Chapter 10

Taking Group Meetings to the Next Level with Zoom Rooms

IN THIS CHAPTER

Understanding immersive-telepresence technology

Covering the basic features of Zoom Rooms

Reviewing hardware, software, and lighting considerations

Meetings & Chat serves a valuable purpose: It allows individuals to hold videoconferencing calls with anyone on the globe with their computers, tablets, and smartphones. Put differently, meeting hosts and participants just install Zoom software on their existing devices and get to work.

But what if an organization’s videoconferencing needs exceed letting people dial in from their own individual devices? That is, a company wants to hold its video meetings with groups of people in the same physical location. Doing so would let remote attendees feel like they’re in the same room as their peers.

For this reason, Zoom offers a popular service that takes Meetings & Chat up several notches: Zoom Rooms.

Revisiting the Early Days of Immersive-Telepresence Technology

It turns out that the idea of fusing high-tech software and hardware together to provide ginned-up conference rooms, corporate meetings, and training sessions isn’t exactly new. In fact, the idea behind contemporary immersive-telepresence technology dates back to the early 1990s.

While you’re unlikely to hear the term around most water coolers, immersive telepresence refers to an integrated set of visual, audio, and network conferencing technologies and services. Together, they deliver a communications experience that resembles real-world ones.

Put it this way: Say that one group of suits was in São Paulo, Brazil while the other was in Montreal, Canada. If both groups were using immersive-telepresence technology, then people in each cohort would feel like they were actually in the same physical room.

How does the magic behind immersive-telepresence technology happen? I asked that very question to Jeff Fillbrandt of Utelogy, a company that builds tools that let people manage their audio-visual setups. The two of us spoke in early April 2020 — via Zoom, of course. Fillbrandt told me that Lifesize, Polycom, and other early immersive-telepresence vendors created this effect by installing three large, high-tech video screens next to each other. At the risk of oversimplifying, those screens and the software behind them created the illusion that people in Room A were sitting across from the people in Room B.

TelePresence by Cisco Systems

Arguably the highest profile product launch in the category took place in October 2006. Cisco announced the release of TelePresence, a suite of products that linked two physically separated rooms in a tighter way than people previously thought possible. Ideally, thanks to TelePresence, two conference rooms would resemble a single, integrated one despite their disparate locations.

To be sure, the idea behind TelePresence made plenty of sense. After all, the web had been around for more than a decade at that point. Generally speaking, new technologies were starting to make the impossible possible or, if you like, flatten the world. Thomas L. Friedman makes that point in spades in his 2005 book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century (Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

Brass tacks: The time was ripe for Cisco Systems and other large technology vendors to take their first-generation immersive-telepresence tools to the next level. Cisco’s execs envisioned the company’s TelePresence in organizations’ boardrooms and classrooms across the globe.

In 2008, Cisco claimed that it had outfitted 2,000 rooms with its wares. Beyond its paid customers, the company used the tool itself and commendably donated dozens of units to philanthropic organizations.

Unfortunately for Cisco, TelePresence never caught on as a mass-market tool. In retrospect, it’s not hard to understand why adoption wasn’t universal or even prevalent. Many executives found its costs exorbitant. The 2009 book Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals (Cisco Press) quotes the starting price back then for a single room at $250,000 plus additional maintenance and installation fees. Needless to say, a company couldn’t just buy purchase TelePresence for a single room. It would have to sign up for at least two of them. Add in costs for bandwidth, switches, and other services, and the price tag could easily exceed seven figures.

Believe it or not, a large firm could spend even more money if it wanted to purchase and deploy best-of-breed immersive-telepresence technologies back then.

Halo by Hewlett-Packard

Many millennials have never heard of Hewlett-Packard (HP). Not that long ago, however, HP was just as influential as Google or Apple is today.

The iconic Silicon Valley technology company first dabbled in high-tech videoconferencing with its launch of Halo Collaboration Studios (HCS) on December 12, 2005. It did not take the world by storm. The company launched its successor to HCS a few years later. On March 18, 2008, Halo Collaboration Center (HCC) purported to “delive[r] an immersive collaboration experience for executives or small groups.” (Read the press release at bit.ly/zoom-hp.) The price tag? Oh, not much. Just a cool $349,000 for a single room.

