We’ve now almost completed the retrofit of the three B50 conference rooms. All three have identical controllers and interfaces to make it easy for staff to move between the rooms. All three rooms have bright, current generation projectors with both HDMI and VGA connectors – and support for virtually every resolution supported by laptops – so no need to degrade your resolution to get a good picture.
All three rooms also have new audio – with new amplifiers and speakers in the ceiling in the 50A rooms, and on the front wall in 50B-4205.
50b-4205 and 50a-5132 now have permanent conference phones installed as well (integrated as part of the Lifesize unit in 50B and a new Polycom Stealth phone in 50A-5132.)
On an aesthetic note, we’ve hidden the projection room in 50a-5132 with a “transit vinyl” which allows you to look out from the projection room, but not see inside. The vinyl has a nice panorama of the Bay – meaning you can see almost the same view out the real windows or the fake one. In 50b-4205, an installation art piece called “Glaser’s Bubble Puzzle” captures the beauty of the bubble chamber images and the challenges of assembling the “puzzles pieces” of scientific inquiry.
All this is in operation in the rooms now, but we’ve got a few things left to do. We’ve got temporary user facing instructions in the rooms now, which will be finalized over the next couple of weeks. We’ll also be testing out whether a permanent computer in 50a-5132 will see any use – that will be installed next week.
On the back end, we’re finalizing the internet interface to the rooms which allows the helpdesk and support staff to see what’s going on and, in some cases, troubleshoot issues remotely.
If you’re considering a conference room technology upgrade, get in touch with collaborate@lbl.gov to discuss how you can leverage what we’ve learned.
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