Wilson & Gilkes At MCEC

THE CHALLENGE

Recog­nised as Aus­trala­sia’s Leading Meetings and Con­fer­ence Centre from 2012 – 2015 by the pres­ti­gious World Travel Awards, the Melbourne Con­ven­tion and Ex­hi­bi­tion Centre is a one-stop-shop for creating and running a suc­cess­ful event. This includes amazing spaces, leading tech­nol­o­gy, creative food and wine, and staff with the skills and ex­pe­ri­ence to bring it all together. Entrances to the multiple con­ven­tion and ex­hi­bi­tion spaces branch off a long foyer lined with modern ar­chi­tec­ture and angled windows looking out to the Yarra River.

THE PROCESS

Because of MCEC’s size and scope, there are often several events taking place within the venue at any given time. This means the long corridor is fre­quent­ed by several people, each seeking their specific event of interest. Paul Rumble, Senior Manager Tech­nol­o­gy Services at MCEC, chose to integrate digital signage options to help direct foot traffic through the ex­hi­bi­tion and con­ven­tion halls’ shared foyer.

The shared foyer is pretty expansive — the kind of space that’d instantly dwarf a petite screen. Here, digital signage has to be big to make an im­pres­sion. So they went big. 80 inches big.
 

“the Gilkon shroud is designed to lend digital signage a com­mand­ing presence as well as struc­tur­al stability”

THE SOLUTION

MCEC purchased two colossal 80-inch NEC com­mer­cial panels. To accompany them, Rumble ap­proached Gilkon to construct custom en­clo­sures (or shrouds) for both displays, having first seen Gilkon’s offerings at the Integrate 2015 expo.

Like a well-matched photo frame, the Gilkon monolith is designed to lend digital signage a com­mand­ing presence as well as struc­tur­al stability. MCEC purchased two of them to house the NEC panels, both of which stand tall and proud in the en­trance­ways of MCEC.

It’s not just the aes­thet­ics that makes the giant enclosure what it is. Porta­bil­i­ty was a key re­quire­ment for MCEC’s needs — something Gilkon’s shrouds hadn’t featured pre­vi­ous­ly. Though it posed a challenge making such a sizeable rig re­lo­cat­able with anything less than a forklift, Gilkon built castors into the shroud that allow them to be easily and strate­gi­cal­ly placed wherever the most foot traffic will be con­cen­trat­ed. Power and Ethernet con­nec­tions appear at spaced outlets all along the foyer to avoid long and ugly cable runs. Content is con­trolled centrally from MCEC’s digital signage software.

Adding porta­bil­i­ty wasn’t the only first for Gilkon. These were also the largest shrouds the company had made, with the next size down being 70-inch.

THE OUTCOME

Paul Rumble: “Events here are layered over the top of each other. Peak business days mean we’ll have traffic that’s going to be cen­tralised in one part of the building or the other. So we had to be agile enough to be able to cater for that. The fact that we’ve got two to cover this concourse means we can move them as we need to.”

The displays have another important purpose: “Recently we had one ex­hi­bi­tion company that hired the whole con­ven­tion centre, and they were able to utilise them to brand their events,” says Rumble. “The other thing we can do, because it’s all tied in with the signage system is, when there are no events in the venue, we can advertise our internal offerings like our new Shed café.”

Dale Arnull from Wilson & Gilkes’ AV Projects de­part­ment says, “All the shrouds we make are custom. What made this one different was that it had to be mobile, and it had to be bigger than what we’ve made before. Our history of metal fab­ri­ca­tion goes back a long way. We’re true in­no­va­tors when it comes to producing quality products for the au­dio­vi­su­al industry.”