Volume 20, Issue 6 — February 9, 2022

rAVe ProAV Edition — Volume 20, Issue 6

February 9, 2022 | Volume: 20 | Issue: 6

What a week it’s been. Between recovering from COVID-19, editing Gary Kayye’s much-anticipated Kayye’s Krystal Ball article and keeping up with all the new internet things like the metaverse, it feels like the past week has been a year long.

Let’s unpack all that real quick.

Kayye’s Krystal Ball is Gary’s annual article (and webinar!) in which he goes through his AV predictions for the next year. These predictions include upcoming trends, problems and manufacturers you should watch for! (He also goes through his predictions from the year before and analyzes what he got right and wrong. The past two years have been tough ones to make predictions about, though. Sorry, Gary!) Overall, it’s a great article that really highlights things you should check out in our industry.

In the second article this time, Scott Tiner does a great job helping us understand what the heck the metaverse is. I live on Twitter and I basically just ignored it (I lumped it in with NFTs in the category of “Things That Are Probably Not My Business”). But when Scott compared it to games like Fortnite and SimCity, it made a lot more sense to me. Do I think it will take off completely? Not really. MAYBE it will be a trend that lasts for five minutes. I do know an amateur rapper trying to make it by buying an island via the metaverse. But I don’t really think Scott can explain that one.

Enjoy the newsletter, my friends! Happy Wednesday!

P.S. LAVNCH WEEK 5 is March 1-3 — don’t forget to register to catch Megan A. Dutta and me co-hosting three days full of thought leadership, new products and education!

— Steph Beckett

COLUMNS

+ Kayye’s Krystal Ball: 2022 Edition [Gary Kayye]

Welcome to my 22nd annual Kayye’s Krystal Ball! I can’t believe I have written this article 22 times. I am beyond humbled by how many of you read this; last year, it was viewed by over 90,000 #AVtweeps. #LOVE

+ What in the Universe Is the Metaverse [Scott Tiner]

In IT (and therefore AV as well), we certainly don’t have a shortage of our acronyms and buzzwords. When Meta, formerly known as Facebook, changed its name in October, the newest buzzword, “metaverse,” exploded into our feeds. We have heard the word countless times, but what the heck does it really mean? What, after all, is “the metaverse?”

+ How To Buy a Car (Or an Audiovisual System) [Tom Kehr]

I know someone familiar with a new House of Worship project with suggested donation amounts for some of the furniture and fixtures. These are big donation amounts. This person asked me to guess what they budgeted for AV. Because of how they phrased the question, I guessed a ridiculously low number. “$20K,” I said. Nope. It was $15K, including installation. I guess that’ll be a TV, a couple of hardwired mics and two powered loudspeakers. At least they’ll be decently powered loudspeakers!