UK operator Praesepe, which runs over 150 adult gaming centres and nine bingo clubs, used a webinar, broadcast from television studios in London, for its annual machine symposium.
Machine manufacturers from the UK and elsewhere in Europe were invited to take part in the debate, with suppliers able to involve their R&D teams in the exercise. The event is now seven years old and was designed to assist in the development of user-friendly machines for the Praesepe locations.
Company CEO Nick Harding said: “While meeting face-to-face with our manufacturing colleagues at a central venue, such as our offices in Milton Keynes [north of London], was perfectly adequate, it restricted the numbers participating to two and in some cases just one of the business principals.
“No-one is going to be able to take their entire R&D teams to an off-site meeting, but we know that a significant number of companies felt able to involve entire departments of games designers in all or part of the webinar.”
The event was able to involve colleagues in Germany and Austria in the one-hour event with contributions from Harding, Nigel Davis who heads the machine division at Praesepe, Larry Kehoe - operations director of Beacon Bingo - and Steve Ambrose, operations manager at Cashino. The moderator was Chris Jones.
Image: Left to right, Larry Kehoe, Steve Ambrose, Chris Jones, Nigel Davis and Nick Harding.
