Infocomm 12 - Rock Soup

Pardon the Bold format here folks... The post was written in MS Word when I did not have access to my online tools *sigh* .  For some reason the MS formatting is being read as bold and is STICKY as hell. 

Infocomm has wrapped up and if my facebook feed is to be believed even the largest booths have been packed away in crates and are well on the way home. The pictures of tired but obviously satisfied faces with a drink in hand tell you all you need to know.  This show went without a hitch and 34,268 -up 4%!-  found good food, lodging and business deals.

Now, thousands of products were exhibited on the show floor - .  You can find reports on nearly every one in nauseating detail from great industry news outlets like System Contractor, PLSN and many, many others.  rAVe Pubs also did a fine job video documenting nearly every booth on the floor and have them posted in a handy, searchable site.  

To save you time I am going to boil down the main elements for you in seven points

What was Infocomm 2012 all about?  

1). Simplification

 You have heard of multiplication or perhaps even anticipation (it’s making me waa -a-a-it) but Infocomm this year was all about making things “Simpler”, “Easy”, “little ramp up time to operation” and “With in House staff in mind”. These common catch phrases spun as revelatory exclamations seem to show that manufacturers and developers finally understand that interface matters.

There is a darker side to all this happy ‘we get you’ preoccupation with making set up, controls and configuration as easy as a three fingered salute.  I have to ask at what the root catalyst for this sudden interest in implementing the Wizards cry to Dorothy “Pay no attention to that man behind the screen!”.  Are we giving up on the need for basic understanding of the physics and simple mechanics because they are no longer needed for standard operation or because we can no longer find the  personnel  who can or are willing to dig deep?

Certainly the industry is ch-ch- changing but is it for the right reason?  We have a serious youth deficit in this industry, doubly so for the Event Staging world, is this the way to get them into the fold, by bypassing all the hard knowledge stuff ?

2. iPad

Apps  are still everywhere but no one is hysterically shouting about them from booth rigging. Yes they are a good thing. Yes they make things more flexible and, well let's admit it, sexy. Thankfully they appear to have become standard accessories not above or beyond actual equipment.

3. Speaking of hysterical nonsense

 Thank <enter deity name of choice here, or null> -  that 3D is only a footnoted specification now.  Last year in Orlando attempting to avoid the clamour of 3D from any booth was akin to trying to enter a vegas hotel without having to claw your way through the forest of slot machines, blue smoke one could cut with a bowie knife and over eager cocktail waitresses.  If you read my Twitter rants or listen to the AV NationTV podcasts with any regularity -you know just how enamoured with 3D I am.  Oh Muybridge! Up Yours (with apologies to Polystyrene)

4). HD over Structured Wiring

 AV over “Cat 5” was everywhere - or should I say HDBaseT was ubiquitous under various and sundry names throughout the show floor.  For Installations folks the era of UTP / STP as THE wire for everything is now nearly at hand. Another shake up in the wire biz is due soon as fewer and fewer cable types are used.  I wonder what pseudoscience babble Monster Cable will start using to market theirs.

5). IATSE Booth

Before anyone starts with me, I love the folks involved with IATSE- some of my best friends are IATSE members. Yet the large set aside space with a stage and chairs never seemed to have any activity in it. Perhaps I was on a  different schedule or something happened while I was recording AV Social or the Live Life. I spent a good deal of time in the ‘Lighting and Staging’ section and never saw anything beyond a few folks eating.

The eerie atmosphere reminded me of the a scene in the book  Travels with Charley  by John Steinbeck. The book is part travel journal, part memoir and part  literary extension of   Kerouac’s  On The Road, it is the story of his travels across the United States with his dog Charley. Steinbeck wrote the book while living in Sag Harbor Long Island, (My Home Town!) which is also where he wrote the Winter of Our Discontent - but that is another tale altogether. Early on in the book, while he is traveling through deep Vermont Steinbeck comes upon a fully lit and operating roadside cafe but it is empty of people. After waiting for half an hour he decides to get behind the counter and cook his own breakfast which he eat and cleans up after.  With still no one showing he leaves money for  his meal and moves on.   

I really wanted to have some folks on the Live Life podcast but since I could not find anyone in the “booth” the opportunity was lost.  If anyone from the organization is reading this, we would love to have you on a future show!

