For the third time in 15 years, IBEW, a union representing 750,000 members in the U.S. and Canada, again tapped AVW-TELAV to produce its 37th Convention and Expo, held at the Cleveland Convention Center this past September. "Our production team is an extension of the IBEW team. It is our responsibility to ensure the site(s) they are considering will work within the extensive audio visual requirements for this meeting- the most critical of which is for the president to see his members in a face-to-face environment, " said Bob Walker, Vice President Creative Services. "In 2002, Kenny Hunt, one of AVW-TELAV's Production/Designers, and I conducted a site inspection in Cleveland to ensure this facility could meet the design and technical engineering requirements for this meeting. And leading up to this event, Kenny worked on IBEW for almost three months exclusively," said Walker. The '06 gathering drew more than 3,000 delegates elected by locals and 3,000 guests. While AVW-TELAV has produced many events of similar size, the IBEW meeting was complex and challenging.
The first challenge was the distance between the delegates and the president. "The delegates were a football field away and the president wanted to have eye-to-eye contact with the delegates in the audience who had a question or comment", said Walker. "We needed to find a way to create this face-to-face opportunity."
Our solution was two-fold. We installed 15 KIOSKs throughout the hall, each KIOSK engineered with a built in screen, sound reinforcement and robotic video camera. Any delegate who had a question or comment would go to the KIOSK and pass a badge across the RFID reader. The reader would identify the delegate and a close circuit feed would send the image to one of 15 screens built into the president's lectern. The president controlled the audio and video for each screen and could interact with all of his constituents. Another challenge we had was the massive size of the lectern. The lectern and teleprompter was needed for the president but not needed for the entertainment or other festivities happening on the stage. How do we move this structure on and off the stage without creating delays for other events utilizing this same stage?
Our solution was to build two (2) elevators into the stage. The first elevator was to transport people to and from the stage. The second elevator was used to lower the lectern and teleprompter under the stage. As commonly used in theater productions, the "slip stage" would open, the elevator would lower the lectern and teleprompters, and then the stage would slide in and become flush with the rest of the stage. Since the teleprompters were higher than the lectern, we used a teleprompter technology that included a motorized telescope pole. This enabled us to control the height of the teleprompters for the president as well as lower them for transport below the stage.
Our last challenge was the low ceiling height in the Cleveland Convention Center. Our solution was to install multiple screens throughout the hall permitting delegates to view the proceedings with proper site lines from any area within this facility. The setup included "lots of scenery, staging, video, lighting and sound," Walker noted. Equipment arrived in 16 semis. A crew of 40 AVW-TELAV staff and 120 temporary workers laid five miles of lighting cable and three miles of CAT 5 video cable. Partnering with Freeman, we also set up working offices onsite for IBEW executives, who moved union operations from DC headquarters to Cleveland for the five days of the convention.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers was founded in 1890. The union represents members who work in a wide variety of fields, including utilities, construction, telecommunications, broadcasting, manufacturing, railroads and government.