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General
October 2007
5 Minutes with…
MATT DANILOWICZ, Managing Director, Clear-Com
By Kevin Rogers Cobus
TFWM: You have a section on your website dedicated to church. Can you give us some background as to how your products came into the church market?
Danilowicz: In retrospect, it was a natural progression for Clear-Com to enter the church market. Clear-Com had established a remarkable reputation for providing reliable, sophisticated yet intuitive, high quality intercom systems for theatres, concert halls, and other live entertainment venues. Meanwhile, church productions have become more sophisticated with advanced audio and video technology necessary to support the broadcast of messages to a wider and distant audience. This demand called for high-end intercommunication equipment for larger production crews to coordinate and communicate more efficiently and effectively. Looking to the world of theatres and concert halls with similar production demands, church crews quickly found Clear-Com was the all-around preferred choice for intercom systems.
TFWM: When you set out to create a product, what drives the research and development?
Danilowicz: Our customers, channel partners, and market trends drive us to improvement and innovation. We are constantly seeking to incorporate cost-effective technological advances that expand the quality and capability of professional intercom communication. By way of example, facilities such as broadcast stations, theatres and corporations continue to grow their communication and network infrastructure investments to support high quality audio and high definition video data file deliveries. Recognizing this trend, Clear-Com has brought to market several IP-based intercom products that allow our customers to leverage these existing investments, such as SOFT-VoICE, for connection of panels across a network, and our latest offering, Clear-Com Concert, a completely software-based intercom solution.
TFWM: What are your Intercom solutions mainly used for in Houses of Worship?
Danilowicz: After 40-years of intercom innovation and product development, the Clear-Com product portfolio consists of the most comprehensive range of wired to wireless products on the market today. Thanks to the broad range of our offering, our products can be found in facilities of any size. The compatibility between our equipment assures that a smooth migration from our smallest Party Line system to our largest Digital Matrix system can be achieved without the need to obsolete existing Clear-Com equipment. Depending on budget size, typically small to growing churches start with a simple party-line intercom system, comprising a 2 channel main station, interfaces, and 1 or 2 channel beltpacks. This is primarily used to call camera shots and direct staff in support of their in house services.
As churches grow, quite often they will migrate their Party Line equipment into a small to mid-sized matrix system frame that could connect over 100 users or talking positions. This happens as their congregation expands to include additional onsite activities, such as child and teen ministries, or perhaps even adding television ministries. Large size churches typically utilize our large Eclipse(tm) matrix frames, which can support up to 240 users on control panels, two way radios, and telephones as well as wired and wireless beltpacks. In addition to expanding their in house capabilities, these systems allow connection to remote sites anywhere in the world via a wide variety of connection options. Irrespective of size or type, churches use Clear-Com intercom solutions as their communication system for production teams.
TFWM: What can houses of worship expect from Clear-Com in the next 2-3 years?
Danilowicz: In the next 2-3 years, Clear-Com will continue its technical advancements with product improvements and innovations of highly dependable, easy-to-operate communication systems for busy production professionals. More specifically for small to mid-size churches with a tight budget but require the flexibility of point-to-point matrix communication, they will find our new Eclipse Easi-PiCo matrix package an ideal entry-level solution. Furthermore, production crews can soon enjoy the simple intercom operations via their wireless handheld PC devices without installing any intercom hardware.
Increasingly, our product management team looks to the house of worship sector for input in designing and deploying our new products. Our reputation in offering superb quality intercom technology and providing excellent customer service will continue to set us apart from other providers in the industry.
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