We launched SDVoE LIVE! season 2 with a review of AV over IP at InfoComm 2021. Now we stand at the season’s penultimate episode, and we’re just back from ISE 22. How much has changed in six short months for AV over IP? What impact has the return to work had on system design? What new products have been introduced for 2022, and—perhaps more importantly—are integrators actually able to source them? Gary Kayye joins us to share his insights and a view from the show floor.

Episode guest

Emily Dean
The rAVe Agency, Director of Marketing

Emily Dean is the director of marketing for THE rAVe Agency and oversees and directs marketing activities for all THE rAVe Agency talents including the AV industry’s leading publication rAVe [PUBS]. Emily has been with rAVe for over 10 years, has attended 50+ industry tradeshows and recorded too many videos to count. Emily also writes and creates various CTS RU-approved courses from THE rAVe Agency with topics that range from AV industry trends to technical topics like AV over IP and 4K. Emily has a journalism degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and currently lives in Chapel Hill, NC.

Episode Transcript

Justin Kennington (00:07):

Hello again. Hello again. Thank you for joining us. Welcome everybody. I’m your host, Justin Kennington and this is SDVoE LIVE, TV for Pro AV. Are you guys back from Barcelona? Was anybody in the audience in Barcelona, write to us. Tell us about your experience live@SDVoE.org. I got home very late on Friday night. I was lucky to catch a direct flight almost literally the moment the show ended straight home, although it was still quite a journey. It was quite a week. It was my first time in Barcelona.

And I have to say, despite trepidation about leaving Amsterdam where ISE has been held for… What, a decade? And it was just comfort of a city that I’d come to know and understand, and basically know where to go for dinner that was actually good. To move to a new location was stressful, but it worked out great. Barcelona it turns out was a great city. It was beautiful to have this first one in May. Although in general, we will be back to February, but I suspect the weather in Barcelona is probably still better in February than it is most other places in February including Amsterdam.

That’s good. And the show, the venue, Fira Barcelona Gran Via, make sure you say “Gran Via” because there’s two Fira Barcelonas and your taxi driver will not know which one you mean. Don’t ask me how I know about that. Gran Via. Anyway, it was a great venue. It was nice to be in a place that was clearly designed from the ground up to handle an event of ISE’s magnitude. That was really exciting. Anyway, we’ve got a lot to talk about. We’re going to review the show a little bit for you today. We’re going to talk about where AV over IP was at the show, maybe talk about where it wasn’t at the show. Don’t forget, you’re going to talk about it in the aftershow. I already mentioned the email address above my head, live@SDVoE.org. If you’re logged into lAVnch right now, if you’re logged into the SDVoE Academy right now, if you’re watching us on LinkedIn right now, then look somewhere down there below my feet and there’s a comment section.

There’s a chat section for you to interact with your fellow audience members and get your questions to us. And to our guest, Emily Dean, director of marketing for THE rAVe Agency. She’s going to be here to run the show down for us. You may know that rAVe sends… They claim, I believe them, a camera to every single booth at the show. In theory, she’s seen it all. We’re going to find out what happens. Get your emails in, get your questions in, but now I want you to go check out this quiz.

Well, I’ve gone and done it, haven’t I? I’ve got to start studying those show schedule sheets that Matt sends over so that I don’t spoil the answer to the question in the segment right before the question, but let’s see who was paying attention. Shall we, Matt?

Matt Dodd (03:16):

Any of you have got that wrong, wake up. Do you know you look so much taller in the studio than you do in a trade show booth.

Justin Kennington (03:27):

Well, I’m wearing different shoes now as well. Don’t forget about that.

Matt Dodd (03:29):

Oh yeah, of course you are. Hey everybody. It’s me again, your favorite English guy, his sidekick, his stooge. Don’t forget, we’ve got a team of moderators ready. And Emily’s here with Justin to talk about ISE and everything ISE. I’m sure you’ve got loads to chip in with so get your comments and questions in. Email live@sdvoe.org. And for those of you in Academy, well done you. Use the chat because our moderators are here to grab all of those chats and throw them our way so we can chat away to myself, to JK, and to Emily.

