Welcome to WorkSpace ConnectWelcome to WorkSpace Connect

Over at our sister properties No Jitter and Enterprise Connect, our audiences of enterprise IT professionals have been telling us with increasing frequency that other departments — namely Real Estate/Facilities — often stand in their way of delivering effective technology solutions for corporate meeting rooms. Get them talking, and you'll hear all about glass-walled meeting rooms with abysmal acoustics, rooms with inadequate power sources or Wi-Fi dead zones with no network drops, or audio-visual gear so complicated that nobody knows what to do with it.

The frustration is palpable, especially for those enterprise IT professionals who carry the onus of helping their companies build a collaborative culture. After all, the modern meeting room — big or small — is a critical enabler of such initiatives. Enterprises want employees to be able to walk in, click a button, and begin collaborating, via voice or video, with anybody else, anywhere. It's all about keeping employees engaged and giving them positive experiences that make them want to stick around — just ask HR how important that is!

The disconnect we heard about from our No Jitter and Enterprise Connect communities planted the seed for what has blossomed into this site, WorkSpace Connect. Neither IT nor Real Estate/Facilities nor HR alone can bring about the changes required to meet the collaborative workforce imperative. They need to be acting in sync, to capitalize on the investments they've made or plan to make in advanced collaboration solutions, modern office spaces, and in the people themselves doing the collaborative work.

As my colleague Eric Krapf, publisher of WorkSpace Connect, has written, "It's not a secret within most enterprises that these three departments could stand to work more closely together, and that the costs of not doing so are rising. We believe the same technologies and ways of thinking that are transforming the workplace now offer the best chance yet for the elements of the triumvirate to overcome the obstacles and truly come together to support the multifaceted collaboration needs of the employee."

We'd like WorkSpace Connect to be the place that all three of these disciplines can come together to share practical advice, best practices, and thought leadership that will help propel these initiatives. We've lined up contributors who will share the latest thinking on workspace design, IT, and people management trends, with pieces such as:

We'd love your input, too. Share your ideas in the article comment boxes, email me if you'd like to contribute, sign up to receive our weekly newsletter, and consider attending our companion one-day WorkSpace Connect Summit, taking place on Monday, March 30, in Orlando, Fla. Your company's connected future awaits!