Yes, I was there. I, along with some other members of the trade press, attended at the invitation of Mike Peppel, the president and CEO of MCSi, partly out of curiosity and partly out of fascination regarding the "talk" swirling around about MCSi. It was quite a show as it was the largest dealer sponsored show I have ever attended and a number of manufacturers said it was, in fact, the largest dealer show they had ever exhibited at.

And, large is probably an understatement. Not only was the show floor large (about the size of an NSCA show) but also the booths were large. Extron had what appeared to be the largest booth on the show floor and even sponsored a party night (not as wild as their infamous INFOCOMM party, but they did have Extron armbands, free drinks, food, etc.) and other major exhibitors included all the major projector manufacturers (i.e. InFocus, Proxima, NEC, Sony, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, etc.) along with Crestron, Panja, Altinex, Inline and all the "regulars" you'd find at INFOCOMM. In fact, it reminded me a lot of INFOCOMM in the late 1980's.

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But, here's the big realization. As I walked the show floor, I realized that I was walking the first dealer show that was actually for the dealer. What do I mean? Well, normally manufacturers support a dealer show with the intention of pounding the flesh with that dealer's end users. Well, the MCSi Show, dubbed Convergence 2000, had an end-user day, but the amazing thing was that the majority of the manufacturers I spoke to there were there to see the MCSi people. They felt like it was the opportunity for them to make sure each and every MCSi employee knew the ins and outs of their product line and offering. In fact, the majority of them even went so far as to say they didn't even care who showed up on the end user-day, as the MCSi-only day was the reason they were there in the first place.

You have to respect that. As I have said many times, this industry is changing in many, many ways.

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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. He is also the volunteer chairman of the PETC. The views expressed in this article are solely the author's and do not represent the positions of any organization to which he belongs.

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