AMC Entertainment To Open 'Zoom Room' Auditoriums At Theaters In 17 Markets (deadline.com) 29
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: AMC Entertainment plans to launch "Zoom Rooms" at movie theaters in up to 17 U.S. cities serving businesses with in-person events and meetings. The partnership with Zoom will roll out "sometime in 2023," the giant exhibitor said. It will give the chain access to the "multi-billion market for corporate and other meetings," according to CEO Adam Aron, and during weekdays when most theaters are quiet.
Users will book three-hour blocks online, selecting preferred theaters and meeting time. AMC and Zoom will provide the necessary equipment. Auditorium sizes are expected to range between 75 to 150 seats. Additional services like food and beverage offerings, movie viewings, and concierge-style personalized handling of meeting needs will be available for an added cost. "As hybrid work has become more commonplace throughout the United States, Zoom Rooms at AMC will enable companies and other entities with decentralized workforces and customer bases to bring people from different markets together at the same time for cohesive virtual and in-person events and meeting experiences," the nation's biggest chain said.
"One of the lessons learned during the pandemic when so many of us were forced to work remotely was the importance of a reliable, dynamic communications platform. We also learned that even though we may be spread far apart, the ability to come together in person is as important as ever," said Aron. "This creates an all-new product in major cities across the U.S. for companies and meeting planners."
Users will book three-hour blocks online, selecting preferred theaters and meeting time. AMC and Zoom will provide the necessary equipment. Auditorium sizes are expected to range between 75 to 150 seats. Additional services like food and beverage offerings, movie viewings, and concierge-style personalized handling of meeting needs will be available for an added cost. "As hybrid work has become more commonplace throughout the United States, Zoom Rooms at AMC will enable companies and other entities with decentralized workforces and customer bases to bring people from different markets together at the same time for cohesive virtual and in-person events and meeting experiences," the nation's biggest chain said.
"One of the lessons learned during the pandemic when so many of us were forced to work remotely was the importance of a reliable, dynamic communications platform. We also learned that even though we may be spread far apart, the ability to come together in person is as important as ever," said Aron. "This creates an all-new product in major cities across the U.S. for companies and meeting planners."
One flailing industry trying to cannibalize (Score:3)
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Why? O why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would anyone wanted to attend a zoom meeting in-person in one of these "zoom rooms"?
It has all the disadvantages of both in-person meeting AND zoom meeting. You can't do other productive work while someone drones on and on about things not relevant to you, yet you do not actually have physical face-to-face interaction with people in other zoom rooms.
Only bosses who loved to see his empire laid out right in front of him would be interested in renting these and forcing all his minions to go into them just to watch his face on the cinema wide screen. I already feel disgusted just by thinking about it.
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I doubt the collaborative advantage very much in most cases as well. I mean if you were getting everyone together in one place there would be no need for the zoom element.. So you are still talking about a meeting where some parities are remote.
At the same time you are moving a bunch of parties to a situation where they may not have the computer, other noting taking facilities and reference materials handy. So if a technical question comes, up either nobody can go look or it will take 10x longer.
About the o
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Not only will everyone at the site lose the productivity for the meeting, you get to lose the half hour there and back again as well. It's wasting productivity at double the rate per meeting!
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I can think of just one reason why someone might want to do this, and it's to have distributed company wide meetings. It's not a good reason, but it's the only activity I can think of that it would really fit. With everyone in the room facing the same way, it doesn't really make any sense for anything else.
To be fair, it doesn't make any significant amount of sense at all...
Company All Hands (Score:4, Insightful)
Many of the companies I've worked hold company wide status update meetings on at least semi-annual basis. The point of these is to inform the employee of what's been going on across the org, since the day-to-day life of the rank and file doesn't often provide such perspective.
For smaller groups, we'd all collect into some common room, like a cafeteria.
When the company was too big to easily fit into a room on site, we'd rent out a local movie theater.
Seems like AMC is just taking that model, making it a more official offering, and adding some technology to make it more flexible.
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Seems like AMC is just taking that model, making it a more official offering, and adding some technology to make it more flexible.
Why not use the same technology to not need to rent a room? That's the baffling part here. What's gained by forcing everyone to sit elbow to elbow to participate in a virtual meeting?
