AVNation Special: Huddle Spaces

In this AV Nation special, Tim Albright, Rob Carter from Crestron, and I discuss the design and technology that goes into huddle spaces.  We talk about hiding equipment, offering the features that users need, control of the AV equipment, and future huddle space trends.

AVNation EdTech podcast: Episode 41 (March 2016)

In this latest episode of the AV Nation EdTech podcast, we talk about AV equipment connected to the network, essentials of the connected classroom, and the end of Crestron's QuickMedia line.

AVNation EdTech podcast: Episode 31 (Nov 2014)

I made my podcasting debut in this episode of AVNation's EdTech podcast.  We discussed Crestron's DMPS processor upgrades, Panasonic's new ultra short throw projector lens, Crestron's RoomView Connected (aka Crestron Connected) feature and SIMPL module, AMX's JITC certification, and other exciting topics in the world of higher ed AV.  I must have said something right, because the EdTech guys said they'll have me back for the December episode.

Rental & Staging Systems: InfoComm for the first time

I attended my first InfoComm Show in 2008, and Rental & Staging Systems Magazine asked me to write daily blog posts during the show.  After the show was over, they summarized my blog posts as an article in the August issue of the magazine.  I was working at Harvard University at the time, and a big part of my job was supervising the live event AV support on campus, hence the rental & staging connection.  I figured I would re-post my article for those of you attending for the first time (or even the show veterans):

InfoComm For The First Time
Rental & Staging Systems Magazine
August 2008

InfoComm 2008 has come and gone. It seems like just yesterday that I was battling the 105 degree heat on my way to check into the Las Vegas Hilton. This was my first time attending an InfoComm show, so I was really excited about the idea of going. Before going, I spent some solid time planning out an extremely busy schedule of classes, networking, meetings, presentations and parties. Even though I was heavily scheduled during the day, I still had a decent amount of time to walk the show floor and visit booths. 

My focus at the show was mainly one of education and networking. I'm obviously interested in the new technology on display, but that angle was well covered by my travel partner, our classroom installation project manager.

Here's a summary of what I ended up doing during the week, with a quick day by day dairy that follows.

Classes:
I ended up taking four classes at InfoComm: Rental & Staging Business Survival Kit, How to Train Rental/Hire and Staging Staff, Anatomy of a Las Vegas Staging Event and Entertainment Electrical Power. I didn't take any of the longer multiday certification prep courses, since I simply didn't have the time. Originally I had also signed up for two of the manufacturer's training courses, but I ended up cancelling them since my schedule looked way too busy. In hindsight, I'm really glad I cancelled them, and I think in the future I'll limit myself to only two or three classes. It was just a bit too busy with four classes in three days. 

Presentations:
The two big presentations that I attended were the Manufacturers Forum and the Rental & Staging Forum. Both had completely different feels to them, with the Manufacturer's Forum being more of a panel discussion and the Rental & Staging Forum more of an interactive event with the help of an audience response system. 

Networking and parties:
The major networking events that I attended were the InfoComm Opening Reception, Extron Educator's Reception, ExpoJam (with the Gin Blossoms performing) and the Rental & Staging Reception. At night I stayed busy with parties hosted by Extron, Crestron, and VER. 

Show floor:
This year you couldn't help but notice that digital signage related booths were all over the place. Professionally, I don't deal with much digital signage, but it was still interesting to see the advancements in that sector.  Telepresence technology was starting to make more of an appearance at the show, and of course everywhere you turned it was HD this and HD that. 

Day 1 (Tuesday):
I checked into the Hilton around 1pm and decided to make my way over to the Las Vegas Convention Center to check things out and get registered. The show floor didn't open until Wednesday, but I was able to sneak in the north hall and check out everyone scurrying about to get all the booths set. I had never been in the Las Vegas Convention Center before, so I was blown away at the sheer size of the place. That was just the north hall. The show also consumed the center hall, lobby and many meeting rooms too. They also rented out a large amount of meeting space at the Hilton too. It was InfoComm as far as the eye could see.  

