Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of simplifying remote collaboration, addressing the challenges in hybrid spaces, a podcast brought to you by Nabieva I'm your host, Tyler Curran. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode of the program. Today we were talking to Dan Gundry. He's the vice president and managing director of uba USA. Dan, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining me. It's awesome to be here. Thank you so much. Absolutely absolutely today on the show, we're going to be talking a little bit about how the pandemic really shifted the job responsibility for a lot of IT managers and IT departments. It's the kind of need to do more of the AV as far as meeting spaces go, hybrid spaces go, and the way that those shifts really evolve, the job description and the different solutions that have now begin to pop up that help make those jobs a little bit easier. And so, Dan, let's start off just with those shifts that the pandemic created. Obviously, the paradigm for what work looks like with many employees working remote, working hybrid and that sort of thing has changed a lot of things. Right so what pressures does this created for IT directors and IT departments? Yeah, I don't know what you're talking about for this. There have been no change whatsoever over the last couple of years. You're crazy. No you know, first of all, it's different for every organization, you know, small organization which may only had one or two IT. People is very different than the way a large, say, health care campus is run that may have staff of 100 people. Nonetheless, the challenges are still real and the changes and the pressures that they're under, the stress are incredible. I think specifically about the world that we live in and specifically about the question about hybrid, you know, and you can run off in so many different tangents when you're talking about it. I think some of the core pieces are now I'm managing somebody's home network, I'm extending my firewall, my security, my security perimeter beyond the walls of my physical headquarter location. How do I manage all of those devices that are out there? How do I just afford more time in my day to do this, do all the new things that I need to do, affect all the new challenges. But I still have that same limited number of hours, limited number of resources available. I think that kind of hits it at a very high level. And again, we could always dive into deeper weeds in just about every area of security that you want to and It yeah, that's a great point. You know, and you talked about a lot of the things that IT managers should be spending their time on. Obviously they we could all use more hours in the day I think to get things done and to make things happen. I think we all kind of feel that pressure these days. But, but in addition to those responsibilities that IT managers and IT directors have of creating secure parameters around devices and all of the different security things that need to be taken into account these days. You also have that aspect of it managers having to deal with the fact that meeting rooms and meeting places need to be able to accommodate those hybrid workers and those remote, remote workers to make sure that they are also able to then participate in the same way that maybe people who are in office can participate in conversations, in discussions. And so in addition to all of the different things we talk about around device security and that sort of thing, there's also an AV component where it managers are having to kind of help with what those meeting spaces are going to look like now. Yeah so the term that's out there, the buzzwords in the industry right now is meeting equity, right, or meeting experience, kind of similar things. It's, you know, how do I take all these different people? Some are in the office, some are in different office, some are working from home. And home can be described so many different ways. I could be at my kitchen table versus an actual office or a dedicated space within my house. How do I make sure that everybody has the same meeting experience that gets the same out of it, that is heard, that can collaborate and share? You know, when you're in an office environment, you can look across a table and make eye contact with somebody and roll your eyes. If somebody said something that's either funny or doesn't make sense or whatever, pass notes, etc., etc., what does that look like in a hybrid environment? What does it look like in a completely remote environment? So I think it managers, AV managers, just business leaders have been trying to find this way so that those people that are out there on an island working from home one day or every day aren't by themselves. They're not isolated. They feel an equal part of the team and they have an equal experience in the meeting and in the workshops. We pay them to do a job. We want them to have full access to do the job and collaborate with their team owners. That's a real stressor and the solutions and how we deal with it and how we manage it are going to be different for every organization. But it is. It's probably number one biggest problem about hybrid workflow right now is what does that meeting experience look like? What is meeting equity mean to a given individual organization? Yeah, that's absolutely right. And I suppose when it managers are dealing with that, that's less time that they have to deal with. Some of the other things that you were talking about earlier. Right which just adds more to the plate. And so so with this looking different for. Every organization having solutions that can really help solve this, especially for the folks in office, to be able to utilize solutions that are quick and easy within their meeting spaces that improve and increase. That meeting equity would certainly give time back to it managers. Right, and allowed them to kind of focus on the things that they were hired to focus on. Yeah I mean, you're common. Every day. IT manager is not going to be an expert in AV technology. That's not what you hired them to do. It's not what they're paid to do. But it has become a natural part of their job, especially as those meeting spaces, those meetings themselves are now being held on the network. So you're right, they definitely need to find a way to do what we need to do speaking in their terms, using their terms, using their protocols, living in their space. So cloud management of those things, easy installation of those things, the models in which you buy it, the avenues in which you buy it all becomes really important because again, it's not necessarily their day job. This is not what they signed up to do, which is manage the meeting