The PA People brings digital networking to City 2 Surf
Published: ASIA
AUSTRALIA: For an event encompassing more than 70,000 participants and spanning 14km through Sydney and Bondi streets, part and parcel of ensuring operations run smoothly is providing a means of communicating between organisers and participants. For the recent Sun Herald City 2 Surf charity event, the task of organising and corralling the runners was handed to Fairfax Media Events. To assist with this, The PA People, as with previous years, supplied and installed the start and finish line PA systems, providing ‘increased value’ for the client by moving to a digital transport system for the first time in this location.
‘Our approach to these events has grown and developed over the years and 2014 was no exception; continuing design improvements were implemented to further enhance the level of production and interaction,’ explained Travis Henry, manager of event communications. ‘This methodology ensures that we deliver improved production quality each year for the event organisers, so the participants walk away at the end of the day happy and looking forward to next year’s event.’
With the audio setup covering nearly 2.5km of public roads, the PA People designed a flexible system that was able to both project the Redfoo start line mix as well as provide distributed PA for information and health and safety announcements. To accomplish that, without disturbing the city’s many nearby residents, the team used a Yamaha Dante audio networking solution to distribute programme audio from the control position to the amp locations, providing greater flexibility in zoning and balancing of the system.
With the communications demands of City 2 Surf increasing year on year, the PA People reports that this year’s move to a digital transport system represents ‘just another step in continuous improvement that delivers additional value to our clients’.