Tampa International Airport - Embracing Microsoft Teams and AV Innovation

Doug Wycoff, Director of Digital Technologies and Innovation at Tampa International Airport, and Rebecca Criswell, Account Manager at AVI-SPL, explain the technological innovations at Tampa International Airport, including use of Microsoft Teams, digital signage, and advanced AV solutions.

• The rapid technological transformation from pre-Covid to present and the acceleration of Microsoft Teams adoption
• Importance of standardisation across different room sizes and configurations in the airport's SkyCenter to ensure efficiency and ease of maintenance
• Hot desking solution enabling flexibility for employees to reserve and use spaces efficiently with real-time location tracking
• Tampa Airport's outdoor parking lot video wall offering up-to-date flight information to help manage traffic and improve customer experience
• The importance of innovative solutions and strong vendor relationships 

Thanks to AVI-SPL, this episode's sponsor, for your continued support.

Transcript

Doug Wycoff: When you walk through our terminal from our P&D team from a construction standpoint and everybody else from maintenance. Uh, down to IT. Yeah, we have all the, we have a lot of the public facing wow factors and, but you can't have the wow factors without all the magic, the core product behind it. And that's the amazing team that goes with that.

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. Really excited for this one. You know, on the podcast, we'd love to get the customer perspective. And this is quite, quite the impressive customer and interesting scenario. This is with one of the Empowering.Cloud partners, AVI-SPL, who are a great partner of ours.

We really appreciate their support. So let's get into this customer conversation. Doug, if I could start with you to just introduce yourself and your role. 

Doug Wycoff: Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it. Doug Wycoff, Tampa International Airport, and I'm the Director of Digital Technologies and Innovation. My teams, we handle the passenger experience, we handle the customer experience, and we consider customers as our fellow employees as well within the authority.

So we have the entire airport campus, the, um, our office building, what we call SkyCenter. Uh, so we have a broad, broad breadth of, uh, audiovisual demands and needs. And it's a, and it's a full team that, uh, monitors and maintains and ensures stability 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We have all the policies and everything in place to ensure the check and balance with that standpoint.

And, uh, it's, uh, it's been a recover. a rocket sled on rails for the last five years. I mean, uh, and we get into the details, uh, from, uh, from pre COVID to where we are today. It's, uh, it's been a very, pretty amazing journey. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, I'm so excited to get in. Like, we've done some prep and Rebecca's kind of prepped me on some of the, the, the, the kit you've got and it's very, very innovative and very exciting.

Um, Rebecca, if you could just introduce yourself as well, please. 

Rebecca Criswell: Yeah, my name is Rebecca Criswell, and I'm the Account Manager at AVI-SPL, and Tampa International Airport is, um, my largest client. So, I've been working with them for about nine years now. I think, Doug, we're going on about nine years. 

Doug Wycoff: Yeah, it's like I said, it's gone from zero to everything.

Rebecca Criswell: Yes, definitely. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it's an amazing partnership it sounds like, we'll get into that. Doug, maybe you could kind of set the scene on, like, your journey and the Teams journey at Tampa International Airport, because you're a Teams shop, right? 

Doug Wycoff: Yeah, we're certainly a Teams shop, and, uh, you know, the funny part about Teams is we had the same struggle that a lot of people did when you, when you go back to 2018, 2019 in that time frame and Teams was just coming out and it was a cool kids thing to get on.

But the cool kids thing is sometimes very hard to adapt within an environment. Um, I'll be the first one to admit I wasn't a super fan, wasn't ready to get off, go jump on it. Uh, there's a certain generation that wants to, I want to walk over and talk to you. You know, and from that standpoint, we can save that conversation.

But, uh, enter COVID. And COVID kind of took Teams and put it on steroids because now everybody's at home. Now everybody, we literally, uh, Teams usage, we, we, we talked about this not too long ago on a graph, but Teams, Teams usage actually tripled within the first 90 days of COVID after we sent everybody home.

So, uh, and that's really what forced the adoption. And it's just been, uh, it's been exploited and expanded, uh, exponentially since, uh, since that time frame. 

Tom Arbuthnot: It feels like from the kind of prep conversation, you guys have not just, you know, some people were taken along for the ride. It feels like you've really embraced it and innovated and done all sorts of things like the turning the SkyCenter.

It sounds like maybe you can talk us through what you're doing there with the MTR Rooms. 