Gives you feedback on the show as well. We need to hear from you. It’s great to hear from you. It’s good to see some of you last week as well. Please get your feedback in. And as usual, Justin, there has been a question. This time it’s Bill Wickers. Oh, steady there. Bill Wickers from Park City in Utah asked, “Would someone who attended ISE expect to see anything new or different to InfoComm next month?” That’s a pretty good question actually.

Justin Kennington (04:32):

The shows are barely three weeks apart this year. That’s special. That’s not normal, but we’ll put it to Emily. We’ll see what she thinks. Why don’t you come join me in the studio and let’s move along to some news while you find out if you got the answer right.

Matt Dodd (05:10):

I’ve been training. It’s not as hard this time. It’s not as hard coming down.

Justin Kennington (05:15):

It’s a workout at these shows, isn’t it?

Matt Dodd (05:18):

Here we are in the newsroom again, got something special this time, haven’t we JK?

Justin Kennington (05:23):

Let’s do it. Let’s show them a quick clip of SDVoE’s experience at ISE 2022. Why don’t we roll that beautiful footage?

[Video footage of ISE plays]

Matt Dodd (06:18):

Wasn’t it fun? Wasn’t it fun walking 17,000 steps a day? No, it was really good. Really enjoyed it. Hope that did you justice for those of you that hadn’t been because you missed a treat. It was a big place, right?

Justin Kennington (06:33):

It was huge. But unlike some convention centers that my heart used to belong to, it was not cobbled together over five decades with buildings here and buildings there and a tent in the parking lot, a skyway to get across them and so on.

Matt Dodd (06:49):

Let’s dig into it, shall we?

Justin Kennington (06:50):

Anyway, we’ve got so much to cover. Shall we do the news?

Matt Dodd (06:57):

News article numero uno. Is that right? Oh, sorry. I don’t speak… My Spanish is getting better. News article number one, ISE 2022 draws attendance of nearly, but not quite, 45,000 people. This is a very quick, a very interesting article. For those of you, again, that hadn’t been just gives you a flavor for not only the size of the place and how many people were there, but the success of it as well.

And I think that’s really where we need to be honing into here. Well done, bravo from my perspective and I think a lot of other peoples as well. Bravo because it was a really, really well attended and well put together show with a lot of thought had gone into that and it’s just such a shame it had to take a few years extra to get going, but brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Justin, thoughts?

Justin Kennington (07:44):

I think the key metrics on this one, the 45,000 was very strong attendance considering where we are in the world. Right? That is down from a peak in 2019 of 81,000 people.

Matt Dodd (07:56):

Yeah. Yeah.

Justin Kennington (07:57):

It looks like a massive drop off in that sense. But remember InfoComm ’21 last October had an attendance of 7,000. This is a massive upward swing, upward trend, and I think I’m expecting very big things from InfoComm 2022, which opens tomorrow I believe.

Matt Dodd (08:13):

Yes.

Justin Kennington (08:14):

No, no, no. We’ve got three weeks.

Matt Dodd (08:15):

Yeah, tomorrow. I’m getting out there as quickly as I can. Well, in that case, let’s zip onto topic number two, because good for Mike here. Good for Mike proving the ISE 2022 doubters wrong and good for you quite… And amen to that, we proved them wrong. The industry’s back after that thing that we’ve just experienced. And I think it’s fair to say that Mike and his team are probably feeling pretty relieved about what happened last week about the attendance. And there was few… There were a few little concerns Justin, right? There were…

Think little niggles that could be fixed. You try setting up a show with 40 odd thousand people in a brand new town with a brand new venue that was the size of… I don’t know, however many 30 odd football pitches is incredible. Some things can be improved and that’s fine, but everything can be improved, but by and large, good on you. Well done.

Justin Kennington (09:09):

Look, the digital badges was a disaster. That was a horrible idea that didn’t work well for anything. It was a horrible idea horribly executed. That’s the worst thing about the show, right? The rest of it, absolutely right. It was a fantastic show. For me as somebody whose job is to manage an organization’s participation in a show like this, there were a lot of moments I was nervous.

