SAPHILA 2014 was an energising conference that brought networking, entertainment
and creativity to one outdoor venue.
The African SAP User Group’s (AFSUG) SAPHILA 2014 conference and exhibition
proved to be a refreshingly different conference with its innovative layout and
design. The conference and exhibition featured an entirely outdoor “Saphilatown’ at
Sun City’s Gary Player car park.
The SAPHILA 2014 biennial event was held mid-June and brought together SAP
users to connect, create and collaborate through knowledge sharing about
innovations, implementation and service delivery.
Simon Carpenter, SAP Africa chief operating officer, says SAPHILA 2014 also left a
positive impression on international delegates: “Peers from overseas were
absolutely blown away. They were stunned, which is good for all of us.’
The design was a concept that Paul Warner, owner of 24 Carrots Events Design, had
developed a number of years ago but SAPHILA 2014 was the first client to go for it.
Warner appointed JDM Unlimited’s Dewet Meyer as the designer.
AV Unlimited was contracted by 24 Carrots Event Design to handle all the technical
requirements of the event, which in essence was 13 events in one, says AV
Unlimited’s Guillaume Ducray. “The client brief was that this year they wanted
something that is “out of the box’ as far as conferencing goes.’
Warner’s concept took inspiration from nature, where people were given a space to
connect, create and collaborate with like-minded people under the beautiful African
sun. Everything about the conference and exhibition was unusual – it was a tailor
made outdoor urban metropolis, made from the building blocks of overhauled
transport containers. These shipping containers were ingeniously adapted, wrapped
in graphic decals, and some stacked on top of one another like gigantic Lego blocks.
The container town featured inter-connecting ramps, bridges and spiral staircases
that bordered and looked out onto the open air auditorium. The multipurpose
community space was the hub around which the entire conference was centred.
Multitasking was the order of the day as this core space facilitated social and
business networking and doubled up as the venue to host the keynote addresses,
refreshment breaks, lunches and the locale for sponsors and exhibitors to receive
the exposure they needed.
The set, which includes the Saphilatown, the conference rooms and the superbowl,
comprised of 44 re-fitted and re-purposed shipping containers, the video component
included 90 square metres of LED screens, 370 square metres of projection screens
and 112 flat screens, the audio component of the conference and exhibition was
made up of 90kW of sound, 50 radio mic systems and six digital mixing consoles.
The sound design was provided by Matrix Sound’s Trevor Peters.
The lighting involved 192 LED Parcans, 60 automated beams, 90 LED washes, 38
automated profiles, 30 automated washes, 84 LED beams and 700 metres of LED
trim. The lighting designer was Renaldo Van Den Berg.
One of the conference’s evening entertainment events included a White Party. Each
guest was given a white poncho which had LED strips sewn in on the shoulders to
wear on the night. The LED strips were programmed by UK-based Xylobands, which
uses its own proprietary software that is downloaded onto a laptop and sent to the
event location. The laptop is connected to a transmitter box with antennae, which
sends commands via radio frequency to the LED strips.
The conference also had a charity element to it and the sponsors gave back to local
communities by donating all of the plastic PVC table covers to Managed Executive
Services that will reuse the material for hand bags and tablet covers. All proceeds
raised are to be used for the rehabilitation of homeless people in Hillbrow,
Johannesburg. The chairs in the auditorium were made entirely of cardboard and
donated to three local schools. The containers were sold for R1.00 to Skills Village
2030, a practical framework for workplace experience that uses festivals and
events to identify commodities, goods, services and experiences that are unique to
the local community and bring them to market. Skills Village 2030 will use the
containers as training rooms for skills development.
“The design of this conference and all of the extras, such as the ponchos and the
charity elements, came together to be a truly successful and vibrantly energetic
networking experience for that attended, and was by far the most successful
SAPHILA conference that AFSUG has done,’ concludes Warner.
