That’s why I was dumbfounded when I came across a handwritten sign on the front door of a school recently that said in large black letters, “This Door is Open.” The sign was on the door to tell parents and others coming to the school that they didn’t need to be buzzed in to get to their conferences with their children’s teachers, so it was done with good intentions. It just struck me as unusual execution.

Although deaths of students and assaults on them at schools have gone way down since their peak in the 1990s because of increased awareness, new equipment and more formal safety procedures, public awareness of school shootings is way up in recent years. So, while the danger at and around schools may be less, the execution of school safety plans is much more stringent than it’s ever been in the past. That’s what makes this cavalier attitude to safety even more surprising.

Staff members were inside the building as usual when the “This Door is Open” sign was posted, so maybe the sign was a way of freeing them up to leave early or complete other tasks and not have to be focused on signing in visitors to the school or push the access control buzzer on that particular day. I just feel there had to be a better way to get the sentiment across that it’s OK to come into the school if you’re there for a parent-teacher conference or a safer way to grant parents access to the school without broadcasting that the door was open and anyone could enter whenever they wanted.

That’s especially true when you consider most teachers—and many of the students waiting to be picked up by their parents—were in the building at the time. And, of course, parents were all over the building meeting with the teachers, which is why “This Door is Open” in the first place.

It’s sad that was my first thought when I saw the sign, and I’m probably the only one or at least in the minority when it comes to this mentality, but it’s all I could think of when I saw it. Truth be told, no card access or buzzer system is going to keep someone out who’s on a mission to enter a school or office building and do harm to someone or many people, but that doesn’t mean school officials shouldn’t take every precaution to prevent or limit the possibility.

As I wrote recently about the Boston Marathon, we live in an ever-more-dangerous world and if that means someone has to check our bags at the airport or make sure we’re supposed to be coming into a building to help limit the risk of danger, I’m all for it. Too often, people are focused on the quick and easy solution and getting from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible, when what they should be thinking about is getting to their destinations as safely as possible.

Is it really that hard to sign your name on a piece of paper or show your license to a receptionist? Why do school officials ask parents to fill out so much paperwork at the beginning of the year if they’re going to let anyone into the school anyway?

Again, I know this sign was posted as a convenience to parents and visitors had to be close to the door to read it and actually know “This Door is Open” but that’s beyond the point. A decade or two ago, that sign was a good idea. These days, it’s only inviting problems. I’m happy to report no security or safety issues this time around but that doesn’t mean someone looking for an opportunity to enter that school won’t wait for the next time he or she sees a handwritten sign and make the most of the situation. Why would anyone want to invite that possibility?

Maybe I’ve become overly paranoid in the three years since the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, but I prefer to think of it as more diligent and careful. What do you think?

The post Ignoring School Security Invites Risk of Danger appeared first on My TechDecisions.

But there will be no shortage of eye-popping and innovative technology broadcasting the Games, being used by the athletes, and at the venues by which they’re competing. From LED video walls to virtual reality programming to live streaming and more, technology will be everywhere during the 2016 Summer Olympics.

Leyard provided three Leyard TVH Series LED video walls for the NBC Olympics set within the International Broadcast Center in Rio and one Leyard TVH Series LED video wall for NBC’s outdoor set in Brazil.

The Leyard video walls a 13-foot wide by 13-foot tall video wall comprised of 169 displays and an 8-foot wide by 7-foot tall video wall made up of 56 displays, both with a 1.9mm pixel pitch for ultra-high resolution graphics and video playback.

NBC’s sets will also feature a 9-foot wide by 12-foot tall 2.5mm pixel pitch in-floor display made up of 108 displays.

Audio-Technica is providing microphones, broadcast headsets and monitor headphones for NBC’s Olympics coverage. Audio-Technica’s BP4027 and BP4029 stereo shotgun microphones will be mounted on cameras to closely follow the action; while AT4050ST large-diaphragm stereo microphones and BP4025 X/Y stereo microphones will capture ambience from the games’ various venues.

Meanwhile, announcers will wear BPHS1 broadcast stereo headsets in audio-over-IP venues to provide separation between their voices and the ambient sound; and reporters will use BP4001 handheld cardioid dynamic microphones for interviews.

