On this episode of Futurum Live! From the Show Floor, The Futurum Group’s Craig Durr talks with Jeff Smith, the head of product for rooms, spaces, and meetings at Zoomtopia 2023. Their conversation dives deep into the advancements of Zoom’s products, especially in the realm of hybrid work and the integration of AI to enhance meeting experiences. They also explore Zoom’s collaborations with tech giants and the future prospects of shared desk experiences.
Their discussion covers:
- The launch of the “Intelligent Director” for superior multi-camera experiences in conference settings
- Integration of AI-driven tools in meetings, such as AI Companion, for efficient note taking and meeting summaries
- Robust partnerships between Zoom and tech leaders like Logitech, Jabra, and Poly to elevate user experiences
- The emergence of shared desk solutions to maximize workspace utilization in the evolving hybrid work landscape
You can find Part 1 of this interview here and by subscribing to our YouTube channel, as well as other insights from Zoom executives at Zoomtopia 2023.
You can view the video of their conversation here:
Listen to the audio below:
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Transcript:
Craig Durr: Hey everybody. Craig Durr, research director with The Futurum Group. We are here live at Zoomtopia 2023. We’re continuing our conversation with Jeff Smith. He is the head of product for rooms, spaces, and for meetings.
Jeff Smith: Yes.
Craig Durr: And we spent some time talking about the challenges of hybrid work, but now you and I get to get into some of that really fun geeky part we like is talking products and what’s taking place in those spaces, right? Yeah.
Jeff Smith: Yep.
Craig Durr: So I tell you one of the cool things I spent time with and I had a great experience with was experiencing intelligent director, multiple cameras, multiple stream experience, working in a conference room. Talk to me about that finally coming to bear right now.
Jeff Smith: So it’s been a couple of years of research for us and it’s been an evolution. So the objective that we’re trying to get to is where I can take a group of people and really make individuals back out of that group. So I’ve got five people in a room. I don’t want to see ants around a table. I want to see each individual with full dedicated video stream with attribution. I know who they are, I know who they are for a transcript, I know who they are for a meeting summary, and that’s the ultimate goal. This is a great step along that journey. Smart gallery was the first step. Single camera, I can put people into their own video stream. Intelligent Director helps us when I can’t see everybody from one camera. And so if I have three cameras, I’m going to get three views of Craig and I have to have intelligence to understand which view is the best view. Of course the left side-
Craig Durr: Well, I appreciate that.
Jeff Smith: This is the money shot right over here.
Craig Durr: Okay, that’s good.
Jeff Smith: And so I’ve got to make sure that the camera right is going to see you. And that’s what we want to automate. So it’s easy.
Craig Durr: That’s the incredible part, the intelligence to get the best angle from the best camera at the right time. Start having things such as name tag. So I know that’s Jeff speaking. And you hit the other key part about that, it’s a great segue into meetings because that information now feeds into some of the powerful AI that you and your team are bringing to bear right now. Right?
Jeff Smith: That’s right. So in meetings, we put a lot of effort into putting AI companion in meetings. So I can have ask the meeting questions, and catch me up, and create a summary with smart chapters.
Craig Durr: I love that. I’ve been on the beta program and I love it. Absolutely great experience.
Jeff Smith: So now if I have a room in that meeting, it’s the room speaking, that’s a problem. So I don’t want to have a room speaking, the room doesn’t say anything. I want know who’s saying what and so it feeds into the whole rest of the intelligence. So that’s the next stage of what we’re working on this next year is how do I go from, now I’ve got everybody with their own video stream, so I know who’s in that video stream and what they’ve said.
Craig Durr: Got it. You use a great phrase, and I love this… the life cycle of a meeting because a lot of times we think about what takes place from the introductory, hi, I’m Craig. Hi, I’m Jeff, here’s our agenda. Okay, we talk about it, we finish up, but that’s not the true lifecycle of the meeting. Tell me how this expands to the pre and post.
Jeff Smith: That’s right. Everything from scheduling a meeting. So especially if I’m working with people that are outside of my company, I might not have visibility into their calendar. So Zoom scheduler can help me publish my availability to people that don’t have visibility into my calendar, and we can create a meeting from there, all the way to writing that agenda. So I need to make sure that I have a place where I can bring in Zoom notes, or a full Zoom doc to create an agenda, upload content that’s for pre-reads, and get people prepared so that in the meeting I’m making a decision. I’m not reading the material and trying to figure out what are we doing here?
