Wow. Wowowowowow. The show is officially over. We did it! Our final video count? 2,128. It’s been years since we shot this many videos and I am so impressed with how hard our team has worked to achieve such a feat. Let’s talk about ISE for a second, shall we? The show officially announced that 73,891 unique attendees visited the show this year. While this number is still short of 2019’s attendance (~81,000), the number speaks to what we will have in the future. People missed trade shows. People want to be back in person. It’s finally time to do that.

ISE actually broke some records this year:

• Largest single-day attendance numbers on Jan. 31: 51,617
• Attendance on Friday, Feb. 2 was 24,528 — the largest number since ISE moved to a four-day show.

I’m so glad this year was a success. I got to spend a good amount of time on the show floor, checking out the latest technology and asking questions about how things worked and why. I didn’t see too many new products on Friday like I thought I might, but I think I finally have a perfect idea of the show-floor trends.

1. LED everywhere. As one of our interns, Emma Dobek said, “Everyone has a video wall these days.” Gone are the days where only a few companies offer this. I saw so many LED displays that I felt like I was getting dizzy. From microLED to mini-LED and more — it was video wall city. Barely any LCD and I don’t feel like I saw as much projection as I have in the past. Of course, there was some cool projection mapping from the likes of Epson, Panasonic Connect and a few more, but nothing like past shows. At least from what I saw.
2. Sustainability. Many companies talked about the importance of their sustainability efforts. SAVe was also at the show, helping to work on this and promote sustainability in AV. I’ve never seen so much recyclable packaging and stripped down stands/booths. I think this is an interesting direction we’re taking and I’ll be interested to see what companies stick with it.
3. Remote management and putting everything in the cloud. I think I heard “in the cloud” more at this show than I ever have in my life. Remote management was definitely the trend to watch on the show floor. But of course, this goes hand in hand with AVaaS so, we’re not anywhere done with this. Companies like Xyte and Domotz are going to change the game for a lot of you so definitely keep a lookout.

Without further ado,

Things I Like:

• Being horizontal (self explanatory)
• Dome-shaped LEDs (even though they make me dizzy)
• Immersive audio

Things I Don’t Like:

• Stereo left and right (now that I have heard immersive audio)
• The ISE “time travel” hallway. It was included on the scavenger hunt in the app and I thought it would be something a little more exciting than it was. I did enjoy seeing the stats about past ISEs, but I would have loved to see more. Pictures from past shows, fun music playing, that sort of thing.
• Buzz words. I get why people use them, but “hybrid work” is getting on my nerves. Call it anything else. I beg.

Overall, this ISE was a huge success for everyone involved. I can’t wait for next year already. Don’t forget to check out all our coverage at ravepubs.com/ise.