After over 750 minutes of recording and two lengthy walks from Caesars to Caesars Forum, and some 30 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 Customer Care Week Las Vegas comes to a close. Customer Care Week was held at Caesars Forum in Las Vegas from June 3-6. It is the premier event for customer care professionals. It spans 4 days, 300 speakers in over 165 sessions, and 5000 onsite attendees. Attendees witnessed endless examples of customer care solutions be they entire platforms, components for a solution or a services company to deploy the solution.
After over 1500 minutes of recording and 14 escalator rides, and some 35 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 Identiverse comes to a close. Identiverse was at Aria Hostel in Las Vegas from May 28-31. It is the premier event for identity professionals. It spans 4 days, 250 speakers on over 100 topics, 150 exhibitors and 3000 onsite attendees. Attendees witnessed endless examples of identity and privacy solutions including many jokes about SAML (it is NOT dead), examples of passwordless as well as talks about the value of identity.
After over 1500 minutes of recording and 14 escalator rides, and some 35 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 Identiverse comes to a close. Registration for the four-day event kicked off after the long holiday weekend. The event featured 250 speakers on over 100 topics, 150 exhibitors and 3000 onsite attendees. There was so much packed in it was impossible to catch all of the exhibits. They had sessions in the Joshua rooms as well as Marisopa rooms. Opening day was then capped by a mighty keynote featuring John Whelan, President of the Cyber Risk Alliance and Andre Durand, CEO of Ping Identity and Founder of the Identiverse Conference. The event provided food for the attendees. We were able to capture breakfast Wednesday. The attendees did explicitly find me to let me know they were disappointed with the breakfast due to the lack of protein. I do understand the Microsoft Breakfast did feature sufficient protein. Many attendees complimented the lunch which was served Wednesday as well as on Thursday. The exhibits* were open on Wednesday after the opening keynote. They were spread between two large rooms across from each other.
As one might expect, Identiverse is all about identity. Much to my delight, an entire panel was presented on confidential computing. Confidential computing strength lies in multiparty computations among untrusted parties – something that occurs in the identity space quite often. The session immediately following was on digital identity where they pondered how one could achieve such an exchange – unfortunately those panelists did not attend the Confidential session. On the digital ID panel, it was exciting to see that California is live with a digital driver’s license. Many are still trying to get their real id into their wallet! Australian Bank was on stage for a keynote making the case for the Bank ID. Admittedly this talk created a bit of déjà vu to the days in the bid to become primary certificate authorities. There is no shortage of information to make the business case to adopt passwordless for your organization.
Thursday morning’s keynote concluded with the Power of Passwordless sign-on. This session includes a number of guest speakers from the FIDO Alliance, Clarkson University, Bank of America and Amazon. The net result is that companies love it, their customers are more engaged, and the security posture is improved. Numerous examples of passwordless solutions were shown in the exhibits. AllAUthenticate shared their passwordless solution. Bringing blue collar workers who need to punch in and out into this century, Bio-Key displayed their product leveraging MFA Mellon RFID. If you would prefer your identity solution to eliminate any and all standing privileges, SGNL can get you there and help you stay in that security posture. Zluri is available to handle access control for all SaaS solutions. Aserto is an identity service that considers policy and relationship-based access control. If your service accounts are your pain point or you don’t even know how many you have of what – a start-up just out of stealth mode called Anetac may be someone you want to evaluate. If your organization’s problem is more about non-human identity issue, Natoma can assist in provisioning, deprovisioning and maintenance of non-human IDs. The word of the conference was service and non-human IDs is an area exploding with a reported over a dozen just announced at RSA.
Google hosted an entire detailed workshop on Google Sign-On, Passkey and the use of FedFCM to deal with 3rd party cookies. It was exciting to see they are working to push privacy forward with browser.
An attention-grabbing keynote Thursday morning alerted to the Darkside of identity. Reminding all that identity is the most common entrance point for the uninvited. Another keynote reminded all attempting to forge a path in identity, that the most important thing is to just get going! Furthermore, pay attention to the point of no return. Identity and security are all about depth of defense, spend the effort when there is a big payout. Do not insist on 100% for each program as the last percentages take resources without improving security posture. It is far better to find a new program that will affect the remaining identities with the remaining resources.