Perhaps because of its higher price and sagging consumer brand, HP’s Halo remained an also-ran to Cisco Telepresence and others. On July 22, 2009, Justin Scheck and Ben Worthen of The Wall Street Journal reported that, in the first quarter of the year, Cisco sold two-thirds of the 520 telepresence units purchased worldwide. By way of comparison, that number was only 51 percent in 2008, according to estimates from Wainhouse Research. During that time, HP’s share dropped to 10 percent from 11 percent.

The underwhelming results of early immersive-telepresence technology

In theory, installing a state-of-the-art telepresence system of the 2000s would ultimately pay for itself. I’m certain that these vendors’ salespeople included this claim in their standard pitch to their prospects back in the day.

Sure, organizations would have to fork over princely sums, but consider the savings. Telepresence systems weren’t just cool tchotchkes that illustrated a company’s level of tech-savvy. These tools could save them millions of dollars per year. Say goodbye to hundreds of airline tickets, hotel bills, physical conference rooms, food, and other travel- and meeting-related expenses. Telepresence systems practically paid for themselves!

Despite their utility, the immersive-telepresence tools of the aughts remained niche tools. The obvious question is why. Three reasons come to mind, although I suspect that there are others.

First and to state the obvious, few companies outside of the Fortune 500 could afford them. Second and on a related note, the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 thwarted most of the momentum behind their widespread adoption. Organizations needed to slash their internal IT budgets, not expand them. (I should know because I was there. I worked as an enterprise-systems consultant during that time.)

Finally, management at most firms decided that it was more important to connect everyday employees via affordable — if less chic and powerful — desktop videoconferencing tools. That is, ultimately it just didn’t make sense to reserve this collaboration and communication technology exclusively for a company’s top-20 bigwigs in their cordoned-off conference rooms.

THE EARLY DAYS OF IMMERSIVE-TELEPRESENCE TECH

My first, albeit indirect, exposure to immersive-telepresence tech took place in 1998. Back then, I worked at Merck & Co., the pharmaceutical giant based out of rustic Whitehouse Station, New Jersey.

During my Merck tenure, from time to time I mingled with company muckety-mucks. Executives often lunched in a private dining room equipped with a waitstaff and requiring an access card to enter. They also could hold virtual meetings with other Merck executives, government officials, and media members. The setup was pretty advanced, at least for the technologies of the day.

Introducing Zoom Rooms

Here’s the best way to think about Zoom Rooms. As Chapter 3 describes and as more than 300 million people know, Meetings & Chat works exceptionally well for individuals and their personal and employer-issued devices. For group meetings and events, however, it’s often not practical for everyone to huddle around Steve’s laptop or Joni’s iPad, much less Aimee’s smartphone. If you intend to hold group training or brainstorming sessions online in this manner, you most likely won’t be pleased with the result.

For this reason, Zoom Rooms is a popular choice. The product allows organizations to augment their physical conference, huddle, and training rooms with powerful technology that simulates more expensive immersive-telepresence solutions. Put differently, through the combination of software and hardware, Zoom Rooms lets groups of people in the same physical space communicate and collaborate effectively with others who are somewhere else.

Conceptually, Zoom Rooms shares a great deal in common with its ancestors. That is, with Rooms, Zoom has done what vendors such as Polycom, Cisco, and Lifesize did. At a high level, all these companies’ solutions allow their clients to turn their relatively low-tech conference rooms into far more immersive ones.

Features of Zoom Rooms

Generally speaking, people can do the same things in Zoom Rooms that they can in Meetings & Chat, but together in the same room. Highlights here include

• Screen-share a camera: Users are not limited to just sharing their computer’s screen with others. They can also share a second camera — the one in the physical room.
• Pin a video: Individuals can disable the active-speaker view and just focus on one attendee.
• Spotlight a video: The meeting host can disable the active-speaker view so that everyone in theory focuses on a single attendee or speaker.
• Control different aspects of the meeting: Options include recording, stopping the video, managing the participants, and much more.
• Use voice commands: It’s not quite Alexa or Siri yet, but you can say “Hey, Zoom: Start meeting.” As I describe in Chapter 13, expect more voice-initiated options in the future.
• Chat with others in Zoom Room via text: In this way, Zoom Rooms resemble the functionality that I cover in Chapter 5.
• Invite others to your Zoom Room meeting: You can easily let internal and external contacts join the party.
• Schedule meetings in Zoom Rooms: By synchronizing Zoom Rooms with your organization’s calendar system, scheduling is a breeze.

