If you have had the opportunity to check out Foy’s Arcade you can see it is a truly collaborative space, and that flows all the way into the resident staff in the space!
We will be doing a fortnightly focus on each of the Foy’s team members starting with the Man behind the beard… Richard McMullen. Richard is apart of the Collective Social Intelligence (CSI) team and maintains all AV in the space… all 51,000,000 pixels of it.
Let’s start with his super impressive background in his own words…
“Hey,
Since 2004 I was head tech for Virtual Reality Solutions(VRS), a QLD company specialising in everything virtual reality. Back then VR was very expensive and only the military and medical sectors had the capital to invest in this type of tech prior to 2011/12. Before Oculus and the hype started I was waiting for it all to hit mainstream. It has developed in ways I expected and ways I didn’t.
VRS was eventually bought out by Christie Digital Systems, an American based projector manufacturer. VRS main business was the design and installation of 3D stereoscopic immersion rooms for oil and gas companies who use 3D stereo projection systems on curved screens (Similar to the Foy’s CHUB) to analyse seismic data looking for oil and gas deposits.
Yes, I’ve worked briefly with Bruce Ramus lighting. I worked with Christie Digital Systems as a pre-sales technical engineer under 3 national Business development managers.
The Echo Entertainment group (now rebranded as The Star Entertainment Group) who own the Jupiter’s Casino on the Gold Coast QLD wanted to spice up the look of the Hotel/Casino complex by using projection mapping. I helped spec the projection systems, and also the all-weather enclosures for outdoor all weather projection to keep them shining rail hail or cyclone.
Most of my project work has been in the industrial sectors like the Military and resources.
A world first I was also involved with, I help install and commission the world’s first Stereoscopic visualisation system for Saudi Aramco in Ad Dammam where up to 3 separate stereoscopic supercomputers from Silicon Graphics could be visualised on the same projection system, that was in 2009.
Also worked with several system integrators working with Telstra. I installed and commissioned the Sydney flagship LED system in their store on George Street. The design was copied by another company and installed here in Melbourne’s Telstra store, it’s the 6 strips of LED that are 2 stories high.
I also worked on Telstra’s experience centres here in Melbourne and Sydney. The Melbourne site was the largest Christie Microtile system in the southern hemisphere.
I have project managed/installed/commissioned a couple of military flight simulator training systems for Boeing. Very boring.
I got right into fibre optic based KVM extension as well, I sold a few systems into film studio’s around Sydney. When Happy Feet 2 was being produced George Millar had issues with workflow. The studio were taking computers around the various studio’s on carts and setting them up for the various stages, sound, lighting and motion capture. This was taking too long and threatening the films scheduled release date. I put a KVM(Keyboard Video Mouse extension) system together and they were able to leave all of the PC’s in a safe environment and installed fibre optic cables to the various stages and simply press a few buttons to switch the back end PC’s where ever they wanted them.
Basically I have worked with every piece of Audio Visual kit under the sun and my previous roles were complex system design and install commissioning and SLA maintenance on those systems.
Regards,
Richard McMullen”
Talk about experience! Now having moved to Melbourne, Richard is based at Foy’s Arcade and is the go to guy for everything VC and tech related. He splits his time curating events and continuously partaking in ongoing research and experiments for CSI.
To wrap up… 5 quick facts with Richard McMullen:
On the weekend you’ll find me…
Out riding my E-Bike or playing in my home recording studio
My unusual talent is…
Keen sense of smell
My coffee order is…
Flat White 1 sugar
Quote to live by…
Nikola Tesla: If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.
Favourite lunchtime spot in the Melbourne CBD…
Belleville
Any questions for Richard? You can reach him on 0402 527 419 or richard.mcmullen@collaborationhub.com.au. For more info on our Partners CSI you can visit their website here.
