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One of the many meeting spaces at Querétaro Centro de Congresos in Mexico working within the location's Dante networking backbone.

Corporate Meeting Spaces At Large-Scale, Multi-Room Facility In Mexico Employ Dante IT-Based Approach

Facility in Querétaro capable of hosting more than 15,000 divided across multiple spaces inked by a scalable and interoperable AV-over-IP system with Dante networking.

The Querétaro Centro de Congresos in the city of Santiago de Querétaro, Mexico serves as a premier professional meeting space for the state of Querétaro, capable of hosting more than 15,000 people divided across multiple spaces, and it’s linked by a scalable and interoperable AV-over-IP system backed by Audinate Dante networking.

The facility offers the Aqueduct Rooms – which comprise of 10 different rooms with a capacity for 150 people each – and the Constitution Room – which can accommodate a variety of in-person briefings, conference calls, seminars, corporate breakout sessions, and other events. The location is also home to the Querétaro Teatro Metropolitano, which includes a 1,345-person theater, a dance room, and an “experimental” room where live performances take place.

The Querétaro Centro de Congresos’s individual meeting rooms are key rental locations in the facility. The 80-person executive board room and the 150-person meeting room allow for government meetings, breakout sessions during conventions, and private meetings to be held for anyone that may be renting the building. Further, the main event room, capable of holding around 12,000 people, is often partitioned into smaller spaces for meetings to take place.

Ivan Romero, director of Ponle Audio, the company that integrated the system, explains that because different configurations for meetings are often requested, the management of the spaces used to require a heavy lift on the part of the IT staff.

Joel Ramírez, production supervisor at the location, notes, “The way things used to work, when we used traditional cabling, you basically needed one technician for every room. When the building was busy, which it often was, that was extremely hard to manage.”

Further, every renter of the space – from medical conventions to government hearings – had its own specific needs and setup requirements. “This was never about just reducing the amount of work,” said Héctor Quintero Martínez, head of operations for the facility. “We honestly needed to get to a place where the customer wasn’t worrying about any setup at all. They just want to come in and use the system, so we needed it to be seamless.”

The Dante-backed system accommodates those needs, with more than 500 manufacturers producing in excess of 2,800 Dante-enabled products that have interoperability. “Most microphones and all speakers are Dante-enabled,” notes Martinez, “We can control the system from a central location where we use a central DSP and route audio to the 10 different locations. Control panels for each space mean we can offer them a level of local control as well. This setup also allows us to offer service packages that are definitely going to meet the needs of anyone who is using the space.”

He offers an example: backup microphones in the building are all set to join the Dante network once they’re powered on. If a show or corporate meeting client arrives and suddenly needs far more microphones than was previously thought – a request that tends to happen last minute – the change is as simple as handing them more microphones. They simply plug the microphone into the Bose ControlSpace XLR wall plate, and they’re ready to have a meeting.

“No more running cables,” says José Enrique Pérez, head of forums at the location. “It is honestly amazing how much this has improved things. It’s amazing to see it work, and it’s incredibly easy to use.”

Audinate recently launched a resource site looking at how Dante is helping to facilitate corporate environments to return to work during the global pandemic. Access the site here.

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