Sibos (the SWIFT International Banking Operations Seminar) is an annual banking and financial conference that has been convened in cities around the world since 1978, attracting more than 7,000 visitors who work in financial markets who participate as exhibitors and attendees and discuss issues relevant to the financial industry. In October 2018, Sibos came to Sydney for the third time, celebrating the event’s 40th birthday.
A prestigious conference of this magnitude demands the best in audiovisual support – so experience marketing agency George P. Johnson (GPJ) turned to TDC – Technical Direction Company. The brief was to deliver video solutions for the keynote addresses as well as six conference rooms.
“Sibos 2006 seemed to leave an impact on our industry for years, so when GPJ contacted us nearly two years ago to say Sibos was coming to Sydney again, we immediately started putting resources aside to support this impressive event,” said Finn Coffill, project manager for TDC.
Extensive resources
That was just as well. An event of this size and profile requires extensive resources in terms of both equipment and people. There was, 160 square metres of ROE Carbon 3mm LED screens – yet only half of the stock owned by TDC. A further 70 square metres of ROE Black Onyx 3mm LED panels were also deployed. To enable the large audiences to view presentations in detail, TDC used four Sony HD broadcast cameras as well as 12 Panasonic HD PTZ cameras. ‘Behind the scenes’ were Barco processors and expansion units, all fully loaded with the latest Barco tri-combo in/out cards – and no fewer than eight Dataton WATCHOUT media servers.
“Thanks to the ingenuity and careful system design by Matt Teale, our Technical Project Manager, the client’s briefed system design was reconsidered, and we increased our inventory of Barco Event Master processors,” Coffill continued. “The benefits were extensive: reduced control area footprint, reduced operator count, simplified control and redundancy, and reduced hire cost. Furthermore, the challenging projection designs were replaced with LED, saving space and, surprisingly, thanks to our highly competitive LED pricing model, money.”
Experienced team
“The keynotes were all about the LED,” recalled Coffill, “As the stage opening was completely filled with an eye-catching design of descending arches. Balancing the brightness and temperature of the LED screens with the stage lighting for camera – both for IMAG and broadcast – takes an experienced team. Thankfully, with our decades of TV studio experience, this was nothing new to us, and was completed before our client even cast an eye over it.”
That experienced team included no fewer than 27 operators – with one remarking that Sibos 2018 was one of the most comfortable corporate shows he had ever done. Over 2,600 crew hours were spent onsite.
Faultless
“Corporate events of this size don’t come to town every day, or even every year, ”smiled Coffill, “and despite this overlapping with many other large projects for us – not least the Invictus Games opening ceremony – the team planned, coordinated and delivered a faultless show. It was a feat of design and coordination by our clients, and a huge team of Australia’s best suppliers – as well as suppliers from around the world – worked incredibly well to deliver a successful event.”
“We would like to thank and congratulate the ICC Sydney venue, all the talented suppliers, our own tireless teams of technicians, crewing coordinators, warehouse coordinators, service technicians and, most of all, our client George P. Johnson,” he concluded.
