Gary Kayye (01:10)
Good morning everyone. How’s it going Steph?

Steph Beckett (01:12)
Good, how are you?

Gary Kayye (01:14)
Well, thank you. Um, we are split apart. We’re not in the same, even in the same state, uh, this morning, but we’re making it happen. It is rAVe TV, the industry’s only live TV show. We come on live every Wednesday at 9 a.m. Eastern time, which gives us the opportunity to be live in Europe and everywhere else in the world, pretty much. If you’re willing to watch us during dinner, maybe I guess sometime. Yeah.

Steph Beckett (01:36)
Absolutely. Yes.

And for the West Coast, can watch us at, I’m on the West Coast right now, so it is 6.01 a.m. my time, but we restream this at noon Eastern, so those West Coasters can watch it at nine their time.

Gary Kayye (01:53)
Yeah, and tell them why you’re on the West Coast. You’re at an event, right?

Steph Beckett (01:56)
I am at an event. I am at PSA and Edge’s Spring Partner event. So this is a kind of two and a half day event and I am here ⁓ covering it. There are a bunch of sessions and there’s security integrators here and ⁓ AV integrators here and we’re kind of just all talking a little bit about what’s going on in the industry and it’s been really great so far.

Gary Kayye (02:19)
Yeah. And, uh, you know, they’re, they’re a great company if you’re, if you haven’t paid attention to what they’re doing, they’re growing, um, lot of stuff going on and, you know, it’s a good, good sign for industry. How, what’s the, tell me what the talk is. You know, I know you spent a couple, a day and a half there now. What’s the talk as far as the, you know, the P P the integrators feelings about the industry and the direction that the year is going.

Steph Beckett (02:44)
think mostly positive. talked, there was a really good panel led by Dan Ferisi yesterday and it was kind of about where they’re seeing the convergence and they are starting to see it but they talked about the struggle is if you go into AV, you can just kind of do AV. Like there are certifications but a lot of them aren’t required to do AV. But with

Gary Kayye (03:10)
⁓ huh.

Whereas security that you have to get licensed. Is that what you mean? Okay.

Steph Beckett (03:14)
yes, there are some.

It depends on your state and luckily the guy who was talking was from North Carolina, so that’s our city and he was talking about how you have to be alarm certified to do any type of security, anything, ⁓ and that now there are even some stipulations county per county and in North Carolina we have 100 counties. So you just have to be so knowledgeable about what’s going on.

Gary Kayye (03:20)
interesting.

Yeah.

Steph Beckett (03:40)
everywhere you are to do security and there’s that kind of barrier to entry for AV integrators.

Gary Kayye (03:46)
It makes sense. Yeah. And, and, I think, you know, the, it’s, wouldn’t even call it convergence. I would call it an opportunity for AV integrators to get into having a deeper relationship with their client because the nice thing about security is they’re doing what we’re trying to do in AV, which is to have recurring revenue, ⁓ for a reason.

Steph Beckett (04:05)
Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that, you know, obviously the recurring revenue model and cloud based opportunities are a thing that AV is playing around with. That was even a huge thing that I saw talked about at NAB. Like everyone was putting everything in the cloud. I think that we’re going to see a ton of that for the next couple of years. ⁓ But security is an industry that’s doing like a recurring revenue model very well. So AV can definitely learn.

from them.

Gary Kayye (04:35)
I

agree. Well, hopefully they’ll, they’ll listen to what you’re saying. Cause I think there’s a great opportunity there. And, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m interested to hear more. we just want to remind you about the, those of you who are interested, if you’re, we obviously have, ⁓ you know, all different kinds of listeners here, but one of our most loyal listener base is manufacturers in the industry.

If you have not entered our Best of Infocomm Awards for 2026, there’s only, let’s see, what’s the deadline? I can’t remember the deadline. Okay, so.

Steph Beckett (05:07)
Early Bird is by this Friday. So if you want to

pay that cheaper price, ⁓ definitely apply by this Friday and then it’s going to be a little more expensive, but the application will stay open until May 22nd. And that gives me and the judges some time to go through and rank and pick our winners. So we did change it up this year, ⁓ but so far it’s gone really well. We’ve got some applications in, which is exciting.

