Summer may be over, and with it many of the outdoor live events we know and love, but this market keeps it moving all year long. The house of worship market saw some quick changes during early COVID, with many being forced to adopt streaming technologies so people could still worship from home. But now […]

With summer being such a big time for festivals and live events, rAVe decided to focus June’s temperature check on the rental and staging market. Our first question for individuals in the rental and staging market was “What rental and staging market segments do you primarily serve?” The majority of respondents (48.6%) primarily serve the […]

By Paul Wylie and Olivia Lowden Futuresource Consulting The COVID-19-induced explosion of the content creation space continues to offer lucrative opportunities, as related technologies evolve and the COVID-19 user base becomes solidified. Intel from Futuresource Consulting’s recent survey shows double-digit growth in market value to over $2 billion in 2021, accounting for over 30% of […]

Tis the season and technology managers are seeing green. They are dreaming of purchases arriving in boxes. Red lights are everywhere! Yes, it is the holiday season, but that is not what I am referencing. In higher education, it is also budget season. The vast majority of higher education institutions have a fiscal year that […]

Before COVID, I spent a lot of work time in the field in a lot of public places: offices, retail stores, shopping malls, parking lots. Especially parking lots. I joke that I have two offices: my home office, and the Tim Hortons parking lot on 39 Ave NE in Calgary where the Wi-Fi signal is […]

The last couple of years have been eventful, to put it mildly. Even now, things are getting back to normal while still not really being back to normal, if that makes any sense. In my store visits to my retail partners, I’ve noticed that it’s about 50/50 between places that have taken their plexiglass sneeze […]

I’m sure you’re all familiar with the aphorism that “to the person with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” I knew someone who had to read “Boom, Bust & Echo,” the book by demographer David Foot and journalist Daniel Stoffman, in college. After doing so, they related a factoid — no matter how […]

If there’s one topic that has been totally exhausted and “overthunk” in the last year, it’s the post-COVID return to work. I don’t say that because it’s unimportant; I say that because most of the pieces we see written try to draw some new one-size-fits-all conclusion to what the… gulp… “new normal” will, or should, […]

If you have read my blogs in the past, you know that I work in higher ed, and it has hopefully come out that I am passionate about education. In fact, my career was supposed to be in education. I went to college to be a teacher, did my student teaching in a high school […]

By Helen Matthews Futuresource The System camera market was brought to a standstill by the Coronavirus pandemic in FY2020. Strict Government-mandated lockdowns in many countries resulted in live events being canceled or postponed across the globe, original content production stalled and as a result, the demand for system cameras plummeted. As professional broadcasters turned to […]

By Maxym Dmytriyev Futuresource Consulting According to Futuresource Consulting’s latest Gaming Headset Market H2 2021 report, the overall gaming accessories market is expected to grow 10% year-on-year in 2021, despite a deceleration in volume and value growth compared to 2020. Onset by the continuous efforts in combating COVID-19’s spread, work-from-home trends have supported market growth, […]

By Helen Matthews Futuresource Consulting COVID-19 has had a lasting impact on the professional camcorder industry. Its initial impact appeared to be negative, with the first half of 2020 seeing a significant downfall in sell-in compared to previous years. Lockdowns, social distancing and event cancellations affected markets across the globe, resulting in the majority of […]

One thing I truly love about writing a blog for rAVe is when I get a reaction from my peers about what I wrote. These responses always help me further think through what I originally wrote, and I always learn from others in these scenarios. In my December blog, I wrote about the supply chain […]

By Charles Kowalczyk AtlasIED The recently signed Infrastructure Bill will impact our industry in many ways. For five years, the bill provides $25B for airports alone, $39B for public transit, and $66B for passenger and freight rail. This allocation will manifest new builds, renovations, and expansions – which will include technology, both security and audiovisual. Projects that were allocated […]

After all the guessing, prognostication and assumptions, it actually happened. InfoComm 2021 took place in Orlando the last week in October. What surprised me most during the event was the social media banter that went back and forth between the “should” and “should not” crowds. That is those who thought that AVIXA “should have” InfoComm […]

An important but seldomly acknowledged part of my job is to be a good listener. It comes with the territory as part of being a value-adding business partner for my dealer network. I like to joke about how providing unpaid business consulting benefits both my clients and me: If they’re successful, then by extension, so […]

