I recently attended the Integrate Expo in Sydney — it is Australia’s version of InfoComm, although a lot smaller. There were 87 Exhibitors and over 500 brands, and as the spiel goes, Integrate is “Australia’s largest Audio Visual entertainment information & communication technology event.” The expo also includes many seminars throughout the three days of the show.

This year I took Emma (who is in a sales role) and has taken on a very big AV learning curve; it was her second trade show (the first was a CEDIA show, which here is a lot smaller then Integrate).  All the big names were at the expo including Epson, Panasonic, Sharp, Samsung, LG, NEC, plus all the main distributors in Australia and even Extron.

We had seven hours to get through the show with a lot of suppliers to catch up with & new products to find we had a big task ahead of us.

Some of my highlights:

The LG stand had a great display of their monitors with digital signage players; the monitors were very bright with vibrant colours. They were also showing some cool software called Stikus, there was a touch screen monitor with a webcam alongside the two-screen video wall monitors (see picture below). You take your picture using the touch screen and then push it through to the video wall and it has all sorts of animation with it, and then it settles with all the other photos – pretty cool software, but LG does not provide it – I suppose they were just showing off the monitors.

One of the best and largest stands in the show was Hills SVL (see photo below); it was a great stand and they distribute a great deal of products such as Hitachi projectors, interactive boards, Australian Monitor Audio, Hall Research, Wolf Vision, Projection Design and Crestron, just to name a few. We spent about two hours there going through products and chatting to one of the Crestron trainers about issues on recent installs. He gave us an overview of all the Crestron products on the stand, which was good for Emma to see the products in action.

A new discovery for me was the Panasonic ET-YFB100 Digital Interface Box that connects to Panasonic PT-VW431D via Cat 5 cable thus eliminating the need to use extenders and run multiple cables. I think this is a great idea and makes installs much easier, less cabling to run and heaps of inputs via the Digital interface box and it’s compatible with HDBaseT. Apparently will be available in Oz in October so can’t wait to be able to start specifying on jobs.
The Epson stand was also a great stand this year: they were giving secret demonstrations of something that I am not allowed to talk about as it was the first time it has been used – we even had to sign a waiver and they had the area curtained off – so sorry can’t tell you about that one. But they did have the Moverio BT-100 goggles that comes with a media player and you can play movies right in front of you via the glasses – unfortunately it was flat when we got to have a look at it, but our rep brought it out to our office so we could have a play with it and its pretty cool – not sure they will take off here, probably not as good as beer goggles.

Overall there were a lot of monitors and projectors, a few interactive boards with more touch screen monitors and a few interactive projectors. The whole expo looked great with some really good stands. A bit more enthusiasm from the exhibitors would be great instead of walking away when you walk on the stand, very off-putting. Loved it when one the exhibitors asked if we actually put together jobs and went on installs, he thought it was great that we were women and could do that – thanks for noticing.

I also think that Integrate could do better on the social media side; they had a Twitter account with followers but did not Tweet. Their Facebook site was better, but they still did not Tweet after I suggested on there Facebook site that they should. I’m not sure the AV industry in Australia gets Twitter yet – it is such a great source to get information about what it happening. Integrate did send out a survey which was a good thing – which meant I got a chance to voice my social media opinions.

Will definitely be attended next year maybe for longer, and also get in some seminars also – one year I will make it to InfoComm in the States where I’m sure it will blow my mind.