Producers will use ATH-M50x professional monitor headphones in edit rooms, for monitoring RF mic receivers and submix consoles and for other applications.

Audio-Technica’s involvement with the Olympics is part of a long-standing relationship with NBC.

RTS is providing broadcast intercom systems and support for NBC’s production, including OMNEO, RVON, IP trunking ADAM intercom matrix and intercom panels.

Perhaps the most anticipated innovation for NBC’s Olympics coverage this year is the availability of 85 hours of coverage in virtual reality to Samsung smartphone owners through Gear VR and the NBC Sports app.

Fans can be virtually transported to iconic venues such as Maracana Stadium for an unprecedented view of the Opening Ceremony and Copacabana Beach for an immersive beach volleyball experience in the sport’s ultimate setting.

Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS) will capture VR footage—including the Opening and Closing ceremonies, men’s basketball, gymnastics, track and field, beach volleyball, diving, boxing and fencing as well as highlight packages of those sports—and provide it to NBC. All VR content will run on a delay from the day after the Opening Ceremony until Aug. 22, the day after the Olympics end.

Comcast plans to live-stream about 4,500 hours of video of every event of the Summer Olympics, from basketball and beach volleyball to javelin and judo, far exceeding the number of hours streamed during the 2012 event in London. The company also plans to broadcast some content in 4K on a one-day delay.

The Rio Games will feature 34 sports and up to 41 events happening simultaneously.

The Rio Olympics are the first Summer Games since Atlanta in 1996 to occur in or near a U.S. time zone, meaning NBC can broadcast more events live for an American audience. NBC has long faced criticism for airing prerecorded coverage long after an event has occurred, especially in the Pacific time zone.

Many athletes are likely to be wearing analytic bracelets and high-tech sports bras that give them information to improve their performances during training sessions.

LeBron James, Michael Phelps, and Ryan Lochte, among many other stars across all major sports, will wear WHOOP during the 2016 Olympics. The wearable bracelet fits snugly on athletes’ wrists and tracks heart rate and steps but also tells athletes how travel is affecting them, how close they are to a potential injury and how much training is too much. It could be available to the general public soon.

The post The 2016 Summer Olympics Are Swimming in Technology appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Most of the companies that applied to be 2016 CI Industry Leaders expressed a proficiency in the corporate space, showing we may never truly be done bringing offices into the future. Adtech CFO Erik Waters says the company has had “increasing success focusing less on the technology itself and more on the benefits of use.

Clients are looking for an understanding of what the systems will do to increase their productivity.” Waters describes Adtech as “process- and system-focused,” noting the company “continually invest[s] in new software and process tools to improve collaboration and efficiency.

Inventory management and scheduling are two biggest challenges, especially dealing with changing customer timelines. The biggest opportunity is in service and recurring monitoring relationships.” Advance Technology president Rob Simopoulos sees the shift to open-concept workspaces going strong.

“To work with these environments we have been deploying huddle and conference room technology that provide synergy within the space,” he says.

“Our proactive service model allows our remote engineers to detect and react to hardware failures before the customer identifies that there is a problem. Once [the problem is] detected, our remote engineering team is able to diagnose and often able to repair the problem remotely without the need to roll a truck. Our customers are benefiting significantly in the limited system downtime and the quick repair we provide through this program.”

“Advanced AV marketing director Marina Gregory sees strength in the company’s ability “to join with and work in harmony with client design and implementation teams. Post-sales expertise in the AV/IT implementation, experienced project management and technical service support are all capabilities required to implement technologies across global enterprises. Managed services and our network operations center have provided operational client feedback, which allows us to design better solutions moving forward.”

Advanced AV also offers a Network Operations Center and AV as a service, including cloud-based technology, is a focus as well. Anderson Audio Visual VP of operations Chris Bosworth describes the corporate market as “robust and growing.”

“We feel we are strong in this market because we have partnered with the right customers, and built strong relationships with these customers,” he says. “Our single biggest opportunity is in our managed services offerings. We are heavily focused on growing this market segment, specifically the remote monitoring portion of managed services.”

