As a manager, I’m often faced with the question of what requirements we should put into a job description when we are ready to hire a person. Experience is always the easiest one to figure out. You think about how senior the position is and then you base years of experience or type of experiences […]
With fresh eyes on amazing new products and services presented over the last few tradeshows (InfoComm, DSE, ISE) so far this year, the rAVe Agency has seen some truly remarkable technology coming out of the audiovisual (AV) industry. But while AV technology is undoubtedly impressive, the way AV products are promoted and advertised has mostly […]
Update: Please see below a response from Eiki to this story. Things took a turn for the worse on Friday as Eiki laid off another round of greatness, including their 15-year general manager, Steve Rubery, and, according to one source, 50% of their tech and sales support teams. In addition, their dealer network was notified […]
For the past several years in higher education, the active learning classroom has grown in popularity. With these active learning classrooms comes an increase in technology. Many of the classrooms have multiple displays and multiple ways of getting your content onto those displays. These may consist of flat panels, projectors and interactive whiteboards. The expectation […]
So after about 17 years working as an integrator, as a rental staging guy, and as a manufacturer, I got my first job working as an end user. I figured that based on my background and experience that this would be a no-brainer. I mean how hard can it be? I know all this stuff. […]
By James Kirby Industry Analyst, Futuresource Consulting Yet further consolidation has hit the professional audio markets, with Biamp’s acquisition of the Community and Apart loudspeaker brands. This follows a consolidation trend which Futuresource has being reporting on for some time, with pro audio moving further away from the independent, family-run industry it once was. This announcement […]
Shure, Inc. today announced that it has filed a lawsuit against ClearOne in the U.S. Court for the District of Delaware. The lawsuit alleges ClearOne’s BMA CT product, launched in February of 2019, infringes Shure’s U.S. Patent No. 9,565,493 (“‘493 Patent”). The ‘493 patent, which protects the architecture of Shure’s ceiling array microphone offering powerful acoustic benefits with flexible mounting options and minimal aesthetic […]
Last week was an eventful one for Zoom. In less than twenty-four hours, we had: The revelation of multiple security vulnerabilities in the popular Zoom conferencing software A [now updated] defensive statement by Zoom, dismissing concerns related to same Public outcry A reversal of course and introduction of an immediate patch for one vulnerability and […]
By Paul Konikowski, CTS-D Last week was a big week for cybersecurity news pertaining to the audiovisual industry. Vulnerabilities in Zoom’s Mac desktop client were disclosed, hijacking flaws in Logitech’s Unifying USB dongles hit the mainstream and Draper, Inc. announced that its computer systems and communications networks were being held hostage by ransomware. Let’s take […]
By now, you’ve probably heard the news that Rashid Skaf-led Biamp is buying Audioprof Group International, which is the parent company of Community Loudspeakers (based in Philadelphia) and Apart Audio (based in Antwerp, Belgium) from 3d Investors of Gent, Belgium. Bruce Howze founded the company in 1968, which was first named Community Light and Sound. […]
The AV/IT industry has a problem, one of its own making and one that is getting worse by the micro-second. There are just too many conflicting and confusing “standards” and best practices. Between those created by trade groups, those developed by technical associations or technology consortia (worse yet as these tend to be proprietary) and […]
Over the years I’ve been in this industry (this was my 33rd InfoComm — 34th annual show with InfoComm/AVIXA though as my first, back in 1987, the show was called COMTEC — before the name was changed to InfoComm in 1988), the show has evolved from a technology-based show to a product-based show and, more […]
For those of you who don’t know me well, I am pretty active in networking with other AV professionals, technology managers, designers, content producers, etc If there is one thing most of them agree on, it’s that doing a proper needs analysis is the only way to assure that our systems meet all of our […]
See part one of Anthony’s Planned Obsolescence column here. Since planned obsolescence for pro AV gear harms sales, service contracts and product support, the future for the AV industry may be headed toward the “as a service” model borrowed from the software industry. Should there be standards for planned obsolescence? Even the IT industry, with […]
In my last article, I spoke of the need to design the spaces we deal with not by thinking about the tech stack, but instead from the perspective of an experience. But in order to do this, we need to understand WHOSE experience we are referring to. For the most part, when we design a […]
I’d be surprised if Epson’s real-time art exhibit inside their booth didn’t win an InfoComm 2019 award. I’m serious. But, even if you’re not into digital art, you’ll appreciate how they were projecting it off-axis at about 160-degrees — on fabric! It was stunning. But they also had the entire DSE booth inside the InfoComm […]
