It's been such a busy show that I haven't had a great deal of time to write. But what a show! Huge doesn't begin to describe it. I was out here in Vegas for CTIA in March and this show seems even larger.
That being said, it's mostly and A/V show and conferencing and collaboration are clearly a distant cousin.
Of course Carol Zelkin and the IMCCA are doing all they can to change that. IMCCA is sponsoring the Collaboration Pavilion on the show floor - giving thouse of us in this segment a chance to highlight our solutions and they're doing a magnificent job. This pavilion allows the collaboration market to be group together and give attendees and easy why to locate and identify vendors that they want to visit.
IMCCA is also providing a great deal of content for some of the educational tracks for the Infocomm seminar sessions, as well as holding their annual forum for collaboration end users on Wednesday. This year was especially exciting with the increasing awareness, and interest in, telepresence and HD videoconferencing.
Compunetix VP Jerry Pompa participated in the organization's annual Lunch and Learn session on the status and future of collaborative technologies - hosted by the ever insightful Ann Earons. And a lively discussion is was. Jerry may have been outnumbered by the video vendor respresentatives (including Polycom, Tandberg, Radvision, and others) but he provided a nice balance by reminding the audience that very few succesful meetings occur without good, quality audio.
And yours truly gave my two cents in a well attended session on Web vs. Video conferencing. Great session, terrible title. Hosted by JPMC's David Danto, this session explored the critera that should be considered when deciding on the correct collaboration "tool" for your meeting. I'd like to say that I starred, but real props go to Martha Degraw of Intercall. Man, this is someone who really knows her stuff.
I'd like to post some more pictures of actuall show floor sights, But frankly, I haven't had a lot of time to go shoot pix. Between the speaking gig, meetings with customers and prospects, trying to stay up-tp-date with the office back home, and just genrally working the booth; it's been going a mile a minute. Hopefully I'll get out there a little later today.
That assumes that the old Kodak holds out. Apparently I have an issue with my camera or with the mem card. Started about two weeks ago and continues. I guess I'll try a new card first, although it may be time for a holiday upgrade on the hardware.
Lastly, for now, I'd like to give a shout out to the folks from Sonic Foundry. We managed to hook up last evening and thouroughly enjoyed every minutes. if you don't know them, get to know the product - MediaSite. You won't be sorry.
Ok, here's one picture from Aethra's exhibit that came through OK. Once again, some of the best looking video hardware on the planet.
