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Hi, and welcome to the Microsoft teams inside a podcast. This is a new format where I take people from the industry and talk about Microsoft teams. First guest is Graham Walsh many people will know him. He's at Neat we talk about his career journey and how he got into Microsoft teams and video devices. We get into the neat portfolio a little bit. We talk about the neat frame and where we think it fits in the market. Also the neat bar pro and how that compares to the neat bar and the extensibility there, and a little bit about the Neat center and where that will play. Hope do you find this useful and informative you've got any questions, comments, or feedback? Do let me know. And I want to thank me for being one of the benefactors and a great supporter of everything we're doing at empowering cloud. I hope you enjoy the conversation and on with the show.

Tom Arbuthnot: 0:44

Welcome to the very first Microsoft Teams Insider podcast. And I'm really excited about this. It's a new concept. And my very first guest is of course, Graham. Who else could it be? So Graham, do you just wanna introduce yourself?

Graham Walsh: 0:57

Yeah. Hi. Thanks Tom. Thanks for having me on this new podcast. So yeah, Graham Walsh. currently a product specialist here at Neat focusing on Microsoft Teams devices.

Tom Arbuthnot: 1:06

Whenever I have a device question, you are one of my go-to people. You are pretty big in, in the world of our community and devices. I'm sure a lot of people know your name, but I'm not sure everybody knows the history. Obviously we've known each other for quite a long while. Talk us through the journey to, to how you got to Neat

Graham Walsh: 1:22

yeah. Originally let's wind the clock back When I as I was at university, I thought I wanna be an accountant. I love numbers and then make loads of money. So I thought let's be an accountant. And in my year out, my gap year that I had at university I fell into it. I enjoyed having computers at home. Commod 64 and everything else. And I fell into it. And telecoms so my first job out outta university was actually doing that. If anyone remembers Avaya or should I say sdx loosened back in the early days when it was at branding.. So originally analog, then digital, then IP telephony. So again, saw that transition in the telephony side. Yeah. So did that for seven and a bit years. And then all that was again, also on the Microsoft side of things. So very early adopter of exchange five, 5.5. Citrix Thin client. NT 3 51, all the Microsoft applications. So yeah, very early on that sort of space and the Microsoft side of things internet, LA services, spinning up LCS servers. Then through that journey of, office communicator link Skype and then into teams. So after doing telecoms and it. I went to Polycom the original, the og Polycom the Triangles. You still And that's where I started video and I thought, coming from telephony to video, what's the difference? And all it was the device at the end of the cable was different, still all the network stuff behind it and everything else. Taking to video was, really quite. So yeah, seven plus years at Polycom. Again, focusing on the Microsoft piece there, bringing our, conferences and bridges into into LCS and into ocs. Then the Skype launched with voice as well. When we got to art ocs, R2 in 2007 with devices there. And then I had a little had a little let's say interlude, little break And but still on the collaboration side I was like, mention data, which NTT for some people now. Again, collaboration style and that's when they found, let's call it the other side of the house, like you, Cisco when you started looking at the other devices in that product portfolio and learning that as well. So I did that for 18 months. But I wanted to get back to the vendor and that's where Pexip came in. With the Skype for Business iop. So being able to take, any traditional video room system, SIP or H 2 23 based and bring that into the world of Skype for Business. Four and a half near five years at Pexip began seeing a journey and a transition from, on-premise of servers into cloud-based compute in a, in Azure for video interop and then the teams launched for cloud video iop or cvi. And that is now known. And then after pxa I thought, We got interrupt that, that tick box is done. Where do we go now? And then I jumped over to Crestron. So for any of people that don't know Crestron are 40. No, it's coming up to 50 years. I think. Doing, a lot of things in digital media all those complex meeting spaces, being able to, extend that connection with screen or connector on everything else.

Tom Arbuthnot: 3:58

Yeah, if you go into one of those rooms where you press a button and all the blinds go and the lights go and everything sets up, that's probably Crestron. Yeah.

