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Wired In: Kontek Conversations is for leaders who want to get technology right. From universities and healthcare systems to corporate enterprises, each episode delivers practical insights to help you navigate complex projects, avoid costly missteps, and design environments that truly connect people.
Through candid conversations with Kontek executives and industry experts, you’ll discover why projects succeed or fail, how to balance innovation with usability, and how bold ideas become reality. Along the way, we share perspectives on the evolution of AV technology, the impact of employee ownership, and the culture of accountability that drives lasting results.
With almost four decades of expertise, Kontek invites you to think bigger, dream bolder, and imagine what’s possible when technology and vision come together.
Brandon Giella: Hello and welcome
back to another episode of
the Contec Podcast, Wired In.
We have back with us, special guest,
Jeff Howard, the senior UXUI system
programmer talking to us again about
UX and UI, like our last episode.
But further clarification for MTRs, which
are Microsoft Team Rooms and Zoom Rooms.
Now, we have another episode on that
where we talk with Marcus about the
importance of thinking about MTRs,
but we wanna dive deeper into these
details because they are very important.
When you are thinking about designing
a space and all the use cases that
you have for a conference room for
your team, especially if you're a
Microsoft organization or you use
Zoom for your videos, it's extremely
important to think about these things
ahead of time because there's a lot of
technical details you have to get right.
And they're more expensive if you
don't do them right the first time.
So that's what we're
gonna talk about today.
So Jeff, tell us about the, uh,
differences between when you are setting
up a room that's, you know, it's ProAV,
it's gonna be a great room, it's gonna
have great conferencing, but you need,
uh, a, an MTR room specifically and the
differences between those two different
rooms, and then we'll go from there.
Jeff Howard: Yeah, sure thing.
So I think what customers are, are used to
when they think about, uh, Microsoft Teams
room or a Zoom room is smaller spaces.
And then they're larger, more complicated,
you know, conference rooms or boardrooms.
Uh, that's when they
usually think about ProAV.
And I think the transition, uh, for the
industry's move towards mic- supporting
Microsoft Teams rooms and Zoom Rooms is
that those two can be one and the same.
Uh, so if you have a large space
and you're already a Microsoft Teams
house or a Zoom Rooms house, uh,
you can start that conversation very
early in terms of wanting a fully
integrated ProAV system, but also
having it run a Microsoft Teams room.
Uh, a lot of users are comfortable
with the Teams interface or the Zoom
interface and, uh, hybrid meetings
are just the way we do business now.
Brandon Giella: Yep.
Jeff Howard: so if you can start that
conversation early and, uh, really
drill down on what are the users going
to be doing in, in a room, in a system.
And, uh, we are all kinds of sclu-
solutions, you know, very scalable
solutions for, uh, your small
huddle spaces all the way up to
your, to your large boardrooms.
Brandon Giella: Okay.
So when you're thinking about designing
a space and you're programming it and
thinking about how all the hardware
and software connects and the cabling
and so on, there are, you know, certain
PCs that you can use that would do a
great job, but then there's the, okay,
I need, I'm actually a Microsoft team,
that's a different PC or a different
way that you have to program that.
Like talk to me about
those kind of differences.
Jeff Howard: Yeah, absolutely.
So, um, MTR or Microsoft Teams Rooms,
like you said, are purpose-built PCs,
uh, that can, uh, ingest, uh, content
to be shared in a Teams meeting.
Um, they are, uh, completely integrated,
uh, into the Teams platform, uh,
which comes with all the bells and
whistles that Microsoft has in terms
of, uh, room scheduling, in terms of
AI annotation and, and note-taking.
Um, so it really, uh, gives you
the full power of the Microsoft
platform in, in a purpose-built MTR
PC uh, and the same thing with Zoom.
You know, if you're a, a Zoom Rooms,
uh, house and you can record or have
AI note-taking on that platform,
um, then the purpose-built Zoom
Rooms PC is gonna do the same thing.
And that's a really powerful tool that
you have rather than just a, a, a PC
running Zoom software or Teams software.
Uh, you're not gonna get that fully
integrated user experience, uh, if
you're just using something like that,
which is why when we design, um, Pro AV
systems with, uh, MTR or Zoom Rooms in
mind, um, that is always gonna be the
heart and soul of the user experience.
Brandon Giella: Talk to me about
like the cost differential between
doing, we'll call it a regular
room and then doing an MTR.
And then something you, you mentioned
before we were recording was that,
uh, if you don't do the MTR first,
but then you realize you need an
MTR, that gets way more expensive.
Like te- tell me a little of the nuts and
bolts of the budget thinking through that.
Jeff Howard: Yeah, absolutely.
