Well, Infocomm is definitely showing the growth of conferencing of all types. I certainly expected the increased importance of videoconferencing, but the growth in terms of number of companies involved seems to be exploding in the area of audio/graphics (or “whiteboard”) conferencing. Nearly every company that makes commercial flat panel displays is showing a distance-connected interactive touch […]

Another product category that seems to be exploding here at the show is the video-switcher-with-built-in-streaming-server group. Panasonic, Sony, Roland, Grass valley, etc. all seem to be making one, in varying sizes and cost ranges. The combination of a multi-bus live event SEG with a streaming server is one that should be of great value to the rental […]

Just spent a few minutes at the Cisco booth, where I have a little bone to pick with my favorite telepresence supplier. They announced (and demonstrated) their iPad app for telepresence (Jabber Video) several months ago with a pretty foggy announcement on when it would be available (but with a lot of materials for integrators to use to promote […]

Just spent some more time in the International Business Lounge (they have coffee and comfortable chairs) and was struck by something: the InfoComm banner now flies over 8 or 9 international AV trade shows, like Integrated Systems Russia, Integrate! In Australia, andInfocomm China, to name a few. Does this represent our eventual decentralization? For the 25 years I […]

OK, next observation: this show is more international than ever before. Business is being conducted on the floor in several languages, and the importance of the international membership has obviously increased. It used to be very much like the World Series, where we don’t actually invite other countries to play. But no more. In fact, […]

Well, I promised you all (ok, mostly Gary and Sara and the rest of the rAVe crew) that I would blog live from the show. But here it is nearly 2pm and I am just sitting down to write in the rAVe booth. So, while I will be touring the show later on, here are my first impressions of this year’s […]

As some of you know, I am moving this weekend. Since it’s just a couple of exits up the beautiful Merritt Parkway, I’m doing most of it myself, although yesterday I pressed a good friend into service moving the heavy stuff with me. But it is a true audiovisual move. Not only do I have […]

In the last few years we have all seen what upheaval in world credit markets and currencies can do. More recently, we are seeing the potential collapse of smaller countries that do not have the ability to finance their own bailouts as the United States has seemingly managed to thus far. But we are also […]

Funny – I wrote my last blog post about Airplay and its uses in the conference room last week, and since then a number of mainstream magazines and newspapers have talked about it as well. Here’s a recent one that I liked: Apple TV finds a home in the meeting room | Macworld As I said […]

I must admit to being impressed when a technology works well, but even more impressed when it works well with so little effort that it is nearly invisible. And, as a presenter, I’m impressed with the potential of Airplay – the wireless network streaming system built into the AppleTV, the Mac under OSX Lion, and the iOS devices like iPhone […]

Today, I took both my 400-disc DVD changer and my network Blu-Ray player out of my living room. I’m tired of discs… of the inconvenience, of the late fees for the ones I rent, of the tiny scratches that seem to always crop up to keep my favorites from playing after a time. I’m tired of Blu-Ray discs that take roughly a millennium […]

A longtime friend, John Ellis, emailed me (and about 9 million other people in the industry) to update us all on the Mike Peppel/MCSi case. And no, it isn’t over, like many people seem to think. The incredibly light sentencing verdict rendered against a man who ruined a lot of the great small companies in […]

Well, rAVe Rental [and Staging] will be out shortly with the details of my review of the InfoComm Live event, and you can read it here at rAVePubs.com, or subscribe to the publication and it will be sent directly to you via email. I won’t re-write it here, but suffice it to say that in general it was a great event, and my […]

Well, I have had a VERY full day here at the InfoComm Live conference. As I told a number of people today, there are two great truths to be had about InfoComm holding this event. The first is this: what I like to call the Circus Bear Effect. As my dad used to tell me all the time, the […]

This Thursday and Friday, the 15th and 16th of March, will be the InfoComm Live event in DC, and yours truly will be attending. Like the InfoComm 100, this is an invitational discussion group with attendees from around the country – but this one is strictly about the events industry. To quote the InfoComm website: “2012 is the inaugural year for InfoComm Live, a gathering of Live […]

