Simon Mpele, Senior Specialist: Policy Investigation at the National Advisory Council on Innovation (NACI) has seen the benefits of videoconferencing, through the economies of scale, reduced transport costs and therefore reduced carbon footprint and ease of use.
The initial idea to use video conferencing came when NACI moved from the Department of Science & Technology to its own suite of offices in Persequor Technopark in Pretoria. The decision to relocate was taken in September 2009 and the office design was completed by the beginning of the new year, allowing implementation and testing of the system by the end of February 2010. “We have councillors and committee members that make up the executive board of NACI but none of them are present on site,” explains Mpele. They could be all over the country from Gauteng to Durban or Cape Town and they fulfil roles in private institutions, government and universities. This made it almost impossible for us to arrange board meetings with such conflicting schedules and this had a major impact on meeting attendance.”
After an impressive demonstration and evaluation of all the features of the Teljoy Audiovisual system, Thabo Mosenthal, in charge of IT systems at NACI, selected a design that offered exceptional clarity. The system incorporates everything including touch panels, DVD player, sound recording abilities with microphone voice uplift technology, HD projector, a secondary keypad, multiple pop-ups and an additional screen for content. All items utilize the latest convergence technology to allow the vendor to control the room and its contents both locally and remotely. Mpele’s comments, “We were very pleased with the success of videoconferencing, the system works excellently and we receive an efficient quick response on any service queries that arise. The system is extremely user friendly and can be operated easily. For us there is also the possibility of allowing our associates in the department or precinct access to this technology which is made easier each day as videoconferencing becomes the norm.” Technical specs The room, at first glance, appears to be fairly simple. This is part of the art of designing a system where the user interface is very simple and the complexity is controlled behind the scenes.
Design standards incorporating best of breed technology and tried and tested AV practices where used to enhance the experience for the customer. The design also takes a view on scalability, redundancy and future proofing that will hold NACI in good stead going forward. The video is broken down into display devices (screen and projector) and the input can be either PC or video conferencing. The video conferencing unit is the state of the art HDX 7000 unit from Polycom, which has won awards globally. It is capable of high definition video conferencing (720p) but is most effective at lower bandwidths where the quality far exceeds that of the competitors and previous models. The audio is quite complex with the ceiling microphones capturing the audio within the room. There is both echo cancellation and voice uplift within the room, which ensures that the users get a constant high quality experience. This ensures that the 22 kHz stereo surround feed from the VC is accurately distributed throughout the room. This gives the user a distinct impression of where the person speaking on the far side is in the room (e.g. back left or front right etc). There are two control points within the room. One flush mounted into the wall and one flush mounted into the table. The design is similar for both to encourage usage and to simplify the offering. With one button, one can set the "tone" for a VC meeting or a standard presentation. This ease of use increases usage of the rooms by simplifying things and removing the need for the five remotes that would typically be required (projector, screen, panel, audio & VC).
“The servicing aspect is essentially managed services, which we will be demonstrating to them in the near future,” explains Marc Atkinson, national sales manager at Teljoy Audiovisual. “The beauty of this is that they have already spent the bulk of the money on the hardware, which is fully compatible with our requirements.” “With this solution, one meeting room becomes a data presentation room, audio conferencing room, video conferencing room and data conferencing room all in one. The room can be used for long periods at a time, and the hardware included makes the system as user friendly as possible. Ease of use assists to limit meeting fatigue and provides the delegates with a feeling of personal satisfaction, for having successfully completed a long distance meeting,” he concludes.