Check out the informative webinar “5 Things You Didn’t Know About Zoom Rooms” at bit.ly/zfd-webinar. (Note that you’ll have to register to view it.)

Visit bit.ly/zmrmfeat to learn more about the specific features of Zoom Rooms and how to deploy them.

Cost and functionality

Say that you’re in the market for a new car. Few people would confuse a 2020 Lamborghini Aventador S with a modest electric car. Sure, both qualify as automobiles, but that’s where the similarities end. The price of the latter is a rounding error in comparison to the price of the former. Few people can drop $400,000 on a premium sportscar.

You can lay the same claim about Zoom Rooms with respect to Cisco TelePresence and other ultra-upscale offerings. Six-figure, immersive-telepresence solutions remain far beyond the budgets of the vast majority of organizations, even in good economic times. Zoom Rooms represents an affordable, powerful, and user-friendly option. It allows individuals and companies to realize many of the benefits of more expensive tools at a fraction of the cost. For example, the Dell Optiplex, HP EliteOne, and other entry-level models start at roughly $1,000.

The types of environments that typically benefit from Zoom Rooms

Today many organizations deploy Zoom Rooms in the following environments:

• Executive conference rooms
• Huddle rooms
• Lounge areas
• Theaters
• Classrooms

Setting up a Zoom Room in your 8-x-8-foot cube at work probably doesn’t make sense. Outside of the office, though, personal Zoom Rooms are becoming increasingly common in home offices and studios.

Setting Up Your Zoom Room

At a high level, a Zoom Room requires two things: hardware and software. While entirely optional, a little lighting does wonders as well.

Software

Someone in your organization will have to purchase a Zoom Room software license, available at $49 per month per room. (For more on pricing, see Chapter 2.) Once you do, download and install the Zoom Rooms app, displayed in Figure 10-1.

FIGURE 10-1: Zoom Room iPad app.

The Zoom Rooms app differs from other Zoom mobile apps. Visit bit.ly/zr-app to download it.

Hardware

I’ll bet that, at some point, you have attended a conference. If so, then you may have noticed that the speaker was wearing a headset or using a microphone. If she looked down from time to time, odds are that she was looking at a confidence monitor. Through a clicker, she was advancing her PowerPoint slides. The audience could see the slides on the projection screen when they looked up from their own devices. And without those speakers, you wouldn’t hear a thing unless you were in the front row.

In this sense, Zoom Rooms works the same way as traditional audio/visual (A/V) systems. It requires a number of different, integrated components in order to function properly. Fortunately, Zoom provides plenty of hardware options.

All-in-one appliances

Zoom’s management has forged partnerships with a number of popular hardware vendors to make all-in-one appliances. These devices make installing and configuring Zoom Rooms far easier than trying to piece together hardware components from different manufacturers.

As of this writing, Zoom’s recommended appliances include:

• Neat Bar by Neat: This device looks like a Sonos Playbar and goes for $2,500. It includes an on-table controller. (See https://neat.no.)
• Poly Studio X Video Bars: Poly’s offering also resembles a Sonos Playbar. It plays nice with Microsoft Teams, BlueJeans, and GoToMeeting. I found the X30 model on Amazon for $1,500 as of this writing. (See amzn.to/2MJ7vdr.) Note that you need to purchase a separate controller to make it work.
• DTEN All-in-One Video Conferencing Device: DTEN’s touchscreen-enabled model looks like a large flat-screen television, but does so much more. I found the 55-inch model available for $4,300 as of this writing. (See amzn.to/37iKFD8.) Because it’s a touchscreen, you don’t need to purchase a controller. Figure 10-2 shows a picture of this model.

In June 2020, the company launched its little brother, the 27-inch DTEN Me.

For more information on suggested appliances for Zoom Rooms, see bit.ly/zm-app.

FIGURE 10-2: 55-inch DTEN All-in-One Video Conferencing Device.

