Mike Blackman’s love for his home of Munich is evident when he appears on screen from his office framed by a spectacular image of the mountains rising over the city. A lover of the Alps, where he enjoys snowboarding and skiing, Blackman commissioned the image in three sections as a homage to Munich’s spectacular setting rather than opting for a virtual background. “When the warm air arrives from Austria, you can almost touch the mountains. They feel so close. The view is unbelievable,” he says. “And it’s one of the main reasons Munich attracted me in the first instance.”
Blackman is happily settled in Munich with his second wife, Uta. But his identity is multinational and he is a citizen of three countries – his native Guyana; the UK, where he grew up, and Germany, where he now lives. His international outlook has informed his vision as managing director of Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) helping him to build the show from modest beginnings into the world’s largest exhibition for pro AV and systems integrators. The first ever show in Geneva in 2004, which he organised, had 120 exhibitors and 3,500 attendees. That number has since risen to 1,700 exhibitors and Blackman is expecting 90,000 attendees this year in Barcelona.
The show has become far more international – with 60 percent of attendees still from Europe, but a significant rise in visitors from India, North America and Latin America. “It helps that budgets are now allocated not by regional offices, but at the global headquarters. That provides more money to invest and more interest . We’re getting senior executives, such as the president of Samsung last year. That’s the ilk of person now.”
Blackman’s life began far from the fast-paced world of international conferences. He was born in Guyana, a tiny South American nation and has “vague but fond” memories of his early years as a toddler by the sea. Then, at the age of six, his family moved to London and Blackman landed wide-eyed in a huge metropolis. “Nothing in Guyana is big city-wise. The total population is 800,000. So you can imagine the impact London made on me!” .
The move enabled his parents to benefit from career opportunities that did not exist in Guyana. His mother was a teacher, then became a head mistress, and finally a school inspector, while his father retrained as a computer analyst. The young Blackman, meanwhile, learned his first lessons in adapting to a different culture.
GUYANESE DEVELOPMENT
Although he left Guyana at a young age, in recent years he has returned several times to visit relatives, as well as discuss the future of the country with politicians since its discovery of huge reserves of oil a decade ago. “It’s now pulling in billions of dollars in oil revenues. With such a small population, you could almost give everyone a million dollars overnight,” he says.
Blackman reclaimed Guyanese citizenship a decade ago at the request of the then president. Already a British national, he also became a German citizen in 2020 following Brexit. And his multinational identity does not end there. “Barcelona’s mayor will say that I am an adopted Barcelonian by choice,” he adds.
Growing up in Southeast London, Blackman attended Brockley Grammar School, where a seemingly arbitrary decision proved pivotal in shaping his future life. French was compulsory, but for his second language, he chose German over Latin. “I didn’t have aspirations to be a doctor or a dentist or a lawyer and I decided German might be more practical.”
So began an affinity with German culture that has endured all his life. Beyond the classroom, in what he calls his “misspent youth”, Blackman also worked as a ski instructor in Austria and Switzerland, refining his German and gaining more confidence in unfamiliar environments.
Looking back at his earlier life in the UK, his emergence as one of pro AV’s most influential figures was far from inevitable. After studying marketing in London, he joined the Financial Times newspaper working in advertising sales for five years. Then he moved to the now defunct technology magazines Personal Computer World and Personal Computer News.
CAREER PIVOT
A pivotal moment for Blackman’s future career came in the mid-1980s when he joined Montgomery Exhibitions. In a foreshadowing of what was to come, he ran the UK’s largest computer show in Earl’s Court in London. His ability to organise large-scale events caught the attention of a headhunter in Germany and in 1991 he was asked to relocate to Munich to work for International Data Group (IDG), launching tech events across Europe. The move suited him: he spoke German, was drawn to the culture and landscapes, and the money was good. But after two years with IDG, he felt confident enough to strike out on his own, founding Blackman Consulting in Germany in 1993 and running it for a decade.
Blackman landed major clients, ranging from Texas Instruments and Bertelsmann to Harley-Davidson and BMW. One memorable project was BMW’s relaunch of the classic Mini in the late 1990s. He helped to shape a more avant-garde marketing strategy, including collaborating with music label Cheeky Records and its artists Faithless and Daido. “The project was all about building an image that would attract younger, mainly female, audiences aged between 25 and 35 which meant doing a lot of cool high-concept marketing,” he adds.
While navigating the ups and downs of his business, Blackman received a call just after Christmas in 2002 from the same headhunter who had originally brought him to Germany, and had been chasing him with job opportunities for a decade. Blackman had always refused, but this time was different. Three American associations – InfoComm International (now AVIXA), CEDIA, and NSCA – had joined forces to launch a pro AV show in Europe and needed someone to make it happen. Blackman’s background was in technology, but not in AV, and he hadn’t a clue about companies like Crestron, Kramer or Extron. But he was intrigued. “I said, ‘oh my god, people sell cables and make money’! I asked him to send me the info and I had a look and I thought, ‘yes, that could be a lot of fun. I’d love to do it’,” he says.
