APEC PNG 2018

The Leader’s Retreat was the main meeting for the APEC 2018 Summit, held at APEC Haus on the 18th of November. 21 APEC leaders came together to discuss economic trade in the Asia-Pacific. Each leader was given a Bosch multimedia conference microphone programmed and installed by Congress Rental technicians. These push-to-talk microphones were programmed with seat-mapping technology which indicated the name of the leader speaking on the LCD screen located on each of the units. 

Installed in the centre of the round table was a 360- degree Bosch HD Dome camera. This camera was installed and programmed by Congress Rental technicians to focus on the speaker each time they pushed their microphone to speak. This vision feed was then displayed on a screen in the room displaying a close-up of the leader. Each leader was also given a call button located next to their microphone that they could use to page their team that were located outside the room. This technology was a special request by the leaders and Congress Rental sourced the system exclusively for this event. In a remote room nearby, Congress Rental technicians ran eight different language interpretation feeds for the event.

The leaders listened to the interpretation via headsets plugged into the multimedia conference microphones and selected their language via the LCD touchscreen located on the unit. Eight soundproof interpreter booths were installed for the interpreters with high-quality Bosch equipment to distribute the language feeds. Languages included English, Chinese, Bahasa Indonesian, Korean, Japanese, Russian, Thai and Vietnamese. Each interpreter booth was supplied with a vision feed of the meeting, which included an overview of the meeting room as well as the dome camera feed displaying the close-up of the speakers, enabling the interpreters to provide accurate interpretation for the event from a remote location.

A total of three viewing and listening rooms were also set-up around APEC Haus with 50 delegates in each, streaming the Leader’s Retreat. Each of these rooms received the interpretation feed via the Bosch infrared system installed by Congress Rental. Delegates in these rooms listened to the interpretation via a Bosch receiver where they could select their language  preference via the channel-selector button on the unit.

In order to manage the complex vision and audio distribution to multiple rooms across APEC Haus, Congress Rental established a control room in the building. The team used the in-house patching from the venue to distribute the audio and video around the building. This meant that there were no cables running to and from the tables in the meeting rooms. The Congress Rental team managed the vision from three different rooms across the venue.

​Each of the rooms had a wide shot showing an overview of the room, and a head-and-shoulders shot from the HD Dome cameras. Each of these shots were compiled and split into quadrants to fit onto a single screen and were run on a continuous feed to the interpreters, the security rooms and the executive and CEO rooms. The head-and-shoulders shots were also distributed to the viewing and listening rooms around the venue.

Congress Rental embedded the English interpretation into this vision stream so that the English-speaking delegates in these rooms would not need a headset. The Congress Rental team worked diligently to switch the audio and vision seamlessly and accurately throughout the entire venue with restricted time frames for change over between sessions. The Leaders also took part in a Working Lunch that was held after the Retreat. Congress Rental also provided the interpretation and vision for this lunch via the remote rooms established inside the venue.