AV Magazine AV Magazine 
The finalists for the AV in Action award have been selected and now it’s open to a public vote to decide the winner.
In light of the pandemic, which has impacted the AV world and beyond, the AV Magazine team want to highlight the incredible innovation and ingenuity we have seen from the AV community throughout this period. We therefore introduced a new free-to-enter category – the ‘AV in Action.’
We received an incredible amount of excellent entries which shone a light on the many ways in which the AV world has risen to the challenge throughout the pandemic. From these entries, eight finalists have been chosen. Please read the submissions below and then vote for the one you think has risen to the challenge throughout the virus outbreak and helped society to continue to function.
The deadline to cast your vote is 4 November. The winner will be revealed during the AV Awards virtual ceremony on 20 November!
All entries must be made using your work email address to be counted.
Finalist 1: CIE Group
Following the UK government and NHS call for medical ventilators during the pandemic, specialist AV distributor CIE-Group refocused much of their resources during the lockdown period to respond to an urgent need to supply essential custom-built cables and electronic components to the VentilatorChallengeUK consortium.
Supplying directly to key VentilatorChallengeUK members including Penlon, McLaren, Ford, Airbus and Jaguar LandRover, CIE supplied over a quarter of a million bespoke cable assemblies and connectivity units in record time to meet the demands on the NHS during the pandemic.
CIE was initially approached by the consortium to provide high volume critical electronic components for both existing ventilator models and approved new designs, which required the CIE team to design, source, manufacture and deliver non-standard video and control cable assemblies in extraordinarily short time frames.
CIE director, Ben Yeardley, said: “It’s been an exciting challenge for us, having produced in excess of 250,000 cables – from initial tooling to product delivered to the factories – all within a very tight two-month window. We are extremely proud to have successfully responded to this critical need and have supported the critical supply chain for VentilatorChallengeUK. It’s been an honour for the CIE team to have played our small part in helping to alleviate the suffering in the UK resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.”
https://www.ventilatorchallengeuk.com/
Finalist 2: Clevertouch
Whilst some were busy offering product training webinars, Clevertouch wanted to also help and support people around the world and not just those who are customers. The team developed three initiatives and turned them around within three weeks.
The company’s three former teachers turned tech ambassadors along with the group marketing director developed Learn at Home, focusing on helping develop young minds whilst having fun and supporting parents beyond Netflix and Disney+. Teachers also needed to rapidly adapt to new ways of teaching whilst evolving learning outcomes of their students.
The second initiative was to support global meetings and distance learning for all. Clevertouch purchased 2,500 Stage licences and gave them out to anyone who requested one (all licence offers were taken up). The team trained them how to use Stage as live meeting and distance learning platforms.
The third initiative was supporting anyone still working and supplying free digital posters promoting the Keep Safe campaign. The posters were free to download and easy to add to any digital signage system and Clevertouch continues to develop the campaign with Return to the Office or Return to School messaging and updated posters.
The company gave their loan fleet of eight IMPACT Plus education screens to Enfield local authority so they could use them in their halls to teach more children right up to the summer holidays. All of the initiatives were at Clevertouch’s expense and free for anyone around the world to access.
Learn at home – www.clevertouch.com/learnathome
Stage – 60 day free licence – https://www.clevertouch.com/uk/latest-stories/news-articles/the-way-we-work-and-learn-is-changing
Stay Safe campaign – https://www.clevertouch.com/uk/latest-stories/news-articles/clevertouch-supports-the-stay-safe-campaign
Finalist 3: Harman
One of the most-hard hit industries during the global pandemic is live entertainment and installed AV. All over the world performing arts centres, theatres, music festival grounds, stadiums and arenas are dark. New construction and retrofit projects are stalled. Venues will remain dark for the unforeseeable future. This means massive financial devastation for the workers who support live entertainment production and installed AVL.
No construction, no touring bands, no musicals, nor theatrical plays assure unemployment for people like Lighting Designers, Front of House Engineers, audio technicians, stage crew and integrators. HARMAN Professional Solutions felt compelled to help our customers and end-users.
HARMAN Learning Sessions is a relief effort; employ out-of-work professionals and pay them to share their expertise and then make those webinars free to other professionals looking to enhance their skills while stages and projects are dark. Born was HARMAN Learning Sessions.
The team brought in presenters who have worked on tours for artists such as Lady Gaga, Paul McCartney, Mary J. Blige and Prince. Courses available include ‘Loudspeaker System Design for Airports’, ‘AV Challenges in Esports” and “Transitioning from Touring to Corporate Lighting”.
From April 2020 to August 2020 Harman spent $30,000 just on presenter pay with an additional $20,000 budgeted until the end of 2020. The company has budgeted an additional $50,000 for presenter pay to continue the program through 2021. In an effort to maximise the amount of budget going to presenters, Harman spent less than $5,000 to promote the program in the past four months. More than 60,000 people watched the recorded webinars which exceeds 150 hours of content.
https://pro.harman.com/lp/learning-sessions
https://pro.harman.com/lp/learning-sessions-playlists
Finalist 4: iMapp Bucharest
During the pandemic iMapp Bucharest – the renowned video mapping events organised by Bucharest Municipality through Creart – launched an artistic initiative to spread a global message of solidarity and hope.