I think, um, uh, before we really had this
full-scale integration, um, if you needed
to do conferencing, uh, in sort of an old
school ProAV system, uh, there was just a
lot of hardware required for transporting
camera video and, uh, microphone
audio and, and, uh, audio DSP mixing.
Um, a lot of bells and whistles,
a lot of equipment required to
really make that, uh, conferencing
experience, uh, a positive one.
And, um, what we see now with the
Teams and Zoom platforms is that, um,
those are incredibly powerful platforms
that really handle a lot of the nuts
and bolts of it, uh, internally.
So, um, we can really slim down, um,
what the other equipment and, uh,
the other program required, uh, to
make that a positive user experience.
Um, and that's what I was talking about
earlier in terms of, um, clients who
are more used to these larger rooms just
being these massive, uh, uh, price tags
where you have to have a lot of, uh,
video transport equipment, you have to
have a lot of microphones, you have to
have a lot of these other peripherals,
uh, to make it into a usable space.
And with MTR and Zoom, we
can really slim down that.
We, it can only be a few pieces
of equipment, um, a little bit of
configuration, and because the, uh,
manufacturers in, um, the AV industry
have gotten so good about, um, integrating
with Zoom and MTR, it can be a very
light touch, not a lot of equipment,
um, not a lot of configuration.
And, um, if we know that at the beginning
of a project or the beginning of a
design, uh, you can really slim down
and, and create a fully functional
space, um, without a lot of equipment.
Brandon Giella: Have you done it the
other way where you come in and it,
you know, it's a, it's a f- fully
fledged AV, beautiful conference room,
everything's great, and they're like,
"We wanna make this an MTR specifically."
And you're like, "Oh, okay.
Jeff Howard: that's,
Brandon Giella: is that like?
" Wow.
Jeff Howard: you will typically have an
existing system that has, uh, you know,
a, a control process and a touch panel
from, uh, from another manufacturer and,
uh, you either have to try to integrate,
uh, MTR or Zoom controls into that space.
Um, sometimes it's not even possible
if it's an older system and the
equipment is not compatible.
Um, so it ends up being, uh, a
redesign from a, from a UI and
UX standpoint, but also sometimes
from a, from a hardware standpoint.
Um,
a lot of times clients won't
wanna go through the trouble.
They'll say, "Oh, well, well, we have
a PC in here, or users will bring their
laptop in here, and they can just launch
Teams or launch Zoom, uh, from their PC
or laptop, and that'll get the job done."
And, and it will.
It is just not a, a, a positive user
experience because, um, with an MTR
deployment or a Zoom Rooms deployment,
you have that, that control surface
that's purpose built for that, and
it's a one button to join a meeting.
The meeting is already there
on the screen, you walk in, you
hit one button and off you go.
If you're asking users to come in and
log into a PC or connect their laptop
and then launch the software and then
find the meeting, and it, it, it just
becomes really cumbersome you know, time
is money and pe- if people have to spend,
you know, five, maybe more minutes to
go into a room and get everything set up
and, and get the camera right, and they're
just not gonna wanna use the space.
And then it becomes just a wasted system,
uh, it's a, it's a negative experience,
and people are just gonna have those
meetings at their desks with their
laptops, and that's really not gonna be
utilizing, um, the, the full power of a,
of a fully integrated MTR or Zoom system.
Brandon Giella: That makes sense.
And I, and I can imagine the,
the AI note taking, if you will,
which I know is super popular.
Everybody does that now because you can
create all kinds of docs after the fact.
Um, it, th- that doesn't work as well
if you were to have your PC come in,
you kinda connect it or do whatever,
and it's not a purpose-built MTR.
Is that, is that fair?
Jeff Howard: Yeah, I think that's right.
And I think the value add of having,
um, multiple people in the space with a,
uh, professional level microphone and,
and speaker system, um, you're gonna
get that clarity of speech that, and the
AI speech recognition and note-taking
is just gonna be that much better.
And, um, you know, we've seen some really
cool products over the last few years
in terms of, um, wireless microphones
and, um, tealing mic arrays or table
mic arrays where they are, um, designed
to, uh, pick up multiple speakers in
different zones and really provide that
clean audio that you're just not gonna
get with, you know, a laptop microphone.
Um, so the more that we can sort of
increase the value of these platforms
and just create a positive user
experience, a room that people wanna
use, um, with not a lot of extra bells
and whistles, um, that's really the
goal when we're integrating, uh, with
Teams rooms or with, uh, Zoom Rooms.
Brandon Giella: I like that.
Okay.
That's very helpful.
Uh, what, is there any kind of, um,
recommendations you would make if somebody
is like, "Hey, I'm thinking I need to
build a nice space and I know I'm gonna
use Microsoft and we're a Microsoft shop.
