By Jami McGraw Does the blender at your local smoothie place look anything like the one you’ve got at home? Do your auto mechanic’s power tools seem a little more “robust” than the ones gathering dust on your workbench at home? Of course. High-demand, business-grade jobs require heavy-duty products that just work, and work. And […]

By John J. Lupo Division Manager, North Florida, Dynamark Systems This is part 3 of a multi-part series of articles that will provide a solid understanding of the principles of sound and acoustics as it relates to design and construction of both public and private spaces. Part 1 covered the basics of Sound, Part 2 […]

By John J. Lupo Division Manager, North Florida, Dynamark Systems This is part 2 of a multi-part series of articles that will provide a solid understanding of the principles of sound and acoustics as it relates to design and construction of both public and private spaces. Part 1 covers the basics of sound. Parts 3-5 […]

By Michael Frendo Executive Vice President of Worldwide Engineering, Polycom One of my personal pet peeves is the way the tech industry defines “user experience.” If you listen closely, you’ll notice many identify that experience as only what is seen on screen. We often hear a device or application has a “terrible UI” or that […]

By John J. Lupo Division Manager, North Florida, Dynamark Systems This is part one of a multi-part series of articles that will provide a solid understanding of the principles of sound and acoustics as it relates to design and construction of both public and private spaces. Parts 2-5 will cover decibels, STC ratings, soundproofing and […]

By Cory Schaeffer The world of AV is quickly tilting toward a more IT-focused environment, as AV products evolve to better integrate with existing IP, wireless and mobile infrastructures. These advances require AV professionals to gain a deeper understanding of IT technologies and to work more closely with IT departments to deploy AV solutions. Still, […]

By R.P. Higgins Electric Picture Display Systems In 1990, David Bowie put on one of his most active productions — the “Sound and Vision” tour. At the time, I was a regional sales manager for GE Projection Display Products, and my biggest customer was Performance AV of Washington, DC. Performance AV did a tremendous amount […]

By Kevin Kelly Stampede A standardized, commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) education curriculum has not yet been established by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). As a result, virtually anyone can market himself or herself as a commercial drone operator. The barriers to entry are minimal. However, as the number of businesses utilizing drones continues to […]

It’s no secret that digital signage is the best way to reach your target audience. However, if you’re not reaching the RIGHT people in the RIGHT place at the RIGHT time, all of your digital signage efforts may be wasted. Take a look at these 5 tips that will help you to optimize your content, […]

By Aaron Bach Four Winds Interactive It all started with an art museum. About two years ago, our CEO, David Levin, stood at my desk and looked at a custom sign build I had created for the Denver Art Museum (a local client of ours and one that, incidentally, our new building backs up to). […]

By Robert White Manager of Convergent Technologies, Multi-Media Solutions As an integrator providing digital signage have you ever thought about all of the things that can jump up and bite you in the proverbial butt? I mean the kinds of things that can really put you at odds with your customer or even worse land you in […]

By Alan Vezina Jydo In my previous post, The AV Industry Needs to Open Up, I talked about two reasons why it is difficult to become an AV programmer — proprietary hardware and certifications. Today, I am going to talk about the biggest reason there is a shortage of quality AV programmers: sub-par tools. For […]

By Dave DiGirolamo, CTS-D LEED AP Many technology integration companies believe that the salesperson is the face of the company. There are discussions in sales meetings about dressing professionally, saying the right things during the sales interview process, and being responsive to a client’s needs. As a salesperson, I feel this is very important. However, […]

By Megan Harvey Premier Mounts One way to maximize sales for a QSR or Fast Casual Restaurant is to use dynamic digital menu boards, but implementation can be overwhelming. How do you justify the cost to implement them? How can you maximize their effectiveness? Isn’t there someone who can find an ideal solution for your […]

By David Danto IMCCA This article originally ran in my my Network World column “Workspaces for Tomorrow” earlier in the year. Enterprise videoconferencing has been around in one form or another for decades. The space has been – and continues to be — owned by many diverse silos (facilities, AV, IT, UC) which is one […]

By Alan Vezina Jydo There has been some discussion on rAVePubs.com recently about AV programmers, in particular the lack of AV programmers. It started with the AV Power Up! episode Hey, Get With the Program!, then continued with Hope Roth’s follow up article Where Have All the AV Programmers Gone? In both the podcast and […]

