London Venues – Technical Presentations
In the last few years, many London venues have marketed themselves as the perfect place to hold your conference, meeting or event. Whilst many of them focus on their location, their surroundings or their reputation, one factor that is rarely mentioned is their technical capability. The following few paragraphs will give you some ideas as to the variety of technical services you should look for when selecting your London venue.
The old fashioned presentation tool was the overhead projector; this has now been replaced by ceiling mounted projectors, or even a full audio visual cinematic projection unit. A critical factor when assessing London venues for their projection capability is the age and style of the building. Many buildings are Grade I and II listed buildings and are therefore unable to be flexible enough to meet your technical requirements. When viewing a London venue, ensure you are clear whether the projection will be free standing (and therefore often in the way of the presenter) or ceiling mounted.
You should also look at the lighting in London venues. Many of the older buildings are perfect for presentations as their windows can be blacked out very easily. However many modern London venues are very light and airy and it’s difficult to achieve the darkness required to ensure clarity of viewing from all delegates at the event.
Another technical based factor to take into account is the accessibility of the World Wide Web. In many London venues, linking to the web still requires wires to be run all around the venue, often ruining the aesthetic beauty of a carefully arranged stage. It is important to find a London venue that has embraced technology and made use of a wireless internet connection. This ensures that you stage / presentation area can be designed exactly how you want it, with no concern for hardware or wires.
However, although a London venue may have had the foresight to install a wireless connection, that is no guarantee that its setup correctly. Many wireless networks can suffer from interference or reliability. Ensure that you test any hardware (laptops etc) that you will be using several times before the event itself. Check the speed of the connection at different times of the day in case other users in the building consume high levels of bandwidth causing bottlenecks and slow down. A good London venue should have its own technical team in the building so that you can speak to them directly regarding the network, and also give you some confidence that they will be close at hand on the day of the event to fix anything that may go wrong.
The final key area when looking at the technical capability of a London venue is the sound. While every venue should be able to setup a microphone and speakers, many
lack the expertise in acoustics to ensure the sound quality is of the
highest order and ensures that every person in the room can easily hear the
presentations and speakers. If you are using music for introductions before
a single speaker, then the venue should have an audio team on hand to ensure
volume levels remain even throughout. There is nothing worse than being
deafened by the entrance music, only to not be able to hear the first
delegate speak. Treat audio and visual requirements as two very separate
entities when looking at London venues and ensure that you have enough
expertise to hand on the day to ensure no unwanted silences.
An alternative to relying on the London venue to supply all of the technology is to bring in the experts. Many venues or venue finding agencies have partnerships with Audio Visual specialists who can assess a venue on your behalf and supply and test all technical requirements for your event, meeting or conference.
