PresentationMaster.com and KNews Best of 2000 Awards Panel: Bruce Christensen, President, Business Media, Inc. John Campanella, CTS-D President, MDCI Sean Matthews Director of Marketing MCSi Scott Walker, Principal, Waveguide Consulting, Inc. Peter Putman, Owner PHP Communications Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Gary Kayye, CTS, Chief Visionary, Kayye Consulting Denise Harrison, Producer, KNews and PresentationMaster.com

Didn't this year feel on the brink of great things to come? New or improved technologies and aggressive developers and marketers laid the groundwork for market explosions in small systems, such as boardrooms and home theater, and large systems, such as outdoor concerts or digital cinema. And everything in between.

There are places now where video walls are no longer a nice touch - they're expected. There are business presentations that simply can no longer be done in good taste without a projector, and controlling a dozen projectors for one purpose no longer takes a dozen A/V specialists to run them.

Whereas in most markets the technologies are flying faster than the implementers can figure out what to do with them, not so in ours. The technology-savvy Pro A/V community is ready to run with the new technologies and embraces the growing number of choices available.

This year made more things possible, no doubt, and Knews and PresentationMaster decided to give a nod to those companies and technologies that are making this industry more advanced, more high profile, more relevant to a larger population.

We put together a panel to begin the first of an annual awards program, the Best of 2000 Awards. Each award recipient was nominated by at least one of the panel members, and often two or more.

Categories are as follows:

Best Projector Innovation

Best Monitor Innovation

Best Overall Innovation

Best of Converters

Most Promising Partnership

Best New Company

Companies to Watch

Best Marketer

Most Contribution to the Advancement of the Pro A/V Industry

Keep up on the news with our weekly Pro AV newsletter!