Doug Wycoff: Yeah, yeah, there's no question. And, uh, at SkyCenter, our big thing is standardization, because with efficiencies and not to be, you know, one of our, one of the objectives is always to be more efficient, less, less staff heavy.

And if the more efficient you are, you should, you should need less, less staff to support. So standardization format is one of the big things that we, we put in place, especially at SkyCenter, because it was, it's literally, you know, 30, 30 plus rooms of various makes and models. but they all go back to the core product.

And from that standpoint, it's a Teams room. It's the audio format and footprint is the same. And some of them, and we, we, we exploit Teams from our, from our EOC for what we do for emergency response and coordination for any type of thing, whatever happens on the campus. Those are automatic bridges that are set up that we, that we get in and you can get it from any, anywhere in the world.

You can jump on your your immediate bridge to get involved in what's going on at that point. And, uh, the standardization part and the, and the audio integration, our big thing was making sure that everybody sounded like, uh, very much like this room. I mean, it's, uh, it's, there's microphones and, um, and speakers are in the ceilings.

Everything is well balanced. And that's really the key piece, the key piece of challenges for us was the, the various sizes of room. There's no two, no two conference rooms are the same size. So, ensuring the, the packets in and out, and when somebody got picked up at the other end of the table compared to somebody that was talking at this side of the table, and getting that all balanced out.

I mean, I know there was a weekend somewhere back a year or two ago that AVI-SPL literally spent probably 48 hours in our house tweaking that one particular room, not all rooms, one particular room. And that model. That model is followed to our boardroom and everything else. We used to have microphones that sat around the table that people spoke to in the boardroom.

We took that same model and put it in there. So now you can have a Teams call in the boardroom and everything flows. You're not, you know, you don't have to holler at somebody. Turn on the microphone so they can hear you online. You know, those type things. It's, um, It's, it's clean, it's fluid, and every conference room operates in the same, the same manner.

Down to our huddle rooms. Our huddle rooms, you know, hold, hold three, three to five people. Uh, the small conference rooms 12 people. Uh, every, and then we have the larger ones that hold 20 to 25 up to our boardroom. 

Tom Arbuthnot: I love that standardization story. I mean, like you're saying, you've got everything from huddle, kind of, you know, more standard board, like more standard meeting rooms up to, you know, big boardrooms.

And you, you've, you said there, you've, the standardization that obviously speaks to, you've, you've chosen certain OEM partners. I think you've got Crestron in there, you've got Logi in there, like, like, you've tried to kind of have a minimum number of partners, but keep innovation going, is that right? 

Doug Wycoff: Oh, no question. And then the big thing is, is trying to establish the things that get out of sync very easily as, as cameras, is, is the actual Crestron devices, because you're cruising along and it's the same cookie cutter models, rinse and repeat.

But the camera's changed, and the camera features, the firmware is the same as the other one. The big thing is that anybody walks in a room, hits join, they have a picture, they have audio, and they can also, Teams, they can also share their screen. And that was another big cultural change, not to, not to adjust, is the fact with Teams, we initially built out that you would come in and plug in your, plug in your laptop with a cable, And we, we threw all that out the door after about six months and went to strictly a bring your own device and share the screen.

You log the room in. If you want to share something on as part of the conversation, you simply get logged into Teams on your laptop, share it with the room. So you can have six people in the room sharing different points of contact content on the same, on the same meeting or around, around the world either way.

But that's, again, it was a cultural change, it was a cultural switch. People are used to people coming in, plugging in your device, logging in and do it all. And, uh, for the most part, we, everything is a bring your own device environment. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. And you're doing, uh, hot desking as well. So you've got, I think you, uh, one with, uh, Rebecca, remind me, who is the partner you built a custom app with?

Rebecca Criswell: Well, 22 Miles built the app for it. And Embrava has the beacons that are on the desk. And that, you know, is, saves space, you know, I think that goes back to what Doug said about efficiency, right? Because you don't need all those. 

Doug Wycoff: The big thing coming out, the big thing with COVID and the work, uh, and the work remote policy of the world today is that, you know, we designed our new building.

We've got 175 spaces in there. No, everybody doesn't all come to work on the same day. We all know that. And so you have a reservation system and it says, hey, you can only reserve, reserve it out two weeks. Microsoft Teams And you can only reserve it for 10 hours at a time. And so you put those parameters around there and it, yeah, there's no question.