Graham Walsh: 4:05

When you see a touch panel by the wall, that's usually Crestron. You can go to hotels and event stadiums and stuff. So very big in that space. And they started getting into the uc space. Actually it was early with Polycom back in the day. They. Joint venture, where Yeah. Crestron did some of the hardware and obviously Polly did some of the cameras and stuff and technology around it. They, they would, dabble in, in, in that sort of space in the not mtr SRS Skype room system. Oh, hang on. Link Room system was the actual product back then. LRS yeah. Then s rs Yeah. So they weren't new to the game, but it was the, let's call it the teams launch. And that's where, the Windows based mtr, again designed for those, complex rooms. They installer friendly, should we say. I've been able to, have everything ready to mount the wallet and. But then also being able to extend cables. So if you've got those long meeting rooms, you could get everything from Crestron on to, to, have that extended, et cetera. Yeah. So yeah, that was about two and a half years at Crestron. Based on obviously the Windows based mtr. And we also launched when I was there, we launched the the flex phone. So again, into the team's phone, into the telephony space but also with video. And then. after that. Another knock on the door from from NEAT to Hey, come and join us. And it was a case of, Ooh, what's this? What's this Android stuff? Obviously a couple of years ago. It was early days. Should be saying for Android. Yeah. First launched as a collaboration bar. I think in 2019 Ignite 2019, just, yeah,

Tom Arbuthnot: 5:21

It was a huge deal. Cause Mean Neat. Has a strong Zoom heritage, of course. So that was, and there was even investment from Zoom wasn't there, so when Correct. Yeah, I heard a little bit early the news that they were getting into the teams game. It was very exciting, neat. Always had a lot of respect on, the, in the Zoom world as being, high end quality devices so it was interesting to see them come to teams as well. Obviously they're still Zoom there. That was, you were joined. You ju you were a bit before that, weren't you? Cuz that was the

Graham Walsh: 5:45

ramp up, yeah. So when was it? It was announced at the, I think it was the Microsoft hybrid work event in middle of June 20. I've lost time of years now. 2021? Yes. Yeah, that's probably right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, at the end of 21 I joined. Neat. So I've just been over there just over a year. Yeah, it was a six month development cycle, so from that announcement, that's

Tom Arbuthnot: 6:10

crazy. We've done a lot in a year. It feels like more than a year's worth of of content and seeing you on the circuit and everything else.

Graham Walsh: 6:16

So yeah, from that announcement date, middle of middle of June to December when I joined was obviously when we then had a first build. That could be public, people could start testing. So yeah, a lot of development work in six months. As you said, the hardware was there because it was designed for the zoom elements. So obviously you tweaks and changes as you work with the different software vendors and how the camera talks to the software and hardware, et cetera. Yeah, and all that was, a lot of groundwork was done there. So it was just working with the Microsoft team to obviously blend that. But that's one piece is obviously getting the device working head center certification, tap testing customer valid. And that took about three months, I think it was. Then Enterprise Connect was the first GA of the pad. So your controller or your scheduler outside the room. Then the bar, so you know, the front room for small to medium rooms but also the board, which is a very, interesting device in the space and all in 1 65 inch touch. And I think we were the first or the quickest vendor to develop and certify four products. In record time. Yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: 7:10

Yeah. You got the, they're the full stack certified now, isn't it? And so everything is certified

Graham Walsh: 7:14

now. Yeah. We actually then did Bar Pro, which is for that medium to large space. And then our frame which you've got convenient placed over your shoulder there. Yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: 7:24

Really that was Noise supression in the framing on that is just, names in the name, but like it really is impressive. Yeah.

Graham Walsh: 7:31

And, a device to that for me, a personal device at home, be able to quickly, I saw, before we had this chat I didn't get my toast pop up from Outlook to say I've got a. But in the corner of my eye, my team's client popped. You said, oh, here's the link for our session. So having this as your, productivity assistant on your desk I is really great. I think, do you know what I like about it is,

Tom Arbuthnot: 7:49

and obviously I'm fortunate to have access to a bunch of. Of kit luckily to play with it. The kind of more single use of it. Like when I'm having a meeting with my internal people, I'll often turn and do that cuz I'm not then checking teams chat and doing everything else. I'm of more locked in. I think of it as a bit of a sit back meeting experience rather than what I typically do, which is three things at once.

Graham Walsh: 8:10

A multitask or, yeah, you see something

Tom Arbuthnot: 8:12

notification. It's a function of I'm locked into the meeting

Graham Walsh: 8:15

a. Yeah. There was actually a comment from a customer. They said using the device felt like less fatigue all day. And maybe that's cuz as you say, you're not multitasking. Yeah. Coming back to back calls all day, having great, camera and audio just right there in front of you. Just relieves you that, stress and pressure. I'm wearing a headset today cuz realistic working from home, the washing machine is on. But normally, yeah, I don't like wearing a headset. It's nice to have it as an option when the dogs go barking mad or whatever, But yeah, I love being, hands free, let yourself and just, listen back and. Not being, fixed to a device.