The 2019 edition of iMapp Winners League featured the motto ‘One Map. Different Journeys.’ Now the whole world is confronted with the same threat and different journeys have become one. That is why iMapp created a public awareness project of mutual support that promoted the message ’One World. One Heart.’ In under two weeks, 46 international visual artists from 27 countries joined the initiative by creating, pro bono, 10 sec 3D animations, starting from the same visual template – a heart.
The artworks were reunited into a single video that was simultaneously projected on façades from all over the world. The project started with Bucharest (The Palace of Parliament, Romania), Budapest (Hungary), Seattle (US). As the day of the simultaneous projection and live streaming approached, more cities joined the effort. Some were light festivals and others were private initiatives or renowned artists.
On 17 April the animations were projected and live streamed from nine different cities: Bucharest, Budapest, Lyon, Kyiv, Paris, Moscow, Monterrey, Seattle, Asker which can be seen here. Further international projects followed in Mexico, China and the UK, shown here.
Credit: Daniel Robert Dinu
Finalist 5: NowSignage
In April 2020 NowSignage became the first digital signage CMS to bring a capacity management solution to market that displays people counting information, alongside core digital signage functions, all via an industry leading digital signage CMS. Like all NowSignage features, it’s available to all users for free, as part of a standard license fee.
The company has seen the solution heavily adopted as a new product sold by major manufacturers, including Philips and Vestel. Due to the speed at bringing the product to market the solution has been rolled out across the UK, Europe, Australia and North America. To date the company’s largest capacity management implementation is with a large retailer in North America and is due for rollout across 1,300 stores.
Now Signage’s people counting solution is unique because the people counting camera is fully integrated into a digital signage CMS. This offers advantages including group sensors to count and aggregate across unlimited entrances; tracking of all customer data, setting capacity alerts and understanding trends; utilising entrance screens for dual purposes; encryption of all data to ensure full GDPR and security compliance; and customisation of dashboards with colour coding, dynamic data inputs and personalised messaging.
Finalist 6: One Digital Signage
In late 2019, as Covid-19 emerged and took hold in China, this new virus was still to really be registered as an issue within the UK. However, at One Digital Signage the story was different. With its supply chains linked to China for various componentry, the team noticed disruption emerging and the virus was being cited as the cause.
As a result, the team began to review what this could mean to their operations, core products and the UK as a whole should the situation escalate. This analysis led us to invest in the development of a range of Covid solutions. This included digital signage integrated hand sanitisers, with stations for indoor and outdoor use, and infrared facial thermometers.
By drawing on their expertise in LCD screen technology and digital signage manufacturing, they designed and launched production of the infection control solutions. As the crisis intensified it became apparent this course of action had been essential for their customers and end users as demand for these solutions grew.
At first this came from essential public and commercial spaces needing to remain open during lockdown, with further demand coming later from businesses looking for responsible ways of reopening. Partnership has been key to our ability to deliver these solutions. We have worked closely with Now Signage – deploying their management software – and Northamber AV – signing a new agreement with the distributor.
https://www.onedigitalsignage.co.uk/
Finalist 7: Phoenix Audio
For years, Phoenix Audio has supported IT service managers Yorktel and Caregility in their production of telemedicine carts. When the pandemic initially broke out, Phoenix Audio was there to support them once again. Between mid-March and early June, the company supplied 1,500 Smart Spider speakerphones for telemedicine carts that were sent to hospitals all over the world to help frontline workers care for their COVID-19 patients from a safe distance.
Upon receiving Yorktel’s initial requests for Smart Spider speakerphones, we rushed delivery to begin the process of helping assemble telemedicine carts. Time was of the essence and we understood that the need for telemedicine carts was crucial to help save lives during the pandemic, so we proceeded to rush production and provide the remaining units in record time.
We purchased spot components that were available rather than purchasing in bulk due to shortages. For specialised components, we contacted the manufacturer individually to work out a rush in production and they opened up an entirely new production lines to increase daily production capacity. Phoenix was able to cut production time in half to provide Yorktel and Caregility with the products they so desperately needed.
Finalist 8: Unilumin
During the early stage of the epidemic in China, Unilumin took protective measures to ensure the safety of its staff and actively fulfilled its social responsibilities by donating cash and medical supplies, totalling 5 million Yuan to different communities domestically and internationally.
Even in the face of the gradual tightening of the export policy of epidemic prevention materials and the suspension of the delivery in logistics of some areas, Unilumin delivered more than 800,000 medical masks, 14,000 protective gowns, 10 oxygen generators, and 3,000 testing reagents to overseas communities.
Unilumin has also given away many conferencing AIOs, Unilumin intelligent conferencing systems and visualization software system solutions to hospitals and anti-epidemic departments. With the availability of smart video conferencing, patients with mild symptoms could receive remote diagnoses at home thus the risk of them being exposed to the virus was reduced. Unilumin provided essential technical support on using these devices and software.
The visualisation software system solution donated by Unilumin played an indispensable role in China’s epidemic situation control and epidemic prevention and control. With its help, the epidemic situation and material status were collected, monitored, analysed and visualised in seven days. The system has also updated the data by associating with the map of epidemic places. According to statistics from 120 Command and Dispatch Centres of Ningxia province in China, with the support of Unilumin emergency rescue visualization solution, from January 22 to February 6, Ningxia 120 received 15,193 calls, accepted 3,727 times, and dispatched 3,547 cars. Among them, 3,148 trips were effective, and 3,349 people were treated.