AVI Systems marketing communications manager Kelly Perkins finds increased demand in the corporate space for UC integration within the meeting space and utilization reporting and analytics. AVI’s account base “continues to encourage AVI’s innovation in how people meet and where they meet,” she says.

“Decentralization of workgroups and the democratization of video and collaboration tools continue to drive demand for simple, pervasive, room designs that include software-based collaboration tools and platforms.”

“Additionally, enterprises are continuing to look to AV and video as a core communications infrastructure and along with the budgets come the responsibility to demonstrate the positive impact of workforce productivity and the need to lower operating costs,” says Perkins.

“More and more, AVI is being asked to address these issues with creative and comprehensive applications that streamline workflow integration and provide analytics on knowledge worker utilization, system availability and productivity analytics.”

In short, says AVI-SPL public relations specialist Nathan Legg, “the corporate market is hungry to meet their collaboration needs,” including solution and system standards, global delivery capabilities, unifying their collaboration solutions and proactive monitoring, management and maintenance of their solutions.
AVI-SPL’s global team “understand[s] the current and future needs of our customers, are trained on the newest innovations coming to market, and have the advantage of working with an innovative services team generating new collaboration solutions like UnifyME and Symphony,” says Legg.

Dennis Pitzl, owner of Concepts AV Integration, says his company is focused on service, starting with accommodating all clients’ service calls on the same day they come in.

“Our strongest market is corporate,” he says. “We find that the clients are demand-ing the ability to have extremely simple to operate systems. They want to be able to have a meeting with little to no effort.”

Kevin McKay, national sales manager at Genesis Integration, notes, “Genesis is shifting our focus away from equipment and focusing more on the value-added services that we can provide to our clients. From our initial engagement with our clients, we strive to become ‘outcome-focused.’ The collaboration technologies we provide have become an integral part of the strategic initiatives of our clients therefore we are focused on managing the complete lifecycle of the solutions we offer.”

Bruce Kaufmann, president and CEO of Human Circuit, says “our customers demand more authenticity” in their installations so the company’s sales/engineering approach to needs analysis and project programming “makes our project approach unique.”

Tim Hennen, president of enterprise sales and engineering at IVCi, says corporate clients “are demanding innovative designs that adhere to standard, strong project management skills and ongoing services. IVCi deploys many highly qualified engineers whose job it is to know the technology, to design proven technology into our solutions always with a focus on ease of use and ongoing service.”

Robbie Danko, marketing manager at Low Voltage Contractors, notes the corporate market “has always been good for LVC. Unlike most systems companies, we often work directly with the owner or general contractor. There are any examples of how this works for LVC. We were the fire alarm subcontractor on a number of high-rise buildings in Minneapolis and were brought in during the planning stages. LVC produced construction drawings for the owner before the projects were out to contractors for bidding.”

John Mitton, VP of AV group and CTO at Red Thread Spaces, says “collaboration solutions” are the company’s greatest strength. “We are an integrated solutions company and are able to integrate space and technology to provide a great experience for our clients,” he says, noting they use LEAN processing and workspace management techniques to succeed.

Derek Paquin, principal at Sensory Technologies, says the corporate market is tough but lucrative. “Clients are demand-ing increased efficiency and productivity through collaboration solutions. Our consultative approach and focus on embracing the technology allows us to partner with the client for success.”

Sharp’s Audio Visual executive VP of sales and marketing Tim St. Louis also emphasized client demands. “Clients are demanding a very positive full-project lifecycle experience,” he says. “From needs analysis and design to project management and installation, commissioning and after-sales service level agreements. We have spent the past year focused at every level of our company developing revenue from services. It is a priority and is engrained in our corporate culture.”

Spinitar implemented a new ERP system a few years ago and also self-directed work teams (made up of sales, PM, designer, associate designer, and project foreman) that are responsible for their own financials, while assuring an exceptional customer experience and implemented a LEAN team, now having two individuals that have gone through formal LEAN training, with the charge to ID opportunities to eliminate waste, redundancy, wait time, duplication of efforts, etc., making for a more efficient organization.
The biggest challenge, says principal Jeff Irvin, is remaining relevant. “With many manufacturers developing direct relationships with end-user customers, vast amounts of information available to prospects and customers, and increasing competition from EC’s, consultants, and other low-voltage contractors, relevancy is a huge issue for the future,” he says.

