In this interview, we sat down with Femke Veen, community manager @ The Hague Tech. We got some interesting insights into how Joan helps running their meetings, managing their Hub, and an agenda hack we’ll present later on.
Meet The Hague Tech
The Hague Tech is not your typical hub, it’s a community of passionate and driven individuals. Next to having a workplace at the heart of innovation, The Hague Tech also provides consulting services for starting a business and organizes meetups, festivals, and get-togethers to get the most out of the community.
The First Impression matters
The first contact with Joan was at Femke’s interview. The company already deployed Joan devices quite some time before Femke joined them. Joan was actually recommended by a building expert, who was also a member of their community. He’s seen it in other places, so it was a no-brainer.
Once Femke walked into the building, she was greeted by our larger Joan device (Joan 13). There she, and every other visitor can find an available meeting room at glance – there’s no need for third-party guidance, additional help, or wandering around the building searching for a free meeting room.
“I was actually amazed, when I first saw it, because I had never experienced such a device before.“
At each meeting room, there’s a smaller device – Joan 6 – for managing individual rooms. Femke can recall clearly how easy it was to book a room with a single tap on our touchscreen device, and how the screen turned to ‘Booked’.
Now, more than a year later, Femke loves working with Joan: “I don’t have to work with sheets of paper and I know I can count on it. The system is very reliable, simple to use, it’s connected to wi-fi, small, and gets recharge fast.”
Customizing Joan for easier navigation
Even though Joan 6’s most often use case is booking meeting rooms, The Hague Tech also loves its power of custom content. Since they work with limited resources, Femke doesn’t have time to guide people and explain, where events or specific meetings happen.
With Joan, she easily changes the information on its screen to reflect the use case – featuring a meetup name, meeting, or even individual person’s name, which helps a lot during COVID since individuals now work in meeting rooms daily.
“Joan allows me to change the title on the meeting room, so it doesn’t just say that it’s occupied so people can really find their own way without additional support.“
Adding agenda to each meeting
Joan is all about our users – next to endless integrations developed on our end, we have always encouraged bending the technology to your needs (another example is this smart home automation hack).
At The Hague Tech, they added an agenda to each meeting. There’s a special link with it and when it gets updated, the agenda shows on Joan’s screen. This saves a lot of time and brings structure to each meeting, making sure that everyone stays on track.
It was implemented with the help of Joan support team – they provided the needed API and the solution got implemented within a month.
Meeting room monetization with Joan
There’s another use case for Joan, which we don’t see very often, but The Hague Tech managed to implement it perfectly – monetization of the meeting rooms.
As they are a tech innovation hub, many different businesses reside at their offices. They can book the hub’s meeting rooms at an additional cost.
Instead of keeping an excel spreadsheet on the reservations, hub members can book a meeting room ahead of their meeting via calendar. This provides the complete, and needed, visibility into meeting room use and associated costs.
“Without Joan, we would need to employ someone to manage meeting rooms and help with wayfinding”
At The Hague Tech, they like Joan because it helps them optimize their booking system and is a navigation system at the same time.
“This allows us to reduce costs, personnel costs, for instance, a receptionist,” adds Femke.
It’s also much more than a cost and time saver – Joan empowers everyone, visitors, community members, and staff, to book meetings or events from wherever they are. And the information is always visible where they need it the most – in front of their meeting rooms.
Interested in learning more about Joan 6? Get in contact with us and let’s discuss how we can support your workplace.