By TJ Adams Director of Installed Systems Products Management, QSC Let’s be honest — there are a million ways one could describe AV and IT integration. It’s true that in this day and age, we can now control just about every device via the network, make our phone calls via the network and route our […]

By David Wolf Video Architect at Capital One Many in the AV industry are emphasizing collaboration standards focused on an professional IT approach keying in on specific strategic solutions. While this might be an easy approach to apply to collaboration solutions in organizations starting with small inventories or doing complete refreshes; I find this is […]

  By Megan Harvey Premier Mounts Every A/V project comes with a unique set of challenges. When installing equipment into an existing structure, integrators may need to securely install equipment into a location that was built before digital signage even existed. This can create a laundry list of challenges, from protecting equipment outdoors to creating […]

By Ann Brigida InfoComm International A while back, I was chatting with a bunch of AV experts from every corner of the industry about a hot topic: project documentation. We were working on an ANSI standard for verifying the performance of an AV system. The basis of that standard was documentation. In other words, in […]

By Ron DeVoe Successful Sales Consulting I have enjoyed having guest editorials published with rAVe. In times past my contributions have been more for entertainment than insight. However, this rambling is a result of my increasing awareness of the double standard that we, in our beloved industry, seem to ignore and that deals with women […]

(An earlier version of this post appeared in SMART’s Next Level Collaboration blog.) Occasionally, I come to grips with the fact that I’m in my mid-forties… especially when I look at how far technology has come since I was a child. Every once in a while, something comes up with my kids, and it makes me feel […]

By Emerson Loustau CTO, TransitScreen In many ways, signs have changed very little over the past few thousand years. But we are now at the brink of a massive global shift as digital signs become one of the easiest ways to communicate with large numbers of urban residents, commuters and travelers. The language of the […]

By AVPro Store In HDMI 2.0 installations we expected that everything would work as described in manuals. Many of us have done that and got terribly frustrated – it’s like troubleshooting in the dark – divide and conquer – replace potential defective components with known good components…unfortunately at this point in time the cards are […]

By Matt Murray AVPro Store In HDMI 2.0 installations we expected that everything would work as described in manuals. Many of us have done that and got terribly frustrated – it’s like troubleshooting in the dark — divide and conquer — replace potential defective components with known good components… unfortunately at this point in time […]

By David Danto Director of Emerging Technology, IMCCA This week both of my boys head off to college, leaving my wife and I with the proverbial empty nest. While I know they’re as prepared as they can be to absorb all the higher education that they can access, I can easily recall the time when they […]

By Matt Murray AVPro Store In HDMI 2.0 installations we expected that everything would work as described in manuals. Many of us have done that and got terribly frustrated – it’s like troubleshooting in the dark – divide and conquer – replace potential defective components with known good components… unfortunately at this point in time […]

By James Gruening Mechdyne Corporation A recent Wall Street Journal article, “Virtual Reality Isn’t Just About Games,” by Christopher Mims, made several predictions about the future of virtual reality technology. However, there were a couple of points that Mims missed. First, head mounted displays (HMDs) are not the only way to experience virtual reality (VR). […]

By Hope Roth One of my favorite episodes of the Simpsons involves Bart Simpson and an elephant named Stampy (who turns out to be a bit of a jerk). It also involves a couple of radio DJs are who are in danger of being replaced by a computer, the DJ 3000. DJ 3000: Looks like […]

I read with interest the restructuring announcements from Google this week, as they rebrand the parent company into Alphabet, building out the letters with innovative products and business models — starting with “G” for Google, which remains a wholly-owned subsidiary. It’s a bold move for a company that doesn’t want to be conventional. This got me thinking about […]

By Paul Konikowski PK Audiovisual Any good company has to have a good mix of people in order to balance the work load. By matching the personality type of with the job opening, employers can benefit from certain traits that may be inherent in some individuals, and not others. Combining the different strengths (and often […]

By Frank White Social profiles are a critical part of any marketing and biz-dev activity. Author your profile in such a way as to accentuate the benefits of working with you, just like you would in the “about us” portion of your web-site. In other words, it is about the reader, your potential client, not […]