When InfoComm attendees return to the Orange County Convention Center (OCCC) in June, they should have an easier time navigating the venue. The Orlando, FL-based facility has spent the last five years scaling a visual communications solution to accommodate modern facility and attendee requirements. Its solution incorporates standard signage, touchscreens, and even attendees' personal devices to create a flexible system that can adjust to any event.
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A 7-million-square-foot campus spread across several buildings, the OCCC is one of the largest convention centers in the United States. Averaging nearly 200 events annually, its messaging and communications requirements change daily. Plus, it's unusual for a single event to take over the entire OCCC, so signs in different areas often need entirely different information.
To accommodate the fast-paced engagement demands of these events, OCCC needed a solution to enable facility managers to update content effortlessly and control screens anywhere in the facility. Additionally, the OCCC's food vendors rely on digital menu boards; they need access to update menu content directly with menu items, dynamic pricing, promotions, and more. Most importantly, the OCCC's hundreds of thousands of annual guests need directory and wayfinding information at their fingertips.
The OCCC IT management team collaborated directly with Intel and 22Miles to implement a comprehensive digital signage and wayfinding solution. The team deployed 20 strategically positioned 3D wayfinding kiosks across the facility, running the 22Miles Interactive Wayfinding application on Intel NUC Mini PCs. The interactive kiosks are supplemented by 60 column signs with facility and event information. The OCCC also features 94 menu displays primarily used for third-party vendor content.
Facility managers can update or replace content on any screen and preview, control, or troubleshoot any device in the digital signage network using the 22Miles Publisher Pro App. Third-party vendors also have limited access to update their menu board content through the 22Miles Web Editor.
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“The menu screens process greatly improved, as in the past we had food service vendors basically running around from food court to food court with a flash drive to manually update signs,” explained Michael Distler, OCCC IT manager. “Now they use the 22Miles software, which we can easily update all of the 90-plus menu display signs from one system.”
After success in its initial phase, the OCCC IT management team also collaborated with 22Miles to create native mobile Android and iOS apps using the Publisher Pro app development kit, making visitors' smartphones a crucial part of the facility's visual communication strategy. Visitors can use the new OCCC Campus app to navigate the facility using detailed interactive 3D maps, get turn-by-turn directions to any location, save their parking spot, find transportation pickup points, and submit feedback to the facility.
The app uses the same Publisher Pro backend as the signage system, so the managers can automatically push updates to the app. The app also integrates with Ungerboeck, the OCCC's event management software, allowing visitors to access event-specific information.
Since the OCCC began its visual communication overhaul in 2018, the clear benefits to both attendee experience and facility management have led them to steadily scale the experience to more features and screens. InfoComm attendees can download the OCCC Campus app or visit 22Miles (Booth 809) for a demo of the convention center's content management system.
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“It’s so great to see the project continue to expand over the years to more touchscreen wayfinding systems, additional digital signs, and now even the mobile wayfinding app,” said Richard Towner, sales manager at 22Miles. “It’s truly amazing that the project as a whole is made possible by a single platform in Publisher Pro, needing no custom coding or programming to deliver the 3D wayfinding for kiosks, a native mobile app, and digital units—fully integrated with OCCC’s Ungerboeck event feed, too.”
