After attending NSCA last year, I thought the show was dead. The floor barely appeared to have anyone wandering through it and the exhibitors all unanimously agreed that Las Vegas wasn't a good location for such a small show.

But, what a difference a year makes.

This year's NSCA was, well, a lot like a mini-INFOCOMM (except with primarily audio exhibitors). No, it's far from a show that even comes close to touching the power and the appeal of INFOCOMM, but I was impressed with its inaugural year with larger booths and a much larger show floor.

INFOCOMM is still THE show to attend if you're in the ProAV of presentation marketplace, but NSCA is a great show for audiophiles.

But, the question is: has it lost its core audience?

Many people attended NSCA with the mantra that they 'loved this show because it wasn't a battle-of-the-booths'. Well, they can't say that now. NSCA had huge booths (not as big as NAB or INFOCOMM, but some as large as 30' x 40'), a full slate of educational courses and even a sister show next door called the Electronic House Expo - it, too, was well attended. But, the real question is: will the die-hard NSCA fans like the new format or simply liken it to every other show?

The appeal of NSCA in the past has been the fact that you can get a lot of one-on-one time with the technical support and engineering teams at each manufacturer; not this year. The primary job function on the badge of most booth personnel was sales related. Sure, the technical teams were there, but mostly in the form of seminar presenters.

Still, all in all, it was a good show and I suspect that INFOCOMM will be a great show. The buzz from the traditional INFOCOMM exhibitors was the potential recession, the change in profitability in the projector world and the idea that IT was just as important as AV nowadays. So, expect those three themes to dominate the upcoming show in June, but, before that, we all have to get through heading off to Las Vegas for everyone favorite (facetious) NAB. Blah.

 

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Gary Kayye is Principal of Kayye Consulting a firm that specializes in providing marketing consulting, telephony integration and training development to the professional audiovisual industry. He spent 12 years at Extron and AMX as VP of Sales and Marketing before founding his own firm. He can be reached at www.kayye.com or via e-mail at gkayye@kayye.com.

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