At an international press briefing held in Amsterdam, ISE MD Mike Blackman unveiled plans for ISE 2013 along with several new initiatives for the future. Chris Fitzsimmons reports.
Foremost amongst these are a shake up of the way the show organises its accompanying conference programme. ISE has brought on board Marieke Bouman to act as conference and event manager, and she will have responsibility for organising both the as yet unnamed digital signage conference, and the newly announced Smart Buildings conference which will take place on Monday 28th of January 2013, they day before ISE kicks off.
ISE aim to run and manage the conferences themselves, whilst working with expertise from partners to deliver appropriate content.
The Smart Building conference has been arranged in response to the 34% of attendees from 2012 who said that they wanted to see more information on building management and automation at future events. It will be complimented by a dedicated area of the show floor, replacing the Energy Management pavilion from 2012. The conference will aim to improve communication between the AV industry and building trades.
ISE also took the opportunity to announce its own charitable initiative, called SeeHearTouch. The programme see the show organisers aiming to "enhance short lives with AV" by facilitating the donation of home-cinema and media technology to hospices for children with terminal illnesses across Europe. ISE will provide funding to integrators to install and maintain equipment that has been donated to hospices by distributors and vendors of AV equipment, and it follows the model of work done in the UK by ISE Sales Manager Ian Morrish.
Finally, Mike Blackman remained tight lipped about the plans for the keynote presentation at ISE 2013, saying only that it would be "different to last year, but very interesting and relevant to AV."