One often too difficult aspect of identity is customer onboarding. To that end, Strivacity specializes in the end user aspect of identity. If you challenge is too many identity services and you are having difficulty getting a complete picture, TenableOne provides a unified dashboard to see the entire threat attack surface. If your difficulty is all about connecting identity platforms to other sources and targets, Aquera Platform provides identity connector along with automation and governance in their solution. Saviynt provided a demonstration of their identity cloud with a visual display. RSA Shared their Unified Identity platform that is available on prem or in cloud for SAS saps as well as supporting SAML. Radiant Logic also provides an identity middleware heavily focusing on the data and metadata of identity. This point was also shared during John Pritchard of Radiant Logic’s keynote.
There were options if one is seeking assistance with their identity solutions. AOH offers identity consulting spanning assessment, architecture, execution and maintenance. ProofID offers global managed identity services and are key partners with many of the top identity technology providers such as PING Identity.
Cisco provided an in-depth workshop on defining and building an identity graph. It was very insightful, and the audience was glued to the screen. What caught our eye was the end when they said, “look at that picture – you know what that means. You know what that means you are supposed to do” Even in 2019 when I was at Gartner, augmented intelligence was present so hearing, “look at the picture” was surprising. More commonly is generative AI incorporated so it suggested actions based upon what is seen. Fortunately, Microsoft was there to bring it all back to 2024. There was an Microsoft Entra deep-dive by Nichole Peterson as well as a Microsoft Entra with Co-pilot demo that allowed attendees to zoom back to 2024.
Next year’s Identiverse is held June 3-6, 205. Furthermore, next year’s conference will be at Mandalay Bay.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
This webinar will feature a panel of engineers that have deployed deep learning and generative AI and their solution is in customers’ hands. You will be able to take away insights on the selection of technology, the process of realizing a solution, pitfalls, nightmares and what the panelists would do differently next time.
Can’t attend? Register and submit your question anyway, the answer will be on our YouTube channel.
Research Code: 2045
Omer Segal is the Head of AI at Pixellot, overseeing the AI group responsible for researching and developing automated sports production and automatic game highlights generation for Pixellot AI-automated sports camera systems. He has extensive leadership experience as CTO and R&D Director at companies in homeland security, mapping, and sports technology, where he oversaw the development of innovative AI applications. Omer’s project portfolio includes creating land vehicle and aerial mapping and navigation systems, AR applications for archaeological reconstructions, and athletes’ video analysis applications.
Omer holds a BSc and an MSc in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University, specializing in the application of advanced technologies such as deep learning, computer vision and signal processing.
With 20 years of experience as a Character Technical Director, JC Leon bring expertise in motion capture and avatar creation for diverse productions. Originally focusing on rigging for films, commercials, and games, I transitioned to real-time motion capture and game engine rigging over the past five years. Integrating AI into motion capture and avatar systems has been a recent passion, alongside a commitment to exploring new technologies and their synergies. From rigging for TV shows like “The Flash” to contributing to 3D Bitmoji development and virtual concert setups, my journey reflects a dedication to innovation and collaboration in the ever-evolving landscape of AI and entertainment technology.
Ziyuan(Zac) is the Chief Scientist at Birch.AI, where he spearheads the research and development of LLM and ASR models to automate healthcare call-center workflows. He is responsible for selecting and designing ML models, data processing, production system architecture, and deployment. With over 10 years of experience in speech recognition and natural language processing systems, Ziyuan has a proven track record of delivering production-ready systems for tasks such as classification, named entity recognition, and real-time transcription. Ziyuan holds a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University Beijing and a master’s degree from the Johns Hopkins University where he worked at the Center for Language and Speech Processing on projects that led to the creation of many open-source NLP and ASR toolkits
Analyst(s) and Photojournalist: Doreen Galli, PhD MBA
ABSTRACT
After 400 minutes of filming, 30 videos, countless shorts and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Smart Retail Tech Expo 2024 closes. Smart Retail Tech Expo is part of 5 conferences held at once at the same time and place: White Label, Retail, Supply Chain and Logistics Expo, Smart Retail Tech, Ecommerce Packaging and Labelling and Com Business Live. It was held in Las Vegas from May 8 to May 9 at the South Lower Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center (LVCC). The event featured 5 theaters with each featuring 4-5 talks each day for a total of 47 keynote sessions. With discussion on distribution and logistics and vendors for every step of the journey, one could launch a new business with the contacts from this event alone.
