Intel upped the ante for its annual Intel Developer Forum (IDF 2015) delivering a big, visually dynamic show for an enthusiastic audience attending three days of sessions and presentations. Working with John Halloran Associates (JHA), WorldStage provided extensive AV support for the IDF’s keynote and Mega Sessions in the West Hall of the Moscone Center in San Francisco. WorldStage has a long relationship with Intel representing a full slate of events year round.
“Intel was looking for even more visual sizzle than past years. They wanted to impress and dazzle the developers right away,” says WorldStage project manager James Sarro. IDF 2015 marked the 15th developers’ gathering supported by WorldStage for JHA. It was the second year that Intel opted for a single keynote, this time by Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, and a series of Mega Sessions featuring senior leaders focusing on technology trends and innovations, including cyber security, gaming, IoT and Big Data.
“This year Intel enlarged the set, added more projection and a large media server component to deliver content across the screens,” says Sarro. “In past designs for IDF a standard sized screen was used. Now, projection ran up one side of the room, wrapped around the stage and ran back down the other side of the room. There was about 380 feet of projection that curved around the stage wrapping the audience into the meeting.”
WorldStage treated the massive projection surface as five screens. The central, 105-foot main screen displayed show content and IMAG. Outside screens presented themed graphic content to support the topics under discussion.
WorldStage provided 32 projectors. The main stage was a six-image blend with Christie HD20K-J series projectors. Each side screen was a three-image blend and the screens just offstage a two-image blend; they featured Christie HD14K-M series projectors.
A Dataton WATCHOUT media server fed all the screens. “We gave Intel the content specs so they could deliver files to play across all five screens or move up, across and down all the screens,” he explains. “The main screen was switched through three Vista Spyder X20s; the others were directly fed by WATCHOUT.”
A Ross Vision 4 switcher switched six Hitachi SK-HD1000 cameras, Spyder sources, Intel graphics, and product demos from the demo control system. Inputs were switched for IMAG display and for archiving on Sound Devices PIX 270i video recorders.
WorldStage also furnished an enclosed audio system for IDF 2015. Eight L-Acoustics ARCS served as the main speakers; they were supplemented by JBL VRX and Meyer UPJ speakers. A Yamaha CL5 console was fed by a Rio system to distribute I/Os. WorldStage also provided Shure UHF-R wireless mics and an RTS intercom system.
WorldStage Inc., the company created by the merger of Scharff Weisberg Inc and Video Applications Inc, continues a thirty-year legacy of providing clients the widest variety of entertainment technology coupled with conscientious and imaginative engineering services. WorldStage provides audio, video and lighting equipment and services to the event, theatrical, broadcast and brand experience markets nationally and internationally.
