When advanced audio-visual technology provider, Anna Valley, held its 2022 Inspiration Showcase at Tobacco Dock in London’s Docklands, it relied on a number of partners to ensure that this ‘Event Odyssey’ — designed to reveal the techniques and tools now required in an ever-evolving event landscape — was conducted in not only a high impact environment, but also a safe and sanitised one.
This was vital as visitors were guided through a number of environments, exploring the possibilities that extended reality, motion capture, holographic projection and other audio-visual solutions have to offer.
Providing this assurance to attendees during the week-long showcase were Entec UVC SafeClean — a recent start-up by the Entec Group. They provided a suite of products to ensure not only the purification of air transmission but also that all surfaces were cleaned and all pathogens removed. These included the THOR UVC mobile disinfection robot, ZEUS a smart, cabinet-based surface decontaminator, which is effective against all known pathogens, EIR 2000 high-capacity air filtration unit and four GOLDENSEA UVAIR 216 air purifiers.
These are already being used regularly by Entec’s sister company (and long-term Anna Valley partner) Chameleon Event Production. Entec Managing Director, Noreen O’Riordan explained: “Chameleon and Anna Valley have been working together successfully for several years and so I approached [Anna Valley Director of Business Development] Dan Orchard, asking if they would like to use our UVC services to give confidence to their guests. Once he saw the standard of the technology his response was immediate, and we became a partner.”
Orchard takes up the story. “We provide technical support for Chameleon’s larger projects, and they traditionally attend our events — so I am delighted that they introduced us to Entec. When Noreen asked if we were interested in looking at [Entec UVC SafeClean] tech, it was just before Christmas and we were staring down the barrel of an Omicron wave—the infection rates were soaring. And so the timing was perfect. We were ahead with concept design, content creation and had multiple partners on board,” he continued, “but at that point we were still discussing the merits of going ahead as we were concerned whether anyone still had an appetite for it.”
Since Anna Valley are the official AV incumbents to the venue, Tobacco Dock, with a mandate to help get events moving again, he added: “There would have needed to be a compelling reason to cancel it with so many stakeholders involved. But once we knew we be able to clean the event space the decision was made.”
Everyone who had registered for the event received a personal email that listed all the precautions that were being taken. “The headline was that we were using Entec UVC SafeClean as a robust and comprehensive system. It’s such a powerful tool, and to be able to clean every surface in a space with UVC SafeClean was a real boon.”
Ahead of the event, the Chameleon team, led by Sam Parkins, undertook a site visit to instruct on usage. “What we liked was just how easy it was to use,” noted Dan Orchard. “It’s simple and reliable and certainly did the job we wanted it to do.”
Going forward, he believes that even with COVID restrictions now lifted it will take time for confidence to return. “Therefore, services such as UVC SafeClean become vital.”
And as for the 2022 showcase itself, Anna Valley say this year’s Event Odyssey managed to surpass all of the company’s previous showcase events.
