How do you measure your impact on a community? For Michael Wilson, COO of the Silicon Valley Monterey Bay Council of Scouting America, the numbers tell part of the story.
“We’ve served over 10,000 Scouts already this year — and still counting — with about 6,000 adult volunteers involved in our program,” he says. “We figure that most Scouts, if they join at the beginning in elementary school and go all the way through high school, spend nearly 1,000 hours on community service.”
Supporting that many young people and volunteers is no easy task, especially when the council’s footprint spans a vast geographic area. Keeping everyone connected is essential. With sites separated by hours of driving, hybrid meetings have to feel seamless and natural.
“People want to feel included, and they want to feel heard,” Wilson says. “And if we don’t have good ways to achieve that, then they’re going to drift away from our organization.”
Wilson knew he needed to source the right AV setup to keep volunteers and Scouts connected. He also knew it wouldn’t be an easy task. The room he was looking to outfit has a large column in the middle of it, big windows facing a noisy street and a fridge that doesn’t stop humming.
And as if that wasn’t challenging enough, Wilson’s space is the definition of multipurpose — used regularly as a classroom, a boardroom, a team huddle space and everything in between. Every time it’s used, the room looks different. “We have tables that move around depending on those different needs and how active the participants are going to be inside our space.”
Wilson tried a few audio solutions, but everything fell short. “They didn’t function fully,” he says. “They would be good in one of our scenarios, but not the multiples that we end up seeing on a regular basis.”
Remote people couldn’t reliably hear everyone in the room, which was an ongoing source of frustration.
“It was a much flatter experience,” he says. “The interconnectivity between people that were physically here versus people in a virtual setting was limited. Understanding went down. We had to pass a microphone around to try to get folks to be heard — with limited success.”
Luckily, Wilson had some help in solving his problem room. He started working with Adam Berns, a council volunteer and technical alliances specialist at Logitech, to improve the videoconferencing capability. And when he asked about an audio solution to add to the mix, Nureva was Logitech’s obvious answer.
“The Nureva® HDL410 was the audio system that Logitech thought would be a good solution — and it has been,” says Wilson.
The room’s AV setup includes a variety of intuitive tech, including an HDL410 audio conferencing system, an ASUS NUC with Windows® operating system, two Logitech® cameras and two Sony displays — one running a touch overlay powered by TSI Touch. “It’s been technically seamless,” he adds.
Adaptability is top of mind even when it comes to UC&C platforms — the room is set up as a Zoom Room but needs to function just as well as a BYOD space.
The result is a configurable room where all the products feel like they belong together. And this kind of seamless experience has been appreciated by people using the room, who live and work in Silicon Valley and can be tough critics when it comes to tech.
“Our volunteers have high expectations of quality and connectivity because they’re in the same technical space that Nureva, Logitech and Zoom are in,” he says. “They use high-end products at work and want similar experiences in their volunteerism.”
What makes the HDL410 such a great addition to the space? Wilson thinks a lot of it comes down to Nureva’s patented Microphone Mist™ technology. It fills rooms with thousands of virtual mics so there’s always one nearby — which is especially important given that in this room, people like to move.
“Being able to walk around a space and have the microphone travel with you is pretty amazing,” he says.
The virtual mics solved one of Wilson’s biggest challenges — meetings and classes that were constantly interrupted with the need to repeat people’s comments in the room so remote participants could hear.
Now people in the room can act naturally and know their voices will be picked up clearly — without the need for intrusive, awkward tech. Wilson’s CEO, for example, is always on the move. “Miking him up was always a challenge, and I don’t have that challenge anymore,” he says. “If you’re expressive and you don’t want to just sit in one place and talk at a microphone, the HDL410 gives you flexibility that might not be found in other products.”
For Wilson, flexibility is king. His space is transformed daily, and there are always new people using the tech, with sometimes as many as 40 in the room.
“We host our own Scouting events, such as CPR and first aid training or teaching young people about outdoor ethics,” he says. “Each trainer prefers a different classroom setting — from small group discussions to lectures.” This means every session places a different demand on the room, sometimes requiring a completely new layout of furniture and equipment.
And that’s not all. The room also serves as a community hub for all types of events, so while one evening it might host a public meeting, the next day it could be filled with a gathering of wood carvers. No matter how often the room is rearranged, Nureva audio remains clear and consistent.
Given that so many different groups use the space, the AV tech can’t have a learning curve. “We give people the keys and a code and they come in and make it their own,” Wilson explains. “It really matters that it’s easy to operate, no matter if people are very technical or if they have to ask ‘Which button do I push to turn it on?’” With Nureva and Logitech, everything just works, every time, with no need for technical expertise.
Wilson can keep tabs on how the space is being used with Nureva Console, our secure, cloud-based management platform. “Nureva Console sends me emails, and then I can sign in and understand if there’s a challenge or an upgrade that needs to be done and make that happen,” says Wilson. He also used the Nureva App’s acoustic check tool to figure out the best spot to install his system.
The HDL410 system has helped Wilson make smart investments in his room. Because he’s in a leased space, he has no desire to spend money on elaborate acoustic treatments and other improvements. So, he’s grateful the Nureva system doesn’t need them.
For example, the room has persistent loud noise coming from a fridge at the back, which isn’t about to be moved. The HDL410 takes care of it without any extra programming. “The system detects the background noise and deadens it, which I think is a pretty neat set of technology.”
And because Nureva audio systems are easy to install, Wilson has options when his space’s lease is up. “We want to take it with us into our next space,” he says. “The system doesn’t have a large installation cost, so that certainly helps.”
In fact, Wilson and Berns installed the HDL410 themselves easily, using the supplied template and a couple of CAT5 cables. There was no need to bring in expensive installers or specialized tools.
The impact of Wilson’s new hybrid space has been clear. “We’ve seen better collaboration with teams that are geographically spread out,” he says. With Nureva and Logitech in place, the focus has shifted from coping with technical issues to getting on with the real work of engaging Scouts, volunteers and community members to make connections and achieve their goals.
For Wilson, the outcomes he’s seeing are about much more than great audio conferencing. “We’re talking about technology, but the most impressive thing is really the people that we get to impact,” he says. “It’s all about the young people and their amazing community connection.”
With Nureva and Logitech, Wilson’s team isn’t just improving remote learning and collaboration — they’re building a model for how technology can strengthen the bonds that make Scouting America thrive. And as more councils explore hybrid spaces, Wilson hopes his success story helps spark a wider transformation.