This blog and interview were written and conducted by Penny Sitler of Draper Inc. Check them out on Twitter at @DraperInc. I’m honored to have been invited to help write this blog series on women AV entrepreneurs. Corey Moss had the idea, and I hope you’ve already read his excellent interview with Cory Schaeffer of […]

So ya, thought ya, might like to go to the show… The year was 1979 when Pink Floyd, one of the most revolutionary bands in history, released one of the most powerful albums in history. It set records, trends — it was, and still is, unmatched by any other band in rock music. Roger Waters, […]

They say that the ground wars are giving way to a more dangerous threat, one that has no readily visible location or target. Military aircraft are of no benefit in this battle. The military’s answer, for one, is the U.S. Army Cyber Command which plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes, directs and conducts network operations and defense of […]

This blog and interview were written and conducted by Kelly Perkins. Check her out on Twitter at @AVI_Kelly. Midori Connolly is the principal at AVGirl Productions and former co-owner of an audiovisual company. She is best known for producing the first set of best practices for Sustainable AV Staging. Midori provides support to meetings and […]

Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, well-known as just Michelangelo, was possibly the most renowned artist of the Renaissance. Along with Leonardo and Raphael, they represented artistic pinnacles only to be imitated, but not perfected by other artists. Michelangelo’s body of work was incomparable, and all anyone else could hope to do was duplicate his greatness. […]

Convergence, in terms of technological convergence (according to Wikipedia), is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve toward performing similar tasks. The premise of AV and IT convergence is simple, two separate realms of technology come together as a single entity to expand the industry’s capabilities to satisfy full-scale technology needs of the end user. In […]

With all that we presently know in terms of AV, IT and Internet of Things (IoT), I truly believe we are expanding into a full technology realm of elaborate innovation and boundless potential. As I’ve previously written on IoT and innovation, the components of technology change and growth are appearing before our eyes on a regular […]

Note: This series is being written along with two outstanding women in the industry, Penny Sitler of Draper Inc. who will handle content and interview for Part Two and Kelly Perkins of AVI Systems, who will handle the same for Part Three. I am handling this Part One of the series. And why not? — […]

In this series, Women in AV: The Three, three high level women executives in the AV industry will be interviewed and give their unique perspectives on their backgrounds, the industry and certain issues that women are facing in the current technology business climate. This blog series preamble is dedicated to all of the women in […]

Christie, a company historically known for high end display, video wall and projection technology is continuously doing something which can only be described by a singular statement — blowing your mind. For those who may not yet be aware of what they do (that should be very few), Christie is a leading provider of high-performance […]

Last week I published a blog on the Internet of Things and convergence, basically highlighting two companies — Cisco and Google as those leading the way in IoT and IT. However I felt the need to clarify that while I mentioned the cloud collaboration environment that Cisco has built through acquisitions as strategic to an overall […]

When we think of convergence, we of course refer to how the industry’s two realms of technology potentially merge together to create seamless system implementation where all components, potentially including devices, form reliable AV/IT integration whether on-premise, in the cloud, or both. However, questions continue to arise about the convergence and if it indeed has […]

Many months back, in late 2013 I had a conversation with a friend of mine in the business from Canada. Maybe that makes sense to those of you who have followed my blogs, since my first one emanated from the Great White North as it involved one of the major integrators in the Canadian market. […]

I tell this great story as if it was only yesterday. Back in my early days in AV integration sales in the late ’90s, within three months of being hired by the company, the owner comes into the sales cubicle area and a few of us turn to look at him as he starts speaking. He […]

To begin, I want to speak on a personal level. This blog is without a doubt the most important one I have written yet, and as some out there know it almost didn’t happen for various reasons. However, after much cajoling (in a good way) by certain individuals — yes, you know who you are […]

AVNOC®, an AV/IT industry manufacturer with offices in Williamsburg, Va. and Reno, Nev., has partnered with leading global systems integrator and video communications provider AVI-SPL to deliver audiovisual and video conference monitoring for their customers. AVNOC® reports on AV/IT network availability plus detailed system metrics through (HIPAA compliant) SNMP monitoring keeping help desks, service centers […]

