The conference sessions at yesterday’s InstallMarket brought together an impressive roster of speakers from across the industry.
In the keynote address, award-winning projection artist Ross Ashton described some of his most exciting projects, and discussed how the technology used to create them has changed over time. While large-scale projectors have changed little over time, media servers have become more powerful, so projects that required a rackful of kit previously can now be managed by a single box.
The other sessions were devoted to discussion of changing markets and technologies across different vertical market sectors: retail, AV and broadcast, education, hospitality and transportation – with a final session devoted to AV-IT convergence. Each panel was moderated by a consultant who specialises in that field, presiding over a panel of integrators.
Some key messages for integrators emerged from across the sessions:
- Know your customer and their needs. As their requirements become more complex, your depth of knowledge needs to increase. Sometimes, you will have to show them what is possible.
- Remember that you may have a broader perspective than your immediate customer. For instance, in the hospitality market, hotel owners, operators and guests will have different priorities – you may have to remind your customer of this.
- Understand the limits of your expertise – and bring in complementary expertise where necessary.
- Particularly when they are not technical experts, training for end-users on their new system is essential – though it often gets overlooked.
- As projects grow in complexity and scope, project management and planning become ever more important
- Establish trust with other the parties in the project – but if you can’t manage this, you may have to bully a little.
We’d like to offer our grateful thanks to all the moderators and speakers for helping us to create such a thought-provoking conference programme. There will be more coverage of InstallMarket in the October issue of Installation.
