A lot has happened since my last column was published in 2023. I worked part time for two different companies as an independent contractor, attended or hosted (and paid for) several trade shows and mini-tech events, and so much more, but I’m not going to get into at this time. I joined A-V Services, Inc. […]

By Scott Stephenson, senior director of product, global motorization, Hunter Douglas A recent retrofit project involving illuminated shades in a 1950s estate got me thinking about a problem integrators run into all the time: the homeowner wants a more finished, layered lighting experience, but the house does not cooperate. Maybe the ceilings are not worth […]

LED flooring is still new to competitive sports, and this year’s Big 12 basketball tournaments provided a high-profile test. The glass court lit up the 3-point line after made shots, merging live gameplay with interactive graphics. But players and coaches raised concerns about traction, prompting the conference to switch back to traditional hardwood for the […]

In 1998, I worked at The Buttes Resort in Arizona. If you haven’t seen it, it’s a beautiful property. It’s owned by a hotel chain now, but when it was built, it was one of four boutique hotels in AZ known for using the natural landscape as part of the architecture. It is nestled into […]

United Airlines is defending itself against a proposed class-action lawsuit built around a wonderfully simple question: When an airline sells you a window seat, is it required to provide a window? Passengers say they paid extra for seats United identified as window seats, only to board and find themselves sitting beside a solid cabin wall. […]

By B. Scott SwannCEO, ROC.ai As physical security and digital identity systems converge, organizations are rethinking how identity is verified across access control, surveillance and command center environments. Single-modality biometrics, such as facial recognition alone, are increasingly being supplemented by multimodal approaches that combine face, fingerprint, iris and other identity signals to improve confidence and […]

If you attended InfoComm26, you no doubt noticed the number of companies on the floor that make Direct-View LED (dvLED) products. From well-known brands to emerging market contenders, the breadth of cabinet-based, curved and custom dvLED offerings at pixel pitches from 5mm down to 0.7mm is downright daunting, to say the least. It would be […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST A few years ago, the AV industry had a visibility problem. Today, it has a context problem. That’s a very different thing. We’ve gotten pretty good at knowing what’s happening in a room. We can tell when a display goes offline, when a camera disconnects, when a firmware update fails, […]

The fourth-quarter holiday selling season is when brands spend the most on running promotions with their dealers. They’ll run promos elsewhere in the year, too, of course. They’re often centered around new product launches, but they’ll also run when brands think their quarterly sales are lagging and they want to move the needle. Which is […]

The other day, I read this article in Techdirt about how the so-called “billion-dollar” AI company Medvi is a giant scam. The whole thing is basically a house of lies built on fake AI-generated images and testimonials, plus a metric ton of spam. The GLP-1 drugs they dispense are glorified placebos (they’re “pharmacologically inert” in […]

InfoComm 2026 has officially wrapped, and as usual the rAVe team did an outstanding job covering the products, booths, announcements and personalities that make the show one of the most important events in professional AV. Between videos, interviews and on-site reporting, virtually every significant product announcement found its way into the rAVe coverage pipeline. One […]

It’s Tuesday afternoon in Las Vegas. The InfoComm exhibits haven’t opened yet, but education is in full swing. I walked into the West Hall and found the room where I spoke on a panel, “Crafting Enterprise AV Standards.” The panel was stacked, by the way. Nathan Coutinho from Logitech, Roy Sherry from Microsoft, Christina Vernon […]

Day Two! It’s time to provide you with another wrap-up of my day. Of course, it included more sponsor interviews, chats with attendees, and my favorite part: The Technology in Practice Tour. First, we attended the AVIXA Women’s Breakfast. This is like the third or fourth year that I’ve attended this and I’m so excited […]

Hi everyone! This is your favorite wrap-up of Day One of InfoComm. Yes, I am posting this a day late. Yes, this will be a trend. First thing’s first: My day began with sponsor interviews. This was actually most of my day. While yes, people pay for these, I still think they are worth watching. […]

For the better part of the last decade, the technology industry treated “The Cloud” like the answer to every question. Need more processing power? Cloud. Need analytics? Cloud. Need AI? Definitely cloud. For a while, that was the industry’s favorite chorus. And for a while, that made perfect sense. Centralized cloud computing gave organizations enormous […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST InfoComm 2026 is rapidly approaching. Booths are being built, demos are being fine-tuned and product launches are being readied for their debut in Las Vegas. With nearly 750 exhibitors spread across the convention center, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of the show. That’s where […]

