As a manufacturer and distributor sales rep I get to play a lot of different roles. Getting my dealer clients to buy stuff is great, but my favorite is probably helping them trouble shoot their problems. I don’t have to put on coveralls and get dirty on one of their jobsites (at least, […]
Just a day after announcing their 2015 financial results and earnings, Barco CEO Eric Van Zele sat down with me in an exclusive video interview at ISE 2016 in Amsterdam. In addition to discussing the earnings report, he’s very frank about what they plan invest in with the over €250 Million in cash Barco is […]
I only attended my first Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show in 2014, so I’m hardly the best qualified to preach about the benefits it brings any smart home installation business but I’ve drawn on those experiences to put pen to paper for this blog post. In the early years of forming my install business, I […]
Well, here we are at the close of ISE Day Four. My feet hurt, and my new sneakers are definitely trashed. But it has been a great show, and it broke all records. This morning, at the closing keynote, the director of the show announced that we had not just broken ISE attendance records, but […]
I caught up with ISE Managing Director Mike Blackman on the last day of the show (day four) here in Amsterdam and we discussed the impact of a fourth day of the show as well as the show results. He hints at final attendance numbers, too. It’s certainly a record attendance as we can see […]
Wolfgang Lenz is a good barometer of the AV market in the EMEA. His company, COMM-TEC is the leading distributor is Germany with an office in Hong Kong and soon to be in mainland China, and I have interviewed him at the end of ISE each year as I think he’s a good barometer of […]
In Part 1 I explained that I’ve previously written blogs capturing Twitter and Facebook moments at InfoComm 2015, InfoComm Connections in NYC and other trade shows. This time I decided to do a “4000 mile” social media view of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in Amsterdam – the AV industry’s largest trade show event which takes place […]
I had a chance to sit down today with the keynote speaker for ISE 2016, Michio Kaku — author of the book Physics of the Future. I have truly been a big fan of his since 2011 when I read his book. Since then, I’ve required all my students at UNC read his book predicting […]
This afternoon, Annabelle and I had the opportunity (a rare one) to stop Amanda Beckner, vice president of learning at InfoComm, to talk about the direction being taken by InfoComm’s education department. Amanda is a person of rare energy and enthusiasm. I have at times in the past been critical of InfoComm’s educational department and […]
I had a chance to sit down with InfoComm’s Jason McGraw today to talk about InfoComm! It’s less than four months away and he came over to ISE here in Amsterdam as InfoComm is a partner in this mega-AV show along with CEDIA. Jason has been heading up expositions at InfoComm for over 20 years […]
Colin Boyle is Canon’s European marketing specialist for projectors and he spent some time with me explaining how they fared in 2015 and what their growth plans are for 2016. Canon is heading in to much brighter projectors for 2016 including a 7500-lumen lamp-based projector and a 5000-lumen 4K resolution projector.
Crestron EMEA CEO Robin Van Meeuwen talked with me about how their 2015 was, his thoughts about 2016 and the new direction Crestron is headed with marketing. Barely any product was marketed at the 2016 show and, In fact, Robin explained that they focused on applications instead with their giant Hall 2 stand.
