8 Specific Tele/Presence Room Design Configurations

Top Story - Tele/Presence Room Design Considerations
By Thomas B. Cross
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In this issue, the focus is on "room design." However, room design is just part of an overall plan. The planning, engineering and implementation of a teleconferencing system can be a complex process requiring expertise and experience in some or all of the following areas:
- Audio engineering/acoustical analysis
- Telecommunications and satellite networks
- Devices such as computers, audio graphic, archival and video retrieval, cameras, headsets, speakerphones, monitors, hardware and more
- Video compression techniques and television production
- Designing high-performance or high QoS networks
- Human factors, user training, executive interviewing
- ROI and cost-justification
- Equipment specification and selection process
- Room design and buildout
- Scheduling systems and operational issues - "one touch"
- Support "room attendant" and technical support

We have discussed audio engineering in previous issues and in future issues; we will present ideas on these other topics. Without bias, here are some various rooms and suggestions for your consideration. To begin with or rather, in the beginning a long time ago, I visited (and still do) a large number of video rooms in the U.S. and Europe, interviewed users and room managers, spoke with industry experts and put together one "model" room - below.

The room I designed has a number of features not found in other planning documents, then or now. You should, in any case, look at your own needs, physical limitations and budget to determine what works. One of the key issues to be discussed at greater length in the future is onsite "room attendant(s)" and technical support. While the room below is not drawn to scale, there is a room at the back. It could also be at the front of the room for a room attendant as well as equipment storage, replacement parts of all kinds, cables, network management tools, supplies (paper pads, pencils, etc.) and even a coffee bar. The point is that a tele/presence meeting should be everything and more than any executive meeting and should be treated as such. That is, focus on all aspects of the meeting not just the audio/video network. The next recommendation is to record all meetings. This allows for later retrieval by participants unable to attend and presenters to review how they can improve their "tele-skills."

Next, none of the systems mention an overhead camera. This is ideal for showing documents, broken parts, body parts and others. Again, "focus on the problem, not the person" should be the mantra for all meetings. However, if the person is the focus, then train them for video and have rehearsals. I did a lot of video for a major telecommunications company and when the executives tried to "wing it," they failed. When they wrote a script before the video and rehearsed it then night and morning before, they often did it perfectly with "one take."

I will present more in future newsletters, however, this came out this week from the Chief Scientist from Accenture (click for full article), "Do you have executive telepresence?" Among the many great issues put forth by Mr. Kishore S. Swaminathan is "Videoconferences have a different conversational rhythm." He mentions the need for presenters to "manage the rhythm" which refers to having an understanding of the communications protocols and nuances in telepresence. One last comment is to always have a monitor showing you and your room to yourself. In a F2F-face-to-face meeting, you can always look around and see what you look like, so why not have the same experience in a tele/presence meeting.

Here are just few examples of tele/presence rooms I selected. Remember your needs and YMMV-your-mileage-may-vary, so these are just ideas for consideration.


The first one is from Polycom. I like this room as is shows not just a "sit down" meeting but a person "standing up" and presenting. You may want to have different rooms for these two specific activities since they are the most common but also very different in their design. The next part of this example was the use of "fill lighting" to add in more lighting on the presenter. This is also an example of portable, as needed, AV-audio-visual equipment which can be used and moved inside or out "on location." From my experience, you can install great lighting but like with any television studio, the lighting may need to be increased, decreased or just moved. In fact, this is a good time to recommend you get a tour of your local television studio to see all the equipment they used even for the news and weather as well as field broadcasts.

The next two examples are small tele/presence rooms. The first from Polycom is like the first one above but designed for small groups ideal for branch offices, factory floors, or even temporary and can be used as your "template model" for many installations. Note, see the "dry erase" board on the wall. You will need a video camera aimed and lighted appropriately at it.

Both of the Cisco rooms show a "side monitor" used for additional video sources or as I suggested to show the video image of the room. Both have a "greyed" image to show the "coverage area" of the camera. A good idea is to plan the coverage area desired in order to accommodate all the occupants. Too often the presenter has to move in order to be seen or, more typically, one person arrives late and there is no chair and may have to sit in a corner and may not be seen by distant participants. Images courtesy Cisco TelePresence Fundamentals - click here for book.

The next two are from Polycom. They are good examples of Large Conference and Classroom configurations. I especially like the classroom with the document camera. I would have added a monitor at the back of the room so that the teacher could see themselves and while it is not shown, additional fill-lighting on the teacher.

The last example in this series is from Cisco. I added it because it was the only reference to HVAC-heating, ventilating, air-conditioning. I am always amazed at how much money tele/presence is spent on video systems, network, etc. but forget the "tornado" noise generated by HVAC systems which can disrupt any meeting, video, audio or even a traditional meeting. Also, HVAC personnel rarely have any training on "quiet" air-handling systems, so they are often a hindrance to tele/presence rooms. In addition, there is generally a lot of heat (explained later) by the video and all the computers/people in the meeting. Simply, this means that most tele/presence rooms should have their own temperature, humidity and HVAC systems inside the room and are designed for extreme quiet conditions.

In summary, in 1,000 words I wanted to present an introduction to tele/presence room configurations and ideas on how to design them to suit all kinds of needs.


Polycom uses a portion of the book Basics of Audio and Visual Systems Design: Revised Edition, Chapter 12, "Videoconferencing" written by Scott Sharer, CTS, and Jim Smith, CVE, CTS, copyright 2003, with permission of InfoComm International®. For more go to www.infocomm.org. Here is just one example of excellent design considerations presented in the paper, "In architectural terms it is not uncommon to find a rule-of-thumb applied that allows for up to 15 square feet of floor space per participant in a traditional presentation or meeting room. If there is a front-of-room presenter position at a podium, and if there is some use of in-room technology (projection devices, whiteboards, etc.), then this figure may increase to as much as 20 square feet of floor space per participant, but rarely any more than that."