What is a Certified Technology Specialist and Why is it Important?

The Audio Visual and Integrated Experience Association (AVIXA), is a hub for professional collaboration, information, and community, and the leading resource for AV standards, certification, training, market intelligence and thought leadership.  For more than 30 years AVIXA has administered the Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) Program.  Within the CTS program, there are three levels of specialists - CTS, CTS-I and CTS-D.

CTS is the general audio visual certification, CTS-I is specific to the task of installation and CTS-D is specific to the task of design.  Currently there are more than 12,000 CTS holders and more than 2,000 hold either CTS-I or CTS-D credentials.  

In June, more than 44,000 visitors attended the InfoComm Show in Las Vegas and more than 80,000 attendees are expected to attend Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) Show in 2019. As the industry continues to mature and develop, the CTS certification remains a coveted certification.

As a current or potential client you may be thinking ‘Why is it important for my organization to work with a solutions provider that has Certified Technology Specialists?’  

The CTS program benchmarks industry personnel against peer developed standards which upon successful completion of the exam, provides a three year certification.  At the conclusion of the three-year period, either the holder must have obtained 30 renewal units (RU’s) as outlined by AVIXA or the certification lapses and is no longer valid.

There are many professionals within the audio visual industry and the ability for customers to feel comfortable and confident in working with a particular company should begin with a clear understanding of their abilities.  

At Newgentek, we feel certifications and industry training are important for employee development and an integral part of delivering the very best solutions with a strong knowledge base behind it.  We are proud to say that today we have eight (8) people within Newgentek that are CTS holders and will continue to grow that number in accordance with our company growth!

Infocomm 2018 Recap!

InfoComm 2018 occurred last week, Wednesday, June 6th thru Friday, June 8th in Las Vegas, NV. 

InfoComm 2018 is the largest professional audiovisual trade show in the United States, with thousands of products for audio, unified communications and collaboration, display, video, control, digital signage, home automation, security, virtual reality and live events.

InfoComm provides integrators with a unique opportunity to meet with 1,000 exhibitors, thousands of products, and 44,000 attendees from 110 countries.

For the past 10+ years InfoComm has alternated between Las Vegas, NV and Orlando, FL. The change in geography gives integration partners and end users an opportunity to attend the trade show with at least a bi-annual frequency, however for the Newgentek team, InfoComm is a ‘must go’ each year.  Here's why.

InfoComm provides Newgentek with the ability to see cutting edge technology and schedule meetings with our key vendor partners. As highlighted in our Mission Statement, our company is built on Strategic Partnerships - which are made up of our employees, customers and key vendors. 

The theme this year seemed to be "more with less". Here is a review of specific technologies we noticed during our booth tours:

Video Conferencing / Huddle Room Solutions:

• Gone are the days of dedicated hardware video conferencing solutions for institutions.  Companies like Zoom who partner with Logitech and Crestron provide a soft codec experience and are changing the game. Click here to learn more about Zoom.
• Logitech provides numerous feature-rich camera options like Meet-Up or Rally to provide crisp video and clear audio for users to communicate from one office in America to another in Europe. 
• Crestron has continued to modify their Mercury solution that ties directly into the Zoom Platform for ease of configuration and allow room users to have their content shared on the screen within moments of arriving. Want more information on Crestron's Mercury solution?  Click here.

Audio Solutions:

• The JBL Brand within the Harman family continues to be a household name. This year they showcased their 2x2 Ceiling Speaker. The benefit to this speaker is the un-intrusive appeal. Most rooms use the 2x2 Ceiling Tile pattern, and the LCT 81C/T drops directly into an open 2x2 tile and provides that brilliant JBL sound. Click here to learn more.
• Sonance hit a home run with speaker appeal with the Professional Series PS-P63T. It’s a 70V/100V/8 Ohm selectable Pendant Speaker that utilizes a minimalistic design similar to pendant lighting to blend discreetly into the environment.

