When we talk about the return to office, we need to talk about past lives. And I’m not just talking about the Before Times, when we all had very different commuting and workplace habits. No, I’m talking about past-past lives, where many in the AV industry have their roots. Talk to almost anyone who’s designing workplaces today, and they used to be in a band or are still in a band. Or maybe they used to be in theater production and still run lights, sound and streaming services for friends on weekends.

Which means that many who are setting the stage for a return to office have actually been on a stage, or backstage or somewhere near a stage at some point in their career. And so they know better than anyone: No one wants to play to an empty room.

“You always want to play to a full room — and maybe that room only holds 20 people, but you want 19 chairs full,” says Scott Walker, President and Founding Partner of Waveguide, an AV, IT, acoustics consulting and design firm that also provides comprehensive AV operations services. “You really don’t want to play to 19 people in a 200-seat auditorium. It feels like the lamest show ever. And that’s just human nature. We go where there’s a little bit of vibe and action. And that takes planning. You have to cultivate that. It isn’t just going to happen because it’s a Monday.”

That’s why Walker, a former musician himself, designs offices that work with human nature instead of against it. And that’s why, as he’s talking to enterprise clients about how to fill their too-often vacant spaces, he’s thinking now is finally the moment for Smart Buildings (I’m capitalizing those words because it’s a Thing) to shine.

Why? Because, to use a bunch of business parlance and some worn out metaphors, we are going to leave money on the table if we don’t evolve from “dumb property” into something with a little more wisdom. When we are trying to update those 90 million meeting room spaces that Frost & Sullivan estimates are still not properly outfitted for video meetings, perhaps we should throw in some bonus intelligence to make ourselves indispensable to our clients.

What does that actually look like? Let’s take a trip down memory lane with smart buildings, a progression which Walker has witnessed first-hand as a proponent of USGBC standards in the AV industry since before it was cool. In fact, he led the development of the STEP program for AVIXA before it was AVIXA, back in the ol’ InfoComm days.

At the same time, for those who prefer to see “green” in a monetary capacity, Walker also made a major point about the future of our industry way back way back in 2001 when he delivered the InfoComm keynote that precipitated his ascent to being an InfoComm officer. Two decades ago, he said the IT industry was going to consume us all, especially after the countless AV widgets evaporated into digital modes. Fast-forward to today. Some might say we are all IT services companies now (unless we have niche specialties keeping us in audiovisual and acoustics realms). So if we want to make sure we’re not totally commoditized out of the picture, we should probably embrace smart buildings.

But why? How are smart buildings connected to money?

Let’s get back to that smart buildings historical timeline. Early on, “smart” was all about energy management, and saving money that way. Then, after the HVAC systems were smart, it became valuable to attach those savings to being “green” and maybe getting a LEED certification. From there, it evolved into sustainability practices and goals that corporations could tout as part of their brand values. Which wasn’t only a motivator from a talent-attraction standpoint, it could also help to secure financing in certain municipal districts with the added bonus of some appealing tax breaks and friendly building codes.

This is where it all comes together. No matter what your philosophy is on “green,” you can’t dispute that it’s a waste of resources to have empty offices, right? So check this out. What if we combined all of our AV prowess to not only make architecture more intelligent, but also put on a really good show that draws crowds (figuratively speaking — I’m still talking about work here)?

To do that, let’s talk about humans. Many humans have become accustomed to working from home. But, being humans, they do still enjoy occasionally seeing people they like or could at least benefit from in a professional sense. So what if they knew their team was going to be in the office on a particular day? Or they could see in real-time where their friends are hanging out in the various nooks and crannies of fancy new office spaces? The “young people” (and fine, some older people too) today already rely on that somewhat questionable privacy violation of “find your friends.” Let’s follow that example.

And let’s use that data to develop something that isn’t strictly calendar-driven. Let’s figure out how many days a week or month we need certain people in the office, and then optimize for that from a financial standpoint. “What we need to do is find within each team, culture, group or department in the company, what is your culture for as small as that kernel of a team can be?” Walker suggests. “Maybe they just need to be together five days a year, and for some it’s five days a quarter, and some it’s five days a month, and some it’s five days a week.”

