In the future, video technology and facial recognition will change the way meetings are conducted, reshaping the experience for both attendees and the company. This new technology will be able to read the room and evaluate people's reaction to what is said. Even though this technology isn't ready to enter our offices, the premises of such technology are entering in play. In this blog post we will try to push forward what we already talked about, to see to which extent these new breakouts might impact our ways of collaborating. Imagine this, you walk into your meeting/conference room with several of your co-workers for a meeting.

We're all familiar with Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant--virtual assistants that help you save time and get things done at home like check the weather, turn on your TV, set a reminder, or summon your car from the garage. These products are great in your personal life, but what about at work? Have you ever been late for a meeting, either because you don't know how to connect or you're wandering the halls trying to find an available room? How many times have you forgotten to record a meeting or write down action items? What if you had a virtual assistant that could do all of those things and more? Imagine how much more productive you could be by focusing on what's important – getting work done with your team.

Cisco introduces Spark Assistant and Spark Room 70, and lays out its AI roadmap. Cisco this week is holding its annual reseller conference, Partner Summit, in Dallas. When Rowan Trollope, SVP & GM of IoT and Applications at Cisco, delivered his keynote today, the company unveiled its AI-powered voice assistant with the not so inventive name of "Cisco Spark Assistant." There is, of course, a veritable cornucopia of voice assistants out there, as we can ask Siri, Google, Alexa, Cortana or other popular AIs a question and get a prompt answer back. The reasons that communications and collaboration industry professionals should care is because the Spark AI is entirely focused on improving meetings.