Raising the Wi-Fi Curtain for Assasin’s Creed III

The LA Theatre was one of the most interesting venues that I have worked in.This historic theatre happens to be the last and most extravagant of the ornate movie palaces, built on Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, between 1911 and 1931. Designed by S. Charles Lee with a French Baroque-inspired décor, its majestic six-story main lobby and 2,000 seat auditorium of carved plaster ornamentation, mirrors, and cove-lit murals recall the glamorous days of 1930s Hollywood.

This said it does not make it an easy venue for a keynote where the client needs a wireless Internet connection for up to 2,000 delegates and they are broadcasting the keynote live on the web.

We had to have a 300.0Mbps line installed into the venue and the only way of doing this was with a line of sight, this was installed at the back of the theatre which meant I had to run lines all over the building.

We installed 12 x Xirrus wireless Arrays to manage the Wi-Fi and had up to 1200 unique devices attached at any one time.

I am pleased to say that the event was a huge success and the client, Ubisoft was very happy, they were showing off their latest titles including Assassin Creed 3 and the new Rayman game for the soon to be released Wii U hand held games console. Check out the keynote here

“huge thanks for all the help getting this show up and running, Ian and team were fantastic. The client was thrilled and we found out today they were voted “Best Press Conference of E3” on Gametrailers, one of the big industry gamer news sites. That was in addition to a ton of other rave reviews, blog posts etc…” -Project Director.

Next Stop – San Francisco!

Ian Rutland

Senior Director

3D Printing at Drupa 2012

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The Event: Drupa 2012, The largest print show in Europe. The Venue: The Messe, Düsseldorf, encompassing 17 halls of Exhibition space! The Client: WRG for Ricoh. The Experience: 2000m² of floor space showcasing the latest Ricoh hardware and software technology. … Continue reading →

Technical support @ East Berlin Power Station

Last week Eric, Alan and myself were in Berlin supporting Big Rock Productions on the TedxChange project. Hosted at one of the strangest venues we’ve ever worked in, the shell of the old East Berlin power station, which included – Lots of concrete, lots of darkness and plenty of areas where in the UK or US health & safety would have a field day.  The remit for TedxChange is to look at the bigger picture and why as a society we should help provide people with their most basic needs: Food, clean water, life-saving medical treatment and vaccines.

We were tasked with providing full wireless coverage throughout the public areas of the venue as well as a selection of wired and wireless coverage in key areas for speakers, staff and crew. Support the keynote production and of course provide some technical equipment which included: Cisco switches, 4 x Xirrus arrays, 10 x laptops, a TMG server, printers and 1.2km of cat5 cable.

The venue itself was a challenge, being just a shell it couldn’t provide us with the power and internet requirements we needed so it meant power generators being hired in and a line of sight internet connection being ordered and beamed to us across the Berlin skyline from 1.5 miles away.

The show went ahead and was beamed via satellite from Berlin to London where it was webcast live to the world.  A full recording of this inspiring show can be found here

Andrew Clark

Technical Consultant

Photographs courtesy of Mike Reid Photography

Top Ten Favourite Apps

When you are on the move, be it for business or pleasure there are a few things which can ease the pain of waiting in a boring departure lounge, a hotel lobby or even a cold and windy station platform. We asked everyone here to send us their favourite apps, after many emails and deliberating we have managed to put together a list of our favourite 10. We hope you find something you like..

1) gMusic – Allows you to listen to your entire Google Music collection and make any songs, albums or playlist available offline.

2) Network toolkit Lite – Network Toolkit LITE is a collection of tools for any network administrator. It provides the basic tools needed in a daily job: PING, TRACEROUTE, WHOIS and SUBNET CALCULATOR

3) Penny talk – A calling card which enables you to call over 200 countries, including India, U.S.A & Canada for only 1p per minute!

4) Shazam – Discover, explore and share more music, TV shows and brands you love, with fast and unlimited tagging.

5) Flashlight – Flashlight uses the LED light on iPhone 4 and fills your screen with bright white light to illuminate your world when you find yourself in the dark.

6) Bing Search – A decision engine, beautifully designed to find whatever your looking for.

7) Pocket cloud – enables you to access and administer your PC at home (or any other PC you may choose) from your tablet.

