By Matt Pruznick It's wonderful: with a few taps on a pocket-sized device, we can do just about anything—video chat, share vacation photos on a TV, or fill an entire home with music. But these conveniences are causing headaches for designers of commercial AV systems: end users now expect their workplace equipment to have the same intuitive functionality. This topic was one of the key trends covered last week at a panel discussion titled "The Future of the Workplace," held at Sennheiser's newly opened pop-up store in SoHo.
In 2011—five years ago to this exact day—I wrote an article titled "The Clouds Are Forming," which, little did I know at the time, ended up to be very prophetic. The article started off with my distaste for buzzwords and phrases, but this one phrase, which was relatively new at the time, seemed to be a formidable trend, if there is such a thing. That phrase was "the cloud."