Did you watch the Wimbledon tournament or any World Cup games this year? Tennis, soccer, football, skiing and beach volleyball are just a few of the many sporting events live broadcasted on televisions around the world each day. Sporting events bring fans together in households, restaurants and bars for group cheering or friendly competition, giving […]
I spend a decent amount of time in airports and I can confidently share that there are two things that can be found at every airport in the world: a “port to air travel” and audiovisual installations. Ask any member of the rAVe team, they will share that I am like a kid in a […]
InfoComm 2018 is a month behind us, and over the last few weeks, people have been writing about the trends they saw at the show. We’ve seen blogs discussing increasing end-user attendance as well as several people’s lists of their favorite products or the ones they saw to be the most innovative or disruptive. There […]
Thank you for joining us for Part 4 in our series. So far, we’ve presented: Part 1 – The Key Players in AVL Design Part 2 – The Key Tools in AVL Design Part 3 – The Key Phases in AVL Design Now, we’ll finish our series by addressing the final phase of AVL Design […]
Back in 2015, Nest put out a video on its YouTube page called “Welcome To The Thoughtful Home.” It details all the dated appliances, devices, systems and “things” we all use daily and nightly in and around our homes that are rather time consuming, and designed from another area. The video itself goes so far […]
In the soundtrack of life, music matters. As far back as I can remember, music has always been a big deal in my life. It has always provided a most excellent, or as I like to say, a “double awesome” experience in everything that I do, whether it be work, play, explore, build, create, exercise, […]
InfoComm is the largest, most exciting event in North America focused on the pro-AV industry, with 1,000 exhibitors, thousands of products, and 44,000 attendees from 110 countries. I had the pleasure of attending this year, and it was a blast! The following is a list (not in any particular order) of my favorite booths, […]
As we talked about in my last post about learning how to program, object orientedness is the name of the game when it comes to writing scaleable code that’s easy to update. Break your code up into little chunks that you can reuse. Figure out how to do it once, and you should (hopefully) never […]
“The Internet of things is a network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances and other items embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators and network connectivity which enables these objects to connect and exchange data.” Each “thing” is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to inter-operate within the existing internet infrastructure. If this […]
When you deal with the public you get to meet all kinds of people, for better or for worse. Most people you deal with are average, and as a result not necessarily memorable. Others are more memorable, and not always in a good way. I had a new client who wanted a retrofit project: a […]
Imagine you were walking the floor of the Las Vegas Convention Center at InfoComm 2018. You walk up to a random person without looking at their badge and shake their hand. What are the odds you just shook hands with an integrator? A. 50 percent B. 40 percent C. 30 percent D. 20 percent If […]
In Part 1 of our AVL Design series, we listed and summarized the key players in AVL design. Then in Part 2, we shared about the key tools that those key players may interact with and use. For Part 3, we will move forward to discuss the important phases of the design process. Let’s begin […]
Author and educator Stephen R. Covey, probably most well-known for his book “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” often said in his presentations that: “Most People do not Listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Think about the last meeting you attended. I don’t care what the meeting […]
I have been reading some people’s reviews of InfoComm and I have to admit, I’m a little jealous that I no longer get much time to walk the floor while I’m at the show. Being a bit of an AV Geek, I miss seeing new products, looking for new trends, and connecting dots in a […]
There’s an advertising catchphrase that’s probably dates back to the dawn of advertising: “We service what we sell!” You’ll see it appended as a tagline everywhere from car dealerships to general merchandise retailers. Last week my kitchen fridge died. It was only seven years old. I say “kitchen fridge” to differentiate it from the downstairs […]
By Erik Byer Guest Blogger for Tony the AV Guy & AV Bend In part 1 of our AVL Design series, we listed and summarized The Key Players in AVL Design including the architect, the consultants, the engineers, an owner’s representative, and a general contractor. And depending on the complexity of your AVL project, these […]