After 2 days of filming some 400 minutes of content, 30 videos with endless shorts coming and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Smart Retail Tech Expo closes. The event is five events held at once all together. White Label, Retail, Supply chain and Logistics Expo, Smart Retail Tech, E-Commerce Packaging and Labelling and Com Business Live. With row after row of exhibits*, the event was made whole by the balanced combination of talks and exhibits. Even better, there was 15 minutes in between the talks so one could catch the exhibits. Furthermore, all theaters schedules were once again aligned in the event you wanted to switch theaters as well.
The short two-day event packs a punch with 5 keynote theatres each featuring 4 or 5 talks a day for a whopping 47 sessions. The first day was supposed to be capped off by a presentation Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy but it was cancelled purportedly due to security concerns. We captured 30 videos that will result in a lot of great shorts so be sure to save the entire playlist of videos for Conference Whispers: Smart Retail Tech Expo. We were able to capture the walkabout of the entire conference right at the conference’s grand opening. If you are wondering what was to eat at the show, we have you covered with video of the food lines and menus.
The keynotes at this smaller event were quite impressive and featured talks from Google, AWS, Home Depot, Lenova, and ASCM (Association of Supply Chain Management) to name a few. Douglas Kent of ASCM (Association of Supply Chain Management) shared top supply chain trends during his keynote. Jesus Sanchez from Google show the many ways in which you can put Google AI to work for you for your retail solution. It is all about optimizing marketing expenses. He also shared the interesting statistic that 15% of all searches are unique. Amazon’s Justin Honaman shared the many ways AWS Gen AI is being leveraged for innovation in retail and CPG. Phil Pench of DHL ecommerce shared an interesting talk with the list of options for the end of the supply chain particularly for those importing goods.
Home Depot’s Paul Ganz shared the ripple effect of failing a customer. He reminded all that you only get one chance to take care of your customer. That once the customer bought the product, you are handling their item – not yours and it should be treated as such. Chewy’s Debarati Das gave a detailed talk highlighting the complexities of inventory management in the context of the corporate goals and customer satisfaction requirements. There were many people waiting to speak with this speaker following the talk. Kevin Lawton of @thenewwarehouse examined the question of doing fulfillment from the retail location versus a warehouse. Admittedly, this talk reminded me of a patent I was awarded as an IBM Engineer on this exact topic in the heart of the dot com era.
While many of the exhibits focused on the White Label portion of the show were captured in the walkabout, there was no technology for us to cover. Nonetheless, we discovered quite a bit of tech to capture. If you need to make a professional video to sell your wares or any other services in getting your product to market, newegg was on display with media, sellingpilot, and marketplace. If you are not sure about the size of the object you are selling, vMeasure was on site. vMeasure leverages cameras, sensors and scales with some great AI /ML models to provide the size of the object.
If one is selling something in a store, are instead display, Retail Media Management was there to share their digital signs and smart retail tags. One only needs to change the price online, and all price tags will automatically update. They are reported to have a 5-year battery life. Admittedly, we know days of batteries in such electronics is limited as glass can now capture energy from thin air as seen in our coverage at CES. Another digital sign company, Hongzhou had a smart menu kiosk on exhibit. This kiosk not only takes the order and payment but coordinates the order to the kitchen staff. Limited staff but want to open a pizza joint? Pzza has an automated solution to make commercial pizzas that only requires one employee to run the shop. This exhibit gave us flashbacks to the automatic stir fry tech we saw at CES, Techmagic. If you would like to bring home the bacon instead of serving it, Bacon Tech was on site with their staffing and employee management mobile application. If your retail business involves CBD, Argyle Payments was on hand to help you with your banking needs.
To secure a retail space, many require video surveillance. LVT remote surveillance with their solar panel powered solution complete with simple intelligence was on the floor. This intelligence is leverages to identify objects in the video and notify as appropriate. Is your business is looking for warehouse space AND will create 10 jobs or more? Global Site Location Industries collaborates with municipalities around the country. This collaboration allows Global Site Location Industries to offer their assistance for free.
If you warehouse scanners or other mobile technology is missing or you need an extra, ASR Tech was on site and can fix anything. If simply cannot find your products in your warehouse or want to monitor them through the supply chain, Lyngsoe Systems passive RFID has a solution for you. RFID has come a long way with stickers at just .05 each. We also heard about Cirro Fulfillment’s Smart robots as they were to enhance the supply chain. SRSI shared their automated storage and retrieval technology available in all 50 states. In fact, SRSI handles all technology available within the 4 walls of the warehouse. Goods was on display to remind you to focus on your business with their integrated solution handling inventory management, order management, and warehouse management.
