The conference room has changed.
What was once a table, telephone, projector, and screen has become one of the most technology-dependent spaces in the modern workplace.
Today's meeting rooms need to accommodate employees sitting around the table, colleagues working remotely, clients joining from across the country, wireless presentations, video conferencing, content sharing, and increasingly sophisticated collaboration platforms.
And everyone expects it to work.
For businesses throughout Cleveland and Northeast Ohio, designing a conference room during an office renovation, expansion, relocation, or new construction project presents an important opportunity.
Plan the technology before the room is built.
At Xtend Technologies, we work with businesses, architects, general contractors, electrical contractors, interior designers, and IT professionals to design commercial AV systems around how each organization actually meets and collaborates.
The goal isn't simply to put technology into a conference room.
It's to create a meeting environment where the technology virtually disappears—and people can focus on the conversation.
One of the most common mistakes in commercial AV planning is underestimating everything required to create a professional meeting experience.
A complete conference room may require coordination of:
✔ Commercial displays
✔ Video conferencing
✔ Cameras
✔ Microphones
✔ Loudspeakers
✔ Wireless presentation
✔ Room control
✔ Lighting
✔ Motorized shades
✔ Room scheduling
✔ Network connectivity
✔ Power
✔ Equipment locations
✔ Acoustics
✔ Furniture
All of these components influence one another.
That's why conference room AV should be designed as a complete system rather than a collection of products purchased independently.
Before selecting a display, camera, or microphone, we start with a more important question:
How will your team use this room?
A four-person huddle room has very different requirements than a 20-person executive boardroom.
A corporate training space may need to support multiple room configurations.
An executive conference room may prioritize exceptional aesthetics and invisible technology.
A sales organization may depend heavily on video conferencing and presentations.
During our Discovery & Design Process, we consider:
Only then should equipment selection begin.
Hybrid meetings aren't an occasional requirement anymore.
For many Northeast Ohio businesses, they're simply how meetings happen.
A modern conference room should allow employees to enter, start a meeting, and collaborate without searching for adapters, troubleshooting audio, or spending the first ten minutes trying to connect a laptop.
Depending on the organization, rooms can be designed around platforms such as Microsoft Teams or Zoom, while also accommodating guests who may use other conferencing services.
The objective is consistency.
Employees shouldn't have to relearn the technology every time they move from one conference room to another.
Bigger isn't automatically better.
But a display that's too small can make presentations difficult to read and remote participants difficult to see.
Display selection should consider:
✔ Room dimensions
✔ Furthest viewing distance
✔ Seating arrangement
✔ Type of content being displayed
✔ Videoconferencing requirements
✔ Number of simultaneous content sources
Some rooms may be perfectly served by a single commercial display.
Others benefit from dual displays that allow participants to see remote attendees on one screen while viewing shared content on another.
Large boardrooms, training spaces, corporate lobbies, and multipurpose environments may benefit from large-format displays, projection systems, LCD video walls, or direct-view LED video walls.
The right solution depends upon the room.
Video quality isn't simply about buying a high-resolution camera.
Placement matters.
A poorly positioned camera can make participants appear distant, create awkward viewing angles, or make remote attendees feel disconnected from the conversation.
Professional system design considers:
In larger spaces, intelligent camera systems can provide automatic framing or help focus attention on the person speaking.
The objective is to make remote participants feel as though they're actually part of the meeting.
People will tolerate imperfect video.
They won't tolerate a meeting where they can't understand what's being said.
Audio is arguably the most important component of any professional conference room.
Microphone design must account for:
✔ Room size
✔ Table configuration
✔ Ceiling height
✔ Number of participants
✔ Room acoustics
✔ HVAC noise
✔ Loudspeaker placement
Depending on the space, microphones may be incorporated into the table, ceiling, or other architectural elements.
Loudspeakers should provide clear, even coverage without drawing unnecessary attention to themselves.
When designed correctly, participants shouldn't be thinking about microphones and speakers.
They should simply hear the conversation.