Whether by selection or default, if you find yourself in the role of “leader” of your HOW AV team, you need to carefully consider both the methods you use to communicate with your team and the message(s) you are sending — spoken and subliminal. One of the most consistent problems we encounter with HOW AV […]
By Ron DeVoe Total Marketing, LLC A little time has now passed since InfoComm 2018 turned off the lights. I hope that the sore feet have un-throbbed, the voice has lost its hoarseness and the bloodshot eyes have cleared. I attended my first NAVA a “couple” of years ago and I remembered how exhilarating that […]
With the new branding, AVIXA appears to have picked up a new motto, one which many of us have seen on the various promotional items for sale in the AVIXA store at InfoComm: “Together, we can change the way people experience the world.” Those who know me I believe in language, and believe in having […]
Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. Hang around long enough in this business and you’ll see a lot of changes, and a lot of technologies come and go. Mostly, you’ll see them go. Nothing lasts forever, but some technologies die off faster than others. The one common thread in all the jobs I’ve held […]
By Erik Beyer Guest Blogger for Tony the AV Guy & AV Bend Whether it’s a major project around your home or a major project you have been assigned to manage at work, when it comes time to find people and companies to get the job done, the choices and process can seem overwhelming. The […]
We all have things that we hold dear. And often, the things that we believe are so internalized that we take them for granted, assuming that everyone else knows what we do. Take baking bread, for example. When leading training I often use that as an example of a basic skill. The thing about baking […]
I just finished up teaching CTS prep for Avixa during the three-day classes before the InfoComm show. Not only was this a fun and a rewarding experience… I also came away with a new challenge. Several of my fellow instructors encouraged me to step up my certification game and get both my CTS-D and my […]
Editor’s note: Joel didn’t write the title of this column. I have always laughed at marketing “buzz terms” as used in our industry. In fact, I once devoted an entire column to them (Buzzards in the AV Industry, July 2010). Except today, I am going to use one myself: Breathtaking. It is simply the only term […]
There is an enormous amount of great new technology here this year. And you can choose to get it from fewer and fewer companies all the time. One of the things that I have commented on in rAVe for several years is the difference between the way the AV market works in North America and […]
I was participating in a social media chat the other day when the subject of AV as a Service (AVaaS) came up. For those not familiar with the subject, I’ve written a little about it in the past, and if you’d like a little background feel free to click here or here. During the chat, someone […]
As we all know, the IT world is converging with the AV world more and more every day. For most of us, this is quite exciting. For others, this can be daunting. In facilities where the IT and AV world are working together, if something goes wrong whom do you call? If you don’t have […]
Something that always fascinates me is how new technology creeps into our lives without even noticing. Several years ago, Google put out Google Cardboard. It was an impressive piece of technology, considering it was free to most people. Slowly, other virtual reality devices have come out, but in my opinion none have really hit the […]
By Norman Rosenberg Let’s face it; AV dealers have their own lingo. And that’s a good thing… until it isn’t. As I mentioned in my last blog post, working relations between AV dealers and drapery workrooms can be, well, compromised at times. This is because many times AV dealers are using words that lack meaning […]
If you haven’t already been following the conversation about selling AV software and services, I encourage you to catch up on my last couple blogs where I lay out the three main issues that I believe are stalling the transition from hardware-based businesses, as well as some specifics on business models that may play a […]
Just two days following one of my most popular blogs, Barco’s Overture Dilemma, Barco announced exactly what I suggested inside the blog — they’ve integrated Overture into ClickShare! In a blog post from ClickShare Product Manager Steven Lampshear, shrouded as an educational piece about how ClickShare can make meetings simpler, near the bottom, is a section […]
There are going to be moments when we all just feel dumb and clumsy…argh! And it feels so awful. For me, this photo really brings those feelings to life. Whether it’s an ice cream cone or the latest technology, many people feel inept, gawky, and awkward when handling something potentially fragile and easy to drop. […]