As a conference about logistics, there were many logistics companies! Fellowship logistics shared that they can reach 99% of the US in 2 days and 75% in 1 day. Meanwhile, ExFreight was sharing that they provide 100% online capabilities for their entire service logistics offering to 175 countries. C&C logistics serves all continental US and Mexico and can move anything from a single pallet to an entire warehouse.
There were vendors on display with technology for every aspect of your retail business. Shopline intelligent offered a unified commerce platform. There was also a solution called iVision to automate customer loyalty. Admittedly, both solutions intelligence is not yet fully realized compared to many of the technologies analyzed at the Adobe Summit or even Fintech Meetup.
Smart Retail Tech Expo comes to Las Vegas every year. The next Smart Retail Tech Expo will occur April 16 and 17th, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
Register early to submit your questions for this exciting AMA (Ask me Anything) with Katya Lainé who founded the advanced conversational and Voice GEN AI product known as Talkr.AI
Katya Lainé is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of TALKR.ai and world-renowned for her expertise in Conversational AI. Katya has spent over a decade reshaping the way organizations handle customer interactions, playing a pivotal role in modernizing call centers by replacing traditional Interactive Voice Response Systems with Intelligent Voice Conversational AI Assistants. Katya is also a respected expert at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) contributing to cutting-edge AI research and international cooperation. Beyond her GPAI role, Katya serves on the board of Numeum, where she is President of its AI Commission, championing ethical practices and advancing the adoption of AI technologies. Katya co-founded OpenLLM-France, further exemplifying her dedication to advancing technology and ethical standards in AI. Additionally, she is a Co-founder and Vice President of Le Voice Lab, underscoring her commitment to shaping the future of voice technology in Europe. She holds a Master of Business Administration (MBA), in addition to a Master’s degree in Broadcast Journalism from Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski.
After 2 days of filming, 31 videos and 34 shorts and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Call & Contact Center Expo Las Vegas 2024 ends. CCCLV24 was held in Las Vegas from April 24 and 25. The event was held in the Las Vegas Convention Center South Lower Hall. The event featured 4 theaters with each featuring 6 talks each day for a total of 48 keynote sessions. Attendees witnessed endless examples of how generative AI and deep learning are revolutionizing the Call and Contact Center industry.
After 2 days of filming, 31 videos and ~30 shorts and over 30 factchecks, our coverage of this years’ Call & Contact Center Expo Las Vegas, CCCLV24, ends. With row after row of exhibits*, the event was made whole by the balanced combination of talks and exhibits. Even better, there was 15 minutes in between the talks so one could catch the exhibits. Furthermore, all theaters schedules were aligned in the event you wanted to switch theaters as well.
The short two-day event is definitely mighty and packs a punch with 4 keynote theatres each featuring 6 talks a day for a whopping 48 sessions. That said, there were also 2 keynotes who were to bashful to be taped which is a highly unusual occurrence. Nonetheless, we captured quite a lot of great content in this year’s CCCLV24 playlist. In fact we also spun out over 30 shorts which are at the tail end of the playlist – in case you only want to catch the super good parts!. We were also able to capture a video of the food available. Overall, it seems the Las Vegas Convention Center hits the mark as there were just as many bragging about the food and prices as there were complaining. The Global Voice of Customer Experience, Dennis Wakabayashi, was interviewing on site and even shared his wisdom in a keynote. Fascinating to see how leveraging global call center talent can truly impact the world in which we live.
Sahni Sanjeev’s keynote by eGain appropriately drove home the requirements for corporate data programs to be mature before attempting to dive into deep learning tools and techniques. A second keynote by Uniphone offered up an Enterprise AI blueprint with some very solid advice. Specifically, your knowledge management system should be used so that the data determines your first actions. One must act based on the customer pain points not the cool technology. Of course if you didn’t get to organize it yet, Robot.AI shared their solution on exhibit. Robot.ai is simply feed all your corporate data then provides a gen AI service to answer questions about all of it.
A keynote reminder was given that one cannot use newest and greatest AI tools without thought to protect your customers. This keynote was provided by Private AI’s co-founder Patricia Thaine. In her talk, she detailed the various scenarios and considerations one must take to not end up on the news for an embarrassing compromise. It was a true sign of industry maturity to see a product such as Private AI on exhibit this year as well.