And if you have questions about the application, I’ve gotten a few emails about, Steph, how would you say, what would you clarify to be a micro LED? So if you have any questions about any of the categories like that, you can email me ⁓ at Steph at rAVePubs.com and I’ll be happy to talk to you and clarify any of the categories for you.

Gary Kayye (05:57)
Well, take that opportunity to do that. And of course, the deadline now apparently is my birthday.

So good to know. Good to know it’s my birthday present. There you go. And then we have a video. We want to show you a video on the Crestron One Beyond ⁓ i12D camera. So ⁓ check this video out real quick. And then we have a special guest.

Steph Beckett (06:03)
Yeah, it’s your birthday present.

Hang up.

All right, let’s go ahead and bring on our guest. Welcome, first timer at Rave TV, Matthew Malone, how are ya?

Gary Kayye (07:07)
So.

Matt Malone (07:09)
Good morning.

Thanks for having me here.

Steph Beckett (07:13)
Absolutely. So first things first, if you would just tell these those people who are watching and listening a little bit about who you are and what you do for Crestron.

Matt Malone (07:22)
So I’ve been in the AV industry since college. ⁓ My last 14 years have been with Crestron, which has been ⁓ a great role and a great company to work for. ⁓ I’ve done everything in this company from managing our enterprise clients, our largest corporate customers in the Northeast, to now managing ⁓ our higher education. So I predominantly ⁓ handle the Northeast territory and call on all the higher education schools in the area to support them.

Gary Kayye (07:46)
Greetings.

Steph Beckett (07:50)
Very

cool. You and Gary have that in common. Gary also works in higher ed, so I’m interested to hear both of your perspectives on some of this. So Matthew, starting off at a high level, what are you seeing in higher ed right now? Are you seeing a lot of demand? Are you seeing constraints or are you seeing kind of a little bit of both, a little bit of push and pull there?

Matt Malone (08:11)
Definitely a little bit of both. All depends on the school as ⁓ far as budgets and constraints go. But overall, we’re definitely seeing more demand. ⁓ know, budgets now are finally stabilizing.

That was kind of the topic for the last 12 months is the instability in the budgets. A lot of the COVID rooms that go back to 2020 are now coming up for updates. We’re seeing more video enabled rooms as Teams and Zoom becomes more popular in classrooms where schools want to bring in remote speakers to talk to the class, but also have remote learning. We’re also seeing more AV over IP in schools, which we’re happy about.

giving schools more flexibility on how they deploy the rooms. We’re also seeing more two-way collaboration where students are kind of going off into pods in the room and then collaborating back to the class. The other thing we’re seeing a lot more too is also faculty spaces. So not only are we managing the classroom spaces, but also those faculty spaces, those Zoom and Teams rooms that ⁓ are more for the faculty to use that aren’t part of the classroom.

Steph Beckett (09:17)
Gary, are you seeing the same thing?

Gary Kayye (09:17)
But yeah,

I’m sorry, Steph, what were you asking?

Steph Beckett (09:21)
I was just gonna ask if you were seeing the same thing since you, you know, you’re at UNC every day.

Gary Kayye (09:27)
Yeah, I mean, we, um, we’re, we’re pretty much we’ve become a video everywhere. Campus, uh, audio is not as important to us as video, meaning it’s kind of by default. We expect audio to be there and we’re not focusing on it. We’re, focusing on amping up the video. Um, audio has already been in our classrooms for a long, long time, but yeah, I agree with him as far as I would say I would catalog catalog is other spaces because it’s not just like conference room spaces, but ad hoc.

spaces, but also creating spaces out of digital science monitors that are hanging in different locations, study carol areas. mean, you know, all of it is, know, thing about higher education, higher education always starts first. So it’s a great place to test out new products and technology because we adopt first before any other segment of the market. But, you know, obviously budgets are always an issue. How are you seeing the budget cuts? Cause especially with public education.