Bundles

Bundles represent a second hardware option. Other vendors make very slick video screens that work seamlessly with the Zoom Rooms software. For example, consider Urben, a maker of interactive, modular, movable, customizable, and affordable hardware enclosures. In effect, they stitch together the devices from Zoom-approved vendors into an all-in-one solution. Figure 10-3 displays a three-screen version of the Urben Immersive Datapresence (ID) product.

Individual components

If appliances and bundles don’t float your boat, then feel free to purchase and configure other third-party hardware to work with Zoom Rooms. For the best experience, you’ll need each of the following components:

• Computer: The device that powers the main visual display.
• Main display: A large monitor that others in the room can view.
• Controller: A device that remotely powers the Zoom Rooms software. Typically, Zoom’s customers use a tablet for this purpose.

  

  FIGURE 10-3: Urben Frame ID for a three-screen, 55-inch Zoom Room setup.

• External camera: This device allows others to view the meeting attendees in the physical room and vice versa.
• Speaker/microphone: This device allows in-person meeting attendees to speak to the remote participants and vice versa.

Zoom Rooms for Touch

Employees who seek an even more interactive experience for their Zoom Rooms are in luck. Zoom Rooms for Touch lets organizations add large touchscreens to their Zoom Rooms. With it, meeting attendees can concurrently touch the Zoom app on a large video display.

See bit.ly/zfd-tch for more information about Zoom Rooms for Touch.

Deployment options

People who want to deploy Zoom Rooms can go in a number of directions:

• Buy the hardware and install it themselves — the DIY option.
• Hire a certified, third-party integrator.
• Use Zoom’s professional services.

But do you have to buy new hardware to make Zoom Rooms sing? As I briefly mention in Chapter 2, not necessarily.

Zoom Conference Room Connectors

Say that your organization has already purchased specific hardware and configured it to work with a competing immersive-telepresence product. Along comes Zoom Rooms. Understandably, your management doesn’t want to underwrite yet another series of expensive hardware purchases.

You might be in luck. That is, your company may be able to link its existing proprietary hardware to a Zoom Room using a gateway product called Zoom Conference Room Connectors. These devices let employees make Zoom video calls using their organization’s existing conference-room hardware. Put differently, employees can to take advantage of Zoom’s intuitive UI and port their existing, on-premises videoconferencing systems to the cloud.

Before junking your company’s existing hardware, talk to an experienced professional about integrating your company’s current monitors, speakers, and other devices with Zoom Rooms.

To find out more about Zoom Connectors, see bit.ly/zfd-connect. For much more about its technical specifications, visit bit.ly/zoom-connector.

As the nearby sidebar on Drew University illustrates, Zoom Rooms allows organizations to meet business needs that Meetings & Chat simply cannot.

UNDER THE HOOD OF CONFERENCE ROOM CONNECTORS

Zoom Conference Room Connectors support third-party calling systems from Cisco, Poly, and others. There’s just one caveat: Those systems rely upon one of the two most popular standards for audio-, video-, and data-transmission interoperability: H.323 and Session Initiation Protocol (SIP).

Both protocols manage the voice, data, and control aspects of calls. They only differ in their approach to achieving these goals. H.323 uses Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). For its part, SIP uses an Internet-based approach. In other words, Connectors allow companies to link Zoom Rooms to their existing endpoints.

In its simplest form, an endpoint is a remote-computing device that communicates with other endpoints on a connected network. Typical examples include laptop and desktop computers, mobile phones, tablets, servers, and even virtual environments.

For more on this subject, see Chapter 1.

HOW DREW UNIVERSITY ROLLED OUT ZOOM ROOMS

Located in the leafy suburb of Madison, NJ, Drew University is home to more than 2,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The university consists of three different schools, including the Drew Theological School (DTS). Historically, DTS has appealed to older students, some of whom were in their 60s, and many of whom held part- or full-time jobs. To this end, DTS held many of its classes remotely. (Researching this book, I interviewed Shawn Spaventa, the school’s Director of Instructional Technology.)

Faculty in Drew’s Doctor of Ministry (DMin) program had been using videoconferencing technology for more than a decade. Back in 2009, it relied upon Breeze, a clunky and expensive tool that Adobe purchased and fused with its Connect offering. After that, the school paid for a Webex subscription for a few years with mixed results.