The call came at just the right time in Blackman’s career. His consultancy had been struggling during a financial recession, but it was starting to regain momentum. “Had the call come six months later, I might not have been interested,” he admits.
The final interview was scheduled for March 2003 in the US and he set about studying this unfamiliar market carefully for the next three months. Fortunately, Blackman is passionate about technology. “It was a steep learning curve. But when there’s something interesting like that, I get to the nuts and bolts of it very quickly because I enjoy it.”
Blackman did his homework well. He was the first of three candidates to be interviewed and the organisers called him the same day to offer him the job as he was waiting at the airport. “I said, ‘What about the other candidates?’ And they said, ‘If you want it, it’s yours and we won’t even see them’. At this stage we hadn’t even talked about money.”
SHOW LAUNCHER
The rest of 2003 was spent planning the launch event in Geneva in February 2004. The market for pro AV had previously been fragmented in Europe. Other shows had pieces of the puzzle, he says. CeBIT had computing, Plasa had lighting and sound and AES had audio, but nothing was organised specifically for systems integrators. “We brought it all together. It was like parts of what ISE is were dotted all over the place. We built it from scratch. It was a totally new concept.”
The relatively modest beginning with 120 exhibitors gave little sense of what was to come later. In the following years, the show expanded steadily, then picked up momentum. In 2005, it moved to Amsterdam, had a brief detour to Brussels in 2006, then settled in the Dutch capital for 15 years. But the growing international audience necessitated more space and ISE moved to the Fira de Barcelona in 2021.
Blackman believes ISE’s early slot in the calendar has helped to expand its scope. The show acts as the European launchpad for pro AV products, which helps to drive attendances, he says. “It’s an ideal time for the display business, for example. Samsung, LG and Sony launch consumer products at CES and the business versions are pretty much the same on the front end, with some alterations. Then they launch the modified versions at ISE,” he explains.
A further motivating factor for attendees, he believes, is that AV equipment cannot be demonstrated remotely over a screen. “You want to see firsthand the video and audio and experience these solutions, especially when they’re more immersive,” he says.
Despite its huge scale, ISE is run by a relatively small core team of around 45 people, supported by extensive outsourcing. Operations are distributed across multiple locations. Strategic decisions are taken in Munich; operations people sit in Barcelona; finance and IT have remained in Barcelona; and most of the marketing team is in the UK. “English is our first language of communication for ISE,” Blackman says. “We do marketing in multiple languages – Spanish, French, German, Italian – but as English is the first language, I wanted native English speakers.”
RELENTLESS CYCLE
The annual cycle is highly structured, but relentless with only one quiet period in July. The selling process for the next year actually starts during the show itself. Immediately after the event, the teams take a well-earned break for a week to recharge, before reconvening for detailed analysis. “We look at everything and say ‘okay, what was good? Was it good because we did it well or were we lucky? And what was bad? Was it bad because it was the worst thing to do or we did it badly?’”
By mid-March, the full team gathers to decide what to keep and what to change. The pace slows slightly in July and August, then accelerates dramatically from September as attendee acquisition begins in earnest. “From about January 7th, it’s like a race,” Blackman says. “It’s full speed ahead.”
One of Blackman’s recurring themes is the danger of complacency. He likes to cite CeBIT, which was once the world’s largest computer show with 700,000 attendees and 4,000 exhibitors, as a cautionary tale. “I saw it like watching a car crash about to happen,” he says. “You could see it heading in one direction and then, suddenly, it just went boom – and disappeared. The issue was a failure to adapt.”
To avoid the same fate, ISE places a lot of emphasis on listening, through advisory committees, close exhibitor relationships, and sector-specialist sales teams who become experts in their areas. “Our sales team is really encouraged to be inside the business to really bond with customers. They need to understand what their goals are, what they need to do,” Blackman explains. “We might be the biggest at the moment, but we have to work hard to stay there. The key is we don’t do what we think is best. We do what our customers think is best.”
The main problem in shaping future events is the pace of change in AV. Financial planning is done on a three-year cycle as five years would simply be too far ahead to predict the market, he says. Decisions about ISE’s evolution must reflect the broader changes in the industry, such as the rising importance of convergence between AV and broadcast, which Blackman cites as one of pro AV’s hottest trends. He points out that the second largest hall at ISE is now Hall 4, half of which is devoted to broadcast AV. “It’s not that the broadcast business is coming to us,” Blackman clarifies. “The broadcast business is changing. They’re using more and more AV products and solutions.”
The transformation from physical to virtual studios has proved a game-changer “If you go to RTVE, one of the older public TV companies in Spain, they had these huge studios where there was a set being built for one show. You had a facility that was 3,000sqm. And when they weren’t shooting that show, that studio was redundant. Now you’ve got 200sqm virtual studios and you can shoot a different show every hour. The investment is higher, but the long-term savings are tremendous. LED vendors are profiting a lot from this.”
