Ropes & Gray

This is where AV is going. As mentioned in the Encore (PSAV) section, companies with resources are no longer renting hotel conference rooms where they cannot control security, they are permanently installing audiovisual equipment in the offices with conference rooms that they already lease. 

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My job at Ropes is less troubleshooting and maintenance and more communications. Any conference room with virtual conference capabilities that is reserved for a meeting, gets a Zoom link. I create the link with specific parameters to ensure automatic connectivity and I write the SIP address in the scheduling software. As a global law firm, many meetings take place in hybrid with attendees joining in person, in conference rooms, from multiple cities. A typical meeting for the data privacy team may take place in DC, NYC, Boston, Chicago, and London at the same time. And it is possible that all of the attendees from DC, may decide to join the meeting from their at-work desk or their home office, instead of in the meeting space. This is hybrid meeting technology. We want to have the flexibility to accommodate last minute changes we might not be informed of. 

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The AV team does not own the risk of a meeting being connected in a room where no participants show, but since we do (IT) own the security of the network the meeting lives on and how the meeting was created, the risk is low. The meeting host can quietly email me and ask me to drop a room, which takes only a few seconds. I never thought I would have an AV job that required me to be so much at my desk, in front of a laptop, but I love it (especially since I'm getting old!). 

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Unfortunately, I am not permitted by this employer to take photos or screencasts of my work, however, on this page is a diagram based on the official drawing created for one of the multipurpose rooms in the DC office.