While it may seem unnecessary, don't overlook the benefits of creating the best conference room names. Meeting room names are actually an important aspect of ensuring that your meeting booking system is easy, and operates without any possibility of confusion. And, not to mention, fun, relevant meeting room names can add a lot to the overall office environment and people's feelings towards meetings.
Room names should be clear and not confuse the users. One of the most common mistakes companies make is naming their conference rooms after actual locations. Initially, this might seem like a good idea, but in our experience, this is not a good naming convention for rooms. That's because it can easily lead to confusion. When the conference organizer announces that the meeting will be held in San Francisco, the conference room, the conference attendees might confuse it for being held in San Francisco, the city. I know it may sound unlikely, but believe it or not, these kind of misunderstandings are actually quite common.
The same can be said for naming conference rooms after people. The intention may be to generate inspiration from historical figures or company leaders who are sources of wisdom and leadership for employees. But until your staff has the room names down, they can cause confusion when it’s unclear which “Bill” you’re referring to: the Bill Gates room or Bill from accounting? Remember that we as humans tend to shorten phrases and names in order to keep things simple. The tendency to stray from a full title such as “The Bill Gates Room” will be strong, and can lead to communication problems.
On the other hand, naming your conference rooms simply on the color or style of the room, i.e. the white room, the corner room etc., you could miss an opportunity to use the names to better describe their purpose, or use the names to underscore your company values. When meeting rooms lack inspiration, often the meetings held within them can too.
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To prevent confusion, name your meeting rooms using this strategy: create short and unique names that represent your company or your products/services in some way. For example, if you are a gaming company, you can name your room after characters from your best-selling games (Mario, Yoshi, Kirby, etc.) If you are a music label, you can name your rooms after best selling songs.
A great way to use room names to underscore your company message and boost the working environment is to name the rooms after your values. When employees take meetings in the “transparency” conference room, or meet with clients in the “customer service" lounge, you can be sure that the values are top of mind for your staff at all times.
Our customer, Lime Technologies, sets a great example for successfully implementing one strategy. Lime Technologies is a software company based in Sweden that sells a CRM product called “Lime.” Following the theme of their product, they named their conference rooms after food and drinks containing lime. For their conference rooms in Lund, Sweden, they named their rooms Key Lime Pie, Guacamole, Daiquiri, and Mojito. These fun and lighthearted names endorses their product, while providing precision when communicating about conference room booking.
Another customer of ours, Dubizzle, a large buy and sell site in The United Arab Emirates, have named their conference rooms after Game of Thrones locations (fictional locations are all right), such as King's Landing and Winterfell. Creative names that a lot of people can relate to, I mean - how can you not like these names?!
Take a few extra minutes to name your conference rooms with intention. You can build your brand, intrigue visitors, build corporate culture, and make your conference rooms more memorable. When you do it correctly, you can make your meeting booking system easier, and avoid confusion amongst team members, which is why room names may be more important than you think.
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