Two weeks ago, Prysm participated in New York Digital Signage Week (NYDSW), hosting a variety of events – from press Q&As to a customer and partner open house – at our New York City CEC, located in the heart of bustling Manhattan. Throughout the week, we showcased how the Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) 6K Series is helping digital signage customers provide a unique and personalized experience for consumers.

I have been friends with Mark Thompson, the #1 growth leadership coach, and his wife, career strategist Bonita Thompson for years, and ever since they saw the Prysm Laser Phosphor Display (LPD) 6K Series at our launch party in New York City, they have been eager to give the new technology a try.

Research* shows that today's employees can spend up to 80% of their workdays collaborating. As a result, meetings — our primary method of working together  — have become mere waypoints in an ongoing collaborative process. This is a major shift from the way we used to think about meetings, which we regarded as events with a beginning and an end.

Research* shows that approximately 65% of enterprise meetings now include remote participants. The reasons are obvious, including endeavoring to leverage a diverse global workforce, saving money on office overhead, and — in some cases — taking advantage of less expensive local labor.

Our marketing meetings at Prysm have several different purposes – campaign planning, design reviews, weekly status, one-on-one working sessions – the list goes on. The content we need to share in those meetings varies. With the recent release of co-browsing, we’ve been able to streamline the prep required for any meeting, as well as to dramatically enhance the meeting experience itself.

When you think of the word "collaboration," you probably think of meetings (online or offline), messaging, screen sharing, file sharing, and maybe even video conferencing. These activities have become not only standard in most business environments, but also a critical part of getting work done.

The express lane to kicking off productive meetings and brainstorming sessions

This week we launched Prysm Go, a quick, easy, and elegant way to upgrade your physical meeting spaces to enable superior collaboration, creation, and presentation.

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.

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. 

Oh, meetings. It must be hard to be so unpopular. But let's face it — you rarely live up to your promise. You bore without purpose. You masquerade as a working session, then reveal yourself as an endless PowerPoint. You purport to offer a quick, important update, then wander aimlessly for an hour.

The hallmark of truly disruptive technology is that it changes our day-to-day workflow. At Prysm, I see this happening all the time. A case in point is how we use Prysm visual collaboration software to help us prepare for, conduct, and follow up after board meetings.