With the Covid-19 outbreak drastically limiting face-to-face interaction, video conferencing is all the rage for people working from home.
Just look at how one video conferencing app saw its number of users jump to 200 million in March, from a mere 10 million in December last year.
But how do you make working from home as efficient as working from the office?
In the office, some face-to-face meetings could last hours. Without the proper set-up, video conferencing would take even more time while accomplishing less, owing to technical issues such as noise or lag.
Imagine quick-sharing a heavier on-going project, such as a 3D model, and having everyone from home working on it at the same time.
To address this, managers are increasingly seeing the importance of conference panels, which anchor such meetings.
The latest release for such devices is the Huawei IdeaHub - the top-of-the-line digital whiteboard/smart screen system that captures the little things that give a face-to-face meeting its value.
The aim is to "digitalise" an enterprise with an interactive device for work-sharing that doubles as an online meeting place for professional conferences.
Making mobile meetings as efficient as face-to-face ones
With artificial intelligence (AI), the Huawei IdeaHub presentation-size smart screen can do more than other conference panels when used for two-way video conferencing, as an intelligent electronic whiteboard as well as for mobile multi-screen collaboration.
For video conferencing, the IdeaHub comes with a built-in system of cameras, microphones and speakers.
Its 12-linear microphone arrays set-up allows noise cancelling, where it literally captures only the audio within a determined virtual space and removes the sound from outside.
Auto-framing will prompt the camera to zoom in or out based on the size of the crowd, for optimum view.
This system is also coupled with intelligent voice-tracking to zoom in to the person who is talking.
Multi-screen collaboration can be utilised during video conferencing, as well as during face-to-face meetings in the office.
The big-screen IdeaHub also has multi-party projection capability to display information from multiple parties in split-screen, which helps with purposes of information comparison, among others.
The Huawei IdeaHub allows screen-sharing and screen-mirroring by either scanning the generated QR code, or by scanning IdeaHub's built-in near-field communication (NFC) chip with a mobile device.
With the two-way interaction, it is also possible to reverse-control a presentation in IdeaHub via a mobile device.
Further, a user can project a video call from a mobile phone on IdeaHub via screen-sharing as well, to fully utilise the big screen size of 65 or 85 inches.
As a digital interactive whiteboard, Huawei boasts intelligent handwriting recognition, which converts writing and shapes into digital text in real time. This allows for immediate digital interaction.
The touch-screen also boasts an ultra-low writing latency of 35 milliseconds - nearly 3,000th of a second - which is 20% to 30% faster than other conference panels out there.
Part of an open, smart mobile office ecosystem
The IdeaHub is part of a wider smart office ecosystem by Huawei, dubbed the Huawei Intelligent Collaboration.
The Intelligent Collaboration seeks to create synergy between devices, and between devices and the cloud networking technology.
This is because a smooth ecosystem requires strong network capabilities as well as seamless connectivity with third-party components for ease of use.
The Intelligent Collaboration boasts the "1 + 3 + X" strategy, to enable widespread use of 4K video and AI in combination with productivity tools, and establishing all-scenario smart offices.
The "1" in Huawei's formula refers to office digitization of enterprises, made possible by cloud and AI, in particular Huawei Cloud Meeting service, its intelligent work platform for enterprises.
"3" refers to three types of smart collaboration devices, namely Huawei's telepresence series for professional conferences; the newly-launched IdeaHub series for team collaboration; and the smart desktop series for personal offices, which will be launched in the future.
Meanwhile, the "X" refers to open cooperation, and the construction of third-party software and hardware connectivity - essentially welcoming other devices into the ecosystem as well.
The IdeaHub offers open software and hardware capabilities - namely the extension for Microsoft Windows module, and the open software development kit (SDK), to allow third parties to use its software and audiovisual capabilities.
The reason businesses now explore mobile set-ups is that working from home is fast becoming a must instead of a choice.
Investing in the right mobile office equipment such as the IdeaHub could help accelerate the adoption.