The dust has settled, we’ve all returned home, and hopefully most of us came home healthy or have recovered from any bug we may have caught in last week’s gathering of 30,000+ people.

Vegas Vegas’d, our social tanks were filled, steak dinners and late night cocktails fueled early morning rehydration efforts, and the overwhelming sentiment, at least from an attendance and people standpoint was that InfoComm is back.

For that, I celebrate AVIXA’s hard work and our industry’s resilience.

I was also excited to see that of the non-exhibitor attendees, 29% were end users, which some may disagree, but I think is very important. As an integrator, it’s even more important for us and the reason that we see value in exhibiting at InfoComm each year. We had over 120 scheduled tours in 3 days, and as a tour facilitator myself, this meant I was extremely busy during show hours.

In reading the post show press however, I am a bit disappointed at the way we continue to congratulate each other on producing new products that represent little more than a market share grab without providing much new innovation or customer value.

I hope that everyone reading takes this comment as intended, not as an insult or condemnation of the great people and companies that make up the AV industry, but as a challenge to us on the whole to think beyond incremental revenue and “wallet-share musical chairs” and toward increasing customer value to drive new growth.

Based on the press releases and best of show awards and articles I”ve read so far-

I’m happy that XYZ Co. has introduced a brand new wireless sharing device for BYOD meetings in 2024, but Clickshare, AirMedia, and Mersive were on the show floor in 2013.

It’s cool that ABC Inc. now has a sound bar, mic, camera combo unit, but those are over a decade old as well.

Small form factor PC based compute devices to run MTR and Zoom rooms are great, and I guess that category is only around 5-6 years old, as people like Starin were selling Zoom Room kits like these in 2018.

Yes I understand that market demand for these products has increased, allowing the entry of new players all jockeying to get market share from the field of incumbents, and I don’t begrudge anyone success, let’s just not call the products “new” or “innovative”. They’re “new to you’ but not new to the market or to the customer.

Don’t get me wrong, I did see a few new iterations of products I thought were interesting and I’ll be writing a blog about those for rAVe’s LAVnch Code page here shortly.

I don’t have a best of show award for a new product this year though, nor a top 10, let alone a top 24. I wish I did!

If you think I’m wrong and I missed something truly new on the floor, I’d love your comments and links below.