InfoComm 2012 Wrap Up

Mecca of all things Audio Visual called InfoComm has come and gone. My nine day sojourn left me with some sore feet, a small small allocation of swag, (much to my wife's dismay. She likes InfoComm to resupply the pen collection) great relationships, and some great training.
InfoComm usually falls in to two categories, game changers and same stuff new paint. This years show fell in to the latter, don't get me wrong it was a great show, but technology wise it was mostly 'anything you can do I can do better' or manufacture A does x and manufacture B has a 'Me too' and it comes in grey. In fact you couldn't swing a cat and not hit an interactive screen, table, or widget of the week while you walked the show floor.

The few highlights that caught my eye were Panasonic's large screen displays with built in pixel for pixel interactive tech (think no calibration), latest crop of bulbless DLP projectors (name the manufacture they'll have one), a glass fiber optic cable from Clearline that requires no striping and takes about a minute to terminate (oh you can twist it in knots and the light path is still functional), and the creation of a new InfoComm members council, called the Independent Technical Service Providers (ITSP) council.

 I also had the opportunity to join the folks at AV Nation to record the weekly AVWeek podcast which was recorded live on the last day of InfoComm 2012. Fun was had by the motley crew of hosts, commentators, and industry professionals.

The other memorable event that happened was at the Standards and Industry Innovations “Firkin Standard” Reception (not that I'm bragging) where I was presented with an award for testing The J-STD-710: Audio, Video, and Control Architectural Drawing Symbols Standard (Which my wife kindly pointed out that I was in Vegas receiving an STD).

All in all InfoComm 2012 was an extremely enjoyable show I'm one class closer to getting my CTS-D, I partied with some #AVTweeps  suffered sticker shock of a $600.00 meal at Dal Toro while dining with Mr. AVDawn, Mrs. AVDawn, Chris Neto (If you ever get the chance ask him about his snake on a leash story), Matt Scott, Michael Drainer, Steve Greenblatt, and Mike Brandes.

InfoComm 2012 in in the books and I'm looking forward to 2013 in Orlando. I just hope I'm about 80lbs lighter for the next show cause dam I'm fat in all my photos.

Till the next time enjoy and remember it's only AV.

- The AV CAD Guy