It was a very special day at IBV, when our 3 Surface Hubs arrived about 3 weeks ago. As a software company you do not receive two palettes with big boxes every day.
We unboxed the devices immediately and our internal support integrated the Hubs into our company network within a few hours. For the preparation, the Microsoft virtual academy was a big help. See the link at the end.
The First Meeting
Coincidentally, the first meeting on this day was a company meeting. Our colleagues working at the Berlin office and from home, were connected via Skype for Business and could follow the meeting easily.
A new meeting culture arises
In our 4 story building, which was originally a hotel, we have distributed the Surface Hubs on 3 floors. With this setting we can simulate how it is to collaborate from different locations. The already known input possibilities (inking, touch and speech) on the Surface Pro or the Surface Book can easily be adopted to the Hub. The usage of the Hub and the Apps is very intuitive. Most of our employees have been joyfully using the big touchscreen and integrated them into their meetings since the first day. You can find some impressions on YouTube.
The big change is that we stand much more during the meetings and collaborate directly on the device. The pre-installed Apps like the whiteboard, Skype for Business or Office 365 already provide some good features for collaboration. But there is a big backlog demand regarding good apps that are optimized for the Hub.
After 3 weeks with the Hubs, the feedback is very positive and we are curious to see how the usage of the Surface Hubs for meetings will be enhanced with the new apps and the universal Windows 10 update.
In the upcoming blog series, we are going to present you how we have changed our meeting culture with the Surface Hub and how the different departments started to use the Hubs in their own ways. Coming up next:
- marketing meeting – developing a new website
- executive board meeting – facts and figures
- sales meeting – PowerBI Rocks
- development sprint meeting
- project management on the Surface Hub
Links:
Surface Hub Virtual Academy: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/microsoft-surface-hub-for-it-pros-16386).
Surface Hub App Development: http://ibv-software.com/en/products/surface-hub-app/