The Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants Conference, produced by Buckmark Productions for the fifth consecutive year, took place at the Ricoh Arena and this year brought together more Whitbread employees than ever before.
With 2,500 attendees from the restaurant and hotel divisions of Whitbread meeting for the annual conference, Buckmark Productions had to redesign the conference set, creating an 'in the round' seating system with a circular stage in the middle.
Blue i Event Technology was commissioned to design and install the AV equipment required for the event and the new conference format posed new challenges. Ian Riley, project manager for Blue i explained, "Due to the sheer size of the audience, the 'in the round' format meant speakers could engage better with the delegates, but presented new challenges with the AV production.
"With audiences facing different angles towards the stage, sight lines became critical as not everyone would be able to see the projection screens on the back wall of the set. We brought in five 103" plasmas from PSCo and flew them from the 10m high truss system spanning the stage perimeter. This allowed those people sat in the higher tiers and towards the edge of the circular stage, to not miss any of the action."
As part of the conference set, two 6m Imag projection screens were hung to relay live feeds from the stage, and Blue i's Media Hub Rack conveyed over 25 inserts in a four hour presentation.
John Roebuck, managiong director of Buckmark Productions commented, "The team worked very hard to ensure this technical solution would work, as the client wanted every delegate to feel 'involved' with the conference. Sight-lines were critical to achieving the objectives of the brief, and I was personally delighted with the 103" plasma screens. Every seat in the auditorium had a fantastic view of the screens - which carried both PPT slides and VTs - and the nett result was one one very successful event and one very, very happy client."
(Jim Evans)