If certain people migrate to the same desk because they're there every day, you bet. But the other side of the coin is that person's gone for two weeks. That allows somebody else to use that, to use that space. From that perspective. And at the same time, if I'm looking for somebody in particular, all I have to do is go to their calendar, see what their reservation says, and I know where they're sitting.

So, those are all features you can do. We have an app that you can go into and reserve it from that standpoint. Or you can walk up with your badge. That was another change we did. You can walk up with your badge, scan the reader that's at the cubicle, and do an immediate reservation. You can go and extend your stay.

If you only reserved it for four hours and you're going to stay longer, you can, uh, it's a touch device if you can extend your stay. So, the whole thing is putting control into the employee, the employee's capabilities and allowing them the most robust feature from that standpoint to do what they need to do.

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. So, normally with enterprises, this is kind of where the conversation stops. Like, there's different types of rooms, there's different types of desks, but with the airport, there's so, so much more you're doing. Right, let's get into kind of digital signage because the, the, the, what you're doing there is amazing across both the SkyCenter and the terminal.

Doug Wycoff: Well, there's, there's, there's several aspects. Number one, we have an amazing facility and, um, there's a lot, a lot of people that have hands to make that amazing. And I, you know, uh, all politics aside, it literally, at Tampa International, it starts from the top down. It's the executive management row that allows us to do what we do.

And when you walk through our terminal from. Our P&D team from a construction standpoint and everybody else from maintenance, uh, down to IT. Yeah, we have all the, we have a lot of the public facing wow factors and, but you can't have the wow factors without all the magic, the core product behind it. And that's the amazing team that goes with that.

And, and they're, they're working with each and every one of them allows us to bring the features and functionality to, to what the, what the passenger wants. Yeah. And you walk through our transfer level today, or most of our levels today, and the LED transition and the ability of the, of the canvas. What we try to tell our customers is we'll build you the canvas and you tell us how you, what, what you want the, the artwork to be.

And uh, so we do a lot of, uh, a lot of magical things. We have an event space that holds, uh, that holds over a hundred people that's got, uh, a hundred and uh, 30, 32 inch, uh. LED screen in it that, uh, that handles about 164, is that right? 

Rebecca Criswell: Yes 164. 

Doug Wycoff: 164 across. And it's a wow factor. It's a wow factor that, uh, that, you know, changes the dynamics to the point that that's now where we have press conferences.

We have, we recently put in a lighting configuration to enhance the lighting for TV ready press conferences when we're making major announcements and things of that nature. Um, so there's a lot of aspects. Our boardroom, our boardroom at the, at our Sky Center is. Outside of the view being stunning, the features and functionality, uh, it also has a 164 inch, uh, screen in it, uh, from that standpoint.

But we took the first floor, the first floor at our SkyCenter building, because it's a multi tenant building, we have three floors there, but we have, we have two major conference rooms, and then one that holds up to 100 people, and the other one that is a, is an almost executive room. Again, we took that over.

We put a 164 inch LED screen in there as well, and it just, it allows people to immediately walk in. And you have that, wow, and then when the technology works, it's just, it's just icing on the cake. And so it's um, you know, that, that is part of it. It's, it's just, when people, when we have changes, if we're closing it, we have an escalator that goes back.

We have immediate deck change on the LED screen above it, and we're able to do that. And this is really just the tip of the iceberg of where we're going, what we're doing, where we're excited about a new airside, airside D that we're planning and all the, all the technologies that will be built into that.

So, uh, 

Tom Arbuthnot: The outdoor video wall looks super impressive to me as well. I don't think, I don't, I do a lot of international flights. I haven't seen anything like, like that, of like having that level of, in the kind of parking lot experience. 

Doug Wycoff: Oh, the cell phone lot. We're talking about a cell lot. 

Rebecca Criswell: Yeah, 

Doug Wycoff: yeah, 

Tom Arbuthnot: yeah.

Doug Wycoff: Cell lot is, uh, that was one of our very, very first projects. Uh, 2018, 2019, that time rang when Cell Lot was one of our very first projects. If you saw pictures of our old Cell lot, you would understand the difference between that. The old Cell lot was from 2006. Uh, it looked like it was from 2006. But, but again, it's allowing the flexibility.

I mean, uh, the Cell lot, uh, is 66 feet across, I believe, Rebecca, is that right? Something like that. 

Rebecca Criswell: Something like that. 

Doug Wycoff: Yeah. And so, and they're the, they're the best, they're the best presentation of information for outdoors that you're going to find. I mean, the millimeter pitch is, is the best produced today.