6). AV NationTV

Rocked with our first Live broadcasts of  The Daily Rave, AV Week, AV Social and The Live Life.  Our Broadcast table, in the front of the rAVe booth drew crowds of regular listeners and many new ones. We had a fantastic time chatting with integrators, press, Infocomm staff  and lots and lots of exhibitors.  When the recorded versions of the shows post I will update here with links.   

7). Finally

Speaking of AV NationTV, we want you for the AV Nation Army- Join us by suggesting topics, guests or even joining us on air as a panelist. We started the network but it is for and about our industry - it can only grow when we work together.

All in all it was a great show. I am unclear if anything really new came out of this show but I found it informative and a great networking opportunity. In the last hours of the exhibit I kept thinking about the story of Rock soup. It may not have started out as much but it was damn tasty in the end with all the help.   Hope to see you all in Orlando next year!

 

 

This is Not a CES post, Not a CES Post

Originally posted on on Ravepubs, January 19th, 2012

 

This is not a post about CES, No, not at all.  But as you brought it up - just a few thoughts

CES is huge, I mean really huge.  You may think that Infocomm or CEDIA is large but neither one of these have left our dear friend Richard Fregosa curled up in tiny trembling ball on the plush carpet of the LG booth. Actually this did not happen, nor do I suspect Mr Fregrosa exhibits any
public displays of trembling- ever.  It is I who would suffer the ‘who put my knees on backwards today’ walk from canvasing the infinity that is CES.  And yes, I would wind up a puddle on the LG carpet, a booth babe nervously poking at me to see if I was still breathing. Just reading RF’s twitter posts and blog missives for CEPro have me holed up in the corner of my office with the first heat rash symptoms of a  trade show specific agoraphobia.  

When a show can be compared to the infinite universe you know for sure that it is just too damn big.  Watching the Twit.tv folks record iPad Today live walking around the ‘iLounge’ section of the show and twice realize that they had left the section only after someone pointed it out to them -just made me happy it was them not me.

You might argue that the show obviously needs to be as large as it is, just look at all the booths they filled and all the attendees. Phil Swann of TV Predictions.com summed up my feelings when he tweeted:

“@SwanniOnHD: Hard to believe the stuff u see on the #CES2012 floor; much should have been left on the cutting room floor”

Then there is the Gizmodo post by Mat Honan . Gizmodo lives and breaths this stuff so it is worth noting when he says:

“Then it's time for a meeting, so I scuttle out through a maze of ocular and aural assaults, past booth after booth of headset-wearing pitchmen doing their best Billy Mays. Deep in the middle of the din, I meet yet another PR person whom I'll never see again in my life, and settle in for a demo of another product I already know I'm not going to write about.”

With too much space to fill we find ourselves swallowed up in detritus and ephemera.

We, as a culture, are fervently fond our ability to spread out, to take up space. Our homes are a testament to this early pioneer spirit of owning our own spread.  It is also a testament to an entire economy which fuels innumerable bloated shows  full of stuff to fill our abodes with.

In my last post “Knit One, Purl Two”  I touched on the opportunities and advantages of going small - how compression can generate new and exciting ideas. Limitations are liberating, forcing new solutions and even revisiting older ones that we should not have abandoned, Like moderate homes with porches.

I own a fairly modest home, a 1901 colonial which, with the finished attic, is about 1900 square feet.  This is, in reality much too much space.  In reality I only use about half the space for actual living, the rest just accommodates stuff - mostly items I do not need and could be put to better use.  The house was purchased as it fit my other priorities of being near mass transit and within walking distance of a local deli/grocery store/ bara porch, this and the small patch of green in the back.  Given my druthers I would have preferred a smaller house on the same lot with less house  more grass and more porch.  So yes size does matter, just not how we have been taught.  

Recently my wife and I performed the annual post X-mas purge of toys, clothes and other miscellaneous items from the house. Each time we do this, (and we do it at least twice a year which is two times too few for me), I am appalled at the sheer volume of items we have accumulated which we have no real need for.  I think part of the issue is that we actually have the space to keep all this flotsam and jetsam. My parents, most likely subconsciously, purchase too many things for the kids because we can fit it. While anecdotal, when we lived in an apartment the items the grandparents brought in were far less and smaller.

I KNOW it will draw guffaws and hackles but  there is much to said for houses that concentrate on function rather than flash.  I am particularly fascinated with the work of Lugi Colani’s Rotor House concept design or perhaps something along the lines of Normal Projects Origami apartment.  The attraction here is beautiful design with emphasis on natural light and economy of space by creating multifunction without appearing industrial.  While the homes are in the vein of Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie homes these homes far more than ranch homes redux, the point is more environmental rather than ornamental.  

