Just like other types of meeting room and collaboration technology, projectors continue to evolve and improve. Long gone are the days of overhead projectors and slide presentations.
Today’s projectors offer HD images, wireless connectivity, interactive capabilities and can even provide clear images in rooms with lots of light. Some of the newest projectors on the market can even split the screen into quadrants and display multiple images at once.
TECHNOLOGY GUIDE FOR YOUR TRAINING AND PRESENTATION ROOMS
With plenty of places your business technology budget can go, it’s important to understand what today’s projectors can do and when to use a projector.
When should you consider using a projector?
The most basic and critical component of a projector is the lens. Advances in projector lens technology means projectors aren’t just for big rooms and large images anymore. Short-throw projectors can project a readable image in a very small space or from a very short distance and some of the newest models can even project in a dome.
Projectors are also no longer the one-sided presentation tool they used to be. Many of today’s projectors can connect wirelessly to the internet or allow multiple people to interact with the screen at once. Given these advanced capabilities, projectors are becoming an increasingly critical business technology investment. Here are some examples of when to use a projector:
1. For on-the-go meetings
If you make a lot of presentations on the road or rarely hold meetings in the same place, a small, lightweight, portable projector is a worthwhile investment. Projecting your presentation content will give a larger, clearer picture than just displaying it on a laptop.
Many portable projectors can also be powered through a USB and some even have wireless capabilities so you can easily adapt to any variety of meeting room circumstances and capabilities.
2. Going green (and saving green)
Buying a projector for your conference room or other meeting spaces can be a big upfront expense, but technology investments usually save you money in the long run.
Many interactive short-throw projectors include annotation software that allows you to use a pen stylus or your finger—depending on the technology supported by that projector—to write or draw content onto the projection screen. You can save the image to your computer and share as needed, eliminating the need to print off hard copies of slide decks or other presentation materials.
3. Image size matters
Successful collaboration relies on large displays. Why? Because people can’t collaborate on what they can’t see. The cases where a group—and meeting room—is small enough for everyone to huddle around a small screen are few and far between.
In most use cases, medium to large-sized groups of people need to be able to see and read the same content images, and increasing the size of those images through a projector is the best solution. This can be even more critical in education and training settings where low-resolution or too-small presentation materials can compromise important learning.
4. Keeping it engaging
We’ve all seen someone—or been the someone—dozing off in a dull meeting. One person talking to a group of people is not an effective or engaging way to do business or create learning opportunities. Interactive projector technology allows multiple people to draw on or interact with a screen at the same time, opening the door to real-time collaboration and longer engagement from participants.
5. When you want to be memorable
Whether you are participating as a vendor at a trade show or hosting a large function, events are a perfect place to make an impact with projector technology.
Short-throw projectors allow you to project an image in a small space; set one up in your booth at a trade show to display video demonstrations of your projects, contact information for salespeople or images of new products. Or hang a large screen behind a keynote speaker at a large-scale event and use a projector to display real-time social media content including reactions and questions for the speaker. You could also use a projector to display information such as the event schedule or a campus map for attendees; you’d cut down on paper waste and be able to update information instantly if times or locations changed.
Projectors support desire for collaboration
Whether your employees are attending a meeting, a conference or a corporate training, chances are they want and expect an interactive, collaborative environment. Choosing the right technology for your meeting and training spaces is essential to employee satisfaction and retention, and it will only become more so as time goes on. Trends in projector technology are keeping pace with workplace trends towards interaction and collaboration. Explore what technology solutions are best for your training and presentation spaces to maximize productivity and satisfaction in your organization.
