Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
We have already seen a so called Christie ‘News Desk’ at this year’s #NABShow – designed and produced by Christie Digital themselves as a demonstration of what can be done with MicroTiles and at the time we made mention “It’s not just desks that can be made more interactive of course – think speaker podiums, lecterns etc. AND what a great place to run your Twitterfall” but just see what we have here…
From en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectern…
A lectern (from the Latin lectus, past participle of legere, “to read”) is a reading desk with a slanted top, usually placed on a stand or affixed to a some other form of support, on which documents or books are placed as support for reading aloud, as in a scripture reading, lecture, or sermon.
From en.wiktionary.org/wiki/panel_discussion
A conversation about a specific topic conducted by a group of experts, usually either in the presence of an audience or in a broadcast (or both)
Look carefully at the all three pictures, taken last week in Islington, London at an exhibition for event organisers (with no people in the shots the perspective can be a little disorienting).
Bottom line what we have is some tremendous ‘furniture’ innovation from Aztec Event Services Ltd who only a month or so ago took delivery of 70+ MicroTiles.
The lectern on the right hand side of the photographs comprises two x MicroTiles one on top of each other. The panel discussion desk (note the microphones on both pieces of furniture) is made up of 4 x MicroTiles next to each other.
July 19th, 2010 at 14:10 @632
Although I love the concept of MicroTiles for the newsroom and architectural signage environment, the Digital Lectern application is a square peg in a round hole.
The same effect can be achieved at 1/8th the cost using an LCD display, and it’s the role of the AV specialist to recognize that. PSAV’s digital lectern does just that using a +40″ LCD. (PDF link follows) http://www.orlandoconventionaid.com/menus/psav-digitallectern.pdf
The LCD solution is also easier to build for the integrator, and offers lower software/content complexity.
MicroTiles are great, but not a solution for every AV question…
Dmitry Sokolov