Steve Winawer is a happy man. An electrical engineer by training, he now serves as the director of engineering for Pfizer Inc.’s Global Learning and Development group. He works amidst things that make electrical engineers happy: computer-generated virtual sets, broadcast-quality control rooms, and enough fiber-optic wire to run a small Internet.

Winawer is a member of the Media Development team that produces all of the media for sales training and is responsible for every aspect of production from creation through transmission. Yet, Winawer’s eyes betray a kid-in-a-candy-store giddiness as hetours the Pfizer Learning Center, an 110,000- square-foot training facility in Rye Brook, NY.

But he turns serious when he talks about what those tools are used for. “Our level of training responsibility is as high as it can be,” he says. At stake, Winawer explains, are the patients who benefit from the information supplied to doctors by the Pfizer sales representatives. Evidently, the Global Learning and Development group is doing a good job. This year Training magazine voted Pfizer the world’s number one corporation in training.

The centerpiece of this effort is the Pfizer Learning Center, which relies on a diverse mix of Sony equipment and services. “As much as Pfizer excels at training, Sony is recognized as the leader in the field of broadcast equipment and technology,” says Frank Ripa, Sony senior account manager.

The heart of the Learning Center is more than 20 classrooms used for everything from role-playing exercises to presenter-led training sessions. (A sample topic, for instance, is “The Leading Edge,” a leadership development workshop.) The rear-screen projectors found in many of these rooms are a good example of how Sony engineering works to serve Pfizer’s training needs. “After lunch it’s hard for students to stay tuned in,” Stuart Rakley, Pfizer’s senior director of resource development and deployment, recently explained. “Especially when you turn the lights down low.” Which is why Pfizer doesn’t dim the lights in its classrooms and thus needed rear-screen projectors with sufficient brightness. The answer was found in Sony’s VPL-FX200U projectors that, according to Winawer, were chosen for

“Everything the Media Development team does is about the training—how we can best support the business. We don’t do technology for technology’s sake. We selected bright, sharp projectors because they make for better training,” says Rakley.

The document cameras in these rooms also had to shine. “Thatwas a really interesting product comparison,” says Winawer, recalling the test his team conducted at a trade show. Using a cell phone to help measure the camera’s ability to capture black-on-black and a box of raisins to determine depth-of-field capacity, they ended up selecting the Sony VID-P150 document camera.

But perhaps even more important than seeing documents and other images, Pfizer employees get to see themselves. For both new sales representatives and for managers working on their coaching skills, Sony EVI-D30 wall-mounted cameras tape their performances for later review. The cameras are also used for videoconferencing.

INSIDE AV HEAVEN

o education would be complete without a lecture hall experience and the Learning Center has several tiered-seating amphitheaters for this purpose. But anyone hoping for an anonymous, fade-into-the- background experience is out of luck. These rooms come

equipped with wall-mounted Sony DXC-950 cameras that automatically pan to the active speaker. And for most large-scale presentations, Sony BVP-950 studio cameras record the session. A full array of Sony handheld and lavalier wireless microphones let presenters move freely among the audience, helping create a truly interactive environment.

Training works best when the tools allow educators and students to focus on learning—not on operating machinery. At the Learning Center that happens largely thanks to the rooms below the classrooms, where cameras are controlled, worlds created, and learning experiences captured. Much of this happens in a place Winawer calls “AV Heaven.” Picture a room with a wall of Sony BVM series 8-inch (viewable area, measured diagonally) monitors vast enough to watch a significant portion of the 500- channel TV universe. These monitors serve as separate lenses on each of the training facility’s rooms and technicians can remotely control all the wall-mounted cameras in use. Also found here are a half-dozen Sony DVW-A500 Digital Betacam® cameras, one PVW-2800 Betacam SP® editing recorder and player, and one DSR-2000 DVCAM® editing recorder. The DVCAM unit is especially helpful in preparing a wide variety of content for Digital Betacam, Pfizer’s preferred master format.

Roman Sypko, the chief engineer for the training facility, is responsible for the support and operation of all of the technology.Sypko likes the DSR-2000’s flexibility.

“This is DV everything,” Sypko says. “So it’s not just Sony DVCAM format. When someone brings us a DV tape of whatever flavor we can work with it. We’re seeing a great deal of that. One of the other very positive features of this tape machine is, to our facility, it looks the same as a Digital Betacam machine. It routes the same, it controls the same. So you take this little DVCAM tape that was shot in the field, you stick it in here, and to the editor on the other side, or the production guy using it as a roll-in, it’s the same.” Meaningful learning requires understanding life outside the classroom. Hence, field experiences, such as patient interviews, need to be captured so that trainees can benefit from real-world content. A pair of Sony DVW-790WS Digital Betacam portable cameras help bring this footage into the classroom. And they do double-duty as studio cameras when equipped with Triax adapters.

For the truly remote world of the human imagination, the Learning Center is equipped with a cutting-edge “virtual set” studio used to create imaginary landscapes such as a packet insert (PI) for a product used in the treatment of schizophrenia. The virtual PI provides representatives with an engaging learning environment. A convincing virtual set requires coordinating a number of moving

“One of the nice things about the Sony switcher and the very, very good chroma-keying is you now have multiple keyers you can use,” says Sypko. “It’s not very expensive to add the chroma-key option to your switcher.”

The cameras are also important. “In order for virtual sets to work well you need to be able to count on the cameras,” says Sypko. “Your whole image system has to really produce good stuff. Otherwise the artifacts break up the illusion.”

JUST-IN-TIME TRAINING

Learning at Pfizer doesn’t stop once employees have returned home. Not long after the Pfizer Learning Center opened in 2000, Pfizer’s then-vice president of Global Learning and Development stated the company’s learning goals: “We’re trying to drive... training to the individual level, if we can. I can envision a day when the [sales] representative has access to the Interactive Pfizer Learning Network from his or her home office, and we can deliver just-in-time training.”

Winawer says they’re quite far along in meeting this goal. Content for distance learning applications is now produced and delivered in a variety of formats including DVDs, CDs, Web video, and satellite transmission. All of this requires high-end media production tools such as those produced by Sony. “A well-transmitted, bad show doesn’t work,” says Winawer.

Just as the educators who work at the Learning Center rely upon technicians to do their job, Sypko and his group periodically rely on Sony for maintenance and operational advice. A SupportNETSM contract and a team of Sony product specialists— Winawer calls them “product wizards” —help support all the Sony equipment. All of this adds up to a worldclass training facility that helps Pfizer maintain its position as a world-class company. And in an area that’s no less important, the work done at the Learning Center helps improve the quality of life for many Pfizer employees. Between the videoconferencing and the distance learning opportunities, more Pfizer workers are traveling less often. Winawer says he now has good friends in Hawaii he’s never met in person: they’re co-workers who are thankful their travel time has been reduced. This makes Winawer—and Pfizer—very happy.