Matt, mean, there’s not a single public university that’s not having to do budget cuts right now.

Matt Malone (10:31)
Yeah, budget definitely, like I say, is the topic of 2025, 2026. We are seeing budget cuts in a lot of schools. And the question is, how do we get the most out of our budget? Can we take old equipment that’s been in the room and add new features and new equipment on top of that old equipment? So a lot of schools, it’s very important to them that whatever standard they pick,

you know, can be used with the product that’s existing in the room and, you know, in kind of a long lifespan, you know, based on the company’s history of supporting legacy product. ⁓ You know, we see, you know, well, new gear work with old gear is a pretty common thing as far as budget cuts, ⁓ you know, making the room more flexible, you know, it’s kind of that budget conversation. And also as part of the budget conversation, we’re seeing a lot more wireless being used in classrooms, you know.

Gary Kayye (11:01)
Yeah.

Matt Malone (11:25)
Because with wireless, I may not have to worry about how I get the wires to certain locations or space in the room. So that can really dramatically lower that cost of that room if I can use a wireless solution instead of having everything hardwired.

Steph Beckett (11:40)
makes a lot of sense. ⁓ Since you’re seeing and we’re seeing so many more AV enabled spaces on college and university campuses, in your opinion, do schools actually have the staff to support all of that tech?

Matt Malone (11:55)
⁓ I laugh because, you I don’t know if there’s a single school that’s saying we have too many AV staff in our spaces. are, you know, we have the luxury of a giant AV staff. ⁓ The reality is interesting, you know, most schools, you know, since COVID, ⁓ I would say, you know, conservatively, the amount of AV enabled rooms or video enabled rooms has probably multiplied by a factor of five or 10, probably conservatively. And I can tell you, I don’t know if a single school who’s AV staff

Steph Beckett (12:02)
Hahaha

Matt Malone (12:25)
has grown at the same rate as the workload. So ⁓ that’s actually one of the challenges is how do we manage twice as many or 10 times as many rooms with the same AV staff that we had pre-COVID. ⁓ So what we’re seeing is, number one, can we simplify the space, make it easier to manage? ⁓ But also, can we use a remote management tool? Can we use some cloud-based services that allow fewer people to be in more spaces at the same time?

A lot of schools that we’re seeing are implementing our cloud solution, our XIO cloud, ⁓ you know, for three reasons. Number one, the XIO cloud will give them advance notice if a room goes down. So that way they can deal with it on Friday night, not Monday morning. ⁓ Also, they can reboot a room remotely. So they don’t have to, you know, run across the campus, you know, to reboot that room. They can do it remotely. But also, they can ⁓ log into that room remotely and actually, you know, control the room remotely.

without actually having to be there. So that’s definitely probably the fastest growing segment for us in the education space is that remote management capability.

Gary Kayye (13:35)
Yeah, I agree with you on that. ⁓ you know, it’s, there’s no question. There’s been a cutback. However, at the same time, the year has gotten a lot simpler and it used to be, there was a rack of equipment in all the rooms and that rack of equipment is gone. In fact, if the audio industry would get their stuff straightened up, ⁓ that rack of equipment would be gone because there’s a lot of audio stuff that’s still required to be in the room that is creating complexity of rooms.

And there are ways to remote that. I mean, ⁓ it’s amazing to me how much Dante has been adopted and also at the same time, how much it hasn’t been adopted, ⁓ with, with regard to traditional audio applications, Matt, and that’s, you know, that, that remote management can only go so far. Right. I mean, you, you, you, you, you, it stops when, when the, when the cable goes analog, right. It stops when you’re using legacy, ⁓ installed gear and we can’t do wireless audio.

reliably the way we could do wireless video, which is kind of ironic considering the bandwidth issues there. And that’s basically because the companies like Crestron, for example, you all have focused on AV over IP, but the audio, you stop at the input audio, not the output audio, right? The output audio making that wireless and completely making, and it’s that way with every company, right? I mean, like we don’t really truly have.

