Center Stage at InfoComm 2018: An ‘Utterly Insane’ AV Professionals’ ‘Playground’

In a video interview with CI, AVIXA director of program design Rachel Bradshaw talks about Center Stage at InfoComm 2018 — “the absolute coolest program I’ve ever had the opportunity to be associated with.”

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AVIXA director of program design Rachel Bradshaw talks about Center Stage activities at InfoComm 2018.

AVIXA director of program design Rachel Bradshaw doesn’t mince words when describing the Center Stage activities planned for InfoComm 2018, calling it “utterly insane” and “the absolute coolest program I’ve ever had the opportunity to be associated with.”

AVIXA bills Center Stage, which as the name indicates can be found on the exhibit floor, as a “hub for creative dialogues, featuring leading thinkers and practitioners from the fields of entertainment, enterprise, health care, education and hospitality.”

Bradshaw goes into more detail in the video interview above.

The more than two dozen free sessions tackle topics such as:

  • Analytics in enterprise space design
  • How digital content supports employee recruitment and retention
  • The psychology of user interface design
  • Wearable technology for connecting audiences
  • VR for immersive live experiences
  • Using videoconferencing to connect learning communities
  • Creating a campus-wide digital media hub
  • Designing educational collaborative technology for digital natives

Bradshaw, who works on many AVIXA programs, admits that Center Stage is special. “Center Stage is our playground,” she says.

“This is our opportunity to take people who are doing exceptional work on the fringes of our industry and bring them home to our show to get people thinking about how the wildest, most experimental, coolest ideas that touch AV can be incorporated into their work,” says AVIXA’s Bradshaw.

“This is our opportunity to take people who are doing exceptional work on the fringes of our industry and bring them home to our show to get people thinking about how the wildest, most experimental, coolest ideas that touch AV can be incorporated into their work.”

It’s appropriate that Center Stage is adjacent to where InfoComm 2018 attendees are learning about products, which are the tools for creating the AV experience.

The conversations at Center Stage aim to facilitate creative use of those tools.

“We have people on Center Stage talking about ideas ranging from why we need to have ethics in the way we design artificial intelligence voice assistant to how buildings of the future are going to respond to human occupants,” Bradshaw says.

“We also have incredible case studies. We have people talking about how to adapt what they know to emerging technologies. We have a session on how you use Foley effects to create a more empathetic and immersive experience for VR, and the line of speakers is just a murderers’ row.”

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