Since we equipped our main meeting room with a 55” Surface Hub with CollaBoard installed on it (for testing purposes, as we did not release it yet), our meetings completely changed. All of our teams have free access to the meeting room and we got to experience how these new technologies have impacted the way we hold our meetings. IBV’s Svenja Bucher interviewed Tamara Wasser, our Marketing Coordinator, to understand how exactly things have changed.
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Interview with Tamara Wasser (Marketing Coordinator)
Svenja: What was your first impression of the Surface Hub and CollaBoard?
Tamara: I am really thrilled about it. The Surface Hub is a cool device and CollaBoard enables us to work on it together in groups. What I used to see in movies about the future has now become reality for me.
Svenja: How well are you able to use the Surface Hub and CollaBoard?
Tamara: Our Marketing team is located in Munich, Berlin, Milan and here in Zurich. We constantly use CollaBoard on Surface Hub and Skype for Business to hold our meetings. New ideas, completed flyers, selected images and much more can be shown to the team on the Surface Hub through CollaBoard. Decisions can be made immediately. We save a lot of time with this new kind of collaboration.
Svenja: How did your meetings look like before you used these new technologies?
Tamara: Depending on how big the agenda was, these meetings were very protracted. Participants needed regular breaks to “clear their mind” in order to be able to come up with new ideas. The meetings were mostly hold in seated position and were quite passive. In our case, where people are located in different cities, it is very difficult to get everyone together at one table. Time for traveling and cost for flights increased tremendously.
Svenja: How do your meetings look like now?
Tamara: The meetings are much more creative and everyone wants to work on the Surface Hub because people actually enjoy working with it. Everyone has completely new ideas, people flourish and start working in a completely natural and productive way, although they are far away from each other. Many times we stand in front of the Surface Hub and work on it simultaneously. Cost and time for travelling are eliminated and we are now able to meet and talk about current topics several times a day. The time we save now is priceless.
Svenja: Did the Surface Hub and CollaBoard strongly influence/simplify your meeting culture?
Tamara: The meeting culture has changed a lot. The team is looking forward to the meetings and proposes new ideas with joy and enthusiasm. We can no longer imagine a typical brainstorming, which happens at least once a week here, without CollaBoard on Surface Hub.
Svenja: Which advantages do you see in CollaBoard and the Surface Hub?
Tamara: You get the best ideas when you spend time with people, mostly during lunch/dinner time or in the evening at the bar. Having the opportunity to share these ideas with clients, supervisors or co-workers around the world immediately, in real time, is just awesome. CollaBoard allows the instantaneous start of the implementation. I have the opportunity to receive the ‘go’ from my boss immediately, because I can present my ideas to him in real time. Finally, the time of long preparations and boring PowerPoint presentations has come to an end.
Tamara – Marketing Coordinator
Svenja – IBV Marketiér