And, but we, there's many nights if you came by the airport, there's two cell lots there that probably hold 50 plus cars a piece and they're packed. They're literally packed. And what that does is that keeps them off the roadways. If your information is accurate. Your information is readable. Uh, you provide that information.

That's what people need. And those are all the little nuances that make a difference and that allow not only people to rave about the airport, but allows us to work more efficiently. It's a small piece of the puzzle, but it allows us to work more efficiently from that standpoint. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Huge for the end, you know, end customers going through the airport as well.

Like, if you can make that experience smooth and convenient, that's what everybody's looking for that, that signage, particularly, I think in your world. You know, by definition, a lot of people are going to be coming for the first time, so every, it's not like people get used to the environment every, you probably have to consider that.

Lots of people are new every time, so the signage has to really work for them. 

Doug Wycoff: You know, we, we do something as little as what we call our meeter and greeter area, where people on our outside, off the air side and the main terminal are waiting for people to come off the shuttle to, to meet 'em. Well, we've got LEDs for each, for each air side there.

And one of the big things there is you have the flight information display on the, on the right side. And then a lot of times on the left side we have where, what we call flight in sight. Flight in sight allows them to see where their plane is. It's coming in and I'll identify the airline name and number.

So, it's kind of a cool thing for people to see, oh, well, okay, it's over Atlanta right now. Well, I'm a little early. So, uh, but that gives them, people have to have a perspective. All they have is the time in most places, but if they can see, well, it's over Atlanta, so I can, I can go buy something, one of our concessions come back, because I know it's over Atlanta and it's only going to get here so quick.

So, um, you know, that time is valid. 

Tom Arbuthnot: So it's efficiency and experience, it's kind of both. 

Doug Wycoff: Yeah, people, people, you know, people are very untrusting when it comes to the time, because they don't want to, you only get one shot for somebody to come off that shell in their first meeting with them, and you want to be there.

You came here to meet them, and you want to be there to meet them. Yeah. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. And this whole journey we've been talking about here, the, the, the Teams rooms, the, the digital signage, all the av, this is working with AVI-SPL over many years, it sounds like. 

Doug Wycoff: Lemme tell you AVI-SPL, uh, you know, they're like, they're like that.

They're like us. They're like any company. We all have our, our, our hurdles and challenges. But I will tell you that from the top of, uh, top of AVI-SPL to the, to the, to the bottom people that work at our at are where, at our place, um. Uh, it's, they care. They care about us. They care about getting the solution.

I have no problem, uh, and I, you know, I, I rarely do it, but I certainly am comfortable calling the CEO, of AVI-SPL. He understands our business just like everybody else does through there. And, uh, and the people down, the people that work here, Day in and day out. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And you've got, yeah, you've got AVI-SPL people on site, so you have, like, it's a real team project.

Doug Wycoff: Yeah, we've got AVI-SPL people, we've got, uh, you know, uh, uh, four people on site right now. And they're, and you talk to them, they're proud to be here because it's not the same thing every day. Every day is a new day. Every challenge is a new challenge. Uh, and it's, uh, and it's a, it's an exciting place to, to be with what, we're, and again, we're very fortunate.

because we've got the ability and the funding and so forth to make a difference. Our passenger traffic allows us the revenue flow to do the things we do and what I call to make a magic happen that we do. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And you talked about the pace of changing in your world and everything you're doing to innovate.

Also the pace of change with Teams and the Teams ecosystem and choosing vendors. How, how do you work to kind of choose which vendors you work with, which kit you use? Because I guess AVI-SPL have brought you a portfolio of options. 

Doug Wycoff: Well, there's no question. There's a, there's a, there's plenty of, there's a, there's a ton of AV, AV companies out there, but a lot of things we do is kind of same culture.

We're doing a lot of things. You, you try to stick with what works. Again, it goes back to the consistency thing. I've got to be, I can clearly, it doesn't matter what conference room goes down, what, what sign has a problem or what issue we have. I know where I'm going. And it's not like when you get multiple vendors going, Oh, no, that's not, that's not our room.

That's, you know, that's company XYZ's room. And you call company XYZ. Well, no, that's not ours either. It must be Jack's. And that's what you get into. And the big thing about having people on site is I can honestly tell you, I can probably count on one hand in the last two or three years that ever, that a meeting ever had to move conference rooms because of failure.

