AV Technology - March 2008 - (Page 30)

AV AFTER HOURS hours are determined by region,” he says. “Currently we do not transfer help desk requests between regions. This will be resolved once we update the infrastructure in the United Kingdom and Pacific Rim.” MacNeil’s North American staff includes 14 people working in staggered shifts for maximum coverage. There are 19 AV support staffers worldwide, six of which are company staff and 13 are full-timers on a vendor partner maintenance contract. “We use a hybrid model,” he says. “Company staff is used for face-to-face customer contact, while vendor staff is system support and diagnosis.” His team also provides cross-training of AV and IT to offices that may not have staff for both, as well as end-user training for simple tasks like changing a battery in the wireless keyboard. “But there are always calls where you hang up and just have to chuckle,” he laughs, citing one company executive who called for help with setting up a wireless router in a daughter’s college dorm room. At a large law firm in New York City, Michael Edebohls is the conference center technology supervisor, responsible for worldwide offices. His firm does not run an official AV help desk, rather “some calls go through the IT desk; if you can wait, they will call the conference center desk,” he explains. “For calls that come through the IT desk, they use an IT ticketing system — a formal database-driven system to keep track of tickets. If the call is tagged as an emergency, then the conference center department gets an e-mail alert from the system.” Locally, Edebohls and his team support the main headquarters in downtown Manhattan in addition to a closing center and IT center across town. The levels of AV technology in use range from audioconferencing or videoconferencing and remote camera recording, down to a large flat panel display with DVD/VHS inputs and a standard conference table phone. For remote offices like the one in Providence, RI, Edebohls uses a simple web camera to see into a conference room while providing support. “If someone hit the physical power button on the display, I can’t diagnose that over the phone,” he says. Support hours at his firm are seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. for AV only. Weekends are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. unless by special arrangement; holidays mean that someone is on-call via cell phone. Edebohls notes that the AV and IT departments remain separate but work collaboratively, due in part to trends like remote access of devices via the Internet. A PROACTIVE APPROACH At international law firm Dechert LLP, based in Philadelphia, PA, “AV” refers to videoconferencing more than anything else. “We have a very videoconferencing-focused culture. The first http://www.dsan.com http://www.dsan.com http://www.dsan.com http://www.dsan.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of AV Technology - March 2008

AV Technology - March 2008 Contents Precedent Corporate: Whose Job Is It Anyway? Education: There’s No Business Like Show Business Government: Technology and the New World Order Buying a Videoconference System They Will Actually Use AV After Hours The Sound of HD Conferencing Assembling the Design Team Concert Hall Acoustics on a High School Budget Audio Architecture Keeping a Watchful Eye Product Spotlight Tech Horizons Product Review New Products AV MO

AV Technology - March 2008

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