By Alice Chambers |
Step into any modern workspace and you’ll see how AI-powered collaboration tools are changing the ways we work in meetings: conversations are flowing more naturally, fewer eyes are darting to keyboards and there is a growing expectation that the technology around us should fade into the background. However, all of this relies on participants being able to hear clearly.
For Josh Blalock, director of collaboration ecosystem and engagement at Shure, AI can only amplify human connectivity when the foundational audio is clean, consistent and trustworthy.
“Shure is enabling human-to-human collaboration that is more impactful, efficient and focused during meetings,” he says. “The distraction of technology – that’s where good audio and conferencing equipment comes into the mix by ensuring you’re not having to think about it.”
It’s a reminder that “good enough” audio was made for the era of simple phone calls, not for intelligent systems that now capture, analyse, summarise and act on every spoken detail.
“Audio that is good enough captures every sound – from air conditioners to typing on a keyboard – but the idea of good enough is no longer good enough,” explains Blalock. “We’re not just talking about speaking to each other, meetings are enabling further productivity with AI-powered tools that work behind the scenes for us. You can’t just turn over good enough data to these systems. Clear, consistent audio from a brand that you know is going to deliver the most seamless, cleaned up data is vital.”
When asked what distinguishes genuinely effective collaboration experiences from setups that simply connect people, Blalock answers quickly.
“The distinguishing mark is a solution that 100 per cent truly enables you to abandon the thinking of technology and just focus on collaborating together,” he says.
Blalock believes technology will become increasingly invisible, yet continue to drive greater efficiencies, in the future. He cites Facilitator, an AI-powered tool in Microsoft Teams as an example.
“Facilitator mimics another colleague being present to do a bunch of tasks that we as humans don’t want to keep doing because they’re distracting,” he says. “It should be so easy you don’t have to think about what you’re having to do with the technology.”
This frictionless ideal becomes especially relevant when resolving the problem of meeting fatigue, where employees feel tired, disconnected and unmotivated from work due to video conferencing challenges. Yet again, audio plays a large role.
“Meeting fatigue is caused by our brain overthinking, including in our subconscious,” explains Blalock. “The reality is our brains are having to filter out when you have poor or only good enough audio. We want the audio to truly understand what a voice is and then do the real work of getting rid of all the other noise. If it doesn’t feel like a natural human interaction – if you’re aware of someone calling in from somewhere else – you will get meeting fatigue.”
Multiple industries have relied on Shure’s products for one hundred years in scenarios where failure is not an option.
“When it comes to Shure, our history is full of broadcasters, entertainers and even militaries during world wars leveraging our solutions for critical communications,” says Blalock. “To this day, we still build our devices to military spec to make sure they are the most reliable and trustworthy for all industries. Organisations operating in those different verticals choose Shure over and over again. That speaks volumes about how we clean up noise and deal with meeting fatigue.”
As meeting spaces become more varied and include everything from huddle rooms to auditoriums, the need for reliable, adaptable technology continues to grow. Shure addresses this with Teams-certified solutions and a design philosophy built around scalability.
“We have a certified Teams Room solution for all kinds of meeting spaces,” says Blalock. “We’ve extended our reliability so that if organisations need a refresh or want to outfit more rooms, we now offer room kits based on that foundation system.”
Flexibility is particularly crucial for rooms that break traditional moulds.
“Consider an auditorium with far more seating than a traditional large meeting space, or a divisible room where a removable wall can instantly double the capacity,” says Blalock. “A regular Teams Room can’t account for that level of variability – and that’s where the flexibility, programmability and customisable approach of Shure audio really comes into play.”
As workplaces lean deeper into AI-assisted collaboration, one truth becomes clearer: productivity doesn’t start with the software on the surface, but with the sound at the core.
Discover more insights from these partners and others, in the Winter 2025 issue of Technology Record. Don’t miss out – subscribe for free today and get future issues delivered straight to your inbox.