Technology leadership does not only mean asking an industry for better products or faster roadmaps. Sometimes it means looking back at the assumptions that have served us well, and asking whether they still serve the future we now need to build.

One of those assumptions in the AV industry is standardization.

For years, standardization has been one of the most important operating principles in enterprise AV and collaboration. It has helped organizations scale, reduce complexity, improve supportability, control cost, and create more consistent user experiences. Indeed, I spent more than a decade leading an organization that built its value proposition on the principle of Scale, Standardization, Simplification, & Speed.

We all know our industry's journey. There was a time when AV-enabled spaces were relatively few. Organizations invested only in the most important rooms. Bespoke design was possible because the volume was manageable.

Then the world changed.

Collaboration became more central to how organizations worked. Video became normal. Hybrid work expanded the pressure on meeting environments. Costs came down. Expectations went up. The challenge was no longer a handful of premium rooms. It was tens, hundreds, or thousands of spaces. In that reality, standardization was not only logical. It was a rational and required response to scale.

We have seen similar patterns in other industries. Local, highly human-scale models gave way to larger systems built around consistency, efficiency, and scale. Then, disruptive digital platforms introduced a third possibility: combining scale with greater personalization and relevance. We all know those stories, from Amazon to Netflix and beyond.

I believe that moment has arrived for our industry!

Change in an Era of AI

There will always be a place for highly customized spaces: executive environments, boardrooms, innovation labs, teaching studios, immersive rooms, command centres, and other spaces where deeper tailoring is justified. But for the broader enterprise estate, the old trade-off between scale and personalized fit is going to change in an AI era. Not because AI is a magic wand, but because it is relevant to addressing the very frictions that standardization was designed to manage.

We know that in the past, more capability meant more complexity. More flexibility meant more support burden. More customization meant more cost and inconsistency. That was not practical, which is why we simplified and standardized. Simplified room types, user interfaces, and feature sets. Exactly what was required to make the overall experience usable and manageable.

But there is a difference between simplifying because users have simple needs, and simplifying because our legacy systems and workflows could not manage complexity.

And that distinction matters.

Meeting and learning spaces were not simplified because users all wanted the same experience, but because more capability created too much friction to justify otherwise. So we designed interfaces to meet the lowest common user denominator. And in turn, we answered the needs of the supporting stakeholders as well, because the cost of variation was too high.

That made sense, but it also created a hidden effect. One of the hidden risks of standardization is that it does not only standardize solutions, it can standardize imagination. Over time, the constraints of a model become so familiar that we stop seeing them as constraints.

But what if some of those assumptions were actually just necessary coping mechanisms? Did we standardize because it represented the best possible experience, or because variation was too difficult to deliver, support, govern, or evolve?

That is not a criticism of the past, but a challenge for the future. It is not that we built the wrong rooms in the past. It is that in a new AI reality, the game itself has changed.

And that is what makes this new era so difficult.

Decisions in a Period of Unparalleled Uncertainty

End-user AV technology managers are being asked to make decisions in a period of unparalleled uncertainty, yet with traditional inertia. The investment decisions being asked of them today are expected to serve organizations for years ahead, yet they are being made in a reality where AI will change workflows, user expectations, interface models, support structures, and the role of the physical workplace itself in ways we cannot yet fully imagine.

That is a hard position to be in. It is easy to say “be more innovative, evolved, prepared” from the outside. It is much harder to put your name to decisions when the crystal ball is murkier than ever, and the consequences of getting it wrong may become visible sooner than ever.

So, the practical question is not whether every future capability is ready to deploy tomorrow. The better question is whether today’s standards, partner relationships, and decision criteria are preparing your organization to take advantage of that future potential or constraining it.

I do not believe the future is a pendulum swing from standardization back to customization. The better proposition is that the very definition of standards needs to evolve to create an entirely new paradigm.

Consider that historically, a room standard meant a fixed room type, equipment package, UI, capability set, and lifecycle expectation. A comprehensively defined answer built heavily upon the realities of traditional physical construction and real estate lifecycles.

In the next model, a standard may need to become more than just a defined answer. It may need to become more of a foundation.

The physical infrastructure, network requirements, security model, platform architecture, interoperability principles, and support processes may still need to be standardized. But above that foundation, the experience layer must become increasingly adaptive and digitally agile. One that can behave and equip users differently for a project review than for executive alignment. Differently for training than for ideation.

The room may be physically the same. The experience may not be.

That is the new possibility. The emergence of standardized infrastructure with adaptive experience.