“We are focused on strategies that focus on providing value to our customers, outside of traditional AV products and services (i.e. cloud solutions, remote monitoring, solutions addressing virtualization and mobilization, etc.).”

Unified AV marketing manager Lea Johnson also focuses on client demands, saying “they want managed services.” The biggest challenge for UAV, she says, is “convincing network administrators to take advantage of technological advances.”

Verrex VP of marketing and business development Theresa Hahn says the company has seen a “noteworthy rise in streaming and recording capabilities in corporate communal areas — town hall spaces, cafeterias — as clients focus on uniform messaging across a remote workforce and offices to build a stronger sense of community and engaged culture.”

The past year has been “outstanding” for Westbury National in the corporate market, says sales manager Brock McGinnis. It included “a broad mix of complex corporate auditoriums and presentation spaces, divisible/combinable conferencing facilities and hundreds of simple meeting and huddle rooms,” he says.

“Clients are demanding ease-of-use, high reliability and BYOD or highly customized, purpose-built meeting, conferencing and gathering spaces. We’re well positioned because of our substantial in-house engineering and programming capabilities as well as our very responsive service organization.”

Whitlock national marketing manager Ellen Hickson says the company is seeing “a continuing demand across the corporate landscape for cloud, mobile and hybrid solutions in 2016, along with increasing interest in Microsoft Surface Hub and Skype.”

“Our Enterprise Delivery Model ensures alignment of business goals with project schedules, expert coordination with the general contractor and other essential trades and a communications framework to keep everybody informed at every step of the journey,” she says. “Our promise and commitment does not stop once an implementation has finished, because we’ve already planned for technology adoption through cloud-based training and in room support.”

With Yorktel’s guidance, organizations worldwide have successfully harnessed the full power of this environment, creating ecosystems founded on flexible policies that embrace new business models, transparency, collaboration and community building, diversity, and the consumerization of technology.

Application development, coupled with vertical market integration into UCC platforms has allowed Yorktel to not only extend its footprint into vertical markets, but to also establish a leadership position.

“Several years ago, when video communications began earning widespread acceptance, we realized that it was only a matter of time when video would no longer be used solely for traditional calls from behind a desk or conference room, but rather for practical business applications such as remote patient care,” says Michael Beaudoin.

Click here to meet all of the 2016 CI Corporate Industry Leaders.

The post Commercial Integrator’s Top 20 Corporate Market Integrators of 2016 appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Customers are expected to receive “large shipments” of the hotly debated all-in-one collaboration platform by July, says Tom Napolitano, technology product manager at Red Thread Spaces, one of a handful of Surface Hub launch partners. Red Thread’s headquarters will have three 84-inch Surface Hubs displayed throughout the posh waterfront property that doubles as a showroom.

So far, many of those who have participated in demos of the Surface Hub find it user-friendly, says Napolitano. At Red Thread, they live by the motto, “First use must inspire future use,” and he believes Surface Hub lives up to that in its current iteration, which he says is well beyond a first-run product.

“People aren’t intimidated by it,” he says. “They press that Windows button like they do on their devices. So it’s something that’s very familiar to them. Everyone’s making ROI decisions with their technology, so it’s got to be simple and consistent wherever they go. There are a lot of other systems that do what it does, but none of them do it all in one.”

“It’s very refined now. It’s been through a lot of testing and it’s ready for prime time,” says Napolitano.

At InfoComm 2016, AVI-SPL VP of UCC solutions Linda Civitillo said Surface Hub “helps us to bring together what we’ve been talking about forever. This is about bridging the gap between the AV and IT environments. It’s a much bigger story than just a Surface Hub on the wall.”

“The lead time for this is longer than we usually deal with, but we’re seeing allocations weekly and we’ve had some very successful installations. The demand is still there and everyone is still really excited but we’re faced with a six-month lead time, so sometimes [the customer’s] schedule moves faster than we can deliver,” says Civitillo.

