Updated: Nov. 11, 2020 Most (and pretty much all, as we update this story in November 2020) industry events past Q1 2020 shifted or changed in light of COVID-19. rAVe pulled together a list of AV or related events and trade shows on our radar and included their event statuses and/or what happened with the […]
Welcome to my 20th Kayye’s Krystal Ball! I know, I was shocked too. Twenty years of this. But I love writing this annual predictions article. If you’re a regular reader, you already know this, but for those who don’t, my Kayye’s Krystal Ball piece is an annual article where I not only tell you what […]
Disclaimer: This is one of those topics that seems to require periodic reminders and refreshers. Why this is the case is one of the great mysteries of the AV life, but we seem to lose sight of the core principals reasonably regularly, and thus — the following is your scheduled reminder that the foundational rules […]
While the coronavirus certainly decimated attendance at Integrated Systems Europe 2020 — coming in right at around 52,000 attendees — exhibitors were thrilled with those who showed. NOT ONE exhibitor complained to me. Quantity was down, but the quality was up. Way up. This actually could have been the best thing ever to happen to […]
On the third day of ISE last week, with little fanfare, Barco announced its 2019 earnings report while also commenting on how they think 2020 will play out. As we have very few publicly traded companies of this magnitude in the commercial AV space, I always appreciate Barco’s earnings report as it’s become a bellwether […]
In December, I was a panelist for a session of the HETMA conference. I can not recall the exact conversation that led to us discussing getting cold calls from vendors. Several of us who are “customers” replied how much we dislike getting the cold calls or emails. What struck me most about the conversation and […]
By Aviad Cohen Founder, Comeet I’ve been a fan of AV-over-IP ever since I first worked with the technology — but the number of vendors and different solutions out in the market make it very hard for customers to choose. How could an AV investment be protected if there is no standard? You can be […]
Oregon-based Biamp will announce at ISE 2020 here in Amsterdam, that it has purchased Huddle Room Technology (HRT). In case you haven’t heard of HRT, it makes a wireless sharing and collaboration product (think Barco ClickShare) but its version includes wireless USB, as well (think Barco ClickShare Conference). However, the HRT HuddleHub has one wireless sharing […]
At ISE 2020 in Amsterdam in stand 15-B250, the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS) ProAV Working Group introduced Internet Protocol Media Experience (IPMX), a set of open standards and specifications designed to enable carriage of compressed and uncompressed video, audio and data over IP networks. IPMX addresses the ProAV industry’s need for a single […]
AV marketing professionals spend countless hours pursuing more reader likes, more engagement, more content, more metrics and frankly more of the same in a never-ending hype cycle. Social media is merely another function where marketers are stuck in tactical due to feeling the pressure to produce something — anything — in order to somehow drive […]
In a deal that is incredibly strategic for Midwich, the UK-based company announced this week that it’s purchased ProAV distributor Starin, headquartered in Chesterton, Indiana. Starin had revenue of about $200 million in 2019. Although the official announcement didn’t say how much Midwich paid for Starin, rAVe has learned the deal is worth under $50 million. […]
UC Workspace’s new UCC product is called WEAV; more information is near the bottom of this product announcement but read this first to understand its positioning. UC Workspace jumped on the scene a few years ago with a universal UX for all collaboration boards. Called Quicklaunch, it’s the maiden product of UC Workspace that allows […]
Like most folks out there, I spent many years not understanding what UX (User eXperience) was and, more importantly, what the difference between UI (User Interface) and UX was. Over time I came to realize that what was being commonly delivered as a UI in the AV world did not translate to good customer experience. […]
AVI-SPL and Whitlock have jointly announced an intention to merge (technically, it’s a “definitive agreement to merge”) — both will be held by portfolio company, Marlin Equity Partners (a global investment firm with over $6.7 billion of capital under management). As you likely know, this means the second-largest AV integration firm is merging with the third-largest — jointly creating […]
By Futuresource Consulting As the ProAV sector gears up for ISE 2020, opening its doors in just a few short weeks, Futuresource Consulting identifies the key trends and technologies likely to emerge from the world’s largest exhibition for AV and systems integration professionals. Brought to you by the professional AV team at Futuresource, this pre-show […]
Help me! How do I ? Where do I? These and a lot of similar questions were the core of the responses we gathered during and after the seminar session on “How to Source and Purchase Equipment for a HOW AV System,” presented during the WFX Conference & Expo in September 2019, held in Orlando, […]
