7 reasons to put Alexa in your conference room

This post comes to us from Jordan Wills, Director of Marketing at Cloud9 Smart, an authorized Control4 dealer. 

Now that the smaller and outrageously low-priced Echo Dot is hitting the market it’s becoming harder to resist trying what many consider to be the most convenient piece of tech they’ve bought in years. Most Echos end up in the kitchen (where hands-free timer setting and DJing tend to be the most helpful), but we’ve been wondering about its potential in the conference room. We put one in ours and here is where it shined:

Settling Debates:

Some disagreements need to be tabled for the sake of meeting momentum. Others are easily answerable, and who better to provide a quick answer than the dictionary- and Wiki-connected Alexa?

Confirming Estimations: 

Unsure estimations like the local time at a partner’s headquarters or the distance to a prospect’s office can be confirmed in an instant thanks to Echo, along with quick math.

Determining Room Availability:

With the ability to link to your conference room’s calendar, room availability for the rest of the day can be read off then and there, for immediate scheduling of your next meeting.

Setting Timers:

For the aggressive agenda, setting timers can be a helpful way to keep one topic from taking over a meeting that was supposed to cover three. (warning: setting timers on verbose co-workers could be hazardous to your dynamic.)

Ordering Supplies:

Event planning meetings are full of “Oh, we’ll need one of those, too!” moments. Rather than jot it down to order later, skip a step by adding it to your shopping list then and there.

Filling Time:

That thumb-twiddling period when someone will be there any minute is the perfect time to have Alexa read you headline news for the day, or entertain you with its (admittedly terrible) jokes.

Listening to Music:

We wouldn’t recommend playing any music through Echo; its built-in speakers just aren’t high quality enough. Tie it into your Control4 system, however, and you can easily throw on Pandora, Napster, or other streaming services through high-quality, overhead speakers. 

While Echo also boasts integration with DIY lighting, shades and temperature products, reliability gets shakier the more one-off components you try to integrate. We still recommend room control via a control platform like Control4 and meticulously thought-out scenes. Calling those scenes up through always-on voice control is the next step of convenience.

Interested in finding out more about voice control with Control4 and Amazon Alexa? Simply fill out the form below and we'll be in touch.