One click wonder for corporate collaboration
Improving collaboration in the corporate environment has been a long time goal for many businesses looking for better outcomes and efficiencies from their employees. One of the major focuses has been on overhauling the time-wasting and performance-restricting behaviours that make many meetings unproductive.
Solutions such as Barco's wireless collaboration technology, ClickShare, is changing both the dynamics of meetings and the way companies meet. Instead of focusing on one presenter, ClickShare encourages all attendees to participate by showing all of the visual content on a large meeting room screen. The result is, it becomes far easier for everybody to prove their point and collaborate far more effectively.
In essence, ClickShare means that connecting to the meeting room's video system is just a matter of clicking a button. It can help participants to get presentations on-screen in a second, and also allows the other people in the meeting to participate more actively. This is done using the unique ClickShare Button, or by installing a simple app to share content from an Android or iOS smartphone or tablet.
The ClickShare wireless collaboration technology was the first of what was a relatively under-represented niche, yet the trend has grown substantially alongside employees using their personal devices into their place of work. ClickShare's real differentiator is that it allows up to four people to share the content from their respective devices on a single screen at the click of a button. The most obvious use for it in workplace meeting rooms would be presentations, but it would be equally suited to sales conferences, planning sessions and other meeting environments.
Without the device, sharing content from PC, Mac, Android or iOS devices on meeting room screens requires the need for the right cables and/or adaptors to hand. Even then, there is no guarantee that it will come out at the correct resolution, so text may be unreadable. ClickShare automatically ensures content is displayed correctly and without having to use a physical connection.
With pressure on corporate budgets increasing, it is worth investing in a technology that not only reduces inevitable IT support call-outs commonly associated with meeting room AV while improving collaboration in the workplace. With ClickShare, out of the box, there is a base unit, a burnished steel box around the size of games console, with a matching holder to fit four "buttons", the USB devices that plug directly into laptops. A free app is also available from the Apple App Store and the Google Play store for Android devices respectively.
Setting up the box is straightforward. For instance the ClickShare CSM-1 set consists of two USB-powered devices (ClickShare Buttons) and a base unit. The base unit has a fixed connection to the meeting room's visualisation system, and takes care of all the needed processing. Users who want to get their presentation on the large meeting room screen, simply connect a Button to their PC or Mac. They start the application, click the ClickShare Button and immediately their desktop is wirelessly transferred to the large visualisation system. Alternatively, when using a smartphone or tablet, a simple app allows you to share content in the same way.
A one-click wonder, Barco's ClickShare is a simple, easy to use system that will encourage engagement and co-operation in a variety of meeting room scenarios across many different industries.
