SHEN MILSOM WILKE



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Spring 2004 Report
If you would like more information on any of these projects or stories, please contact Jeff Wilde, Partner, at (212) 725-6800 or jwilde@smwinc.com.

Better than Wall Street
More Technology at Another B-School
Carnegie Hall's High-Tech Portal to the World
Mixing Books and Technology
Understanding VoIP

Better than Wall Street
John R. and Georgene M. Tozzi Electronic Business and Finance Center, University of Michigan Business School, Ann Arbor, MI

The simulated trading floor also functions as a classroom for teaching financial analysis and trading. Photo: Michael Leiboff

Architect: University of Michigan
Multimedia/audiovisual, telecommunications, trading floor design: Shen Milsom & Wilke, Chicago; L. William Nattress III, project manager
Completion: October 2003
Size: 5,800 square feet

Challenge: The University of Michigan Business School, one of the top ten B-schools in the world, needed an interactive classroom to teach students about financial analysis and trading. This specialized space needed to emulate Wall Street, giving students access to the latest securities research, investment banking, and asset management tools.

Solution: The Tozzi Center, located in renovated space inside the existing Electronic & Education Resources Building, contains a simulated trading floor that also functions as a classroom. With its networked workstations, teleconferencing system, live financial data feeds for real-time information from global markets, and the latest financial services, the center is "better than a Wall Street trading floor," says Richard G. Sloan, the Victor L. Bernard PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Collegiate Professor of Accounting and Finance.

Much of the technology, including the cable and wireless infrastructure, the displays at the front of the room that aid instruction, and the instructor-controlled touch screens to manage what appears on the displays, was designed by Shen Milsom & Wilke.

Aside from the financial analysis and trading floor classroom, the facility also includes a wireless electronic classroom, e-lab seminar room, and a ticker display outside the center to welcome visitors. Shen Milsom & Wilke also designed the technology in these spaces.

More Technology at Another B-School
Executive Learning Classroom at the Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley

The Executive Learning Classroom is designed for distance-learning technology. Materials and finishes were carefully chosen to improve acoustics.

Architect: Goring & Straja Architects, Emeryville, CA
Multimedia/audiovisual, acoustics: Shen Milsom & Wilke/Paolette, San Francisco; Ben Shemuel, project manager
Completion: September 2003
Size: 2,600 square feet

Challenge: The Haas School of Business educates a range of students seeking business-related degrees--from Fortune 100 executives to undergraduates. The school needed ways to extend its reach to students within the University of California system and around the world.

Solution: Shen Milsom & Wilke designed the audiovisual systems for the school's new 75-seat Executive Learning Classroom. This space, made by combining two existing classrooms, includes a sound system and microphones for clear voice reproduction of presenters and students to distant class participants. Two 120-inch screens and a high-resolution projection system display crisp, clear images of the instructors' materials as well as far-end class participants. A ceiling-mounted plasma display provides instructors with visual feedback, mirroring images displayed on the projectors.

A digital annotation tablet allows instructors to whiteboard and to highlight computer content. Images of the whiteboard content are simultaneously displayed on the local screens and transmitted to distant participants. An in-ceiling document camera transmits hard copy and transparencies. Tracking cameras automatically transmit images of students and instructors.

Cameras and microphones automatically select the speaking student via the automatic mixers. The instructor camera is aimed through the use of sensors concealed beneath the carpeting. Technicians working from a control room or remotely, via a Web interface, control productions of greater complexity.

Finally, Shen Milsom & Wilke's acoustics consultant worked with the architect to choose materials to eliminate distracting echoes--a particular concern given the semicircular layout of the room and large proportion of hard surfaces.

Carnegie Hall's High-Tech Portal to the World
Judith and Arthur Zankel Hall, New York City

Zankel Hall's distance-learning system allows performances to be shared around the world. Photo: Chris Lee

Architect: Polshek Partnership Architects, New York City
Audiovisual/distance learning systems: Shen Milsom & Wilke, New York City; Robert Badenoch, project manager
Completion: September 2003
Size: Up to 650 seats

Challenge: Carnegie Hall's new performance space, Zankel Hall, doubles as an educational facility and an incubator for new ideas and musical forms. Yet officials there needed a way to share these innovations--which may include musical instruction, panel discussions, concerts, and recitals--with those located outside of New York City.

Solution: Shen Milsom & Wilke designed Zankel's sophisticated and unusual distance learning system. Flexibility was essential due to the variety of events and the malleability of the hall itself. Stages, floors, and seats move to accommodate different performances or room layouts; the technology has to morph with the hall and make maximum use of each room configuration.

Some of the attributes of the distance-learning system:
Audio and video signals are connected to the Internet, allowing Web-casting of performances.
Signals may be funneled through Carnegie Hall's recording studio, allowing technicians to add special effects.
Producers, directors, switching technicians, and other specialists can be involved with the production, or the entire operation can be automated with a single operator using a touch screen to run the system from the control room.

