By Vincent Geels, The Philadelphia Orchestra

Though the summer is traditionally considered downtime for most, The Philadelphia Orchestra has been keeping busy with out-of-state residencies, performances at the Mann Center, and free Neighborhood Concerts in Cheltenham and at Penn’s Landing. The iNotes team has been keeping busy, too, with July test sessions designed to follow up on feedback garnered from our initial public test this past May in Verizon Hall. Reactions to that test revealed the need to establish, in advance of the next public test, a stable environment in which the app operates. In short, we need to be sure that iNotes runs smoothly on the mobile devices we choose to use for our next public testing opportunity.

The July tests took place during a time when the Orchestra was rehearsing and performing away from the Kimmel Center. Working on iNotes in Verizon Hall without our musicians meant that we were able to conduct a wide variety of internal tests with no impact on the Orchestra’s valuable rehearsal time or patron experience. And the fact that Verizon Hall was dark and devoid of the Philadelphia Sound in July didn’t cause as big of an issue as one would think given our app’s need for a sound source during music tracking tests. The solution? A recording of Elektra piped through a sound system in the hall.

Drexel University’s Matt Prockup lines up subtitles to the score of Richard Strauss’s Elektra next to a batch of iPod Touches in the Verizon Hall control booth.

This time around, members of the Orchestra’s IT department and Drexel’s MET Lab were testing for a specific purpose: to determine whether iPhones (or iPod Touches in this case) could stay on the Kimmel’s WiFi inside Verizon Hall for an extended period of time. The test itself was executed quite simply: IT staff members waded through the sea of seats in Verizon Hall, laying iPod Touches throughout the different tiers and sections and keeping track of which iPod ended up where. From there it was a matter of periodically revisiting each device throughout the test, without physically handling the devices, to determine how many were still on the network at the end. Back in the control booth, Drexel’s Matt Prockup delivered real-time text and photos via iNotes to the iPod Touches to simulate a real performance in the hall.

Outcomes of the test are forthcoming in our August blog post!