Matt Dodd (09:31):

Yeah.

Justin Kennington (09:31):

I said… I make myself notes about these articles. I said, “ISE nearly made a lot of big mistakes.” Right? They were pushing to the last minute to do a show in ’21, they canceled it. It was the right thing to do. They were pushing until late, late, late to do the ’22 show in February. At the last minute they changed it, moved it to May. In the end, the actual decisions that actually got made were spot on. It was great.

Matt Dodd (09:54):

It was great. Yeah. And if those of you that were wondering where the food was, try harder. There’s plenty of food there. Best burgers I’ve ever eaten as well, best burgers in the world.

Justin Kennington (10:02):

We got to talk about that. You told me that. I had a burger the next day. I was like if this is the best burger Matt’s ever eaten, then we’ve got to talk. I got to bring him to America or something. But then I saw a different burger restaurant that maybe that’s where you were.

Matt Dodd (10:14):

Yeah. Maybe.

Justin Kennington (10:14):

Anyway, we’ll straighten that out next February.

Matt Dodd (10:16):

We need to, and I’m quite happy to come to America to taste even better burgers. No problem. No problem at all. Last piece here and don’t forget, these are all available for you in the resource section below, check this one out. This is a goodie. This is brilliant. We’re just going to pick out a couple of things that really them shown for us. JK, you go first.

Justin Kennington (10:34):

I like, and you can even see it in the picture right there, the immersive art experience, right? They had Van Gogh paintings transformed into this three-dimensional digital form. Many of you have probably seen these kind of art shows. I know they’ve toured and things. I’ve never personally seen one so to get to experience that it was a great reminder of what AV is really capable of when we’re trying our hardest to create great user experience.

Matt Dodd (10:58):

Right.

Justin Kennington (10:58):

It was awesome.

Matt Dodd (10:59):

Well, for me, and all of it is great… But for me, what I really enjoyed was the immersive audio. Now I know this has happened a few times before in the shows.

Justin Kennington (11:07):

I knew you were going to pick that one.

Matt Dodd (11:08):

Yeah. But there was… Around the corner from our booth, there was this brilliant… And you walk past it. You guys that were there would’ve seen it. And you just walk past these immersive audio speakers, and it’s going, “psst, psst, hey, you.” And it’s being really cheeky in your ear and you can’t help but look around. But what’s funnier is watching other people’s reaction to it and it takes them back again.

But it was adopted by more and more of the booths and I love it. I love… I’m an audio guy through and through. And I just love that whole immersive audio piece to really support the video. Some great stuff, check out those links below. I’m going to leave you to have a chat now with Emily, so have fun and we’ll see you in a bit.

Justin Kennington (11:47):

See you. Our guest today, we thank her for joining at the last minute. Those of you paying careful attention know that Gary Kayye was going to join us. He ended up having to miss ISE for what must be the first time in a long time. And as I was speaking to him, he said, “Why don’t you invite Emily on?” And Emily and I go way back. Why don’t we bring her in? She’s the director of marketing for rAVe. We thank her very much for joining and you know what? We didn’t need Gary on this show for the third time in two seasons. I’m so glad that this happened and here you are. Welcome.

Emily Dean (12:17):

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Justin Kennington (12:20):

Sure. Boy, rAVe does a lot of coverage of these shows, right?

Emily Dean (12:25):

We do. We do. It was… When I heard that Gary wasn’t going to be able to make it due to COVID, I had a little mini panic attack, but then we pivoted and I was the one who did all of his interviews for the first two days and executive interviews and booth tours so threw me right into the fire just like now, but happy to be here.

Justin Kennington (12:53):

Be honest, it’s been what? Three days or so that we’ve all been home ish.

Emily Dean (12:57):

Yeah.

Justin Kennington (12:58):

Have you watched every single video that has been recorded by you guys yet?

Emily Dean (13:04):

No, I have watched a number of them, but not every single one. No.

