U West Florida Uses BYOD Content-Sharing System for Collaborative Problem Solving
Courtesy of Christie
The Innovation Institute at the
University of West Florida is using a digital
collaboration system that lets people share content on a single screen from
their own laptops, tablets and smartphones, so they can more easily discuss ideas
and solve problems together.
The Innovation Institute opened in January 2014 in a historic building in the
Belmont Devilliers historic district of Pensacola, FL. One of the institute's
primary missions is to bring together people from industry, government and
education to talk about problems and figure out how solutions from one
particular domain might be extended to another domain. "Our charge is to address
some of the large problems in education in particular to try and discover an
innovative way to approach what we're doing," said Dave Dawson, research
scientist at the Innovation Institute.
Connection Challenges
The people who come to the institute for these problem-solving sessions bring
with them a wide variety of technologies, some of which are locked down in a way
that makes it almost impossible for the user to make any configuration changes
to his or her device. The collaborative nature of the problem-solving process at the
Innovation Institute requires the ability to analyse and compare the differences
and similarities between what different organizations are doing, and the
institute wanted a content-sharing system that could simplify that process.
"We wanted to make it so that people could walk into the building with
whatever it is that they use most often, whether it's a PC-based laptop, a Mac,
an iPad, an Android tablet or a phone of any type, and connect to our display
system and collaborate with other people with a minimum of distraction — without
going through a trunk full of hardware connectors or adapters or going through
contortions for systems configuration, which they often don't have the
administrative rights to do," said Dawson.
Digital Collaboration on Any Device
The Innovation Institute worked with a third-party audio-video systems design
and integration company,
Technical Innovation, to identify and implement technology to support BYOD
(bring-your-own-device) digital collaboration. The institute's list of
requirements for the digital collaboration system included ease of use,
flexibility, wireless connectivity, seamless system integration, real-time videoconferencing and multimedia content sharing. Technical Innovation researched the
available options and came back to the institute with a couple of proposals.
"They did a very good job of the evaluation process to make sure that the things
they proposed actually met our performance requirements," said Dawson.
In the end, the institute selected the
Christie Brio wireless presentation and collaboration system from Christie
Digital. Christie Brio supports multimedia, multi-device and
multi-platform content sharing without additional hardware or drivers. It can
share content wirelessly and in real time for up to five content feeds per
unit.
The system was in place in time for the opening of the Innovation Institute's
new facility in January 2014. According to Dawson, the implementation process
was "absolutely painless." As part of the process, the institute created a
separate guest network to enable visitors to connect their mobile devices to the
Christie Brio system. Apple iOS devices, such as iPads and iPhones, connect to
the system over Apple AirPlay, and Android devices connect to it through
Miracast.
So far, the only unexpected surprise occurred when Apple released a new version
of the iOS operating system, which broke the AirPlay connection to the Christe
Brio system, but Dawson noted that the people at Christie Digital fixed the
problem in just a few minutes over a remote connection.
Results
The Christie Brio system lets people from any organization bring their own
mobile technology to the Innovation Institute, log on to the guest network and
start sharing. They share interactive digital video, presentations, spreadsheets
and other digital content, and collaborate to solve problems and develop new
ideas. According to Dawson, the people who visit the institute love
the technology. "The first thing they always ask is, 'can we get one of these
for our shop?'" he said.
Since the Innovation Institute opened just over one year ago, it has grown
from 12 people to more than 150 people and has roughly doubled its square
footage, taking over another part of the building where it's located. The
institute plans to implement a second Christie Brio system with a larger 4K
ultra-high-definition display for use in the expanded space.
Dawson calls technologies like Christie Brio "enabling technologies" because
they simplify the collaboration process rather than complicating it. "We're
looking for things that enable us to do the things that we want to do without
the distraction of tinkering with the technology to make it work for a
particular case," he said. "We want people to be able to focus on the issue at
hand rather than on the technology to enable them to articulate their vision."
About the Author
Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].