Even expensive microphones can struggle in a poorly designed room.
Glass walls, hard floors, exposed ceilings, large conference tables, and other reflective surfaces can create excessive reverberation.
That makes speech harder to understand for people in the room—and even more difficult for remote participants.
Acoustic planning may include:
✔ Acoustic wall treatments
✔ Ceiling treatments
✔ Strategic material selection
✔ Proper microphone selection
✔ Digital signal processing
✔ Sound isolation considerations
Architects and interior designers can play an important role here.
Addressing acoustics during design provides far more elegant options than trying to correct a problematic room after construction is complete.
Lighting has an enormous impact on videoconferencing.
A conference room may look beautiful in person while producing poor video because participants are heavily backlit, faces are under-illuminated, or fixtures create uncomfortable glare.
Professional lighting design can create an environment that works equally well for:
Lighting control can make the experience even easier.
Instead of adjusting individual switches, users can select scenes such as:
Meeting
Video Conference
Presentation
Training
Off
The room automatically adjusts to the appropriate lighting environment.
Conference rooms with large exterior windows can present another challenge: sunlight.
Depending upon the time of day, direct sunlight can create glare on displays, dramatically change camera exposure, or make portions of the room uncomfortable.
Motorized shades allow the room to adapt.
When integrated with room control, shades can lower automatically when a presentation begins or when direct sunlight becomes problematic.
This is another reason AV, lighting, and shading should be coordinated during the design process rather than treated as unrelated systems.
Few things interrupt a meeting faster than:
"Does anyone have the right adapter?"
Modern conference rooms can allow employees and guests to share content wirelessly from laptops and mobile devices.
But simplicity matters.
A professionally designed system should make it immediately obvious how to:
✔ Start a meeting
✔ Share content
✔ Adjust volume
✔ Control the display
✔ End the meeting
The best user interface is the one people barely need to think about.
As meeting rooms become more sophisticated, control becomes increasingly important.
Users shouldn't need separate remotes for:
A professionally programmed control interface can consolidate those functions into a simple touchscreen or other intuitive interface.
One touch can prepare the entire room for a presentation or videoconference.
At the end of the meeting, another touch can shut everything down.
Sophisticated technology should create less complexity—not more.
Modern AV systems increasingly rely on the organization's network.
Video conferencing, wireless presentation, room scheduling, remote management, streaming, and AV-over-IP technologies can all depend upon network infrastructure.
That means the AV integrator and IT team should communicate early.
Planning may involve:
✔ Network drops
✔ VLAN requirements
✔ Bandwidth
✔ PoE devices
✔ Wireless coverage
✔ Security requirements
✔ Remote system management
✔ AV-over-IP infrastructure
Waiting until installation to address these requirements can create unnecessary delays and compromises.
This sounds simple, but it causes problems on commercial projects all the time.
Technology requires space.
Depending upon the system, equipment may need to live in:
That equipment may also require ventilation, electrical power, network connectivity, service access, and future expansion capacity.
If no one discusses those requirements until construction is nearly finished, the technology often gets squeezed into whatever space remains.
Proper planning prevents that.
Conference room AV systems can require power and connectivity at:
✔ Displays
✔ Conference tables
✔ Cameras
✔ Touchscreens
✔ Speakers
✔ Microphones
✔ Equipment racks
✔ Room schedulers
✔ Wireless access points
Floor boxes may need to be coordinated with furniture.
Conduit may need to reach displays.
Blocking may be required for large displays.
Cable pathways may need to cross ceilings or walls.
These details are inexpensive to coordinate during construction.
They're significantly more difficult to correct after the room is finished.
One of the most overlooked parts of conference room technology planning is the furniture.
Where will power come from?
Where will laptop connections be located?
Will microphones be installed in the table?
Where will cables travel?
Does the table require floor boxes?
Where are the table legs and structural supports?
AV design and furniture selection should happen together.
Otherwise, beautifully designed conference tables can arrive only for someone to discover that the technology infrastructure doesn't align with them.
