This year’s InfoComm, the North American pro AV technology expo that also attracts international exhibitors and visitors, takes place from June 7 to 13 (with the exhibition from 11 to 13 June) at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Florida. Event organiser AVIXA (Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association) is hoping for an attendance of 40,000, which would build substantially on the 30,271 verified attendees, from 125 countries, who visited Las Vegas for the 2024 outing. It would also mark a return to pre-pandemic levels.
Of the visitors to last year’s show, 71 percent were from the pro AV channel and 29 percent were end users, with international attendance accounting for 23 percent. Also present in the West and Central Halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center were 833 companies taking up 407,00sqft of exhibition space. AVIXA is anticipating over 900 exhibitors this year, more than 150 of which are first timers. In total, InfoComm exhibits will occupy 410,000sqft of the 2.1m sqfts of the centre, which houses two exhibition spaces – the West Building and the North-South Building – of 92,000sqft each.
END USERS
When InfoComm is held in Orlando, AVIXA has found that it attracts more end users from the education, house of worship, retail, hospitality and enterprise sectors. The focus and theme for this year’s show, which is relevant to all these areas in different ways, is “conferencing and collaboration”. It will be the subject of over 40 sessions on the conference programme, with more than 200 manufacturers and developers exhibiting products and technologies in these areas. Expert input will be provided by representatives from Google (Meet), Microsoft (Teams) and Zoom. According to AVIXA’s annual Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis (IOTA) report, conferencing and collaboration are now the areas attracting the biggest spending in the AV market.
Sean Wargo, vice president of market insight at AVIXA, says this sector now makes up the bulk of revenues for integrators as businesses upgrade offices to facilitate hybrid working. “In North America alone, collaboration solutions are expected to produce $24.8bn in spending,” he says. “Visitors can expect to see a wide variety of hardware and services in this area of the show this year.”
This commercial significance does not, however, mean conferencing is the AV market seeing the most rapid growth. That accolade belongs to performance and entertainment, which the IOTA report predicts will experience an 8.4 percent rise in revenue this year. “It is the story of recovery in experiences following the pandemic, with consumers attending concerts, museums, sporting events and themed attractions in large numbers,” Wargo explains. “This in turn has sparked increased investment in technology to support it, which will be reflected at InfoComm 2025.”
BUSINESS DIRECTION
The current and possible direction of AV business will be revealed on Tuesday 10 June at AVIXA’s Market Insights Lunch: State of the AV Industry. This will present new research, including forecasts of industry size and growth, from the 2025 edition of the IOTA survey. “Our team will provide key highlights from recent end-user demand surveys that reveal quarterly purchase intentions for pro AV products and services,” Wargo says. “We’ll also examine macro-economic trends, such as tariffs, inflation and interest rates, impacting the pro AV landscape.”
Where the AV sector and the technology that enables it might be going in coming years will be discussed at the session 2030 Vision: The Future of AV on Thursday 12 June. Hosted by AVIXA chief executive David Labuskes, this will see three “pro AV visionaries” – Brad Hintze, executive vice president of marketing at Crestron; Eric Hutto, chief executive of systems integrator Diversified; and Christine Schyvinck, president and chief executive at Shure – discuss what they view as the innovative and developing technologies that could radically change the AV market. “I’m thrilled to welcome this panel of industry leaders to the stage, where they’ll inspire attendees with their perspectives on what’s on the horizon for the ever-evolving world of pro AV,” Labuskes comments.
Brad Hintze adds that hybrid working in particular has played a part in driving an increase in the adoption of technology, creating potential for increased user feedback. “There is still a lot of opportunity for our industry to drive even better experiences and a big part of that will be a migration away from user-driven systems to more autonomous environments that can react intuitively based on data,” he says. “Industry advancements over the next several years will help these AV systems adapt to the environment and anticipate the needs of the users based on previous trends of how the space has been used.”