That is how we can truly serve diverse users, activities, and outcomes, while leveraging that diversity as the very reason we convene people in the first place. All the reasons that were not possible in the past are eroding before our eyes.

Embrace that concept, and it frankly changes the role and importance of the end-user AV technology manager. The job is no longer simply to define the right room standards and defend them over a five-year lifecycle. Rather, the job is to build the conditions through which collaboration environments can evolve as capability, user expectation, organizational need, and AI-enabled possibility change around them. It is to recognize that we cannot deliver tomorrow’s adaptive collaboration expectations through models built around yesterday’s static propositions.

So the next leadership question is not simply “what can we standardize?”

It is “what should our standards enable?”

That is a very different question.

Manage and Mitigate Opportunities and Risks

Of course, I am not suggesting we all just embrace AI enthusiasm and unbridled optimism. But as in any time of change and lack of clarity, it means developing a strategy to manage and mitigate both the opportunities and risks ahead.

That strategy will, of course, not look the same for every organization. A global bank, university, healthcare provider, government agency, technology company, law firm, and manufacturer will each have different collaboration realities. But here are a few universal questions you might ask of your current standards to catalyze the mindset shifts we all need to embrace.

>> Which current standards still deliver value because they improve reliability, consistency, security, supportability, or user confidence?

>> Which exists because variation was historically too difficult to manage?

>> What infrastructure truly needs to remain fixed and physical, and what could become more flexible and digital?

>> Where might today’s standards, even unintentionally, limit tomorrow’s capability?

A “medium meeting room” is not a meeting purpose. A classroom is not automatically a learning experience. As we move from an era of equipping rooms to enabling outcomes, true leadership will be about understanding what people are actually trying to achieve in these spaces: deciding, creating, teaching, selling, learning, aligning, innovating, or responding to change. Understanding those patterns will become the critical capability in enabling spaces to adapt to real-time context and application.

Of course, that should change conversations with the supply chain: vendors, integrators, consultants, and service providers. They should not only be challenged on what they can deliver today, but on their vision of the future, and how they can help you prepare for it. In an AI era, the value of a partner may increasingly depend less on whether they can deliver an agreed standard today and more on how they can help that standard evolve tomorrow.

The risk of not making these sorts of foundational adjustments is not just technical debt, financial write-off, or user dissatisfaction. If collaboration is becoming the critical infrastructure of innovation, then the cost of rigidity becomes a constraint on organizational speed. A room standard anchored in yesterday's thinking that cannot evolve may slow more than a technology refresh. It may slow how quickly an organization can embrace the new ways of working of an AI age. And that should be a critical concern for every organization.

Across the industry, we need to embrace the fact that the game has changed. The constraint set is changing. The expectations of users, teams, and organizations are changing faster than traditional meeting room lifecycles were ever designed to absorb. So if that old model treated standards as fixed answers, the next model should treat them as adaptive foundations. The goal is not to choose between consistency and personalization. It is to create the conditions where consistency, governance, supportability, and scale can coexist with far greater human relevance, flexibility, and transformative future capability.

The industry can build products. Vendors can develop platforms. Integrators can deliver systems. Consultants can advise. But end users live in the real organizational context. They know the workflows, constraints, cultures, frustrations, security realities, support burdens, and business priorities that determine whether technology creates value and impact, or merely fills rooms.

So, whether you are an end-user Collaboration Enablement leader, or wherever else you might sit in the industry, I leave you to consider this.

Will the next “standard” you develop be anchored on a room type at all? Or might it be based upon the foundational principle of adaptability itself?

And if that is indeed the case, what might need to change in you, your team, and your organization to make that a reality?

IPMX’s progress is showing up in many places throughout the industry, including in 15 different stands at ISE 2023, where IPMX-ready products were on display. The level of industry interest and support felt like a milestone for the IPMX community.

As cool as this was to see, it’s within the trade associations and standards organizations that we go from IPMX-ready to a finished, open compatibility standard that people can implement into their products. One of the groups that have been extremely active in the IPMX community is the Video Services Forum (VSF). As evidence of this, we will see two more important milestones take place at two VSF-sponsored events in March.

At the VidTrans conference in Marina Del Rey, California, the IPMX Activity Group will demonstrate the results of their work on VSF Technical Recommendations TR-10-1, IPMX System Timing and Definitions, which is currently available to the public as a draft publication. In the demonstration, multiple implementations of IPMX work together in a mix of software and hardware devices. Multiple receivers and senders are connected to a network and controlled with an AV-over-IP NMOS switching application. Thanks to the work done in TR-10-1, the demonstration will show subframe latency between asynchronous sources and receivers, all without the use of PTP.

