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The Portland Rose Garden: Leading Edge Technology in a Public Space.
With some 320 events in a typical year -- often two different events on the same day -- the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon is one of the hardest working arenas in the country.
The events hosted there are as diverse as the tastes of the Oregon public and include NBA, WNBA, college basketball, professional hockey, indoor track & field, gymnastics, major concerts, monster truck rallies, rodeo and bull riding, circuses, ice shows, boxing, and convention and trade shows.
Managing it all can be especially complex. Take for example three consecutive days in February 2002. On those three days the arena will be set up for the state wrestling championships by daylight and by night a Portland Trailblazers game, a Winter Hawks (professional hockey) game and another Trailblazers game, respectively. Merely setting up and changing over the arena for these activities is a logistical challenge in itself.
A logistical challenge
But the challenge of constantly changing menu boards at 25 concession stands -- tailoring them to suit the dynamics of individual events as well as the demographics of the guests -- was possibly the toughest.
Paul Allen, high-tech pioneer and co-founder of Microsoft, built the Rose Garden in 1995 with an eye toward the future. It is no surprise then that the concession stands were among the first in any similar venue to employ PC-driven monitors throughout. These monitors, 108 in all, display hundreds of menu items during any particular event. Unlike static, backlit displays, however, they provide a whole lot more than item and price data.
Scott Gregg is responsible for developing the content for these displays and managing the network.
"Given that they were starting with a clean sheet of paper, management concluded that the cost of putting in a dynamic signage network was not significantly different from traditional signage. But, you get a whole lot more bang for your buck," he said.
Like many pioneering projects, however, the original system was not without its weaknesses. While the hardware technologies were adequate to the task, the software was considered lacking.
The process of creating and updating menus was cumbersome. Menu changes required post-production work that was time consuming and costly.
The solution
Toward the end of a five-year contract, The Rose Garden searched for a better solution. They looked at a variety of alternatives and discovered Scala.
"We didn't want to be on the bleeding edge," Gregg said. Rather, they were looking for a proven solution that would deliver greater flexibility and productivity. The Rose Garden management decided to give it a try, running a six-month trial at Hound Dogs, a restaurant with three stands in the arena. Each stand had two players, one for food and one for beverages.
"The Scala network proved itself by enabling us to make menu changes on the fly without having to take the menu down. The speed, together with the quality of the presentation, sold us on the solution," he said. "Moreover, in the two years it has been running we have never had an outage as a result of the software," he added.
The ability to make menu changes quickly is just part of the story. Now, the arena has the ability to leverage the system to run promotions. A good example is up selling to the "Souvenir Cup." Or, is it the "Trailblazers Cup?" Actually, it has been both.
Given the speed and flexibility of changing a script, it was a no-brainer to switch names and switch back again. It is a simple matter of going into a text file in the script and changing the name, much like anyone would on their word processor.
In search of a salmon sandwich
This flexibility took an interesting twist recently when Paul Allen, who also owns the Trailblazers, was taking in a game in another city and spotted a tasty-looking menu item, a barbecued salmon sandwich.
Word quickly filtered down to concession management at Cutting Edge Concepts that it might be a good idea to have such an item at The Rose Garden. After 200 pounds of salmon showed up at Rosie's Frying Circus three hours before the next Trailblazers home game, Gregg was called upon to create the menu item. In an unusual example of life imitating art, he designed the sandwich by taking a JPEG of their standard chicken sandwich and replacing the chicken with salmon. He then added onions -- "It's better than it sounds," said Gregg -- and posted the sandwich to the script. At the same time, he emailed the photo to the chef who used it to model the real life product. The Scala script and the sandwich were both up and running when the doors opened at 6 p.m.
New software platform appealing
While delighted with Scala software as it is, Gregg is looking forward to implementing InfoChannel® 3, Scala's new platform. On the creative side, he appreciates the new GUI, an improvement on an already easy-to-use interface. He is also pleased with the incorporation of a multi-level undo capability. The new transitions and special effects (such as spinning text) will make the programming even more attractive, he says.
His life will be made easier by scheduling software that enables him to modify dates in a master script rather than have to drill down into nested scripts to change each date on each menu.
He also likes the "pull" versus "push" approach of the new software. When he updates a script he doesn't have to then send it to the broadcast server. Individual players continually and automatically "pull" the new information from a central location, Scala's Network Manager 3 software, at set intervals.
All these creative and productivity enhancements should serve him well in the future, and not just in Portland. You see, Mr. Allen also owns the Seattle Seahawks and is building a new stadium for their use in the 2002 season. It will have 200 screens. Guess which software they have chosen?
"The Scala network proved itself by enabling us to make menu changes on the fly without having to take the menu board down."
- Scott Gregg, Scott Gregg Design
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