Behind the scenes of AVIXA's TIDE Conference at...

Dan Goldstein, AVIXA Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications

After a successful debut at InfoComm 2017 in Orlando, AVIXA is bringing its TIDE conference to ISE 2018 in Amsterdam.

Held on February 5 at Hotel Okura Amsterdam, the day before the ISE show opens, TIDE (Technology. Innovation. Design. Experience.) explores the creative forces shaping the AV industry and how AV businesses can benefit. The Amsterdam conference will focus on design thinking, bringing together designers, brand marketers, content creators, systems integrators, live events producers, and end users and to share different perspectives.

Daan Roosegaarde, an internationally acclaimed creative thinker and founder of Studio Roosegaarde, will open the conference, and artist and designer Monika Bielskyte will offer the closing keynote.

We caught up with Dan Goldstein, AVIXA senior VP of marketing and communications, to find out more about TIDE Amsterdam.

inAVate: For any readers who weren't aware of the success of the inaugural TIDE conference what can attendees expect?

Dan Goldstein: TIDE is really the first attempt to contextualize all the technology that's on the show floor at events like InfoComm and ISE. We know all that tech is cool, but what is it all for? How is it used in the places that it's deployed? And what value do users really gain from it? These are the kinds of questions we seek to answer at TIDE, because the more we know about the value people attach to AV products and services, the more the AV industry can tailor its offerings to enable even greater success in the future.

inAVate: After a successful debut at InfoComm 2017 in Orlando do you feel there are any differentiating factors or slight amends to the approach of delivering a TIDE conference outside of North America?

DG: Having worked on the marketing of both ISE and InfoComm, I do feel there's a difference between the attendee profile of the two events. InfoComm is more of an engineer-led show (though that's changing), while ISE draws more people whose main interest is design. So TIDE in Orlando had a number of speakers who were technologists, first and foremost, whose real-world experience enabled them to speak to our event theme of the power of storytelling. In Amsterdam, we have a different theme design thinking for business and so while all of our speakers there are referencing technology in some way, they are coming at it from a design or a business perspective.

inAVate: A high proportion of TIDE attendees were not AVIXA members, why was that?

DG: Historically, much of the value of AVIXA membership has been in professional education and certification. That will continue to be the case as we move forward, but our association strategy also calls for us to create new kinds of content that don't fit into the pattern of technical training. TIDE is the first example of that. It is not about having a fixed, science-based curriculum and teaching it to a room of students. It is about outlining an array of different possibilities of how AV technology can be applied in new and creative ways, and then letting the audience discuss that and come to their own conclusions about how they apply those ideas in their own careers and businesses. So we were actually pretty happy that many of the TIDE attendees in Orlando were not AVIXA members from a programmatic perspective, it told us we were on the right track.

inAVate: How important is it to bring different disciplines (content creation, architecture etc) that normally sit outside of proAV all together in the same room?

DG: I think that's a key part of the mission of TIDE. It's easy to get a community of like-minded people together, buy them all a beer and have a successful networking event. But we want to be bolder than that. We want to take people out of their comfort zone, put them in a room full of professionals from different backgrounds, and encourage an exchange of perspectives. I think that kind of exchange has been a huge reason for the success of ISE, and it's the reason we believe TIDE will be successful as well.

inAVate: What's in it for professionals attending who do operate in the channel?

DG: Whether you're in fixed installation or on the events side of the AV industry, you can never know enough about your customers' businesses. TIDE is going to be full of real-world examples of how design thinking can result in better end-user outcomes, and as we all know, the happier your customers are, the more successful your business is likely to be. TIDE is really the first event of its kind that starts with the AV user experience and works back from that, rather than starting with the technology and trying to find an application for it. So wherever you are in the channel, I think there's a great business case for coming to TIDE.

inAVate: What does TIDE say about the changing nature of proAV and the people who are now working under its umbrella?

DG: Overseeing the development of the TIDE Amsterdam program has been fascinating. I thought we might struggle to get speakers to participate, but when we approached people like our opening keynote Daan Roosegaarde, who's an artist and innovator; Sabine de Schutter, who specializes in interior lighting; and Ben Moorsom whose field is designing for better business communications, not one of them said: Oh no. AV? I'm sorry, but I really can't speak to that. They looked at the context of ISE and, although none of them had ever attended the show, they felt completely confident that they could create a meaningful presentation and make an inspiring contribution to the industry's dialogue. I think that speaks volumes for just how broad AV is becoming, and how many more people it is starting to impact.

inAVate: What is it you hope non-ISE attendees to TIDE take away

LINK:	http://www.inavateonthenet.net/news/article/behind-the-scenes-of-avixa...
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