We love what we do but sometimes, something really special comes along.  A world first.  Something to talk about.  Something we’re truly proud of and something we tell our parents about (who usually have no idea what we’re talking about). This year, we travelled to Rio for the Olympics in order to bring the athletes home… virtually.

Samsung asked M&C Saatchi to organise a live interview of athletes who were taking part or who had taken part in the Olympics but oh, by the way, the athletes will be in Rio, the journalists at the M&C Saatchi office in London and it has to be fully immersive using the Samsung Gear.  As part of a team of wonderful technical experts made up of Present Communications, Streaming Tank and Atticus Digital, we made that happen.

VR is not new, neither is streaming.  In fact, more people now stream in 360 and this will become even more popular since the launch of Facebook’s live 360 streaming platform.  But a live 2 way conversation like this had never been attempted before due to the large delay between camera (in Rio) and goggles (in London).  The guys at Atticus reduced the delay, Present Communications got the video from Rio to London and back in record time and Streaming Tank made the two work together.

It was a great effort from the team and a real world first.  Thanks team!

Present Communications ltd has been trading for around a decade now and we’re doing just fine and we’re having fun.  But in the last few years, we’ve really gone from strength to strength and it’s due to a smoother back office.  That’s it.  We take pride in our work, our technicians understand the importance of customer service, appearance and going that extra mile but in the past, that wasn’t always something that translated to our ‘behind-the-scenes’ operations.

We made a real push to streamline, organise and always be prepared for the next thing; the next push.  One of the steps we took was to appoint a new accountant  We needed someone who would get involved, help us out when we needed it and give us advice geared towards a small, customer focused business like ours.  We went with Amity Accountants who came highly recommended.

It’s probably quite unorthodox to write about your accountant on the business website but fair is fair.  They have played a pivotal role in transforming our business and helping us to understand how exactly we were really doing as a business, how we are doing every day in fact, and where we could find opportunities to do better.

So here is to our accountant, Philip and his team at Amity.  Thank guys!

We recently spent the day with our friends at Lambeth Palace and Foodshow to throw a birthday bash for a large multi-national company.  1,000 staff were invited to enjoy the spectacular views and surroundings at Lambeth Palace which is the 3^rd largest private garden in London,.  Their evening continued with culinary delights and fairground attractions before a short awards ceremony and a party into the evening.

Present Communications ltd provided audio, lighting and power equipment and technical support for the duration as well as a branded balloon archway and balloon drop to give that final touch.

“We have been a preferred supplier at Lambeth Palace for the last few years and enjoy making event technology work for clients who inevitably have high expectation given that they’ve chosen such an exceptional venue.  Foodshow make sure the food and service received is up to the same exquisite standard and we love seeing clients’ faces as they delve into their dinner”

We love getting your message out to the world, that’s what we’re all about. We can build bespoke micro-sites, complex automated systems for user registration, payment gateways and more.

But sometimes, we just want the video online, we want it live and we want it easy for the user. Easy means different things to different people though. We work with many clients who are already familiar with Cisco Webex, GoTo Meeting, Goto Webinar, BlackBoard and more. Or perhaps for your requirements, something like Skype or even Zoom might work better for 2 way communications and that’s why we work with all of these platforms and more.

You have an existing social media presence, your customers interact with you on various social media platforms so why not ‘stream’ or webcast live to platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Periscope and Meercat or even LiveStream and UStream where your customers are already interacting with you. It’s pretty easy to get a video from your phone up live on these platforms but it’s also possible to stream high quality, studio style video to these platforms and bring superb production value to your social media presence.

We’ve always been big fans of audience interaction. Our audiences can often be online as well as in the room but today we want to focus on the room.

Event organisers, facilitators, and audience members want interaction. Often the best content is from the people watching the presentations. The CatchBox is a fun way to encourage conversation, break the ice, get people talking by throwing the CatchBox microphone and breaking the ice…

Present Communications are proud to be a partner with CatchBox. We are a hire stockist and a reseller and can therefore provide the best option for you and your event. We are even able to hire you the microphone but with your own branded casing, making it perfect for high profile events especially where there might be photographers or videographers.

Check out the website to see the options and the prices – http://eu.getcatchbox.com/

The festival market is booming. More and more people are attending festivals with an estimated 32m attending last year in the US alone. 145,000 attend Glastonbury, the UK’s largest festival, every day. And many of these festivals are attended, unsurprisingly, by young people i.e. millennials. So what’s next for the music industry?