Eye-Catchers:

• Samsung showcased their Fl!p board, a digital white board device that provides collaboration within Huddle Rooms, Boardrooms and Conference Rooms. When the room users have all of their information on the board, instead of taking a picture of the board, the content can be emailed directly to meeting attendees. One more nice feature is the ability for the Fl!p to be used in landscape or portrait format.

For the Newgentek team, we returned from InfoComm energized about where the professional audiovisual industry is headed. We are excited to meet with our key customers to share the ways we can incorporate technology in an easy to use format, with a focus on how we can increase their productivity.

The countdown begins to InfoComm 2019, June 12th thru June 14th in Orlando, FL!

Conference Room Scheduling & Management

Are you keeping a piece of paper outside of the conference room to keep track of scheduling?  

Resource management, especially conference room management, is becoming more and more important.  The need to maximize the resources that are available in a given company has become a top priority throughout organizations.

As many organizations outfit technology within training rooms, conference rooms or huddle spaces, the next logical step is how to reserve the room.  Throughout many organizations today, those rooms are reserved by scheduling the resource through the companies email client - whether Microsoft Outlook, Google, etc.  The missing piece is how that data translates to the room itself.

Just imagine, your team is strategizing on how to penetrate emerging markets outside of your geographic territory with a white board full of great ideas when… your co-worker enters the room insisting that he/she has the conference room that you reserved.  Without any type of room scheduling or management solutions implemented, you and the team leave the room in hopes that you’re able to pick up where you left off. If this sounds familiar - good news! You’re not alone and even better news, there are tools that can assist!

When searching the market for this tool, you will discover that the solutions have changed within the past few years.  Approximately three years ago, many of these tools were solutions that required hours of programming and configuration.  In certain applications those systems are applicable, but in others, the focus is based on three factors: Scalability, Implementation & Ease of Use.  Let’s better understand each of these factors.

Scalability:

In business today, scalability is critical.  No matter how many rooms are formal boardrooms vs. huddle spaces, seats to a room, or geographic boundaries - technology provides organizations the ability for each room to look uniform, be managed by your current email client and provide the room-user with the same experience and behaviors whether your employees find themselves in Chicago today and Los Angeles tomorrow.

Implementation:

Gone are the days of installing a hardware solution and finding that your organization does not go live with the solution for another two weeks due to the backend coordination, programming and configuration and adoption of the software.  The market offers many solutions, such as Zoom Rooms, which allows users to utilize any type of device like an iPad or Android Tablet installed outside of a room, and through a simple, standardized user interface, it is up and running within a few hours.

Ease of Use:

The million dollar question now becomes - how easy are these solutions to use?  In today’s world, many of these solutions require the room-user to be technical - which inevitably has the room-user reaching out to the IT department to schedule room resources.  As with many of the solutions on the market today, Zoom Rooms are able to be reserved from the calendar within an organization's email client or through the front of the scheduling panel itself.  Additionally, with a bank of rooms lining the hallway of an organization, a user is able to understand which rooms are available just by looking at the tablet mounted outside of the room. The bottom quarter of the room scheduling solution will be lit green for available and red for occupied.  The benefit here is for room-users to conduct ad hoc meetings without having to schedule these resources from their desk.

Gone are the days of the piece of paper that is printed at 6 am only be outdated by 8 am.  Let Newgentek demonstrate the scalability, implementation and ease of use that room scheduling solutions offer!

Support Services - It means no worries!

Expectations are reality and it’s reality for employees to expect technology to function.  The million-dollar question is - what is the cost of lost productivity when facilities lose a room asset for hours or even days?

Maintenance Agreements that include Preventative Maintenance is key!  It allows full service systems integrators to complete a thorough check up of your audio-visual system and components during multiple opportunities on an annual basis.  The ability for integrators to identify potential mishaps with technology prior to an important meeting will ultimately save time and money.

Whether your organization specializes in finance, law, medical, pharmaceuticals or any type of business for that matter, proactive support services allows your organization to focus on your initiatives while we provide ‘Hakuna Matata’.  Wait, what is Hakuna Matata...it means no worries!  

