Greetings from the Windy City!

The Media Stage crew recently traveled to Chicago for a 3-day show produced for YWCA in partnership with Plus Three. As always, there were several logistics to work out during the pre-production and planning phases, in addition to making some adjustments while on site as the show flow played out.

Our venue was the Chicago Marriott Magnificent Mile which was located downtown. Given the location and specs of the building, we had to be extra detailed when navigating the loading dock and clearance with our truck. We also had to arrange for truck parking at an offsite marshalling yard for the duration of the show.

Once we loaded in, we stored our gear overnight until we got access to all the rooms that would be in use. We had a full set day during which we built four breakouts (each equipped for livestreaming) and our General Session room. This main room consisted of a lockdown camera, a robotic camera, two rear projection screens, a full audio complement and lighting for ambience and stage wash.

We also sourced a local teleprompter operator while on site as the need came up during some of the planning meetings and rehearsals. Our operator supplied his own gear which included presidential glass panels with SDI connection. Many of the key presenters used this addition for some of the main speeches throughout the program.

The breakouts were a main function of this show as they were interactive workshops, and as mentioned earlier, made available to a vast online audience for remote participation as well. We brought in HD webcams for these rooms along with wireless mic packages that allowed for seamless two-way communication.

As always, it was a very busy week but our crew still had the chance to go off premises for some deep dish pizza and to take in some of the sights of the city. We were thrilled to have the opportunity to work on this meaningful show. ‘Thank you’ to Juan Proaño and Deirdre Hannigan of Plus Three and Elisha Rhodes, Matt Preiss and the entire YWCA team as well!