The Collab Collective

One in 100 people in a meeting room ever touches the camera controls. Cisco built an agent to do it for them. At InfoComm 2026, Chief Analyst Craig Durr sat down with Rich Bayes, Senior Director and Head of Product for Cisco Collaboration Devices, on Cisco's case for treating the meeting room itself as AI infrastructure. Rich's framing: collaboration devices aren't just video endpoints anymore. They're sensors into the room, the network, and the last mile connecting AI to the people actually using the space. A few things worth knowing: 🟠 New agentic services run directly on Cisco devices, including a Director agent that automatically chooses the best camera mode for the room (since almost nobody touches that setting manually), a Notetaker agent for the meetings that never connect to a platform, and an early translator agent built for voice-to-voice translation that preserves tone, not just words. 🟠 The Board Pro G3 brings Cinematic Meetings and RoomVision camera experiences into an all-in-one board, with AV over IP extensibility for adding PTZ cameras and ceiling mics without losing the minutes-not-hours install time Cisco is known for. 🟠 Zoom Rooms for Cisco devices, announced at the show, lets customers run a native Zoom-first experience on Cisco hardware without losing Cisco intelligence underneath, joining last year's Zoom Meetings support inside the Webex experience. 🟠 Workspace Advisor builds a digital twin of the room to catch drift over time, while Agentic Ops uses an MCP integration so IT admins can query Control Hub data through Copilot or any MCP-compatible AI tool in plain language. Craig's read: Cisco is building a platform on both ends, the endpoint and the IT admin's AI workflow, that ties every room back into a single Cisco ecosystem story rather than treating each space as its own island. Watch the full conversation now. #InfoComm2026 #ProAV #AgenticAI

Good audio used to just be good audio. Now it's the data layer the AI builds on. At InfoComm 2026, Craig Durr sat down with Erik Vaveris, VP of Product Management and CMO at Shure, for a conversation that reframes audio's role in the AI era. A few takeaways from the conversation: 🟠 The meeting is data now, and audio quality determines how clean that data is. 🟠 Audio is a human factor as much as a technical one. Erik's recent MIT Technology Review podcast appearance made the case that sound quality shapes how credible and trustworthy a speaker comes across, whether they realize it or not. 🟠 A decade after the original Microflex Advance launch, the new MXA925 flagship puts AI-trained processing onboard the mic itself, handling echo cancellation, denoising, and dereverb before the signal ever reaches a meeting platform. 🟠 IntelliMix Room Kits now run Zoom Rooms alongside Microsoft Teams, and ShureCloud brings fleet management into IT's world. Craig's take: whoever owns the audio inputs owns how well the AI performs on top of them. After 101 years in audio, Shure is positioning itself as the foundation under the AI-powered room. Catch the full conversation and explore the solutions discussed at shure.com/infocomm #InfoComm2026 #ProAV #WorkplaceAI

Hot on the heels of Q-SYS's June 3rd Activate, Craig Durr will be sitting down with two of the executives who took the stage. Patrick Heyn (VP of Marketing, QSC) and Jason Moss (Head of Marketing and Ecosystem, Acuity Intelligent Spaces) will join him live on June 10 for the first analyst conversation about what was announced. Don't think of this as a keynote recap. It's the analyst conversation that follows the announcements. We'll dig into: 🔸 The new RoomSuite additions 🔸 The deepening Microsoft partnership 🔸 Why buying AV at the application level keeps tripping up workplace strategy

Last week at Enterprise Connect 2026, Craig Durr sat down with Chris Morrissey, General Manager of Zoom CX to talk about the thing that’s plaguing employees today: friction. Friction is everywhere, and the cost is higher than most organizations realize. Here’s what stood out in the conversation: 🟠 94% of employees say friction is getting in the way of their work, according to Zoom and Deloitte research. 🟠 25 hours per week are spent on meeting-related activity. 63% of that time isn't in the meeting at all. 🟠 Zoom's AI platform targets the "work around the work," helping employees show up prepared and take action faster after conversations end. 🟠 Zoom Virtual Agent 3.0 now hands off full context to human agents, so customers never have to repeat themselves. 🟠 A self-learning knowledge loop means every escalated call makes the system smarter, with humans staying in the loop to validate. 🟠 Zoom's contact center strategy is deliberately horizontal. When 50% of organizations say every team is accountable for customer experience, a platform that spans the whole org becomes the differentiator. This is a strong story. Watch the full interview to hear how Zoom is connecting employee and customer experience through a unified AI foundation.👇 #DFE #EnterpriseConnect #ZoomCX #AI #CollabCollective #ContactCenter

🎬 New Direct from the Expo is live from Enterprise Connect 2026. Craig Durr sat down with the Zoom team to unpack their biggest argument of the week: employee experience and customer experience now run on the same AI foundation. What's covered: 🟠 AI Companion 3.0, across every surface, not just Zoom 🟠 Agent Builder, no-code automation for any employee 🟠 AI Docs, Sheets, and Slides, turning meeting context into finished deliverables 🟠 Zoom Virtual Agent 3.0, Expert Assist, Workflow Orchestration, and CX Insights, all GA One shared intelligence layer. Across collaboration and the contact center. That's the platform story Zoom is telling right now. Theresa Larkin Michelle Couture Watch the full interview.👇 #EnterpriseConnect2026 #Zoom #WorkplaceTech #DirectFromTheExpo #CollaborationTech

🎬 New Direct from the Expo is live from Enterprise Connect 2026. Craig Durr caught up with Malachi Threadgill from GoTo to unpack a year of vertical execution and a brand new announcement. Here's what's covered: 🟠 GoTo Connect for Automotive, 3,500+ dealerships, AI Receptionist, and deep DMS and CRM integrations 🟠 GoTo Connect for Education, safety-first design, legacy system compatibility, and predictable pricing for budget-constrained districts 🟠 GoTo Connect for Healthcare, announcing at Enterprise Connect, HIPAA-ready by default with EHR integrations across Epic, Athenahealth, Oracle Health, and more The horizontal UCaaS market is consolidating. GoTo is going the other direction, deeper into the verticals that need purpose-built solutions the most. Watch the full interview below. 👇 #EnterpriseConnect2026 #GoTo #UCaaS #DirectFromTheExpo #WorkplaceTech #CollaborationTech