Although many integrators and competitors were critical of Microsoft’s myriad delays before finally announcing Surface Hub was shipping a few months ago, Napolitano wasn’t entirely surprised.

“Microsoft took on a lot,” he says. “This is a very exciting time, though, and I really think this is something that’s going to transform meeting spaces for business.” That’s something that’s especially important to Red Thread as it continues to sell “the workplace of the future” to its customers.

“We’re seeing the work space change,” says Civitillo. “We’re doing a lot of thinking about how we work and leveraging spaces. We’re working really diligently to help our customers. This is a bridge to help everything work together.”

Napolitano also says concerns about the cost of the Surface Hub are somewhat unfounded, noting, “if you take the four pieces and buy all of them separately, it’s going to cost a lot more when you add that together.”

Civitillo calls Surface Hub “a very competitive solution” in terms of price when factoring in the cost of a computer, camera, audio components and training. She says criticism that Surface Hub is harder to fix because of its all-in-one nature is unfounded.

“When you have a system made up of different components, if one piece goes down, the room isn’t really complete anyway,” says Civitillo. She agrees with Napolitano about Surface Hub being greatly improved from the original version of the product she saw and says the revisions such as added privacy features made it even better. AVI-SPL customers who buy a Surface Hub can utilize their virtual meeting room licenses, she says.

“They’ve incorporated a lot of things along the way to make it more user-friendly,” says Civitillo. “I think it’s ready.”

The post Microsoft Surface Hub Ready to Install After Delays appeared first on My TechDecisions.

“Once I made my decision and announced that I’d be retiring at the end of 2016, there was no going back for me,” says Bright, who turned 65 in January. “I was always an analog guy, a box guy. The technology is such that it’s harder for me to keep up.”

Bright begins his transition into retirement just a month short of his 40th wedding anniversary, which he celebrated with a surprise party thrown by family members and friends this week. His wife Debbie has been healthy for more than 18 years after several battles with cancer and Bright himself has spent the past decade fighting what doctors call “a disease of unknown origin.”

He had his worst stretch of health from November to January but says the symptoms have come and gone over the past 10 years. That battle contributed to his decision to retire, as did the fact his brother and two close friends are “three of the happiest retired people I know.”

Bright started a division of Mitsubishi from scratch and ran that for more than a dozen years before starting another company. That entrepreneurial spirit was what attracted Kramer ownership to him, but he downplays his reputation as a “startup guy.”

Kramer has transitioned into the future of integration by buying a wireless collaboration company and a simple control business in recent months and the company is slated to have the fifth-largest booth at InfoComm 2016 “even though there’s no way we’re the fifth-largest company in the industry.”

“It’s almost like the company is starting over again,” says Bright. “I wasn’t going to stick around for more than two or three more years. Rather than have someone come in midstream to replace me or pick up where I left off, it made sense for the company and for me to do it the way I did it.”

That doesn’t mean Bright’s decision to retire was easy though.

“I had been wrestling with it for a long time,” he says. “I love this company and I want to leave it in the right hands. When the idea of retiring hits you and you realize it’s the right thing to do and the right time to do it, you get such clarity.”

Going Out On Top

Bright will cap off a career that’s stretched back several decades by adding one more piece of hardware to his trophy case at InfoComm 2016 as the winner of the Mackey Barron Distinguished Achievement Award.

“Mackey was like a second father to me,” says Bright, who visited the late founder of HB Communications at his house about four or five times every year. “Getting an award like that is validation of your career, although that’s not something I was looking for.”

Kramer VP of marketing Clint Hoffman nominated Bright for the award and he got support for the annual InfoComm honor by PSNI executive director Chris Miller, among others.

“It’s always nice to have somebody validate what you’ve done as something that’s important to them,” says Bright.

But that doesn’t mean Bright is continuing to wield all the power at the company. In fact, he’s already given up his corner office at Kramer headquarters to his successor, Steve Biegacki, former senior VP of global sales and marketing at Belden, who took over as CEO May 1.