Tom Arbuthnot: 8:47

What are you seeing in terms of customer demand for the frame? So it's it's, it's not a cheap device in terms of the portfolio. I say that I often have this conversation with customers. They used to spend like thousands and thousands on personal video devices in, legal and finance and stuff. But is it the home exec? Is it huddle rooms? Where are you seeing the.

Graham Walsh: 9:07

So it runs let's call it different platform to a Microsoft Teams room. Yeah. And also different to a team's phone that you may have. So it's Teams Display is the category it sits in, and it's Let's call it, it's a hybrid bit of the two. So obviously yes, you can do telephony teams to teams calling pstn. If you've got that enabled on your tenant for your users, you can use that in your phone. Obviously compare with a Bluetooth headset wide headset, et cetera. Or use the built-in AI cause it has deep noise suppression but yeah, in terms of the use case as a personal user, so it's signed. With Tom's E five license, it's got all your credentials. Yeah, it's yours on your desk for you to use every day. And that's probably one of the the sort of bigger use cases that we see today. However the next use case is back to work, shall we say, and having the ability to have a device on desks or booth or, hot desk in areas where it's signed in with the new team shared device license. Yeah, eight, is it eight bucks a month? I think$8. Yeah. Eight US dollars. Yeah. So basically that's got an account and calling so it can make a pstn call.

Tom Arbuthnot: 10:06

Yeah, it's a very beta in the shared device mode. It's a very basic experience, isn't, I think that's important to understand. It's not really designed to be. Used much in that shared device mode. It's really, you are then hot desking into it, isn't

Graham Walsh: 10:17

it? Correct, yeah. So it's, it's a simplified, let's call it a booking panel. Very similar to that, sorry, the room. Using the same license You walk up, you can reserve that hot desk space and then at, 10:00 AM you come in and you sign in with your credentials. Then it turns into that personal mode. And then after your hot desking session at, 11:00 AM you've booked it for an hour, it'll actually automatically sign you out or you can tap to extend it. So it's so they're the two main use cases. And yeah, what we're seeing today is in the office in the sort of exec space or in those hot desking areas.

Tom Arbuthnot: 10:46

The other thing I'm excited about is it's a, I feel like it's a device and it's tempting fa, but a device execs can't break. feel like there's people, there's execs who absolutely work from home now and often they're the worst in terms of audio video quality or that they'll have a laptop pointing at the ceiling, that kinda thing. I feel like you have to do very well to cause yourself a bad experience on the frame because the video frames up, the audio locks in and it's. Always on. Good to go. One buttons hit type device.

Graham Walsh: 11:15

Correct? It's, they're ready to join that call. That scheduled call, yes. It's missing. Should we say some features that you might expect such as direct guest join? So if you wanna join a third party meeting. That's not there. Or proximity join these are some of the wishlists that I hope the Microsoft product group look at should we say to add to it, because I think that'll then complete the usability of it, yeah. Cause it's not quite a full room system. It'd be great, if you could have some of those features, you've got the data here on your device. Yeah. And you just wanna, you. Connect it in, like you do at Proximity, join. So yeah, it'd be nice to have some of those features. we, We had this

Tom Arbuthnot: 11:47

conversation when we were last at the London user group where mentally I keep slipping into thinking it, it is like a room and you expect that room functionality. It's not, it's a different stack. It's a different, yeah, a different use case. But yeah, you do default to, oh, it's a tiny room device, which isn't really,

Graham Walsh: 12:03

I think, especially as you see in the workplace. what would you call'em? Like these huddle booths or, single person booths where you go in the door and you feel like you're in a room, so you your brain probably thinks, oh, this is a room system when it's not Yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: 12:17

Yeah. But the Bar pro I'm not an AV person as and I feel like you are a You are, you're crossing the gr, the world between it and AV these days. But what's the difference between the bar and the bar Pro? And take us through the extendability of the bar.