Speaking of protection, a vendor we are familiar with, SecureLogix shared their patented solution to stopping call pumping and TDoS attacks and more. Call pumping wastes an incredible amount of money. During my tenure as a telephony strategist, every public 800 number examined suffered from a call pumping compromise. At one point, 85% of all DDOS attacks had concurrent TDOS attacks- meaning your customers cannot find you on the internet or call you regarding the issue. One modern security concern involves deepfakes, to that end Veridas was on hand with their solution to identify and stop vocal deep fakes!
Awaken’s keynote points out that Agent Experience is your Brand’s experience to your customers. To that end, there were many technologies available to improve Agent experience. You may recall FLOWIT from Conference Whispers: CES 2024 that uses Generative AI over employee satisfaction. They were also featured in an Industry Whispers webinar. CCCLV24 had a similar technology by Centrical focused on improving employee experience. They focus on creating best-in-class employee experience for frontline agents specifically. evaluagent was on exhibit sharing how their technology can execute deep analysis of the conversation and summarize freeing up their agents.
For organizations seeking to add AI to their agents and leave it to the agent’s discretion when and how they use AI, then Smile.cx was there for you! If you want to capture all the folklore in your organization and make it available to your agents, ScreenSteps exhibited. If you want to avoid handing agents a 200 page searchable PDF files, Drop Cowboy may have an answer for you. In another exhibit, Reddy.IO has AI for your agents and stated a system setup takes 5 minutes. If your agents have heavy accents make calls frustrating for them to communicate, Tomato.ai who was on stage last year, was on exhibit this year. We also featured Tomato.ai in an Industry Whispers earlier this year.
Big Profiles was on exhibit to provide intelligent customer profiles that predict certain customer propensities such as churn, purchases, cross sales, and collections. Structurely shared their solution to text or call customers including an AI created voice. Observe.AI can digest all conversations with customers to identify moments of interest. If you would appreciate accurate granular sentiment analysis over all those communications, Sestek and their conversational AI and analytics was on exhibit.
If you are an individual who’s number is the Do Not Call registry, you will appreciate DNC’s solution. DNC to assist call centers in respecting the list by scrubbing it for numbers that they should not contact. Meera.ai enables a company to stop annoying customers by maintaining contact cadence for the organization. TNS was one of the many vendors present that can add a telephony identifier, ANI, to wireless outbound calls to the ANI of the company represented. For readers who absolutely despise IVR (Interactive Voice Response) systems, Talkr.ai shared their technology ready to make your corporate IVR system obsolete.
If understanding your agent is critical, you will appreciate it if the agent calling has access to Tomato.ai, especially in the event they have a heavy accent. Likewise, if the company your calling is quite popular, you would appreciate if the company you are calling deployed Omilia – able to handle 6 million concurrent calls. If the company you do business with leverages Drop Cowboy, you may just get a custom voicemail. Drop Cowboy leverages deep learning capabilities to generate a voice to customize mass voicemails. Finally, for those of you that just hate filling out surveys after a speaking with a call center, Miarec has you covered. Miarec leveraged conversational intelligences to automatically score a call eliminating the requirement to survey the caller.
Call & Contact Center Expo comes to Las Vegas every year. The next CCCLV will occur April 16 and 17th, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
After 85 flights of stairs, ~40,000 steps, 12 Vegas loops trips, and over 40 factchecks, our coverage of 2024 NAB Show, National Association of Broadcasters Show, ends. NAB Show was held in Las Vegas from April 13-17. It is the premier event for content professionals in the broadcast, media, and entertainment ecosystem seeking to create superior and innovative audio and video experiences. The conference featured over700,000 net square feet of exhibits, nearly 1300 exhibitors, 750 educational courses and sessions, and over 61,000+ attendees from an amazing 163 countries. Attendees witnessed endless examples of cloud enabled remote production, early implementations of generative AI, and discussions on sustainability in production and technical security for remote live production.
The Conference
The first NAB Show was held October 11, 1923, in New York City at the Commodore Hotel. There were 16 radio stations represented among the 23 attendees. NAB Show moved to Las Vegas in 1991.
NAB Show was held April 13-17, 2024, in Las Vegas. The event featured over 61,000 attendees. Within those attendees 27% were international attendees from an amazing 163 countries represented.
The exhibitions featured nearly 1300 exhibitors in over 700,000 net square feet of exhibits a 30% gain over 2023.