As a strategic partner in your business, audio-visual integrators focus on your shared success by ensuring clients realize maximum efficiencies and productivity while experiencing minimal downtime.  Let’s expand on the potential mishaps that can occur during the lifecycle of technology:

Unplanned Downtime:

One specific benefit of having Maintenance Agreements in place is the ability to improve equipment life and avoid unplanned downtime.  Similar to your annual physical at the doctor, this is scheduled ahead of time in an effort to uncover challenges. Audio visual strategic partners will spend several hours every couple months running the technology through its paces.  When we find situations that could interrupt business and potentially cause downtime - those fixes would be scheduled and completed ahead of the next big meeting.

Unreliable System Costs:

Imagine this - you walk into a huddle room to conduct a videoconference with your largest client to finalize a project, and the videoconference system is down and unable to be restored.  Putting the emotional frustration aside, you’ve now potentially lost a client or a particular opportunity due to technology mishaps - this is detrimental. This is an immeasurable risk that you cannot afford to take if your goal is to maximize your company’s revenue and make good impressions on current or prospective clients.  Another catch during the Preventative Maintenance appointment!

Software Concerns:

With much of America dealing with and understanding how security concerns affect their technology, the potential exists for bugs to be introduced within the audio-visual technology.  With Maintenance Agreements in place with various Service Level Agreements (SLA’s), the ability for audio visual integrators to involve themselves within minutes remotely or onsite within hours, could make all the difference in achieving your organization’s IT security initiatives.  Don’t let bugs sneak in through the cracks!

Not only can a Maintenance Agreement keep your integrated systems optimized and performing, but it can also save you money.  Expensive components, hourly rates, and emergency services vs. proactive maintenance can prove to be a costly adventure.

Let Newgentek show you how we can provide Hakuna Matata, so your organization can focus on your corporate initiatives!

What is a Huddle Space?

Wainhouse Research estimates there are currently 30 to 50 million Huddle Spaces in offices worldwide.  With research showing the number of Huddle Spaces on the rise, you may be wondering, what is a Huddle Space exactly?  Here’s our take on Huddle Spaces…

As recent as 2010, the options for meeting rooms ranged from a 16-person conference room to an executive office, but nothing in between.  Fast forward eight years and depending on who you ask, a Huddle Space could be as formal as a small four- to six-person conference room or a gathering location at a popular coffee house.  What has become the common denominator for this type of space is the ability for an informal, impromptu collaboration where one employee can say to another ‘come take a look at this diagram’ or ‘let’s review this spreadsheet’.

So, next you may find yourself asking, what does a Huddle Space need to provide?  The main three requirements for Huddle Space are:

1.   Flexibility – organizations strive for rooms to be Activity Based Workspaces or ABW.  This allows teams to gather around a circular table on Wednesday and then convert that to a standing environment on Thursday without including facility management.

2.   Collaboration – as desktop computers became laptops and as laptops now become tablets, the trend has moved to ‘smaller is better’.  Which is a key component, but how do we share content? With 95% of Americans owning at least one smart device, the ability to transmit data and audio from users’ tablets, laptops or smartphones to a collaboration device continues to drive the use for technology.

3.   Simplicity – over 20% of meetings start more than 15 minutes late due to technology issues.  Time costs money…various Fortune 50 organizations estimate the cost of poorly managed meetings cost over $75 Million Dollars per year.  Room users strive to enter a room and have their content loaded on the screen upon their arrival. It must be simple!

Organizations seem to be moving away from larger conference rooms in favor of Huddle Spaces from a real estate standpoint.  For example, where 500 square feet used to occupy two large conference rooms, that same square footage can now occupy five Huddle Spaces.  This allows for more efficient use of your organization’s real estate, making the Huddle Spaces more than twice as productive than your traditional large conference room.

We’ve now discussed how simple, flexible, and collaborative Huddle Spaces can be – the final question is what do these spaces cost.  Great news here as well! Huddle Spaces save money. They are much less expensive and less intrusive to outfit than large conference rooms.

With Huddle Spaces on the rise through corporate and enterprise organizations, let Newgentek show you how easy it is to transfer small, unused spaces into productivity zones!