Graham Walsh: 12:29

So it's using a next generation chip set, so it's faster, quicker, better, like you'd expect with any new sort of piece of hardware. The cameras lot are different. So actually in the Bar Pro there's two cameras, two 50 megapixel cameras, and the reason for that is for Widen telephoto to pick up a larger distance. So if people think of meters or feet, you've got the the bar on board, which go up to about five. Mm-hmm. uh, what's that? 15 feet in conversion. And then Bar Pro can go up to about 10 meters, 10, 11 meters. So what, 33 feet or so? So again, it all depends on the room style and usage as well. What we're seeing. Cuz a lot of the times your retro. Devices into rooms already. Unless you're fortunate enough to build a new space. And you might look at things like the Microsoft enhanced meter rooms, which front row, et cetera, which Yeah, with

Tom Arbuthnot: 13:10

the ar with the archetypes. Microsoft. Talk about the traditional room and then the signature. You've got loads of money to rearrange the furniture and make it all flash. And the reality is the. Majority of the rooms are gonna be traditional just by definition. You're not gonna Correct. Yeah. Rip out every room and do a signature new furniture It's a great experience. They're amazing. Yeah. But mostly you are gonna be retrofitting

Graham Walsh: 13:31

existing spaces. Exactly. Yeah. So on the Bar Pro again, over time we've added features. People convert compare to a Tesla. You've got the, you've got the car, let's make it better with software. Let's give you a Christmas jingle with the light, headlights flashing, whatever it might be. we don't quite do that, but for example, in, in the latest release, we have enabled what we call deep noise suppression. So we have it in the frame, if you, yeah, I've got that now. You want your empty, crisp packet and Russell La that will, block it all out on the frame. Now, on, also on the Bar Pro as well. So there's AI. Caption all the audio and obviously listening for that, vo vocal element. The other difference there on the bar Pro Is, coming out in the release we're about to release on there is the ability for that external audio. So yes, it can do rooms up to, 11 meters with the 16 beam point microwave that's built in there. However, the, some people like table mics, they like to have a mute button in front of them, maybe or, gooseneck mics, it's proper like AV fitted room sort of thing. Yeah. Or table clear and having. Ceiling tiles, or again, you might be retrofitting into a space that already had your short D S P and your Sure ceiling tiles. So why throw'em away? Let's keep them. Change your codec out and put in the teams room. So the first level we've done there is what we call U USB audio. there's USB port on the back of the device. And that can take direct connection to your DS P or you have a How,

Tom Arbuthnot: 14:44

how does that work from a driver's perspective? Cause I, when I'm talking about MTR Android versus MTR Windows, one of the things I talk about is extensibility. And obviously with Windows you've got that Windows base. So drivers and IOP is a little bit easier between device to device, in theory and by the spec. Any MTR Windows device works with any. MTR windows cuz the driver's update with Android. It's different story, isn't

Graham Walsh: 15:05

it? Indeed. Yeah. So obviously Android you have to have the driver on board. But for something like audio and I'll likeactually use the Windows terms cuz it's simple. The h i d device, whether it's a mouse. Headset. It's just, it's all the same. So when you, and another example would be a touchscreen. So if you took a bar or a bar pro and you're connected to your, Samsung, lg, Yama, whatever it might be, touchscreen, that's just a, a simple communication method, like a keyboard or touch display. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's a drivers for that piece. And again, that's how we do audio. Audio's just h. Essentially on that side of things. So no drivers are required. So meaning you can plug in your dsp directly,

Tom Arbuthnot: 15:42

right? So the DSP is just taking a feed. On the other way around the DSP would be pushing a feed to the bar,

Graham Walsh: 15:48

wouldn't it? Yeah. So as soon as you connect in the device it'll then disable the onboard audio. Mike and speakers. So then you're relying on that third party DSP to do

Tom Arbuthnot: 15:56

all the It's not, it's not about, it's an either or scenario. So you Correct. You'd have to have the room properly

Graham Walsh: 16:00

micd up. Correct. Yeah. So that's one use for that USB port. And then secondly, there's actually another network adapter port on the device. So again, looking in the future, potentially having network-based audio, so again, plugging that onto your, let's call it, oh, interesting audio. So the first step is, either usually the D S P or you can get a, what they call a USB Dante adapter. So you can convert it through that adapter and then bring it onto your network that way. So a few different ways to do that. External audio, and again, that seems to be quite popular because people are trying to put it into large spaces, but they also want great audio.