He’ll also remain Kramer’s acting chairman of the board for Kramer until his retirement at the end of this year. Kramer had what Bright described as “false starts” with two other potential candidates to take the baton from him but “things have a way of working out.”

Biegacki retired from Belden a couple of years ago and emerged from a group of about 50 resumes only a few weeks before he got the job.

“He came in and really blew us away,” says Bright, who was part of the team that found his own replacement. Biegacki will commute between St. Louis and New Jersey before he and Bright hit the road for meetings with key integrators and organizations including PSNI, USAV and InfoComm International who work with Kramer.

“He’s going to have to become the face of the company,” says Bright of Biegacki. “It’ll be fun saying goodbye and handing off the reins. Steve doesn’t want to be looking over his shoulder and I’m perfectly fine with that.

“After 19 years of running the company one way, I wanted someone with new ideas. Many of the companies Steve has dealt with are IT-based. We’ve got a family here and I wanted someone who would respect that culture. We’re a funny, wise-cracking, sarcastic group and Steve has fit right in with that too. The real secret to all of this is to surround yourself with great people.”

Busy in Retirement

Bright and his wife took a three-week trip to Australia and New Zealand this past winter and he notes “we have a lot of travel planned,” some of which will be with his brother and his brother’s wife. Bright and Debbie will drive cross-country to Denver and Scottsdale in February, returning by going through New Orleans and the Florida panhandle before heading home.

He’ll continue playing in a men’s-only hardball league and will be part of a New York Yankees fantasy camp in January. He may get involved in a friend’s sporting goods store and will definitely do some coaching, he says.

“I’ve got a bucket list a mile long,” says Bright. “I hope there’s enough time to get it all done.”

The post Retiring Kramer President and CEO Sees Bright Future Under New Leadership appeared first on My TechDecisions.

This year in Las Vegas at InfoComm 2016, the industry’s most dangerous band is trying to “ignite” more interest in a new NSCA offering that aims to bring young people into the industry while being “Obsessed with Vinyl.”

The first and largest Drunk Unkles fundraiser of 2016 is scheduled for Wednesday, June 8 from 8:30 to 11 p.m. at Las Vegas’ Vinyl in the Hard Rock Hotel.

The show, dubbed “Obsessed with Vinyl,” will provide funding and raise awareness about Ignite, a new initiative that “arms integration firms and consultants with marketing and promotional materials that can be used at job fairs and shared with students and young professionals considering a move to the commercial technology industry.”

Free concert passes will be available at designated sponsor booths on the first day of InfoComm 2016 or can be downloaded at the NSCA Education Foundation or Drunk Unkles websites.

Money raised from this annual event has contributed to the NSCA Education Foundation’s ability to establish programs, offer scholarships and provide training opportunities.

The Drunk Unkles performed its first show 11 years ago to help the family of an industry peer who unexpectedly lost his life.

“The Drunk Unkles have supported the industry and its members by sharing their talents at great venues for more than decade,” says Chuck Wilson, director of the NSCA Education Foundation. “This annual Drunk Unkles performance has grown to become one of the most popular, must-attend networking events held during InfoComm week.”

The post Drunk Unkles Ready to ‘Ignite’ InfoComm 2016 at NSCA Education Foundation Event appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Each of the 30 teams will have iPad Pros in their dugouts and bullpens, marking the first on-field integration of next-generation technology. The move “puts advance-scouting video and customizable reports at the fingertips of all managers, coaches and players,” according to the recent announcement by Major League Baseball.

“Our collaboration with Apple on the use of iPad Pro in dugouts and bullpens is part of our ongoing effort to introduce extraordinary technology into our game,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in the statement. “We are pleased that Apple’s groundbreaking products, which have already improved the access that fans have to our sport, will now inform the decisions that make our games interesting and exciting throughout the year.”

The iPad Pros will be customized for each team and include with the MLB Dugout app, which will allow managers, coaches and players “to utilize their own proprietary and strategic statistical reports, data visualizations and advance-scouting videos during every game from dugouts and bullpens, giving them easy access to valuable, actionable baseball insights,” according to the announcement.

Teams will also have the ability to include any of their own reports with data generated from Statcast tracking technology last season, bringing new stats for pitch tracking, hitting, baserunning and fielding.

