I can’t think of two separate specialists on the jobsite whose work is more closely linked than the AV pros and the electricians. They’re so closely linked because even for small installations AV pros need to communicate with the electrician to specify locations and load capacity for the outlets that service their equipment. And with […]
I love writing this annual predictions article. If you’re a regular reader, you already know this but for those that don’t, my Kayye’s Krystal Ball piece is an annual article where I not only tell you what I think is going to happen in the AV market for the upcoming year, but I also go […]
I am fairly involved in the worlds of virtual reality, robotics and artificial intelligence and have a strong interest in how they will alter the future of our industry. Our equipment is already being built in robotic factories, using artificial intelligence. But before we push ahead into a future where our “help” is robotic instead […]
Update: We just heard from Christie, who told us that although it’s true the original Christie MicroTiles are being retired, an all-new version that’s “smaller, brighter and faster to install” will be announced at ISE next week in Amsterdam. Stay tuned for more information! I just received an official notice from Christie Digital, today, that […]
If you’ve been in sales for a long time, you’ll have read a lot of books and articles on selling. And if you keep track of such things, you’ll notice that the majority of the time, the content focuses on cold calling: How to do it, and how to make it work. Conversely, there’s less […]
This year at ISE, AVIXA will present a conference called, “What’s Next In Higher Ed.” AVIXA has presented unique sessions like this for the higher ed attendees of ISE for a couple of years, but this year looks like the best one AVIXA has presented yet. It has several well known educational technologists and will […]
Welcome to Technologist In Bars Talking AV! Come hang out with me and my guest Joe Way at GameCraft Brewing. We’ll have a drink, eat some spicy chicken, play Jenga… and if there’s still time left, maybe we’ll talk about Joe’s role in AV as well as his new book Producing Worship. Check out GameCraft […]
There are 15 halls at ISE 2019 in Amsterdam 5-8 February and show management has worked year after year to try to find a way to help visitors, well, visit. It’s LITERALLY impossible to go to the show and stay all four days and see the entire show floor — impossible In fact, that’s why […]
This holiday season I gifted a small, simple smf useful electronic device that can play music, control your home, integrate to other smart devices very easily, assist you throughout you day and night, and so much more through the power of the internet. It’s offered in a variety of colors, can be bold or blend […]
There’s no doubt in my mind that 2019 will be the year we look back on that the industry transitioned from signal routing and distribution via HDMI and so-called “digital-media” to AV-over-IP. Certainly not the entire industry — just most of it. But buyer, specifier, installer and designer beware. Not all AV-over-IP is the same, […]
I have tried to avoid writing one of these blogs. I resisted the temptation to wrap up my top moments of 2018. I stayed clear of making tech predictions for 2019. I even managed not to comment on others’ top moment lists and predictions. All in all, I was doing pretty well… until yesterday. Yesterday I […]
Lately I’ve spotted what I believe to be either a new audio trend — or perhaps it’s always been this way, and I just wasn’t paying enough attention to notice. More often I’ve seen record players be the music player of choice, or live musical entertainment with actual instruments offering up harmonic vibrations for the […]
We recently had a email thread at my institution discussing whether people should use microphones as a standard at all meetings. The discussion started as a result of people having a hard time hearing during faculty meetings. Interestingly, this discussion took a different direction that previous ones had. It was focused on accessibility and how […]
The scene: Project manager training, major integration firm. Dramatis Persona: A project manager, new to the wonderful world of commercial AV A veteran of the AV industry The Dialog: “I’m worried about this bid we just won. There’s no way we can do all of this.” “Why, what’s wrong? It looked like pretty standard conference […]
For 2019 I thought I’d flip the script on my Selling AV podcast by introducing a new format. In 2019, I’ll be crowdsourcing your AV sales questions and asking what your biggest challenges are. Then I’ll take those questions and answer them Selling AV style via audio in under five minutes. Once the podcast is […]
Last month I asked if the AV Industry was getting soft. I hope that it is… because it should be. In a time when technology is advancing at an alarming rate and becoming more and more advanced, it may seem counterintuitive to tell companies that they should hire less technically minded people, but that is […]
