InfoComm University Names Tom Stimson CTS to Adjunct Faculty
At Infocomm on Thursday June 13th Tom Stimson will teach two business track seminars, one each for Systems Integrators and Rental-Stagers. › Continue reading…
Tag: InfoComm
This will always be the InfoComm I remember the best – not for the obvious reason that this is my year as President of the association – but because the show got its mojo back. › Continue reading…
I just read today’s headline about the jump in jobless claims and immediately started to contrast that story with all the good news I am hearing on the street from AV folks. For the past month I have heard almost exclusively about better than expected revenue and revenue forecasts. › Continue reading…
Which things can we fix and which are here to stay?
By Tom Stimson CTS
Shrinking margins, unfair competition, price shopping customers, disloyal suppliers, greedy bankers, and a general lack of appreciation for the value of your services…does this about sum it up? Ten or fifteen years ago the industry starting mumbling about AV becoming a commodity. At that time 40-50% equipment margins and an exclusive lock on professional gear made AV dealers quite happy and the AV Industry very attractive to investors. Value-added services like design, programming, and project management were considered overhead costs and what little revenue they represented was just gravy on an already profitable transaction. › Continue reading…
The Dow Jones index is hovering around 9900, October has been a busy month, and the pipeline for 2010 has new activity. It’s time to celebrate because the economy is coming back…right? As much as I want to be excited about the spurt in business so many of us are seeing, I want to caution against resuming “business as usual”. When we get busy we start to miss the people, suppliers, and perks we still had before the Recession. The natural tendency is to reward the team for their sacrifice by hiring up, suspending those furlough days, and reinstating full salaries. I don’t think it is time yet to do this – for most of us. › Continue reading…
If you still struggle daily with low price competitors, here are a couple of mantras for your wall:
1. At any given time, SOMEONE can do it for less.
This means that despite your best efforts, another bidder or rival for the project at hand could easily trump your low price. › Continue reading…
Imagine 100 AV Industry geeks talking about the future of technology without mentioning a single product. It was tough, but somehow we managed to stay on task. The InfoComm 100 was an think-tank of AV and related professionals from around the world that examined the 3-5 year future of the AV Industry. Let’s examine the list of primary assumptions about the 3-5 year future of technology influences on our industry and ponder their implications: › Continue reading…
The Visionaries of the InfoComm 100 think tank have presented us with some interesting and sometimes conflicting assumptions about how the AV Industry will compete in the next 3 to 5 years. Let’s examine the list of primary assumptions and ponder their implications: › Continue reading…
A huge theme of the InfoComm 100 event was the trend towards an IT-centric world. It predicts that more IT departments will take ownership of AV management and delivery, that computers will increasingly replace AV products as the endpoint for communications. “The AV industry will need to fully understand unified communications, networks, and wireless applications.” It will be an open-source world.
In my recent Roadmap for the Future blog I touched on the six macro-trends identified by the InfoComm 100 in April 2009. The implications for the Audiovisual Live Event Industry are significant and expand the outlook I have been noodling over the past three years. › Continue reading…
