Hello, rAVe Europe readers! Happy last issue of January.
This month, Gary Kayye released his ever-favorite “Kayye’s Krystal Ball” article, in which he makes some predictions about what the AV future will hold. He has some pretty great ones for 2021, so I hope you’ll give it a read. That article goes hand-in-hand with his other column featured below on when he thinks live events will return.
P.S. rAVe’s LAVNCH WEEK 3.0 is coming to a screen near you — that’s one prediction I’m sure is 100% correct. Join us 9-11 Feb. for all the best AV, UCC and Digital Signage content. Register here.
If you’re a regular reader of my content, you already know this, but for those who don’t, my Kayye’s Krystal Ball piece is an annual article where I not only tell you what I think is going to happen in the AV, UCC and Digital Signage markets for the upcoming year, but I also look back and review the previous year’s predictions — sort of a scorecard of accuracy, if you will. 2020 sucked and surprised us all, so it was more than humbling to start this article by reviewing what I predicted for 2020.
Global managed services provider RingCentral brings out Glip, a free solution that offers video and audio conferencing — and integrates with team messaging, file sharing, contact, task and calendar management. The company refers to the integration as its “Smart Video Meetings” experience. You might have thought of Ring Central as a PBX-replacement, a telecom-as-a-solution cloud provider. That was years ago. The company’s main product, RingCentral Office, combines message, video and phone service. More than 350,000 businesses worldwide use RingCentral, according to a company spokeswoman. European rates vary from plan.
Decimated by COVID-19, most that are still standing have turned to virtual events. But, in those cases, you are trading dollars for dimes. Live events will not make any sort of significant recovery in 2021, I am sad to say. I miss them as much as anyone. However, until we have the great majority of the population vaccinated — likely by August 2021 — we will see a shuttering of most live events.