You have to admire
InfoComm International, which is really the only professional a-v trade association in the game. In the last eight years it has made the transition from being an almost parochial American body to a worldwide organisation that has pretty well the only pro a-v training courses and qualifications available, It is now an ANSI-accredited course developer, its qualifications are ISO-recognised and the a-v industry’s clients are demanding CTS and CAVSP qualifications from their suppliers.
It has also become an outstandingly successful commercial organisation. Ten years ago its then executive director was, for whatever reasons, trying to sell off its main property, the InfoComm International trade show in the USA. Now that show is one of the top ten trade exhibitions in the country. It now, with the Integrated Systems subsidiary it jointly owns with CEDIA, runs the main shows for the pro a-v business in Europe, the Far East and Russia. In the next year it will be running shows in India, Abu Dhabi and Singapore. Worryingly, many of those will be with commercial partners whose interests would be best served by keeping other media at arm’s length.
So it’s trebles all round. The association has gone from being a domestic player to being a world force. It has started trying to analyse and quantify the worldwide pro a-v markets (although those reports need more regular updating) and it is starting to invest in non-US versions of its courses.
It needs to do that more rapidly, if only to counter the suspicions of cultural imperialism that were raised in Las Vegas last month. In fact, if the rumour that the association is netting an annual $1m in profit from Integrated Systems Europe is true, it also needs to speed up its investment in non-American markets, which now represent more than half the world a-v economy.
Of course, it’s up to us as well. We need to get in there and make sure that InfoComm is delivering what the industry in the UK and Europe needs and to make sure that the association spend is in tune with its markets. So it’s time to spend time. To volunteer and, as part of that process, make sure that Europe doesn’t become a colony. Of course, that’s what the Boston Tea Party was all about – ‘no taxation without representation’.
