BIG INTERVIEW
‘That’s what is unique about what we’re doing with our outreach, we’re really trying to get under the skin of what the outcomes are’ the show. We used to be all about our technical training, but now we confine that to our Flashtrack stand, with little bite-sized, 20-minute sessions, and they go down very well. It’s interesting: the technical content is what works in that format. But our longer, two hour, three hour and half day or full day content sessions are much more about end user applications and outcomes. We contributed content to a lot of the other events that were going on this year; Digital Signage Summit, Smart Building Conference, the different vertical market events. Because of the investments that we’re making in research and content development, we’re able to make a much more strategic contribution to the content of the show. And I think that’s really important. In fact the exhibitors were quite explicit with us as co-owners of the show when we met with them a year ago at the ISE advisory board meeting. They said: we don’t need more attendees, we need the people who are coming to stay for longer, and the way that you get them to stay for longer is by providing content away from the show floor. So we’re happy with the contribution that we’re making and I’m really pleased with the way the show’s content is evolving. I’m also really proud of the fact that we are consistently seeing new people coming into the show; we had between 30% and 40% new attendees this year and that’s fantastic. What are some of the key ways you’re showing end users the value of AV? I think it’s really based on discussion. A lot of it is actually about the consumer experience, so when we go to a retail conference, for example, we look at retailers who are using AV in interesting ways but we’re looking at it through the eyes of the shopper, rather than through the eyes of the store owner or the store operator. Similarly, when we look at corporate AV we’re looking at it through the eyes and ears of the employee of that enterprise rather than the technology manager. That’s what is unique about what we’re doing with our outreach, we’re really trying to get under the skin of what the outcomes are. If you invest in AV, if you’re a corporate entity, does that mean it’s easier to retain talent? Is it easier to acquire new talent? It’s a very competitive job market out there in a lot of places, so talent acquisition and retention is a big item on the agenda for employers. If you can use technology to improve communication and collaboration and that makes your company a cool place to work, those are the sorts of conversations that we’re starting to have. What I find fascinating is that we started off with a very preachy approach of trying to persuade people that they should invest more in AV and we very quickly realised that just getting up on a stage and doing a PowerPoint presentation and talking at an audience of
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end users or decision makers wasn’t really going to work. So we pivoted away from that towards facilitating discussions. A lot of what we do is identifying key advocates for the power of AV within each vertical. So we’ve got certain people within the hotel industry, for example, who have worked with some of the big hotel chains, who are personally very invested in AV so they can speak eloquently about the power of AV and they can do it in a way that resonates with their peers; if you’re in the hotel industry and you work for Hilton hotels and you’re at a conference and there’s somebody from Marriott speaking you’re going to listen to what that person has to say because you know you’ve got a shared agenda and probably a very similar set of challenges and opportunities. So it’s about facilitating discussion and learning from that – getting feedback and then making sure that that feedback is incorporated into our own research so that the supply side of our industry, the integration firms, consulting firms, service providers and distributors, are aware of these evolving market needs and can adjust their own business model or their own resource allocation or the way that they’re approaching the different markets accordingly. And finally, what can people expect from the InfoComm show this year? Well we’ve got quite a lot going on. I think we’re going to have our biggest ever show in Orlando, certainly in terms of floor space and exhibitor numbers. We’ve got a big focus this year on two vertical markets that we haven’t traditionally focused a lot of education content on and that is retail and hotels/hospitality. So when you look at our seminar and workshop package at the show – which is typically around 120/130 sessions – in contrast to ISE, which pulls its content in from a lot of different partners, at InfoComm we do a lot of the education ourselves because we have a lot of a that capability in-house. So we designed a programme this year, without neglecting some of our core competencies like unified communications and collaboration, corporate AV, higher ed AV, lecture capture, streaming, those sorts of things, we’re still doing all that but we’re adding a lot more about retail and hospitality. This starts to take us more into areas like digital signage, content creation, audio programming, interactivity – perhaps different kinds of interactivity than you would get in a corporate or education environment. So there’s a big emphasis there. We’ve also got our TIDE conference going on again in Orlando which is looking at designing experiences and provides a forum to talk about what’s possible and different ways of approaching it; that’s held the day before the show in Orlando.
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