For organizations with multiple conference rooms, room scheduling systems can make finding and reserving meeting spaces significantly easier.
Scheduling panels located outside meeting rooms can provide immediate visibility into:
✔ Room availability
✔ Upcoming meetings
✔ Reservation status
✔ Meeting duration
Depending upon the system and organization, room scheduling can integrate with existing calendar platforms and help businesses better understand how meeting spaces are being utilized.
Businesses with several conference rooms should think beyond individual spaces.
Imagine if every vehicle in your company's parking lot had the accelerator, brake, and steering wheel in different locations.
That's essentially what happens when every meeting room operates differently.
A thoughtful AV standard can establish consistency across:
Displays may differ.
Camera capabilities may differ.
Audio systems may differ.
But the user experience should remain familiar.
That dramatically reduces training requirements and support calls.
If you're building, renovating, relocating, or expanding office space, conference room technology should be discussed during architectural planning.
Not after drywall.
Not after furniture arrives.
And certainly not the week before employees move in.
Early AV planning allows us to coordinate with:
✔ Architects
✔ General contractors
✔ Electrical contractors
✔ Interior designers
✔ Furniture dealers
✔ IT professionals
✔ Business owners and facilities teams
This collaborative approach reduces costly changes while creating cleaner, better-performing spaces.
Every commercial project begins with understanding the organization.
We want to know:
✔ How does your team currently meet?
✔ What isn't working?
✔ Which collaboration platforms do you use?
✔ How many employees use each room?
✔ How frequently do outside clients participate?
✔ What types of presentations are common?
✔ How important is videoconferencing?
✔ What level of simplicity do users expect?
✔ How might your organization change over the next several years?
From there, Xtend Technologies can develop a commercial AV design based upon actual business requirements rather than simply specifying equipment.
Commercial construction moves quickly.
By the time someone realizes AV hasn't been properly planned, electrical work may already be underway, walls may be closing, furniture may be ordered, and budgets may already be committed.
That's why we encourage businesses, architects, general contractors, and commercial interior designers to involve Xtend Technologies during the early design phase.
Whether you're planning:
...early collaboration can help ensure the technology supports both the space and the people using it.
If your organization is planning new conference rooms, renovating existing meeting spaces, relocating offices, or developing a new commercial facility, Xtend Technologies can help establish the AV requirements before construction decisions limit your options.
Our Commercial Discovery & Design Process allows us to collaborate with your leadership team, IT department, architect, general contractor, electrical contractor, interior designer, and other project partners to develop a coordinated technology strategy.
We can help plan:
✔ Conference room AV
✔ Microsoft Teams and Zoom environments
✔ Videoconferencing
✔ Commercial displays
✔ Video walls
✔ Distributed audio and video
✔ Room control
✔ Lighting control
✔ Motorized shades
✔ Networking
✔ Digital signage
✔ Acoustics
✔ Infrastructure
Schedule a Commercial Discovery & Design Consultation with Xtend Technologies before construction begins. Bring us your architectural plans and meeting-room requirements. We'll help your project team develop a coordinated AV strategy before electrical, construction, furniture, and technology decisions limit your options.
Xtend Technologies provides professional commercial AV design, conference room technology, videoconferencing systems, commercial displays, video walls, distributed audio and video, digital signage, room control, networking, lighting control, acoustics, and technology integration for businesses throughout Cleveland and Northeast Ohio.
We collaborate with business owners, corporate leadership teams, facilities managers, IT departments, architects, general contractors, electrical contractors, commercial interior designers, and other project professionals to design technology around the needs of each organization.
Our commercial service footprint includes Cleveland, Independence, Brecksville, Broadview Heights, Beachwood, Solon, Westlake, Rocky River, Strongsville, Hudson, Twinsburg, Macedonia, Richfield, Medina, Akron, and surrounding Northeast Ohio communities.
Whether you're renovating a single executive boardroom or planning technology for an entirely new corporate facility, Xtend Technologies can help design and integrate commercial AV systems that are reliable, intuitive, scalable, and built around the way your organization works.
