Lights, Camera, Interaction: Dell’s visual technology at the Fader Fort for #SxSW 2014

In the video studio at the Fader Fort

Last night Dell brought lights, camera, and interaction to the Fader Fort at South by SouthWest. the Fader Fort is best described as a popup music/entertainment venue, with a combination of indoor and outdoor spaces. Tented food areas and a huge stage graced by live entertainment, scheduled to be kicked off by P. Diddy, and followed up with a roster of hot talent, true to SxSW’s fame.

The invite gave me and Diane Durand, who has just joined VizWorld as our Chief Transformation Officer and Summit Visionary, an opportunity to see different parts of Dell’s technology put to use for creating or working with visuals. [Diane’s many years as a visual practitioner and transformational facilitator using visual tools and methods, made her a great interviewing partner, as Dell had visual technology on display for business and education nestled alongside 3D printers and digital games. Diane will be contributing her own interviews and content to VizWorld as well as working with the visual thinking community growing here. Read Diane’s Bio here.]

Our first stop was in the video suite, run by Craig Kneuper, Stream Engineer and Producer, (@ximediaprod) where live feeds from both stationary and mobile cameras were brought through a NewTek Tricaster, and the live edit was then processed with multiple Dell mobile workstations. This signal was then sent out through closed feeds to go elsewhere, as well as recorded and backed up.

In the video studio at the Fader Fort

While this wasn’t an over-the-top video production, seeing mobile stations handle the HD signal without a hitch just shows how far we’ve come. It was exciting to play with the drone with a GoPro camera attached transmitting video back to the studio rather than worry about an overwhelmed GPU processor hanging up on signal processing for the displays or feeds.

A drone with a GoPro camera, feeding video to the studio and eyeglasses

Social Media put on display for quick analysis

Dell’s social media command post following twitter activity visually, including location.

A social media command center was on display, where multiple monitors pulled content from Dell’s Radian6-driven visual analysis of social media activity centered on their engagement with South by Southwest.

Watching a tweet about @vizworld appear at Dell’s social media station at the Fader Fort

We had a surreal moment when Diane’s twitter post announcing our plan to visit the FaderFort showed up on the screen just as we were standing there.

Dell’s Toad BI suite

Continuing the exhibit area, we met Sree Abbaraju, the Product Technologist Sr. Advisor of the Toad Business Intelligence Suite. The product, originally a proprietary BI product to allow Dell to pinpoint client painpoints through social media monitoring, is essentially a display of what Sree fondly called, “A Net Promoter Score on steroids”. (See the fact sheet about the Toad BI suite at the end of the article)

Interactive large-screen projection

Our last stop before taking in the music was at the interactive projector station: this product combines large-scale projection from a computer (Windows-based, from the product info) onto a screen which allows finger-touch and stylus interaction.

Diane took one of the styli, which is the size of a whiteboard marker but has a non-inking plastic tip, and drew a unicorn.

Our verdict is that the finger sensitivity for navigation is fine, but the responsiveness in terms of speed and tracking accuracy needs to be better to use the system for graphic recording or facilitation at the scale of working in a room. Diane will probably make a follow up visit with Dell to see if there’s behind the scenes improvement in these areas.

However, in comparison with the Smart brand of Smartboard products, commonly seen in classrooms offering this kind of technology, Dell’s system is completely competitive in terms of pricing and functionality.

Diane puts the interactive projector system to the test:

And then, after the tour of interaction, data science and video studio work, we danced. (watching the video is NOT a required part of reading this post!)

[youtube url=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NMq6_P5ZAQ” fs=”1″ hd=”1″ rel=”0″ showsearch=”0″]

[hero heading=”Fact sheet about Dell’s Toad BI Suite”]

Toad Business Intelligence Suite allows users to rapidly combine data across multiple sources, locations and formats — relational databases, BI platforms, cloud databases, and Big Data sources like Hadoop.  Users can then synthesize this information through Toad Business Intelligence Suite’s customized BI tools, designed specifically for both business and IT users. Key new features in version 2.0 include:

• Expanded heterogeneous data connectivity – Toad Business Intelligence Suite 2.0 extends its list of data connectors with complete support for Microsoft Analysis Services and connectivity to Amazon’s DynamoDB and Redshift databases. Unlike traditional BI tools that address siloed data sources, Dell Software’s data-agnostic approach provides one tool that works across all data sources to reduce complexity and improves business analysis and self-service BI.
• Storyboarding and enhanced visualization – New storyboarding capabilities empower users to publish in-depth analyses via the web for consumption by additional line-of-business decision makers.
• Optimized data access and desktop self-service integration—Desktop self-service data integration becomes faster and more agile with performance enhancements that accelerate the ability to share data and queries in real time while streamlining collaboration and analysis.

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