Attendees at NABShow held titles such as Production Director, Production Editor, Production Engineer, Broadcast and Network Engineer, Logistics Manager, Electrical Engineer, Sound and Video Engineer, Director of Product Management, Technical Architect, and data scientist.
After 85 flights of stairs and 40,000 steps, and 12 Vegas loops trip, our coverage of the 2024 NAB Show produced by National Association of Broadcasters, ends. NAB Show 2024 exhibitions surpassed last year’s by nearly 30% with 700,000 square feet in all. Attendance came in at 61,000 attendees with 27% coming from international destinations. NABPAC contributors were recognized in the West Hall. The conference leveraged the entire indoor conference exhibit spaces in the West Hall, Central Hall, South Upper and South Lower and a few rooms in North Halls. A majority of North Hall was under construction. Fortunately, the Vegas Loop was running with free rides so one needed not walk the entire distance. We took advantage of the loop no less than a dozen times. When asked attendees reported meeting their business objectives and described it as really good. Once again – the quality of attendees itself was mentioned by the exhibitors. Our entire playlist of video research for NAB Show is available online at our YouTube Channel.
With over 200 exhibitions and over 150 sessions on AI, generative AI was once again the star of the show. Amid the buzz about AI and generative AI transforming broadcasting, one question was on the mind of video engineers – “Will it affect our jobs?”. Luisa Winters had an answer in her keynote. If you are adapting and using the new technologies, you will be fine. No different from the move from tapes. More importantly, you will not only be able to deliver something acceptable but have time to make it great! Another keynote emphasized the importance of great metadata for your assets if you want to fully leverage generative AI solutions in sports coverage. As one might expect, there were countless examples* of tools for production and distribution and each of the tasks involved. Pixellot was on hand with their exciting deep learning automated sports tracking leveraged for streaming sports. Their solution leveraging their state-of-the-art cameras and patented technology that stitches it all together. As would be expected, each sport has its own model. In fact, they had over 10,000 live events streaming as I conducted the interview. Pixellot also includes capabilities for monetizing said sports streams.
One keynote provided a demo of Adobe Premier Pro, something we didn’t recall seeing at Adobe Summit.Backlight showcased their extensive collection of products for media content creation and distribution. Backlight’s solution leverages AI and generative AI to simplify media workflows. Backlight allows horizontal and vertical video distribution. Backlight leverages their own AI and LLM models to transcribe the video/audio. That transcription is then used to quickly generate all the metadata to put on social media. They leverage automation to automate the creation of sports highlight clips out to social media by registering all key moments as the game plays. Finally, their solution also enables monetization.
Amazon and AWS were at NAB Show in full force. A huge display was on hand where they shared their entire Generative AI stack with those looking to develop solutions. Experts were on hand if you had any questions including seeking insights on Amazon Bedrock. In the Microsoft pavilion, SymphonyAI was there as part of the beet the buzzer architecture that enables viewers to play along with game shows. Microsoft offered a Pilot demonstration of AI enabled marketing.
Transcription and translation are a big area for generative AI in broadcasting and media, sometimes referred to as localization. This topic was featured in a keynote as well as in exhibits. Microsoft featured their solution based on Open AI. TRINT featured their text to speech solution adopted across the industry. One exciting development is the ability to do full motion capture without putting on a special suit due to generative AI! In fact, Zerospace Captury was on exhibit sharing their solution. Interestingly, the room only requires about 15 minutes to set up the space to capture motion.
With all of the generative content capabilities shown, stopping misinformation and deepfakes was a very popular topic featured in a keynote. The solution involves knowledge of the content frequently communicated through metadata. To that end, Hand (Human & Digital) shared their solution for identity intelligence for notable talent.
Leveraging capabilities of 5g, XGN featured their solution that enables users to connect direct to mobile to send content from the field – no SIM card required! Cobalt Digital shared their extensive collection of open gear based on 2110, 12G and ultra-low latency. Their gear also supports Rest APIs. Cobalt Digital featured routers, control panels, and multi-viewers for video and audio processing. As might be expected with the continual increased resolution, a new video compression standard is being rolled out and is already rolled out in Brazil, LCEVC. In the LCEVC showcase, all the providers with their next generation of tech leveraging LCEVC were on display. Ateme also focuses on compression – for the purpose of technologies such as the Apple Vision Pro which they showed off in the exhibition. Once you created all your content, if you wanted to manage the programming data so it is accurate in every tv program listing, Titan TV shared their solution. If you wanted to optimize the way in which you manage ad campaigns, Showseeker shared their solution to simplify advertising scheduling.
