On this episode of Collaboration Cafe, the Collab Collective’s Craig Durr talks with Dan Root, Head of Global Strategic Alliances at Barco, for a conversation recorded in Kortrijk, Belgium. They explore the evolution of Barco’s ClickShare technology, the company’s deepening relationship with Microsoft, and how partnerships are shaping the future of workplace collaboration. Dan also shares insights into Barco’s heritage, its sustainability-focused headquarters, and how the Experience Center showcases modern meeting environments.
Or tune in on your preferred streaming platform:
Craig Durr: Dan Root
Dan Root: Hey, Mr. Craig Durr. How are you doing?
Craig Durr: Good to see you. I love the spot that you got here.
Dan Root: Oh, thank you.
Craig Durr: This is a beautiful place. This is my first time in Kor-trijk… Kortrijk. Thank you. I'm going to get it right, I swear.
Dan Root: So I started on the vendor side of the house, and then from there, we were analysts for a while.
Craig Durr: You and I met when you were working with Bluescape.
Dan Root: Yes
Craig Durr: Now what is Bluescape?
Dan Root: So Bluescape was in digital whiteboarding and kind of digital canvas back before it really started to grab hold, pre-Covid… well before Covid. So I left right as Covid hit, and there were a whole bunch of enterprises that were like, “How do we onboard these tools into our stack for our people who can no longer come into the office?” And after a little while, our good mutual friend, Alan, came and asked, “Hey, would you like to maybe roll up your little shop and come work at a more established analyst firm because we really have a lot of inquiries and questions around how to deploy these things right now?”
Craig Durr: And you work now with Barco?
Dan Root: Yes, I work with ClickShare, part of Barco, and we are the global leader in wireless casting and conferencing technology. My title is the Head of Global Strategic Alliances. Basically, all of the vendor partners that we have within the ecosystem. So both upstream and downstream partners. Upstream is more of the platforms, the things where we're looking ahead two years from now and how we integrate and make sure we have a seamless flow.
Craig Durr: The ecosystems, right?
Dan Root: Yes
Craig Durr: This would be like the Microsoft, the Zoom, Google, Cisco platforms… things like that, right?
Dan Root: And then on the downstream side of the house is all of our vendor partners in market for our certification and compatibility program. We have, what I would like to say, is one of the strongest compatibility and certification programs out with over 400 devices total involved.
Craig Durr: 400 devices? Wow. You know, it's always been, and I'm not trying to pamper your ego here, but you've always been a really good connector of people, right? The idea of taking, “Hey, this person over here really should talk to this person over here, and I just want to help them get together.” Thank you. What a perfect goal this is for you. I mean, honestly, if there's an idea of connecting hardware to make it into a solution, it's in line with what you've done in terms of connecting people to make it into a bigger conversation.
So one of the things I thought, what was really interesting when around the time you joined Barco, is when I saw that relationship with Microsoft develop. You guys are part of one of the marquee partners, a part of an MDEP program as a Microsoft Device Ecosystem Platform.
Dan Root: So one of the things that we as ClickShare decided was that we wanted to move from being a Linux-based appliance to something that was more readily used within the meeting room. So we assessed some of the different platforms that were out there or operating systems at the time, and it just so happened that Microsoft was just in its starting to unroll these announcements about this Microsoft endorsed or Microsoft version of Android, called the Microsoft Devices Ecosystem Platform… Really fortunate at the relationship we've been able to build with the MDEP engineering team and the resources behind that who have really stepped in to help us be able to move things over and build things up around this Microsoft experience with security at the front of how we're going to deliver this. And I personally think the idea of an appliance-like compute within the room is something that's actually going to resonate really well with the market over time.
Craig Durr: It's interesting. I mean, I have an insight of what it is, and we can't talk about it. I don't know how to describe it without describing it. Tell me you're a new product by not saying you're a new product. I don't know what to say here.
Dan Root: Well, what we're coming out with in June here is really the next step. So we've now built the foundations that people have probably also seen, that we've been enrolling in Teams BYOD and really making the most out of those enhancements. So now ClickShare units are actually seen within the Pro Management Portal. They're also able to be managed out of that portal, which is fantastic for the usage data and things that you're trying to build within places that there is really the next thing, I think, for Microsoft, as far as bringing together that integrated workplace experience.
And so the next step from here is kind of finishing that piece with Microsoft and being able to give a full integrated workflow. So I'm really excited at what we're going to be able to talk about here in June. It's kind of killing me not to be able to just talk about it now fully, but that's why you and some of the other analysts are out here this week. So we can show you guys what we've been working on, get your feedback on how we can make sure to really drive this into the market, and also how to refine. This is obviously the very first of a new product generation, and we need to make sure that we're looking ahead at building this generation into the market over the next couple of years.
