Making hybrid work: how RTU transformed campus collaboration with ClickShare

Latvia · 2026

Riga Technical University (RTU), a leading center of technology education in the Baltics and the only multidisciplinary technical university in Latvia, regularly hosts conferences, hybrid meetings, and collaborations with academic and industry partners. The scale and diversity of these events called for a reliable and intuitive videoconferencing solution capable of delivering a seamless meeting experience for both onsite and remote participants.

To meet this need, the RTU IT Department made the strategic decision to implement Barco ClickShare videoconferencing solutions.

Key benefits

Seamless hybrid collaboration across platfoms (Teams, Zoom, Webex, and others)
No cables, no technical delays - just instant collaboration
Smooth, guest-friendly meeting room experience
Minimal IT involvement

Barco solutions

Challenges before ClickShare

As an international institution with a growing number of hybrid meetings, RTU needed a reliable way for staff, students, and guests to collaborate with their peers, whether on campus or joining remotely. Before modernizing their meeting spaces, the university relied on setups that weren’t designed with hybrid collaboration in mind. Users often struggled to access audiovisual equipment for remote participants, and older cable-based connections such as HDMI and VGA only made the process more cumbersome. These challenges frequently slowed down meeting starts and increased the demand for IT support:

“Every user who wanted to connect to a projector or screen had to rely on cables. In many cases, the correct connection type wasn’t available or compatible with the laptop in use. This frequently resulted in delays and required IT support, interrupting the flow of meetings,” explains Māris Umbraško, Senior IT Technical Support Specialist at RTU.

Ensuring a fast and frictionless start to every meeting

To overcome these challenges, RTU upgraded its conference and meeting rooms with Barco ClickShare solutions, enabling intuitive and flexible hybrid meeting experiences. Participants can now simply plug the ClickShare Button into their laptop, click once, and immediately connect to the room’s camera, microphones, speakers, and display. Within seconds, the video conference is ready to go. ClickShare can be used seamlessly with widely used video conferencing platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex and others, offering maximum flexibility.

“Meeting room users can start a meeting and immediately connect to all the necessary equipment. If IT support is ever required, it’s only at the level of a first-time instruction,” says Māris Umbraško.

Since the installation, ClickShare has significantly improved the day-to-day meeting experience at RTU. Feedback from staff and guests has been overwhelmingly positive.

“Guests are often pleasantly surprised at how simple and fast it is to connect to the system, regardless of the laptop or platform they use,” Umbraško adds.

Making hybrid meetings equitable for everyone

Given its international network of researchers and academic partners, the Riga Technical University needed a solution capable of delivering a seamless hybrid meeting experience with high-quality audio and visuals. With researchers joining from across the globe, ensuring meeting equity was a key priority. Smooth collaboration depends on onsite and remote participants being able to see, hear and contribute without barriers. ClickShare fosters interaction and makes hybrid meetings feel natural for everyone involved. With the feature called ConferenceView, meeting participants and shared content are shown side by side on the meeting room display, keeping everyone visible and engaged.

Ensuring secure collaboration

At RTU, meetings frequently involve sensitive information, from research data to confidential discussions, making security essential. ClickShare is designed to prioritize security and meets stringent compliance requirements. Built‑in enterprise‑grade protections safeguard data privacy and ensure secure, reliable meetings. Continuous firmware updates keep ClickShare devices protected over time, while XMS Cloud provides IT administrators with a centralized platform to remotely manage, monitor, and update all ClickShare units.

Strengthening RTU’s reputation

Beyond operational improvements, the implementation of ClickShare has enhanced RTU’s reputation among both staff and guests by providing modern and reliable meeting spaces for onsite and remote visitors from academia and industry:

“ClickShare solutions create a sense of confidence for both event organizers and guests. Technical disruptions are minimized, allowing everyone to focus on sharing content, exchanging ideas, and building partnerships,” emphasizes Māris Umbraško.

Meeting participants can now be confident that meetings will start on time, that everyone will be heard equally, and that ideas can flow without technical hiccups.

Conclusion

ClickShare has become an integral part of RTU’s daily academic and organizational life, significantly improving the quality of hybrid meetings and conferences while strengthening the university’s international reputation. ClickShare solutions increase interactivity and dynamism, creating an environment where sharing knowledge, which is at the heart of RTU’s identity, can happen naturally and without interruption.

This technology elevates the quality of daily work and events, enabling staff and visitors to focus on meaningful interaction rather than technical challenges. For this reason, Barco ClickShare is considered a priority solution wherever wireless presentation and collaboration are essential.

Māris Umbraško

Senior IT Technical Support Specialist at RTU