Completed Projects

When Safety and Quality Are Truely Number One.

"They simply do not tolerate accidents in the nuclear industry. I'm starting to understand what that really means." That's how MRI's Brian Maksa describes the safety standards at Exelon Corporation's new headquarters, where he and his crew did an extensive series of a/v installations.

Exelon, the parent company of Commonwealth Edison and PECO Energy, runs 17 nuclear reactors at 10 stations in Illinois, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. "Everything," says Maksa, "must meet what they call industry standards, and those standards are beyond anything I've ever seen anywhere. You can't push a cart without gloves on. You can't climb a ladder without people there for fall safety. They want to be a top performer, and that includes everybody that comes in as a contractor."

The result of this care is that nine out of the ten Exelon plants went through all of 2002 without a single lost-time or restricted-duty injury. Employees at the firm's Braidwood Generating Station in Illinois have logged more than four million work hours without a lost-time accident. At Byron, it's more than five million, a run that began in October 1999 and continues today.

These exacting standards apply to quality as well as safety. They're one reason the company brought Media Resources into the headquarters project back in 1999, a year before construction began. According to Facilities Manager Kathy Namors, "Brian had done work for us before, and so we wanted to have him involved from the beginning. You want to make sure you have your specifications down cold. It's expensive to be tearing up ceilings or cutting into walls to install items you thought about only after the building was built."

Read more: Exelon Nuclear - Emergency Operations Facility

by Don Kreski, from System Contractor News

Have you ever wished you could see what goes on inside an operating room?

You can, at least if you're a student participating in the Museum of Science and Industry's Live… from the Heart program.

According to Elory Rozner, K-12 and E-Learning Manager for the Chicago-based museum, the program provides a "very dramatic and very moving" look into an operating room where open-heart surgery is taking place. Connected via videoconferencing equipment, students can watch a coronary bypass procedure live and ask questions of surgeons and nurses as they work.

The program originates at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, IL, using a video system designed and installed by Media Resources of Lisle.

Read more: Museum/hospital partnership takes health education to a new level

by Wendy Ellis, ProAV Magazine

Any absent minded professor who puts the remote in his pocket and walks out of one of the library class rooms at Lake Forest College won't get far with his forgotten memento. Just seconds after the AMX Modero 7500 touch panel leaves the room, an email message pops up on the computer of Academic Technologist Karen Blocker. "The wireless panel has gone off line." A similar message speeds its way to David Maksa at Media Resources Inc., of Lisle, IL, and before long, one of the two has tracked down the errant professor and retrieved the touchpad.

That quick response is all part of the security features that surround the AV systems installed in the four "smart rooms" by MRI. They're part of an $18 million expansion and renovation of the Lake Forest College library in Lake Forest, Illinois. "I had a vision that I wanted to take these rooms to the highest level I could," said Blocker, who manages the college's classroom and media services. "This is the first time I decided to go with a switching device on a wall unit." That decision followed the disappearance of any number of handheld remotes from the college's older classrooms, where the technology is stored in an open rack unit. When Maksa offered her the wireless convenience, easy interface and tighter security features of the Modero Touch Panel, the choice seemed obvious.

"It's pretty slick," said Blocker. "It can power up the projector and CPU at the same time. You can take it off the wall, sit in the back of the room, open up your PowerPoint and advance your slides right from the remote."

Read more: Smart system programming brings security to classrooms.

For small private colleges with big dreams, taking that first unfamiliar step into the world of audio/visual technology can be a leap of faith. At Trinity Christian College in Palos Heights, Illinois, that leap came with the construction of a brand new building, the Heritage Science Center, in 2002. Although computers have been a staple on the campus for years, science instructors were still sharing roll-around audio-visual carts as they taught in two science labs on the second floor of the classroom building. With the construction of the new $8 million science center and some timely intervention by the people at Media Resources, students now enjoy a sleek, modern, technologically-smooth environment that puts everything they need at their fingertips.

Although the Heritage Center's original plans included a/v systems, no one worked out the necessary details before construction started. The building was two thirds complete by the time Brian Maksa of Media Resources and his people stepped in to help. Maksa, a Trinity Christian alum, has been in the a/v business for 15 years and could offer the expertise the project needed to pull things together in just two months time.

