After Hours

A CIO's-eye view of Chicago's Municipal Pier Expo Authority

By // April 14, 2009, 8:36 AM PST // jodylgilbert

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  • McCormick Place skyline

    Ellen Barry is the CIO of Municipal Pier Expo Authority, one of the largest convention centers in the country. Her IT group is responsible for providing technical support for the business as well as running a revenue-generating IT shop that delivers services to show organizers, exhibitors, and attendees.

    Note: For more details of Barry's IT operations, see this interview.

    In 1989, McCormick Place was restructured as the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, joining the city-owned Navy Pier. MPEA is officially government sector. But CIO Ellen Barry says it operates as a cross between the public and private sectors. "Our legal entity is public sector, but the way we deal with clients is much more like a private sector organization, meaning that we know that our customers have choices. If we don't take care of our customers, they may go somewhere else."

    However, unlike a typical business, the goal is not making money. "Our objective is to bring economic activity to Chicago and Illinois. We're responsible for bringing in about five billion dollars a year in revenue for the airlines, hotels, cabs, restaurants, shopping, and so on, from conventions, meetings, and tourism. That's our goal -- to be an economic engine that drives the Chicagoland region as well as the state of Illinois."

  • McCormick Place

    Chicago is bidding to host the 2016 Olympics, and The International Olympic Committee recently toured McCormick Place. Barry believes the convention center is one of the differentiating factors for Chicago. "We have tremendous tried-and-proven electrical and technical infrastructure that can provide flexible and dynamic opportunities without requiring a build-out of a new Olympic facility. For example, they've asked about our ability to provide accommodations for all the broadcasters and media who may be staying for an extended period of time. Of the four major buildings at McCormick Place, they will need the entire south building for media and broadcasting, which is almost a million square feet.

    "We have all the power they could possibly need and more. We have high-speed networking, about seven hundred miles of fiber within our buildings, and high-powered Cisco equipment in all our closets. They would augment that with their own equipment, of course, but we have topnotch infrastructure for them to start with, and we can get them up and running in a short period of time."

  • Building out an event at McCormick Place

    Barry also believes the flexibility of McCormick Place should be particularly appealing to the International Olympic Committee. "Because of the power grid reliability, our technical and internal resources, and experienced union tradesmen, we can build out the space much more easily than other places. We effectively build houses and tear them down for a living.

    Take the Kitchen and Bath show, for example. We build out walls and showers and kitchens in a flash, then turn it back into a show floor and build out for something like a medical event requiring installation of MRI machines and other medical devices. Our show floor is an open palette. We can literally do anything with that space."

  • Skyline Ballroom event

    McCormick Place's Skyline Ballroom is one of the largest in the world, with a banquet capacity of 5,000 guests.

  • Skyline Ballroom between events

    Here's a more bare-bones look at the 103,000-square-foot ballroom -- big enough to contain the playing field of Soldier Field.

  • Navy Pier fireworks from Rooftop Garden

    McCormick Place has 500+ wireless access points allowing for 8,000 concurrent users, a fully redundant 1 gigabit Internet connection, and an expandable power capacity of 40 megawatts (enough to light the city of Joliet).

  • Navy Pier at Dock Street

    Since its construction in 1916, Navy Pier has served as a shipping/recreation facility, a military facility, and a college campus. Following a $200 million renovation, it was revitalized as a "convention, cultural, and recreational center." Along with its 50 acres of parks, gardens, shops, and various other attractions, it includes 170,000 square feet of exhibition space, 48,000 square feet of meeting space, and an 18,150-square-foot ballroom.

McCormick Place skyline

Ellen Barry is the CIO of Municipal Pier Expo Authority, one of the largest convention centers in the country. Her IT group is responsible for providing technical support for the business as well as running a revenue-generating IT shop that delivers services to show organizers, exhibitors, and attendees.

Note: For more details of Barry's IT operations, see this interview.

In 1989, McCormick Place was restructured as the Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority, joining the city-owned Navy Pier. MPEA is officially government sector. But CIO Ellen Barry says it operates as a cross between the public and private sectors. "Our legal entity is public sector, but the way we deal with clients is much more like a private sector organization, meaning that we know that our customers have choices. If we don't take care of our customers, they may go somewhere else."

However, unlike a typical business, the goal is not making money. "Our objective is to bring economic activity to Chicago and Illinois. We're responsible for bringing in about five billion dollars a year in revenue for the airlines, hotels, cabs, restaurants, shopping, and so on, from conventions, meetings, and tourism. That's our goal -- to be an economic engine that drives the Chicagoland region as well as the state of Illinois."

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About Jody Gilbert

Jody Gilbert has been writing and editing technical articles for the past 25 years. She was part of the team that launched TechRepublic and is now senior features editor for Tech Pro Research.