In the rental and staging portion of our industry, we’ve always had to absorb the cost of a lot of inventory that we didn’t get to create line-item charges for. Cases, protective gear, cable ramps, some cabling types… the list goes on. How many of you are now seeing that the falling price of electronics […]

I sit here this morning, coffee in hand, just back from an overnight drive from Rochester to my home in the New York area. The trip was done overnight and on short notice, in order to help a friend, a CPA, with some network issues in his office that were critical because this is tax […]

I have been following the progress (or lack thereof) of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) legislation, as well as a number of the other proposed bills that are intended to curb online piracy. I am radically against piracy, many of my clients and friends make their living producing intellectual property, and to take their work is […]

Newton’s Law You know, with all the predictions articles that happened this month, there’s a phrase that I’m really tired of hearing included in most of them. This is NOT the “Year of the Tablet”. The year of the tablet, the REAL year of the tablet, has already gone by. Now, some of you are […]

More on Kodak As I wrote in an earlier post, our industry stands on the edge of the demise of the Great Yellow Father in Rochester. Eastman Kodak Corp. arguably did more to create our industry (at least in its current form) than any other single company, and it’s current state is a sad but […]

This morning, while reading my morning “paper” I came across this article that made me do a double-take. For the last couple of weeks, we’ve all been predicting the ups and downs of our business, but this one was enough to make me suddenly exhale half a cup of coffee through my nose. Report: Kodak […]

Well, I sit here in my home office, contemplating the end of another year, and the beginning of a new one, in the way I always do. I’m going over my to-do list on my iPad, marking a few things as accomplished and updating the due dates on a lot of them to end in […]

OKAY! A little cause to celebrate today, against one of my pet peeves. Something for which I have wanted to lean out of my living room window and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” And one of the things that made me give up cable television two years […]

So here we are, in the middle of the commerce-crazy, pre-holiday period. Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Big-Box Wednesday, Gifts-for-your-Goldfish Thursday… the market is endless in its ability to create reasons to buy, and the statistics to back it up. In addition to being bombarded with “special” days on which we are supposed to troop like […]

News Flash For months, colleagues, clients and I, as well as the market in general, have argued about the future of Adobe’s Flash environment. Many of my clients have been highly resistant to the adoption of iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad, mostly because they didn’t accommodate Flash. Apple’s contention was that Flash was both a […]

You know, for months now, I’ve heard the political arguments about whether or not providing massive investments in America’s infrastructure would stimulate our economy.. whether the jobs to be gained were in fact “shovel-ready”, whether or not we could afford them, etc. I’m not at all concerned with the political ramifications, which party benefits most, […]

Anybody notice how the world in mobile and smartphone communications is turning upside down this week? First, the release of iOS5 from Apple, which will change our iPhones, iPads, and iPods, and the way they sync. iOS5 is the first PC-less operating system for these Apple devices, which means that you will be able to buy and use an iPad […]

The building my office is in also houses the state’s film bureau, an office set up by state government to promote making films in Connecticut, and draw some of that tax revenue (and job base) out of New York. It seems to work pretty well, judging by the noisy and ubiquitous film crews always present […]

Look, you all know I’m a big fan of the cloud computing concept, and I remain one, because the benefits do offset the difficulties. Usually. But this week, real clouds have really messed with my technological ones. Because, for what is termed a fizzle of a storm compared to something like Katrina, Hurricane Irene has […]

Well, we’ve all been looking this week at the disaster in Indianapolis. Our hearts go out to the victims and the crew, and my column this month goes into a few more of my thoughts on the issue and how accidents like this can happen. So now lets talk about qualifications… we send our crews […]

Some time ago, I wrote a blog post about the fact that all of our analog video recordings on mag tape were gradually disappearing. I got a lot of replies telling me that it had reminded some people to preserve those recordings by transferring them to digital storage, and unfortunately quite a number from people […]

You know I love technology. I’m like a 10 year old in my adaptability to new technology, (and in other ways if you ask some of my friends). But in one aspect of technological progress, I’m a veritable Luddite. For goodness sake, does EVERYTHING have to be wireless? About 10 years ago a friend, whose […]