Gateway, a 20,000-square-foot co-working and innovation hub that’s part of the Swedish-American Chamber of Commerce (SACCNY) that’s located on the 29th floor of 900 Third Avenue in Manhattan has recently been equipped with an integrated conferencing and equipment demonstration environment utilizing components from communication technology brands Sennheiser, QSC and Barco.
Gateway opened its doors in January of 2019 as a “landing” and “launchpad” for Scandinavian businesses, providing members with help in accelerating their development, supplying business matchmaking, service-oriented partnerships, administrative set up, desk and event space, and other offerings. Anna Throne-Holst was appointed as SACCNY’s president in 2017, explains, “In my public life, much of my work was supporting small business. So, when I was offered the opportunity with SACCNY, I jumped on it, with the goal of creating a model chamber, offering both services and support to the innovation and start-up sectors, while facilitating important synergies with the long time, large corporate members. Now, Gateway is a co-working, meeting, and innovation platform mostly geared to Swedish start-ups and corporates, but open to other companies as well.”
The opening of Gateway coincided with a move to SACCNY’s current location, which afforded more office space and room to grow. The collaboration among Sennheiser, QSC and Barco came about as Throne-Holst began exploring a technology upgrade. “I wanted to create a state-of-the-art meeting space,” she recalls.
For Sennheiser, QSC and Barco, as well as and a handful of other companies, the project presented the opportunity to establish a technology showcase to demonstrate the quality, functionality, and efficiency of their products. To move the project forward, Throne-Holst engaged Greg Harper, president of Harpervision Associates, VP of infrastructure for Shorelight Education and technology advisor for companies and financial institutions, who embraced the idea and subsequently pitched it to the technology providers.
The “showcase” room within the 20,000-square-foot facility is “room with a view” providing seating and videoconferencing space for up to 12 people. It’s outfitted with a Sennheiser TeamConnect Ceiling 2 (TCC2) microphone that incorporates beamforming technology which is designed enables the microphone to “follow the speaker.” The TCC2 is connected to a QSC Q-SYS Core 110f, which serves as a “room controller” in supporting up to 256 channels of networked audio and multiple instances of VoIP.
“The Core 110f is connected to three cameras which use auto-tracking,” explains Harper. “So we are getting the data from the Sennheiser TCC2 microphone, and using that data to switch the cameras based on who is speaking.”
Aside from the fact that there are no microphones on the conference room table, one of the first thing people notice when walking into the conference space is the 14-feet Barco X 1.2 LED video wall that’s driven by a Barco E2 Gen 2, which handles all the processing and offers flexible layouts. Barco’s ClickShare Conference technology ClickShare enables agnostic BYOM (Bring Your Own Meeting) capabilities, allowing users access to the advanced AV present in the room.
“We have a QSC touch panel, so guests can come in there and say, ‘I want to do a Teams meeting’ or ‘I want to do a Zoom meeting’. Or they can just bring in their own laptop with preferred VC solution,” says Harper. Since ClickShare is installed and ubiquitous throughout the space, users can connect and present wirelessly no matter where they are located on the 29th floor. Meanwhile, the inbound audio in the conference space is reproduced through two pairs of QSC loudspeakers, two in the front and two in the rear.
While the space offers breathtaking views of New York City, the bountiful glass and hardwood floors and a hard ceiling presented several acoustic challenges. The Sennheiser TCC2 helped mitigate undesirable sound reflections since the microphone is designed to pick up the subject rather than the room itself. “We tried several different microphones in there and as soon as we used the TCC2, it just sounded better,” says Harper. “I’m very familiar with acoustics and how things sound, and I think this is among the best ceiling microphones out there. Sennheiser has a unique capability of sounding really good while giving me very accurate positioning control, with the ability of creating exclusion zones.” By creating ‘exclusion zones’, users of TCC2 can eliminate sounds coming from HVAC systems, or other noise sources.
The Board Room, one of Gateway’s larger spaces that provides seating for up to 18 people is accented with several tables measuring roughly 5 feet square that can be moved around to accommodate different types of meetings, such as seminars or smaller events. It’s equipped with a Barco 16-foot UniSee video wall with multiple LCD panels that is designed to deliver a uniform degree of brightness and color throughout, as well as two TCC2s. Again, everything is connected to a Core 110f processor, which serves as the primary technology interface, and Barco’s ClickShare Conference enables wireless universal sharing of information from the user’s own device across presentation platforms.
The TCC2s are used to drive a 1 Beyond Autotracker system, which has seven built-in cameras and is able to track and switch cameras based on the location of the audio source. “The Sennheiser TCC2 has XYZ data coming out of it that is very accurate, so it can actually detect whether someone is standing or sitting,” explains Harper. “Once this data is extrapolated, the system can automatically direct the camera where it needs to go among hundreds of possible locations.” In the Board Room, there are two cameras on the left side of the room facing the right side, two cameras on the right side facing the left side, and three cameras at the center pointed at the end tables, the head of the table and a ‘default’ wide shot.
Another smaller space in the facility is the media lab, a retrofitted storage room that has been outfitted with a similar combination of technology: yet another TCC2 and QSC cameras connected to a Core 110f processor, and several video screens.
Finally, the Event Room offers seating for 60, or 100 standing. While it wasn’t able to be used for many months due to the pandemic, Gateway is eager to resume its in-person events and programming. “During the pandemic, we had to re-think how we do our events,” says Throne-Holst. “And part of what we thought about was, ‘How do we do digital meetings in a way that really functions? This led to a webinar series we called ‘Checking the Pulse’ with corporate metrics, where we touch on an array of different things. The next series we are going to do is on investment tools: IPOs, M&As, and more.”
“Our collaboration with Barco, QSC and the SACCNY really demonstrates the power of combining our respective best-of-breed communications technologies.” adds Charlie Jones, Global Business Development Manager of Sennheiser. “In this case, our TCC2 ceiling microphone was able to deliver both audio clarity and intelligibility while working within a highly reflective, acoustically challenging environment. Moreover, the seamless interoperability of our TCC2, Barco’s LED Walls and QSC’s processing has resulted in a world-class video conferencing solution for SACCNY and its members.”
Now that Throne-Holst has high-end videoconferencing capability in place, she is anxious to augment this capability with in-person events, which before the pandemic were held approximately two to three times per week. Harper adds that while the technology in Gateway performs at an advanced level, it’s imost effective when it’s “iinvisible.”
“Executives don’t want to have to think about the technology — they want a videoconferencing experience to be as authentic as possible,” he concludes. “Our setup is truly BYOD; this is extremely powerful, and you don’t get that in many places. And you are taking advantage of this beautiful Barco LED wall, Sennheiser microphones and QSC speakers. You get the whole package: high-quality audio, stunning visual communication, lots of control, remote capability — what else could you want?”