Craig Durr: Coming from the small, wonderful town of Kortrijk to the world.
Dan Root: Yes, starting in Kortrijk, coming to us here, down near you, soon.
Craig Durr: Okay, I appreciate the update. I think we're going to take this information and wrap it up and package it until after June. So this will be a little behind the scenes, what takes place before them.
Dan Root: Hey, looking forward to it. And as always, Craig, it's great to see you, looking forward to seeing you in Orlando in a couple more weeks, but in the meantime, let's go and explore Belgium.
Craig Durr: I love it. Let's do that one.
Barco started as a family company…
Dan Root: Yeah, so it started as a kind of a family company. Our founder started it as the Belgian American Radio Company.
Craig Durr: And that's the acronym: B, A, R, C, O.
Dan Root: Exactly. And it was to bring together the, at the time, American radios were known as the best, and so what he did was source certain components from the U.S. and build them here in Belgium, and created a 90-year plus business out of it throughout the 70s and early 80s. Personal computing was big for us. We're big in projection, as far as movie theaters, and things would have been that big there for many years.
Craig Durr: You guys have a decent-sized market share.
Dan Root: With over 50% globally of the movie theater market is Barco, which is interesting because I didn't know that when I started at Barco, and we've worked with Barco as analysts. I was never aware of that element because we didn't care to cover that market… Same thing within healthcare. Barco is really well established within diagnostic imaging.
Craig Durr: Hey, what has been your experience as being an American working with primarily a European management team and a European decision making team. I mean, I love the people at Barco. They're very collaborative. They're very open, so it's not a statement of that, but I'm wondering about where you're the person bringing insights but from a very important market–the North America market is huge for Barco.
Dan Root: I would say, when I came to Barco, one of the things I was told by everybody is, “We want your outside voice. We want an American voice in the inner circle.” The U.S. is, of course, one of our key markets where we're continuing to grow. It's where we believe we will continue to grow in the future. So it made a lot of sense to have somebody that was a little closer to that market. And it also works really well for me because if you're here running off of Central European Time all the time, Microsoft is nine hours behind, Zoom is nine hours behind you. So you're already home and having your dinner before you even got to the office.
Craig Durr: You gotta be close to those. Those are key strategic things.
Dan Root: It allows me to have mornings with Europe, afternoons with all of the partners, and allows me to break up my day a little bit. And I try to keep mostly like my mornings, and especially early mornings are all Europe calls or Asia calls, and I know what I'm doing, and they're mostly internal. And then I have a switch right around lunch.
Craig Durr: Tomorrow, we're going to go all through the Barco area.
Dan Root: Yes, the Experience Center. You and I will take a walk around outside. I'm excited for you to see the juxtapositioning of a very new age modern enterprise building… quite literally set in farmland of Belgium. It's a very interesting juxtapositioning, but I think it's just a beautiful campus to pull up to in the morning, so I'm excited to hear what you think.
Craig Durr: Bright and early tomorrow morning. See you there.
This is beautiful. You were not kidding. This is such an incredible building, and it's all built around the idea of sustainability.
Dan Root: Yes, that was really the core of everything behind this building, right? They wanted to be the example here in Belgium. And so as you look around the building and around the space, it's pretty clear to see they definitely achieved what they were going for here.
Craig Durr: What I love is these grand stairs over here.
Dan Root: Yeah, we've got a really nice lobby, and we've got a couple sets of stairs that take you up into the building.
Craig Durr: Oh, we're gonna go up to the Experience Center?
Dan Root: Yeah, let's take a walk. Go check it out.
Craig Durr: Let's go up the stairs. This building is huge, isn't it, though?
Dan Root: Yes, roughly a third of our workforce. We're over 3,000 people globally, but we have just about a third of them here in Belgium.
Craig Durr: You actually have multiple business units here, and also have the one I'm interested in, which is what you call ‘workforce?’
Dan Root: Workplace and meeting experience.
Well, here we go. Now, we've actually found our way to floor two. We can take a peek at our Experience Center.
Craig Durr: This is beautiful, though. Look at this. This is perfect. So this is exactly what you and I were talking about before. This is your opportunity to really showcase all of these partnerships you've been working on, right?
Dan Root:Yeah, the Experience Center for us really is about showing how we play with the market but also how the workflows apply into different rooms. We have a lot of customers who are maybe more traditional or manufacturing, but then we also have a lot of design firms and things that are customers, and they utilize the rooms differently. So we've really tried to set up both approaches to meeting spaces. As far as is it more of a structured type space or unstructured type space?
Craig Durr: You called it funny. You called it a type A meeting space, and then a type B creative.
Dan Root: Absolutely. I don't always boil it down just to that. But yeah, those that tend to be a little bit more on the traditional side of things, tend to migrate more to what we would consider traditional meeting spaces. So we'll start in one of our largest rooms here. Let’s go check it out.
