I woke up early this morning to the news that there was a massive outbreak of influenza taking place in North America, and that it was of a particularly virulent type. This brought to mind my experience with the peerless health care system in Singapore. I was due to attend a pre-convention meeting. I arrived very […]

Each year at this time, it is a Western tradition to examine our lives and to make New Year’s resolutions to improve them. Right. In previous years, I have attempted to give my readers a guide to making effective (or at least painless) New Year’s resolutions. My favorite New Year’s resolution technique, the “gimme,” involves […]

“’twas the night before Christmas, and all through the shop not an order is stirring so let’s get out the mop…” Yes, the holidays are upon us again. And with the exception of holiday parties and events, many of us can find ourselves looking for things to do. Having spent a few years working in […]

This morning I was involved in testing two of the new virtual reality conferencing environments. As most of you will be painfully aware, the conferencing industry has gone through a number of revolutions in the past decade, from videoconferencing to telepresence to collaboration and now on to VR. At each of them, we tout the […]

Well, as you have probably heard, our international trade association has changed its name. I have heard a lot of opinions about it this week (or at least been sent a lot of emoticons about it). Those of you who have been around a while may know that this is not the first time we […]

The onslaught If you have been to any of the major electronics shows this year, or even if you have only been looking at websites for the advance sales for the holiday season, it is pretty obvious that this year’s hot holiday gift will be VR equipment. All of the major gaming manufacturers, the major […]

In the original movie Ghostbusters, Rick Moranis (in his immortal role as Vince Tully, CPA) is taken over by an evil spirit from another dimension and transformed into the Keymaster, the minion who will enable Gozer the Gozerian to enter our plane of existence and destroy the world. First, if you don’t understand that reference, […]

It’s the last day of the show, and TGIF. It really has been a great show, setting records for attendance, and I think the attendees really got their money’s worth this year. There was lots of new technology and ideas, and most new products that were introduced seem to be shipping, which means people can […]

OK, so on the second day of the show I found the best thing I have seen so far this year. And it isn’t a product. It’s a program. Let me back up a bit. This morning, two longtime friends and colleagues from “down under,” Rod Brown and Jonathan Seller, introduced me to two friends […]

Well, InfoComm got off to a roaring start yesterday, and it continued into today. The show floor is packed, and the manufacturers and distributors I have talked to seemed happy with the attendance. And so am I, for a number of reasons. International attendance — I have often complained that the show of the International […]

You know, every year I can’t wait to come to this show — and then I remember the parts of it that I deliberately forget during the year, like the eternal wait for coffee and the fact that my feet hurt. OK, now that I am done being cranky (at least for today) lets talk about […]

Well, the show opened with the usual ribbon cutting, and we are off and running. I have done my first turn around the floor, and here are my morning observations: First, I ran into David Labuskes, InfoComm’s executive director. Besides a nice conversation about the friendly “sibling rivalries” among some of our mutual friends, he mentioned […]

Well, Gary Kayye and I have just finished our first podcast about the show. This threatens to be the largest Infocomm in history, with advance registration far ahead of previous years. As usual, we are both excited about the show, but disagree about the reasons. Right now, while I am excited about the presence of […]

I’m taking a last look around the show floor tonight before it opens tomorrow. Everybody is commenting on the fact that the floor has a long way to go before opening and they are right. It is now 7 p.m., and it looks like many crews are going to be here all night. Most of […]

It’s hot here in Orlando. Both outside, (where the humidity is curling my hair) and inside the Orange County Convention Center, where the largest InfoComm show ever is less than 24 hours from opening. The rAVe booth is set, and the crew is checking out our equipment, preparing to bring you all the latest product […]

If you move back in history, the human race progresses from crude tool to artform along a predictable path. For instance, once humans learned to break rocks, that path began. We progressed from using the rocks to break each other to turning the broken rocks into crude tools and then to using the crude tools […]

Over my last couple of columns, we have talked about the trend in meetings towards group collaboration, and the equipment and setups that will be necessary to accommodate this trend, as collaboration (and extended collaboration through social media) become the norm in public meetings. This led several of you to ask the question, “what is […]

Last month, we talked about the market’s trend toward collaborative meetings and how that will presumably affect the rental and staging company and its employees. I thought then, and I still do, that the most important aspect of this change was one of familiarizing our employees with the concepts and techniques of collaborative meetings. This […]

Back in December, my predictions for 2017 included the idea that collaboration would be a top driver for our industry this year, including the rental and staging portion of the industry. Several people wrote in to ask about this prediction, mostly inquiring as to how a rental company prepares for such a change in technology, […]

I am in Amsterdam. Or, at least I believe I am at this point. As many of you know, I am in the middle of a very large project and was unable to travel to Amsterdam for ISE this year. This is a pilgrimage I’ve made every year for quite a long time, in fact […]

Well, once again January has come around. Time to close out 2016, to send out all those final invoices that you forgot about and to make some dynamic resolutions for improving your organization in 2017. With my personal resolutions, I tend to set myself easy goals so that I will not be disappointed by my […]

Last month, I confessed to all of you that I really enjoy the holiday season. It seems that as the season approaches, all you remember about it are the good things. However, over the last couple of weeks, I have been reminded of a few of the negative sides of the holidays. For instance, today […]

I love the holidays. Even though they often come as a mixed blessing, combining some welcome time away from the office with seeing the relatives that I didn’t necessarily want to see. I really enjoy this time when people make an effort to smile a little more, to contact old friends and, frankly, just to […]

In a cold, punishing rain, only the brilliant flashes of lightning illuminate our hero, who stands at the entrance to the mysterious, forbidden jungle temple. Rain streams steadily from the brim of his battered leather hat and his fingers twitch on the handle of the bullwhip that hangs from his belt. Is it the guy […]

Last month, my column spoke about the changing role of the AV rental and staging company in the client’s technical universe. As I stated in the article, one of the things that I have always enjoyed about being in the rental industry was that we were a very early purveyor of new technologies. As such, […]

Over the last couple of months, a lot of the articles here on rAVePubs have had to do with new technology adoption, and the costs involved with being either too early or too late with any new technology. I am a long-suffering “Innovator” (for those of you who have read Crossing the Chasm, something I […]

Last night, I was watching the Republican convention from the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland. I will admit up front that I tend to watch political conventions more as theater than for their political content, as these have always been the most scripted events in our world. They are also among the most lavishly equipped […]

Just a couple of days ago, I was working with a colleague in the UK to troubleshoot a conferencing system with a client in a third location. We got together on a call for a few minutes before we dialed the client in order to make sure we were on the same page with regard […]

Well, today was “Super Tuesday.” No, not the political type, however. This is the day that the association traditionally holds a ton of educational events before the opening of the how. Normally, I would have been teaching at least one of these courses, but this year I had a different project. As many of you […]

In today’s episode of AV Weakly, Joel Rollins addresses the complicated world of justifying trade show attendance – specifically InfoComm 2016 in Las Vegas. It’s a hilarious look at how to convince your boss to let you attend and, best of all, it ends with an ad that you’ll love – trust us, it’s funny! […]

Well, things are heating up in the quadrennial political circus: Our presidential election in the United States has begun. We are approaching the time when the public portion of the circus really cranks up, with lots of rallies and events that will need massive audiovisual support. I have done a lot of political events in […]

On this episode of AV Weakly, host Joel Rollins sits down to discuss — marketing as a second language — familiarizing viewers with various terms used in AV marketing. So sit back and watch this webcast here on AV Weakly!