When we talk about the gender/wage gap, we're most likely discussing how women and men with the same skills and experience should get paid the same salaries (inarguable). We usually attribute the gap to straight-up sexism, which is impossible to dispute. I know I've encountered plenty of that in the workplace.
Like most of us at Prysm, I'm passionate about our platform, and I use it every day. After a while, it's hard to imagine conducting certain activities — such as my biweekly team meetings — without it.
In “The Culture Map,” Erin Meyer beautifully describes how cultural differences and assumptions can create misunderstandings amongst colleagues in international business environments. As a case in point, she talked about how Westerners often assume Asians — who tend to participate and opine less than Americans do in meetings — have less to say. In contrast, Asians often feel that Americans are bad listeners because they tend to talk over one another in their haste to share their perspectives. While neither of these assumptions is 100% accurate, they can lead to discord.
We had a great time with our April Fools' gag last week, in which we announced a futuristic (but fictional) creation called Prysm Avatar — a drone that would project your likeness as a 3D hologram, so you could make a virtual appearance in the office, while you worked from a remote location.
At Prysm, we’re always looking towards the future. By pushing the boundaries of science and technology, we help bring people together from anywhere in the world, enabling them to share content and ideas in new and exciting ways. We’ve dabbled in video conferencing, cloud-based file sharing, and mobile-anywhere connections. So what’s next?
Prysm has recently introduced some great new features, including live-source streaming, wireless screen sharing, and a Quick Start screen. With this new functionality, it's easier than ever to start a quick meeting, use Prysm's digital whiteboards and share content with colleagues.
Contributed by Jay Cawog
Companies need their critical workforces to perform smarter, faster, and more productively. Achieving that goal requires embedding collaborative technologies deep into processes and incentivizing collaborative behaviors — ultimately transforming the workflow to turn knowledge into action. Collaboration platforms should do more than help employees talk about their work; they should create new ways for employees to do their work.
I spend a lot of my time at Prysm talking to existing customers about our products and services, especially when it’s time to renew their contracts. Invariably, the most enthusiastic customers are those who take advantage of our full solution — using Prysm Application Suite in concert with a Prysm touchscreen display.
I was talking to one of our sales reps the other day, and he told me something very interesting: he frequently speaks with Prysm users who don’t know about some of our best features! (Reminds me of a guy I used to date, but that’s a story for another time.)
Because I’m passionate about our product, I thought I’d take a couple of minutes to highlight some of the cool features that you might not know about or that you might not be used to their fullest extent.
I had a chat the other day with an employee of a large, well-known tech company. She told me a story that really surprised me. She said that the meeting technology used at her company was so terrible that it was not only impacting productivity; it was actually making people hate their jobs.
“We picked Prysm, in part, because it reflected our brand in being very innovative.” —John Heiman, Director of Experiential Marketing, Sprint
Recently, Prysm published a case study about Sprint’s newly renovated executive-briefing center (EBC) at its headquarters in Overland, Kansas, featuring Prysm Visual Workplace. The telecom giant’s choice of technology was symbolic of a movement in today’s enterprise — the transformation of the traditional “dog-and-pony show” into a consultative sale requiring authentic collaboration.
It's interesting to observe the way technology trends come in waves, and how corporate culture echoes those waves. In the 1980s, the few businesses who were computerized had mainframes, where a central "brain" did all the functioning and workers were tethered to that resource via dumb terminals. The advent of the PC was revolutionary: at last, we were free to create on our own — at our desks and in our homes. As mobile devices infiltrated the enterprise, intelligence became even more distributed. Workers were finally able to take their work on the road and organizations were able to leverage a global workforce.
It’s still a few weeks away, but Prysm folks are already excited about the upcoming Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) 2017 show in Amsterdam, February 7–10. It’s a great opportunity to visit with systems integrators from around the world and chat about the latest trends in AV, smart buildings, customer-experience-center technology, and more.
It's the hallmark of rookie sales reps — the rote PowerPoint presentation, delivered to every new customer and prospect with little to no variation in content and no time for discovery or feedback. The one-size-fits-all presentation is unlikely to come across as personalized or inspired and rarely leads to a sale. When you're trying to impress a prospect with your understanding of their business and commitment to their success, this is simply a poor strategy.
While I love people, I can be downright curmudgeonly when it comes to meetings. After all, I'm a w-r-i-t-e-r. My work is typically solitary. In my mind, every moment I'm in a meeting is a moment I'm not writing. And considering the (lack of) value I've derived from and contributed to the meetings I've attended over the considerable length of my career, it's no wonder that each new invite has me scrambling for reasons not to attend.
As a corporate blogger, I have had the privilege of spending time with many sales reps and execs, mining ideas and helping them put their own blogs together. It's great to hear about their thoughts, their vision, and their customer visits.
From those who are constantly on the road, I've also sometimes heard something less than wonderful — namely, that they are exhausted. They often spend way too much time away from their families, cooped up on airplanes, and sleeping in impersonal hotels.
Ever worked at a company that had an ample number of conference rooms — but when you'd go to reserve one, they were never available? You're definitely not alone. Until now, there was no way to safeguard scrum notes or protect confidential board-meeting information, except to lock the door.
Agile software development is an iterative approach that requires continuous team collaboration and a tight feedback loop. A 2015 survey of 601 software developers and IT professionals* revealed that the Agile methodology had achieved widespread adoption and had become the "new norm."
The concept of remote work has been steadily evolving since the late 1960s.
The way information is presented has an enormous influence on our ability to understand it and derive actionable insights. One of the biggest flaws with many existing tools — such as PowerPoint — is that they can only show information sequentially, which is not the optimal way to get a comprehensive overview and drive good decisions.