⁓ wireless speakers like we do ⁓ wireless everything else in the industry yet. And I think that creates some complexity and we’re always kind of nervous about that, right? But we have that with that gear already installed. ⁓ And I do think that we’re gonna see ⁓ continued ⁓ erosion of human support and more automated support, more AI-based support, like you said, predicting problems before they happen and things like that.

So I agree with you on that.

Matt Malone (15:34)
It’s funny, you mentioned the AV rack going away and it’s always, whenever I go to a school that’s gone, that’s migrated to AV over IP, that’s always a point of pride. They always take me to where the rack was. This whole rack now is just these two boxes. ⁓ And so I had to smile when you said that because boy, that a point of pride for a lot of schools when they go AV over IP. ⁓ As far as audio goes, I think it’s twofold. I think…

Gary Kayye (15:44)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Matt Malone (16:01)
Audio doesn’t progress at the rate that video does. So when you talk about budgets, a lot of schools are trying to reuse that old audio gear ⁓ because to upgrade the speakers and the amplifiers, the cadence of that upgrade really isn’t in sync with video and other technologies in terms of the need to upgrade. ⁓ do have, Cross Run is progressing in that direction though. So we do have AV over IP speakers where you can literally just run a network cable ceiling.

Gary Kayye (16:05)
Yeah.

Matt Malone (16:29)
and the amplification and the DSP is actually built into the speaker. And we do see that expanding, you know, just as the rack goes further and further away.

Gary Kayye (16:37)
Yeah, think that’s gonna be, I honestly think for the kind of audio we’re doing, you’re doing a movie theater, it’s different. You’re doing a live event, different. But in the kind of stuff we’re doing where we have limited frequencies, we’re just trying to solve a problem and make a room do, we know exactly what we need the room to do. Going completely wireless is huge. I think that’s gonna be a great opportunity for industry. And yeah, I agree with you on that.

But in any case, ⁓ we’ve also gone AV over IP, as you may know. But we’re also seeing spaces kind of forced to be more flexible, where you have a classroom that used to have a head of room, and it doesn’t have a head of room now. And so we’re having to be creative in the way that we’re putting displays. But also the signal routing and distribution for that ⁓ becomes different in that particular case. Are you running into that?

Matt Malone (17:33)
Yeah, so we’re seeing more of what I call the active learning classrooms out there on campus. There’s always going to be the campus where they’ll never get rid of their chalkboards, they’ll never get rid of their lecture halls, because that’s part of the theater of that classroom. ⁓ But we are seeing more of these collaborative spaces in education where there isn’t necessarily a front of the room, but there’s also ⁓ pods throughout the spaces where the students can collaborate and learn.

Gary Kayye (17:37)
Yeah.

Matt Malone (18:01)
And I don’t think, I think that’s also like a generational thing as far as how students like to work together in groups and learn as groups. And that creates some unique challenges. And it’s really, those are really fun projects for us because it kind of leads to what we want to do at Crestron in terms of collaboration. And in those spaces, what we’re is we’re seeing more AV over IP where all of those monitors at those pods are just endpoints and we can sync them all together and share the same content.

Gary Kayye (18:26)
Yeah.

Matt Malone (18:30)
or they can become breakout sessions. So the flexibility of the AV over IP in that situation ⁓ is great. And what we’re also seeing in those situations ⁓ is, Gary, is we’re seeing two-way communication where not only is the teacher sending information to the pods, but the pods are sending that information back to other pods and to the front of the room. And they’re either doing that either through AV over IP or they’re doing that wirelessly.

Gary Kayye (18:55)
Yeah. And what’s interesting about that

is that’s an interesting design decision because it also depends on who’s teaching in those rooms. We have found that the younger the teacher age wise, the more likely they already use the collaborative active learning classroom features. ⁓ and, you and I think it comes down to comfort with new technology, but also teaching style. Cause if you’re used to teaching all linear, then you don’t necessarily use it that way. But if you, if you’re

more flexible than I think that that ⁓ plays really well. So I think it depends on who’s using that room. So doing that whole heartily campus wide doesn’t tend to work out really well. You have to kind of address it, you know, almost professor by professor in our case.

