3 ways the Microsoft Surface Hub transforms your meetings

We’ve all been there, sat in another cream-coloured room on cheap seats and chipped furnishings while someone makes notes on a flipchart. Maybe to shake things up you’re squinting at a projector while they sermonise a PowerPoint Presentation. It’s dull and dreary. It’s not much of a shock to hear that 73% of employees bring other work to meetings, or that 39% have admitted to falling asleep!

With a combination of virtual Whiteboard, Videoconferencing and Microsoft’s Windows 10 Universal App ecosystem, the Microsoft Surface Hub completely revamps the traditional meeting experience and re-engages attendees. Here are three ways the Surface Hub will forever change your concept of teamwork and collaboration:

1. The Quick Kick-off

With the Microsoft Surface Hub, you can walk into a meeting and find it instantly ready to go. Inbuilt sensors detect when someone enters the room and switch on the machine, unveiling the opening screen. On the 84” screen the landscape shots can be breath-taking.

From this opening screen you can sign in to get all your OneDrive files remotely. If that would take too long you can tap one of the three buttons to immediately open Skype, Whiteboard or the Miracast connect. If you’re really pushed for time, all you need to do is pick up the Surface Pen; the Hub will guess your intention and immediately begin the Whiteboard App. When you’ve booked the meeting in advance a single-click will jump you straight into the Skype conference, great for those moments when you’re cutting things close

2. Engaging Presentations

Is Death by PowerPoint a hazard at your work? We’ve all had those meetings where someone stands at the front of the room and proceeds to send the audience into a glassy-eyed stupor.

The Surface Hub can’t improve your colleague’s monotone, but it can become a physical part of presentations. You can digitally ink any talking points on which you need to focus on, across any app, or annotate points on the fly. If someone is struggling to see something, you can zoom and refocus the image. You can swipe back and forth through your slides without having to dart back to computer or use a clicker, making transitions feel more natural and taking technical distractions away from the presenter. If needed, you can have another window alongside your presentation showing websites or documents that back up your points, or give you somewhere to take notes.

3. An Infinite Whiteboard

The OneNote Whiteboard is a core element of the Surface Hub’s functionality, replacing the need for flipcharts, whiteboards and with the ability to send the whiteboard via email, notepads and pens become obsolete too.

With a flipchart, your ideas can only be as large as the size of the paper. With the Surface Hub, the Whiteboard app has an infinite canvas. Your work can cover an unlimited amount of space without being split up or lost. The app also lets you take screenshots from other apps to be annotated, as well as importing images from the internet. If you’re doing any technical drawing you can bring in a digital ruler, which works identically to a physical one, or draw shapes and tables that snap into perfect versions of themselves.

At the end of the meeting you can send the whiteboard via email, save it to a one drive or a memory stick and take it away for next time.

These examples only scratch the…ahem, surface, of what you can achieve with the Microsoft Surface Hub. In the future, I’ll be covering more specific examples. If your team relies on group meetings or collaboration to get work done, then it’s well worth getting in contact to arrange a demonstration or attend our upcoming webinar – Unlocking collaboration with the Microsoft Surface Hub.