Huddle Spaces, or, Is it Football Season Already?

Huddle Spaces -  Is it football season already?

Build more Huddle Spaces! Or, at least build the rooms you’ve already been building, and call them Huddle Spaces because it’s time once again to add to the plethora of football terminology in AV. Since no one will know what you’re talking about anymore if you mention Collaboration, Ad-Hoc, or Study Rooms, make a rushing attempt to relabel those drawings before you’re sacked.

In an unnecessary effort to help perpetuate this trend, here are some suggestions for other football-themed spaces we can build.

Dead zone

Meeting rooms used by upper management for endless powerpoints, where your tortured soul leaves your body by about hour four, that’s if your bladder lasts for the duration.

End zone

Rooms where excessive celebration at the end of a long AV-challenged meeting will cost you a penalty.

Red zone

Meeting spaces within twenty yards of the executive suite, where AV failure rates increase exponentially.

Bench

                Meeting room with inferior AV, reserved for the less important, or underfunded projects.

Neutral Zone

Imaginary meeting space with excellent AV, where all ideas are considered solely on their merits, and all input is valued equally.

Of course, football terms can also be names of important features found in meeting spaces:

Goal line

Exit door of a Red Zone room farthest from the executive suite

Hash marks

                When the previous meeting’s participants didn’t clean the table after the breakfast buffet

Line of Scrimmage

Line on the meeting room table past which the single available HDMI cable will not reach, also the imaginary line dividing participants across which it is rude to reach for the donut box

Sideline

Cheap seats around the outside walls of an undersized huddle space, located out of camera shot, for those not important enough to claim a chair at the table

Finally, football terms can be applied to many procedural issues during the meeting, regardless of the complexity of the tech:

False start

Restarting the meeting because of a videoconferencing failure. Penalty involves overtime.

Illegal procedure

                Any attempt to collaborate without the use of Powerpoint.

Turnover

                What will be gone from the pastry tray by the time you get to it.

Two-minute warning

What you give tech support when you call, a measure of onsite response and issue resolution time, beyond which jobs are lost.

Punt

Postponing the meeting, because screen-share failed.

Rush

Skipping over your last 20 bullet points to wrap up before the videoconference times out.

Running out the clock

Going over your last 20 bullet points in excruciating detail because the videoconference hasn’t timed out yet.

Touchdown

Successful completion of a meeting with fully functional AV. Rare but desired outcome in any game, er, meeting.

Voice Control of Classroom AV - a test project

Voice control in a classroom AV system

Is it wise to use voice control in a classroom with consumer devices like smart speakers? They are certainly in widespread use in home environments. More than 100 million Amazon Echo devices have been sold as of early 2019. 

At Utah State University, we are fortunate to have a supportive and technically savvy administration, and a teaching and learning technology program that allows us to evaluate and test technology and teaching methods in a lab environment. Consumer electronics and BYOD are often a focus of our efforts, since consumer electronics and personal devices are always at the top of user requests for accommodation. 

In the fall of 2016, we decided to develop a test project to see if voice control was possible and if it provided an improvement to the user experience.

There were challenges to make this work. Smart speakers such as Amazon’s Alexa control smart devices, typically consumer devices controlled over wifi and discoverable on a local network. We would need IP control of every classroom device, and a skill written for every item to be controlled. On our campus enterprise network, device discovery would not be allowed, so we would need to manually register each device with its skill. Newer connected devices have network control API’s, but we use many devices of different brands and age. Some are controllable via IP, some are not. We would need interfaces for devices controlled by RS-232, infrared, or even relays.

We already have a system in place campus wide that is built for control of any device regardless of it’s age and available control interfaces, it is designed to do this, and does it well. In our case, this is Crestron. We program in house, and have systems in nearly every classroom. The Crestron processor can receive character strings via a network connection and can be programmed to parse or compare these strings to run commands, controlling any classroom device connected to the system

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For voice control, Amazon’s Alexa was our choice because of the easily accessible API. We wrote an Alexa skill to receive voice commands and send ASCII strings to the Crestron processor, mirroring the existing touchpanel controls. This worked well as a test project in our lab, but our campus disability resource office heard about the project, and requested it for a visually impaired instructor to use in a classroom. It seems we had accidently created an accessible classroom system. The faculty member used it for two semesters in two different rooms, powering on the room display, selecting the presentation source, adjusting room volume, all controls available on the room touchpanel and made available also by voice command. 

