Common problems with meeting room technology

Hiring a meeting room is aimed at taking the hassle out of organising a corporate event.

As a business, you expect the very best when you hire a venue, as you’re paying for a service that should be 100% satisfactory. The venue should make your meeting a successful one and create a good impression for employees and clients.

However, the standard of meeting room technology can make or break your event. There are a number of common problems that can be distracting, making the meeting a bad experience rather than a resounding success.

Tech issues may be more common than you might think, with around 30% of event organisers and delegates worrying about technology failure and 28% feeling concerned about incompatible equipment.

People don’t know whether the problems occur with the software, hardware or networking components. This means pinpointing where the failure has occurred can be difficult for someone who isn’t a tech expert.

Faced with problems during a meeting, 66% of delegates would try to sort it out themselves. The remainder would summon IT or a more knowledgeable colleague, although 15% would simply postpone the meeting.

Businesses have suffered unfortunate consequences of meeting room technology going wrong, with 24% missing a deadline, 12% losing money and 10% missing an opportunity.

Bad connections
When a lot of people simultaneously try to connect to the conference room technology, only to be greeted with a spinning “page loading” symbol, this is infuriating and wastes valuable time. Login difficulties can get your meeting off to a terrible start and leave everyone feeling stressed.

Similarly, when you’re giving a presentation, it’s annoying, to say the least, to find you were disconnected ten minutes earlier, so your audience outside the room missed most of it.

A bad connection can also cause spasmodic and faint audio and pixelated videos. The poor connection can be caused by a weak WiFi signal or an overloaded network. Either way, it can ruin a meeting.

Wrong connections
When you’ve prepared for an important meeting and arrive at the venue to find your laptop dongles aren’t compatible with the A/V equipment in the meeting room, this can spell disaster. You may find you don’t have a connection between your laptop and the projector, or other equipment in the conference room.

You could use multi-device dongles and connectors, but this can over-complicate matters, particularly if you have to work out which connectors to use on which machines. Some conference room equipment has a confusing number of connections and it can be almost impossible to choose the right input.

For faster easier connections, it’s much simpler to use wireless technology – to avoid unnecessary stress for meeting organisers, who might otherwise have to work out complex cable formations.

Echoes and feedback
It’s almost impossible for delegates to stay focused when the speaker is backed by a chorus of echoes of their own voice. Similarly, feedback and background noise, such as crackling when someone speaks, becomes all that the attendees can hear. Sometimes, this can be so bad that it’s necessary to reschedule the meeting or pass on the vital information via an email later.

To avoid problems, a tech expert needs to check the equipment before the meeting starts, to ensure there are no dodgy connections. Alternatively, go for a cable-free environment, so the annoying buzz becomes a thing of the past.

Solving problems
When you book a meeting room with &Meetings, meeting room technology problems will become a thing of the past. We use ClickShare technology – meaning cables are no longer required. Our venues also use a very fast internet connection to avoid any issues.

Start a presentation at the push of a button, whether you’re using a USB-device connected to your laptop PC or MAC, or a user-friendly app for iPad, iPhone, or Android. In addition, ClickShare will automatically display the optimum resolution, without messing up your laptop’s layout.

If all else fails we have a dedicated AV specialist who will be able to help you with any problems.

Avoiding the common problems and making your event hassle-free for everyone, &Meetings is all about providing the ultimate meeting room experience. Give us a call on 0800 073 0499 for information on our affordable meeting rooms for hire.