Patent ID: 8909702

Claim:
A computer-based method for coordinating operation of hardware devices in a meeting, including: at a room control component residing on any of one or more computers connected by a network, each of the one or more computers including one or more processors, memory storing instructions, and at least one configuration repository component, wherein hardware devices are connected to the room control component: enabling one or more presenters to create a meeting configuration, each meeting configuration comprising one or more presenters' configurations of hardware devices, the meeting configuration being stored by the at least one configuration repository component, and each presenter's configuration comprising a plurality of device states for at least a subset of the hardware devices, each hardware device associated with one or more device states, each device state indicating a respective operation of an associated hardware device, a first device state of a first hardware device pointing to a second device state of a second hardware device; and following creation of the meeting configuration, coordinating the operation of the hardware devices for presentation in the meeting without control by the one or more presenters based on the one or more presenters' configurations for the meeting, wherein: enabling one or more presenters to create a meeting configuration includes authenticating one of the one or more presenters with a cell phone as an authentication device communicably connected to the room control component through authentication device wrappers for identifying the one of the one or more presenters, wherein the authentication device wrappers are configured to enable system independence from the choice of authentication devices in authenticating one of the one or more presenters; and coordinating the operation of hardware devices includes separately authenticating one of the one or more presenters with a cell phone as an authentication device communicably connected to the room control component through authentication device wrappers.