By: Morgan Alley Account Manager, Almo Professional A/V We millennials sure love to ruin everything, don’t we? First, we came in with participation trophies, we moved on to tank the economy and now we have come for sports! *Queue diabolical laughter* According to this Reuter’s article, global esports revenues will rise above one billion dollars by […]
Each level of the classic Mario game would end with our hero having battled through hoards of foes to rescue his beloved, only to be greeted with the now-familiar message that his princess is in another castle. The inherent sexism of the princess-rescue trope aside, this is what I think when I look at the […]
At the turn of every year, I often think of blogging about the big stories or products of the past year, or the promising products of the coming year. I have never written about my resolution for the new year, as they are often personal and not business- or AV-related. However, this year is different. […]
For this article, I wanted to step away from AV and all that fun stuff and talk about a far bigger issue, which is communications. One thing that became very clear to me very quickly when I moved from being a long term “AV guy” to being an end user is that we have some […]
A couple months ago, I saw a post from Liberty AV on social media. It showed a picture of a device that seemed to wirelessly share a laptop to a larger display. There are a lot of devices that allow someone to share their screen wirelessly to a display — Barco ClickShare, Crestron Air Media, […]
Happy New Year, friends. I’ve been too absent from these spaces as I’ve left one job, settled into a new one and let the rhythms of life get in the way. Let’s take it as a New Year’s resolution that I’ll be back, with more to share. As we’re talking about resolutions, we’ll start with […]
Collaboration had to be one of the most-used buzzwords of the last half decade. It’s been used to describe everything from wireless screen sharing to interactive flat panels to teleconferencing to cloud-based file sharing apps. Marketers LOVE to slap “collaboration” on their boxes and press releases. I even heard a story about a sales rep slapping […]
In April I wrote a blog about HETMA, a new association formed by Joe Way and BC Hatchett. Check out the blog to understand more about the association and why it was formed. In this blog, I want to draw your attention to the first-ever virtual conference that HETMA hosted December 9-11, 2019. By all […]
CES 2020 kicked off with some exciting announcements from LG. Last year we were all blown away by LG’s incredible OLED roll-up screens, so this year LG are taking it one step further with a roll-down version that extends from the ceiling, similar to a motorized projection screen. LG also announced all-new gaming displays and […]
2019 was like no other year I can recall. While the AV-economy experienced explosive growth, at the same time, a few big brands nearly disappeared, namely InFocus and Polycom. How can the Kleenex of projectors, InFocus, literally divest themselves of projectors? Well, it happened and, that happened to be our biggest story of 2019. In […]
If you are one of my readers (thank you) or if you are one of the many people in the rental industry that I am constantly calling for advice, you know that I have spent most of the last 18 months designing and implementing an “experience center” for a global manufacturer. The experience center type […]
Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. It’s not just a catchy Mazda slogan, but it’s also the tale of the last few projects I’ve worked on. In a world where we hear many that like to complain software and hardware companies are talking to customers directly and that the scourge of “good enough” is ruining our businesses, I […]
Anyone who has ever sat in on a project meeting with end users, purchasers, IT, corporate, architects (and all the other professionals likely to be at the table) knows that perspectives are often significantly distorted. How? They’re distorted by either too much or too little understanding of the technologies involved. In this hypothetical project meeting, […]
I hope everyone is having a great holiday season! It’s the day after Christmas, which means for many of us, yesterday was the culmination of a long build-up of anticipation. Planning family gatherings, curating the holiday meal menus, baking cookies, making fudge and braving the web and the local retailers to find that perfect gift […]
This is part four in a four-part series Christopher Gillespie has been writing about the relationship between end users and integrators, particularly with regards to corporations or educational institutions that have a large number of conference rooms. See part one, his introduction, here, part two on the AV bill of materials here and part three, […]
In the previous installment, we took an overview of estimating and examined some of the basic concepts. Building off of that, it’s time to dig in with a little more detail and provide some context about selecting which methods to apply when you need to develop an estimate. One estimation technique I didn’t go into […]
