Describe your organisation’s involvement at ISE.
As the UK’s professional audio body, ISCE UK are exhibiting for the first time at ISE, and we also have a number of our member companies presenting seminars on current topics.
Although ISCE is UK-based, it is open to anyone from any country to join – and as there are few, if any, professional organisations exactly like ISCE in other countries, ISE represents a really good opportunity for sound and communications professionals in the AV industry to find out more about what membership of ISCE can bring to them. We’d very much like to expand the number of ISCE members outside the UK.
How do you see the ISE market faring in the EMEA region in 2011?
We’re expecting growth to be slow. Markets will clearly be depressed for some time, which makes membership of professional bodies even more important – it can be a key differentiator that can help individuals and companies secure business, especially as many new and revised standards now require proof of ‘competency’.
What do you think will be the key external factors affecting the market this year?
Government actions to reduce budget deficits will have the biggest impact. They may, and probably will, hit new builds and replacements, but to what extent? 2011 will see a plethora of new and revised standards, both UK & European, and these will all require all staff (sales, estimating, installation and commissioning) to have additional training.
What do you think will be the ‘star’ technologies of 2011?
We don’t see a single ‘star’ emerging in 2011. We do, though, expect EN 54 compliant loudspeakers and control equipment to be pushed hard by the manufacturers. Controllable loudspeakers – steerable arrays and so on – will become more common and acceptable as solutions to difficult environments. There will be an increasing reliance on IT/network-linked systems, and the old boundaries – between commercial audio/AV and so on – will become increasingly muddied.
And if we could have a wish for 2011, it would be that there will be more standardisation of control systems to allow interfacing between systems.
Stand 9A114
