For anyone that follows my @avphenom handle on Twitter, you most likely saw a plethora of posts last Friday about the Themed Entertainment Association‘s (TEA) SATE conference.

SATE stands for Storytelling. Architecture. Technology. Experience.

It was a two day event that featured speakers who’s art was blending story with space with technology to create amazing, immersive environments. In fact, this year’s theme was “Beyond the Screen: The Future of Immersive Realities” and they delivered on ALL counts, and I only attended half of the conference.

In the one day that I attended, I was able to listen to imagineers, space tourism futurists, game developers, world class exhibit designers, AI experts, robotics gurus and designers talk about how they approach the task of turning a passive bystander into an active participant in the very exhibits and stories they tell in their spaces.

I think everyone I spoke with left with a renewed passion for their role in creating these experiences as well as with new and valuable expertise on how to continue to raise the bar well into the future.

Given the AV industry’s recent rebrand on Experience with AVIXA, I sat there thinking that there should’ve been more AV professionals in attendance to benefit from the insights. I also would encourage AVIXA staff to attend next year, as this is the type of crowd the recent rebrand is aimed at attracting.

SATE offered creative inspiration for sure, but it also offered some scientific and data driven ideas on how to connect with Millennials and Gen Z as well as a talk on ROE- Return on Experience: Using data to generate results-driven creative. For a full list of all the speakers and topics you should go here.

If there are any AV folks out there that still doubt the recent rebrand and associated new focus of our industry association, attending an event like SATE would definitely go a long way toward changing your mind for sure.

If you’re in China you still have a chance to get to SATE in Beijing on November 3-5.

I’ll leave you all by restating the theme of SATE this year — “Beyond the Screen”… sounds like a good strategy for growing our AV industry as well doesn’t it?