Chief Marketing Manager Karen Smidt and Product Manager Kathryn Gaskell joined me for a video interview today at InfoComm 2016 to launch their new Fusion Modular Mounts. This system doesn’t seem revolutionary, but it is. Chief has always had a plethora of standard configurations for video walls and menu-board mounts, for example, but now you […]
Rafik Anadol did an amazing job designing digital art using projection at the Epson Booth here at InfoComm 2016. His creative use of laser-based projection, image mapping and color is used to project digital art on top of printed art to create a moving canvas of image. In addition, he also built an Infinity Room […]
Clint Hoffman and I have known each other for over 25 years and I have a lot of mutual respect for him. Kramer used InfoComm 2016 to launch a new totally cloud-based control system and it’s a bold move as the rest of the market is hardware-based. Is it before its time? Will the AV […]
I love talking to Jeevan Vivegananthan, Christie’s Senior Director of Product Management, Displays & Processing, as it’s clear he loves AV technology – and so do I. But, there’s no question that the best booth at InfoComm 2016 is Christie’s as they constructed a hockey arena onto show floor and integrated with all sorts of […]
Anchor Audio’s VP of Sales, Alex Jacobs debuted a wireless version of their Liberty battery-operated powered speaker — called Liberty Air. It’s aimed at the educational and live events market and it’s water resistant, and has a 5-6 hour battery. Oh, and you can daisy-chain up to 10 of them together! Check out my video […]
I have an annual video interview with NEC’s Rich Ventura as he’s THE expert at digital signage applications. So, he’s a plethora of information. We stood in front their giant 8K video wall made from 16 55” LCDs and talked about NEC’s new analytics system, their digital canvases and how they’ve morphed into the display […]
Cisco’s Marketing Manager, Kim Nguyen joined me for an awesome overview about their entire product line at InfoComm 2016. Cisco is squarely focused on supporting the AV integrator community and their newest products like PresenterTrack, Spark and their SX and MX room systems prove that. I hope you’ll watch this video interview with Kim:
I caught up with Powersoft’s Paul Freudenberg, General Manager, who talked about their power amps and how they are able to continue to squeeze more power out of their amplifiers out of the same energy-efficient design. It’s magic! I ache always admired Powersoft for their aesthetics – they aren’t black boxes. Here’s my video interview […]
You read that right — this is a long interview with Leyard’s CMO, Jennifer Davis, as more than a half-dozen InfoComm attendees literally walking between me and my expert videographer, but worth watching! Their 31-foot wide and 19-foot tall 8K resolution LED served as an amazing backdrop to a stunning display that was packed the […]
QSC used last year’s InfoComm to launch themselves into the installed systems meeting room market with Q-SYS. They are at InfoComm 2016 continuing that launch with their collaborative solutions to address web-cam conferencing as well as more meeting room products. I caught up with QSC’s Director of Installed Systems, TJ Adams, and VP of Marketing, […]
Nureva’s new HDL-300 is the company’s first entry into the audio market. It’s basically a microphone array in a speaker-bar-like configuration designed to solve all meeting room mic issues by creating over 8100 virtual mics and allows you to pick up audio (equally) from anywhere in a room (up to 20’x20’). I hooked up with […]
I love new technology. In fact, I teach a course on how new technology effects Advertising, Marketing and PR at the University of North Carolina. But, sometimes I hate it. Remember when your TV just turned on? Oh, how I long for this days… Now, then you hit the TV power button on your remote […]
Did you realize that yesterday was Twitter’s 10th birthday? No other social media app has had as big of an influence on our market as Twitter — more AV’ers are on Twitter than on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+ and Instagram combined. So, we thought, since it was their tenth birthday, we’d take a look some of […]
Just a day after announcing their 2015 financial results and earnings, Barco CEO Eric Van Zele sat down with me in an exclusive video interview at ISE 2016 in Amsterdam. In addition to discussing the earnings report, he’s very frank about what they plan invest in with the over €250 Million in cash Barco is […]
I caught up with ISE Managing Director Mike Blackman on the last day of the show (day four) here in Amsterdam and we discussed the impact of a fourth day of the show as well as the show results. He hints at final attendance numbers, too. It’s certainly a record attendance as we can see […]
Wolfgang Lenz is a good barometer of the AV market in the EMEA. His company, COMM-TEC is the leading distributor is Germany with an office in Hong Kong and soon to be in mainland China, and I have interviewed him at the end of ISE each year as I think he’s a good barometer of […]
I had a chance to sit down today with the keynote speaker for ISE 2016, Michio Kaku — author of the book Physics of the Future. I have truly been a big fan of his since 2011 when I read his book. Since then, I’ve required all my students at UNC read his book predicting […]
I had a chance to sit down with InfoComm’s Jason McGraw today to talk about InfoComm! It’s less than four months away and he came over to ISE here in Amsterdam as InfoComm is a partner in this mega-AV show along with CEDIA. Jason has been heading up expositions at InfoComm for over 20 years […]
Colin Boyle is Canon’s European marketing specialist for projectors and he spent some time with me explaining how they fared in 2015 and what their growth plans are for 2016. Canon is heading in to much brighter projectors for 2016 including a 7500-lumen lamp-based projector and a 5000-lumen 4K resolution projector.