Tom Arbuthnot: 16:33

I is that one of the challenges at the moment is I certainly see this is people misunderstand not just neat bars, any bars, like they often, they're like the camera can see me, so it's fine. It's yeah, but like the audio's not gonna stretch that far,

Graham Walsh: 16:47

and like we always say, you can switch the camera off and still have your meeting if you've got great. Yeah. If it's, great video, but poor audio, then you've gotta revert to something else because you need to be able to hear it and listen to people clearly and talk back. So yeah, audio is, still really important. And again, one of the things we find is acoustics, whether it's tiles, flooring or whatever soft furnishings, whatever it might be. Yeah. It's still really important to, have that audio environment. we see a lot of, architects or designers, exposed ceilings. Pipe working. Yeah. Absolutely.

Tom Arbuthnot: 17:19

Load, load of glass. It looks really amazing until you try and

Graham Walsh: 17:23

have a meeting. Yeah. You're in a goldfish bowl essentially. Yeah, that's where, things like table mics can help out then. Having things like the ceiling tars and as you mentioned earlier, having certain noise areas where it blocks out certain, open plan areas maybe, or the mics only channel on a, certain direction. So again, that's where you may want to go into advanced audio and use that processing power of a DSP to, narrow it down or make that, only around the table sort of thing. Yeah. So it's only picking up certain audio, not background.

Tom Arbuthnot: 17:49

Oh, that's really cool. So I took you straight into hardware there, but I wanted dig in. What is your role in Neat, because you seem to be at every event on every flight. So what's the job,

Graham Walsh: 17:57

So my role is product specialist. Or pre-sales is traditionally, solutions consultant or whatever you wanna call it. That's the main day job with hat number one, So I wear a number of different hats but then also working with our right alliance so our Microsoft team globally working with Microsoft on and on, two different things. One is the engineering side, so with hand into our r and d team and assisting them. Yeah. And when, let's say Microsoft give a spec for a new feature. Do we have that enabled? Have we got it? Do we need to do something on our tenant? Managing our tenant as well on the back end to make sure everything's set up correctly, ready to start testing and develop a new feature. And then the other side is the go to market piece as well. Working working, uh,

Tom Arbuthnot: 18:35

Supporting the boot camps, that kinda thing.

Graham Walsh: 18:37

Exactly, yeah. So helping educate partners, customers, and When Microsoft have a events and, host let's and industry specific event, they'll invite the OEMs to come in I'll go along and present at some of them. And then also trade shows such as ISE coming up at the end of this month. So we're gonna have a nice big booth there and again, show all our products on display. So yeah, traveling a little bit, I'd say, it's always quite funny saying you're traveling to promote the use of video to save traveling, which is quite.

Tom Arbuthnot: 19:03

Yeah. But there's something about like I think with these kit decisions, like having hands on and even having demo units in play is really important. It's funny, obviously you can in theory go look at the online specs and Microsoft will tell you what type of room it's certified for, and everybody's I've got a trillion megapixel camera. It's cool, but Like a, getting to feel the kind of quality and then b testing the units out I think is so important. Cuz there's such a difference in performance between on paper similarly spec devices sometimes.

Graham Walsh: 19:32

And I think, going back to what we mentioned earlier, the room and the environment that you're going to put it in, is it Yeah. Able to cope in that environment and whether it's tricky or simple. And I think seeing is believing as well, obviously, seeing it in your own environment, getting your colleagues to see the technology and, we do something very unique at Neat, with our neat symmetry or AI framing. Which, is I think one of the first in the industry and others are imitating, copying or similar should we say. It's very different and able to capture these people. You know, Our torsos are head and shoulders. That's

Tom Arbuthnot: 20:02

pretty much how our industry works. Someone innovates and everybody else deeps, and then we all have to step it up

Graham Walsh: 20:05

again. Yeah. As what I used to say, it was a cat and mouse game. You always, one person leaves and someone else leaves and takes another, lead. Yeah. And that's what we wanna do at. just keep innovating, making it the best, user experience as possible. But gave back to your point of talking about innovating.

Tom Arbuthnot: 20:19

Yeah. Talk me through center of room cameras so neat. Center. You can't claim this as an innovation because I had one of the old poly around, I might still have one in my garage, but but what's the story there? Cause it's slightly different in this concept, isn't

Graham Walsh: 20:32

it? Yeah. I think the difference is how we're working today, yes. When Microsoft developed the round table, what was that for? Live meeting back in 2006? Maybe. Might, it might have been even been that long. Yeah. Cause it originally designed for live meeting. Definitely.

