Stagnant Meeting Room Giga

The photo linked to above was recently shared by an American politician local to a Tesla facility where he met Elon Musk.

My first impression was, how strangely 'normie' the conference room. Which these days seems hardly the chased look, hey.

Around the same time, Tesla opened its latest battery factory, Giga Berlin. Their polished pr fly-through feeling like the CGI rendering of a near-future sci-fi movie set. The pic up-top this certainly ain't.

Which does raise an eyebrow. Given not only the vanguard signalling of the occupant, but also that they built it and moved in only a year or so prior this snap.

Such seven-seater setting will be familiar to us all. Likewise the single big screen on the wall. and the vanilla surrounds.

Which does feel incongruous alongside their supposedly trailblazing ethos.

Then I remembered imagery of old from inside Tesla conference rooms. Here's an example I find still online today.

According to its Flickr post details, this link is from back in 2012.

Even in '12 by the way, I recall meeting rooms with glazed walls on which you could write.

A decade on though, what's the difference?

They had the more elevated webcam back then, mind.

Where's the progress?

I've heard clients recount the scramble to sneak exclusive use of meeting rooms when in the office. Resembling the unedifying rush to nab that sunlounger around the holiday pool before any enemy tribes lay down their towels. Subterfuge, distraction and entitlement taken to new depths.

Yet the ones I see remain pretty much faithful to Tesla's on show here.

Not ideal for any type of video comms really.

The formats pictured here aren't suited to convening a one-on-one video call. No better for a pair of you say, dialling in together on-screen. Neither appear to offer a large table that can be split up so that you can sit directly in front of the webcam. How likely is a smaller desk there, out of shot?

In those distant oppressions of 2020 lockdown days, early I came across a company that converted an old stationery cupboard into a 'zoom booth'.

How many longstanding meeting rooms do you know have since been similarly converted into a series of dedicated video call rooms?

Or indeed, now unclaimed, undesirable main open plan floor space, freed up and renovated accordingly?

Who knows, the gleaming new Tesla Gigae could be full of such.

And you can maybe see how a more intimate, smaller, purposely designed space - even if it could comfortably squeeze in four attendees plus photographer elbow room to pap - might not have held appeal for a billionaire entertaining in Texas. Not matter how cosy, different and after all, apt.

Shame. Your office missing such trick too?