Crestron EMEA CEO Robin Van Meeuwen talked with me about how their 2015 was, his thoughts about 2016 and the new direction Crestron is headed with marketing. Barely any product was marketed at the 2016 show and, In fact, Robin explained that they focused on applications instead with their giant Hall 2 stand.
Crestron’s Toine Leerentveld is the control system security expert. I caught up with him at ISE and asked him about the industry’s current concerns with the security of control systems and what Crestron is doing to address it. He also tells me about a security guide that Crestron has to help integrators deal with this […]
InfoComm is a co-producer of ISE and their CEO, Dave Labuskes, was all smiles when I stopped him and convinced him to jump on camera with me today. In addition to projecting attendance, Dave talked about the success of ISE as well as their plans for InfoComm in 2016. It’s only a two-minute interview but […]
So did I. So, I asked Randy Klein. I sat down with Randy at ISE and he gave me the first, and only, video interview to explain why they decided to pull out of CEDIA and, more importantly, what their future HomeAV plans are. Randy is candid and direct in this interview where he shares […]
Canon is here launching a new 5000 lumen 4K projector as well as a plethora of other new projectors designed for corporate, education and digital signage applications. Canon European Marketing Specialist Colin Boyle takes me on a tour of their stand at ISE 2016 here in Amsterdam and what’s new — and, at the end, […]
dnp is packaging an optical 100” screen and a short-throw laser-phosphor 1-chip DLP projector in a packaged system called LaserPanel. LaserPanel is a prepackaged system that dnp is marketing towards AV integrators looking for a box-systems approach to selling against flat-panel systems in meeting rooms and schools. A 100″ Interactive LCD would cost well over […]
Medialon first exhibited at ISE 2015 to launch into the EMEA market. Medialon Overture is a cloud-based control system that allows you to control from one to hundreds of rooms, see real-time data from devices, and serve dynamically generated HTML interfaces (GUIs that are user-specific). The convergence of AV and IT is no longer just […]
Newline launched its 70” TRUTOUCH X7 last year at ISE and this year they’re debuting their X5 Interactive display with integrated videoconferencing, touch, wireless content transmission and whiteboarding. Newline Chief Marketing Officer Betty Lu demo’d both their new 50” X5 with their built-in interactive software as well as its X7 with third-party interactive touch software […]
What’s new with SMART? SMART debuted kapp last year but 2016 is all about kapp IQ and how it collaborates across devices. SMART VP of International Tom Yeates explains the company’s strategy behind SMART kapp and kapp IQ and its vision for collaboration in both the educational and corporate markets. For anyone wondering what’s up […]
InFocus has been spending money lately both on R&D as well as buying companies. In the past six months, they’ve acquired three companies and they’ve become way, way more than a projector or a Mondopad company. I caught up with InFocus Vice President of Marketing Brady Bruce, who filled me in on all the details […]
When I heard that a company literally branded a product with the name Flux Capacitor, I had to stop by and check it out — you may remember the movie BACK TO THE FUTURE? Eric Martin, senior systems engineer, at Just Add Power explained their Flux Capacitor as well as their their differentiation to the […]
I hadn’t heard of them either. Walking the aisle of the giant Hall 7 — known as the pro audio hall — at ISE, I stumbled across one of the coolest, if smallest, booths in there. It’s a company called TUTONDO. They have one of the nicest distributed audio systems (for the home and pro […]
Gary got a personal booth tour from BOSE Professional’s own Rob Kosman, their manager of Global Events and Applications. Many people don’t know that Bose is even in the commercial AV market and Rob, during the tour, demos a few interesting technologies that only Bose has including a very cool flexible array speaker system (both […]
