So just as the celebration of Native Americans and Pilgrims eating together way back when has become an annual tradition in the United States for most people, Blessings and Turkeys has become an annual blog tradition for me.  It’s the time of year when I give thanks for developments in the AV industry as well as air my grievances in mini Festivus inspired rants.

2014 has brought many blessings my way.  From being a part of the Milestone team, to the success of #AVCrosstalk, to a year of blogging on rAVe, to being interviewed by the NY Times, and to the continued growth of cAValry Rides! including a new radio show hosted by rAVe, it has been a year to remember for sure.

The focus here however is to address Blessings and Turkeys for the industry as a whole, so here are my picks for 2014.

Blessing: The Embrace of the Soft Codec.

So this started last year actually in earnest when the typically “proprietary at all costs” control giant Crestron introduced integration with Microsoft Lync, opening the door to a world of possibilities.

This year we saw both cloud and off-premise or virtualized VTC environments take off with companies like Pexip, Acano, Videxio, Zoom and Starleaf as well as movement from the hard codec guys Polycom and LifeSize toward the trend.  It is opening the door for smaller companies to realize the productivity gains their larger competitors have enjoyed, without having to have the pockets for hard codecs, realizing quicker ROI in technology.

The embrace of the soft codec has also helped many new products take hold in the market (AppStations, ViewShare, etc) and created new categories and opportunities for innovation.

Turkey: Microsoft (Do I really have to explain?)

Microsoft created the biggest #InfoYawn in history with the water and soccer station they created at InfoComm 14.  It was a move that left InfoComm silent and their PR people in “spin” mode.  Even I could have thrown together something, even if they did have a potential failed product release as speculated.

They are also on the Turkey list for announcing Lync will move to Skype for Business.  Considering the details are sketchy, I’m hoping it’s more of a change in name and GUI only. Hopefully the change doesn’t create integration work for those who have helped companies leverage Lync in their existing systems.  If it’s one thing clients hate, its rework and change orders.  Thanks Microsoft.

 

Blessing: InfoComm for APEx and its Stance on Booth Babes

Dave Labuskes has put his stamp on InfoComm this year.  It is no secret I am a fan of their new APEx program that states that “the customer should have something to say about customer satisfaction.”

I was also thrilled to see a formal statement from Mr. Labuskes on the use of “booth babes” on the InfoComm floor.  This coupled with several end user focused events, management councils for integrators looking to update their business models, and the new outreach and communications surrounding “exceptional experiences” are, IMHO, moving InfoComm out of the Lemke era in a good way.

Turkey: InfoComm for the Microsoft Debacle and its Stance on Booth Babes

Despite the accolades above, I also have to single out InfoComm as a Turkey in 2014.  The InfoComm show floor was rearranged after space was sold to accommodate the IT behemoth Microsoft, changing the value of space already purchased by others, and the potential value of booth space next to Microsoft as well.  Then they let them cut their space in half at the last minute, and have never come clean on whether or not Mr. McGraw and company charged Microsoft the appropriate fines for their last minute change of plans.

As for the booth babe stance, it was nice to see a formal statement, we would have never seen that in the past, but they promptly stopped short of any enforcement or even judgment of what will actually be allowed at future shows.  They instead played their “if you do that again, I may or may not send you to timeout” card.

Blessing: Video over IP

Last year, I put HD-BaseT on both sides of the list.  This year I’m putting Video over IP down as a blessing.  It’s not new, I know.  Just Add Power gained some notoriety years ago in this space, and SVSi had a viable Volante solution at least 4-5 years back.  However, there have been strides in this space.  We’ve seen the improved transport of 1080p through the gigabit network, adoption of better compression strategies for signals above 1080p up to 4k to keep them under 900 Mbps, and options to distribute video uncompressed through a 10G switch with copper or fiber based SFP connectors.

Turkey: Our Involvement in IPv6

I can’t help but think that as an industry we may have missed an opportunity.  We have focused so hard on creating proprietary switches for parallel video distribution that I fear we missed a real chance to innovate.  With a pending change in many switching environments coming up with the introduction of IPv6, perhaps we should have been at that table to promote a better backplane in these switches and/or the option to license Valens proprietary PAM strategy for video to switch companies to make these new switches video ready.  IPv6 is not backward compatible anyway, and as IT environments are forced to start switching and patching things over from Ipv4, it would have been nice for AV to be a major destination on that roadmap.

I’m sure there are many more, but I always try to limit this blog to a few entries, as you have turkey to eat and relatives to argue with.  If for some reason you’re on good terms with all your houseguests this Thanksgiving, I encourage you to add your blessings and Turkeys in the comments below, or take umbrage with some of mine!

Happy Thanksgiving!