The Manufacturer's Forum started at 4pm. The event was hosted by Gary Kayye, and featured a panel of Gerry Remers from Christie, George Feldstein from Crestron, Michael MacDonald from Harman, Joe Sigrist from Polycom, and Jeff Porter from Scala who was filling in for the CEO, who was stuck on a delayed flight. 

I found their opening remarks interesting, since they touched on issues and problems that are obviously at the forefront of the company and industry. In his opening remarks, Gerry from Christie made mention of the church market becoming increasingly important to them, and also the fact that many people are moving toward unconventional aspect ratios, rather than just sticking with 4:3 or 16:9. George from Crestron opened with talk of the convergence of all types of AV technology and mentioned that the adoption of new technology by the end user will push the industry through the recession. Michael from Harman commented on the challenge for them of the collapse of distribution layers. Joe from Polycom opened with the concept of "video is going mainstream" and talked about "HD" and "telepresence" becoming mainstream terms with even non-tech savvy individuals. Jeff from Scala, a digital signage software company, talked about a wide variety of industries jumping on the "digital signage bandwagon". 

After the Manufacturer's Forum I visited the InfoComm Opening Reception, the Extron Educators Reception, and the ExpoJam featuring the Gin Blossoms. All were well attended and kicked off the week nicely. 

Day 2 (Wednesday):
My day got started at 8am with the Anatomy of a Las Vegas Staging Event class. On a side note, the 8am classes were hard to wake up for after a night at the parties. Unfortunately, I had two 8am classes during the week. Anyway, back on track, the course goal of Anatomy of a Las Vegas Staging Event was to provide information about working a staging job in the Vegas market. It was hosted by JP Brozyna from AGF Media Services, and featured a panel of Joe Leone from the Wynn Hotel, Warren Tash from AV Concepts and Chris Prosio from Barco (and all those great Rental & Staging Systems articles too.)  All of the panelists provided some solid insight into staging a corporate event or meeting in the city with the largest amount of meeting space in the US. 

After the class I ran down to the show floor for my first exposure to it with all the booths fully set up. I met up with my coworker and our sales rep from our installer. I had just enough time to check out the Extron and Sanyo booths before choking down some food and running off to my next class.

The course I took next had to do with creating a training program for rental & staging techs. It was taught by Don Guzauckas from HB Group. I was really surprised at how many in the class don't have a training program in place. I think too many people put too much emphasis on the equipment angle and neglect the staffing side of the industry. As Don said, training is expensive, but think about the cost of losing one big client because of poorly trained techs. 

After the class I was immediately off to the Rental & Staging Forum and Reception. It was hosted by Tom Stimson, and featured a panel of Matt Emerson (the Chair of InfoComm's R&S Council), Doug Hunt from American Audio Visual Center, Bob Leon from Colortone, Janne Mummert from VER and Wayne Vincent from MVP International. Tom posed questions about industry revenue, fuel costs, green AV and HD. We all had a personal response system to answer questions posed by Tom. About 100 audience members usually voted on each question. At some point you'll be able to download all the questions and results from the InfoComm website.  

I, along with about 8,000 other people, scurried to the shuttle buses for the ExtronBASH at the Palms Hotel. Since it's Extron's 25th anniversary, they spared absolutely no expense. They rented out the Palms pool, 2 restaurants next to the pool and the Palms nightclub, Rain. A cover band playing in Rain, food and drink everywhere, blackjack games and Dwight Yoakam performing made for a busy evening. Apparently Dwight is one of Andrew Edwards' favorite performers, so the big boss booked him for this show. They had an amazing turnout and some great presence. I've never see so many Extron gobos projected in one place, and the event had what seemed to be an endless sea of Extron employees attending. 