Dirty Hands

Immediately following VidTrans, a group of vendors will reconvene at the NFL’s facility in Los Angeles, where they are hosting IPMX’s first dirty hands event. In the standards community, a dirty hands event is where different manufacturers implementing a standard gather to test interoperability by following a test plan. Failure is expected at these events, which is where the dirty hands come in. Engineers use testing and analysis equipment to understand errors in their implementations, or gaps and ambiguities in the technical recommendations.

Depending upon the results of the dirty hands event, another iteration may take place, eventually resulting in an interoperability testing event, similar, or slightly modified for pro AV, to the JT-NM Tested program used in the broadcast industry. During this final event, manufacturers may not modify their implementations (clean hands only) and every aspect of the standard is tested extensively to ensure smooth operation in the Real World.

During the first IPMX dirty hands event, many of the details in TR 10-1 will be poured over. These tests include timing with and without PTP, as well as new video and audio modes that IPMX must support in both compressed and uncompressed workflows. In addition, the first test of interoperable HDCP over IPMX will take place, including the first time that the new HDCP Key Exchange Protocol (HKEP) will be put through its paces between multiple manufacturers. Finally, all of the new descriptions required by IPMX in both SDP files and NMOS resources are tested to ensure that controller applications can make connections reliably.

A tremendous amount of work needed to happen for a dirty hands event to have been possible, which is what makes this milestone so special. It means that the core documents for IPMX have neared completion and that their quality was enough to inspire multiple manufacturers to invest significant time and money to make implementations from those documents. With the advantage of past experience from the work creating ST 2022 and ST 2110 as a guide, the IPMX Activity Group expects to complete the first phase of the IPMX roadmap by the end of this year.

AVIXA released its standard Image System Contrast Ratio (ISCR). This standard defines acceptable minimum contrast ratios for AV presentation systems relative to their stated purpose or application.

“Presentation technology has fundamentally changed since the original PISCR (Projected Image System Contrast Ratio) standard was released,” said Jonathan Brawn, CTS, principal, Brawn Consulting, and co-chair of this standard’s task group. “Previously, while direct-view displays were a strong part of the industry, projection-based display technology still influenced the majority of large format installations at that time. Today, direct-view technologies like very large format LCD, LCD videowalls, and increasingly, dvLED have not only maintained being mainstream but are now the dominant technology in most instances. This drove a true need to update the original PISCR standard to reflect current technology.”

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This standard replaces the PISCR standard published in 2011, which applied to projection only. As direct-view displays became more prevalent, AVIXA assembled a task group to assess the technological characteristics of direct-view displays to determine whether the differences in technologies would affect how image system contrast was assessed.

The task group concluded that the measurement used in the original PISCR standard was equally appropriate for direct-view displays. However, the addition of sequential (also called full on/off or inter-frame) testing was deemed necessary to accurately characterize the image system’s contrast for any technology. Sequential testing enables AV professionals to effectively measure high-performance display technologies that can create high contrast ratios in a wider range of environments.

The new ISCR standard is designed to facilitate informed decision making for projector, screen, and direct-view display selection relative to location and stated purpose. Additionally, the metrics (the contrast ratios) and classifications (the viewing categories) in this standard may be used to establish design criteria for new systems. Requirements of this standard apply to:

• Planning and designing image system installations.
• Setting minimum and optimum contrast ratios relative to stated purposes.
• Testing and signing off on completed image system installations.
• Determining remedial solutions for a system not conforming with this standard or inadequate for the stated purpose.

The standard’s four contrast ratios are based on the following content viewing requirements:

• Passive Viewing
• Basic Decision Making
• Analytical Decision Making
• Full Motion Video

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“This standard helps our industry to address our customers’ needs,” said Justin Watts, CTS, senior AV design engineer, and co-chair of this standard’s task group. “In new systems, we can deliver a superior experience by providing display solutions that meet or exceed the performance requirements for the core applications we represent. It’s also a powerful tool for existing systems, where we can evaluate their performance and provide sometimes needed justification for updates, upgrades, or changes to environment to maximize investments.”

To learn more, register for the webinar “Leveraging the AVIXA Image System Contrast Ratio (ISCR) Standard” led by Jonathan Brawn and Justin Watts taking place Oct. 12 at 1 p.m. ET.

Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) and AVIXA have released their new standard Recommended Practice for Lighting Performance for Small to Medium Sized Videoconferencing Rooms (ANSI/IES/AVIXA RP-38-17).

