55 HAPPENING NAB
THE ATMOSPHERE AT THE SHOW WAS ONE OF HOLDING STEADY edge companies taking advantage of the tech in content management (and our next issue will feature a closer look at this age of asset management). The adoption of AI is going to happen quickly. There will be stumbling blocks as people get fooled by products stamped ‘AI’ that don’t deliver, but the fact that AI’s exist only in software makes them easily updatable, very flexible and easily expandable to other functions. Machine learning is literally teaching software how to solve a problem on its own, which, once it’s got the hang of it, it can do day and night, without tiring. Yes, AI will be taking your job. But it may also create new types of jobs that we haven’t thought of yet. In the next year or so, I don’t think you’ll be able to go to any stand at a big trade show and not see an AI-enabled product. The presence of AI’s will be taken for granted. At NAB 2020, people won’t be asking ‘Do your products use AI’s?’, it will be ‘What kinds of AI’s do your products use?’ NAB IS ITS OWN REWARD Delegate traffic was down a bit at this year’s NAB. Yes, it was. We all know it was. But don’t worry too much about it. We easily get stuck in an obsession for unending year-on-year growth, which is not only unrealistic, it also diverts our attention away from what trade shows are for – doing business. The atmosphere at the show was one of holding steady, of getting work done. People didn’t come to see glamour and bro- worthy super-tech, they came to roll up their sleeves and find solutions. My impression was that, though numbers may have been slightly down – seemingly more so in the production halls – that the conversations between decision-makers, buyers, thought- leaders, especially in the streaming media space, were energetic and profitable.
It’s possible that delegates more interested in production gear will start focusing on sector specific shows. Cinegear is showing growth in the US and London’s BSC (British Society of Cinematographers) Expo is becoming a preferred production-specific confab. Is the model of a Wal-Mart style trade show, featuring everything under the broadcast sun, finally on the wane? It’s much too early to tell. Which brings me to… …one more Grand Canyon metaphor. GEOLOGICAL TIME The Grand Canyon was formed very slowly, with the Colorado River and its watery ancestors removing stone bit by bit by bit for a very long time – at least since the 1970s, which is when I first saw it. The broadcast industry is prone to technological flash floods that seem to sweep the past away and leave only bare rock for something entirely new. In the panic, or excitement, we can lose sight of the bigger canyon. The media industry is an ecosystem of technology, but also one of people, institutions, regulations, financial interests and even ideals, and
these do not come apart and rearrange themselves as quickly or as easily as we sometimes suppose. We may be looking excitedly expecting a future of AI-generated advertising tailored for the individual viewer, sent directly to their AR glasses at the perfect moment in the day, but the fact is, there are still networks out there who cannot see the business case for upgrading to HD. Thinking of technological development as a line of progress isn’t always helpful. Better to think of it as an ecosystem, where some technologies flourish, others wane, but everything is always affecting everything else, in unpredictable ways. eSports has boomed in the past year, and while the eSports landscape may seem an unfamiliar and forbidding arena, what has happened is that eSports companies are running back to traditional, old-school tech suppliers to learn how to do big live broadcasts properly. It’s a chaotic process, that has much more collaboration than competition about it. It can be very unpredictable – and much slower than we suppose. NAB started in 1923. Remember the Grand Canyon.
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