For those requiring the ability to manage the labor and payroll for that remote labor, Procrewz shared their solution. If keeping track of and on top of all the compliance requirements for broadcast and streaming is your challenge, Vela exhibited their product.
NAB Show also featured technology and solutions to support the creator economy. In Vimeo’s session they stated that one can expect 2% of free YouTube subscribers to convert to a paid subscriber on Vimeo. For those wishing to participate in a reality show about making creators or leverage it for advertising, the team from the TV show Follow Me had a lively panel. The central Main Stage featured an interview with Jennifer Hudson. During the interview Jennifer told the audience that she is always cheering for everyone. A great session on diversity in broadcasting featured the Las Vegas Aces Alysha Clark who majored in broadcasting during her college career. Alysha Clark made the great point to all that inclusion means opening prime spots to diversity be it tv slots or board and executive spots in corporate America.
NAB Show is held every year in Las Vegas since 1991. The next NAB Show will occur April 5-9, 2025, in Las Vegas, NV.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
Adobe Summit 2024 took over the Venetian with over 11,000 attendees and leveraging one-million square feet of exhibition to host the conference, keynotes, exhibits and meals. The keynotes and side sessions were all about generative AI for the ultimate in personalization and scale for your marketing content needs. Many service providers and ecosystem partners were exhibited. A Strangely many exhibitors didn’t denote if their products leveraged artificial intelligence within their solutions on their displays.
Analysis is only available to clients at this time.
Highlights
Extensive examples on stage of how Firefly can scale to quickly generative full experiences target to exactly the right customers.
Many service providers were on exhibit for those who are overwhelmed by the technology involved.
Cautions
Many sessions were filled in advance leaving attendees to wait list for desired events. If attending, be sure to create a formal schedule in advance to ensure ability to attend desired events.
As a conference for a vendor’s technology for marketing, the atmosphere was set up to be fun with a DJ playing in the hall throughout. The 11,000 strong in attendance could be felt while approaching the keynotes or perusing the exhibits. Meals were served downstairs albeit the word was one might be finding something elsewhere. Readers may experience the entire Conference Whispers: Adobe Summit 2024 playlist.
The keynotes presented endless examples of personalized experiences at scale. The opening day keynote launched with an in-depth overview of Adobe Firefly. They then shared an example using Coca Cola brand assets designing an entire campaign with significant variety in no time. Pfizer’s Lidia Fonseca then came on stage. Lidia Fonseca shared how they are leveraging Adobe’s generative AI capabilities enables campaigns every time a new drug is approved by the FDA. Next, there was a quick announcement regarding Adobe’s collaboration with Microsoft was made surprising without Scott Guthrie who was in town or any other Microsoft executive. With no shortage of examples, they keynote then welcomed Mary Barra of General Motors. It was fascinating to hear how Mary started her career on the assembly line as well as how GM leverages Adobe. At the end of day one, there was an amazing introduction to artificial intelligence and generative AI for those who do not understand its basis.
The second day of the conference commenced with an Inspirational Keynote featuring Delta, TSB, and Major League Baseball (MLB). Admittedly as someone who worked with the MLB in high school, I didn’t expect to hear them talk about a long-lost friend, Bret Saberhagen. The Maximize creativity and scale content strategy keynote provided a Pepsi in depth example. Once again, the theme was how much brand aligned content we can help you create and deliver to exactly who you desire.
The third day brought some other great conference talks and a lot of tired attendees due to the party at Area 51 with Shaq as DJ. We started off our coverage with an Adobe talk that discussed in-depth how to update your content strategy architecture in the age of generative AI. Expanding on this theme, Omnicom provided in-depth case studies on their AI powered ecommerce.
Community Pavilion Exhibits
Exhibitors ran the gambit to support the Adobe ecosystem. Interestingly many that leveraged AI to improve their product did not put any indication on their exhibit. This point was so strangely prevalent that all the industry analysts were discussing it prior to Keynote on day two. According to some exhibitors, the AI was added after the booth was ordered. Others said that at a data conference, every booth specified AI and they thought it was overwhelming. When pointed out if not specifying made it seem like they are displaying legacy technology, the error in their ways was realized. Exhibitors not specifying technology features of their product on the exhibits is not by any means customary!
If attendees were seeking technology to assist in generating content, Movable Ink was present. Conveo provides AI search over your assets and can provide a generative answer to optimize business outcomes. If you would like to create chatbots from any kind of data, Searchblox was on hand.