8) Netflix – ability to enjoy unlimited Films and television episodes, on line. Perfect when you are working away and trying to avoid the hotel bar! Available on PS3, Wii, Xbox, PC, Mac, iPad, Apple TV.

9) Yelp – Search and find helpful user reviews for thousands of Restaurants,           shops bars.Perfect when you are out of town.

10) Eventful – This app allows you to find local events wherever you are, listing: venues and tour dates for over 130,000 performers.

Top 10 Favorite Apps

When you are on the move, be it for business or pleasure there are a few things which can ease the pain of waiting in a boring departure lounge, a hotel lobby or even a cold and windy station platform. We asked everyone here to send us their favourite apps, after many emails and deliberating we have managed to put together a list of our favorite 10. We hope you find something you like..

1) Pandora  – A free personalised radio that only plays the music that you like, after selecting your favourite artist, song, composer etc. Pandora automatically searches similar music and creates a custom station.

2) Penny Talk – a calling card which gives you a convenient way to save on all your long distance calls, available on any phone in the US or Canada for 1¢ per minute.

3) Espn – Score centre, gives you one-tap access to your personalized set of scores.  Never miss another goal, pitch, basket, try, touchdown or wicket.  ScoreCenter brings you the fastest and most reliable game details like plays, key stats, leaderboards, boxscores and scoring summaries.

4) Netflix – ability to enjoy unlimited movies and television episodes, on line. Perfect when you are travelling. Available on PS3, Wii, Xbox, PC, Mac, iPad, Apple TV.

5) Yelp – Fantastic app especially if you are travelling, with ease you can look up local shops, restaurants, bars, nightlife and more – all with a review from past users.

6) Flashlight – Flashlight uses the LED light on iPhone 4 and fills your screen with bright white light to illuminate your world when you find yourself in the dark.

7) Networktool kit – Network Toolkit LITE is a collection of tools for any network administrator. It provides the basic tools needed in a daily job: PING, TRACEROUTE, WHOIS and SUBNET CALCULATOR

8) Eventful – This app allows you to find local events wherever you are, listing: venues and tour dates for over 130,000 performers.

9) CNN – View the latest headlines, race results and major events live on the CNN App for iPad. Perfect for keeping up-to-date with everything happening back home when you are away.

10) Angry Birds Space – Super fun and does not take up a ton of time to play.

Celebrities and Gaming at PaxEast 2012!

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PAX East explained: “In 2004, the folks at Penny Arcade decided they wanted a show exclusively for gaming. Sure, comics, anime, and other nerd hobbies were cool, and those activities all had their own shows… so what about games? From … Continue reading →

6 Top Questions to ask a venue

When booking a venue for your event there are a whole host of services that will need exploring, the IT provision being one of them.
Through many years of experience we know that every venue is unique in its offerings and capabilities.

Discovering which Technical services are provided by the venue and which ones you may need to source externally can be a time consuming process, so we put together this handy guide to get you started:

1. How much bandwidth do you currently have available and can it be dedicated to our event?

2. If we want to bring in our own internet drop from another ISP, is that possible?

3. Is there an onsite company that manages your network or is it managed remotely?

4. Do you use an in-house AV company or is there an outside company that holds the contract?

5. Do you manage electrical needs internally or is there an outside company that manages that for you?

6. Do you have a loading bay? If so, what is the maximum size lorry it can accomodate?

Keep these handy for the next time you are planning an event…

Facebook Hack is on!

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Facebook Hack London                                                                                              8AM Sunday morning and I’m on my way to the East End of London, to the very trendy Brick Lane for the first leg of the Facebook Hack Road show. So what is the Facebook Hack Road … Continue reading →

More Tea… this time in Liverpool

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Last week we were in Liverpool, England supporting the BBC Worldwide Showcase at the Arena and Convention Centre (ACC).  It is an annual sales festival where hundreds of hours of BBC Television programming are showcased to over 600 TV and … Continue reading →

MWC Barcelona

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Mobile World Congress 2012: Showcasing How the World is Redefining Mobile “Mobile World Congress, again shattered attendance records as more than 67,000 attendees showcased how they are Redefining Mobile. This year’s exciting event, hosted in the Mobile World Capital Barcelona, with … Continue reading →