Craig Durr: Sure. Right, exactly.
Jeff Smith: So trying to make much more productive meetings. Post meeting we’re looking at, again, from AI, how do I make it so that you don’t have to spend all your time writing notes. So you let the AI companion write all your meeting notes, take action items, and get you prepared to follow up for either the next meeting or to document your set of decisions.
Craig Durr: That’s incredible. Now, you and I first met when we were talking about hardware and room experience, and you’ve really curated a fantastic ecosystem of partners. So we spent some time walking through, we took a look at the D10, D7. We saw Jabra’s VBS, their video bar system as well too. The Poly, Intelligent Director. Neat’s got some beautiful things as well right now. You guys, tell me about this symbiotic relationship with those partners because you’re really pushing them and they’re coming to bat, they’re bringing their best game.
Jeff Smith: I think everybody’s working on solving the right set of problems together. And the problems are about ease of procurement, high quality experience, consistent, it always works, and innovation. We have to do that together. So we’ve had some push and pull between consistency across the portfolio and ability to innovate. And I think we’ve struck a really nice balance at this point where there is an ability for each of these partners to innovate along a bunch of different vectors, but we also create that baseline of consistent great experience where people know what they get out of a Zoom room. So Logitech’s been doing fantastic work. They have a great diverse portfolio. You mentioned HP Poly, Jabra, D10. The companies are really seeing an opportunity to solve problems for customers.
Craig Durr: That’s good. But we’re talking about the big spaces, but right now, bridging to our earlier conversation about hybrid, we’ve got people coming back into the office, we’ve got challenges like real estate consolidation, things of this nature. It’s really bringing to bear some really interesting desktop solutions, shared desk experiences, checking in. I saw a Crestron solution, for example. I’ve seen the Logitech solution. Tell me what you see as the future of the shared desk experience and how Zoom’s going to play into that.
Jeff Smith: Well, this is how we help customers with the challenge of how do I optimize my workspace utilization so that I can get the most out of my physical space. So we know that everybody doesn’t need a dedicated desk like they used to and for us to be the most efficient in the use of our resources, we need shared system. So Workspace Preservation works really well for that. And we, again, there’s a hardware ecosystem for this that really helps us with the awareness of what desks are available, what’s the check-in experience, and again, how do I facilitate it, reduce that coordination cost, and the overhead that I have with getting into the office in this flexible environment and just get my work done with the people that I want to be with.
Craig Durr: Right, in an IT friendly way
Jeff Smith: So then I get the payoff at the end. I get the great collaboration experience, but I didn’t have to go through all of the pain to coordinate with all these people and coordinate the resources that we need to be effective.
Craig Durr: Right. Ideally, end users win, IT wins, partners win. It’s a great ecosystem here. I really enjoy it.
Jeff Smith: No, it’s been great.
Craig Durr: Jeff, I really appreciate the time talking to you. In this last moment we covered rooms, spaces, desktop, meeting lifecycle. There’s a lot of exciting development that’s in the air right now, and I’m looking forward to this next year. Between now and next time, I can only wait what the adoption are going to be.
Jeff Smith: It’s going to be fun. Thanks Craig. Appreciate it.
Craig Durr: Jeff, thank you so much. Everyone, this is Craig Durr with The Futurum Group. Thank you for your time. We’re here live at Zoomtopia. Take care
Author Information
As Practice Lead - Workplace Collaboration, Craig focuses on developing research, publications and insights that clarify how the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows enable group collaboration and communication. He provides research and analysis related to market sizing and forecasts, product and service evaluations, market trends, and end-user and buyer expectations. In addition to following the technology, Craig also studies the human elements of work - organizing his findings into the workforce, the workplace, and the workflows – and charting how these variables influence technologies and business strategies.
Prior to joining Wainhouse, now a part of The Futurum Group, Craig brings twenty years of experience in leadership roles related to P&L management, product development, strategic planning, and business development of security, SaaS, and unified communication offerings. Craig's experience includes positions at Poly, Dell, Microsoft, and IBM.
Craig holds a Master of Business Administration from the Texas McCombs School of Business as well as a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Tulane University.
