TechEd is Microsoft's premier event for IT professionals and enterprise developers, and this was followed immediately by Convergence, the Microsoft community's chance to network with other users, share and expand their experience and realise their potential.
XL's team was led by project manager Nick Askew assisted by Chris Ellis and Dick Crabbe and they were working for live event consultancy Nteractive headed up by technical director Matt Brownfield, technical consultant Andrew Vass and acclaimed sound designer Colin Pink.
The Nteractive team paid close attention to all video and audio aspects in all areas, from comms system down to video-switcher labelling, and worked closely with XL's HODs and crew to make sure all aspects were delivered to their required standards.
Matt Brownfield comments, "At Nteractive we have very exacting standards and high production values. To deliver a Microsoft event at this level is a significant technical achievement. XL Video has the equipment and packages it to allow us the optimum configuration and setup for the systems, and also provides the right people to install and operate to the levels we require."
The format for TechEd comprised a Keynote space - taking over Hall 6 of the Fira and featuring a primary conference session on one of the four days attended by around 7,000 people. There were then multiple breakout areas accommodating anything from 400 to 1100 people.
The projection system for the Keynote comprised four large screens, two at 21 metres wide left and right of the stage area, with another two at 14 metres wide functioning as repeater screens mid-way down the auditorium to ensure that the large audience could get a clear view of the presentations wherever they were sat in the hall.
Sixteen Barco HDF W26 machines were used to produce the edge-blended images. One of the major technical challenges for the XL crew was achieving the high clarity and definition on the software code-heavy screen graphics using double edge-blended projections, a task that takes skill, precision and time.
Multiple demo and presentation sources plus XL's Coolux quad and dual Pandora's Box media servers operated by Chris Bowman, were switched to the screens via a Barco Encore screen management system operated by Andrew Vass.
Cutting the camera mix on a Grass Valley Karrera PPU was Jonathan Chard, and feeding into this were four Sony HXC-100 operated units - two positioned at FOH, one on a rolling spider at the front of the stage and the fourth on a wireless steadicam rig - plus one of XL's HDiye minicams and a Pixel Power Clarity live production graphics system.
The Karrera provided a mix to all screens in the hall, while separate TXs were sent to an OB truck broadcasting live to Microsoft's production studios at their headquarters and also web-streamed by Tri-Digital.
The breakout rooms were dotted around the Fira in Halls 8 and 8.1. There were 21 in total accommodating the various capacities, and additional video-over-IP relays were activated for the most popular sessions so they could be seen and heard in the over-flow rooms.
Each breakout room contained at least one Panasonic DZ12000K, DZ13K or DZ21K projector to provide high definition displays for the small lines of multiple code text and demo content being displayed.
A Barco PDS-902 switcher and preview monitor was deployed in each room, together with an Interspace Industries touch-operated count-down clock, with about 60 Fibre / CAT transport systems in use across all of the rooms.
A custom audio system was designed for each break-out room, each utilising different
