SERVICES

Radio technicians

Emmanuelle GANTET, UNOG

Three men with plenty of skills

For the provision of every sound or image, either in a conference room or during an opening ceremony or a public speech or for staff members following a meeting by telephone from their offices, Christian Dabronyi, Gérard Varidel and François Rattoni operate offstage. Thanks to their radio-television or industrial electronic background, they can turn their hand to any aspect of the work.
Their skills extend also to the maintenance of the UNOG official satellite antennae, the recording equipment for journalists, the 200 pagers of the Palais, the Engineering Unit’s walkie-talkies and the microphones of the 34 conference rooms. Their various collaborators are: conference technicians, Conference Services, Information Service, the Cultural Activities Committee, but also the delegates who very often appeal to their skills for any computer issue.
The audio-visual installations in the Palais des Nations represent 40 years of technology. Their maintenance and renovation are therefore essential. But modernity does not necessarily go together with reliability and longevity. Indeed, sound and image technologies, linked to computer development, evolve very rapidly, bringing with them premature obsolescence or incompatibility of the equipment. The radio technicians must, therefore, keep up-to-date with technological innovations.
Whether they have ten years’ experience in the Palais des Nations, as in the case of Gérard and Christian, or only three years in the case of François, together these three Swiss nationals particularly appreciate in the accomplishment of their functions their varied and numerous contacts, as well as the different equipment they work with and tasks they carry out in every part of the Palais. In their functions it is not specified that they must be competent at walking, even though they cover more than 10 km per day on foot!

English version revised by Isobel Lang.