Greg Schlechter, Principal Consultant, explores where the AV industry is heading in Episode 8, Season 8 of the SurroundScapes Podcast
In Episode 8, Season 8 of Bluesound Professional’s SurroundScapes podcast, Greg Schlechter joins host Graeme Harrison to explore the changing AV landscape, from networked systems and AI to the evolving relationship between AV and IT.
From AV on the Network to Connected Systems
Greg Schlechter brings a cross-industry perspective to the conversation, having spent 27 years at Intel working across systems, standards and networking before moving into consulting. His later work focused on time-coordinated computing and real-time networks, bringing him into the AV world through initiatives including AVnu Alliance and IEEE standards.
That experience has given Greg a first-hand view of the shift from proprietary AV systems towards networked architectures. “What I see is kind of a natural progression,” he says. “There was a clear business and technical need to put AV on the network.”
For Greg, the industry has now moved beyond asking whether AV can work on a network. The more interesting question is what happens once everything is connected. “People are starting to get to a phase of actually going past the protocols,” he explains. “How do we build these big structures? How do we manage it?”
That shift also extends beyond networking. As software takes on a greater role, networks become less about simply transporting signals and more about enabling devices and networks to support what creatives want to achieve with AV.
From Cloud to Edge and Beyond
Greg has seen a similar evolution across IT, moving from local computing to data centres, then to the cloud and increasingly towards the “edge”. He believes AV is now beginning to navigate a similar change. “It’s a long process to move the computer where it makes sense,” he explains. That means moving away from isolated boxes that need to be managed individually towards connected systems that can work together. “And AI is only going to accelerate this.”
This evolution also highlights how quickly new technologies can move from emerging concepts to industry expectations. Graeme points to the Gartner Hype Cycle. “There was the cloud and now AI, I would argue, right at the top of that peak of inflated expectations,” he says. For the AV industry, the challenge is separating genuine opportunities from the hype and understanding where new technologies can deliver practical value.
The transition is not purely technical, however. As AV moves towards software, cloud and more distributed systems, the industry also needs to rethink how those technologies are delivered and paid for. Greg describes three forces that need to align: “You have the user, the technology and the business, and they’re overlapping circles. They all have to kind of come together.”
The challenge, he says, is that “the technology is getting there. The users maybe even want it. But the business model throughout the whole channel is still adjusting.”
Changing established business models is not easy, but Greg believes collaboration between companies can help the industry navigate these broader shifts. He emphasizes the idea of “co-opetition”, where competitors can work together on challenges that affect the industry as a whole.
“Everyone’s competitive,” he says, “but one of the things that I learned is seeing big companies who were fierce competitors say, ‘Hey guys, this is a challenge for all of us. Let’s work together in this area.’”
“The network you’re going on is part of your product, whether you know it or not,” he says.
Why AV and IT Need to Converge
The increasing role of networks and software is also bringing AV and IT closer together. Greg sees this as a move away from treating the two as separate disciplines and towards finding where their respective strengths complement each other. “It’s not really IT taking over, or AV taking over. It really needs to be a merge,” he says. “Both areas have something to bring.”
This is already reflected in the changing customer. “Back in the day, our customers in institutions were typically the facilities department, whereas now our customers are typically the CIO and his team,” says Graeme. He sees AV’s ability to capture and disseminate information through cameras, microphones, displays and loudspeakers as an increasingly important part of the IT environment.
“It isn’t us or them,” Graeme concludes. “We just have to learn how to use it, how to own it, but also be humble about it.”
AI, Broadcast and What Comes Next
Greg sees an increasingly important role for AV as AI moves beyond the screen into the physical world. “Physical AI is not just a chat, it interacts with the real world doing real things. And AV is right there in the middle of that.” Rather than seeing it as a choice between human and machine, Graeme suggests that the real opportunity lies in combining the two. “I see humans and AI working together. And that’s where the real magic can happen.”
Looking beyond traditional installed AV, Greg views broadcast as an indicator of where the wider industry could be heading. “What I see happening in the broadcast side is acceleration of some of the trends that we’re talking about,” he says, pointing to the move towards standard networking and software-defined systems.
He describes broadcast as “the tip of the spear”, suggesting that technologies developed for one part of the industry can ultimately benefit AV more broadly.
Technology Needs to Meet Creativity
Turning to the relationship between technologists and creatives, Graeme argues that the AV industry does not always communicate effectively with the people who ultimately use its technology to create experiences.
“We as an industry don’t talk to those people in terms that they can understand and don’t come and meet them halfway,” he says. Without that dialogue, manufacturers risk inventing cool stuff that answers a problem no one’s asking.”
Greg agrees that bringing creatives, technologists and product developers together can reveal opportunities that might otherwise be missed. “The creatives are dreaming up really cool things that they’d like to build and can’t build yet because the product or the network or the things don’t come together,” he says.
For Greg, this kind of collaboration will be increasingly important as AV becomes more connected to other technologies, industries and disciplines. “Stepping outside the competitive world, working on these problems together, I think is very important to moving things forward.”
Listen to Episode 8, Season 8 of the SurroundScapes podcast with Greg Schlechter here.
Follow every episode of the SurroundScapes podcast and dive deeper into the world of commercial AV at surroundscapes.bluesoundprofessional.com.
