We’ve all been there. You’ve spent days, weeks even, preparing an important presentation. You’re due to give it to the whole assembled staff, at a board meeting, or perhaps as part of a pitch to a key client.
The big day arrives, you are all ready to go with your presentation safely stored on your laptop. And then disaster strikes. You can’t connect to the giant screen in the room that has been booked. Your laptop has HDMI but the old system is still running 3-RCA. You have Miracast but you need Apple Airplay.
This is always a risk whenever people travel to give presentations or take part in seminars. Travelling to see clients, inviting suppliers in to pitch, hiring a neutral venue for a conference or workshop. Everyone is so caught up in what software platforms people are using and checking they are compatible with the hardware available, they forget the basics of getting connected in the first place.
Enter Polycom. The US hardware vendor has found a niche for itself as the world’s largest pure-play collaboration specialist. Across voice, video, content and conferencing, if you need a solution to help people share and work together effectively, Polycom probably has it covered.
Connecting devices to room systems is no exception.
The Polycom Pano is the ultimate universal adapter for meeting room systems. Whatever laptop, tablet or smartphone someone is carrying, the Pano will connect them. And while this is great for saving presentation fails, it is also idea for enabling more effective collaboration, by allowing multiple screens to be shared at once both within a room and with remote participants.
What can it do?
Polycom bills the Pano as the easiest way to share content at work. Simplicity is the key - the Pano is effectively a wireless adapter to connect devices to external screens.
Predominantly a meeting room solution, what makes Pano different is the fact that you don’t need any special apps or software to connect. As soon as the Pano detects Airplay, Miracast or Bluetooth capabilities on your device, it will invite you to connect with a simple click or touch. If your device doesn’t happen to have any of those, there is a Pano App for Apple OS and Windows which establishes a connection via WiFi.
The real power of Pano is its flexibility. For straightforward one-to-many presentations, it provides the reassurance of high-quality wireless connections. Anyone can walk in and share content on a screen, in 4K resolution.
But Pano is also intended to boost collaboration. Multiple users can connect at once, and up to four screens can be shared on a communal screen. Documents, images and videos can be displayed, all in HD quality. Teams can review, discuss and compare multiple resources at once, speeding up decision making and involving more people in important conversations.
In addition, Pano can be turned into a fully fledged multi-touch collaboration endpoint. With a compatible Polycom touchscreen connected via USB, it provides an infinite whiteboard canvas cast onto participants devices. Participants can jot down their ideas on their own device or on the touchscreen, and, if you are using the Pano App, save what they like to come back to later. The touchscreen also enables group editing and annotation of shared content with a magic pen.