Crestron’s Toine Leerentveld is the control system security expert. I caught up with him at ISE and asked him about the industry’s current concerns with the security of control systems and what Crestron is doing to address it. He also tells me about a security guide that Crestron has to help integrators deal with this […]
InfoComm is a co-producer of ISE and their CEO, Dave Labuskes, was all smiles when I stopped him and convinced him to jump on camera with me today. In addition to projecting attendance, Dave talked about the success of ISE as well as their plans for InfoComm in 2016. It’s only a two-minute interview but […]
So did I. So, I asked Randy Klein. I sat down with Randy at ISE and he gave me the first, and only, video interview to explain why they decided to pull out of CEDIA and, more importantly, what their future HomeAV plans are. Randy is candid and direct in this interview where he shares […]
Canon is here launching a new 5000 lumen 4K projector as well as a plethora of other new projectors designed for corporate, education and digital signage applications. Canon European Marketing Specialist Colin Boyle takes me on a tour of their stand at ISE 2016 here in Amsterdam and what’s new — and, at the end, […]
dnp is packaging an optical 100” screen and a short-throw laser-phosphor 1-chip DLP projector in a packaged system called LaserPanel. LaserPanel is a prepackaged system that dnp is marketing towards AV integrators looking for a box-systems approach to selling against flat-panel systems in meeting rooms and schools. A 100″ Interactive LCD would cost well over […]
Medialon first exhibited at ISE 2015 to launch into the EMEA market. Medialon Overture is a cloud-based control system that allows you to control from one to hundreds of rooms, see real-time data from devices, and serve dynamically generated HTML interfaces (GUIs that are user-specific). The convergence of AV and IT is no longer just […]
Newline launched its 70” TRUTOUCH X7 last year at ISE and this year they’re debuting their X5 Interactive display with integrated videoconferencing, touch, wireless content transmission and whiteboarding. Newline Chief Marketing Officer Betty Lu demo’d both their new 50” X5 with their built-in interactive software as well as its X7 with third-party interactive touch software […]
What’s new with SMART? SMART debuted kapp last year but 2016 is all about kapp IQ and how it collaborates across devices. SMART VP of International Tom Yeates explains the company’s strategy behind SMART kapp and kapp IQ and its vision for collaboration in both the educational and corporate markets. For anyone wondering what’s up […]
InFocus has been spending money lately both on R&D as well as buying companies. In the past six months, they’ve acquired three companies and they’ve become way, way more than a projector or a Mondopad company. I caught up with InFocus Vice President of Marketing Brady Bruce, who filled me in on all the details […]
When I heard that a company literally branded a product with the name Flux Capacitor, I had to stop by and check it out — you may remember the movie BACK TO THE FUTURE? Eric Martin, senior systems engineer, at Just Add Power explained their Flux Capacitor as well as their their differentiation to the […]
I hadn’t heard of them either. Walking the aisle of the giant Hall 7 — known as the pro audio hall — at ISE, I stumbled across one of the coolest, if smallest, booths in there. It’s a company called TUTONDO. They have one of the nicest distributed audio systems (for the home and pro […]
Gary got a personal booth tour from BOSE Professional’s own Rob Kosman, their manager of Global Events and Applications. Many people don’t know that Bose is even in the commercial AV market and Rob, during the tour, demos a few interesting technologies that only Bose has including a very cool flexible array speaker system (both […]
Update: So, now there’s no more guessing as to why Crestron pulled out of CEDIA as I literally got the one (and only) interview with Crestron President and CEO Randy Klein, who spends 10 minutes outlining exactly how the decision was made and why. Watch the […]
I caught up with Vivitek’s General Manager, Holger Graeff, this morning and he talked about their entry in to the wireless collaboration market here at ISE 2016. The company’s NovoPro (targeting meeting rooms) and NovoDS (targeting digital signage) both allow for network and wireless content to be sent to any display. In addition, Graeff talked […]
I was given a one-on-one booth tour from Neil Colquhoun of Epson Europe. The design was intentional to highlight their focus on interactivity, the high brightness projector launch and their ability to do pixel mapping — in fact the tour ends with a Formula-1 car that’s completely pixel-mapped via 10 Epson 3LCD large venue projectors. […]
Nureva’s director of customer engagement, Rick Kennedy, took time to demo its SPAN product for me. SPAN is a 10-foot, 20-foot or 30-foot wide digital canvas that’s aimed at group collaboration. SPAN is an all-in-one system that includes a 16 x 9 (or 32 x 9 in the case of a two-projector system) digital canvas […]
I caught up with Christie Director of Marketing EMEA Brant Eckett and in addition to talking about the philosophy behind the Christie booth/stand at this year’s ISE 2016 show and its new generation of 4K and 2K BOXER lineup, he and I spoke about the current over-marketing of 4K specifications. It’s an interesting discussion and […]
I caught up with Barco’s Peter Pawels, director of strategic marketing ProAV, who explained that Barco believes that they’re on the verge of changing everyone’s perspective about AV technology — and, if you judge that from their ClickShare success, they’re right. ClickShare certainly pioneered the collaboration market and the company is at ISE 2016 with […]
As I’ve written blogs before capturing Twitter and Facebook moments at InfoComm 2015, InfoComm Connections in NYC and other trade shows, I decided, while remaining in the U.S., to do a “4000 mile” social media view of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) in Amsterdam – the AV industry’s largest trade show event which takes place over four […]
When it comes to tools, I often quote Pablo Picasso, who said “everything is either easy or impossible. As I interpret it, oftentimes the difference between the easy and the impossible is whether or not you have the right tool. Don’t believe me? Try running wire between drywall and insulation without fiberglass rods. My love […]
