Event Trends: LED Walls

We talk a lot about LED walls, but the technology behind them is constantly evolving - as are the ways they're being used! LED walls continue to become even more malleable and are providing even better visuals. They're also being used in highly creative ways to create a more comprehensive event experience! Here are some of the ways LED walls are becoming one of the biggest trends in event production this year:

Quality

LED walls are being designed with increasingly better pixel pitches, meaning the LED pixels are closer together, creating a higher quality image. Here at The AV Company, we've recently upgraded our LED panels to a model with double the pixel pitch of our original video panels - and we're really excited about it!

Video panels offer crisper & brighter images and take up less space in your venue than a projector & screen. They also don't require an area of unimpeded space in front of the screen - as a matter of fact, they actually make great backdrops for your speakers, without sacrificing a high-quality picture.

Paired with powerful visuals, LED walls create an impactful first impression, doing the jobs of both a video display & set decor at once.

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Capability

One valuable feature of LED walls is their modularity. LED walls are often made of up panels that are a few feet wide, and they do not have to be configured in one solid rectangle. Most LED walls can also be arranged in a curved or even serpentine formation! There are many possibilities for how they can be arranged, providing you with the ultimate flexibility in your set layout and allowing you to create a display that is truly unique to your event.

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Additional Uses

These days, LED walls are being used not only for primary screens & staging, but also as a source for video content in secondary event spaces like lobbies & exhibitor spaces. LED walls make great displays for event schedules, maps, sponsorship placement, et cetera. If you can keep the high-tech vibe & stunning visuals going throughout the entire event space, you'll create a more immersive & memorable experience for your attendees.

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LED walls are continuing to evolve to better meet the needs of event planners & coordinators, and we look forward to helping you harness the power of these exciting tools to create more engaging events!

Stay tuned for more profiles on event trends in the coming weeks!

Click here to learn more about our LED walls!

The Evolution of Audience Participation

Getting your audience involved in your event doesn't have to be complex or difficult, and it can be a great way to keep your attendees connected to & engaged with the content. And audience participation has come a long way! As new event technology develops, participation methods have become more effortless and often integrate devices that the audience is already familiar with (and possibly carry around in their pockets). Let's look at how audience participation tech has evolved over the years!

Say you wanted to pose a question to your audience.

The old school method would be to ask the question, and either call upon attendees who had raised their hand or have attendees line up at a microphone to give their answers. These days, there are apps like UMU which allow attendees to type out answers on their mobile devices. Not only is this a way to gather more information in less time, but it also allows event team members to review the answers in real time and pick out the most relevant or interesting responses to share with the audience.

Or say you wanted to take a poll!

In past years, you might have rented & passed out dedicated "clickers" or response devices that relayed answers back to a receiver and, depending on the software that accompanied the clickers, the answers might be displayed in a clunky fashion or in small type in the upper corner of the content window. Today, there are a variety of economical polling apps that can also be run from attendees' mobile devices, with easy-to-read results displays that can be pulled up in a browser.

Perhaps you wanted to do a giveaway at the end of your event.

Apps to the rescue once again! Instead of using physical raffle tickets, you can use an app like UMU to collect entries and randomly select as many winners as you like.

Recent participation technology also opens up doors for new types of engagement!

Social media integrations are a great way to playfully engage your audience, whether it's by displaying relevant social media content on-screen, creating an event-specific hashtag to create collections of shared images, or sharing scannable QR codes that connect users to fun activations to encourage sharing! (Check out how UVA is using their 3D CavMan activation at recent events!)

If your event spans multiple locations, you can also use two-way live streaming to encourage live audience participation between locations! We recently worked on an event that was being simulcast between two different cities, with speakers presenting from both locations and large audiences attending each. To bring the energy back up after breaks, we set a camera on the audience and each location did the wave as the other watched, getting everyone pumped up for the next session. It was lots of fun, and the audience loved it!

New audience participation tech can improve your attendees' experience and encourage them to get more involved in the event. The more involved your attendees become, the more connected they feel and the more impactful the event will be. For more tips on keeping your audience engaged, check out our blog post: 7 Ways to Increase Audience Engagement with AV.

5 Reasons Why 4K Recording is a Good Investment

4K video has been on the public radar for some years now, and is increasing in popularity as viewing technology catches up with recording technology. 4K screens are everywhere nowadays, and if you’re planning a recorded event or conference, you’ll want to make sure that your video recordings are up to snuff!

(For more info on the benefits of recording your events, check out a couple of our past blog posts: Why You Should Record Your Next Conference // 5 Ways to Use Event Video as a Marketing Strategy)

Here are five reasons why 4K recording is a good investment for your event:

It may sound straightforward to say that 4K footage is going to look better than your standard 1080p footage. But what some may not realize is that 4K footage looks better & crisper even when shrunk down to a smaller display size. Filming in 4K will give you the highest quality visual on all screens, from 4K televisions to smartphones streaming in standard definition.

With higher resolution recordings, it’s possible to zoom in on the footage, cut to close-ups of speakers, and make other perspective shifts more easily. This results in a more dynamic finished video, without having to have two cameras stationed at the same angle during your event. (And fewer cameras equals money saved!) 

YouTube has the capability to host 4K video, which means that sharing your 4K content online is not only possible, but simple to do! Show off your high quality footage to promote future events, or even release snippets of an educational talk to add value to your social media presence! (For more ideas on using event video in your marketing strategy, click here: 5 Ways To Use Event Video as a Marketing Strategy)

Miss getting a shot of that one engaging speaker? With 4K footage, the resolution is high enough that you’re likely to be able to pull frames from the video, and export them as images!

As technology continues to improve and displays get more & more sophisticated, 4K video content will have more longevity. It will appear current & crisp on any display in the present, and will continue represent your organization well long after the recording has been taken. (Imagine watching standard 1080p footage on an 8K screen in five years - not so pretty!)

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Thanks to our partnership with BlackMagic Design, we have access to their full line of 4K equipment, allowing us to produce the highest quality video for our clients. If you’re planning a recorded event or conference, give us a shout to get the best 4K equipment on your side!