Title: CEO and Co-Founder
Company: Xyte
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Overtime: Omer started programming AV control systems at the age of 14 (and hasn’t stopped since). In his free time, he can be found swimming, watching sports, or trying to keep up with his three sons.
Why You Need to Know Him: Omer Brookstein represents a generation within the Pro AV industry that has a strong understanding of workplace technologies and traditional AV, while also having a focus on modern, cloud-based software applications that will drive innovation within our industry for decades to come.
It may feel like many in the AV industry were destined to work within it, but Brookstein is someone that can literally say he was born into it. In his native Israel, he spent his childhood working as part of his family’s system integration firm, and was encouraged to further his education with AV programming classes at the age of 14.
I’m always happy to meet new people in the industry, and these conversations almost always inspire me.
After his mandatory military service, he relocated to the United States and began working with Crestron Electronics as a programmer for their trade shows as well as customer systems. Eventually, he returned to Israel to take on the role of CTO and head of business development for Crestron Israel.
“Working for a great company like Crestron, alongside top-industry professionals, shaped my professional and business expertise more than anything else in my career,” said Brookstein. “I think that Crestron has been a great ‘school’ for many industry professionals that keep pushing the boundaries of what is still called AV.”
After leading enterprise sales for 10 years at Crestron Israel, Brookstein made the decision, joining forces with his cofounder Boris Dinkevich, to launch the E2E hardware-as-a-service platform, Xyte. “Being able to develop a solution that in a short amount of time is already driving innovation within the AV industry, and other industries, is simply put, the most exciting and rewarding thing I’ve done,” said Brookstein.
Allowing manufacturers to turn their hardware into services and scale their products, Xyte is changing the way the AV industry looks at service models, creating new business opportunities for manufacturers. Richard Sasson, global director of training with Crestron, worked collaboratively with Brookstein during his time at Crestron, and said he was known to create excellent customer experiences while pushing technology to its limits.
After starting Xyte, he continued to work with Crestron as an official service provider. “With his new company, he has launched a fantastic platform to manage and monitor Crestron and third-party systems,” said Sasson. “He is highly innovative and has a great vision for the future of automation technology.”
Brookstein encourages others to live outside their comfort zone and feels those within the industry should focus on “cycling uphill,” which allows them to use the challenges they overcome to spearhead future progress for themselves and the AV industry as a whole. “I think that the AV industry has a very unique vibe of one big family, with great people in it—working for manufacturers, integrators, and end customers,” said Brookstein. “I’m always happy to meet new people in the industry, and these conversations almost always inspire me.”