I just know that.
" Um, is there anything that they need
to think about like the size of the
space that matters or, um, you know,
any kind of planning, forecasting,
budgeting that's gonna, that's kinda
impacts that decision for them?
Jeff Howard: Yeah, absolutely.
I think right off the jump, you're
gonna be wondering about, um, the
physical size of a space and, and audio.
How are, people gonna
be sitting in the space?
And you need, you know, like I said,
you need, uh, microphones to cover
all of the speakers and, um, you
also need to worry about, um, how
people are gonna be sharing content.
think, uh, one of the biggest, uh,
questions we have for clients is in
a, in a large space is how are people
gonna be sharing content in a meeting?
And, you know, a lot of clients don't
want just loose HDMI cables on tables.
They don't want a wall plate or a floor
box that people have to connect to.
So in terms of sharing, you can share
wirelessly through a number of devices
that are out there on the market today,
or you can, if your users are more
comfortable with this, they can bring
in their own laptops and join the Teams
meeting or the Zoom meeting, um, and
just share from their laptop, um, for
content purposes, but still have those,
uh, professional level microphones and
cameras to create, um, sort of a more,
uh, positive, uh, meeting experience.
Um, so those are the type of questions you
would really wanna ask at the beginning of
a project in terms of scaling up, um, from
like a huddle space or a small conference
room, um, is the logistics of, um, getting
audio and content into these meetings and
what their users are comfortable with.
Brandon Giella: What do you tell, or
is there any advice, wisdom, benefit
of being a superior organization
and using Google Workspace like me?
Or is that ⦠What, what
do we, what do we do?
Do we get any benefit of this?
Do we have a special
room that we can build?
Jeff Howard: Unfortunately, no.
I think,
Brandon Giella: Oh, man.
All right.
Jeff Howard: this is where the AV
industry needs to catch up because,
uh, after COVID, you know, Zoom became
so popular that that was kind of
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Jeff Howard: the, the leading edge
of where technology was going.
And, um, a lot of the AV manufacturers
were, were very quick to bring some
products to the market that integrated
with Zoom, and then as Microsoft sort
of c- caught up and started integrating
the full weight of their, uh, various
platforms, um, they've kind of been
running neck and neck since then.
And Google hasn't had, uh, the level
of exposure, uh, to the AV industry.
But, um,
Brandon Giella: It's a shame.
Jeff Howard: we, we, uh, we have some good
partnerships with some, uh, developers
at, at, uh, some of the AV manufacturers.
So next time we meet with
them, I'll bring them up.
I'll be like, "Hey, guys, we've had some,
uh, had some Google, uh, clients come up
and, and they wanna get in on this party.
They want full integration.
What can you do for me?
Brandon Giella: I'm sure that's,
that's not the, the kind of folks
that you typically work with.
Those are, like, design shops and
agencies or whatever, but, um, does it
matter whether you have a PC or an Apple?
Is that something that you think about
or, or, uh, you know, any kind of, like,
OS operations just for people in the
room, you know, because I know a lot
of people have mixtures, especially,
like, if you're on a, uh, you have
some creative team members or, or, you
know, folks that come, maybe like head
of marketing or something that needs
to be in these rooms, they typically
would have, like, a, you know, kind of
an Apple product or anything like that.
Jeff Howard: 100%.
I think, uh, along with, uh, what
platform are you using, I think the, um,
Windows or, uh, Mac conversation needs
to happen early in, in the project.
Um, so, uh, Apple Macs are
notorious for having issues
with, uh, recording and capture.
Um, they
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Jeff Howard: uh, a special flag
on their, on their video output.
I won't get too technical
on it, but basically, it, it
makes it difficult to record.
And, um, where we come in is that when
we design a system saying, "Hey, users
are gonna be bringing in, in Mac laptops
or, um, you know, we're gonna run this
Zoom Rooms instance off of a Mac."
Um, we can, um, design and, uh, configure
those systems, uh, to, to work, um,
whereas, you know, in the old days,
you would have these, um, uh, hardware
codecs Uh, Cisco was like a leading
manufacturer of codecs and then people
would try to plug in their, their Mac
laptop and you'd just get a gray screen.
It would, it would actually
kill the video signal and like,
"Why can't I plug this in?
" So we have been down that road before and,
uh, so the, the earlier we know that there
are gonna be Apple Macs in a system, the
better, and we can, we can design around
that and make sure that that content
gets through, uh, to your meetings.
Brandon Giella: Okay, this is helpful.
