Polycom@25: how we celebrated in APAC

[Dani Boekel (Dani_Boekel)]

A guest post from Luke Sabatini, Polycom's Asia Pacific Corporate Communications Coordinator 

In a global first for Polycom – we celebrated around the world with a 25 hour long video call to celebrate our silver jubilee (25 years).  On the same day, Polycom unveiled innovative collaboration solutions at an exclusive customer event in New York focused on advancing the workplace of the future globally. Polycom’s President and Chief Executive Officer , Peter Leav was quoted as saying, “Today, we are taking a quantum leap in achieving our vision of unleashing the power of human collaboration”. This is how we celebrated in Asia Pacific. (#Polycom25)

First stop… Australia and New Zealand

In APAC, we kicked off celebrations in Sydney with Geoff Thomas (APAC President) and James Brennan (APAC Director of Solutions Marketing) welcoming our guests. We had guests attending Polycom @25 (P@25) events in our Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane and Auckland offices dialled into Sydney to see the unveiling of Polycom’s ground breaking solutions. Guests in attendance at all our offices were excited to see and hear about the Polycom RealPresence Trio and Polycom RealPresence Centro. As part of the P@25 celebrations, long time Polycom customer, ReefHQ helped us celebrate by taking our guests on a Virtual reef excursion of their world largest living coral reef aquarium located in Townsville, North Queensland via Polycom video. As Australia and New Zealand handed over to our next stop on our P@25 celebration, the Sydney team placed a piece of coral and a 25 year message into the time capsule and handed it over to our next location. 

  

Next stop… Tokyo, Japan

The second location for our APAC P@25 celebration was Tokyo, Japan. We had a full room of customers and partners in our Tokyo Executive Business Centre, eagerly awaiting the unveiling of the new Polycom solutions and viewing the live demos. Our Tokyo team welcomed our guests with a Kagami-biraki ceremony, a ceremony performed at celebratory events in which the lid of the sake barrel is broken open by a wooden mallet and the drink is served to everyone present. Polycom customer, Oak Lawn Marketing shared how they have used Polycom’s collaborative solutions to stay one step ahead of competitors. As Tokyo’s P@25 session came to a close, our team placed a Kagami-biraki gown and sake into the Japan time capsule and handed over to our next stop…

  

Next stop… Singapore

With the help of Polycom’s RealPresence Mobile, extending rich video collaboration to your mobile device, we took a live broadcast from four different locations in Singapore. As this year is Singapore’s 50th anniversary of independence, we took the audience through ‘Old Singapore’ (historic sites such as Boat Quay, the Padang, and Raffles Landing Point) and wrapped up at locations which showcased modern, ‘New Singapore’ (Merlion, Marina Bay Barrage) to demonstrate how the country has transformed.

Giving back to the community was at the heart of Singapore celebrations. A team from the Singapore office spent an afternoon at the Willing Hearts soup kitchen, which is 100% run by volunteers, helping to prepare thousands of meals for the next day. We concluded the Singapore session with a virtual handover of the time capsule by Chua I-Pin (SEA Managing Director) over to the team in India. Items included postcards of Singapore’s current skyline, a Merlion souvenir and an SG50 memento. With glasses of champagne in hand, I-Pin then led the whole team in a traditional Singaporean ‘yum seng’ toast, before handing over to our next stop…

Next stop… Bangalore and Hyderabad, India

Minhaj Zia (Managing Director, India & SAARC) kicked off the India’s P@25 celebrations by catching the handover capsule from the Singapore team. The theme of our India P@25 event was the ‘true spirit of India’. A chorus from Bangalore sung a medley of traditional Indian songs, starting with the national song of India followed by songs of diverse languages like Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, Kannada and Telugu, finishing with the national anthem. Interactive demos were held here too to showcase the new solutions. We concluded the Indian and APAC P@25 celebrations by handing off to Moscow, Russia for celebrations to continue in Europe and North America. 

This historic announcement and following P@25 celebrations sent our social pages into overdrive, sharing where Polycom has come and what the future holds. The workplace of the future is now and Polycom is leading the way with these latest industry transforming solutions. It’s an exciting time for Polycom and as you can see by the celebrations on social (#Polycom25), everyone is on board!