Because when, if you're in the conference room, you're setting up for a meeting and you know, most people get there five or 10 minutes at a time. If you're having any problems, you make, you call the service desk, the service desk dispatches one of our techs. And they're literally there within 10 minutes.

So, you, you get your problem resolved, typically it's just a quick reset or something, or reconnect. That's the difference. The difference is you don't have to cancel your meeting, you don't have to move your meeting, and that's the, that's the importance of having them here. Same thing when we start up in the morning.

They have morning routines, and they go and ensure all of our signage is appropriate. We don't do what we call WORMS, which is a run in our LED screen. That's not tolerated. So they, they do daily checks to ensure the quality of the product that, uh, that our customers see every day is the same quality of product that, uh, we deliver.

Same thing with conference rooms. Every conference room gets tested every day to ensure they don't connect and that you can make a call and that everything's working as designed because it may have been sitting there for 12, 18 hours and nobody's done anything with it. So, those are the touches that make a difference.

Rebecca Criswell: Also, I think that makes a difference is I can walk into any room and basically have the same experience, you know, so the touch panel looks the same and it just this room, which is bigger, may have two cameras instead of one. So the consistency for anybody using the room and also the help desk to support it.

I think that makes a big difference as well. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And Rebecca, what's it? I'd love to get your perspective on working with Tampa International and like, it sounds like you've got your hands full in terms of they're pushing for innovation, lots of different conversations around different vendors. Like, is it? It sounds like it's a really exciting account to work with. 

Rebecca Criswell: I'm very proud. I call the airport my airport. I'm very proud. Um, I love, I love it. And I like that we can be innovative. Right? Just, um, you tell me what you need and I'll figure out how to do it. You know, what's the problem? You know, think outside the box.

What's the problem? And let's find a vendor that does it or push a vendor to create it. And, um, having those relationships and I think it does. Go down to relationships with the vendors who supports us the most, right? So I can give the support that they know and the techs can pick up the phone. They have special numbers to call the manufacturers.

It's that support allows us to do things that I'm just so proud of being a part of it. And everybody knows coming through the airport. That's your airport, isn't it, Rebecca? Yep, that's mine, you know. 

Doug Wycoff: Tom, I'll tell you, I'll tell you, we're, we're, we're a tough customer. And I say that in the context of the fact that we have very high standards.

And, um, it's not acceptable for something to be down. It's not acceptable, and they understand that. And that's very difficult to build into the relationship with your vendor. Because, and making sure that they understand that. But once they have that same pride, they're and they know that they have skin in the game, it makes all the difference in the world.

And they, and they start working at a level that of your expectations, it's, it's, it's leaps and bounds above everybody else. 

Rebecca Criswell: And also remember, this is a 24 7 facility. It's not, you can just wait till tomorrow, right? We can't have down monitors, we can't have black, we're not allowed to have anything black up there, the monitors cannot be black.

So, that's why we've got the techs on site, and the support is needed to, 24 hour facility. You can't stop all the airplanes because of this. It's idle lightning.

Tom Arbuthnot: I love how you speak about it, Doug, that level of standard, and I think it's what everybody should aspire to, but in an airport, obviously, absolutely, absolutely critical, but it makes for such a good user as in staff at the airport and part of the airport, but also, End customer traveler experience I think 

Doug Wycoff: the passenger experience is what it's all about to me is I want to make sure that that passenger experience is the best that they can get out of it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. Well, Doug, thanks so much for joining us. It's such an interesting environment and I really appreciate you kind of giving. A virtual tour of understanding all the different things from the Teams rooms, from the desk booking through to the digital signage. It just sounds amazing. 

Doug Wycoff: Well, no, I appreciate you having us on and it's, uh, we, we, we love talking about it because we are proud of it and, uh, but I would be remiss again if I don't give credit to this, this house and these employees from top down. It really does start there. Uh, it takes all of them. It takes, uh, the people that get involved in what we would just call an A B project covers many, many, many, many verticals. So it's truly an airport effort. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Awesome. And Rebecca, thanks again for joining and doing the intros to Doug, I really appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks for listening in. If you've got any comments or feedback, we always love to hear them. But I hope you enjoyed that very interesting conversation around Tampa International Airport and all the innovative things they're doing.

Look out for future podcasts coming soon. 

Doug Wycoff: Thanks again, Tom. Appreciate it. 

Rebecca Criswell: Thanks for the opportunity.