In case you have somehow missed it, Integrated Systems Europe begins in Amsterdam on February 10th.  The show is expected to draw a crowd of 50,000 people.  Compare that to the 37,000 that InfoComm attracts in the United States, and you quickly realize that ISE is a HUGE show.  Yet, because it happens on another continent, many of us don’t pay much attention.  (Honesty on my part, I did not even know about it until about three years ago) We will wait till June, we say, and see it at InfoComm.  No doubt that InfoComm is a great show for education, networking and for seeing the new technologies.  However, for so many of us in the Education market it is far too late into the year.  Anything new that we see at InfoComm, is likely not to be released for weeks or months.  Our designs are done and orders are sitting on the desk waiting to be placed.  We simply can not change our designs and alter our installs for the summer.

Enter ISE, and in particular the coverage that it now gets from the AV press.  rAVe sends a lot of reporters to cover the show and gets hundreds of videos of new products, and interviews with AV executives and sales directors.   If there is something new and interesting at the show, you can guarantee that they will cover it.  Most importantly right now is when you are designing rooms and planning for the summer.  Wouldn’t NOW be the time to learn about what new products and tools will be available to you?

I plan to spend a few hours each day looking through the videos, blogs and write ups that the rAVe team does.  Why not do the same?  Certainly spending a few hours at your desk doing this is saving your company more money than flying you to Amsterdam.  With the experienced trade-show pros from rAVe covering the floor, it is guaranteed that you will get more out of it from them than you would wandering around on your own.

If you see the reporters post about something interesting and exciting, let us know!  I will do the same.  See you in Amsterdam, virtually.