International Roll-Call News Feed

The Passing of a Friend and Colleague

dawjr — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 05:00:00 GMT

We at International Roll-Call are sad to share the news that, Terry Wagner, a beloved friend and colleague has passed away. For the last year or so, Terry had been battling multiple myeloma and fighting valiantly against the spread of the disease with the can-do spirit that he so often brought to his work with IRC and our customers for thirteen years. While we mourn his passing, we will always remember Terry as an integral part of the IRC Team, as a first-rate engineer, an avid and proficient skier, outdoorsman and hiker who conquered such rugged terrain as the Grand Canyon and Death Valley, as well as a devoted family man.

He is survived by his wife, Becky, daughters Stephanie and Tina, and a number of family members, including grandchildren, Olivia and Rebecca. He will be missed by many, both professionally and personally.

Terry's obituary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch can be viewed here .

Iowa House Installs Automated Video Camera System

dawjr — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 05:00:00 GMT

IRC recently installed an automated video system in the Iowa House of Representatives. The system includes roving cameras, a fixed camera, character generator, and multiple software components to manage all of the activity. The video system works in tandem with IRC’s Voting and Request to Speak systems. The tandem operation permits the video system to not only move cameras around automatically, but also to immediately caption the video. The level of automation is such that the Iowa House is operating the system with existing staff, without a need to add personnel.

In automatic mode, the video system tracks the member speaking based on their microphone being turned on and automatically sends the appropriate camera to the preset for that member. The video system then determines that the camera has arrived at the location and instantly captions the member speaking with their name, party affiliation, and the County represented.

Since members of the Iowa House speak from their seats, often with a second member involved in the debate, this presents 100 different locations from which members can be speaking. When two members are engaged in a debate, the videos of the two members are shown split-screen side-by-side with their member information captioned below.

During many static video segments of the front dais, of members speaking, and of votes in progress, the voting system forwards the bill number, short title, and amendment number that are being considered to the video system to caption the video with current item information. During voting, running totals are shown over the top of the video of the front dais. Special messaging modes are also tied in, allowing the Clerk to display informational messages over a wide angle shot of the House floor for when it is adjourned or recessed.

Although the Iowa House does not have full-color LED displays, this would be an instance where the video feed could be shown live on the displays to significantly enhance the experience of visitors to the House Chamber. (Click HERE to see the Virginia House as they utilize this capability.)

The final single stream of captioned video and audio is continuously output to a third-party encoder where the video and sound are made available for live streaming on the internet.

We are excited to have been involved in providing a video system with such a high level of functionality and automation to our friends in the Iowa House of Representatives and look forward to meeting their future needs when it comes to all things of a voting and legislative management nature.

West Virginia Legislature to Move Forward with International Roll-Call's iPad Chamber and Committee Automation System

dawjr — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 05:00:00 GMT

The International Roll-Call (IRC) team is proud to announce that we have received notice from the good folks of the West Virginia legislature that they have chosen to implement, using the iPad, IRC’s Chamber Automation System in the Senate and IRC's Committee Automation System in four Standing Committees in the House of Delegates.

The IRC "Crawler" application is the integration point with the existing state legislative management system and goes out to retrieve all the required documents and pulls them into the SQL database for the members to have real-time access using the iPad. The Chamber and Committee Automation systems are also integrated with International Roll-Call's voting applications to provide real-time display board information, vote totals, request to speak information and voting data to the members.

From anywhere within the Capitol complex, the members will be able to access bills and journal information, mark important documents and send notes to other members using the system’s “Sticky Note” function. When in-chamber, the members will be able to follow along with the current bill under discussion while also being free to research bill and journal documents. Display information such as the current bill can be pushed to the member’s iPads also.

West Virginia, which is the first in the country to implement such a system and International Roll-Call are excited to begin this ground-breaking journey together toward further streamlining their legislative process.

For more information about the Chamber and Committee Automation System with iPad integration, click here to download an information sheet .

Oregon Senate Upgrades Request to Speak System

dawjr — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 05:00:00 GMT

Recently, International Roll-Call technicians returned from the great state of Oregon, having just installed an upgrade to their Request to Speak System. The upgrade consisted of new Request buttons at the Senators’ desks as well as replacing the old incandescent lamps used for Summoning with long-lasting LED indicators. The most significant change to the system, however, comes with the implementation of IRC’s Request to Speak Software in an environment which has, up until now, been very manual in nature.

