When The Beach Company, a 75-year-old real estate development firm in Charleston, South Carolina, decided to relocate and modernize its headquarters, a brand new downtown mixed-use building called The Jasper presented the ideal location. The highly visible Charleston business conducts a lot of meetings, partner visits and virtual collaborations, so they contracted local technology integrator experts The Office People to design and install a network of LG commercial displays for collaboration, BYOD, and future-readiness.
Even before global corporate culture shifted to remote work in early 2020, The Beach Company had determined that its new HQ would leverage the latest commercial AV technologies. According to Jeff Hazelwood, The Beach Company’s Manager of Technology and Information Security, the finished space makes an important state-of-the-art statement to visitors and staff. Sitting roughly one block from the Ashley River and occupying the fifth and sixth floors, the office’s largest digital display is actually clearly visible from boats passing by. “If you’re in the harbor, you can actually see the 130-inch all-in-one LG DVLED display from a boat, and we know that because people have commented about it,” said Sean Mummert, CEO of The Office People.
Mummert explained that each conference and meeting room in the HQ building is named for a past development project, and any time the displays aren’t being used, they function as digital signage and run content highlighting that project. While the majority of the meeting rooms host a 65-inch 4K display, the 130-inch DVLED and the 3×3 video wall present much larger digital canvases. These oversized displays have proven excellent tools to enable social distancing, with both rooms sometimes being used to include more people in a single meeting.
“It’s very hard to imagine a visitor today who won’t be blown away by the LG OLED wallpaper in the CEO’s office,” Mummert added. “LG calls it ‘wallpaper’ because at less than 4mm thick, it basically becomes one with the wall. When you’re hosting other CEOs and business leaders, that is a statement of professionalism and forward thinking that a basic TV from a big box store could never provide.”
All of the digital displays are connected through an AV over IP solution with a Barco wireless collaboration system that enables network-wide content distribution and automated digital signage functions. The system design also enables a plug-and-play BYOD atmosphere.
The Office People’s Director of Technology Joshua Gale also noted that the space is saturated with digital screens, providing the company an excellent messaging platform for any internal communications they may have. “There is virtually no space in the new HQ that lacks a top-quality digital display, making the digital signage application a crucial tool to maximize the network’s value and share news and updates with employees,” Gale said.
In addition to the displays, The Office People also installed new high-end pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) cameras, microphones, speakers, tabletop tablets and a room scheduling/reservation system that uses the 365 Outlook platform.