"We were the system integrator," said Maksa, "but we also became their system designer. We tried to follow the original design as best we could, but that can be a challenging task when walls are already up and floors are done." Adding audio/visual equipment is not as easy as adding information technology.

Read more: Trinity Christian College installs AV systems

College of DuPage uses sophisticated AV presentation and
recording technology to create culinary theater productions

by Don Kreski, Pro AV Magazine

When Chicago's College of DuPage – the nation's largest junior college – set out to rebuild its culinary arts dining room, it wanted to create a "culinary theater" that would serve primarily as a hi-tech classroom. To meet the school's objectives, the theater needed a professional quality video system that could record, play back, and archive cooking demonstrations for classroom instruction. The resulting Escoffier Culinary Theater is not only a major upgrade to the school's food service education program, but it also helps attract students and the public to the campus.

Theater design

George Macht, the school's hospitality program coordinator, says cooking shows on the Food Network, such as Emeril Live, served as the inspiration for the project. Once he knew what he wanted, Macht spent several months working out his ideas and brought in architect Bob Suennen of Evanston, Illinois-based OTA Partnership to design the space – a culinary theater featuring a 50-seat dining room. Lisle, Illinois-based Media Resources Inc. was later enlisted for the project's AV equipment selection and installation.

Read more: Theater adds Broacast ready AV

AV components become the missing link for multi-screen entertainment at a Chicago Starbucks.

by Wendy Ellis, Pro AV Magazine

Most fireflies glow in the dark. This one pings.

At 2 AM every morning, the Focus Enhancements Firefly Media player at the Starbucks Coffee store located at the intersection of Rush and Oak in Chicago reaches out through the dark to a Hewlett Packard server. It's looking for any changes that may have been made to a trio of video presentations playing daily to audiences on a nine screen video wall at the Chicago coffee shop. This new videowall concept may soon branch out to other Starbucks flagship stores across the country, but for now, Chicago is its proving ground.

That nightly request from the Firefly MC media player became part of the presentation process only after AV systems integration firm Media Resources Inc., of Lisle, Illinois, joined the team attempting to link the artistic and technical elements of the project. "They had the production and the display, but they had no idea how to make the show play," says Brian Maksa, vice president of sales and rentals for MRI. "Basically, we became the missing link."

The idea behind the wall came from Starbucks' desire to provide its employees a venue for displaying their artistic talents. Many of the company's employees are also musicians, painters, photographers, sculptors, and even film makers. The new "Partner Projection Wall" is their window to the world.

Read more: Coffehouse reaches customers with interactive AV

Advocate Christ Medical Center links a conference center
to its cardiac operating room

by Wendy L. Ellis, AV Technology Magazine

Everyone is listening for a heartbeat. They are listening in the operating room, in the auditorium, in the lunchroom. They are listening miles away in the museum and in high school classrooms across North America. They are all listening for the same heartbeat. As the skilled hands of a cardiac surgeon bring the live videoconference of open heart surgery to a close, everyone is waiting for the familiar beep-beep-beep of the monitor that means the heart is beating on its own again.

Since Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Illinois, began videoconferencing live heart surgery from its ORs, countless physicians, nurses, students and medical personnel of all kinds have watched these delicate procedures come to life. Initially, the hospital connected exclusively to the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, through its program “Live… from the Heart.” The OR signal would be sent via T1 line directly to the museum, where an invited audience would view the real time surgery, as would designated high school students across the country.

With the opening in 2007 of a new conference center and adult surgical heart unit, Advocate Christ Medical Center has greatly increased its audience and its influence. A sophisticated $450,000 video distribution system now links four operating rooms, a 245 seat auditorium, nine breakout meeting rooms, two open air lobbies and a dining area. A Tandberg 6000 videoconferencing codec capable of 720i HD images ties the auditorium to the ORs, providing incredibly clear images of this sensitive surgery. “Nobody has anything like this,” says hospital AV director Alan Drachenberg, “I have physicians coming in here and asking, ‘What do you have?’ and I say, ‘What do you need?’ This is unbelievable.”

Read more: Media Resources links conference center to cardiac operating room