One of the biggest announcements pre-IBC was the news that Avid would have a stand at the show after all. Back in February, the company had said it would not be exhibiting at either NAB or IBC due to the pandemic, but that decision was reversed during the summer as the impact of Covid began to wane. And it certainly paid off with Avid’s slightly smaller than usual stand as busy as ever. “We decided to come back, and I’m happy that we did,” Avid president and CEO Jeff Rosica says. “I think IBC from our standpoint has been very successful. The traffic was good, the booth was busy the whole time. We’re very happy about how IBC has turned out.”
Asked if that Avid is planning to be back at trade shows full-time in 2023, Rosica says that the company has learnt a lot during the pandemic, including that many of its customers like other forms of interaction. “We learned that our customers want other types of marketing, they want virtual events, they want face-to-face events,” he explains. “We’ve been doing more one on ones with customers, we built a new customer experience centre at our headquarters, so our mix has shifted. Major trade shows are going to be part of our mix going forward, but they will be different. You’ll probably see us invest a little bit less in major trade shows because we’ve invested more in other areas, but they will be part of our future.”
Back to this year’s show though, and Rosica says the key theme from clients at IBC was ‘we’re getting back to normal – whatever normal is’. But, there are some key priorities for the industry as we move forward. “It’s all based on the transformation of their business,” he adds. “Obviously, business models are changing, that’s having a lot of impact on operational requirements and technology needs that they have. Everyone’s just trying to figure out how to create high-quality content and do it more efficiently. It’s not just cost, it’s also labour availability.
He adds: “There are so many things constraining the ability to create the level of content they want, so they’re looking for technology to help strategically answer some of these things that they’re doing. But it is all about efficiently creating more content, faster. Cloud is obviously a big part of that. Cloud isn’t about just lifting and shifting things from an on premises to a public cloud. It’s about innovation. It’s about changing workloads, changing the way businesses operate, transforming the way things are done. If you’re not doing that, you shouldn’t be going to the cloud.”
The full interview with Jeff Rosica can be found in our October/November issue, which is out now.