Justin Kennington (13:10):

Fair enough. Fair enough. All right. All right. Onto the serious questions. What… Big picture… Well, how did you feel about the show? Matt and I liked it. We thought it was strong. Did you have the same takeaway?

Emily Dean (13:23):

Yeah. I echo a lot of what you guys were talking about before. We’ve been in Amsterdam for the past… Ever since I’ve worked and ever since I’ve attended ISE so I was nervous to leave the city that I know the restaurants, I know all of what goes on. I know how to get there. I know what hotel to stay in. I was nervous for Barcelona, but it was… I was pleasantly surprised at how well the show was organized, how easy it was to navigate the Fira.

It’s nothing like the RAI, which is what you were saying, Justin, prior. And yes, we were down from the large numbers of 2019 that I think that’s the biggest show that they’ve ever had. But yet with having over 800 exhibitors, a lot of them showing new product for the first time in two years, it was really refreshing. And it was really great to see all of that product that we’ve seen in the news over the past two years really in person and active.

Justin Kennington (14:33):

Yeah. Any new trends that you spotted or continuing from existing trends? What’s the story?

Emily Dean (14:41):

Yep. There were… A number of indoor DVLED products with just getting smaller and smaller pixel pitch. You walked by Samsung’s 8K for the wall. Barco launched their TruePix LED line so that was impressive. I had heard… I was privy to that product before it came out and it was nice to see it in person. And then surprisingly, a lot of touch solutions for DVLEDs. I think DVLED is something for integrators and end users to keep an eye on because back…

I think maybe 2019, 2018 was really when we started to see the smaller pixel pitches of DVLED, and manufacturers promoting that, yes, you can use this in conference room spaces. And we were like, what? LED? No way. But it’s true. You can… Especially with those touch overlays and everything. And then obviously as we move back into the office, a lot of UCC companies are adding kind of bundled products. Logitech had their largest show presence ever so that was interesting to see.

Justin Kennington (15:54):

I worried about that. I saw that big booth and I wasn’t sure. I said I haven’t noticed this before. Okay, there you go.

Emily Dean (15:58):

Yeah. It’s their largest footprint ever at a trade show they told me. That was really successful for them. They introduced a lot of new things. They had this really cool home office product called the LogiDoc. It’s an either certified Microsoft or certified Zoom device that has a one touch meeting join, a mute button, and a mute video button so it’s really built for the home and it has built in speakers too. That was another thing. And then obviously with just, like I said, getting back to the office, hot desking solutions for all of that.

Justin Kennington (16:37):

I don’t know about you, but I could have really used an easy television scale Zoom conferencing product about two years ago.

Emily Dean (16:47):

Yeah.

Justin Kennington (16:48):

Today I’m sick of it, but okay.

Emily Dean (16:51):

Yes.

Justin Kennington (16:51):

What about in the AV over IP space, right? That’s where we live. That’s where we play. What stood out for you there?

Emily Dean (17:00):

More people are doing it. Back in maybe 2020, 2019, there were maybe 10 booths on the entire show floor that were really pushing AV over IP. And now there’s well over 50. New companies like Matrox and others are now promoting AV over IP in those solutions. And so I think just as we mature and get more and more into that, you’re going to see more and more companies utilize it and hopefully utilize solutions like SDVoE.

Justin Kennington (17:32):

Oh, there you go. Plug the the show host. I love it. Thank you.

Emily Dean (17:37):

Of course.

Justin Kennington (17:38):

Well, in speaking of SDVoE, what about standardization? Where are we at with that? I sat on a panel on Tuesday to talk about where is the industry today and where is the industry headed in terms of… Well, I’m going to say interoperability. The panel was about standardization though, and I think those are slightly different. Anyway, big picture industry standards, are we heading in that direction? Are we not?

Emily Dean (18:06):

I think we are, especially with organizations like the AIMS Alliance and they told Gary that they hope to have it ratified, I think, by the end of 2022. But there still isn’t a specific proposal to vote on yet. But I think that we are headed towards that. I think we have a lot of work to do, but I think we are headed towards the standardization. But in order for a true standard to emerge, I think you really need one of the big three guys to adopt it: Crestron, Extron, AMX. Someone like that.

