What could be better than a tall, cold glass of beer on a warm and sluggish afternoon? Not much. And Miller Brewing knew that was exactly the way to entertain and reward the 3,000 employees and distributors in attendance at its annual conference held at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.

The company's diverse brand portfolio ranges from Miller Lite, the original light beer, to great legacies such as Miller Genuine Draft, Miller High Life and Milwaukee's Best Light. To showcase its wide selection of beverages, Miller asked AVW-TELAV to create a Brand Experience section outdoors, which involved 12 different areas where each individual Miller brand would be served exclusively.

Since the Brand Experience was outdoors and around the MGM Grand's pools, "we had to build individual, self-supported truss structures for each area," explained Bill Kitto, National Sales Manager, National Sales Group (NSG). Two of the larger structures were built directly over swimming pools. "We lit the Miller Lite pool area from above and below using special underwater LED fixtures," he said.

The new Miller Chill area had a bar built in the middle of the pool with a performance stage on one end which featured everything from welders to rock bands. The back of the stage held a 3'x3' plasma wall on which the Sparks brand had its logo and custom videos projected.

The Milwaukee's Best area held a live poker tournament that required us to mount cameras over each of the three tournament tables and project onto truss-mounted plasmas. As if that wasn't cool enough, the Mickey's area had an Ultimate Fighting Cage where attendees were invited in to go a few rounds with some of the fighters.

However, for the AVW-TELAV technicians, it wasn't all easy flowing. "We battled some high winds and rain for a couple of the days during set up and were forced to keep a close eye on the weather throughout the run of the event," detailed Kitto. Thankfully, overall, Mother Nature gave Miller decent-enough weather to keep the outdoor sections open for the duration of the event.

For the finale, a 60'x60' soft screen was lowered from the top of the MGM convention center, as we rolled the closing highlights video using a Barco 20K projector and a JBL VRX system for audio.

We also provided AV indoors for Miller's General Session and Awards Ceremony for which we used two 15'x56' front projection screens, 12 double stacked BARCO R12 projectors, and a JBL Line Array System for sound. Keynote speakers included Tom Brokaw, popular American television journalist, and Mike Krzyzewski, head basketball coach at Duke University. Chris Berman, an ESPN sportscaster, was the MC at awards banquet.

AVW-TELAV, and Kitto in particular, was commended for a job exceptionally well done. "Thank you for getting it right and doing us proud," commented Valerie Carter, the Show Director representing Miller, in an e-mail to Kitto after the conference concluded. "You and your team are amazing and great to work with. Thank you for your ongoing professionalism and dedication to making the Miller conference such a success."