“iPad is our vision for the future of personal computing, and we are so excited to be working with Major League Baseball to put this incredible technology into all of their dugouts and bullpens this season,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing.

ESPN sports business reporter Darren Rovell says Microsoft pays the NFL $80 million a year to use Surface tablets on the sidelines, but MLB officials won’t say whether Apple had to pay to put iPad Pros in all teams’ hands.

The bad news for players such as Boston Red Sox third baseman Pablo Sandoval, who starts the season as a splinter-picker, is Internet access will not be available during games.

Here’s hoping the incorporation of iPads in big-league dugouts work out better than the plan to use T-Mobile cell phones for on-field communication between managers and bullpen coaches. That plan fizzled out quickly, but could be revisited at another time.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the more obvious technological advances at ballparks around the country, like we did last year in highlighting what several franchises did to make the experience more user-friendly for fans.

The St. Louis Cardinals, Cleveland Indians and Texas Rangers installed new video boards in their ballparks this winter, while the Washington Nationals added a new speaker system and the San Francisco Giants added a virtual reality experience.

Here’s a look at the Indians’ new video board in action at Progressive Field:

Here’s a look at the new Progressive Field scoreboard in action pic.twitter.com/Zr9U3UYjqy

— Zack Meisel (@ZackMeisel) March 29, 2016

Here’s a video from mid-February showing the work in progress at Globe Life Park, home of the Texas Rangers:

Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Watch the new LF video board take shape from start to finish! #48Days pic.twitter.com/6ZARHes7Ip

— Texas Rangers (@Rangers) February 16, 2016

Let’s take a closer look at each MLB installation in slideshow format. Play ball!

The post 7 Baseball Teams Show Off Major League Technology for 2016 appeared first on My TechDecisions.

Twenty years ago, the thought of creating a building to celebrate New England Patriots history would’ve been met with loud laughs and boisterous ridicule given the team had what can best be described as a checkered past.

But, with four Super Bowl championships since 2001, it’s no surprise that thousands of loyal Pats fans fill the Hall at Patriot Place every year. And it’s probably even less surprising that one of the Hall’s most popular areas is the Hall of Fame gallery, an interactive area where fans can learn more about the best Patriots players and seasons.

HB Communications recently helped the Hall at Patriot Place take on a more modern look by installing double-sided NanoLumens NanoSlim video displays in four 22-foot-wide-by-4.5-foot-tall pylons that entertain those in the Hall and outside it too.

Installers cut large pieces of plywood and painted them black before attaching the NanoLumens screens to them. They used 9MM pixel pitch for the exterior screens and 5MM pixel pitch inside the gallery.

“They didn’t want any significant down time for this part of the Hall,” says HB account representative Andrew DeCesare. “All the legwork we did on the front end made a huge difference.”

HB staffers brought the equipment into the Hall each morning from 6 to 10 a.m. from a truck that was loaded backward to give them access to what they needed when they needed it, says project manager Chris DeSimone.

With an elevator rated for 4,500 pounds, the staggered approach worked best. As HB finished each pylon, staffers turned it on and made it available to Hall visitors.

“It was a bit of a struggle but we were able to do it with a lot of coordination,” says DeSimone.

HB Communications has a long-term agreement to upgrade the technology at the Hall at Patriot Place and CBS Scene, a restaurant within the Patriot Place shopping complex next to Gillette Stadium.

“LED technology has improved so much since we opened this building in 2008,” says Bryan Morry, executive director of the Hall at Patriot Place. The pylons feature 10- to 12-minute loops on the exterior featuring video highlights from the Patriots’ Super Bowl wins and Hall of Famers featuring statistics and biographies of the 22 Hall of Famers and two honored contributors. Cortina Productions provided the content for the pylons and Gefen extenders send the content to the pylons.

Four touchscreens include information on the honorees.

“It really pops for our visitors,” says Morry. “It’s such a dramatic improvement over what we had. The difference is dramatic.”

NanoLumens officials are proud to be part of the project. “The Kraft Group…set out to…set a new standard for interactivity and engagement,” says Dana Michaelis, director of Northeast sales at NanoLumens. “The result is a series of stunning visualization solutions that forge a closer bond between fans and their team.”

