It used to be that your personal space in the work environment was closely connected with both individuality and power. What indicated business success was the big teak desk in the corner office, complete with accommodation for your private admin support. Promotions often involved a better view or a few more square metres, and even the lowliest cubicle worker has always sought to personalise their own area with photos and knick-knacks. No wonder that the initial reception of hot-desking and hotelling was unpopular when first introduced in the 1990s and early part of the new millennium.
Even in our unevenly distributed workplaces of today, hot-desking remains inconvenient for many. My newly-refurbished bank branch has done away with private offices, but my adviser has to stagger around with her laptop and piles of documents, looking for a private corner for us to have a chat in, all while muttering resentfully about the change...
The vision that Crestron’s Director of Strategy, Unified Communications, Joseph Sarrasin, shares is very different — a way of using shared physical spaces to instantly connect and collaborate digitally, in a completely fluid and flexible way:
Small, flexible spaces for collaboration
“We’re seeing a massive rise in demand for smaller collaboration spaces, huddle spaces, really flexible meeting rooms — which might not even be meeting rooms, it could be the middle of a co-working space for example”, he told us.
“The buzz is about small, quick meeting rooms, where people come together in groups as needed, to get work done dynamically”
Being able to instantly connect and share and work together in a purpose-built space, even looping in remote participants as needed, is a powerful idea. And it doesn't depend on lugging around an office-in-a-briefcase either. Everything you need is right there to log into…
“The reality is, that the laptop is at best a gateway into the cloud account, where their whole world lives”, Sarrasin continues. “We want to get to a point in corporate where the laptop is almost disposable… Once everything is cloud connected, you have your settings and preferences standardised, your meeting room will spin up everything you need”.
