Thoughts from LTSMG Live 2022
This week's LTSMG Live conference considered hybrid teaching and work spaces through the lens of Higher Education. Some lessons for everyone here…
In many ways LTSMG has embodied the arc of 2022. The start of post-pandemic life, the return to campus and the workplace - and the evolving approach to hybrid. During May’s main conference there were some holding out for ‘blended’ teaching/learning, but it was noticeable that folk were resigned to using the term hybrid and just cracking on with considering the practical stuff of enabling content to be delivered and received in local and remote spaces over the next few years.
The acceptance of Microsoft Teams in the campus ecosystems seems pretty ubiquitous. And universities need meeting spaces as well as teaching and study spaces, so they have to have even more of a 360 degree view and understanding.
There was candid sharing of how necessity was the mother of pragmatism during lockdown when spaces got converted to hybrid, without reference to standards and with whatever kit and cables people could lay their hands on.
The most substantive sessions for me were those focused on understanding user needs and space configuration. In a room full of technology evangelists, we’d like to hope that poor room configurations can be solved by the latest tech widget, that wherever we’re forced to stick cameras, for example, that remote participants can still have good engagement. (Spoiler alert: they can’t.)
I took part in one of the panel discussions in a venue fitted out with our co-sponsor dnp’s Supernova ALR (ambient light rejecting) projection screens. Look at that image driven by a projector of modest lumens output! Look at those black levels! Projectors cannot project black, so using a screen that’s black until projected light hits it is the only way to equip spaces where content is king and where users can work all day.
What a lovely thing to have a day where users, specifiers, managers and vendors can consider the bigger picture and take time together with intelligence and wit to reflect on what we’ll do in 2023. Which I’m really looking forward to.
Big, big thanks to LTSMG for a great day amongst friends. You go from strength to strength. (But in 2023 I’ll remember to bring the paracetamol…)
Posted: 9th December 2022