HB Communications also upgraded the Legends box and Celtics Courtside Club at TD Garden, home of the Boston Celtics and Boston Bruins.

“We’re doing a lot more large-scale LED deployments than a few years ago,” says Gerard Wolfram, senior quality control field engineer for HB Communications.

The Patriots also created the Optum Field Lounge, Gillette Stadium’s first ever field-level space. The 20,000-square-foot lounge offers season-ticket holders an array of video technology, including a 30-foot-by-9-foot 2.5MM pixel pitch NanoSlim Engage solution and two 5MM 35-foot-long ribbon displays. Between games, the lounge can be rented for a variety of private events.

This story was originally published on TD sister site Commercial Integrator.

The post Hall at Patriot Place Celebrates Team’s Championship Tradition appeared first on My TechDecisions.

When we launched our first Commercial Integrator Brand Preference Survey and asked people in the integration space to tell us which company’s products they used and preferred in more than two dozen categories, we truly didn’t know what to expect.

We provided a handful of choices in each of the 25 categories for survey respondents to choose, but also left it open for them to fill in their own selections. For the most part, the write-ins earned 1 or 2 percent of a category’s votes, but in other instances, the write-ins cracked the top three, which clearly will help us shape the brand preference survey for 2016.

Many of the results you’ll see were likely fairly predictable based on a company’s reputation or word of mouth from your counterparts, but there were definitely a handful of selections that surprised us, so we imagine they’ll surprise you too.

For purposes of this analysis, we focused on the top three most mentioned preferred brands in each of the featured categories. We asked respondents to share their brands usage for the past two years overall, and indicate one “preferred brand” per category. In most cases, the top three in each category matched up, but there were instances where some differences emerged.

What will be interesting to monitor as we conduct this survey in future years is how certain product categories fall out of the mix and other product categories — in some cases, products that few are really thinking about today — emerge as key parts of a job.

In case you were wondering, we did not break down the categories into vertical markets. However, when integrators share projects with us now it may be fascinating to track whose products they implement in board rooms, conference rooms, classrooms, sports bars, hotels, etc., compared with this data.

Surely, like most other surveys of this kind, these results will generate plenty of debate, and maybe it’ll get you to think in new ways about products or manufacturers you haven’t used in the past. Thanks to the 227 people who responded to our inaugural survey — let us know how you think they did (and if you didn’t participate, there’s always next year), and what we should change for the 2016 edition.

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ISE, a show that brings residential and commercial integrators and manufacturers together for the largest show of its kind in the world, will occupy all 11 halls of the Amsterdam RAI, along with the Diamond Lounge and new Amtrium, which will be occupied by Samsung Electronics.

The show, a joint venture between InfoComm International and CEDIA, is scheduled Feb. 9-12 in Amsterdam and is expected to bring in more than 1,000 exhibitors.

“The increase in sold floor space at the show supports the decision to take the exhibition to four days duration so as to allow exhibitors and attendees the maximum opportunity to meet and network at the event,” according to ISE’s announcement.

“The fact that the four-day ISE is ‘sold out’ indicates that it was the correct decision to expand the show and a vote of confidence from our exhibitors and partners,” said Integrated Systems Events’ Managing Director Mike Blackman in the press release. “We are sure that it will deliver a richer experience for everyone that attends,” he concluded.

ISE continues to also attract more attention from IT professionals working in the AV space and those looking to gain entry or become partners with integrators and installers, which has helped to boost the show’s attendance to almost 60,000 people this year, with more expected in 2016.

In other ISE news, CEDIA CEO Vincent Bruno has joined the board of directors after his recent move from Crestron. He joins ISE chairman David Labuskes, InfoComm’s executive director and CEO; Terry Friesenborg, chief global officer at InfoComm; Wendy Griffiths, executive director of CEDIA EMEA; Jay Rogina, principal at Spinitar; Wolfgang Lenz, president of Comm-Tec; Tobias Lang, CEO at LANG AG; and Ollie French, commercial director of Future Automation.

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