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The Michael Blackman Blog

Mike-Blackman-0712This blog is late. I don’t really have an excuse other than the fact that I’ve been traveling nearly continuously since leaving Amsterdam in early February.

But, as the saying goes, better late then never.

This year’s Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) Expo Jan. 29 – 31, was, in a word, AWESOME.

And, kudos is in order for a host of people who made that show what it really was — the world’s largest AV show with a total attendance of more than 44,000 attendees.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with ISE, imagine if InfoComm partnered with CEDIA and co-hosted their shows together – that’s ISE. In fact, LITERALLY, that’s what it is. Some 10 years or so ago, CEDIA and InfoComm got together and decided to do a show together that hosted both HomeAV and ProAV gear all in one place. And after stops in Belgium and a debut show in Switzerland, the show settled in Amsterdam – where it’s going to stay at least through 2019.

Enter Michael Blackman. Now the managing director of Integrated Systems Events (the official name for Integrated Systems Europe’s planning organization), Michael has been at the helm of ISE since its first year – 10 years ago – in Geneva, Switzerland, where the show attracted 120 exhibitors and just under 3,500 attendees. He’s overseen it’s growth and, more importantly, assembled a team that is simply amazing. Congratulations!!

But, as I said earlier, he’s got a team behind him that deserves to be recognized, too. His press and marketing guru is a guy by the name of Dan Goldstein. You may know him as the guy you always see wearing bow ties and is likely the best dressed guy at both InfoComm and ISE. He’s made it easy for the press to cover the show by giving us all stands on the show floor as well as giving us access to just about anything you’d need to cover a show. Thanks, Dan! And, finally, two others I persoanlly worked with to help organize our coverage of the ISE 2013 show, Danielle Inostroza and Stefanie Hanel — two amazing women who seem to know every exhibitor by heart and who make participating fun and easy. Thank you!!

This year’s show occupied 14 halls of the Amsterdam RAI convention center and not only had  44,161 attendees, but also had over 900 exhibitors and nearly 1,000 new product launches over the three day event. Michael has overseen flawless growth and has established the ISE show as the perfect European AV tradeshow. We covered the show with a custom MicroSite where you can watch all the videos we recorded, read all the blogs we wrote and see all the photos we to: http://www.rAVeNOWise.com

Kudos to all four of you and to the rest of the Integrated Systems Events team!

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