Created by lighting experts from IES and videoconferencing experts from AVIXA, the standard is ANSI (American National Standards Institute) approved, demonstrating that the development procedures meet ANSI's essential requirements for openness, balance, consensus, and due process.

"Videoconferencing lighting has a great impact on the user experience," said Ann Brigida, AVIXA's senior director of standards. "AVIXA and IES share the goal of creating an environment that will enhance this form of communication. We are looking forward to working with IES again on guidance that will benefit both AV and lighting system outcomes."

This standard provides lighting parameters and performance criteria for small-to-medium-sized single-axis videoconferencing spaces defined as one set of video displays and cameras. Although the standard is written to consider at least three but no more than 25 primary seating locations, the principles can be applied to other applications as outlined.

The standard provides guidance to professionals involved in the design, construction, assessment, and support of videoconferencing environments. In addition to presenting performance criteria for the design and measurement/evaluation of room lighting, the standard provides guidance for other room design considerations, such as finishes (e.g., walls and shades, floor, ceiling, windows) and furniture.

RP-38-17 provides measurable lighting performance criteria so the system will:

• Offer minimum lighting performance requirements for optimum participant viewing of displays, presenter, and task area
• Optimize lighting for cameras, thereby improving the images transmitted to remote sites
• Enhance videoconference communication, comfort, and productivity.

Lighting and room design in new and existing spaces that use videoconferencing systems should be built, evaluated, and upgraded according to this performance standard.

"IES was pleased to partner with AVIXA to create ANSI/IES/AVIXA RP-38-17. Their contributions enhance the value of the standard by providing both expertise from their standards writing committee members and also by offering the perspective of end users. IES appreciates their contributions to make this standard a very useful document for designing lighting for small-to-medium-sized videoconferencing rooms," concluded Pat McGillicuddy, manager of IES standards development.

The Recommended Practice for Lighting Performance for Small to Medium Sized Videoconferencing Rooms standard, ANSI/IES/AVIXA RP-38-17, is available in pdf format from AVIXA at avixa.org/lightingVCstandard. AVIXA members can purchase the standard for $28; nonmembers can purchase the standard for $40.

SMPTE Fellow Thomas Bause Mason will be joining the staff as the society's new director of standards development. Howard Lukk, who is returning to his career in postproduction, will conclude his tenure as SMPTE director of engineering and standards in May, after assisting Bause Mason in transitioning to his new role.

"We're pleased to be welcoming Thomas to the SMPTE team as a staff member," said SMPTE executive director Barbara Lange. "Not only has he been deeply involved in the standards development process, including chairing several technical committees and study groups, but his IT background lends itself well to our ongoing need to be more software focused. Thomas has also been instrumental in the creation and delivery of standards-focused educational programming through our Virtual Classroom course offering. I am delighted to have Thomas onboard."

Bause Mason, formerly owner and managing director of Open Media Consulting, began his career in Cologne, Germany, as a computer programmer for automation software in the nuclear and automobile industries. Before his move to Los Angeles, Bause Mason worked at West German Television (WDR) and Cologne Broadcasting Center, where he led the quality control department. In Los Angeles, he became a postproduction consultant and then built and managed the encoding operations for Ascent Media. Joining NBCUniversal in 2005, he focused on emerging digital media technology, spending two years in London to support the company's international business. While at NBCUniversal, he was the company's lead on the Video Services Forum (VSF) TR-03/TR-04 and SMPTE ST 2110 standardization efforts.

"SMPTE has made great strides in enabling the industry to move forward into the future of media creation and consumption, and I look forward to working on SMPTE staff to keep up the pace of standards development," said Bause Mason. "The incredible evolution across our industry makes this an exciting and challenging time for media technologists, creatives, and other professionals, and I see an enormous opportunity for SMPTE in shaping new standards and in assisting the industry to leverage the possibilities of emerging technologies."

Throughout his career, Bause Mason has assisted industry organizations in the development of standards, technical recommendations, and study group reports, and he holds several patents relating to watermarking, 3D, and authentication, as well as metadata tagging. In his work to develop and promote standards for media and entertainment technology, Bause Mason has chaired the North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) Media over IP (MoIP) Subcommittee; organized the MoIP Workshop, presented by the Alliance for IP Media Solutions (AIMS), NABA, SMPTE, and VSF that promoted the use of SMPTE ST 2110; and chaired the SMPTE Studio Group on Flow Management in Professional Media Networks.

"Thomas has a profound understanding of the standards that guide our industry, and he has played a vital role in their development," said SMPTE Standards vice president Bruce Devlin. "We are fortunate to have him join the SMPTE staff and contribute his expertise to the Society's full spectrum of standards work."