The ongoing pandemic has forced schools and districts to change the way they operate. Depending on local guidelines, the new school year looks different than any other previous year. Some schools are reopening with precautions in place, others are choosing hybrid models, and some are conducting all classes online. As schools resume either in-person or via remote learning (or a hybrid of both), mass notification systems can quickly and effectively keep stakeholders and communities informed. This has become even more crucial recently because information changes rapidly and on an almost daily basis. Mass notification systems can help schools overcome the speed and reach of communicating with administrators, staff, students and the community at large. (more…)

In September 1994, over 32,000 AT&T employees stayed home to work. This was the first large scale attempt at telecommuting – and a key turning point for exploring how far businesses could go in transforming the workplace. Prior to this, the workplace followed a 19th century model of work, focused on inputs and outputs, and a distinct lack of worker autonomy. (more…)

Digital innovation is the cornerstone within education, especially when it comes to higher education. The need to work anytime, anywhere and quickly switch back and forth from online to in-person has been accelerated by the global COVID-19 pandemic. The need to have flexible solutions at home and on campus is more crucial than ever before. University faculty, staff and students need to be able to adapt quickly and seamlessly with easy-to-use collaboration tools. (more…)

As organizations of all sizes extend their commitment to supporting remote workforces for the future, cybersecurity teams are finding that they need to address new risks to stay protected. Employees using insecure devices and networks have created new security vulnerabilities for businesses – and with Google tallying more than 18 million malware and phishing emails related to COVID-19 each day earlier this year, hackers have never been more active. (more…)

Commercial printing and sustainability are not something that people would put together. In fact, too often commercial and industrial print are seen as NOT environmentally friendly. However, this is not the case at Konica Minolta. As a global corporation with a large footprint in manufacturing, we have taken great steps to ensure we have a minimal impact on our environment. This also extends to the output of our production print product lines, where volatile organic compounds (VOC) have been part of the challenge for print providers for decades. Konica Minolta is committed to sustainability and we are following our long-term environmental plan: EcoVision 2050, for which we recently changed the target year to achieve Carbon Minus status from 2050 to 2030. (more…)

It seems like an understatement to say that 2020 has been a transformative year. The global disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has forced society to pause and closely examine our daily activities, reevaluating the ways we live and work. (more…)

A recent survey conducted by Citrix found that 78 percent of office workers believe full-time remote working will become more common after the COVID crisis has resolved. For the Marketing Communications team at Konica Minolta, we’re in month five of remote work, and as a group built on creativity, collaboration – and of course, communication – it was a jarring change to have this as our foreseeable future. (more…)

As 2020 looks set to hold the title for the year of uncertainty and economic distress, now more than ever, creatives are being challenged to push design boundaries that address not only aesthetics, but more importantly, maximize form and function. At the same time, continuing concern for the environment is becoming more and more prevalent, and so the need for smart packaging is becoming less of a trend and more the requirement. (more…)

When you hear the words ‘brand culture’, it’s not uncommon to conjure images of wacky campuses, team-building events and pictures of smiling teams. Over the last five years, particularly as Silicon Valley firms expanded like never before, there has been this unwritten rule that if you don’t have a physical representation of your brand, it’s not strong enough. But then COVID-19 hit, and that physical element was removed. So how do you manage brand culture when everyone is working remotely? (more…)

Wide-format digital printers have been around for some time now. Capabilities range from printing sign and display applications like banners, posters and point of purchase materials to technical applications such as charts, maps and engineering drawings. Over the years, manufacturers have continued to engineer advances in these digital printers to provide a greater assortment of widths, higher output quality, different ink technology and wider substrate capability such as printing to acrylic, metal, glass and textiles. (more…)