How many times have you attended ISE, and in what capacity?
I’ve been participating in the show since the first year in Amsterdam, and as you can imagine, over such a long period my role has changed over the years. As vice president pro audio sales EMEA, I followed the change of ISE to Barcelona very closely, and we have adapted our pro presence significantly over the last three years to support the growing customer base of the show.
Overall, how was ISE 2026 for you?
As mentioned, we are very happy to see the interest of professional audio customers grow year over year and the general visitor numbers coming back to Amsterdam records. It’s fair to say that ISE is no longer a show for an exclusive integrator audience. That aspect, together with our solution announcements, is creating a permanent flow of interesting customers and users towards our booth – we are very happy with the results.
Numbers were up again, so how was footfall for you, and what about the quality of leads?
Footfall was excellent, with a lot of interest particularly in Spectera, our bidirectional wideband RF wireless system, and the Spectera Lab, which invites customers and operators to participate in shaping the future of this ecosystem.
The quality of leads was equally good, with a substantial number of deals closed directly on the show floor and many on-site product demonstrations arranged. The months to come will show the full benefit of ISE 2026.
But a show is not only about leads. The exchange with our customers is just as important, and this is where ISE delivers – across all of our verticals. We had theatres visiting, live sound engineers, broadcasters, you name it. We very much valued this additional opportunity for interacting with them, hearing about their latest plans, and demonstrating our solutions to them in a professional setting.
Did you engage with the ISE Daily, either by reading it or by contributing editorially or promotionally?
The ISE Daily is a must-read during the show, providing hot news from the show floor, while the pre-produced articles give a great cross-section of the industries presenting at ISE.
Did you nominate any of your products for the Best of Show awards? If not, do you have a particular reason?
We regularly submit our latest products for the Best of Show awards. On the pro audio side, our partners SoundBase submitted their brand-agnostic RF planning tool, while our business communication colleagues submitted Device Hub, a cloud-based device management system. We very much value the effort that goes into executing these awards and evaluating and judging all the entries. Chapeau, Future Media!
Is there anything you’d like to see improved at ISE in 2027?
That’s too soon to say, but I’d like to learn more details about the customers visiting from the organisation. It should always be our common goal to attract the right mix from all over Europe, in balance.
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