Sure disruptive, it’s just about become my middle name. However, the industry is almost ready to re-name itself as a newly formed arena of disruption to go along with the standards like digital signage, control systems and more. But then again if I search hard next year, I’ll likely come up with disruptive technologies there […]

Lessons are taught as well as learned every day, and this one I consider a major one. I first want to send accolades to my fellow rAVe Publications blogger Mark Coxon for coming to the forefront and speaking his mind concerning the situation relating to Microsoft at the InfoComm show; I think he put in […]

Here it is, the final chapter of a series that included highly worthy participants that exist in this new age of communications and collaboration. I decided to look up the term “disruptive forces” on Google and I came up with another term on Wikipedia – “disruptive innovation,” which is defined as an innovation that helps […]

Microsoft. The AV industry giants. The ever growing market of communications and collaboration. Digital signage and video walls. Interactive displays and whiteboards. Cloud and virtualization — strategic technologies enhancing enterprise collaboration, infrastructure and more. BYOD — the fastest growing trend in the enterprise today. The new market disrupters. And of course, the integrators and end […]

New solutions continue to enter the market at a rapid pace and if all were taken into consideration, it’s altogether possible that this series could go on for months. However, due to the fact that I’ve set it to end prior to InfoComm we are coming to the last few chapters. So far all companies […]

OK, I’ll admit it, I’m a social media junkie. Without social media, I’m not sure I’d have even been doing such a series in the first place — I’ve gotten a very good idea of what the companies involved in this bring to the table either through certain individuals or collectively. And this company is […]

Next up in the series is a company who approaches this new age of video communications from a bit of a different angle, one that may look to be more IT-centric mirroring what is currently occurring in enterprise IT, as organizations move toward replacing hardware in the infrastructure with software and virtualized technologies. Based in […]

If you’ve recently heard of the bug called “Heartbleed,” you may be somewhat familiar with what is being considered one of the most critical Internet vulnerabilities in history. The bug, which has set the worldwide web ablaze, is a serious flaw in OpenSSL, designed to provide communication security and privacy over the Internet. It compromises web security allowing attackers […]

OK, here we go with the first in a series on numerous participants in the new market of disruptive technologies. The groundwork has been laid in the prologue that was published late last week, you may want to first refer back to that if you haven’t read it yet to get set up for the […]

The interview — the power of the spoken word, the real sense of expression and feeling when one gives you direct response to something that you’ve been thinking and/or wondering about. In blogs previous to the last two that I’ve done on the title subject of AV/IT be they cloud, BYOD or cybersecurity, it was […]

Apple’s Steve Jobs. Virgin Atlantic’s Richard Branson. Tesla Motor’s Elon Musk. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. And yes, Microsoft’s Bill Gates. All can be summed up in one word — influencers. Just what is an influencer? Even though the word itself doesn’t appear in WikiPedia or any online dictionaries, in an overview of the […]

As someone who has regularly blogged on AV/IT, cloud and mobility/BYOD, it was my recent blog interview article which brought a whole new angle on blogging for me, opening up a new door where I plan on making it a regular theme as I identify AV companies across the world in this format. I’d like […]

The competitive battle for U.S. AV integrator market supremacy has grown hotter over the last few years, and newer technologies in AV/IT, cloud and BYOD are beginning to elevate this movement toward market reign. In many articles that I have read lately, suggestions (and even directives) are being expressed to the integrators to embrace these […]

Hot on the heels of the January 10th announcement by InfoComm International, many of us now know that Microsoft is coming to InfoComm 2014 as a Platinum sponsor. In the announcement, David Labuskes, CTS, RCDD, executive director and CEO, InfoComm International said: “The decade-long conversation about the convergence of AV and IT technology has been […]

In July of last year, I received an invitation to attend an event, one like I had never been to before. Now I’ve been to my share of AV events and even a few on IT, however this one was very different and brought on great intrigue as well. The event was the Cyber Security […]

It looks as if lately LinkedIn group discussions have become the basis and inspiration for my recent blogs. The previous one I was encouraged to write by the moderator of the group discussion, this one I was not, however I saw the opportunity to put together collective thoughts, some related to the thread and some […]