I'm in New York City for the Open Video Conference, which starts tomorrow. As part of that meeting, we got to meet with the folks at B&H Photo Video
and take a tour of their nearby store. During the meeting, we talked
about Digital Commons, Learning Spaces, and our lab and classroom
setups. They brought along some of the experts they have on higher-end
equipment, who had some ideas about full-room recording.
One really good outcome is they showed us a kind of mobile sound booth (which I wish I could find again on their site). It has four 4-foot-tall walls that are raised about a foot off the ground and which should be pretty good at sound dampening, although not as good as a full enclosure. On the very positive side is that the booths can be opened up when not in use, so they don't take chunks out of the available space. They are also about 1/3 the cost of a full enclosure booth.
The store itself is like a toy store for photo, audio, video, and gadget enthusiasts. They have a huge storage facility in the basement and a conveyor system throughout that delivers orders from the basement to the exit, where they are picked up by customers. No carts. No carrying things. It's an innovative solution.
They also have an events area where they have free courses going on nearly every day of the week. It's a great community-supporting idea. Apparently, the courses are very popular.
On our way our of the store, Matt pointed out that it would be more cost effective to send people to the store to try out several pieces of equipment at once than ordering equipment to test.
So overall, it was a nice way to kick off our conference/visit and we'll already be coming back with some practical ideas.
One really good outcome is they showed us a kind of mobile sound booth (which I wish I could find again on their site). It has four 4-foot-tall walls that are raised about a foot off the ground and which should be pretty good at sound dampening, although not as good as a full enclosure. On the very positive side is that the booths can be opened up when not in use, so they don't take chunks out of the available space. They are also about 1/3 the cost of a full enclosure booth.
The store itself is like a toy store for photo, audio, video, and gadget enthusiasts. They have a huge storage facility in the basement and a conveyor system throughout that delivers orders from the basement to the exit, where they are picked up by customers. No carts. No carrying things. It's an innovative solution.
They also have an events area where they have free courses going on nearly every day of the week. It's a great community-supporting idea. Apparently, the courses are very popular.
On our way our of the store, Matt pointed out that it would be more cost effective to send people to the store to try out several pieces of equipment at once than ordering equipment to test.
So overall, it was a nice way to kick off our conference/visit and we'll already be coming back with some practical ideas.