Budapest – AIM Group International has recently organised a conference for 700 attendees coming from all over the world on behalf of MSD’s US Headquarters. Budapest was the city of choice for this event. However, the team faced a challenge when developing the logistical plan of the event. The team needed to find a way to use the very large rectangular space of the Syma Center for both plenary & workshop space.
The team needed a creative solution due to both space & timing limitations to use one large room to accommodate 700 people for their school-room set-up plenary session and 3-room breakout of about 130 people each, plus allocating part of the space for catering during all the meetings. The solution? The “Silent Room” system.
What is a “Silent Room” Set-up?
Using a Silent Room system, you can virtually divide a room in small rooms, without interference between them. First, each participant is assigned to a workshop by placing a colour dot on their badge. Also, in order to avoid any directional signs, we have decided to border the room with a colored carpet. In this way, each delegate sat, since the very beginning of the meeting, in their designated “room” with the same colour as the dot on their badge.
During the coffee break (which followed the plenary session and was just prior to the workshop session), the entire space has been divided with heavy curtains into 3 smaller spaces. A headphone set with a pre-assigned channel has been given to each delegate and to the faculty assigned to that specific room. The benefits of this system is that, when the faculty is talking on the microphone, the speaker can be heard only from those who have the headphone set on that specific channel. Moreover the audience is able to ask questions to the speaker using a simple microphone. Hence, the “silent room” system.
AIM’s lead contact for the event, Ms. Kathleen Mahoney from MSD shares this confession with the AIM Group International team: “I must admit I was skeptical that it would work. The room was very large and there were so many people. But it was fantastic! It worked perfectly. I would use this technology again in a heartbeat. I wish I could use it in my home when my husband is watching his loud action movies!”
