Ever been to one of those meetings where people struggle for the first ten minutes to connect a laptop and get the presentation up and running? That's before they call an engineer, and then another 10 minutes are wasted before the meeting begins. Then there are the companies that have one laptop connected to the room's visualization system. When the meeting begins, each presenter loads Microsoft PowerPoint slides to that computer and the presentations run one after the next. Either experience is dreadful. In theory, meetings are about collaboration. In practice, one person at a time drones at a meeting while everyone else in the room tries to stay awake. It's time to step away from that scenario and move on to something better. Welcome to the era of ClickShare from Barco. Clickshare is a wireless presentation system that allows any meeting participant to share content on the central meeting room screen. The system consists of a Base Unit and Clickshare Buttons. The Base Unit has a fixed connection to the meeting room's AV system and handles all processing. Users who want to put their presentation on the large meeting room screen simply connect a Clickshare Button to their PC or MAC, click it and immediately their desktop can be seen wirelessly on the large screen. No cables. No hassle. Smartphones and tablets connect to Clickshare through an app. With Clickshare, up to four individual screens can be visualized at the same time on the central meeting room screen. And now Barco is coming to Saudi Arabia with its Corporate AV projector range, including the Present-P, Present-C and Present-M families of projectors, all of which are designed for top functionality with the Clickshare system. “We will be introducing the Barco Present-P range which has the option of a Clickshare Mini built-in,” said Dharmendra Parmar, GM, Marketing for FVC, authorized distributor for Barco in Saudi Arabia. “This unique concept further enables Barco's solutions to blend in with the environment.” Barco projectors are designed to be attractive, small, white units which nearly merge into a meeting room ceiling. The goal is for the projectors to be as unobtrusive as possible but with high functionality. Parmar advised that while Barco is well known in Saudi Arabia for its top-of-the-line professional displays and display walls, the company now plans to work with local audio-visual integrators to offer multimedia AV equipment and systems for well designed executive meeting rooms, boardrooms and Smart classrooms. “In Riyadh FVC has its own team of pre sales staff as well as after sales support, We also have an executive briefing center where we invite potential customers to come and experience the solutions,” Parmar explained. “We are in the process of upgrading the skill sets and the solutions on offer with our local resellers and integrators. This includes their ability to design solutions for a variety of uses in the enterprise as well as in education settings.” With this move to an increasing number of installations, FVC's integrators will have a mandated stock of extra equipment on hand including projectors, as well as spare parts. However, above the standard warranty, customers will need to consider the requirements of high availability situations where a more advanced level of support is required and will have to be requested. “The goal with Clickshare and Barco's new Corporate AV range is to bring style and ease of use into the meeting rooms and classrooms of organizations across Saudi Arabia,” said Parmar. “Clients will be pleased to know that Barco's Present-P projectors are fully future-proof with ‘Intelligence Inside.' These projectors have space inside for extra connectivity and networking add-ons. ‘ClickShare Inside' is the first optional module under the ‘Intelligence Inside' concept, but there will certainly be more to come.”