AI FOCUS
Artificial intelligence (AI) was a major theme and talking point at InfoComm 2024 and while it is not the sole focus, its presence will be felt this year, including during the 2030 Vision discussion. “We will be discussing how technological advancements like AI are impacting the industry,” says Christine Schyvinck. “We’ll also touch on the challenges within the industry, including adaptability with so many changes happening around the world.”
Schyvinck calls this a transformative time for technology in the AV industry, adding that end users are looking for benefits such as improved flexibility and networking. “Spaces are more multi-dimensional and having the right ecosystem is essential,” she explains. “From microphones to DSPs to loudspeakers, networked audio solutions that can be precisely tailored for specific needs will be even more important. AI will play a bigger role in this, not just improving how products operate but how companies operate as well, in areas such as customer service, data management and operations.”
SPOTLIGHT STAGE
The possibilities for the AV industry will be examined further during sessions held on the Spotlight Stage, a new feature described as a “dedicated hub for exploring the fastest-growing solution areas in pro AV, including broadcast AV and digital signage”. This area will comprise both the session stage and a networking lounge, with the aim being to provide a forum for “in-depth conversations between attendees and solution providers”.
Sessions include: Technology Democratisation and Industry Convergence – IABM and AVIXA In Conversation (11am, 11 June); Automated Production and Skills Augmentation: How to Empower Solo Operators with Media Technology and AI (11.30am, 11 June), featuring Jeremy Morris, senior pre-sales consultant at Vizrt and Dave Hoffman, business development manager for the Americas with Blackmagic Design; The State of Modern Work: Navigating AI, Hybrid Culture, and Industry Shifts in AV (10.30am, 12 June), presented by Crestron; Making Retail More Immersive with AR, VR and XR (4pm, 12 June), with Mattia Miglio, director of business development for North America at Alibaba.com and Robin Raskin of the Virtual Events Group; Mastering Digital Signage Deployment: Navigating Supply Chain and Logistics for Seamless Execution (11.45am, 13 June), featuring Tony Green, vice president of business development with Snap Install and Kristin Roubie, director of business development at Elo; and HETMA: Recruiting and Retaining AV Talent, with Erin Maher-Moran, IT manager for classroom technology at John Hopkins University, Elizabeth Burnham, training and QA/QC coordinator with Pershing Technologies, George Chacko, senior director of academic and classroom technologies at Pace University and Ryan Gray, director of technology engagement and strategy, Yavapai College.
HETMA (Higher Education Technology Managers Alliance) will also be staging its own Higher Education Summit, a two-day workshop (9 and 10 June) made up of panels and interactive breakout sessions looking at the trends and innovations in AV for this sector. Subjects for discussion include: Ethics and Accessibility, Security and Zero Trust and Successful Capital Planning. Among the speakers will be: Kameesha Jones, AV project manager at Florida International University, Joe Way, executive director of digital spaces at UCLA, Kevin Schornhorst, director of SLED for AVI-SPL and Andy Vogel, instructional designer at Ohio State University. Those attending the summit also get a free ticket to the Higher Ed AV Awards, which take place on the evening of 9 June.
There will be a further educational focus as part of the InfoComm Workshops and Education Sessions. The technical workshops will examine important current subjects such as hitting green targets through the SAVe Sustainability in AV scheme, creating effective streaming networks and building successful esports facilities. The education sessions will concentrate on AI, including how it can be used as part of the production process as well as for digital signage and what impact it has had on the modern meeting room.
The growing influence of AI will also feature in the Conferencing and Collaboration Education Track, which runs from 10 June to 12 June. Sessions include Beyond the Meeting Room: AI’s Expanding Role in the Workplace (10 June). This is set to look at how the technology is changing not only meeting rooms but also the office experience itself. Among those taking part are: Craig Durr, founder and chief analyst of The Collab Collective, John Stearns, head of Zoom Spaces at Zoom, and Ilya Bukshteyn, corporate vice president, Microsoft Teams calling, devices and premium experiences. Also on the schedule is Shaping the Future Workplace: The Role of AV in Modern Office Design, with representatives from Capital Group, Studio Other, Workshape, Wielding Workplace and Jabra; Enterprise Teams Integration: Successes and Lessons Learned, presented by Chris Bischoff, senior manager of infrastructure engineering at environmental services provider Republic Services; and Accuracy in Transcription Matters: Hit the Bullseye with Zoom and Shure, focusing on the part good quality audio plays in producing precise AI transcripts.
