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.