Craig Durr

Researcher/analyst in the tech industry. Love data that creates insights. I look at human elements of our work lives - the workforce, workplace & the workflows

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Decision Point: The Q-SYS Platform Approach https://t.co/JR637uAFyJ

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

🍵 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗯 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗰𝗼𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗽𝘂𝗹𝗹 𝘂𝗽 𝗮 𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗶𝗿. 𝗧𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝘀𝗮𝘃𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴. 🪑

Today is the day. I am so excited to share our latest episode of #CollaborationCafe with you.

This one takes us to the heart of #SiliconValley. But it's not what you think it is.

Our industry lives in quarters. What shipped last quarter, what launched last quarter, did we hit our numbers. It matters, but every now and then, you have to step back and play a different game.

So this time, we're talking about what it means to take the long view. I sat down with Henry Levak, VP of Product for Team Workspaces at @LogitechBiz, someone who makes decisions that stretch out one, two, three, five, seven years. Over a cup of coffee, I wanted to understand how he actually does it.

And here's the part I keep coming back to. The long view isn't a talking point; it's in the work. You can see it in a product like Spot, which grew out of a conversation that started years before it shipped. You can see it in the design choices made so the technology stays in the background instead of demanding attention, or in the extra "hidden" features so that two products will be compatible in the future. Mostly, you can see it in a way of thinking that plays well past the next quarter.

Watch it here or watch the full episode on our YouTube channel.

And if you want to talk more about what it takes to have a long view, find Henry or me at @InfoComm . Coffee's on me.

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Live from Cisco Live in Las Vegas.

@Cisco just announced Cloud Control, a unified platform pulling compute, networking, security, observability, and collaboration into one operating model for the humans and the agents working the estate.

Cisco’s framing is a “secure harness” rather than a single pane of glass, which is doing real analytical work because glass is passive while the harness is active execution, with identity, policy, and zero trust built into the control path so humans and agents are operating from the same telemetry under the same governance.

For collab teams, this is the version of the story you have been waiting on for a decade, where Webex devices, rooms, calling, and contact center finally land in the same console as the network they ride on and the security perimeter that protects them.

Operational parity with the rest of IT, answered in one product.

For every other IT team, the bet runs deeper, because agentic operations only work when the infrastructure underneath gives agents a safe surface to act on, and Cisco is betting that the next abstraction after infrastructure-as-code is infrastructure-as-a-harness, where governed control surfaces let agents reason, act, and remain auditable across the whole estate.

AI Canvas is where humans and agents investigate together in real time, and Cloud Control Studio is where customers build their own agents and apps on top of Cisco’s APIs, MCPs, and policy model.

Agree with Jeetu Patel, the architectural bet is right.

The execution test is whether the per-domain depth that made Meraki, ThousandEyes, Intersight, and Webex worth running on their own actually survives the unification, and that is what I am watching the rest of the week from the floor.

#CiscoLive #CloudControl #AgenticAI #AgenticOps

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Your users are going to find different platforms to be on. You have to go find them.
Nathan Coutinho dropped this at #SXSW and it's worth repeating.

Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

I might use the wrong term. I might need someone to bring me along.
That's the point. If they're explaining it to me on camera, they're explaining it to everyone watching.
Full episode: https://t.co/EeW9zGtO9K
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV #AVintheAM

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

"Community could be our own worst echo chamber if we let it."

@tdalbright nailed it at #SXSW. Go find the uncomfortable rooms.

Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty

#CollaborationCafe #ProAV

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Most creators have an agenda. @chris_neto asks his community what THEY want.
Nathan Coutinho broke down why that changes everything.
Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV #AVintheAM

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Two kinds of community.

The audience you talk to. And the people who make you better at talking to them.
@tdalbright and Nathan Coutinho broke this down at #SXSW.

Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

I said it at #SXSW and I'll say it here: we drown ourselves in acronyms that mean absolutely nothing to anyone outside our world.

Getting uncomfortable was the whole point.

Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Get someone two steps away from the booth and you get a completely different person.
@chris_neto said it. I believe it. We proved it at #SXSW.
Full episode: https://t.co/l71PQpkbty
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Most return-to-office conversations still orbit around collaboration: getting people together, rebuilding culture, recreating the informal moments that remote work eliminated.

Recent @Steelcase research across nine countries identified something that gets far less attention. People spend two-thirds of their workday working alone, and the majority are not satisfied with how the office supports that time.

What actually moves the needle for focus, according to the research:

🔸 Visual and acoustic privacy
🔸 Adjustable lighting
🔸 Intuitive, easy-to-use furniture
🔸 A variety of settings for different types of focus tasks

Pods, partial enclosures, acoustic panels. These are not headline renovations, but the data suggests they are among the highest-return investments a workplace team can make.

If an office is optimized for collaboration but underserves focused individual work, it leaves the majority of the workday under-equipped.

Full link in the comments.

#WorkplaceDesign #HybridWork #FocusWork #EmployeeProductivity #OfficeDesign #Steelcase

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Outsiders on the Collobration Cafe https://t.co/mKvatFamF3

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

I took @chris_neto, @tdalbright, and Nathan Coutinho to #SXSW, stepped outside our industry bubble, and learned something. Full episode: https://t.co/CGvWT5g0RI
#CollaborationCafe #ProAV #AVintheAM

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Sam Kennedy from NetSpeek called it "sneaker wear." Someone physically walking into a room to check it's configured correctly.
Lena detects configuration drift and restores the room automatically. No human needed.
Full interview: https://t.co/WIPwuR50F5

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Generalized AI pulls from internet searches and forums. That's why it hallucinates.
Lena is trained on primary source docs, release notes, and admin guides pulled directly from vendor partners. Constantly updated. Purpose-built.
Big difference. Full interview: https://t.co/PZtSfrN50S

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Alert-based monitoring: right idea, real problem.
When IT admins are drowning in pings and still don't know what to fix or how, users sit in downtime while the team chases answers.
Sam Kennedy from NetSpeek explains how Lena changes that. Full interview: https://t.co/AFLb8hbsMb
#AVIndustry #AI #ITManagement

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Sam was talking to me. Not touching anything.

Lena found the problem, identified the right fix, sent commands to the devices, and restored the room to its ready state. Automatically.

That's orchestration. Full interview: https://t.co/WIPwuR50F5
#AVIndustry #AI #ITManagement

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

"When someone asks me where I work, I tell them I work at an AI company."
Osman Bicakci from NetSpeek isn't describing a feature. He's describing the foundation of what they're building.

That's a different kind of company. Full interview: https://t.co/AEK17HFUX9
#AVIndustry #AI

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

Monitoring tools flag the problem. Someone still has to fix it. That gap between alert and resolution is exactly where NetSpeek is focused.
Full interview: https://t.co/WIPwuR50F5
#ITManagement #AIOps #EnterpriseIT

[Craig Durr @craigdurr]

You might know @Chris_Neto from AV and the AM on Twitter. Or from his years of presence across the AV community.
But 30+ years of pulling cable makes him something more: a genuine expert on where this industry is going.
Full conversation: https://t.co/DMpE8DJqap
#AVIndustry #Leadership