Other drivers of convergence are the shrinking size of 8k cameras, making them more suitable for enterprises, as well as growth in corporate TV. “More companies and agencies are making their own advertising documentaries, or company profile films as it’s now so much easier for them,” he comments.
ALLOCATING SPACE
Decisions about allocating more space and resources to a developing sector have to be taken carefully. Blackman always has an eye on the long-term direction. “With convergence, we’ve been watching this development for the last few years. We love reading about these things, but it helps to have expert consultants as they’re deeper in it. We wouldn’t want to invest money in broadcast AV if it’s just a fad for a year.”
Blackman expects software-defined solutions to become a more significant factor at ISE in the coming years. “It’s still the smallest and weakest part of the show. But we’re fortunate that the bigger manufacturers bring software partners along. They can’t show cool solutions unless they have that partner.”
Of course, AI also looms large in pro AV’s future as both opportunity and challenge. “When you see the creativity you can do, you think wow, look what’s possible,” Blackman says. “But there are dangers of abuse. That’s the problem – it’s moving so fast. Every day it’s getting more sophisticated.”
Blackman attributes the success of ISE to finding people who can carry out tasks better than him, especially the ones he doesn’t relish. “I started out studying to be an accountant, then realised it wasn’t for me. I know the basics but I have an accountant who loves his job and gets really excited about numbers. Although sales and marketing were my strengths I have people who can do that better than me, too. I want to keep an overview, but I give them free reign. There has to be trust.”
The show has to be planned carefully to mitigate the routine setbacks that arise each year. Years ago, he was given a book by his former bosses Andrew Montgomery and Brian Montgomery called Traps Minefields and Lacunae outlining the dangers lying in wait for conference organisers. “The premise was that in this industry there are a hundred things waiting to go wrong when you’re doing a show and all you can do is be prepared. You have to have a Plan B, but also a Plan C in your pocket so when they do happen, and they’re inevitable, you’ve got something in place and you can say to yourself ‘Okay, I don’t have to run around like a headless chicken. Here’s what I need to do now.’”
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
Another vital element of Blackman’s vision for ISE is the importance of establishing good relations with the local community. The show’s enormous scale leads to disruption: busier roads, packed hotels, crowded streets, and stretched infrastructure. Blackman became acutely aware of this during ISE’s Amsterdam years. “I had an experience one evening where it took us an hour and a quarter to get back to the hotel because of the traffic and turmoil that ISE creates,” he recalls. “I suddenly thought, ‘boy, if I lived here, I would hate this show’. We come into a city, disrupt everything, and then we leave. And half the people involved in that chaos have nothing to do with the show.”
That realisation has led to a deliberate strategy of public activations and cultural contributions to present the more welcoming side of pro AV. In Barcelona, ISE has partnered with Casa Batlló, Antoni Gaudí’s iconic modernist building, for projection mapping by internationally renowned artists including Refik Anadol, Sofia Crespo, and Davide Quayola, with British digital and light artist Matt Clark featured this year. Nightly drone shows outside the Fira de Barcelona, complete with opera singers and large LED screens, add to the spectacle. ISE opens with projection mapping and will close with a collaboration with the annual Llum Festival of light art.
“We do these activations to show the softer side of AV,” Blackman explains. “We’re providing these entertainments to the citizens as a gift because we want them to welcome us. We’re saying that we’re not just here to take. And it also demonstrates some of the technology, such as projection mapping, which is harder to show off in the exhibition halls.”
Working in the events industry can be a rewarding career, Blackman believes, but it demands long hours and hard work. “It’s not for everyone,” he notes, “but for the right person, it’s a joy. People are fitted to different careers. My advice is to do something that is suited to you.”
That outlook is reflected in the varied paths taken by his five children. His first two, Charlotte and Lucy, are from his first marriage to an English woman, while his three younger children – Victoria, Maximilian and Alexander – are with his German wife, Uta. Charlotte, now 40, is a teacher in southern England. Lucy works in the south of France providing second-level support for telephone users. Victoria is an entrepreneur who runs both a wedding planning business and a Pilates studio in Germany. Maximilian works as an investment banker in Frankfurt, while Alexander, 22, is studying event management and marketing in Munich. “Every one is different,” Blackman says. “I’ve told all of them not to choose a job just for money. Do something you enjoy. I love getting up in the morning – I’m excited about what I’ll be doing. For me, I fell into the best job I could ever get.”
The passion Blackman feels for ISE shows no signs of diminishing after 20 years at the helm. At the show’s dawn in 2004, it had a strict focus on systems integrators, but corporate end-users now attend in growing numbers, intrigued by how AV can help their businesses. “I’m more excited about ISE each year than the previous one. I’ve never had a disappointment. In pro AV, there’s always something new. And the way the show is changing, it’s becoming more appealing to more people.”
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