WOW. After Day Three of InfoComm 2023, I am SO tired. I have run around from appointment to appointment, stopping to say hi to people and occasionally give a hug or fist bump but good LORD it has not felt like this in so long. I don’t know how often I can repeat that. This InfoComm has been THE InfoComm to beat. It hasn’t felt like this in a really long time. (I guess four years???) But even so. I can’t even imagine how big next year’s show will be.

So I’ll take this time to first thank the AVIXA team for putting on such a great event. Rochelle Richardson (in charge of putting on the show) absolutely killed it. She and the rest of the team were so intentional about what they chose to highlight on the show floor — from esports to new and innovative companies — and I really have to commend them for what they accomplished. I have to give a shout-out to Dave Labuskes as well — he’s always been so incredibly kind to me and took time out of his (incredibly busy) schedule to let me interview him twice. Final thanks to Krystle Murphy for being so great at her job as well — the relationship between communications manager and the media is so important, and she has made my job so much easier!

Now let me thank our team. It is not always easy peasy over in the editorial department, so I appreciate all the help I’ve gotten from my colleagues this past week. And to our reporters and video titlers as well — they worked around the clock to make sure your videos were the best they could be and were posted as quickly as possible.

Now enough of that gushy stuff. Let’s talk more about the trends I noticed on the show floor.

New Tech? No. New Applications? Yes.

Don’t get me wrong. There were plenty of new products announced or first shown at InfoComm 2023. But to me, it wasn’t necessarily anything disruptive or showstopping. Instead, it was technology that built on things that already exist in our industry. Improvements to existing software and standards. A PTZ camera built with a medical application in mind. Small, scalable speaker/mic combos that can be added and moved in multiple configurations to a meeting room. None of this completely stopped me in my tracks, but it was all interesting and cool and still helpful to understand the state of our industry.

Everyone Wants to Be Your Everything.

I’ve never seen so many companies making all-in-one products or shifting to products that weren’t typically in their forte. Crestron making meeting room audio products? Sennheiser making a video bar? I’m sure there are others that I’m not thinking of — but the bottom line is this. Companies want to be your one-stop shop. They don’t want you to have to go to another manufacturer to get your video bars if you’re integrating their mic/speakers in your conference room. I don’t know what this is going to mean for our greater industry, but I know we had better keep an eye on it. Maybe coopertition (as Gary Kayye calls the interesting relationship by competing companies partnering together on certain products or solutions) is out?

I Still Really Love Froggy’s Fog.

If you remember, I talk about this booth nearly every InfoComm. I’m a big fan. If you don’t remember, Froggy’s Fog makes exactly what it sounds like. Products for creating fog on stage. The company has everything from your standard fog machine to a machine that creates fog-filled bubbles, but this time the company even added … a fog machine gun.

Miss you ⁦@froggysfog⁩ pic.twitter.com/cg2dY0Md9o

— Steph Beckett (@stephlbeckett) June 20, 2023

That’s right. For the low, low price of $5K, you too could fire a gun like Rambo and fog your friends. Or your enemies. If you’re a rental/staging #AVtweep, you had best check them out. It made me want to design the stage for someone’s concert reallllll bad.

Finally, if you really want to hear a more in-depth talk of the trends of InfoComm 2023, during which we hand-select our favorite product videos that exemplify these trends, you don’t want to miss rePLAY InfoComm 2023. The virtual event will be June 27-29, 1-4 p.m. EDT. So come on and relive our favorite parts of the show with us! Register here. 

rePLAY #InfoComm23 is next week and you don't want to miss it! 🎉#AVtweeps pic.twitter.com/4tCHjYH5uQ

— rAVe [PUBS] (@rAVePubs) June 20, 2023