|
The Largest
Forum installation in the UK
Lincoln County Council, UK
In the largest installation to date of the RCF
Forum 9000 system in the UK, specialists in local
authority contracting, Sound Advice have completely
renovated the media and communications systems of
Lincolnshire County Council at their offices in
Lincoln.
Because of the County Councils location (Some
councillors have to travel up three hours to attend
meetings) they have turned to web streaming
technologies. It is now possible for people to
observe goings on in the Chamber over the
internet.
The solution was provided by Sound Advice under the
leadership of Jon Hunnisett and in partnership with
web casting specialists Public-i and RCF UK, who
provided the conferencing equipment and software
support. "Our initial one-line brief from the
client was that the system had to do everything
invisibly," explained Jon Hunnisett.
Lincolnshire had actually been a candidate for an
AV systems upgrade for some time. According to IT
manager and project co-ordinator Dave Walker of
HBS, the Council's facilities management company,
the previous system used in the Council Chamber was
an analogue system installed in the 1980's.
Demonstrations of various possibilities were
carried out, and installation commenced in the
spring of a completely new congress, sound
reinforcement, presentation and camera system. The
heart of the Council Chamber is now RCF's new Forum
9000 digital conference system. Jon Hunnisett
explained what he sees as the main strengths of the
system: "Firstly, it has excellent sound quality,
which was very important to the client." That's
something that the Councillors themselves have
already commented on as being a real plus,
according to Dave Walker. The second bonus is one
of flexibility. Hunnisett again: "The system has so
much functionality that can simply be unlocked with
further software purchases. This means that the
customer doesn't need to worry too much about what
feature they should buy, and whether they can
afford them at once. They can get on, buy the
hardware and upgrade their solution later on
without having to rebuild the system."
RCF ultimately supplied a total of 117 delegate
units for the Council Chamber, along with the FMU
9100 central control unit, one of its VM 9844 audio
/ video matrix switchers and three FDC9900 dome
cameras. The three cameras are located discretely
in the roof of the Council Chamber, and positioned
to cover the whole room. The camera feeds are
switched by the RCF FVM matrix unit and then pass
into a Kramer matrix switcher, which delivers to
the streaming hardware. Audio inputs are treated
likewise.
|
|
 Forum
Conference Operator Touch Screen
 Forum
FMS9411 Microphone Conoles
 Lincolnshire
County Council Chamber
|
|
Since the
installation, the Council has asked for an
alteration to the Forum software to better suit its
needs. They want to be able to alter the 'waiting
to speak' queue, and also would like a second
screen for the chairman showing just a schematic
overview of the Council chamber that would allow
them to invite delegates to speak automatically.
Jon Hunnisett: "RCF have been absolutely wonderful
about this. They have done a software modification,
which is now fully currently up and running in the
installation. It's really intuitive, something that
isn't always true of conference software." Dave
Walker from HBS is very pleased with the
installation, he concluded "The engineers from
Sound Advice are amongst the most professional I've
worked with, they did an excellent job."
|