Matt Malone (19:40)
the room needs to be able to do both. The room needs to able to satisfy that person that just wants to come in, plug his MacBook in and present. But it also has to have that ability to be more granular when you have that different professor that gets to technology and likes to throw things on different screens. ⁓ And I think that comes down to the flexibility of the system as it’s designed. And also the interface that the professor is using has to be simple. ⁓

Gary Kayye (19:43)
Yeah.

Matt Malone (20:09)
You know, it’s our job to hide the technology behind a simple interface.

Gary Kayye (20:14)
Agreed.

Steph Beckett (20:17)
Well, last question I have for you, Matt, is where can people reach out to you and where can they find more about Crestron?

Matt Malone (20:24)
So a couple of things, if you’re attending Infocomm, ⁓ know, Crestron is a big, maybe the biggest ⁓ presence at Infocomm. So we welcome you to come by there to see the technology, put your hands on it, see it working. ⁓ You can reach out to Crestron at Crestron.com. ⁓ Or if you want to hear from your local A plus, my counterpart in your area, ⁓ you can send me an email directly. You know, my email address is my first name, my last name.

So Matthew.Malone at Crestron.com. And if you’re in my area, I’m happy to help you out. But if not, I can connect you with your local Crestron A plus rep.

Steph Beckett (21:01)
Awesome.

Gary Kayye (21:01)
Well, it’s been great. Thanks.

I appreciate you joining. It’s good to have you on. It’s always good to have a new face on rAVe TV because ⁓ to learn from ⁓ different perspectives out there and, ⁓ and the fact that he’s focused on higher education is really kind of cool.

Matt Malone (21:03)
Thanks for having me.

Steph Beckett (21:07)
agreed.

Absolutely, I thought he would be an interesting person for you to talk to in particular. You’ll have a lot in common.

Gary Kayye (21:20)
Yeah,

and I’ll tell you, one exhibitor I’m excited about for Infocomm is ViewSonic. I think you’re going to see a whole new company at Infocomm 2026. So check this out, out this video on their all-in-one LEDs.

Steph Beckett (23:07)
Awesome. next I would just like to introduce an interview that I did with Viewsonic’s Hayley Ruvalcaba. We kind of talked about holistic meeting spaces and where the IFP can fit into that meeting space. So check this out.

Gary Kayye (23:09)
It’s my pleasure to introduce to you, the class of 2020, the class of 2020, the

you Steph way to go. I’m looking forward to seeing what they’re doing. I think they’re kind of underestimated as a brand. One of the things that’s starting to come up a lot that we wrote an article on, Peyton wrote an article on this week that I think is going to be a bigger and bigger deal in our industry over the next 10 years, less so now, is the whole tech industry has a big e-waste problem with the exception of Apple. Apple has addressed it and you know they’ve gone

Steph Beckett (31:27)
Absolutely.

Gary Kayye (31:32)
some of their products are completely 100 % recyclable. They handle it for you. And by 2030, 100 % of their products, not only will be 100 % recyclable, but also they’re going to run all the Apple stores and offices completely off the grid from a power standpoint. But most companies don’t have that kind of money. They’re not trillion dollar companies. And so therefore it’s going to become a bigger and bigger problem.

Steph Beckett (31:53)
That’s.

Gary Kayye (31:58)
sort of like all this has been dumped on the integrators as a responsibility. ⁓ And so what happens is they go and do an install stuff and now they’ve got to collect all the old stuff ⁓ and they have to deal with it, right? I mean, that’s part of the deal. so there’s a great, Peyton did a great job kind of ⁓ talking about some of the numbers that are out there and what SAVE is doing, the nonprofit dealing with this in our industry and their goals for 2030. So if you want to read that piece, ⁓

Steph Beckett (32:03)
Yeah.

Yep.

Gary Kayye (32:27)
check it out. I definitely think it’s worth checking out and you know and help you understand what your responsibilities are.

Steph Beckett (32:34)
Absolutely. And real quick, we’re going to do a quick commercial from our final sponsor and partner, Shure on the importance of AV security in the digital age. And Gary and I will be right back.