“This is about making the jobs of the staff easier and making the process run more efficiently,” explains IRC Senior Engineer, Arnold Snelson. “In the previous manual environment, Requests were difficult to manage and there was no way to tell the order in which the Requests were being made. The IRC software changes that and gives the Secretary the ability to see the Requests not only in a geographical layout but also in a queue that displays them in the order that they come in.”

The RTS software is highly customizable and can be configured to display member Requests in several different ways, including chronologically, alphabetically and by party just to name a few. Control of microphones is also a feature which can be used as part of the system.

With the process of managing Requests to Speak streamlined, IRC expects that the Oregon Senate will see the pay-off in their investment immediately in the form of quickly and efficiently dealing with Requests and allowing the staff to capitalize on that most valuable of resources in the legislative environment; TIME.

It should be noted that in a number of state legislatures we have put in place buttons (SPK AMD & SPK BILL) to allow members to request to speak to either the "amendment" and or the "bill". Through our Request to Speak application, legislators' names will appear under the “Speak to Bill” list or the "Speak to Amendment” list on the Presiding Officer's monitor in the order in which the request was made. This greatly improves the efficiency of the legislative process in allowing the Presiding Officer to recognize first the members wishing to speak to the amendment before speaking on the bill.

For more information about IRC’s Request to Speak system, click here .

NCSL 2011: Another Fantastic Meeting

dawjr — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:00:00 GMT

This August, the IRC team headed to San Antonio, Texas for the 2011 NCSL Legislative Summit where we unveiled our new Chamber Automation app on Apple’s iPad2. The Chamber Automation application enables legislators to stay connected with the current calendar items, amendments, and a complete overview of current bills as well as providing the ability to search, view and print archived legislation. This software is currently available for use on both Apple and Microsoft tablet operating systems. Tablet PCs and the enormous flexibility and portability they bring to the table may well be the way of the future and IRC looks forward to incorporating more aspects of the legislative process, like voting and roll-call, on tablets computers.

In addition to the Chamber Automation app for the iPad, we also shared information regarding our new and improved xmLegislato.net software, which not only includes our latest .net voting applications but all the applications to support the entire legislative process. Our team of developers has worked feverishly on updating our xmLegislator.net system to a level of functionality never seen before, further proving that our IRC’s software and hardware remains superior to any other product on the market.

With the new products on display, it was no surprise that we received a large amount of interest at our booth. Old friends and new faces alike were welcomed by IRC staff in attendance; Howard Jorenby, Richard Physioc, Tyler Schaeffer and Jessica Hayashida. Throughout the summit, we constantly engaged booth-goers, sharing our knowledge with legislative staff, other vendors and even our competitors. It was wonderful to see so many of you and we look forward to seeing you again next year in Chicago where we can once again cement our standing as the industry leader in voting and legislative management systems.

Iowa House to Install New Automatic Camera System

dawjr — Fri, 26 Aug 2011 04:00:00 GMT

Recently, IRC met with the good people of the Iowa House of Representatives to put in place a plan for IRC to install an automatic camera system in the House. This system will work in tandem with the Request to Speak system and be used to capture video and sound of members speaking from the floor when their request to speak is recognized and their microphones turned on. The cameras – five of them mounted at strategic points in the chamber – utilize IRC’s software and the RTS system to pivot and tilt to the exact position of a member once that member’s microphone is activated by the system. Camera personnel and those working in the video booth have plenty to do as it is and the automatic camera system provides an immediate, sleek, and accurate transition to capture video of speaking members and prevents duplication of effort on the part of the staff. As well, in the circumstance of two members engaged in a debate, multiple cameras will be used to capture the action for the video booth staff.

Though the Iowa House does not have full-color LED displays, this would be an instance where the video feed could be displayed live on the chamber displays .

The final, single stream of video will be continuously transferred to a third-party website where the video and sound will be both stored and made available for streaming on the internet live and as archival footage. As per IRC’s recommendation, the Iowa House has chosen Granicus as the entity to provide storage and live streaming of the video/audio content.