Tom Arbuthnot: 20:46

But yeah you're right in that day and age we still worked around a table and the remote person was the person outsider of the meeting, weren't they? Yeah, they weren't percent, they, everybody was talking to each other over the table. Hence the concept.

Graham Walsh: 20:58

Yeah. So I think the latest generation is because, it's that sort of 50 50 split now, half have been working at home, half would be in the office maybe. Yeah. The idea is that, we capture everyone in the room and we wanna get'em from the best angle. And yes, again like others have released their version. Some are only center of room. And then others are just on camera

Tom Arbuthnot: 21:15

links is one that Microsoft announced where it's standalone center of room, if that makes

Graham Walsh: 21:19

sense. Isn't it usb? Peripheral as well. So your windows based mtr from what I can see, yeah. So it's your only camera in. But you can switch cameras on Windows based MTRs. So if you,

Tom Arbuthnot: 21:28

so you could, in theory, you could switch from your center of re mode to your front of re

Graham Walsh: 21:32

mode on the panel bowling alley view, should we say. So if you could potentially do that. But what we're going to do at NEAT is actually make it an additional camera. So it's going to work in conjunction with your Bar board, bar Pro. I've even had a request to have it work with Frame To, see better a screen scenario And again, it goes back to that field of view. The frame, I think is 120 field of view. And their thinking is if they have a small four, four person booth, yes, you could have the frame at the end of the booth, you're sitting quite close to each other. So if you are hanging a neat center from. It's in the ceiling or, yeah. It's

Tom Arbuthnot: 22:04

one of the people that don't understand that you can mount this upside down and have the cable hold the unit so it can hang above.

Graham Walsh: 22:12

There you go. Yeah. I'll use my water bottle as an example. So yeah, I can sit on the table or I can be inverted and, know, look like the light that you have hanging down again, and then it'll have three cameras, so it'll pick up 360 and they'll actually overlap and stitch. But the whole idea, is it audio and video or is it just video? It is video and microphones, so it actually gives you basically

Tom Arbuthnot: 22:32

micro extension.

Graham Walsh: 22:32

You've got 16 mics in the device as well. Simple P OE connection, so it sits on the network so it doesn't actually connect directly back to the device. So it's just a land port Poe. But it will also then work in combination with the front of room camera. So it so

Tom Arbuthnot: 22:44

you say Poe, is it a network device or is it, does it need a direct line back to

Graham Walsh: 22:48

the not network? As long as it's on the network and it can discover the bar usually on the same vlan, et cetera. It will then automatically pair, just like our neat pad does, it pairs over the network to the bar or board. So yeah, the idea is that if I'm here talking to you face to face, it's, and it's picking me up from the NEAT center cuz I'm by the table all great. But if I stood up to go and maybe draw on the neat board, we're doing a whiteboard session, I'm gonna be near the neat board. The camera's not gonna try and track me from the center of room. It's gonna use the neat board camera instead and send that segment of my video into the call. It's gonna be so

Tom Arbuthnot: 23:21

exciting when this stuff comes together and it's gonna be interesting because we are relying on vendor. Framing and AI and technology. So there's gonna be an interesting level of competition there. Cause other people obviously are looking at center of room, looking at multi-camera as well. and Microsoft are gonna do some clever stuff in the cloud with teams, but a lot of this stuff you are talking about will come down to how the vendor chooses to present. Yeah. I assume, is

Graham Walsh: 23:45

it called like edge processing? Is that where my, how the Microsoft. I think it was edge processing, wasn't it? And yeah,

Tom Arbuthnot: 23:50

the Intel. Intel frame Edge, isn't it? Yeah. As opposed to Intel frame. That, that brand covers kit in a number of different ways. Yeah. Clever clever Edge kit. All doing it with Clever in the cloud, or Correct Both I think, which

Graham Walsh: 24:01

will then be on the pro license.

Tom Arbuthnot: 24:04

We've got Adam Jacobs on Teams Fireside Chat. Sure. This month if you're listening to this as it comes out. And yeah, we're gonna get into that in telephone stuff. Cause I know he's working on some of that. It's pretty interesting what they're doing in the cloud as well, cloud side. But obviously Edge gives you. And it in terms of you, you've got that option to mix in multiple cameras.

Graham Walsh: 24:21

Exactly. And then at the end of the day, you're sending that one stream back into teams. So yeah, whether you're on your teams, phone walking away or on the train, you're still gonna see that mixed image from that neat room with center board and bar maybe.

