It is a relationship built upon conversations, but forged with technology.
The partnership between AtlasIED and the Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport (SDF) dates back to the 1980s, but still remains as fresh as the telecommunications equipment that is installed inside the airport itself.
“They’re the first call we make when in our new product development process, whenever we have a new technology platform or we want to get user feedback or user experience in a real-world sense — and not in a vacuum within our design walls," AtlasIED general manager Justin Young recently told me.
The company’s airport-specific equipment operates both in front of passengers (the intercom system to track down and inform about flight updates or emergency messaging) and behind the scenes, such as the touchscreen microphone station technology that is installed at SDF’s new command center, as part of a $400 million renovation project.
Such technology makes life easier on Megan Thoben, director of operations and business development at SDF, and her team.
"I call us the behind-the-scenes ninjas of the airport,” said Thoben, who has been in her current role since 2018. “If you don't really see as much when things are going right, then we are doing our job. When things are going wrong, you probably see us running about trying to get people to communicate or stop what they're doing."
Starting in 2023, SDF passengers can expect to start seeing the latest AtlasIED technology, LookHear, which Young calls “a digital poster that can play announcements,” with the ability to be wheeled around to inform passengers of updates, such as an elevator being shut down due to construction. The airport saw roughly 3.2 million passengers in 2021.
AtlasIED’s equipment — in particular its GLOBALCOM announcement control system — can be found in approximately 300 airports across the country, as well as several international cities. The company declined to disclose revenue information.
Young is one of 48 team members who are based out of the company’s 24,000-square-foot office, located at 9701 Taylorsville Road in Jeffersontown. The company itself has more than 330 employees located throughout the country, but the Louisville office serves as the primary hub of its transportation division.
How AtlasIED's partnership with the Louisville airport began
Before merging with Atlas Sound in 2007, Innovative Electronic Designs (IED) was founded in 1978 by four Louisville businessmen, one of whom was Hardy Martin, whom Young said is referred to as the "patriarch of IED."
What would become IED started out as a local talent agency operated by Martin and others. To record music of local artists, they started creating their own sound mixer, which formed the foundation of the company.
Martin, who passed away in 2016, happened to have his pilot’s license. He would fly in and out of airports — including SDF — and realized that the technology his team created could go a long way into helping establish a uniform computer-controlled public address system for airports.
When Thoben was in her first role at Blue Grass Airport in Lexington, Kentucky, after graduating from Eastern Kentucky University in 2010, she recalled making a security access badge for Martin, who was on hand that day to specifically review the equipment at the airport himself.
"I'm a talker and a pretty charismatic person, too,” Thoben said. “So you put the two of us in a room, and his badging appointment, I think, turned into a three-hour conversation as I was an up-and-comer … and he was kind enough to talk to me and tell me his story.”
For two years, AtlasIED has been hosting a Voice of the Customer event at which airport administrators gather to provide feedback on the products, talk about emerging trends and “then give them a peek behind the curtain as far as what kind of technologies we are playing with,” Young said.
The most recent event was held at the Denver International Airport, but Young would like to see the event held in Louisville.
So, too, would Thoben, who suggested the idea when she was in attendance at the Denver event.
"I would like us to have that event because [the company's office is] in Louisville,” Thoben said of AtlasIED. “So it does not ever make sense for them to go anywhere other than home — or bring their customers anywhere other than home, to demonstrate what they do.
"It doesn't get any better than getting to host colleagues from airports all across the country, and even sometimes the world, to show everybody what we're doing at Louisville. And that's really been our main message."
