The construction industry is booming in Alberta. This is not new information but to construction industry associations that have their membership going full out, it brings some ongoing challenges.
When the Alberta construction industry is as hot as it has been, associations like the Association of Professional Engineers, Geologists, and Geophysicists of Alberta (APEGGA) and the Association of Science and Engineering Technology Professionals of Alberta (ASET) are faced with new challenges. Some of the challenges require the immediate attention of the membership. In this case, the best practices of a hot Alberta construction industry required some fine tuning.
The members need change now, but they can’t take the time to travel to a conference, participate in the conference (2.5 hours in this case) and then travel back to their work. The meeting time is fine but the travel time takes too much productivity away from the associations members. They want to participate but can’t take the travel time away from the work at hand.
The associations asked Inland AV for recommendations on how to put on a “town hall” meeting that would use technology to bring them together. Inland AV created a strategy that saw the merging of Video Conferencing & Webcasting simultaneously.
With both associations having head offices in Edmonton, the Coast Edmonton Plaza was the broadcast centre for the event. The other video conference remote locations included Calgary, Red Deer, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat, Lloydminister, Cold Lake, Fort McMurray, Grande-Prairie and Peace River. If you could not attend the “town hall” at one of the remote locations, you could log in from your office, or wherever you had an internet connection and participate in the meeting via Webcast.
The major component of the system was an IP based TANDBERG MXP video conference system that enabled the audiences in all the locations to interact with full video and audio. The video screen included the name of the location that was currently “on the floor” to help people follow the video conference.
The Edmonton broadcast venue equipment included (not the exhaustive equipment list):
Members could also log in via a webcast to participate. They could follow the video conference online and participate by asking questions via email. Participate they did, logging in from their Alberta based office or from wherever they happened to be. The post meeting records show that members logged in from Alberta, other Canadian locations, Australia, Europe and South America to participate in the “town hall” meeting.
This unique blending of both videoconference and webcasting technologies enabled APEGGA and ASET to conduct their meeting in a timely fashion and allow their members the opportunity to watch and participate in the crucial dialog that impacts professional engineers and technologists.
Contact your Inland AV office for more details and see if video conferencing and webcasting has a place in your communications plan.