Tom Arbuthnot: 24:36

It feels like we're on the cusp of some real innovation, the AI stuff, and it's only gonna get better and better in terms of knowing who to frame and how to frame. And I feel like it's gonna materially change that remote experience to feel like you're much more engaged, we used to have the problem of just the bowling alley and not seeing anybody, the smart framing saved some of that, but this is gonna be next.

Graham Walsh: 24:58

Yeah. And I think, yeah, it'll give that better eye contact to people, when you are on calls cause that's what you wanna see is people's reactions, head and shoulders like you would if you're in the room. Yeah. So I think, we'll, it will improve that. Obviously, I think symmetry takes it to one level and makes it much better. One of the, when we are looking at the designs and concepts of the device, when I do turn around a bit and maybe I talk to someone else, we still capture you. But you lose that eye contact then and that reaction from the, when you're at the far end. And that's what Neat Center will do is, actually when I move over here, it'll change my camera view. So we're, again, we're looking face on and pick up that stitch. Yeah.

Tom Arbuthnot: 25:32

So front of room and send a room and some intelligence to make the right call on the direction. Correct. Yep. how far do you think we are away from a nice cinematic intros and outros to our meeting? The ar all come in. It'll be like a slow pan to let you know who's in the room.

Graham Walsh: 25:48

That I did see one vendor. I think they were doing that. They were like panning out and looking at room, really? Who's here? And then going back to the people. But yeah, again, everyone has a different interpretation of, what should you be looking at in a. Because, yeah, ultimately you don't want someone standing next to me and not knowing they're in the meeting. Okay. The kids, that could be a problem

Tom Arbuthnot: 26:06

depending on how you're talking and who you're talking

Graham Walsh: 26:08

about, and, let's call it that could be the problem with traditional PTZ cameras. You focus in on, seats one to four maybe, and that's all it sees, and no one presses it. Someone could be sitting in seat number six and listening in on the conversation. Yeah. At least with ai, it picks everything up and knows who's in the room.

Tom Arbuthnot: 26:23

Yeah. Yeah. It'd be interesting how good the smart speaker technology gets around the attribution as well, and knowing who's in the room. It feels like we're early days on that, but that could be really interesting as well.

Graham Walsh: 26:35

Yeah I've not heard or seen anyone use that in anger yet. Up to 10 people in a. And maybe it's just because the limitation of devices that there's not widespread and maybe, it'll open up more to cloud confusion process. Yeah. I think

Tom Arbuthnot: 26:47

you're the only one that ships with it. The others are obviously is EPOS and Sennheiser, isn't it? So they're addon add. You have to really want to go and buy an additional one. Yeah. I think also, I think enterprise is generally nervous about voice recognition and voice prints You have to proactively enroll. So it's not it just works. You have to go and do some

Graham Walsh: 27:04

extra effort to make it happy, because who was it? Alexa for Business is dropping support from major. And I Interesting said something off here. Yeah. But yeah, my mind went, got everything. So it's interesting that they coming outta the, the voice recognition market because yeah, I never saw it as a compelling reason in the meeting space to have, Hey, start my meeting. Yeah. You

Tom Arbuthnot: 27:26

know, we've got that now. We've got, you can, yeah. You can either press or or you can have it as from what the microphone is, but like a voice activation mode. But again, I don't, I haven't seen loads of that in real world. There was a real spike in interest around Covid, obviously. So suddenly everybody was like, oh the mobile control. Yeah. I don't

Graham Walsh: 27:42

wanna touch the device, but I think, something like proximity join is much more powerful. It's your device. Yeah. Oh yeah. I'm in meeting room six. Yeah. Start my meeting. And use proximity to join, I think. I think that's far easier than. It's more,

Tom Arbuthnot: 27:55

it's more reliable than voicemail. Again, technologists, I'm sure a lot of us have this kit at home. It's, I have loads of Google and Alexa and it's 90% there, but every now and again, it just decides not to turn off the lights for some reason. It's that will frustrate business users, so it has to be very high percentage,

Graham Walsh: 28:10

a hundred.

Tom Arbuthnot: 28:12

Accurate every time. Yeah. A hundred. There's a target guy. I wasn't do for a hundred, but yeah, Awesome. appreciate you taking the time before we wrap it up and I'm sure we'll have you back on again. I wanna talk about N G D ama cuz I feel like that is something that everybody should be aware of. Talk, talk us through that quickly.

