CES 2011 is over but that’s just the beginning of the trade show calendar for the New Year. All the dealers I know are highly focused and selective about the shows they attend: It’s typically CES, OR CEDIA Expo, OR InfoComm OR EHX, and occasionally two, but almost never more than that. On the manufacturing side, however, it’s typical for my […]
Every industry and channel has its larger than life characters. They’re the Bill Brasky types that we all tell stories about at industry functions when they’re not there, either as an inspiration or as a warning to others. If they are there, there’s an excellent chance that they’re the ones telling the story. One of my favorite […]
The phrase “you can’t be everything to everybody” gets tossed around a lot, but people seldom stop to think it through and ponder the importance of that message. I’m not aware of any successful small or medium-sized business that has ever become successful through doing a whole bunch of things half-assed, as opposed to doing […]
I remember my first December in the custom channel very clearly: 9-5 office hours, comfy chair in an office, and meetings with clients. And with the exception of being closed on Boxing Day and only half-day hours from Christmas to New Year’s Eve, it was business as usual and no different from any other month […]
Last month I had no idea that the banter on Twitter surrounding a CE Pro story about HDMI-related issues would touch off a minor flame war, and inspire Gary to write a very good blog post about the opportunities that HDMI affords to integrators. For my part, I took advantage of the discussion to Tweet a series of haikus about HDMI. In case you […]
I’ve got a lot of aphorisms that I like to live by but the notion that “It’s Better To Be Prepared Than Postpared” is one of my favorites. Sometimes I take it too far, but when it comes to system design, I don’t think that’s possible. Related to that, I’m also inclined to believe that there’s no […]
As clichéd as it sounds, the one constant in CE is change. That’s why resistance to it always comes as a surprise. Recently a story of mine went online that dealt with sustainable architecture principles, with a special focus on Daylight Harvesting: programming a lighting control system to respond to daylight levels so as to maintain a […]
It used to be called the Information Superhighway, but really, if information and news is central to your business, it’s more like trying to drink from a firehose. Like everything else work related, it helps to have a process. Here’s how I do it. I get something on the order of twenty industry-related newsletters a day […]
Now that Sony has announced its new TVs that will incorporate Google TV, the concept is beginning to look less like vaporware and more like yet another entrant to the coming content wars. So I guess that means it’s time to start blogging about it, in anticipation for when it’s finally released and we can get our […]
I was talking the other day with an integrator on the east coast of the US. Like a lot of conversations I have with people in the industry, there’s always some small talk about business conditions in our local markets. As I told him, in the past eighteen months, in Edmonton and Calgary pretty much […]
Reflecting on discussions I had on the topic of 3DTV at CEDIA Expo last week, a clear trend emerges: beyond the official pitches the exhibitors were giving during their booth tours, no one is really that keen on 3D. One bon mot that swept across Twitter last week was: “Too bad LED and 3D came out at the same […]
Last week I submitted a story for rAVe [Publications] that detailed the trend of AV installers moving away from using Wi-Fi unless absolutely necessary. The main reason cited was that the sheer density of Wi-Fi routers in both residences and commercial operations in urban spaces has led to wireless traffic jam, seriously inhibiting the ability of any of those devices to […]