Gary Kayye (34:30)
Sorry about that, Steph, I missed that piece.

Steph Beckett (34:31)
you

It’s alright, no big deal. Let’s continue on. Let’s talk about David Danto’s latest piece that he wrote for Rave, is about NAB. And he talks about how NAB finally makes sense because it doesn’t make sense. And he’s kind of talking about the thing that I mentioned last week about how the end user for NAB is such this crazy wild like range of people, right? So you have AV integrators, you have people in

broadcast, you have higher ups from different news stations and TV stations, and then you have content creators and YouTubers and Twitch streamers. So the end user is so vastly ranged that it’s hard for like the manufacturers to be like, okay, like what do we bring to make the most sense? So they kind of just bring everything. And David talks about how that used to kind of be a criticism and a real problem.

but now it’s kind of its strength because all of us are kind of shifting toward using content creation tech in different methods. So he’s saying it’s just, makes a lot of sense now. So on one…

side of the trade show area you could be looking at Ross Video. So you’re looking at like a very detailed production switcher that like no one would ever be able to know how to use unless you like do that every day. And then you walk to like aisles over and then you see a Blackmagic setup built for your smartphone. So it was it’s definitely a very different show but those things

he says belong together because the industry is constantly changing. So the modern media world now means it encompasses things like smartphone rigs, but also giant production switchers. So I thought it was an interesting take.

Gary Kayye (36:34)
So we have an article on our website about NSCA releasing the 2026 economic output. They do a really good job every year kind of wrapping things up and making you feel

scared or better about the industry, depending on what side of the industry you’re on and where we’re doing economically. Right now we’re doing really, really well, as you know. so there’s a lot of opportunity out there. So check out the economic report. If you’re a member of NSCA, if you’re not a member of NSCA, you can go to nsea.org and join.

Steph Beckett (37:05)
Absolutely. And not a ton of products from the last week, but Absen has the new Saturn series solution. So it’s the SA 1.5, basically their latest addition to the Saturn series. This is its 1.56 millimeter pixel pitch, full flip chip, chip on board technology, ⁓ monolithic panel structure. So very, very stable. And basically this technology that they put into this is meant to extend its lifespan.

So the power consumption is also 30 % lower than previous models and the stability is 40 % greater than in other conventional products. And it’s also backward compatible with all of their ⁓ Saturn accessory ecosystem. It’s got anti-reflection on it, dual layer cabinet. So if you want to see the full list of specs and where you might be able to use this, definitely go to ravepubs.com.

Gary Kayye (38:00)
We have two virtual events coming up before the end of the month. What’s that? Yeah. One is at 2 PM today from devices, assistance, rethink in the modern meeting room. ⁓ and, this is, ⁓ in partnership with sure. So you should register for that. Even if you can’t attend that gives you access to the recording. ⁓ but if you can attend, ⁓ awesome, I think you’ll really get a lot out of it because it’ll be alive. And then we have one tomorrow.

Steph Beckett (38:03)
Yep, once today. Once today.

Gary Kayye (38:27)
at 2 p.m. as well, which is it’s all about video now why AVM broadcasts are finally the same in the same conversation. ⁓ And and that’s sort of like your takeaways from NAB. ⁓ So that one’s at 2 p.m. again. Sign up for these, even if you’re not sure you’re able to join, because it gives you access to the recordings, plus ⁓ you’ll get notified when the recordings are posted and stuff like that. So good reason to sign up, but say.

Steph Beckett (38:52)
Absolutely.

Gary Kayye (38:54)
So Steph is great doing this. look forward to seeing you next Wednesday. Will you be back in North Carolina? Okay, good. And I guess you’ll be back until Infocom, right? Okay, yeah. we’ll be, and don’t forget InfoComm we do live rAVe TV every single day.

Steph Beckett (38:59)
Yes.

Yeah, I think so, unless something happened.

Yep, so I look forward to doing that with you, Gary.

Gary Kayye (39:13)
Yeah, same. Thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us.