But in regards to APM… AP… Or IPMX, Barco announced that they have signed on and have integrated it into some of their control and processing products. And then obviously SDVoE has momentum because you already have Kramer signed on. And so that’s moving in the right direction too, but I still think we have a lot of work to do and a lot of education to do. That’s another thing. And I know that that’s something that you guys are focused on as well as us and Gary is really just …  With his keynote circuits and everything that he’s doing, it’s really educating and making sure that people understand, because there’s this whole debate of one gig versus 10 gig versus variable bit rates. Really just educating and understanding what solutions are out there, what’s right for the specific application and things like that.

Justin Kennington (19:43):

You’re speaking to Matt’s heart right now. He’s an educator first and foremost and won’t let me forget it. I would just like to remind our audience about the voting proposal that’s available from SDVoE right now, which is called look at our list of members and go buy some products, right? While these other guys write their essays and think about maybe one day having something to vote on so that’ll be fun. Anyway, just put in your purchase order. There’s your vote for SDVoE. Let’s see… What else do we have here? Let’s talk about one of our audience questions that Matt brought to us, and it was something that was on my mind as well. InfoComm is coming up in only a handful of days. Sorry to remind you. I know that it’s precisely as stressful for you as it is for me, but it will be fun.

Emily Dean (19:43):

It is.

Justin Kennington (20:28):

We just said how much fun we had being back to big trade shows. Don’t complain now that you get to do it again in three weeks.

Emily Dean (20:36):

Exactly. And you know matter how much you have to do, it’s the same thing with a buildup of a big show like this. If you have five days, it’s going to take five days. If we had five months to InfoComm, we would take five months, but we have to get it done within three days. And it somehow does all get done. There’s just a few stressful days in there. But… Yeah.

Justin Kennington (20:57):

Back in my product management days, I used to tell people, “Engineering will work to fill the available time.” That’s what you’re talking about. You give them five months, it’s going to take five months. Nobody’s ever going to get it done a month early, but a good team won’t be late either. My question is based on the experience that you just had at ISE, has that changed any of your expectations going into InfoComm?

Emily Dean (21:22):

Yeah. I actually ran into David Labuskes on the show floor and I said, “Congratulations on a successful show. I know that AVIXA has something to do with the success.” And he said, “Thank you.” And I said, “Hopefully this is an indication of what InfoComm will be.” And he said, “Yeah, I think we’re going to be surprised at InfoComm as well.” And I said, “Even if you didn’t go and you look at some of those photos, you would think we were back in 2019 with the size of those crowds, especially in the larger halls and hall two and hall three, just with all of that.”

I have high hopes and high expectations for InfoComm. I know that we are talking to a number of manufacturers who are reinvesting back into in-person experiences and shows and marketing dollars and all of that. I think that that’s a good indication of what to expect from manufacturers, because last year we heard we’re just going to go. We’re not going to have much product in our booth. And so I have not heard that this year. And I was surprised by the number of product at ISE as well.

Justin Kennington (22:40):

Okay. Okay. Yeah. I have to say, thinking about that venue how large it was, how well laid out it is, honestly, I was a little surprised when we saw the attendance numbers for the show, 45,000. That’s a strong number. That was a great number. I was surprised, based on my experience, at how low that was. I thought… It felt crowded. It felt busy. It felt really humming and to think of that size of venue, I thought there must be a hundred thousand people here to be this busy. Anyway… Yeah, it was…

Emily Dean (23:11):

I think it was… I think they did a good job of laying out the show. I was talking to some of my team members who have never been to an ISE and they said it seems like it’s really busy. Could it be… Is it going to be this much bigger next year? I was like, it’s going to be way larger because there are so many other places that they could put manufacturers. You had the IoT hall.

I’m not sure if they’re counting the IOT hall, World Congress IOT, in their exhibitor number or not. You had that hall and I do know that they’re planning on partnering with IOT World Congress again next year, at least next year.

Justin Kennington (23:54):

Okay.

