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MillimeterInfoComm Appeals to Corporate Market
May 26, 2005 8:00 AM
Corporate executives responsible for adopting AV and presentation technologies are faced these days with an increasingly confusing environment in which—perhaps paradoxically—declining prices and ever-simpler systems have made decisions more difficult.
 InfoComm05, to be held June 4-10 (exhibits June 8-10), offers resources to help corporate users with AV decisions that declining prices and ever-simpler systems have made more difficult. |
InfoComm05, coming to the Las Vegas Convention Center on June 4-10 (exhibits June 8-10) offers several vehicles to help corporate video users, and their systems integrators, negotiate the new world.
Although it evolved from an event for AV dealers and integrators, in the last decade InfoComm has tried to focus on the needs of users as well, with a particular emphasis on such critical niche markets as churches, education, and corporate America.
Corporate users are certainly among the target audiences for the Projection Summit, which takes place June 6-7, prior to the opening of the exhibit hall. “The summit can give you a strategic view of what’s going on in the whole projection environment,” says Chris Chinnock of Insight Media, one of the program’s organizers. (The other is McLaughlin Consulting Group.) “You’ll get a very clear-eyed perspective and maybe even learn a few tactical tips.”
The summit, Chinnock adds, is designed to bring supply chain players, manufacturers, dealers, users, analysts, and others together for two intensive days. Tuesday’s program, for example, offers a series of four “analyst debates” on different segments of the industry, presented by “analysts who live and breathe this stuff all day long.”
The first day of the summit offers a similar lineup of sessions but with a more technological focus. The agenda includes updates on image quality, electronics, illumination, projector engines, microdisplays, and screens.
The ongoing convergence of AV with the IT business is also shaping the program, Chinnock says, and presenting corporate clients with choices. “Do you want to buy from an IT-centric company or an AV-centric one? Do you want LCDs or plasmas? What is the right mix?”
Similar decisions face corporate users pursuing a collaborative conferencing strategy, notes Carol Zelkin, executive director of the sponsoring Interactive Multimedia and Collaborative Conferencing Alliance (IMCCA). The conference program will address current topics from a distinctly practical viewpoint, she adds.
“Telepresence and high definition have become very big, along with streaming and archiving,” Zelkin says. “Anything you hear about at these sessions is real, working, and being used.”
Zelkin also identifies homeland security issues as an area of steadily increasing attention, and says the conference at InfoComm will devote a session just to this topic.
Another highlight is a “Lunch and Learn” session on “The State of the Collaborative Conferencing Industry,” moderated by Dr. S. Ann Earon, president of Telemanagement Resources International (TRI), and featuring more than 10 speakers representing both manufacturers and technology users.
The addition of such focused conference programs to a major exhibit hall is central to InfoComm’s mission, says International Communications Industries Association (ICIA) Executive Director Randal Lemke, Ph D. “The missions of the classroom and the show floor are the same in that we present multiple opportunities to learn about products, technologies, and business trends.”
Continue the discussion on Crosstalk the Millimeter Forum.