rePLAY 2021 is officially over, and we had a blast bringing you coverage on the LAVNCH platform, and we’ve got a review of Day Two for you! We’re so excited to bring you three days of content, including InfoComm 2021 coverage, playing THE GAME, words from sponsors and so much more. If you missed Day One’s piece, find it here, and check out Day Two’s recap right here. Here’s a quick rundown from Day Two of rePLAY.

On The Road Again

Due to COVID-19 and its variants, many companies chose not to attend InfoComm 2021 and instead take to the road to showcase their products and latest updates. Companies such as Crestron, Sony, Planar and Legrand AV recently announced roadshows. Crestron’s next tour will be in Boston, Chicago and Long Beach, California. Sony also has a tour coming up, and those stops will be in Minneapolis, Boston, New York, Tampa, Atlanta, Dallas and Los Angeles. Planar will be in Denver, Washington, D.C., Chicago, New York, Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and Los Angeles as well. You can find more information on these tours and their dates and locations on ravepubs.com.

“A lot of companies decided to do these tours because they felt like they could control the intimacy better and not deal with COVID,” Gary said. Megan said she got to attend one of the Sony stops and felt they monitored and handled the event very well. This discussion prompted a chat on the future of national shows, and Gary is sure these shows won’t go away. In fact, he, Steph and Megan are all extremely excited for ISE 2022 — even though it is notoriously hard to navigate!

Megan A. Dutta — Unscripted

During each day of rePLAY, both Steph and Megan have hosted a series of unscripted conversations with AV pros and guests. In one of the sessions, Megan spoke with Nyere Hollingsworth of Under Armour. The pair discussed their experience at InfoComm 2021, the year that has been 2021 and more.

As most people have said, Nyere’s favorite part of InfoComm was the people and tech. He felt a renewed sense of energy being around the AV community and the newest tech. He really enjoyed seeing new digital signage and video wall applications on the show floor, both of which are products his company uses often. He also enjoyed the Absen and ClearTouch booths, finding ClearTouch’s camera auto-tracking tech to be very useful for the future of hybrid work. But, we all have our favorite companies at each show, and Nyere’s was NETGEAR! NETGEAR developed many products specifically for Under Armour’s use cases. The company’s manufacturing partnerships helped build switches that Under Armour needed for their IP-based communications.

Megan also asked Nyere about his thoughts on UCC collaboration technology developed this year and what was at InfoComm. Nyere said the most important thing for the future of any UCC space is tech that is hybrid-ready. Microphone, camera and conferencing technology have come a long way in recent years, but it still has room to grow.

“More things that do things automatically and take the friction away from the end user in terms of their technical ability to launch those systems I think are going to be key,” Nyere said. “The reality is, nobody is coming into the office just to sit on a Zoom call … they’re coming in for a purpose. Inevitably, somebody that is really important to that meeting … is not going to be in that physical space and we have to equalize that experience for both local and remote participants.”

The Future of the Hybrid Workplace

During rePLAY 2021 Day Three, we got a look into the future of the hybrid workplace — a hot topic right now! Mersive and Logitech teamed up to give a product launch all about Solstice Conference. The future of the hybrid workplace lies in wireless bridging and making the hybrid experience easier for users, and Solstice Conference does just that. Christopher Jaynes from Mersive and Geno Zaahaie from Logitech discussed Solstice Conference and the tech that goes into it.

Christopher and Geno said that disruption drives innovation, as we’re living in the middle of a huge AV and tech push. COVID-19 changed the world, of course, but it sped up technology production, creation and innovation drastically. Solstice Conference is being launched during this time for just that reason — it is a conferencing tool designed to make hybrid work and meetings easier for all users. Don’t miss this great product launch and more discussion on the future of hybrid conferencing!

You can watch the video of the Solstice Conference launch here.

Readers’ Choice Awards Winners!

Finally, we’ve got the winners for this year’s Readers’ Choice Awards! Steph and Megan announced the winners live during rePLAY 2021 Day 3, and we’re so thankful to everyone who nominated tech and companies and also chose finalists. We do these awards for you AVtweeps >— no one has to pay to enter these awards. Check out a list of winners and read more about the awards here.

Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened! Catch all this content and more by watching rePLAY 2021 on demand. We’re so grateful to everyone who helped put rePLAY 2021 together and for all the guests who took the time to be on rePLAY with us. Don’t forget to sign up to register so you can watch all of the rePLAY content from the last three days on demand.