Day 3 (Thursday):
Another 8am class kicked off this day for me, and this is the one I've really been looking forward to: the Rental & Staging Business Survival Kit taught by Tom Stimson. I'm a huge fan of Tom's newsletter and R&S Systems articles, but never had the opportunity to hear him speak in person. My conclusion: make sure you go out of your way to attend a class taught by Tom. He's an extremely interesting person and presents his material in a very interactive and compelling fashion. His class focused on many of the best practices tips that he's accumulated over his years of experience. He can back all of his tips up with real world examples, and really makes you think about how you go about completing your day to day operational tasks. You really need to catch him when he presents at one of the upcoming Rental & Staging Systems Roadshows. 

The next six hours was spent walking the show floor with my coworker. On the classroom installation side of my job, we use a bunch of Crestron and Extron, so we made sure to get full booth tours. Crestron's Quick Media technology is pretty exciting, and Extron's latest release of their Global Viewer Enterprise software was great to see. We also had the opportunity today to make our way through audio land.  

At 5pm I was off to the Crestron party, and man do they know how to throw a great party. We started at the MGM pool. They rented it out for a cocktail reception complete with a band and mermaids swimming in the pool. Then it was inside to enjoy a performance of Cirque Du Soleil's "Ka." Crestron rented out the whole theater. If you haven't seen a Cirque show, you must go immediately. From a tech standpoint they're just amazing. I can even begin to explain this stage they had that could raise and lower on a lift like I've never seen, and it could rotate and tilt on a central point. Just amazing. After the Ka show, Crestron rented out the MGM Grand's Studio 54 club for dancing until 10pm.  

After that party I jetted over to the Mandalay Bay's House of Blues for "The Party @ InfoComm", hosted by VER with partners AV Stumpfl, Green Hippo Video Systems, Martin and tmb. I got there just in time to hear Berlin and the Bangles play. Great show! VER and Green Hippo had the stage decked out fully in LED panels. Very fun night. 

Day 4 (Friday):
The end is near! I couldn't believe how fast my time had gone at InfoComm, but the final day was upon us. My final class was "Entertainment Electrical Power" taught by Alan Rowe from IATSE Local 728 in Burbank, CA. Power issues have always been an area I've been lacking in, so I was looking forward to this class. Alan was under the impression that most of us would be from the film and TV production end of things, but when he heard before class that most of us are sound guys or from the staging world, he did a nice job of changing and customizing his content on the fly. He talked about all the basics of show power: calculating loads, single and three phase power, cabling and most importantly, electrical safety. I was especially interested in the safety issues, so I can pass along this information to the techs I supervise. 

After the class I ran down to the show floor to join up with my coworker one last time. We finally made our way down to the Large Venue Display Gallery at the far end of the north hall. Sony, Christie, Digital Projection and Barco all had some massive projectors on display.  

We finished up the day at the Sanyo booth. My coworker and I entered to win one of 8 HD camcorders or a LCD projector. My coworker was a lucky winner of one of the cameras, so that was a nice way to end the show. 

So my first InfoComm has come and gone. I'm absolutely exhausted, but I'm glad that I kept my intense pace up during the show. There was a ton to see, and I feel like I really pushed hard to experience all that I wanted to. It was great to see so many enthusiastic people involved with the AV industry in one place. It was a very inspiring atmosphere, and gave me a great feeling about the state of the industry. See you in Orlando in 2009!

Campus Technology Conference 2011

On July 26th, a couple of my coworkers and I ventured down to the Campus Technology Conference, held at Boston's Seaport World Trade Center.  My job entails working with video, but the majority of my time is spent using projection and audio systems, as well as room control systems.  This is the first year I was able to attend the Campus Technology Conference, which is shocking when you consider the fact that it's only a 30 minute subway ride from my office.  We only attended the show floor (thanks to Crestron for the free tickets) since we didn't have the time or budget to commit to a few days of breakout sessions/classes.  Many of the breakout sessions looked interesting, but the majority of them were really geared toward academic IT departments, and not really academic AV support departments.  Since we didn't attend the InfoComm show this year in Orlando, I was interested in seeing some of the new products that were announced at that show.

