Between the hustle of NYC and the crisp cold air that took our breath away, Collaboration Week NYC was three full days of learning and mingling with some of the most influential UC and IT professionals in the industry. Much to its namesake, the event was all about collaboration, put on by the authoritative UCC organization, IMCCA, and full of professionals ranging from IT subcontractors, industry vendors to executive level leaders. With that kind of audience and participation demographic it’s safe to say we learned many new things, but we’ve outlined what we feel to have resonated the most.
It’s no longer about having an open work environment sans cubicles and free snacks. Over the past couple of years, the smart office concept has rapidly, but very quietly been gaining traction and it seems that it’s on the brink of becoming a top hitting priority. Companies are designing workplaces now with one thing in the forefront of their minds: people. With this in mind companies are building for the future, rather than reacting to it – which in return reduces friction, excites the people that work there and energizes the people to create great work. Perhaps the most exciting thing to come from smart office space is the ability to use data to continuously improve and stop living off assumption, but hard hitting facts. We’re looking at you, Workspace Insights.
With smart office spaces taking over, and the number of connected devices is expected to increase by over 200% in the next two years, security will continue to be a challenge, if not grow exponentially worrisome itself. AV/IT teams aren’t left out of this equation, in fact with security remaining a top priority, it will be interesting to see how IT teams handle security versus ease of employee use. More connections, means more breaches, malware and exposures risks. Ah, the challenges of a connected world.
At almost every session, data wriggled its way into the conversation somehow. Many companies understand the importance of data, but realize the biggest challenge is getting the data. To our earlier takeaway with data, designing, working and building out a workplace and collaboration environment where employees feel empowered to use the technology, educated on how to improve the issues, overcome existing pain points is a giant, positive step towards a workplace utopia. This session, being right up the wheelhouse of all things Vyopta has us extremely excited. We see a big push towards obtaining analytics and it’s not just for show – it’s to truly make the workplace a better place. Several companies are making a move towards understanding the data at their fingertips, in order to standardize, grow and implement – which has us data nerds, all fired up.
Three days at Collaboration Week NYC felt like a whirlwind. From the informative thought-leader presentations from heavy hitters such as Nemertes’ Irwin Lazar or IMCCA’s very own, David Danto, to the illustrious panel discussions with big enterprises such as Disney, Citi and 21 Century Fox, there’s so much happening in the world of unified communications, and we can’t wait to share it with you.
Stay tuned for more recaps of Collaboration NYC 2019!
Didn’t get a chance to join us in New York? Check out how Collab Week hot topic data, and the lack of having it, is costing enterprises money.