169th Commencement at Emory.
It was the 169th Commencement with no capricious weather in sight – just full sun! It was a fine day, particularly in all the ways we work together to pull off a singularly successful event for an audience of over 14,000.
Many of us in LITS participate as volunteers; we are hosts to the Corpus Cordis Aureum at the Library, we are ushers and information reps on the Quad, we are serving Coke products at the beverage tents, and so much more! For most of us, it’s a 4 a.m. wakeup call to arrive on a dark campus strangely wide awake on the Quad where leaf blowers are running to dry chairs and light/sound crews are tuning up. The Campus Services Division is already hard at work!
On this day, two of our teams pulled out all the stops and do what they do best – connect, transmit, record and stream! The Classroom Technology, Video Services and Architecture Teams rallied to provide the technology, equipment and expertise to telecast the event, stream it online and enhance the wireless network for our extended Emory family. Their efforts begin much in advance of the day, with extensive planning before implementation.
This year, Video Services was HD fiber all the way for production while live web streams and digital CATV feeds were conducted for the Schools of Medicine, Theology, Public Health, Nursing, College, Business (2), the Main Ceremony and for ABC as well. ABC wanted a live web stream of John Lewis’ speech, which took a good bit of technical expertise to get our existing encoding equipment and Helix streaming server to work with their Akamai technology. There were 9 unique streaming events, and 5 different broadcast locations running on fiber. We provided the video production, working closely with AV staffers campus wide along with Atlanta Sound and Lighting, and Commercial Audio.
Did you know that we house parents of graduating students in the Freshmen Residence Halls over the Commencement Weekend? 120 Rooms were booked so there could have been as many as 240 family members staying on campus! EmoryGuest was broadcast on the residential wireless network with the Captive Portal (which requires an email address login) so our guests were able to connect wirelessly without a NetID authentication.
One of the Aruba wireless access points, with close-up detail.
For Commencement, the wireless network was augmented by the addition of 4 brand new “state of the art” Aruba 275s: external Access Points (APs) that support gigabit connections and 150 simultaneous users in any weather with 3 antennas. These were on loan from Aruba Networks for evaluation, timed to test with our commencement gathering. The APs were placed strategically on the Quad; behind the Platform Party stage, by Pitts Library, the balcony at the top of Carlos Museum and in a lovely tree by Callaway. The one at Pitts garnered great interest, for it was a wee bit unhidden; folks thought it might be a camera or even a mosquito zapper! We are grateful for the folks in Callaway, Pitts and Carlos for accommodating the temporary wireless installations. We are also glad that we could pilot the Aruba 275s and give it a great workout at commencement for its evaluation.
At 6:00 a.m., the captive portal was temporarily removed from EmoryGuest campus wide, allowing ease of connection for all our guests till the early afternoon.
User stats show 2351 unique users, with almost 80% connected to EmoryGuest and the numbers began as early as 4 a.m., rising to a high use mark at 9:50 a.m., nearing the end of the main Commencement ceremony. These connection rates are in addition to Verizon, AT&T and all other cellular signals!
Tracking By Hour and # of Users:
- 5:10 a.m. – 17
- 6:10 a.m. – 58
- 7:10 a.m. – 337
- 8:10 a.m. – 834
- 9:50 a.m. – 1,056
- 10:10 a.m. – 858
- 11:10 a.m. – 930
- 12:10 p.m. – 925
Bar chart featuring hourly wireless connections.
Takeaways for next year’s wireless augmentation: install outdoor ports for a permanent installation and fashion camouflage panels to help all the APs become part of the scenery.
From the University Events Office, in a parent letter to President Wagner, it was a “’Hollywood movie-like commencement ceremony” with a wonderful time had by all!
Way to go LITS!