Fascinating and even somewhat useful in practice, but difficult to install in more than just one or two locations. Wide deployment would require additional custom programming for each room, and multiple Echo devices running multiple instances of the skill to talk to each processor. To scale and deploy as part of a standard program and equipment package, we rewrote the skill to utilize our instance of Crestron Fusion, a central management system capable of exchanging control data with the Crestron processors. This platform provides a central access point to address any system, and provides a way to quickly deploy voice control when needed. Moving the devices to different locations accommodating class schedule changes by semester is possible. 

Another limitation is the lack of feedback from the room devices. The Alexa skill was inherently one-way, sending commands when requested but unable to track current status or changes. Our rewrite of the skill tracks status and gives real time feedback.

On the voice side, managing multiple Echo devices became easier with the advent of Alexa for Business. We can configure multiple devices all at once, activate our custom skill, assign each device to a room and manage them with a single account. 

Now our pilot project is a true pilot, ten rooms were installed in early March during spring break, and we are looking forward to thorough testing by the users this Semester.

So, is it wise to use voice control in a classroom? We hope to find out soon.

AV as a Service For Higher Ed

The Latest Buzzphrase

We’ve all now heard of AV as a Service – it’s the latest buzzphrase being kicked around social media and discussed in team meetings in our small conference rooms – sorry, “Huddle Spaces”.  AVaaS shows promise in corporate markets, and potentially allows integrators to expand their business and remain relevant in an increasingly Amazon’d world of one-stop shopping.

What is it and Why Would I Want it?

The potential of an improved User Experience is attractive. Standards, predictable quality, AV in the cloud support and remote management, smaller in house dedicated staff, a customized, personalized and contractual level of support. One monthly fee provides a total solution. 

AVaaS can allow for better cost control, with predictable and scheduled costs, guaranteed availability and support, and scheduled upgrades before hardware becomes unreliable and obsolete. Videoconferencing support with managed networks and scheduling can improve collaboration and communication. A smaller operation could benefit from the shared enterprise level support for these systems and services offered by the integrator or provider.

But What About Higher Ed?

Here’s an issue – Budgets in a State Higher Ed institution often consist of one-time infusions of money to upgrade aging systems or build new rooms. Ongoing funds to pay for a monthly service are difficult to procure. Sometimes a system is upgraded with one-time money, and the old not-quite-dead parts are saved and reused, Frankenstein style, for incremental repairs and upgrades of other rooms. At an AG school such as ours, I can attest these repairs are in the best rural hand-me-down tradition and may occasionally involve liberal applications of baling wire. 

When money becomes available, purchasing rules must be followed. State purchases are lowest bidder, unless a persuasive and documented justification is made and approved. This works well when you’re buying a dongle from Amazon, or a pallet load of black boxes. It may not work so well if you are purchasing a service. My purchasing criteria for AVaaS would certainly include Quality, Fast Response, and Low Cost. As the adage goes, I can choose any two. 

Finally, what happens in the next budget cycle when it’s time to renew the AVaaS contract and budgets must be trimmed by 25%? Time to choose a quarter of my rooms that can function without any AV for the next year or more, or go with drastically reduced support. In our traditional model, budget cuts mean rooms simply operate longer between upgrades.

Wait. We’re already doing AVaaS

It’s easy to throw custard pies at the concept of AVaaS in Higher Ed for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, but a quick look at our operation shows we actually already follow an AVaaS model in our operation. Our AV department is the integrator and service provider, we simply have the advantage of being a non-profit entity. We and our institutional partners provide managed networks, enterprise videoconferencing with central scheduling and remote monitoring and management, high availability systems, standard designs and UI, and equipment purchased by one entity and installed across the institution. Scheduled upgrades keep us current as budgets permit, systems are installed and used by all departments across the institution without additional charge. Sounds a bit like a lease arrangement. 

On the service side, we have a 14/6 helpdesk with onsite support with response 10 minutes or less to every room. We have low cost labor, with those of us who are full time exempt employees working weekends and holiday breaks for one fixed labor cost when the room schedules require it, and part time students working at fast food wages provide on site tier one support.

So AVaaS for Higher Ed, sure. Our own in house private integrator/service entity seems to be how we can implement and afford AV as a Service, and will be the plan at least for now.