For the first time, AVIXA made an effort to unite the worlds of residential and pro AV under the umbrella of InfoComm, with the Integrated Life Pavilion.
“We coined the phrase ‘integrated life,’ but it’s really talking about the convergence of technologies and market spaces,” said Jason McGraw, senior vice president of expositions at AVIXA. “The crossover between smart homes, smart buildings, how emerging technologies like voice, AI, collaboration tools, and IoT and those types of technologies are facilitating connections for users between their home, their office, their entertainment, and their transportation.”
With this emphasis has come a wave of new companies exhibiting at the show, including Vanco, Belkin, Google, Microsoft, Leon Speakers, and URC, which returned to InfoComm for the first time in a handful of years.
“A lot of our residential dealers are coming out here and getting a lot more involved in commercial,” said Lars Granoe, vice president of product development at URC. Granoe said he has also seen commercial integrators at the show who are interested in expanding into home technology. “What ends up happening is sometimes they’ll do these commercial jobs, and the CEO will say ‘I’m building a new house, can you do my house too?’ and they get brought into that. And what might make absolute sense to do for a large office building or complex doesn’t make sense to carry over into the residential side.”