InfoComm 2026 is rapidly approaching. Booths are being built, demos are being fine-tuned and product launches are being readied for their debut in Las Vegas. With nearly 750 exhibitors spread across the convention center, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of the show. That’s where we come in. At rAVe […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST InfoComm 2026 is rapidly approaching. Booths are being built, demos are being fine-tuned and product launches are being readied for their debut in Las Vegas. With nearly 750 exhibitors spread across the convention center, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer size and scope of the show. That’s where […]

It has been 13 years since I wrote the initial guide to Surviving the InfoComm Zombie Apocalypse, so I thought it was time for a reboot for 2026! Nearly 750 companies will be on the floor exhibiting at InfoComm 2026, and with around 30,000 attendees, there is potential to leave after three days transformed into an AV […]

We’re halfway through 2026, and I have one pressing question on my mind — does Thread even Matter in 2026? After an exhaustive couple of years of bench testing, product testing, product advising and generally playing and programming with the most common automation protocols and hubs in the world today, I think it’s prudent to […]

It’s hard to believe that InfoComm 2026 is only a couple of weeks away. There’s a lot in store for this year with new product launches and maybe even some surprise showcases. Here at rAVe, we’ve got something special to share with you all too! At the show, we’ll be giving away rAVe T-shirts with […]

InfoComm is the AV industry’s premier showcase for new products and solutions, but with more than 750 companies and organizations attending, it’s also a golden opportunity for networking. rAVe [PUBS], an official media partner for InfoComm 2026, has compiled a list of on-floor happy hours, association networking events, official after-parties and invite-only receptions to make […]

By Tom Zerega, founder and chief executive officer at Magnetic 3D AV integrators in 2026 are no longer just installing displays and audio systems — they are tasked with creating experiences that seamlessly blend into architectural environments and require deep human factors design-thinking. Today’s RFPs increasingly embed “immersive” into the requirements as if it were […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST By Jim Bask, Broadfield Distributing Why ProAV Integrators Are Being Asked to Play in Broadcast Territory Corporate clients are no longer satisfied with “good enough” video. After years of Zoom fatigue and the normalization of high-production livestreams from major brands, even mid-sized companies now expect broadcast-level quality for internal and […]

THIS IS A PROMOTED POST By: Joe Mukherjee, Director for HP Poly The ProAV channel is experiencing sustained margin pressure, reshaping how integrators compete and expand their businesses. The hardware categories that once supported stable profitability have become increasingly standardized, making it difficult to maintain product-level differentiation. Many competitive bids now arrive with similar configurations, […]

The world has a memory problem. The critical point about memory is that you don’t realize how much you need it until you lose it. The ProAV and live events industry has yet to fully recognize its own oncoming memory problem while global memory chip shortages are already crippling entire industries and businesses. The rapid […]

Every year around this time, I start building my InfoComm schedule and immediately realize two things: And honestly, that’s why I still love trade shows. You can plan all you want — map the halls, stack meetings back-to-back, color-code the calendar like you’re running NORAD — and then somebody pulls you into a booth and […]

It’s important to have role models. And not just good role models, like most people say. I think you should have both: people you aspire to be like and people you never want to be like. I’ll defend my position on that another time. Today, I want to talk about good role models and the […]

By Brandon White, Director of Product Development, Vanco International AV-over-IP has become the norm for ProAV transport and distribution, and for good reason: it offers powerful flexibility, scale and routing options that other transport approaches cannot match. But that does not mean it is automatically the right transport for every job. AV-over-IP solves a lot […]

Dictionary.com defines trust as both a noun and a verb, including the following definitions: In AV Land, the idea of trust can often be fleeting. Stories of backstabbing or stealing AV projects are not uncommon. Marketing can often be misleading, using words like “zero latency” in digital audio or video systems, when most require to […]

The crowds packed ISE this year. We escaped the main artery of the hall, turned a corner and found ourselves in a quiet aisle. There, tucked away on the edge of a massive stand in Hall 3, was the real story of the show. As the content tour leader for ISE’s VIP tours, my job […]

It’s been a minute since NAB Show 2026 wrapped, but I feel compelled to include my thoughts here anyway. (Sometimes it takes me a minute to get myself together, OK!?) I mentioned some of these thoughts on LinkedIn, but I needed more space to fully write about what I saw and what I thought of […]