At the start of January 2020, working from home was a carefully guarded privilege. Some professions — and some job categories — had the chance to stay home and do work on their computers. Some people (mothers in particular) changed their lives to have the ability to work from home. Some employers embraced the idea. […]

Since this pandemic is new to all of us and technology is being designed to aid in coping with this relatively horrible situation, I thought some information and things I have observed or read about over the past 18 months would be helpful. I am not specifying one technology over another nor one vendor over […]

If you are supporting a HOW event in the next, let’s say, three to six months, it’s time to plan for it to be both in-person and virtual. In fact, that’s the decision we recently made for Pilgrimage 2021, the regional HOW event of the NC Conference of the United Methodist Church. With the increased […]

Many of us have wondered what business will be like in the “new normal.” During that time, so many of us assumed the new normal also meant post-coronavirus. As we continue to experience surges in the delta variant and wonder about future variants, I am beginning to wonder if living with COVID-19 is actually the […]

I was recently looking through some of the very first articles I posted to LinkedIn, and I ran across this one called “Taking YOUR Road Less Traveled.” I wrote this about a time I was contemplating a change in my career. I bring it up again today because, over the past 18 months, many of […]

Like G-force when a roller coaster takes off, the COVID-19 lockdown shoved me deep into my own seat. Forces greater than myself took away the freedoms I was used to. Possibilities were restricted. But work still had to happen. I had to find new ways to reach out of my space to work with others. […]

Jerry Garcia and crew certainly had it right when they sang, “What a long, strange trip it’s been.” Seventeen months ago, colleges and universities around the country abruptly shut down in-person learning and sent students home. Over the summer of 2020, they worked to make sure their faculty and students were prepared to learn and […]

One of the topics from the sessions I hosted on my Pexip Platform (see my previous column, “What I Learned By Hosting 32 Sessions With Different Topics and Speakers During the Pandemic”) last year between April 2020 to July 2020 included a very interesting presentation and point of view from Josiah Hobson, managing director at […]

By Gordon Dutch Re-Sauce Sales & Business Consultancy Ltd As I am sure regular rAVe readers will know, the regular ISE 2021 show in Barcelona planned for February 2021 was initially moved back to June 2021 and then canceled this year due to COVID. Shortly after, ISE announced a series of regional roadshows starting in […]

It’s been a good year for retail AV sales. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. The truth is, there were winners as well as losers this past year, and the winners won big. BrightSign received the single-largest PO in its history right in the middle of lockdown. That PO came from a retailer.  Retailers whose business was […]

By James Kirby Futuresource Consulting The professional power amplifiers market, and professional audio in general, has been an area of long-term market growth. Despite the rise of powered speakers, the amplifiers market has continued to see regular replacements and new opportunities over recent years, driven by innovation and demand at a macro level. However, moving […]

James Kirby Futuresource Consulting The professional audio market has traditionally been an area of long-term growth, driven by macro factors and innovation across a range of vertical and product segments. However, the outbreak of COVID-19 came as an unprecedented shock to the industry, negatively impacting many of the industries which previously provided long-term growth for […]

By Adam Cox Futuresource Consulting 2020 was a tumultuous year and one that will cast a long shadow over almost every aspect of our lives. For many of those normally working in offices, one of the most significant changes has been being forced to work from home as most countries around the world went through […]

A new study released by Aura Health and Safety, The Phylmar Group, and SafeTraces, Inc, a company in DNA-based technology solutions, suggests that artificial fog has no negative impact on suspension of aerosols in entertainment venues and productions. This is great news for the film, television and live entertainment industries, with a U.S. market size […]

When looking back on last year, the best description that neatly wrapped up our collective experience in a bow was from Leslie Jones on a 2020 recap show on Netflix. Her character said, “I’d say it was a train wreck and a s*&tshow, but that would be unfair to trains and s*&t.” Seriously though, let’s […]

In a recent blog, Gary Kayye wrote about the current global supply shortage of semiconductors. Take a moment and read the blog and the linked Wall Street Journal article. They both raise some important concerns about what the next several quarters will bring in regards to this shortfall. Unfortunately, my blog is not going to […]