Graham Walsh: 28:27

So yeah, it's a monthly show that I started with Jimmy Vaughn and Michael Trusler. So two other people well known in the industry. And we just come together every month and. What's new what's new coming out in terms of hardware, devices, software, features and then, literally an ama ask me anything on, what are you seeing? Have you got a problem with your room? Like they mentioned maybe voice activation's not working, this, that and the other. So people, throw in questions. We try and answer, you stump the chump

Tom Arbuthnot: 28:52

and help each. Yeah, I think you've got a really good community there. I just wanna, I you, if I, if I don't hit the Europe one, I try and get up for the APAC one, but there's always a good conversation there and it's like a bit like team twice side tracks, non-recorded scenario. So people are fairly open about what's going on, what their challenges are, what's coming,

Graham Walsh: 29:08

and yeah we try and get a guest speaker every now and then as well. So we had Tony Woodruff from Microsoft last month and he was talking about. New devices deployment playbook that they've built. So again, people training on how to you deploy devices, Yeah, monthly call, we try and I think roughly aim for the third Monday, strike Tuesday.

Tom Arbuthnot: 29:27

Where can people find it? What's the best of your URL to hit to?

Graham Walsh: 29:30

Lucky enough to have aka.ms/tdma. Oh fancy It's hosted on my blog site v graham walsh.com/td ama. So again, what I do is upload all the q and a from the teams chat each month in., you can go back and look at any of the the q and a that people asked, when's this feature? How do you enable this sort of thing? And the slide deck is in there, but as you say, we don't record the actual content itself. So people can speak more freely and openly. But I also spun up a a Discord server as well, so a chat room there so people can go and ask questions. But obviously then there's the official way of communicating with resources through the tech c. On there as well. You've got Microsoft product managers that will answer questions on there too.

Tom Arbuthnot: 30:08

Yeah. And I strongly recommend that if you all can make the time for that. That is one of the ones where certainly it helps me keep up with all the device news and the device stuff moves so, so fast. It's good to know what's coming what's just dropped in the latest updates and or, and, challenges people are having as well. The real world.

Graham Walsh: 30:22

The last thing, there's a great, documentation piece, but there's also that real world piece which can be different sometimes.

Tom Arbuthnot: 30:29

Yeah. That's where we live in the real world. Exactly. thanks Graham. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks for everything you do with all the community stuff and thanks for personally answering my questions on a fairly regular basis. pleasure. I'm gonna put you, I'm gonna put you on the spot here. One of the things we're gonna do with this show is have people suggest someone else and other Microsoft teams insider I should get onto the show. So who do you think, you've got great contacts across the inventory. Who do you think I should have on to get some Microsoft Teams insights?

Graham Walsh: 30:55

Wow. What will you look at what area? Any part of

Tom Arbuthnot: 30:57

teams. Any part of teams. We're gonna go, we're gonna cover the full

Graham Walsh: 31:00

gambit, Gosh, really Put me on the spot. Actually maybe Eric Marey doing a lot on the voice side. He loves doing that Skype to team my voice and

Tom Arbuthnot: 31:09

stuff. He's just set up his own company as well.

Graham Walsh: 31:11

Exactly. Yeah. So it'd be great to find out more about Eric and what he's doing on his.

Tom Arbuthnot: 31:16

Yeah, Eric, that's a good shout. Eric is deep into hacking and reverse engineering everything he can as well. I love

Graham Walsh: 31:22

watching him. I was watching a video, what he was doing the other day, I think repairing Xbox headset gaming headsets. So he loves to go down to that deep level. Yeah, he's like hardware hacking

Tom Arbuthnot: 31:29

as well. Yeah, I know. He's done some cool stuff with SIP and SIP Gateway as well. It's really interesting.

Graham Walsh: 31:34

So yeah, maybe get Eric on the show. All right,

Tom Arbuthnot: 31:36

Eric, we're coming for you Cool, thanks Graham. Really appreciate the time. No doubt. We'll talk soon and just the last your blog for people that want to catch it. Yeah.

Graham Walsh: 31:44

Hosted@thegrahamwalsh.com, so you'll find me everywhere on that address.

Tom Arbuthnot: 31:48

All right. Thanks Graham. Appreciate the time mate.

Graham Walsh: 31:50

Thanks. Cheers. Bye.