I wanna zoom out a bit for this, this
last question, but just to think, like,
it seems pretty, I will say, daunting,
to think about all the edge cases that
you might have for a room, because you
just never know how these meetings are
gonna shake out, especially if it's two,
three, four, five years from now, and
you need, you want this room to last,
you wanna do it right the first time.
What, what advice would you give to
listeners who are dreaming about this
space, and they don't know all the edge
cases that will come up and, and the
exact needs that they might have, but,
again, wanna do it right the first time.
What, do you guys have, like, a process to
kinda surface these kind of questions up
front, or how, how do you, how do you help
them think through these things in detail?
Jeff Howard: Absolutely.
So I think the, um, the way
that we design for a solution
is to think about the roadmap.
Um, we can always build on something
that is designed, um, sort of
with a more slim design, you
know, we can, we can add to it.
And I think that's where, um, the
scalability of what we provide, uh,
really benefits like an MTR deployment
or a Zoom room's deployment is because
a lot of clients wanna sort of have a
couple rooms, like on a smaller scale,
just as a trial, we wanna see, uh,
how it works out, and that's great.
And then they come back and they
say, "Hey, we wanna add, um,
to a system, uh, we wanna add
inputs, we wanna add microphones,
we wanna add two camera shots."
Um, and a few pieces of equipment,
we can a robust system behind the
scenes, uh, with a lot of automation,
uh, a lot of features to add to
it later, um, if they're having a
good experience and saying, "Hey,
we really wanna step our game up.
We really want it to be a premier,
uh, system, a premier space
for our, for our organization."
Um, and like I said, if you have
built sort of this, uh, bedrock of,
uh, usability, um, with just a couple
pieces of equipment, um, to handle
control and automation, to handle
audio, um, to handle, um, video, you
can, it's, it's everything is scalable.
And, you know, if you have the right
pieces on the front end, then upgrading
is not gonna be that much more expensive.
It's just gonna be, um, adding in the
right equipment for the solution and
then having, uh, our team come in with
our expertise and just providing, um,
the engineering behind the scenes to
really give you that, that full scale,
um, premier space that you're after.
Brandon Giella: That's what some people
might call f- like, future proofing.
Like, I, I
Jeff Howard: Exactly.
Brandon Giella: bit of work upfront,
just a little bit will save you a lot
of headaches in the future, though you
can't catch everything, and there's always
gonna be, you know, maybe additional edge
cases that will be kinda funky, but do,
do a little bit more work upfront, and
that'll save you a lot in the future.
Is that a fair summary?
Jeff Howard: Yeah.
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Jeff Howard: just had a, a corporate
client in, uh, in downtown Raleigh
who had, uh, similar requests.
We had done a number of, you know,
small conference rooms, a couple, um,
boardrooms, and then one, uh, sort of
big, uh, event space, and they wanted
to add some extra microphones and some
extra video capability, and it was
just a couple pieces of equipment,
and then, uh, the engineering time to,
to integrate that into their system.
Um, and they've had some
great success there.
They've already had a couple events, and
we've had some good feedback on that.
So if you have, like I said, if you
have that baseline of, of, of control,
of audio processing, getting that
clean audio into meetings, um, then
we can always build off of that.
And, um, I think the, the biggest
thing that contact provides is
the, um, first year, um, warranty.
Uh, we have our support team come out
and they're, they're talking to the
clients, uh, they're doing preventive
maintenance checks and, you know, at
that point when we, when we are in the
space with you and are seeing how it
performs and getting that feedback, um,
that's just an easy conversation to have
of be like, you know, this is, this is
working very well, but we would really
like to add something else to the system.
We get that feedback from the support
team all the time and then we can
start that conversation again, being
familiar with, with how the system
was originally designed and then
what their, what their ne- how their
needs have changed or how their needs
have grown, um, since that project.
Brandon Giella: Cool, that's awesome.
Yeah, I love hearing that.
I love hearing a, a actual use case of
doing this recently, and just plugging
up a couple extra things, because
you did all the front end work of, of
thinking through things really well.
That's great.
Jeff Howard: absolutely.
Brandon Giella: Well,
thanks so much, Jeff.
Appreciate your time today.
There's, uh, some other episodes
for our listeners to check out.
You can go to contact.com
and you'll find other episodes on
the UXUI that we just released, and
then there's another episode on MTRs
and Zoom Rooms, but there's a lot of
other resources there if you guys are
thinking about building a new, uh, you
know, dreaming about a new space, and
just all the details that go into that,
and you guys are there to, to support.
But the number one thing I hear from
everybody on your team is think about
things as early as possible in the process
and bring in a great expert like contact.
So, Jeff, thanks so much, and hopefully
we'll see you again on the show.
Jeff Howard: Absolutely.
Thanks, Brandon.