On Tuesday, Nov. 16, Gary Kayye will be joined by Xyte CEO Omer Brookstein for a compelling discussion on AV and cloud convergence; they will also discuss the concept of Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS). During the live, interactive LAVNCH & LEARN, attendees will learn what a true HaaS model means and the toolsets required to achieve them. […]

On Tuesday, Nov. 9, experts from NETGEAR will sit down with Gary Kayye to share their best practices, tips and tricks for getting the most out of an AV-over-IP network. During the live, interactive LAVNCH & LEARN, attendees will learn how to select the right network switch for AV-over-IP installs and how to avoid pitfalls […]

Hello, #AVtweeps! On June 30, I hosted this webinar with Rob Ziv, vice president of business development and strategy at Almo Pro A/V, as well as Adrian Doughty, director of North American sales at Nureva. For this webinar, we discussed how virtual mic and mic-array technologies revolutionize meeting rooms and classrooms — and this is […]

Chances are, you’ve heard of the Newline FLEX — we even covered it last year when it was first unveiled on the market. The Newline FLEX is a solution completely designed for desktop collaboration. The 27-inch monitor includes capacitive touch, full device touchback capability (with palm rejection), USB Type C connectivity (with power) and an […]

When Len Dozier entered the AV market, Lyndon B. Johnson was the president, pro video was still black and white and Sony wasn’t a player yet. But, that was before Len sold Sony into every Nissan dealer in the U.S. Len went on to eventually create what is, arguably, the first mount company in AV — […]

If you joined us for LAVNCH WEEK 3.0, you likely noticed that we had a new segment dubbed “GARY: Unscripted.” The concept is pretty much explained by the name: Gary Kayye hosted a series of rapid-fire, 10-minute sessions, where he would interview industry professionals with no script — a completely off-the-cuff conversation. Kayye interviewed a […]

In case you live under a rock and didn’t know, AVIXA has postponed InfoComm 2021 to Oct. 27-29. This news was a big sigh of relief for many in our industry because there is no way that Integrated Systems Europe and InfoComm in the same month was going to be easy for anyone. This week […]

As I hope you’ve now heard, LAVNCH WEEK 3.0 — three full days of exceptional AV, UCC and Digital Signage-focused education slash content slash thought leadership offering AVIXA CTS RUs — is happening next week. Taking place Feb. 9-11, LAVNCH WEEK 3.0 (what we sometimes like to shorten to LW3 when character counts are tight) […]

2020 sucked! So, now that we got that out of the way, let’s review the top 10 AV, UCC and Digital Signage stories, according to data, in 2020! The top story of 2020 was the the acquisition of Whitlock by AVI-SPL. Marketed as a merger, this didn’t appear to be one in hindsight. Whitlock is now […]

Hey everybody! Welcome to the very first episode of Study With Steph. In case you haven’t heard, I am on a mission to become a Certified Technology Specialist. Word on the street is — it’s no easy feat. But that’s what I’m here for! I am taking a look at a test subject per episode […]

**Note: CTS RU credit is only available for LIVE attendees. Although we didn’t have a physical InfoComm this year, we had a virtual one; InfoComm Connected. And, 50+ AV manufacturers have also held their own “virtual shows” focused on launching new products since April. So, the AV industry is filled with new tech, new gear […]

Right now, around the globe, most companies, educational institutions and government agencies have shifted their money to help solve internal COVID-19 issues and are trying to reopen. Therefore, financial expenditures on tech hardware not directly related to healthcare issues seem to be on hold (for now). So, now — more than any other time in […]

Chuck Wilson is the executive director of the National Systems Contractors Association (NSCA), and he’ll be debating the future of commercial integration with Gary Kayye live on ProAV Day of LAVNCH WEEK 2.0. I wanted to hear what Chuck had planned for this LAVNCH & Learn session/debate, so I reached out to get a teaser […]

Technology seems to be able to do nearly everything — unless the government steps in and says, “No, it can’t.” And, that’s precisely what happened with the concept of facial recognition. Everyone’s experienced it. Everyone’s probably used it, too, if they have a Facebook account or use Apple devices — facial recognition is a giant […]

Gary was joined on today’s Videocast with WolfVision’s Michael Lisi to talk Cynap, the VCX Conference and the future of UCC via BYOM and full collaboration. Cynap is well-positioned to be the ultimate BYOM (bring your own meeting) UCC product to drive both local and distance-based collaboration in classrooms and meeting rooms. Watch and see why!

During our live LAVNCH WEEK Tech Talk, Paul Richards of PTZOptics shared that, these last few months, “connected churches” are discovering just how large their communities really are. And once social distancing is relaxed, many houses of worship won’t be going back to the way things were in their AV systems. For bigger houses of […]

Hello, readers! On April 15, I hosted a webinar with Almo Pro A/V and Steve Milley from Panasonic (this company plays a huge part in the esports and gaming market). And, as promised, I’m including written versions of each webinar, so you don’t miss out on the content — even when the webinar fills up […]

AVIXA has been publishing a monthly ProAV Business Index since mid-2016, gauging sales and employment indicators for the ProAV industry. The index is calculated from a monthly survey that tracks trends. Two diffusion indexes are created using the data, the AV Sales Index (AVI-S) and AV Employment Index (AVI-E). This month’s AV Sales Index (AVI-S) […]

I’m starting a trend of releasing a corresponding blog with my webinars, and this will be the second of that series. On Wednesday, I hosted a webinar in conjunction with Almo Pro A/V and Dana Corey of Avocor, in which I took you on a tour of the UCC world! But, in case you weren’t […]

**Note: CTS RUs are not available for webinar or educational session recordings. Do you design, sell or use UCC-based collaboration systems like Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams or BlueJeans? Do you prefer one ecosystem over the other, or are you tired of interoperability problems? Are you thankful for Zoom’s simplicity and frustrated by Microsoft’s inability to […]

I was honored to be the only member of the AV press invited to cover the live, global (it was streamed live from Seattle, Washington, New York City, Amsterdam and Madrid) streaming video launch of the Sharp WCD (Windows Collaboration Display) last week. Although those in attendance, live, saw it as a technical marvel (connecting […]

I am sitting here in my kitchen table writing this. Like many of you who traveled last week, I am in a self-quarantine to protect the world from my potentially having the new coronavirus, sadly known as COVID-19 (sad as COVID used to only refer to that Tempe-based AV manufacturer known for the once-famous EXPiX […]