Then we build out the smarts of the building accordingly. If we’re not relying on obligation to fill those seats each work day, how can we attract an audience like we might in other venues? “There ought to be a better user journey,” Walker says. And maybe that journey is facilitated by an app, be it a workplace tech platform like Calven, or something browser-based or chatbot-centric or something. But really you need to be able to order coffee, book conference rooms, connect with colleagues to schedule meetings, request IT services or tell someone it’s too cold or too hot in a room and the temperature struggle is breaking your focus.

Everyone is talking about the dangers of “context shifting” these days, and how every time we glance at our inbox or social media or even our phone, we lose focus and slide ever downward on the slippery slope into distraction. So let’s make buildings more like a friendly administrative assistant or concierge who anticipates our needs. Maybe that kind of support and understanding will lure people away from the chaos of their home lives and back to the sweet, sweet escape of the office. Let’s get more of that feeling.

Now we take one more switchback toward “green” in terms of sustainability. Globally, the corporations served by AV companies are facing new Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) regulations. These are requirements in other countries, and in the U.S. they’re still more of a statement of intentionality. But if you’re working with the big companies, you’re going to have the potential to align smart building goals with ESG initiatives.

If that makes you squeamish politically, then let’s get back to financial considerations. “How do you manage your real estate if you don’t know how many people are coming for how long, from what departments to do what?” Walker asks. “You’ve got to have some intelligence in that building or you’re walking around with a legal pad counting noses, which isn’t very sustainable or very smart. We have tech that can do this for us.”

Using sensors and anonymized data that creates a building use picture from more of a departmental level, we can start to see how many people from engineering are coming in and working on the third floor on a Friday versus a Wednesday. “That’s important information to know, because it could help your financial situation as you manage your portfolio,” Walker says. “You can do it with badge data, which is pretty low cost, and everyone’s got it. But if you want to get more granular about heat mapping, how people move throughout the building during the day, or things like reducing congestion in cafes or how many people are in the gym right now, you need to add layers of intelligence.”

Today, sustainability is table stakes, Walker says: “We don’t need a plaque to tell us that — but now what people want is an intelligent building. We’ve got smart cars, phones and houses, but we don’t have smart commercial buildings. We need to invest more in the user experience of the smart building, the app, the glue between everything, including room booking, sensors, security, digital signage, meal delivery and the other pieces that make coming to work more convenient.”

Add to those creature comforts the current context of cost-cutting in many major corporations, and you have potential customers eagerly seeking better ways to serve and attract building occupants while saving money on operations.

Frankly, the market and technology for this is still fairly immature, Walker notes, which spells opportunity for those who can figure out a way to integrate all the systems together into an efficient operation. And that happens to be the AV industry’s specialty.

“There’s a massive market, a multibillion dollar market, and we’re best positioned for it,” Walker asserts. “We’ve been dealing with complicated systems for years. We are the people who have been waiting for it. Let’s figure it out.”

The commoditization of AV is a very real threat. “If we don’t step up and do this, the downside is huge. The fact is, 90 percent of rooms are becoming ‘easy,’ and we as an industry are left with10 percent of rooms. That’s where we started boardrooms, ballrooms, schools and auditoriums. We’re about to go back to that, the other rooms will have tech, but done with lowest common denominator. Over at robotics labs, AI worlds, they’re on a different planet. They’re living 20 years in the future, and we’re still stuck in the cap-ex model. Do we have to change?”

Because let’s face it, Walker continues, “A lot of what was happening in the workplace really wasn’t a good idea. It was really a way to save money. Let’s just shrink and shrink and shrink the square foot per person to the point where you’re having to wear headphones eight hours a day to get your job done. That doesn’t seem very smart.”

There was always a better way to do floor plans in the Before Times, Walker continues: “And now people are realizing the worst thing your employee could say is, ‘Well, I have a really busy day with lots of meetings. I’ll just stay home.’ Because what day isn’t busy with lots of meetings?”

In order to compel people to get into their real work clothes and deal with real traffic on their commute, you need to provide real benefits to being in the office. “The other end of that commute ought to be better than bunny slippers and pajama pants with a nice shirt,” Walker says. “If you want to attract people back, it’s better to not do it by compelling them, but do it by drawing them. That’s just human nature.”