There is a larger social effect beyond taking up less space. In a time before ubiquitous air conditioning folks would spend a great deal of time on their porches and stoops - knowing their neighbors and keeping an eye the general welfare of the area. Even today, communities where people use their porches on a regular basis tend to have  lower crime rates.  These communities also generate less trash and are greener in general in particular, if not completely, because there is less space to accumulate random stuff. The trend may be bad for the folks from ‘American Pickers’ and CES exhibitors but not our industry.

In the cloud based future there is less need to have and store a physical medium, for example our playback and storage devices are small and mostly portable.  The trend is for more personal listening (headphones and headphone amps were everywhere at the show, every online magazine commented on just how pervasive the units were).  Even when a more traditional listening experience is desired the new compact speaker systems are comparable with their larger space hogging brethren -(taking into account economy of scales).   

This would, of course, mean a shift in just what and how home media and automation items are created and sold.  Homeowners will be more interested in controls and media delivery that lives and moves from personal device to the home and back again.  Interoperability, quick replacement transition and customization will be the hallmarks of a new mass market controls.

We may feel a bit pressured by this coming small world but the trends of global urbanization and explosion of multifunction products that incorporate a video monitor, storage, Internet connectivity and control in one box show an inevitable path.. This years CES dichotomy of too much floor space and compact offerings are the rune stones. But then again we were not talking about CES, were we?

AV Week Episode 10 - "Oh Canada"

we mock our northern neighbors, take one for team ,  have serious moment -(ha' who we kiddin?) #avtweeps

 

Episode 10 of AV Week brings new blood with Adrian Boyd, Matt Scott returns as our international correspondent, and George Tucker joins us.

We talk about AV Week, the InfoComm industry celebration of all things AV. Cheryl Regan from ICIA gives us some tips and ideas on how to promote the industry where you live.

Crestron has killed a long beloved product; we mourn the passing of the Adagio line. How would you like a control system you can control with your brain? We’ll explain. Also, George explains how to build your very own satellite. Plus, we have the next big market for you integrators… senior citizens.

http://www.avnation.tv/avweek-episode-10-oh-canada/

A Preponderance of Presentations - Infocomm 11 as seen from the Mobius Curve

Walking the floor at ICIA's Infocomm 11 trade show

 “Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Infocomm is huge this year. From the entire show floor to the second level of classes and demos and breakout rooms throughout  it just seems to never end.

It has been twelve years since I last had the chance to see the show as an attendee and not a booth  builder slash floor barker and perhaps this has altered my perception of space at the show.   When you work the booth for a major manufacture there is little chance to wander from your post and explore -  one eats sleeps and yes poops the product(s) with little chance of getting beyond the immediate parcel of show floor .  The universe is indeed a very defined area during these days.

As attendee, well, it is like being transformed from Sisyphus into David Bowman , complete with wide eyed expression and a multitude of lights reflecting in them.

 
Being here at the show is a must, having a physical relationship with the products and people cannot be recreated by reading press releases or wandering the halls of  a ‘Virtual Tradeshow’.  Only when you can touch a device, turn it over in your hands and look into the -proverbial- eyes  and look directly into the - real- eyes of the company employee does one get  a connection with the possibilities.

This is not to argue against virtual connections. In addition to seeing the gadgets, gear and goodies in action I am excited to finally meet, face to face and beer mug to wine glass, the fine folks of #Avtweeps.  We are a group of  Audio Visual folks who have gathered a tribe on social media, more specifically Twitter.  The daily and sometimes hourly conversations are extremely constructive  and I could hardly imagine a day without ‘hearing’ from the group at least once a day.   

Truth is that I have sought out the company booths of the folks who regularly chat, chide and console each other via the avtweeps association because I trust them. And in turn I am more likely to trust the products - or at least give them the benefit of doubt.

As I head out to dive into day two of the show, my feet still ache and my knees feel as if someone put them on backwards I am determined to see as many demos and presentations as possible.  

Coming from the cloistered world of working for one major manufacture has me learning anew and re-submerging myself into an industry I had taken a short sabbatical from.

See you on the show floor, say hi and join me for a coffee and nosh at the Infocomm Lounge.