Video: 10 Minute IT Jams - Who is Poly?

Video calls have become a part of daily life. For Dale Barnes, Partner Manager in New Zealand for Poly, this shift in working habits means more demand - and higher expectations - for professional audio and video equipment, not just in offices but in homes and remote locations across the country.

Poly, a global provider of pro-grade audio and video devices, once catered mostly to large boardrooms and high-end clients. But as Barnes explained, the company's focus has changed dramatically over the past year. "Poly was pretty much always at the upper end and now we're pushing down into what you would describe as a prosumer market," he said. "What people are saying is, you know, near enough isn't good enough."

The pandemic has fuelled the proliferation of remote and hybrid work, and with it the realisation that clear sound and video are make-or-break components of a productive meeting. "Nobody wants to go onto a call and go: 'Oh my god, Nick's calling from home,'" Barnes remarked. "You might be leading this particular meeting and it's really crappy audio, every second word's chipped, and someone's going: 'Sorry Nick, what did you say?' and it all becomes disjointed and distracting."

The consequences of such poor experiences are well-established. Among them, Barnes argued, is the much-discussed 'video fatigue'. "This is where I believe video fatigue comes in, when I'm straining to hear every word you're saying or I just check out," Barnes said. He added that if employees become disengaged, it means "half the audience is emotionally and basically checked out of the meeting and not collected half of what you're attempting to say."

No matter where employees find themselves - at home, at a holiday house or on the side of a mountain with a mobile - clear communication is crucial. "It doesn't matter how good your video is, how good your cameras are, if I can't hear you, or I'm straining to hear you, we're either having a poor meeting or a bad meeting," Barnes explained.

With home offices and flexible work the new normal, many organisations are reconsidering what tools they provide. Barnes said the answer is not to simply buy the cheapest equipment. "Buying a $50 headset from one of the retailers is just a recipe for disaster," he cautioned. While acknowledging the reality of limited budgets, Barnes stressed that "giving somebody a headset that has a boom but no active noise cancellation - nobody wants to hear that. They don't want to hear the person that's talking to you."

Active noise cancellation, he continued, is especially valuable as many workers now find themselves working from cafes or busy households. "That far noise in with a poor headset will transfer that to the far side, so the poor person on the far side is hearing a huge amount of background noise," Barnes said. "Everyone needs an intuitive solution. I need to be able to pick up my headset, it needs to connect to my laptop, it needs to connect to my mobile phone."

In boardrooms, technological advances are making systems simpler and more dynamic. "The camera needs to dynamically just say, 'Oh there's just Nick in the room, I'll just frame Nick - hi Nick, how are we going?'" Barnes explained. Systems that can automatically adjust to the number of people in a room, and offer one-touch joining for meetings, are increasingly in demand. "Teams do not have time to keep running in and out of video rooms to fix things," Barnes said. "It just needs to be simplistic."

The easier a system is to use, the more likely staff will embrace it. "Once it's simple and easy, people will start to use it," Barnes said. "When it's hard and awkward, they'll find other ways; they'll just sit at your desk and do a call like this."

Poly's range has grown to cater for individuals as well as large groups. Barnes highlighted the P5 and P15 devices. "This little beauty here is the P5, and it's a great little camera," he said, describing how it "narrows the field of view" so home users aren't forced to display potentially messy private spaces behind them during video calls. "We don't want to see your bedroom, Nick, we just want to see you!"

Barnes also touched on the challenge of limited laptop ports. "Laptops today lack USB ports and the manufacturers seem to be taking them away not putting more in. You can put your dongle straight into [the camera], and you can have your headset and you can be having a meeting and not interrupting or annoying anyone."

Importantly, Poly's gear is platform agnostic. "It's USB. It's just a fantastic camera, fantastic mic, and allows people to have a really good collaborative kind of meeting," Barnes said.

He was tight-lipped on what's coming next, but revealed new USB cameras are on the way, with a targeted focus on price, performance, and the needs of the New Zealand market. "The product team led by Tom Perrault in Santa Cruz has done an amazing job and thought long and hard about where is the sweet spot and I think this product is going to be a champion product in the New Zealand marketplace," he said.

Historically, pro-grade boardroom systems were prohibitively expensive, but technology is becoming more accessible. The Poly Studio USB, for example, is being used by the Ministry of Education and Auckland District Health Board, among others, to connect remote locals with urban centres. For rural marae, this means direct links to government agencies in Wellington - a significant improvement in digital inclusion.

Barnes believes these advances will outlast the pandemic, giving employees more freedom and employers greater confidence in remote work capabilities. "So many companies said: 'Oh, we can't work from home, we can't work from home,' and you know, I love the saying necessity is the mother of all invention. When you have to do something you will find a way," he said.

Reflecting on the journey, Barnes offered a pragmatic summary: "People just won't even know where you are."