Predictions for 2021 - Commtech Design Inc

Commtech Design is a consultant/design company that designs every type of technology and security system.

We are engaged in quite a few projects that have a requirement for Audio/Video systems that are going to be enhanced and updated based on new learning and business requirements.

This change in how we learn and work while at different locations is not going away. We believe that in-person meetings and discussions will come back more toward the way we have been working in the past but these remote connections are with us forever.

As long as I have been in the technology design world there has been discussion of videoconferencing as the next step in business and educational productivity. This was a promising solution but it was never realized due to complexity of the systems and lack of inertia in moving to a new meeting/learning paradigm.

The COVID pandemic has pushed videoconference technology faster in 10 months the my entire previous 23 years in the technology business. In January 2020 very few of us would feel comfortable using a video conference meeting and might feel that the customer would think less of us if we were not driving to their office.

Today remote meetings are the norm and have pushed my companies productivity forward by taking us off the road while still getting customer input by sharing of drawings and documents.

We also work in many education facilities in the K-12 and University world. The change in remote learning have become somewhat normal for students and teachers. While there will be debate about how much can be learned while being completely remote, the technology will continue to be adopted and applied in different ways for those that cannot be in the building.

In the business world we are looking at each meeting location and designing it to be part of a remote meeting installation. We are designing LCD displays with camera systems and required HDMI and USB cabling to connect to laptops to facilitate every type of video conference. Included in those designs are additional microphones and speakers either installed in the ceiling or at a table. The rooms that are to be used for meetings need to provide clear audio thru the videoconference.

The goal is to make any room ready to connect to your laptop and make it a videoconference space for scheduled and ad-hoc meetings.

We see that some companies may have small groups of people at different buildings or different spaces within a building and they do not necessarily want them to travel between each of the sites or floors in a building. What type of constant-on video conference system could be installed to facilitate a team approach to day to day work that will allow the teams to interact but be in different spaces?

Where you used to talk to others above the desk wall, will that conversation take place with the people in the remote location thru an LCD and audio/video conference that is always on during the work day.

My assistant has been working from home for the past 6 weeks and one of the things we discussed was setting up a mini-PC with camera and setting up a constant video conference so we can communicate without calling each other 15 times throughout the day. We decided we weren’t ready for this step but it was discussed!

We see a large move to more and different remote work and learning. The AV systems to support this are one of the largest trends we see in 2021.