate in a productive meeting,
the last thing you need is to worry and
fuss over technology which should be
there to support you. A tangle of wires
and constant plugging and unplugging
as presenters swap over does little to
facilitate an efficient meeting.”
He added: “Another issue is different
cable standards, such as HDMI, VGA
or DP. As the majority of laptops don’t
support all connector types and the
business infrastructure might not
provide all connections to the screen
either, this can cause further difficulties
and frustration.”
Optoma territory manager Nick
Price points out that this problem is
exacerbated by the Bring Your Own
Device (BYOD) trend. “It is common
for people to bring their laptops and
devices into meeting rooms and they
expect connectivity with the display
equipment.When selecting a projector
for your meeting rooms and boardrooms
ensure it has a wide selection of inputs
to cater for a range of source devices,”
he said.
He also advises businesses to
make sure the installer leaves a set of
instructions for equipment set-up.
Not surprisingly, wireless solutions
that remove the complication of having
to find the right wire or cable and make
it easier for multiple users to share
content from their devices are a major
focus for manufacturers.
A good example is Barco’s ClickShare,
a wireless presentation and collaboration
system compatible with a range of
devices and operating systems that
allows users to display what’s on
their laptop or mobile device on the
presentation screen.
Last year saw the introduction of
numerous other wireless presentation
solutions that enable users to display
content from personal mobile devices on
a main display in Full HD, including the
OptomaWPS Pro, the Vivitek NovoPRO
and the NRC MultiPresenter MP10RX,
a small HDMI stick that adds wireless
collaboration to projectors and display
screens.
As useful as these solutions are,
Price warns that even wireless solutions
present difficulties. “There are so many
wireless conference technologies on the
market, it can be a bit of a minefield to
get the equipment to talk to each other,”
he said.
Booked up and broken
Another common complaint is not being
able to find a free meeting room with
technology that actually works. This is
where pico projectors like the pocket-
sized Philips PicoPix series come into
their own.
Mark Ivens, marketing manager at
XGEM, which distributes the projectors
in the UK, said: “Many presenters have
walked into a room and expected a
projector or monitor to be there only
Is technology a help or a hindrance when presenting?
Here, we highlight key presentation bugbears with suggestions on how to overcome them
Thomas Walter,
Product Marketing
Manager,
NEC Display
Solutions
Nick Price,
Territory Manager,
Optoma
Barco Boardroom Projection
NEC MultiPresent
Stick MP10RX
OptomaWPS Pro