The first booth we visited was ShareStream, which is a company started by a Harvard alum, David Weinstein.  David was in the booth, so the four of us had a nice conversation about the services they provide.  To use their words, ShareStream is "a turnkey system for creating, editing, storing, managing, and delivering rich media."  In short, it's used to deliver lecture video to students.  We work closely with our IT department for storing and delivering lecture video, so this is an area that we're interested in.  We're mainly responsible for the acquisition and editing of lecture and event video on campus, then the IT folks store and deliver it via streaming servers.  There's more to it, but that's a simplified version of our workflow.  So naturally ShareStream provides services that we were interested in hearing about.

We wandered in and out of various booths, but our next big stop was a visit with our friends at the Crestron booth.  We use many Crestron room control products on campus, so we're familiar with most of their offerings.  We were especially interested in discussing the new products they announced at the InfoComm Show in June.  The Crestron rep was pretty excited to tell us about their new Capture-HD system, which is used to capture and encode lecture video.  There are quite a few lecture capture systems on the market these days, so it will be interesting to get our hands on a demo unit and try Crestron's solution.  Crestron is making a big push for its DigitalMedia system that, in a nutshell, delivers video and audio signals around a room to multiple displays via CAT5 cable with Crestron switchers and signal processing equipment.  They're more than just room control systems these days.

Our next stop was at the Kaltura booth.  Kaltura is an online video platform that allows users to manager their online video content.  It's very flexible (open source) and seems to have a great staff working behind the scenes in support.  We had a nice conversation with one of the reps.

Wandering down the show floor aisle we came across another one of our good friends, Extron.  In addition to Crestron control systems on campus, we have many, many rooms using Extron control systems.  The first item I noticed in the Extron booth was a H.264 encoder that they introduced at InfoComm.  It has multiple inputs and seems like a simple solution for H.264 encoding.  We spent the rest of our time talking to the Extron reps about the new DVS 605 switcher.  This is a new seamless switching scaler that they introduced at InfoComm.  The key is that the switcher is DHCP compliant.  The exchange of DHCP keys between video sources, switchers/other processors in the signal flow, and ultimately the display can really slow down switching between sources.  When we're switching sources in a presentation setting, it needs to be seamless and fast, otherwise it looks very clunky and unprofessional.  It'll be very nice to get our hands on a demo unit of the DVS 605.

Next up was a presentation by the Wowza Media Systems CEO, David Stubenvoll.  David's talk was about implementing video stream, but of course he peppered it with information about the Wowza Media Server.  Wowza can take H.264 content and deliver it to almost any device that can playback video, in many different formats.  Flash, Silverlight, Apple HTTP, etc.  Davis really knows his stuff about viodeo streaming, and Wowza looks like a great product.  We later visited the Wowza booth, and this seems like another company that has a great support staff standing behind the product.

WolfVision VZ-9plus document camera

We visited many booths as we made our way down the aisles, but our last big stop was the WolfVision booth.  As far as document cameras go, WolfVision makes some exceptional products.  If you're not familiar with document cameras, think about the old overhead projectors, just with a camera pointing down at the material, and a VGA or DVI output that can be connected to a projector.  We have a few of their VZ-9plus document cameras already on campus, and I also use their EYE-12 camera to project live science demonstrations in the classroom on the projector.  WolfVision makes great products.  It's amazing how detailed the image is when you have the high res camera zoomed in all the way.  You can see details on a dollar bill that you can't see with the naked eye.  Great for the art department or some of our professors that use rare books in their teaching.

Even though the Campus Technology Conference is much smaller than the InfoComm show or NAB, they still offered a nice mix of exhibitors.  I can't speak to the quality of the breakout sessions/classes, since we didn't take any.  Maybe next year we'll have the time and budget to give them a try.