If you would like a single source of truth over all your marketing data assets, Claravine shared demonstrations and overview of their product. If you would like your assets converted to 200 different languages, Transperfect was on site. Yext shared their SEO intelligent platform to optimize the search over all your digital assets. Glassbox specialized in providing and optimizing customer experience and digital journeys with the use of artificial intelligence. Leveraging all forms of AI, Pathfactory shared their platform for b2b intelligence and personalization.
Session AI’s CMO, Jason Seeba was on hand to share how their technology understands user types within 5 clicks. Knack shared their enterprise grade email and landing page no code solutions. To create a coherent digital journey from telephone calls to web visits at the session level, Invoca conversational intelligence was on display. If you would like to host a conference of your own, Cvent was there with their technology. From planning to hosting to managing all the data for marketing the conference, their product provides an all-in-one solution.
Finaly on the protection side, Cheq shared their solution to remove all botts form analytics, marketing automation and paid advertising. Web governance in the form of removing unapproved cookies from your site was presented by Observepoint.
Adobe exhibit provided many service providers to execute on any of the technologies Adobe shared. We met Webjump who is a Magenta partner in Brazil. We also stopped by Virtusa IT services organization that is proud of their engineering first mindset to enable scalability. Finally, Grazitti not only display but had many their clients also exhibiting at Adobe Summit.
Next year’s adobe summit will be once again held at the Venetian Resort likely in March, stay tuned for details.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
Internet 2.0 Conference is one of five conferences that makes up 2.0 Conferences. In total the conferences had seven hundred attendees over 3 days packed with solid keynotes. Attendees seemed to agree that small but mighty was a good description of the event. Common themes including where is society going with technology as well as how these changes will impact society.
Highlights
Five conferences all in one meant this tiny conference packed a powerful punch.
This event was all keynotes with speakers rotating between the 5 shows.
Cautions
This conference packs the sessions back-to-back. One must plan on your own for bio and physical movement breaks to avoid excessive sedentary day.
The biggest theme at the conference focused on where innovation in technology is going to take us. One keynote on the evolution of intelligence had a panel discuss the paradigms that go beyond AI and ML This session also included an interested example of how Yazzmoney was leveraging blockchain. Specifically, they are helping Zambia government to tokenize cattle, minerals, wildlife and renewable energy. This enables the cattle ranchers, for example to access the value of the cattle. Another keynote with an all-male panel discussed how AR, VR and MR can revolutionize customer experience. Michael Koch keynote was a great discussion on the evolution of work, life, and play. Michael Koch discussed how technology has changed and is going to continue to change even faster with wireless power closer on the horizon than we imagine. Parts of this keynote reminded us of the 100 years of innovation exhibit at CES. One of the fascination aspects of Michael Koch’s keynote was the discussion around moving from creative and getting the ideas to adoption and conversion. There was to be another keynote on AI that looked like great potential at the start. Unfortunately the speakers time was cut in half and the deck didn’t work, thus Gary Y. Wu went Beyond AI in his talk. Futurist writer Jeffrey James Seyferth shared his vision of tech nirvana with attendees.
One thing all agreed on is there will be an adaptation that must occur. Cyber burnout was a real concern in the keynote on wearables, robot and IoT. That session hilariously drew the parallel of the conference attendees not having breaks in between all the sessions to describe how cyber burnout occurs. With all this change, technologist need to be great communicators. To that end, Archer Now CEO, Trung Q. Pham brought his keynote, “The art of Communication Jiujitsu” to meet the demand. Trung emphasized that we retain 90% of what we teach.
Several panellists mentioned the concern of impact around generative AI hallucinations. To that end, one panellist shared that hallucinations are to be expected as the technology is in its toddler phase of reasoning. An interesting second concern on generative AI was raised concerning the massive computational requirements for a simple answer is surely not good for the planet.
We were able to catch one interesting keynote on security. David Ronn from Zecurity shared their on-premises and edge solution to ending ransomware that blocks and examines all commands outside of a simple read command.
2.0 Conferences 2025 conference will be held in Las Vegas, Nevada at Caesars in April of 2025.
*When vendors’ names are shared as examples in this document, it is to provide a concrete example of what was on display at the conference, not an evaluation or recommendation. Evaluation and recommendation of these vendors are beyond the scope of this specific research document. Other examples products in the same category may have also been on display.
