Office Technology: The Ultimate Conference Room Checklist

Whether you host regular in-person meetings with your clients and colleagues, or tend to run meetings with hybrid working attendants, creating a professional conference room setup is vital to the success of your projects.

There’s a lot to consider with conference room design, be it choosing the right furnishings for the room, or ensuring you’ve invested in the right conference room audio video solutions. Your space needs to facilitate clear communication between parties – regardless of whether they’re physically present. Keep reading to discover our ultimate conference room checklist, covering everything from room layout to tech and equipment.

Why Conference Room Solutions Are Important

For midsize businesses and above, a properly equipped conference room is a huge asset that’s well worth the investment. With the right technology, a conference room can be a very versatile space, suited to a wide range of uses, which will both benefit your team internally and help to improve client relationships. Here are just a few of the things you can do with a well-designed conference room:

• Running internal training
• Holding all-hands meetings
• Presenting to clients
• Hosting workshops and courses
• Having company lunches
• Collaborating on group work
• Interviewing candidates
• Recording webinars

Conference Room Layout and Design

When it comes to conference room design, there are several different routes you can go down, depending on the type of event you’re most likely to use the space for. These layouts vary in table shape and size, chair positioning, and perhaps most importantly – the location of any screens, monitors or interactive displays in the room.

Traditional Conference Room

When you hear the term “conference room”, you probably envision a rectangular space with a single, long table running down its centre, chairs on either side, and perhaps a sizeable display at one end. This conventional design has its benefits, especially for corporate businesses often hosting meetings made up of large groups, but it’s not ideal for more creative, intimate meetings.

Theatre Conference Room

Similarly, the theatre-style conference room usually has individual seats laid out in concentric rows, all of which are facing a large screen and audio conference system positioned at the front. Most popular in educational institutions, this setup is primarily used for running internal training, presenting a project to a roomful of people, or even hosting a lecture – but unfortunately it doesn’t lend itself very well to collaborative working.

U-shaped Conference Room

A common choice in contemporary and creative businesses, a u-shaped conference room generally plays host to a round or u-shaped table, with seats congregated in a horse-shoe shape around it. The occupants of those seats are able to look at and speak to each other clearly, and easily see the screen at the far end of the room, without craning their necks to get it in view.

Your Conference Room Checklist

AV Furniture

Choosing the right furniture for your conference room is paramount – and AV furniture is specifically designed to make the best use possible of the space, while facilitating easy access to equipment like screens or conference call systems. In fact, high-quality AV furniture like purpose-built tables and ergonomic chairs even help to protect the other audio visual technology in the room, as it ensures that cables can be connected without the need for makeshift solutions.

Wireless Presentation Capability

Many businesses now take a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) approach when it comes to equipping their staff, and conference rooms need to adapt to facilitate this. Wireless presentation solutions allow team members to present a deck or document directly from a laptop or smart device – either via a dongle or an app-based option. Some advanced conferencing solutions even enable wireless presentation in 4K, making both videos and images are crystal clear.