The Washington, DC E4 Experience Might Well Have Been the Best-Ever
Coming back out of this long nightmare known as the pandemic has been painstakingly slow and that’s an understatement. We’ve had a number of starts and stops in and all over the live events market. And, attendance at every event along the way — from ISE, to NAB to InfoComm and a host of regional events in-between — has been 40% below normal. But, if the Exertis Almo E4 Experience is any indication or bellwether of where we are now as an industry, things are looking great.
The first E4 Experience canceled at the beginning of the pandemic was the Washington, D.C. show way back in 2020. So, this was the first time the E4 Experience has been back in the capital city since 2017. And, this year’s event was moved from the normal “north of D.C.” locations to Reston, Virginia — so, I don’t know if the location was the key or the fact that people just want to be around other people now but, this was likely the highest attended AV event since InfoComm 2022, itself, in Las Vegas. And, attendance was up from the last time Exertis Almo (back then, known only as Almo Pro A/V) was in DC and this was the largest E4 Experience crowd since 2019.
I kicked off the event with a nearly full house of over 300 people for my keynote: “The Future of Work Spaces is All About Experiences” and I’ll be doing it again in Boston in a few weeks (Oct. 20, actually). It’s only my third time delivering this session, and it’s evolved quite a bit since I first gave it way back in March 2022, but everyone — and I mean everyone — stayed until I was done. It was exhilarating, fun and felt like 2019 again. Mental note: I never would have imagined in 2022 I’d be celebrating equaling an emotion from 2019. But, here we are. Here I am.
During the session, I not only talk about the technology we can integrate, better, to build experiential office space as well as bring fun back to the office but, I mention specific products that help solve all sorts of issues in and around hybrid working. For example, Audio Fencing from AVer. Microphone Mist from Nureva. MicroLED from Sony. And, LightScene from Epson. There’s not enough space to mention them all but, I hope you’ll attend in Boston if you are in the New York metro area as well as, of course, Boston. Point is, I spell out how to build a better office. Heck, I even tell integrators which furniture companies they should engage with! Cubicle-land is dead, so there’s an incredible opportunity to re-upfit the office with tech-friendly furniture.
Then, following my session, I took those who wanted to go on a personal, live, ListenTech ListenTALK-driven tour of the show floor to see everything I talked about. It was full. It was just an amazing experience.
The show floor featured over 45 brands, and nearly all of them told me that, other than at InfoComm, these products hadn’t been shown anywhere else — this was the first major show since InfoComm. So, it was cool to see all the new stuff — especially the new fine-pitch LED stuff. And, I was also pleasantly surprised to see that NETGEAR brought the all-new, AV-based 4250 Series AV-over-IP network switches to the E4.
After the tour, I caught Alesia Hendley’s “Future of AV” panel discussion — she has a great stage presence and some interesting insights came from that — including that we will be in a supply chain shortage through 2023. I hope not, though.
Finally, You can catch up with all that happened at the Exertis Almo E4 Experience by heading over to our E4 Experience microsite here: https://www.ravepubs.