Craig Durr: It's a beautiful room. It serves all the purposes as well, too. It's funny, you saw the ‘love meeting’ logo. You guys did all those really great videos that you guys reported for that. But what I like to highlight here is that there's a sign on the wall back there. We're gonna see different vendors’ equipment, paired with the ClickShare.
Dan Root: Yes, exactly. And it's really about, no matter what pieces we're putting together, it's the same in room workflow. And that's the power of ClickShare; it’s that if we are running in this sort of a situation, you just plug in that button right there and press it. And you're utilizing the camera, microphone, and speakers of the Logi device, and then utilizing the ClickShare for the workflow.
Craig Durr: So right now this is set up, I'm going to guess, by the screen as a BYOD use case scenario, right?
Dan Root: Yes, this room is set up primarily to be a BYOD space. And as we go through the spaces, you'll see some of them are set up to be more primarily a room system, and some are more set up to be primarily a BYOD approach. In both cases, the end workflow to interact with the room is either start a meeting on a touch or plug in a button and press it, and that's all you need to do to get these rooms to your goal stage.
Craig Durr: You guys still lean into the term a little bit of bring your own meeting. Does that mean a lot to you?
Dan Root: Yes, it does. You know, I break it down more to interoperability, okay? And that's the flexibility to use the room for any platform versus just the room system that may be there. So this space that we have here as we work our way around the Experience Center, is still what we consider to be more of a type A, but a Type A ideation space. So the furniture itself is all pretty much set in the space, but we're working with a 21:9 aspect ratio Jupiter monitor here, as well as with our partner Jabra and the Panacast 50 that they have.
Craig Durr: You had to look over to the cheat sheet here, right? Well, you guys have a lot of partners here. I mean, it's a lot to manage. Feel like we're hitting a point here. This is like crossing the threshold. That's type A, and here's the bridge. It's a crossover.
Dan Root: We're going to now go to the other side.
Craig Durr: The other approach. Come on.
Dan Root: So first up is same size room
Craig Durr: Exactly. It's the same size as the room on the other side, but it's laid out a little bit more in the creative style.
Dan Root: The beauty of this room is how easy it is to flex in the entire thought process. The intelligence around the room should be taking care of it for you, and you shouldn't have to interact with that space.
This is meeting room Brussels, where there's actually two meeting rooms put together. And so the thought behind this was a space that could flex to the needs of what was going on at the moment. So you have a space over here that's more phone booth style in the sense.
Craig Durr: Yeah, I mean, I recognize this. This is a Steelcase product, right?
Dan Root: Orangebox, which is a subsidiary of Steelcase. We actually worked with them for the entire experience.
Craig Durr: Wow, it's beautiful. The furniture is functional, too. Now this one to me is also a little bit of a creative space. It's almost like a twist on the conference room table, right?
Dan Root: Yes, it's more of the high top. It's almost a cross between what you would find at a bar versus the office, but that was the intent behind the place. The goal when you come over here is something that should be more approachable. It should be someplace that's a gathering spot within the room.
Craig Durr: It’s a community table. I mean, that's exactly what you want to call it. I think that's the way I've heard it, and I reference it in some of the work I do. Sounds good. All right, let's get out of here then.
Well, this has been incredible. I mean, again, I feel very fortunate to have a chance to travel so far for a great cup of coffee with a good friend. I'm glad you had a chance to meet Dan. I think what he's doing right now in this space is fantastic. Speaking of which, Dan, how are you doing?
Dan Root: Hey, I'm doing well. How's the rest of the afternoon gone for you?
Craig Durr: It has been fantastic. I mean, what you guys have here as an Experience Center is just world class. It's premiere. I love it.
Dan Root: Thank you. I gotta say, I felt the same way the first time I came here. I'd worked with Barco for a few years before working in the company but had never had the opportunity to come to headquarters. And the first time you kind of walk away with this like, “Wow, I'm really proud to work for this company.” So I hope you have had a great day here.
Craig Durr: It's been fantastic. Everyone's been very insightful, sharing a lot of great information. I love the way, the fact that you are trying to embrace this idea of making meetings both personal and over video being lovable. I love it. It's like a great line that I saw there.
Dan Root: Yes, absolutely. We are always focused on delivering that lovable meeting experience.
Craig Durr: All right, I think I got a taxi waiting for me there.
Dan Root: You do, indeed, and I will catch up with you back at the hotel.
Craig Durr: Okay, everyone that's gonna wrap up this episode of the Collaboration Cafe. I hope you enjoyed this tour around Kortrijk, Belgium—the Barco headquarters, and meeting my good friend, Dan Root. Until next time, let's get coffee.