By the time I returned to my office after being at InfoComm all last week, I had a dozen or more emails or messages from people asking how we pulled-off the LG Booth tour. I was perplexed. How do I respond? With a camera and a mic? Ah, but I had misunderstood the question! LG, […]
Extron just introduced the DMP 128 FlexPlus series of compact Dante Digital Matrix Processors, featuring twelve FlexInput channels with full DSP, including AEC and Dante connectivity, in only a half rack space. With a mix matrix, a USB audio interface and analog compatibility, the DMP 128 FlexPlus provides the ability to easily connect and route […]
From Friday’s AVIXA Foundation Career Day, welcoming students to the show, to the more than 40 percent of registered attendees under the age of 40, InfoComm 2019, June 8-14 in Orlando, continued to draw the next generation of audiovisual professionals, as well as a broad cross-section of engaged AV customers from higher education, hospitality, retail […]
Semtech Corporation today announced its new AVX chipset series — basically, think HDBaseT or, we guess, what everyone wishes HDBaseT was — a consistent and standard “send” and “receive” platform where all the participants worked together. Semtech, with AVX, simultaneously transmits uncompressed-quality 4K-video, multi-channel audio, Gigabit Ethernet, USB and other control signals over CatX or […]
Video games have long been considered by “adults” to be a way for “children” to waste their time. However, over the past several years, as games have become more interactive and team based, they have become more mainstream. Today, watching others play video games is also a popular activity. According to Wikipedia, the 2017 League […]
We are excited to announce the winners of our 2019 Readers’ Choice Awards. Our awards are different than ANY other industry awards and the stats speak for themselves: We had over 88,000 votes for the final awards! The nominations for the awards came SOLELY from you — the AV community. We have a system […]
For all of the massive technology improvements and innovations within the AV industry, there is irony in the faster obsolescence of digital equipment compared to the analog age of AV, leaving customers vulnerable to unexpected end-of-life notifications of planned obsolescence at the discretion of the manufacturer and reducing the life-span of digital AV gear. In […]
A few weeks ago, I sat in on a meeting with the head of global real estate for an innovative company here in California. He was amazingly generous in sharing his strategy on how he approached developing properties for his company, and I took three pages of notes over that 20 minute period. I think […]
By and large, our industry has four players… we have manufacturers, we have dealers/integrators and consultants (let’s be honest though, they are really two sides of a coin) and then we have the end user.Twenty years ago, a user would come to a consultant or a dealer and say… “I need a room built out!” […]
Last month, I spent some time in this column standing on one of my traditional soapboxes, namely that the AV rental and staging company has come to a point in the history of our industry where it becomes necessary to do some reinvention of our products and services. In my usual roundabout way, I came […]
Plasmonic metasurfaces are being developed for use in future flat panel displays. These are basically scalable electrochromic nanopixels using plasmonics and their color gamut and high spatial resolution blows away even the best OLEDs we have today — by a factor of between 400 and 1000. Right now, according to a research paper published in […]
Last year, Crestron was the focus of some cyber activists who found vulnerabilities in Crestron touch controllers that could theoretically allow someone to use touch screens to spy on the person in the same room. This was covered in a class at a hacktivist conference called DEFCON and subsequently was written up in WIRED Magazine. […]
One of my guilty pleasures is organization consultant Marie Kondo’s Netflix show, Tidying Up. Even those who’ve not seen her know of her, have seen the jokes about discarding those things that don’t “spark joy,” and have heard something about her growing influence. As I make my return to the design consulting world and leave […]
The city of San Francisco, via its board of supervisors voted yesterday to ban using facial-recognition technology. The actual ordinance deals specifically with city governmental organizations and divisions, but it will have long-lasting ramifications that could easily (and quickly) ben emulated all over the country. Designed to protect the average-guy/gal member of the community from […]
SnapAV and Control4 Corporation today announced that they have entered into a “merger” agreement whereby SnapAV will acquire Control4 in an all-cash transaction for $23.91 per share in cash, representing an aggregate value of approximately $680 million. The Control4 stock last traded $17.12 per share so the shareholders are likely to take this buyout. Although […]
In the last month, I’ve had the opportunity to listen and learn a lot about the modern workplace and the principles behind its design. The philosophy goes well beyond the phrase “open” and really capitalizes on the idea of activity based working and creating spaces that allow for independent work, team collaboration, large team meetings, […]