Moving to Meetings & Chat

Spaventa had heard good things about Zoom. In 2015, he signed Drew and the DMin program up for Meetings & Chat. Students and faculty and loved it. They didn’t need a great deal of training. In fact, Spaventa told me that the number of tech-support tickets dropped from two or three per week under previous videoconferencing programs to two total for an entire semester.

In July 2014, Javier Viera joined Drew as the Vice Provost and Dean of the Drew Theological School (DTS). When it came to technology, Viera and Associate Dean Melanie Johnson-DeBaufre wanted to do more — especially with teleconferencing technology. They were interested in conducting on-campus virtual meetings. Like quite a few universities at the time, DTS had fiddled with hybrid classes: those that professors could concurrently hold in-person and online. Viera envisioned location-independent, synchronous learning via small classes that would appeal to the school’s older students with long commutes and full-time jobs.

As it turned out, Spaventa identified a few prospects for these virtual meetings: two small classrooms at Drew that faculty had rarely used. Because Drew’s faculty had already seen the benefits of Meetings & Chat, Spaventa decided to up the ante with Zoom Rooms.

To review its different configuration options, Drew brought in Captus Systems, a New York-based firm that designs and builds A/V frameworks. Drew and Captus personnel reviewed hardware requirements for setting up the rooms, and Drew launched Zoom Rooms in 2018.

Results and lessons

Zoom Rooms has been an unequivocal success at Drew. Specific highlights include

• Students immediately took to the new Zoom Rooms. They routinely reported that they felt like they were in a physical classroom.
• In the span of a single semester, the primary Zoom Room went from barely being used to professors holding more than five hours of instruction in it per day.
• Tech support for Drew’s Zoom Rooms is minimal. Professors simply walk in, fire up the iPad, and activate the room with a single touch.

Sure, Drew experienced a few bumps along the way, as Spaventa candidly admits. For example, he recommends that organizations considering Zoom Rooms explore the specific functionality that they want to make available to their employees. That discussion will form the organization’s choice of specific hardware, such as which camera, microphone, and video display to select.

Also, remember to consider the physical dimensions of a potential Zoom Room. For example, Spaventa described to me a small conference room at Drew with a wall-mounted 75-inch monitor and large, U-shaped table. That setup seemed fine in theory. In practice, though, building and testing the room yielded slightly different results. Positioning the camera and microphone might require several bites at the apple.

Finally, aim for simplicity, especially at first. “We tried to shoehorn in a lot of things in there that we probably didn’t need,” Spaventa tells me.

Lighting

To be sure, your firm can spend thousands of dollars on hardware. Don’t be surprised, though, if the people who use the new Zoom Room don’t look as good as they would like. After all, the DTEN and its ilk aren’t dedicated lighting units.

In other words, lighting matters. As the nearby sidebar illustrates, it’s wise to equip your Zoom Room with professional lighting.

I’m a fan of Brightline’s cMe2 Huddle Room Light, displayed in Figure 10-4. I mounted it above my DTEN, and it has done wonders for my personal Zoom Room. It’s the difference between night and day, if you’ll excuse the pun.

LIGHTS. CAMERA. ACTION!

You've probably heard this expression before, but far too often people forget the lights part of it.

Inadequate light means that cameras can’t see the action. It’s that simple.

Without getting too technical, a camera sees differently than the human eye does. The latter processes light and its associated color through a narrower spectrum.

Professional lights promote enhanced video imaging in two important ways. First, they automatically direct light where it’s needed. Second, and just as important, they shield light from unwanted areas, such as physical whiteboards or presentation screens.

Lighting professionals are intimately familiar with the term color rendering index. CRI quantifies the ability of a light source to faithfully reveal the colors of different objects in comparison with an ideal or natural light source. The higher the CRI of a light source, the more accurate its color reproduction.

Brass tacks: If you’re going to purchase an immersive-telepresence system, it’s downright silly to ignore professional lighting. After all, you want to look like a professional, not an amateur.

Kathy Katz is the managing partner at Brightline, a maker of energy-efficient lighting fixtures for television broadcast-studio, videoconference, e-learning, and government applications based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

FIGURE 10-4: cMe2 Huddle Room Light.