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CEDIA Expo 2021 From Home: the On-Demand Content

CEDIA Expo 2021 virtual coverage

If you’re like me, you couldn’t attend CEDIA Expo 2021 in person. Though the show was smaller than we’d hoped, there are still ways to enjoy whatever show floor coverage is available from the comfort of home. We here at rAVe have uploaded video coverage of the exhibitor booths, and you can find those videos and other news on our CEDIA Expo 2021 microsite. Curious as to how to navigate the page? View our how-to article.

That said, rAVe’s coverage of the show floor focuses on exhibitor booths. What about viewing the informational sessions CEDIA Expo 2021 has on demand? Lucky for you, I’ve picked three select sessions to write about and made mention of other recorded sessions that I enjoyed as someone new to the industry (and new to CEDIA!). I hope you enjoy these as much as I did.

Home Office Design Post-COVID-19

Designing the home office is more important now than it has ever been — we all know this. David Danto of IMCCA and Aurangzeb Khan of Jabra took to the Innovation Hub stage to discuss how to take WFH to the professional level. All of us who have had to adapt to the WFH home model have been through many stages of working at home: The Old “Normal,” Lockdown, Improving Remote Work and Hybrid Working. We went through these phases in rapid succession due to the pandemic, but we also saw changes in our environments because of this. For example, in the housing market, more houses and apartments will be equipped with and advertised as having WFH capabilities. What’s more, manufacturers have specifically designed new products for WFH with the intention and understanding that many of us won’t see an end to this trend any time soon.

The trends within the specialized and equipped WFH office include many things, specifically: good lighting, multiple displays, headset or hands-free audio capabilities, bandwidth, webcams, good seating and a comfortable desk. Much of this session dived into the importance of each of these necessities and how different products meet these demands differently for different people. For example, not everyone likes the same hands-free headset. Not everyone wants one specific type of webcam. And, importantly, people have different work styles. Understanding your preferences in both work style and tool selection can vastly improve your WFH office.

Good guidelines for getting to know what you’d like in your WFH office also include asking good questions: how important is it for a remote employee to project a professional image? Why are multiple displays important to have? What qualifies as “good” audio? What are the specifications of the home office camera that people should pay attention to? All of these questions are good starting points and lead to a better WFH environment, whether it be completely remote, hybrid or somewhere in between.

I enjoyed this session because it is useful to everyone. All of us in the AV industry, from manufacturers and integrators to end users and audiovisual fans, most likely need a home office to work these days. I recommend this session if you or a loved one would like to know about the latest design trends, useful tools and newest tech trends.

Grow Your Business 10X with an Abundance Mindset

This CEDIA Talks session was hosted by Rich Green of Rich Green Design and discussed the topic of an abundance mindset versus a scarcity mindset. The scarcity mindset can hold us back and prevent us from achieving fast and permanent growth in our companies. Often times this is caused by comparison, but instead of thinking pessimistically about the scarcity of customers and profitability, Rich encourages viewers to dare to think abundantly. Much of Rich Green’s discussion builds on the ideas around Abundance based on the books and thought processes of Peter Diamandis and Ray Kurzweil.

He dives into a concept of 10% vs 10x (times). Many companies know it is hard to meet the challenge of “growing their company by 10%.” Instead, flip it around and dare to say, “We’re going to increase our profitability by 10 times.” The answer to doing this is called Exponential Thinking and using Exponential Technologies.

Just what is Exponential Thinking or the Exponential Mindset? Humans naturally think linearly, but this is not the case. Technology causes change to be exponential because tech grows upon itself and accelerates improvement. According to Peter Diamandis’ Abundance360 website, there are six benefits of an Abundance Mindset. These include understanding that the world is becoming more abundant, not resenting missed opportunities, not fearing the future, viewing competitors as potential collaborators, reinventing business through a digital lens and being a leader who conveys the hope of a compelling future.

Rich also discusses how fighting off a scarcity mindset allows for various stages of growth in a business. The essence of Exponential Growth also employs a concept called the “6 D’s Progression.” These concepts are already happening in business and can be used to advance growth further. These concepts include Digitized (digitized media and platforms), Deceptive (we think in linear terms but the growth is exponential), Disruptive (new emerging products can disrupt the market), Demonetized (money is less important in comparison to hardware and software), Dematerialized (physical products are becoming software) and Democratized (once something is digitized, more people have access for wider community usage).

This session gets into the nitty-gritty of scarcity vs. abundance mindset. I really valued this session and the deeper explanations it gave about the ways you can apply this to business.

You Are Connected. But, Are You Secure?

Daniel Pascua of guardDog takes a dive into cybersecurity and why we should rethink it. Cybersecurity should be simple, so how do we make it this way?

The landscape of cybersecurity is changing, and attack numbers on data and personal information are increasing. Due to the increase in hybrid and WFH spaces, employees are taking home corporate laptops. Unprotected WiFi or even children playing on these laptops after work exposes data and information to potential hackers. WFH and hybrid models also mean that employees will often work on wide-open platforms, such as in coffee shops or public spaces. This only opens the gate for more hacks and data leaks. So how do we prevent these? How do we stay connected but stay secure?

The problem is not that we don’t know these things are happening; it’s knowing how to stop it. The lists of problems include but are not limited to increased sophistication in attacks, increased number of attacks, ineffective security features and an increase in the volume of vulnerabilities and exploits. The need for experts in trying to control hackers has increased rapidly and over 20,000 cybersecurity products exist on the market today. There are cybersecurity attacks every 30 seconds today. It can take up to 6 months to identify who caused and attack and up to 9 months to contain an attack.

The idea behind simplifying cybersecurity is retraining employees in cybersecurity so they are better prepared to know how to handle an attack if it happens. Companies like guardDog use affordable AI countermeasure deployment that is faster than a human. They also try to get in the mind of a hacker to think like them to better understand how and why someone hacks information.

This presentation was an eye-opening discussion on the reality of cybersecurity attacks. Though it does go into the abilities of a specific product, it is a great session on cybersecurity and the pressures it places on the safety of data and personal information.

Key Takeaways

The key takeaways from this post (also a TL;DR) are the following: yes, it is worth it to view the product and exhibitor videos we have of the CEDIA Expo 2021 show floor. And yes, it is worth it to register and view the available on-demand videos of many of the information and education sessions that CEDIA put on. Though the show was different than we expected, we can still enjoy a lot of content from the safety of our homes. We at THE rAVe Agency will continue to cover shows, both in-person and virtually, for you to enjoy. So, sit back, relax and enjoy some great show floor content.

All of the above content comes from CEDIA Expo 2021’s Connect webpage. To view these sessions on the CEDIA Expo site, you can register and log in here.

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