FLOOR TOURS
A feature of last year’s InfoComm was the show floor tours led by Jane Hammersley of collaboration specialist Blue Touch Paper. These will take place again in Orlando, with two tours, one on 11 June, the other on 12 June. These focus on seven companies Hammersley sees as making great steps forward in innovation and technology for conferencing and collaboration: She comments on each of the seven to explain her choices.
Q-SYS: “I love how their infrastructure and ecosystem is enabling conferencing and collaboration systems to work seamlessly. They do a lot in the background to make the user experience super easy.”
Yealink: “A very interesting vendor that is agile, flexible and doing well in the SMB [small and medium-sized business] space. The product line includes headsets and videobars and really talks to the whole of the collaboration space, from a remote worker right through to a full interactive conferencing solution.”
Cisco: “An interesting choice for me as I tend to look for smaller vendors with different takes on conferencing and collaboration. Cisco is an enterprise wide, end-to-end ecosystem network that was focused entirely on its Webex platform but now they’re also running Teams, which has changed their world dramatically.”
Igloo Vision: “This is an immersive 360 conference room. I’ve seen mountains of data just being assimilated in this immersive space, which is just very exciting.”
NetSpeek: “It’s an AI-driven tool for device management and proactive maintenance. It proactively manages, monitors and heals devices by pinging the ones being used the day before they are needed. And if it finds a device that’s not working, it analyses the fault and produces the right documentation so it can be fixed.”
Shure: “In meetings now, transcription and translation of audio is becoming almost more important than video because we need to ensure that actions are attributed to the right people. Shure is the latest vendor to join the Microsoft Certification and MTR (Microsoft Teams Rooms) Environment but they’ve done it from a completely different viewpoint. They’ve said we’re going to use our 100-year history in sound to drive a better meeting experience through the audio.”
Salamander: “They are all about how products look aesthetically and work in the meeting and conference environment. They have furniture, brackets and mounts that allow express installation for collaboration rooms that you can set up in less than an hour.”
AROUND ORLANDO
Tours are also taking place away from the Convention Center, visiting AV installations in and around Orlando, with the opportunity to talk to the technical teams behind them. Perhaps the highest profile of these is Drawn to Life, which brings together Disney animation and the visual style of Cirque du Soleil. After seeing the full performance, visitors will be taken on a behind-the-scenes tour, which will take in the seventh-floor catwalk, production/stage management/video control room and the band area.
There is a Disney connection to the tour of the Dr Phillips Center for the Performing Arts. The multi-venue show and event building houses not only the 2,800-seat Walt Disney Theater but also the 1,700-seat Steinmetz Hall and the 300-seat Alexis and Jim Pugh Theater. For those involved in house of worship projects, there will be an in-depth tour of Lifebridge Church, looking at the audio, video, lighting and rigging aspects of the installation. On the education side, attendees will have the chance to visit the University of Central Florida (UCF), including the student union to see the Charge on Chamber 107-seat hybrid meeting space. The tour will then move on to an ongoing classroom installation where UCF’s in-house AV team will talk through the installation of a Crestron-controlled multimedia system.
A popular fixture in any InfoComm calendar is the AVIXA Women’s Breakfast, which this year will take place on the morning of 12 June. The keynote speaker for this event is Noelle Russell, founder and chief AI officer at the AI Leadership Institute. She will talk about the unique challenges faced by women in their professional lives and how obstacles can be overcome with a mixture of “grace and determination”.
As ever there will be more to see and do at InfoComm 2025 once the show gets going but this should have given a good outline of the events, themes and trends that are in store.
InfoComm 2025: education and session programme 7-13 June; exhibition 11-13 June.
