Conference Production

The Hilton Vienna Danube Hotel

Location:

Vienna, Austria

Event:

Conference

Service:

Technical Production

The TPP crew travelled to Austria to deliver the technical, set and stage package for a two day conference production in Vienna. Our venue for the event was The Hilton Vienna Danube Hotel.

As a technical production company, accustomed to travelling the world to produce professional conferences for our clients, we welcomed the opportunity to design and produce a conference in the Austrian capital.

Conference Production Vienna: The Brief

Our brief was to design a set and stage, complete with dynamic lighting, AV solutions, speaker aids, video and technical support. Our priority was to ensure the conference production in Vienna ran smoothly and efficiently throughout.

Working with the event team, as their dedicated technical event department, we were involved in the project planning from the beginning. As a result, we recced the venue to ensure we could deliver the set, stage and technical package required. Our early involvement meant that we could design and specify the equipment accurately, and provide a true and realistic quotation.

The Venue

The Hilton Vienna Hotel presented a fantastic venue choice for the conference. Nestled on the banks for the River Danube, it was centrally located for delegates travelling to the city and the large conference suite was more than sufficient to seat all the guests in a banquetting style seating arrangement.

Access, Space & Rigging

From a technical point-of-view the venue ticked a lot of boxes too. For a start, the access routes and tall ceilings enabled our team to load in all the kit and set panels very efficiently. While the 6m high ceiling in the conference room was equipped with plenty of rigging points for our lighting rig.

Acoustics

Although the high ceilings could have proved problematic with the sound reverberations during the conference, the addition of acoustic panels on the walls worked brilliantly. As a result, the conference audio was clear and posed no risk of reverberations.

Lack of Power Presented the Only Challenge

On the whole, the venue was a great choice, however, it did present one challenge and that was the power supply. Originally we had intended to install a full width LED video wall as the conference set, but the venue’s limited power meant we had to decrease the the size of the video wall and build a custom size set border.

Set-up

The Vienna conference production spanned two days, required eight crew and we had one day to load in and build.

You can see our crew working hard in the time-lapse video below.

Video Wall and Set Design

Having established that there was not sufficient power at the venue to follow through with our original plan of installing a full width video wall, we built a smaller LED video screen with a set surround.

The video wall installed measured 4.8m wide by 3.0m high with a 1.5mm pixel pitch and was mounted upon a 1.2m high stage.

To frame the LED video wall we built a custom-made set surround ahead of the event in our warehouse and transported to Vienna for easy installation onsite. The bespoke set comprised of a three layered system to cover the glazed wall within the venue.

Upon the set panels, we fitted acrylic stand-off logos either side of the screen (blurred in these pictures for confidentiality purposes).

The 400mm high stage was finished with a carpet, and furnished with an elegant glass coffee table and swan chairs for the guest panel, which offer optimum comfort during long conferences.

Speaker Aids

To support the keynote speaker, we provided a variety of speaker aids, including a 49” LED digital lectern and a 49″ comfort monitor, which was placed at foot of the stage. The comfort monitors display the presentation to the keynote speaker and can provide time prompts to keep the presentation on track.

We also provided a SpotOn Annotation system which the keynote speaker could use to mark up sections of the presentation live of stage using a 22″ touch screen mounted on the lectern. As you can see in the picture below, the keynote speaker is able to effortlessly draw attention to specific sections of the presentation either by underlining, circling or drawing arrows or lines in any colour directly onto the presentation. This is particularly helpful during Q&A sessions.

conference production spoton

To ensure the delegates at the back of the room could see the presentation clearly, we installed two additional 85″ LED screens at midway points along the side of the conference suite.

Lighting & Rigging

The lighting design in the room needed to compliment and enhance the client’s branding and engage the audience in the information shared by each of the keynote speakers.

Unlike many venues, the Hilton Hotel provided fantastic facilities for our technical team, including multiple ceiling joists, which allowed us to hang a full lighting rig. The rig was created using a 14m x 300mm box truss hung above the stage with four 250Kg 6m Hand Winches.

Upon the rig, we fitted:

  • 12 Martin Professional ELP CL LED Profiles to light the set, the logo and the stage.
  • 8 Pulsar Chromaflood 200s to light the audience.

To light and colour wash the set, we used 16 Chauvet ColorBand Pix 1m LED Battens.

Operating the lighting was an Avolites Tiger Touch lighting desk.

The Conference Production Vienna Technical AV Specification

Below you will see the full technical AV specification for the conference production Vienna, delivered by The Production People.

Video:

1 x 4.8m wide by 3.0m high 1.5mm LED Wall (on 1.2m high stage)

1 x Blackmagic Atem 2 M/E production studio 4k switcher

2 x Dell i7 256GB SSD 16GB Ram laptops (for PPT)

1 x Apple MacBook Pro c/w Playback Pro (for video playback)

2 x 85” LED repeater screens

2 x 49” LED comfort monitors

1 x 49” LED digital lectern

1 x SpotOn Annotation system

Lighting:

1 x Avolites Tiger Touch lighting desk

12 x Martin ELP CL LED Profiles (stage & logo lighting)

16 x Chauvet ColorBand Pix 1m LED Battens (set uplighting)

8 x Pulsar Chromaflood 200 (audience lighting)

Rigging:

14m x 300mm Box Truss

4 x 250Kg 6m hand winches

Audio:

1 x Yamaha QL1 32 channel digital audio mixer

6 x d&b E12 speakers

4 x d&b Ci80 speakers

10 way Sennheiser radio microphone system

2 x Denon DN-300R MP3 audio recorders (all audio recorded)

ASL Talkback system

Set:

1 x Custom set c/w screen surround

2 x Acrylic stand-off logos

12m x Revo 400mm high stage & carpet

4 x White swan chairs

1 x White glass coffee table

Final Thoughts

From a technical production point-of-view, this was extremely well organised event, owing to the fact TPP were welcomed into the event team at early stages, and the venue selection was on-point for access and easily facilitated a professional lighting rig.

It was a shame not to have been able to deliver the full width video wall – due to the venue power supply. However, we always find a way to overcome challenges and this certainly was not the biggest challenge we have faced when it comes to conference productions.

Planning a Conference?

If you are planning an international event or conference anywhere in the world and need a reliable, reputable, strategic and creative AV partner, be sure to contact TPP.

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