We’ve toyed around with Skype and despised having to add people as contacts before being able to communicate with them.

We’ve tried Google Hangouts – not very intuitive and also difficult for those that are less technically inclined.

Then, in early 2015, the kids at Notabli introduced us to High Five: an elegant piece of hardware that sits atop a flat screen TV or desktop display and lets you communicate better with co-workers, clients and others. We bought one on a 30-day trial and haven’t looked back.

The core functionality of video and screen sharing is built around email addresses on our domain (@vickeryhill.com). We currently have 1 set-top device (in the barn on Vickery Hill) and each staff member has a desktop and iPhone/iPad app. We have scheduled Monday/Friday morning meetings that let remote users see and hear everyone else – and share screens to talk about the week.

The audio quality and video works very well and we even use it App-to-App without ever sharing to the barn TV screen if 2 of us need to share something or just want to see the weather in the other’s location.

While we only use the hardware in one location, we could see this being amazingly affordable and easy to use when connecting multiple conference rooms. We’ve even heard of companies removing very expensive Polycom and Cisco video conferencing equipment and replacing with High Five units!

If you want to give it a try, just drop us a note and we’ll set up a conference call with you.