Plain answers to fair questions.

ROOM is a not-for-profit project to create Community Professional Rooms: private, accessible, professionally equipped rooms in local places, where people can meet a professional who is somewhere else. The idea is to bring the professional to the community, instead of making the community travel to the professional.

No. Zoom, Teams and similar tools already do video calls. A professional service often needs much more: privacy, documents printed and scanned, identity checked, papers signed and seen being signed — and for many people, someone else to handle the technology. ROOM is about a known, properly equipped room where all of that can happen.

Not yet. ROOM is at an early stage. We're building and testing the first prototype room now. The next step after that is a pilot in one real community. If you'd like your community to be considered, register your interest.

It's aimed first at rural, regional and remote communities, where distance is the biggest barrier. But nothing about the design is limited to the country — a room could be just as useful in a city suburb, an aged-care setting or anywhere access is hard.

Many. ROOM is deliberately profession-neutral: lawyers, mediators, medical specialists, allied-health practitioners, psychologists and counsellors, accountants and financial advisers, conveyancers, migration advisers, NDIS and government services, and others. The room stays much the same; each profession brings its own procedures and rules.

No — that's the whole point. You shouldn't need to log in, click links or adjust cameras. You walk in, the screen welcomes you and tells you who you're seeing, and the professional looks after the rest from their end.

Every room is designed to have a large, obvious HELP button. Rooms are also designed with a backup internet connection, and with a plan for safely picking up where things left off if the connection drops — especially during anything formal like signing documents.

The design allows for a companion or support person in the room, and for interpreters or support people to join remotely where that's appropriate. Whether a support person can be present for a particular appointment is up to the professional and their rules.

Accessibility is a core requirement, not an extra: large screens and text, captions, hearing-loop support, wheelchair access, a sensible desk height and easy-to-use physical controls. We intend to test rooms with real people — especially older people — not just with tech-savvy designers.

The room is designed so a professional can see documents and signing clearly, and can print and scan. But whether a particular document can be signed or witnessed remotely depends on the law for that type of document, in that state, and on the professional's own rules. ROOM provides the room and the tools — it doesn't change what the law allows.

No. When the room is empty, consultation cameras are parked or switched off and microphones are off. Nothing should be recorded just because it's technically possible — recording only happens where it's authorised and appropriate for that service.

At the end of each session the room is designed to disconnect, clear temporary documents and print queues, remove temporary local data and reset itself for the next person. Each profession can add its own stricter requirements on top.

If a building needs security CCTV, it's kept separate from the confidential consultation system. The two are not mixed.

In places people already know and trust: libraries, neighbourhood houses, council facilities, community centres and community health services. Later, the same design could go into a small modular building — or a mobile room that travels between towns, a bit like a mobile library.

Our working target is that a useful pilot room could be set up for around $10,000, depending on the space and equipment a community already has. That's an aim, not a quote — the prototype will tell us what's really needed.

Stable internet matters more than very fast internet. Our working design targets are about 50 Mbps symmetrical recommended and 100 Mbps preferred, while still being able to work at lower speeds. A production room should also have an independent backup — 4G/5G, or satellite such as Starlink for remote areas. Fixed equipment should be wired rather than on Wi-Fi.

That's what the design tries to avoid. Each room's computer makes a secure outgoing connection to the ROOM platform, so a council or library shouldn't need to open up its network to host a room.

Hopefully, yes. The standard is meant to describe what equipment must do, not which brand to buy — so existing, donated or refurbished gear can be used if it meets the standard. We're also exploring a "Room Qualification Test" to check that a room does what it should, whatever brands are in it.

Send us an email at hello@room.org.au telling us who you are, where you are, and what you have in mind. We're looking for one external pilot community after the prototype is proven.

Our preferred model is community-owned and led by an Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation, rather than infrastructure imposed from outside. We'd welcome early conversations.

ROOM is a project of Spreadable Ideas Inc, a Victorian incorporated not-for-profit association (Reg. No. A0055927U). Spreadable Ideas grew from a simple philosophy — ideas worth spreading — and has a history of community events including TEDx. You can read more at s-ideas.com.

It means the room standard, reference designs and core software are intended to be published freely, so that a capable council or community group could build and run its own room without having to buy anything from us or anyone else. The exact open-source licence hasn't been decided yet.

Open source doesn't stop sustainable services. Communities that don't want to do it themselves could choose a technology kit, a complete installed room, or a managed service with support and updates. Those services can help fund the project — without making anyone dependent on them.

No. The core room and software are designed to work without any particular company's service. Professional organisations can build specialist services that run in a room — the first test case is a legal-services workflow, because it's one of the most demanding — but they don't own or define ROOM.

Yes, please. We'll need help with camera and device control, room monitoring, accessibility testing and documentation. Email hello@room.org.au and tell us what you're good at.