Events are displayed on one or two moveable projection screens, each of which measure 22 by 17 feet, located above the stage. The projector is mounted on a scissor lift for adjustability. Those who are on stage use conveniently placed 42-inch plasma screens to monitor the screen displays behind them. Events may be recorded with up to six cameras that can be moved freely around the hall, thanks to a carefully configured under-floor cabling system and numerous connection points.

Mixing Books and Technology
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, San Jose, Calif.

The computer training classrooms have proctoring systems that allow instructors to use their computer to monitor what the students are doing.

Architect: Gunnar Birkerts + DSA Architects, Bloomfield, Mich., design associate; Carrier Johnson, San Diego, Calif., executive architect; Anderson Brule Architects, San Jose, Calif., associate architect
Multimedia/audiovisual, acoustics: Shen Milsom & Wilke/Paoletti, San Francisco; Gasper Sciacca, project manager
Completion: August 2003
Size: 475,000 square feet

Challenge: The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library, a collaboration of the San Jose State University Library and the main branch of the City of San Jose Public Library, needed to provide a broad range of information services--including online services and distance learning--to students, instructors, and the community.

Solution: Shen Milsom & Wilke's work included the design of four multipurpose rooms and four computer-training classrooms--all of which are used by the university and the public. Each of the multipurpose spaces has a voice amplification system and video display, including a screen and projector. Portable recording equipment means lectures and presentations can be recorded and broadcast via cable television or streaming video for the Internet or distribution via the local area network.

The computer training classrooms include proctoring systems that allow the instructors to use their computer to monitor what the students are doing and even present a student's work on a display at the front of the room. The large classroom has distance-learning capabilities.

The facility also includes a building-wide announcement system and a cable television distribution system.

A seven-story central atrium with adjacent reading rooms created an acoustic challenge for Shen Milsom & Wilke. Working with the architects, room finishes were selected to minimize reverberation. Sound isolation techniques and control of building noise and vibration from mechanical equipment helps keep the library peaceful.

Understanding VoIP
The convergence of traditional telephony and video/data networks means a more compact and efficient infrastructure and a broader range of services.
By Larry Shields and Andrew B. Finlayson

For more than a century, all phone calls were made in the same way: a dedicated circuit connected each and every call and stayed open until somebody hung up.

In the 1990s, techniques were developed to convert telephone conversations into small packets of data--the same kind of packets that computers use to communicate with one another. All of these data packets can be transported along the same network, eliminating the traditional dedicated-circuit scenario and the need for separate infrastructures.

Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, refers to the convergence of traditional telephony networks with data/video networks, utilizing the existing data network infrastructure as the transport system for all services.
VoIP technology takes a voice signal, which originates as analog, and places it in TCP/IP packets. TCP/IP stands for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol--the language governing communications between all computers on the Internet. It is essentially a set of instructions that dictates how packets of information are sent across multiple networks.

The size and frequency of the packets that are sent depends upon the coding/decoding (CODEC) technology used in the VoIP telephone or device.

Companies are increasingly turning to VoIP. Expenditures in new LAN-based IP telephony systems have grown by 41 percent while sales of traditional PBX systems have decreased by almost 12 percent, according to the InfoTech's InfoTrack for Enterprise Communications.

As corporations, educational institutions, and others invest in their data network infrastructure in an effort to enhance efficiency, productivity, and growth, they should consider the advantages VoIP can bring, including:
Easier and more cost effective management of multiple locations, which would share a single network;
Consolidation of existing data, voice and video networks saves space and costs; and
Installation of a single network instead of multiples.

Also, customers can augment traditional dial-tone services with more flexible IP services such as instant video calling, unified messaging (a common inbox for voicemail, email, and attachments), web-based call screening, and routing and address book integration. These VoIP solutions give customers the ability to simply connect multiple sites and link telecommuters and mobile workers nationwide via a single high-speed network.

VoIP is technologically mature, but there are still issues:
Can the company afford the initial higher cost?
Since health and safety systems often ride on the same network as that used for the telephone, how will VoIP affect them?
How will VoIP be integrated with existing LAN, WAN, and voice infrastructure? What will be the impact on the WAN?
If the VoIP replaces an existing system, how will it be managed in tandem with the legacy PBX systems?

The evolution to VoIP equipment is as significant as when the telecommunications carriers began moving from analog to digital technology in the 1980s. And like the move from analog to digital, the migration will be a phased one permitting both existing analog and digital telephone systems to function without replacement or upgrades.

Shen Milsom & Wilke, an international technology consulting practice founded in 1986, offers comprehensive services in the areas of telecommunications, audiovisual/multimedia, and acoustics. The firm has offices in New York, Princeton, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Houston, Denver, San Francisco, Las Vegas, London, Dubai, and Hong Kong, and a staff of more than 140 professionals. Shen Milsom & Wilke was named one of the 100 fastest growing A/E/P firms in the nation by Zweig White & Associates for the years 2001 and 2002.

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