Renewal of a local government meeting system at Strathcona County
With a smart combination of multimedia conferencing units and wireless microphone stations, Strathcona County set new audiovisual standards for its council room.
A new multimedia conferencing system for Strathcona County’s council room
Hugging the eastern edge of the Edmonton metropolitan region in Alberta, Canada, Strathcona County is an area in transition. Its mostly rural and suburban landscape a bucolic contrast to its larger urban neighbor. Home to roughly 75% of Canada’s oil refineries, Strathcona County is a thriving community that enjoys a strong local economy and a high quality of life.
New conferencing system needed for local government meetings
Strathcona County Hall, in the heart of Sherwood Park, is home to the mayor and local government offices. Like in most regional government agencies, public meetings are an important aspect of governance. But the facility’s aging delegate systems were beginning to become problematic, with components failing and repairs becoming a frequent necessity.
Strathcona County’s Facility Services team reached out to audio-visual specialists DataVisual Marketing to help them plan the implementation of a new audiovisual conferencing system. One that would meet their needs well into the foreseeable future.
Live demonstration
DataVisual’s regional representative Justin Boyle immediately new that a Televic conferencing system was the best solution for Strathcona County’s needs. He called in Televic Conference’s product manager, Didier Rosez for a live demonstration of Televic’s uniCOS multimedia solution. This system offers each delegate HQ audio, up to 6 lip-synched video streams, document sharing, and more. All at their fingertips on a touch screen.
Comprehensive solution for easier meeting management
Easily configurable as chairman or delegate units, the uniCOS conferencing set-up created the ability to clean up the tabletops and simplify the meeting management workflow. In the old room layout, the clerk’s team and the Mayor had three different control surfaces in front of them: a 22-inch monitor, a Crestron control panel, and an iPad. With uniCOS, the meeting management tasks performed on these 3 components could all be integrated into 1 multimedia touchscreen. On request of Strathcona County’s project team, Televic added a custom meeting management functionality to control the queuing list or give someone the floor.
Integration of wireless conferencing microphone stations
Shortly after taking the new council meeting solution in operation, the newly released wireless Confidea FLEX G4 microphone stations were added to the layout, in combination with the uniCOS multimedia units.
The combination of wireless and wired conferencing units – for instance on the speaker podium – addressed the need to provide a clear view on remaining speech time at the public speaker desk.
Justin Boyle, regional representative at DataVisual, explains why he recommended Televic:
“The Televic system was the only available solution that could meet Strathcona County’s requirements, including multimedia stations for each council member and clerk, wireless audio-only stations for presenters and wired stations for the podium. They were also happy with the installation support offered by Televic’s Jeff Pead, who had worked with the Strathcona team in the past.”
Software
Integrator