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I have to assume this is primarily for very large companies with at least two physical locations. I'm not necessarily saying it's a great idea to have meetings like this either, but I've worked for companies who'd do this type of thing once or twice a year too, but had to do it by bringing laptops and portable projectors to hotel ballrooms instead. Where, by the way, the typical seating arrangement of multiple small circles with separate tables was actually much more awkward for this type of format.
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What's gained by forcing everyone to sit elbow to elbow to participate in a virtual meeting?
Better capture of attention, and better practice for leadership speaking and presenting to a large audience (think keynotes, ted talks, etc).
Where I work today, I take in all of these event via telepresence, just like you're suggesting. It's still a mostly one way conversation (ie 90% presenting, 5% questions, 5% time wasting), but it does have the distinct advantage that I can rewind the tape if I missed something, and skip back up to the live feed during the moments of time wasting. If I wanted to attend
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There are jobs that require physical presence. Some of these departments may be quite large, and cannot fit in a common room without everyone being cheek to jowl. So you start splitting the rooms, but then people want to go in a room with their friends and they all happen to clump in the same room.
Sure, you could have everyone
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Why would anyone wanted to attend a zoom meeting in-person in one of these "zoom rooms"?
I take it you work in isolation for a small company? I can't remember the last time we had a meeting that didn't involve a zoom call where some of the people were sitting in a group.
Heck my most recent one involved sitting in a conference room in Madrid with 5 people from our suppliers connected to a broadcast system that allowed us to teleconference with our colleagues in Seattle and Texas.
Only bosses who loved to see his empire laid out right in front of him would be interested in renting these
Conference centres exist for a reason. I know if you don't have a reason to use one you find them incomprehensible. Bu
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Conference centres exist for a reason. I know if you don't have a reason to use one you find them incomprehensible.
Yes of course there is a lot of value in putting everyone in the same room. There is a lot of value in putting a presenter in front of live audience where s/he can see the faces, hear the laughter, murmurs, etc. Yes it also makes sense to video conference enable these things for individuals who cannot attend.
Now - there is already conference center that enables this near you and if there is isnt there are multiple large chain hotels with conference rooms you can rent. All of these facilities are better sui
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It is a distributed conference center. You can have many 'mini conferences' all over the place instead of having everyone travel to a single location.
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You can have many 'mini conferences' all over the place instead of having everyone travel to a single location.
This. My old company used to do events where we would rent out a theater in one of our large markets, invite in customers, give a dog and pony show with our big vendors, then (to make sure people showed up) show a new release movie after the presentations. Being able to do this across multiple markets at once would have saved us a good bit of money and time.
I can also see doing all-hands company meetings like this, but instead of flying everyone in, set these up in areas you have lots of employees so the
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Now - there is already conference center that enables this near you and if there is isnt there are multiple large chain hotels with conference rooms you can rent.
And now there's AMC as well. Why are you upset at additional choice in a market? Have you ever rented a hotel conference centre? The costs are fucking eyewatering. This is definitely an industry which could stand to have some cheaper alternatives.
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You're assuming that your event can use a hotel. Perhaps the nearest hotel suitable is a bit of ways away, but you have a local theatre (you have plenty of motels and such around without such facilities).
Plus, hotels tend to be flat, so you have to put up a stage so sigh
Re: Why? O why? (Score:2)
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Nobody said it was for regular business meetings. It is for things like client presentations, product launches, 'pep rallies', celebrations, etc. You know, the kinds of things that regularly happen in conference centers. This is just making a distributed conference center.
The business case is obvious (Score:4, Interesting)
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My office doesn't have a room large enough to hold everyone that works at that location.
That's right, I said it. (Score:3)
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Actually this is nothing more than a conference centre, except smaller and likely cheaper. You may not have a use case for it, but that doesn't make it stupid.
resignation (Score:3)
The moment I'm told that I have to attend one of these events is the moment I hand in my resignation.
Local Coffee Shops Work Better (Score:2)
AMC? No thanks. (Score:2)
As someone who has been a fan of AMC for a long time, their movie theaters these days are fucking disgusting. Every time I try to watch a movie with Nicole Kidman telling me how wonderful and magical the movies are, I think to myself that obviously she must live in a neighborhood where the movie theaters don't have broken soda machines, seats that are falling apart, gross junk on the floor, etc.
If a company sponsored me to sit in one of those theaters intentionally, I'd start looking for a new job the very
pulse pounding sound (Score:2)
can't wait to hear how a bargain basement microphone sounds over 9.1 channels of dolby atmos.
Only for companies that have no office (Score:2)