It’s no longer a home office. It’s not even an anywhere office. In pandemic times, the office space we’ve carved out of our living spaces have to evolve even further, into nothing else than conference centres.
This means the technology we use has to evolve, too. Yes, one can run an office efficiently with a laptop and an Internet connection – if one simply wants to carry on with business as usual. But many of us want to up our game, make ourselves more employable or useful to the organisation employing us, or stand out from the rest.
That means our remote office, home office, anywhere office, would need to become an “everything office”. It can set us up not just for a videoconference, webinar or virtual presentation, but also for complex meetings or events, with multiple participants both in our own locations and others. At the same time, we can have access to TV, streaming video and audio, and equipment to record ourselves in action.
In short, a home office has the potential to double as a multi-purpose meeting venue, and then triple as a media centre.
Note, these are not “musts”: one can get by with a decent laptop and webcam. But to thrive in the new era of personal branding, of global positioning, of slash roles (multiple roles divided by the / symbol), one may need a little more.
Go to the next page to read about the key ingredients to create your own everything office.
We’ve put together an initial, brief guide to some of the key ingredients that will help you create your own everything office:
Conferencing audio
Poly Sync 20 smart speakerphone
It would not normally be a selling point that a device is Certified for Microsoft Teams and Zoom, but in the era of business being driven by videoconferencing, it offers a definite edge. Smart speakerphones, in particular, need to be compatible with both hardware and software to ensure flawless sound in meetings. The Poly Sync 20 from Plantronics is slim and portable, so it is ideal for taking an office anywhere, and promises 20-hour battery life, addressing both load-shedding and power-challenged locations. It connects wirelessly through Bluetooth, or wired via USB, to smartphones and computers. It picks up sound from up to 2 metres away, meaning one can be heard clearly while walking around the typical home office, hotel room or small meeting area. In other words, no headphones needed if one feels the need to move around while talking. This is thanks to a multi-microphone array, which also eliminates both echo and background noise. Once the meeting is over, it switches seamlessly to music streaming.
Anker Ultra Clear portable conference speakerphone
Anker goes a step further with a similar device, taking advantage of a 6,700mAh battery to charge other devices at high speed via the manufacturer’s PowerConf technology – or to power calls for up to 24 hours. Its key selling points are omni-directional voice pickup: via 6 microphones arranged in a 360° array, to pick up voices anywhere in rooms for up to 8 people. Echo cancellation, “de-reverberation”, and background noise reduction, along with automatic voice balance to make up for differences in volume and distance from the speakerphone, make for crystal-clear conferencing.
Anker has tested the device for meeting rooms, “huddle space” and home offices – but it can work outdoors, too, when a meeting needs both social distance and fresh air.
Lighting
Ring-lights
The most cost-effective investment I ever made for virtual meetings and talks is a ring-light, originally marketed for selfies and TikTok-style videos, but now an essential ingredient of the everything office. On the One Deal A Day site, I was able to snatch one for R125, while a second unit cost R250 on Takealot.com – still a great buy. It has four brightness settings, three hue settings – white, warm and blue – and includes a phone holder inside the ring.
One can take this utility a step further, and add a microphone stand. One Day Only offers the Glow, a “10 -inch selfie light with microphone stand”, for R499. In the broader scheme of virtual office costs, these are the bargains of the year.
Go to the next page to read about storage solutions and the future of
Storage
Western Digital 2 TB and 4TB
Cloud backups are a given, but when you start creating videos for streaming on sites like YouTube and LinkedIn, and the original files run to multi-gigabytes, the cost and time of online storage adds up fast. External hard drives are just the ticket, and their prices have plummeted. A good starting point is Western Digital’s 2 TB Elements portable hard drive at R1,099 from Makro or its 4TB My Passport portable at R1,800 from Incredible Connection. There are other options and other outlets, but that provides a good starting point for shopping around.
Future strategy
These devices are just the start. We will regularly revisit options for the “everything office”. If you’re undecided on your approach, however, you could do worse than follow the advice of JP Lourens, solutions manager at Kyocera Document Solutions South Africa.
“The current pace at which organisations have to shift, adapt and transform has presented an opportunity to embrace a new way of working: the hybrid workspace,” he says. “Agile, flexible organisations that transformed quickly to the first signs of change, and took advantage of emerging technologies to support their workforce, need to consider a long-term hybrid workspace strategy.
“The forced evolution of the workplace has meant that businesses are now open to creating new hybrid workspaces and digital-first models. The bonus of this approach is that this is creating substantial business efficiencies and a more productive workforce.”
Lourens reminds us of the mantra of the new office: “Work is now being more recognised for what we do, rather than a place where we go.”
- Arthur Goldstuck is founder of World Wide Worx and editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram on @art2gee.