The annual pilgrimage to Las Vegas for NAB is always exciting for those in our industry. It’s a chance to reconnect with old friends and meet new ones. Spending time face-to-face was lost during the pandemic so it’s nice to see that coming back. There’s no substitute for breaking bread with new clients and getting to know them in a relaxed environment rather than on yet- another-Zoom-call.
This year, traffic at NAB was up 20% over 2022 to 65,000 attendees. However, this is down almost 30% from 2019 when the show attracted over 91,000 attendees. What has changed over the past few years is that instead of sending large contingencies, many companies decided to scale back and send two, four or five people -- and, in many cases, decided against securing a booth.
Coming into the show our goal was to focus our conversations on one of two key topic areas:
1. Exploring (and deconstructing) preconceived (and inaccurate) notions around sub-second video delivery. These ideas typically revolved around:
- Scalability
- Quality
- Price
2. The interest of various industry players interested in collaborating to form an ecosystem of services that can deliver a variety of interactive experiences and sub-second broadcasts to millions.
For several years, Phenix has been ahead of the market; sub-second latency was a nice-to-have but not a necessity. Over the past 12 months we are seeing this begin to shift, and the appetite to dramatically reduce latency while reaching broadcast-sized audiences with a synchronized viewing experience across all devices has dramatically increased.
We were also able to announce several new partnerships supporting everything from new ingest options to streamlining content management and the viewing experience - with several more on the way. Not to mention the thought-provoking ideas generated at the intentionally designed thought leader dinner orchestrated by our long-time partner, Videon.
Google is also seeing the industry change, by growing their Google Cloud Marketplace, a partner ecosystem specifically dedicated to supporting “media and entertainment companies accelerate their digital transformation journeys and the creation of new audience experiences.”
It was a great show, indeed - with lots of energy, plenty of exciting announcements, and no shortage of inspiring new ideas.