Engineers invent and innovate. Products are created. Marketing promotes the products. Sales try to, well, sell the products. That’s the way it’s been done in product development for ages including in the audiovisual industry (AVL). And that’s the past. The future is the merging of Product Development and Marketing. Whereas the linear path described above […]
Scott Brinker, editor at chiefmartec.com, better known as the Chief Marketing Technologist blogger, said in a recent post, “The funny and frustrating truth is that organizations change (far) more slowly than technology.” In fact, the speed of technology uptake (or change) is usually a fraction of the speed at which the technology is actually evolving. […]
One buzzword/acronym that gets thrown around a lot is CRM, short for customer relationship management. It can be a large, unwieldy concept and what CRM looks like for a business can be a lot like the parable of the five blind people, each trying to describe an elephant, by only touching one part of it. […]
December 24th, 2018 Orange County, CA Just in time for Christmas, AV innovator and inventor, Mark Coxon, AKA @AVPhenom, has introduced a disruptive new electronic gift-giving service. “I saw two trends converging in the marketplace”, says Phenom. “First, young people are consuming a large amount of YouTube content and Twitch content. Secondly, there has been an […]
Well, here we are again. The holidays are upon us, so it is time to pour a glass of, well, whatever a sales rep sent me for the holidays and summon my internal psychic. Each year at this time I write a final column for the year, summing up what I think the year has […]
In years past, building a smart home has been expensive and complex, to say the least. Now however, with the rapid increase of technologies that allow devices to communicate and interact with others well, in the form of the silly/well known by you, acronym, IoT (Internet of Things), this cost has been drastically reduced and […]
I was fortunate enough to cross paths with the senior editor of a well-respected technology magazine while I was over in London last week. It was a far-ranging discussion, but on the flight back, I continued to think about the question he’d put to me regarding software that enables collaboration when we are together and […]
2018 has been an interesting and eventful year in the AV and collaboration industries. We’ve seen a number of mergers and acquisitions, rebranding of products, new players big and small entering the market and an avalanche of new products. So what does 2019 have in store for us? I don’t have a crystal ball, but […]
By Donald Guzauckas, Jr. Vice President, HB Live, Inc. I recently had the opportunity to enjoy a round of golf with some colleagues at a course that featured young caddies. Having been a caddie for several years when I was a teen, I immediately harkened back to my own experience. I was introduced to the […]
We’ve been covering, tracking and following the digital signage market for well over 10-years now. And, it’s gone from good, to great, to fantastic to incredible. In those 10+ years, there’s never been a negative sales year and, in most years, the digital signage market has enjoyed double-digit growth. It’s grown from a few giant […]
My readers will know that I tend to focus on topics related to collaboration, user-interaction, and generally building products that help us work together. You may be surprised to learn that a significant amount of my time is spent thinking about security. As devices become increasingly attached to our enterprise networks – those same devices must be […]
Throughout my entire career, I have been an advocate of using technology to help educate. When I was in college, training to be a teacher, I began thinking about this and then my first job out of college was helping teachers integrate and use tech in the classroom. That was a long time ago and […]
Digital assistants are all the rage these days and they seem to live in so many places like your car radio, watches, smart phones, tablet, computers and the very popular “smart speaker” category. The smart speaker category has grown rapidly and has seen adoption from major brand names in the audio and tech industries — […]
For those of you that aren’t on Twitter or don’t follow me there, I am pretty active on that platform as @avphenom. Most of my tweets deal with AV in some capacity, whether I’m participating in an online chat session, playing an industry hashtag game, or sharing a blog, podcast, or perhaps general business intel that […]
Have you noticed the dramatic rise over the last two-plus years in corporate AV/IT client demand for collaborative technology, huddle spaces and similar functionality? It’s a hot buzz word in the upper echelons of corporate management and HR departments. The thought process for most companies goes something like this: Senior management decides that: “We need […]
Last month, we discussed the Oculus Connect Developers Convention, a meeting I had recently attended in virtual reality. This month, I thought we would address the effectiveness of meeting in virtual reality. First, let’s discuss the event itself, which was the annual conference for Oculus virtual reality developers. For those of you who have been […]