SXSW, one of the World’s most famous festivals/conferences generated over 1m tweets last year, showing an increasing blend between the online and the offline, the internet and the physical. And of course, it’s not just music festivals. The RoundHouse streamed the Poetry Slam final live and a number of theatre groups are using platforms such as LiveStream to make their performances public.

The technology is there, the platforms are there. We no longer need expensive satellite trucks and broadcast facilities in order to make these performances available on the internet. More importantly, artists are beginning the appreciate the value that an active online presence creates for them. When did you hear about a singer or movie star who is ‘less wealthy’ because his/her video went viral on YouTube? But you certainly do hear about the singer who made it for the same reason. The UK’s National Theatre have been streaming shows for years and the Royal Shakespeare Society reportedly have a larger audience for one online show than see their shows in ‘real life’ in a whole year.

Now that high quality HD content can be made available online, we’ll see more and more artists asking for their shows to be made available to their fans, providing a value-add content to people who go out and buy their records anyway. Event organisers will see their online presence only strengthening their brand and ultimately, helping them sell more tickets. This isn’t a ‘what if’, this is what the evidence is showing us.

Present Communications ltd look forward to live streaming your event in the future.

The Living Wage Foundation is pleased to announce that Present Communications ltd has today accredited as a Living Wage employer.

The Living Wage commitment will see everyone working at Present Communications ltd, regardless of whether they are permanent employees or third-party contractors; receive a minimum hourly wage of £9.40 – significantly higher than the national minimum wage of £6.70 and the new minimum wage premium for over 25s of £7.20 per hour set to be introduced this April.

The Living Wage is an hourly rate set independently and updated annually. The Living Wage is calculated according to the basic cost of living using the ‘Minimum Income Standard’ for the UK. Decisions about what to include in this standard are set by the public; it is a social consensus about what people need to make ends meet.

Present Communications ltd feel it is not only important to value their hard working staff but also important to attract and retain the best quality staff to ensure the best experience for the customer.

Employers choose to pay the Living Wage on a voluntary basis. The Living Wage enjoys cross party support, with public backing from the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition.

Living Wage Foundation Director, Katherine Chapman said: “We are delighted to welcome Present Communications ltd to the Living Wage movement as an accredited employer. 

“The best employers are voluntarily signing up to pay the Living Wage now. The Living Wage is a robust calculation that reflects the real cost of living, rewarding a hard day’s work with a fair day’s pay.
“We have accredited over 2,500 leading employers, including Present Communications ltd, ranging from independent printers, bookshops and breweries, to well-known companies such as Nationwide, Aviva and SSE. These businesses recognise that clinging to the national minimum wage is not good for business. Customers expect better than that.”

It’s always nice to get something nice and shiny in the warehouse and even better when we can get it out to clients and help make your events even better.

We’ve recently introduced a new speaker into the hire stock, it’s the Nexo PS8.  Nexo speakers are known within the industry for superb quality, they’re small, light weight and ‘punchy’.

We can’t wait for you to hear them!

The World is getting smaller, we are at the forefront of bringing people together using online technologies such as webcasting and video conferencing.  Technology is available for us to make events accessible to people wherever they might be at that specific time.  ‘Delegates’ (in the new sense of the word) are able to interact with each other on mobile devices or at their desks, even from an aeroplane (yes, we have done this).

There are a few obvious challenges to overcome.  The two big ones, time zones and languages.

The first is difficult to change, we can’t change time zones but we can be as flexible as possible with our event and we find ourselves now working on events at more peculiar times of the day.  If live interaction is not required, we can stagger the streaming in different countries.  Or perhaps two or three live events can be staggered throughout the day for the convenience of various audiences.

‘Languages’ are easier.  The stream, already going over the web can be interpreted live with questions and online interaction translated in real time.  This is becoming a relatively common way to stream and something that works really well for multi-lingual audiences.

In this photograph you see a remote location with real time video sent from the event location to an off-site venue which housed our interpreters who were them streamed live in the web.  It’s a big world, but it’s getting smaller.

When our customers require the ultimate in flexibility and reliability, it becomes necessary to bring the entire offering in house. We’ve been offering video conferencing bridging and firewall traversal for some time through our trusted and (frankly) brilliant partners but the time has come for these services to be provided by our own team. This gives us the flexibility to change, amend and adapt on site as required and often at the last minute and I don’t need to explain to event professionals how important that is.