Emily Dean (23:54):

And then for 2024 and beyond, it really depends on everything. But I think that we will see some new product from some of the manufacturers at InfoComm. Obviously those who didn’t attend ISE and who are planning to go to InfoComm will hopefully see some new products. But there were a handful of manufacturers that said we’re holding off until InfoComm to introduce some of these things or they have a whisper suite at InfoComm where they’re introducing some new things. I think that we’ll see a handful.

Justin Kennington (24:34):

With about a half a minute left, that touches on the last question I wanted to ask. Should anyone who attended ISE expect to see anything new or different at InfoComm? Sounds like maybe, surprisingly to me, yes.

Emily Dean (24:46):

I think so. I do. Like I said, I heard from a few manufacturers that I talked to… I didn’t talk to everyone, but I heard some that they do plan on showing some new things.

Justin Kennington (24:59):

And in the aftershow, I understand you’re planning to give us that list very specifically. Is that correct?

Emily Dean (25:04):

That’s a hundred percent accurate.

Justin Kennington (25:08):

All right. Well, you sit tight because we’re going to have you back in the after show in a couple of minutes while I send the rest of you for a fact check.

Oh, Matt, Matt, Matt… We got to talk to your copyeditor. That said football pitches. Pitches are a baseball thing. I know you English don’t understand football and baseball.

Matt Dodd (25:50):

No. We use feet to play football. Thanks for your questions so far and don’t forget to check out the resource panel as Justin’s been talking about below where you’ll see the news articles that we’ve been talking about today. And we’ve also put some throwback courses in there from ISE 2020, where the members were on our live stage presenting. And here, get this. For those of you joining in InfoComm next month, all of you of course, the SDVoE Academy stage is back. And I’m delighted for that because we always get great results from that fantastic presentation so make sure you swing by and check them out.

We’ll be bringing you as well a brand-new series of interviews, which we’ve been recording at last week’s show. We’re bringing those very soon. Make sure you keep an eye out for them. Really interesting concept. I give Justin credit for these. We have multiple camera angles, recording, lots of member interviews. He did a great job. We got some fantastic information out of them so make sure you check them out when we release them very soon. We’re heading back to chat with Emily very shortly in the aftershow but now let’s head back to Justin to find out what’s happening next time. And I’ll see you in the after show.

Justin Kennington (27:08):

Thank you, Matt. Well, I want to remind all of you to catch us between shows on social media, look for #SDVoElive. You’ll find us on Twitter. You’ll find us on LinkedIn. You’ll find us on YouTube. Go to YouTube, subscribe to our channel, and you’ll get notified about those new interview videos that we’ll be posting over the coming weeks. We’re going to post those all throughout the summer. We recorded about 25 of them I think, some really good stuff.

I want to give a special thanks to this week’s sponsor for the show, Black Box, who, by the way, props and credit where credit is due. Black Box, if I can read their mind, I’m talking about their ISE booth, they said, hey, let’s show our technology in a real environment. Not just a trade show booth, and here’s a demo and here’s a Black Box, no pun intended. And they built a sports bar. Their booth was just a sports bar. As far as I understand, of course I was stuck in the booth giving interviews, I guess I could go there, get some chicken wings, have some beers, and just listen to the programming and see the technology work so that was fantastic.

I also want to remind you about our next episode being our last of the season. Coming up on May 31st, we’re going to be talking about sustainability in AV. And is it time for us to start caring about that? Some already do, many might not be thinking that way, but it’s an interesting new topic. It’s a hot new topic. We were all about it at ISE and found lots and lots of feedback from integrators, from designers, from building owners and managers, even to the media folks that we spoke to. Sustainability is going to be a big thing so tune in for next two weeks, May 31st episode and see what that is about.

We do this live every two weeks. Catch us on the SDVoE Academy, catch us on rAVe’s Launch platform, catch us on YouTube, catch us on LinkedIn, catch us everywhere. One more special thanks to our guest, Emily Dean. Thank you for filling in. It was really great to have you and thanks to the team for putting this all together. We’ll see you in the aftershow.