Loudoun County Parks & Recreation

Loudoun County PRCS needed to share program & services information with the local community at its recreation centers. The new Video Wall and networked displays share community events, social media, and branded messages from the main office.

Project included 15 Xhibit signage systems, a Video Wall system, content integrations and professional services. Loudoun County PRCS reported increased staff and visitor engagement with community events and programs.

Introduction

Loudoun County Parks, Recreation & Community Services​, which serves the third-most populous county in Virginia, chose Mvix to power its digital signage network across 11 locations for visitor and staff communications.

The 15 networked displays are installed in community and recreation centers across the county and the central administration office for the park service.

The digital signs have been uniquely configured so that they can be updated onsite by the managers at the community and recreation centers or remotely from the main office by the director.

This allows the administrators to keep brand consistency between the different locations and efficiently disperse information across the county.

Their mission is to provide outstanding recreational and leisure opportunities, outcome-focused community services, and stewardship of the county’s natural resources to promote quality of life for Loudoun’s residents and visitors.

PRCS staff often paraphrase this mission into one statement: “We create community.” The 10 community and recreation centers host programs and activities for residents of all ages, from preschool and daycare services to classes for senior citizens. The facilities offer a combined 300,000 square feet of space which include baseball fields, aquatic centers, climbing walls, basketball courts, gymnasiums, hiking paths, bike trails, classrooms, and performance art spaces.

The Challenge

The PRCS team did not have a uniform communications system in place before considering digital signage, partly because the county had rapidly grown within the last several decades. The ​Loudoun County​ population exploded from just 169,000 residents in 2000 to almost 400,000 by 2017, thus creating a higher demand for recreational and community services within a relatively short period.

“We’ve grown significantly in the past 15 years,” said Jon Mattia, the Manager at the Douglass Community Center in Leesburg, Virginia. “Because we offer so many programs and services, we needed a way to visually communicate this information to the people in our communities.”

“Our mission statement is ‘We create community.’ Digital signage helps us accomplish this by letting us reach out to the community with different services in a visually appealing and easy to understand way.” – Jon Mattia, Manager at Douglass Community Center

The PRCS team already had high-quality content e.g. event calendars, pictures, and branded videos. This content was however only available on the county website, which was only useful for residents that checked online before their visit to the community and recreation centers.

The organization needed a reliable and flexible messaging platform to make that content available onsite and display general county information as well as unique location-specific information for each of the public PRCS facilities.

The Solution

The Mvix platform offered remote management and integration with content apps such as YouTube, dynamic time and weather, automated event listings, county emergency alerts and photo playlists via Flickr. The platform also offered advanced scheduling and multi-user access to enable individual locations to post their own content.

9 of the 10 facilities have a networked display that shares information about available community programs and activities, branded Loudoun County YouTube videos, pictures from the county parks, and other supplemental information such as weather, time and local emergency alerts. The Claude Moore Community Center includes a video wall and a networked display to maximize the visual appeal of the content.

Mike Kilian, the Senior Director of Business Development at Mvix, worked with PRCS to coordinate the unique implementation needs across Loudoun County. Because Mvix headquarters are located within the county, Mike was able to interface directly with the PRCS managers throughout the installation process.

“Mike was great to work with,” added Jon. “He was very responsive to our needs and showed us exactly how our content would look on the displays by using the ​content management software​.”

The screens are located in the lobby of every community and recreation center where visitors can easily view daily events and program details as they sign in at the front desk. Displays are also positioned in the central administrative building for general staff information, such as program updates, holiday schedules, and employee benefit information.

All of the signs can be remotely managed by the PRCS staff at each of the community and recreation centers or from the main administrative building using the Mvix software. Administrators can push out relevant, localized information about programs and services at their own location, or general content for the county can be pushed out from the main office.

The Result

The community and recreation center managers have noticed higher staff and visitor engagement with programs and services as a result of the digital sign installations. Residents now ask for more information as a result of reading about events on the displays, which leads to more interaction with the staff and an overall better customer service experience.

The “plug-and-play” nature of the Mvix system made for quick installation of the technology in each of the locations and PRCS staff have enjoyed exploring the software and testing out new content and templates for visitors.

The success of the Loudoun County PRCS implementation has proven to other county services that digital signage systems are effective channels to communicate with the public. The PRCS team is already cross-promoting content via the Flickr integration with Loudoun County Libraries, and the local fire department has shown interest in using the signs at the community and recreation centers to display alert messages.

“A similar signage system, connected with the other local services, would allow for a common place to interface community information across the county,” said Jon. “We know the great potential of digital signage, and we’re still exploring all of the possibilities available to us.”

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