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Robin Taylor of VideoMon with the invisible presenter, part
of the huge production team that created SHRM’s Imagination
2000 |
Las Vegas is no
stranger to illusion. The gambling and entertainment destination thrives
on altered reality and the indulgent imagination of show designers. As a
result, Sin City sets high expectations among its visitors. When a
convention comes to town, the attendees expect the showmanship to spill
over into their conference sessions. They expect more than the
run-of-the-mill ballroom dog-and-pony shows that characterize so many
professional confabs. They expect to be surprised, entertained and even
astonished. In short, Las Vegas puts a lot of pressure on
presentations.
Last June, when the Society for Human Resources
Management jetted into town, expectations were running high among its
20,000 attending members. To suit the setting and set the tone for the
fast-changing nature of the human-resources profession, the SHRM chose
“Imagination 2000” as the theme for its 52nd annual conference. The job
fell to Lisa Block, director of meetings and conferences, to whip up a
milieu and a mood that would, in her words, “motivate, educate, inspire,
develop identity, instill pride and promote the values of the
organization.” In addition, says Block, the attendees like to have some
fun.
Block admits that Imagination 2000 may not have been the most
imaginative theme ever created for a conference, but it gave her, her
team, the producers and the technicians plenty of creative elbow room. The
venue could not have been more devoid of inspiration. The “auditorium” was
the 600-foot-long, cavernous and featureless main floor of the Las Vegas
Convention Center. The main hall is used typically for trade-show
exhibitions, but in the case of the SHRM meeting, it was configured to
seat 15,000 people in front of a 60-by-48-foot raised stage. A white
cyclorama ran the width of the stage, with a 10-foot wrap added to each
side. More than 400 lighting fixtures were hung from a custom-built
grid.
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Williams/Gerard Productions of Washington, DC, was lead
producer for the event, which involved live, real-time virtual
reality presented with a series of Roadie projectors from Christie
Digital Systems to an audience of more than 12,000 SHRM
members. |
With that basic and
bland room configuration, it was up to the SHRM team and the producers to
create a series of live presentations that would compete with the
volcanoes, pirate ships, palazzos and pyramids on the Las Vegas
Strip.
Supercomputer
Transport
Block, a veteran of 11 SHRM conferences, knew more than
six months before the event that she wanted to make a significant
departure from the sort of video and graphics shows the organization had
staged in the past. She had recently attended a conference in which the
images of the live speakers on the stage were combined with CGI and video
backgrounds. Block was intrigued by the imaginative possibilities of the
VR technology. “I thought it could take us to places that we couldn’t go
in reality,” she says. “We wanted to transport the audience, to get them
to think about things in a different way, to use their
imaginations.”
Block retained the services of Williams/Gerard
Productions in Washington, DC, as the lead producer for the conference
presentation. Williams/Gerard developed the visual theme, the video and
graphics, set design and management of the conference. It also acted as
the contractor for the many third-party producers and technicians
necessary to stage the elaborate four-day event.
 “Lisa wanted to do something different for the members,” recalls
Brian Congrove, executive producer for Williams/Gerard. “She wanted not
only to get their attention, but to give them the feeling that there is
always something new and fun ahead. She wanted to keep them wondering what
would happen next.”
VideoMon, an engineering and production company
in Scottsdale, Arizona, was brought in to handle the staging, call the
show and integrate the VR effects into the rest of the presentations. The
technology itself was supplied by Mirage Digital, a Phoenix company that
developed a one-of-a-kind portable VR system.
 Dubbed the Virtual Fly Pack, the Mirage Digital system
incorporates two SGI Onyx II supercomputers. According to Mirage Digital’s
president, John Fassett, the only other organization that has modified
Onyx servers for road shows is the U.S. Army.
Similar VR systems
are used in broadcasting to generate special effects, but in that case,
installation takes weeks and involves highly trained technicians. The
system used at the SHRM conference was up and running in four hours, says
Fassett. The servers travel in custom-designed flight cases while the
components racks are pre-wired with more than 360 connections. This
eliminates the time-consuming task of patching together the system each
time it is run. Fassett notes that the technology used to generate
real-time 3D animation effects at the Las Vegas show involved more than $2
million worth of equipment.
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2) |
