17
New technology
installed
at Sandy Park
Getting the right message across
has never been so important, and
Sandy Park, home of Exeter Chiefs
Rugby Union Club, has invested in
installing new state-of-the-art
facilities for those heading to the
venue for meetings, conferences
and exhibitions.
Working with main Exeter Chiefs
sponsor, swcomms, the extensive
makeover has further cemented
Sandy Park, Exeter and Devon as a
leading destination for business
tourism.
As part of the recent technical
upgrade, the venue’s biggest
room, the Exeter Suite, has been
fitted with a high definition
camera, allowing speakers or
other activities to be displayed
across the screens both in the
Exeter Suite and throughout the
building.
In addition, the screens in Sandy
Park’s Exeter, Estuary, County and
Chiefs suites have all been
upgraded to new Panasonic Solid
Shine laser projectors with 4m x
2.25m screens, with new plasma
TV screens also installed into each
of the rooms, ensuring
presentations and videos
stand-out. A new 1m x 2m monitor
has been fitted into the reception
area of Sandy Park, allowing clear
and flexible displays to welcome
customers to the venue.
Investment has also been made
in software to allow wireless
streaming (Apple TV), plus
software to make sure videos,
presentations and images can all
be presented seamlessly, even if
they are separate files.
www.conference-news.co.uk
Technology
The rise (and fall)
of the machines…
- By Simon Clayton,
chief ideas officer, RefTech
I was amused to read that a hotel in
Japan has ‘sacked’ its robot staff
because they just weren’t any good. A
few industry commentators have
implied that robots could soon be
used at events to replace staff, but it’s
worth noting how different our industry
is because of the ephemeral nature of
what we do and the resulting need to
have everything perfect in a small-time
window.
A hotel wishing to implement robots
could do it gradually, learn from each
week’s activity and hopefully improve
things as they go. They wouldn’t have
to implement everything in a day so
that it could work flawlessly for the
next three days like an event organiser
would.
Equally, event staff have to react
quickly to situations occurring on the
day; they can take a member of staff
off registration and move them to
another area of the event if needed.
You couldn’t do that with a robot that
was programmed to do just one
function.
Moss from The IT Crowd got it right;
when he met a bomb disposal robot in
the street, his first instinct was to treat
it like a pet asking “Can we keep him,
Roy - only if he doesn’t belong to
anyone?”
Fun pets they may be, but they
aren’t yet equipped to be fully working
members of your team.