space. So now I think those solutions out there that get it, that take an IT approach to deployment to management to support that are not complex to install and set up and configure where you don't need to be a member of ees in order to set up an audio system in a room. Those are all valid because it makes the IT manager more efficient and really allows them to do the things that they really need to do, which is protect and defend and support the network of an organization and the it backbone of an organization. You know, one of the things I have been extremely interested in discussing and learning more about throughout this pandemic era, let's say, it's just how are the different evolutions that we've made as a society that won't ever go back to how it was pre-pandemic? And I think hybrid and remote work is probably a thing that for certain parts of our society is here to stay for the long term. Right and and so I wonder just how you've seen an evolution in terms of how comfortable people are utilizing the tools that enable remote and hybrid work. You know, just your perspective on the way maybe that we've evolved in terms of, you know, we still make the jokes like you're on mute, that sort of thing. And I think we will probably always be saying those sorts of things. But for the most part, right, it seems like we adapted rather quickly in 2020 and our understanding in our use of tools and things like microphones, headsets, things, different things like that has really grown and evolved over the last two and a half, three years or so. Yeah, I think the first three or six months, we all might disagree with your assessment because we were all scrambling to try to make sense of it and get something that was feasible and working. But, you know, the landscape's kind of ironed out a little bit. We've gotten to this place where we can breathe a little bit. Usually those periods of stress and friction allow for innovation. And we're seeing that with different organizations that are coming out with some of those toolsets. You know, I think users are looking for ease of use. They have been for a long time. And you can see that in the development of touch panels these days that are very much more intuitive and easier and streamlined. You know, I mean, there's not an instruction manual to operate an iPhone or an iPad and that speaks to we're looking for nice and easy. So I think our technology solutions have already been trending that way. Now we've just gotten to the point where I just want to come in a room, maybe not even hit a button, and something just works. And that's ultimately the user experience, the meeting experience that we need to get to. It just worked. When you think about the Office of the I suppose the present but also the future, you know, where we're going and where we're heading. What do you think are maybe some of the characteristics that make up these sorts of spaces? Like you said, ease of use. People are looking for that just kind of plug and play ability to be able to walk in and know that something is going to work. Is that going to be one of the hallmarks of what offices look like in the future? Yeah, I think, you know, really, I think boiling down, there's three different technologies, I think for the Office of the future. One is digital signage. You can tie that into wayfinding. If I'm not in the office every day, I may not know what I need to know. And signage in a building is going to allow me to communicate with employees in a different way. A more just a different way. Hot desking is going to be continues something here stay because we're not going to have these firm for wall closed offices like the one I'm in right now. It's going to be a lot more open space, a lot more flexible space. So knowing where people are doing, being able to do employee counts based off that for any kind of emergency situations. But then the third one, the one that's really going to have an impact on productivity that really has an Roi is workspace workspace solutions, you know, your huddle rooms, your conference rooms. And regardless of the size of the space, the type of the space, the user experience, that meeting experience, that meeting equity concept all needs to be as much on parity as possible. So simple to deploy, simple to manage, simple to use solutions regardless of the size or type of space is going to be of utmost importance. Then tell us a little bit about view all before we sign up today so people know a little bit more about you and what the company does. Oh, gosh, fuel has nothing to do with Workspace solutions whatsoever. So that's the beautiful thing about this. We're we're a visualization platform primarily in the command and control markets, but also executive briefing centers and some other types of space, high end visualization, any content to any display. The tagline here is control what you see. I like that. I like that a lot. So, Dan, any final thoughts that you have for people about what we've talked about here today? What do you want people to know and maybe understand just about ease of use, about utilizing these spaces and in hybrid and remote work following this episode? Anything you want to leave people with? Yeah, I think first of all, every organization is a little bit different and we all need to respect that. Whether we're practitioners and professionals that sell and integrate and support these services, or whether we're the actual people that are out there on islands that are actually trying to find solutions in this market. You're individual, you're different, everybody is. But there's commonality out there. You're looking for plug and play. You're looking for things that are certified on different platforms because you don't want to be the Guinea pig out there. You're also looking for simple, easy to use and easy to deploy. These spaces aren't going away. These problems aren't going away. And I think at this point, it's just a matter of finding a trusted partner. Very, very well put. Dan Gundry, vice president and managing director of all USA. Dan, Thank you so much for joining us here on simplifying remote collaboration and in explaining a little bit more about your thoughts on this. It's a pleasure. Thank you. Absolutely and Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this episode of the show. For more, you can visit NORTHCOM to learn more about Nabieva and also the solutions that they provide and to stay updated with the podcast, make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify or of course by visiting the website to stay up to date with the latest. And stay tuned. We'll be back soon with more conversations just like this one. But for Dan gondry, I'm Tyler Kern. We'll talk to you next time.
