AVIXA Latin America: New Realities
By Rodrigo Casassus Coke, CTS
Are You Ready to Change Course?
The AVIXA® Latin America Team has started a series of articles exploring the new realities the AV industry will face in our region because of COVID-19.
It is as if a hurricane has shaken our ordinary lives, and now it has decided to stay for weeks, even months. The COVID-19 pandemic has started hitting hard on the economy of Latin American countries. Like many other industries, AV is already feeling the adverse effects: From live event companies – that suffered from the very beginning – to integrators, manufacturers, and dealers that have seen their projects pushed further and further into the future.
Due to such a massive storm, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) foresees a yearly growth with negative numbers for all of our economies. It would be irrational to think we'll go back to normal as soon as our health authorities say it's safe to return to our activities. We reckon that as captains of our ships, we must steer and change our business course so we can go through this crisis in the best possible way, to survive and even thrive.
Changing the course doesn't involve a hard pull on the wheel, or transforming the ship into a submarine or a plane. On the contrary, it means using all our existing resources (human, economic, infrastructure, know-how) to find new business possibilities and keep on contributing to society.
In AVIXA Latin America, we are aware that the industry of this region is different from those of our colleagues elsewhere, and we'll be providing data, ideas, and insights that may be a beacon leading to new horizons. That is why we will release new content weekly under the name of New Realities, covering issues on innovation, trends, marketing, collaboration, education, and current topics on the audiovisual and integration experience industry.
We will discuss collaborative options to overcome the crisis. How about making alliances with your main competitor, or promoting your best and most loyal employees into associates to strengthen your company by sharing the risk now and the profit later?
Industry trends with the potential to become business opportunities will also be explored. Ever heard the term cocooning? It comes from the ’90s, and it refers to people who choose to stay at home, turning it into a sort of comfy nest, as they instead stay alone rather than socializing. Nowadays, this behavior is associated with the social distancing practices that have been adopted to protect the elderly from a possible COVID-19 contagion. In one of the next entries, we will imagine the evolution of this in the near future. Will we be staying even more time at home? What technological resources will we need to make our "nest" more pleasant, safe, and better connected? Will we be able to develop AV solutions for this possible lifestyle change?
As for innovation, we will present a variety of ideas that AV industry professionals have been working on with experts from other related fields during this time. As an example, the actions taken by Italian architect Carlo Ratti and his firm, that have designed isolation and care units for COVID-19 patients with shipping containers. This idea could be even further-reaching in our region, if we think about future projects creating medical facilities or schools in marginalized zones that will require several AV resources.
The importance of proper professional formation will also be discussed, how to choose from the vast online educational offer that many industry members, including AVIXA, have made accessible to the public. This topic has drawn much attention in the AV industry, as an example, during the first two weeks of the initiative AVIXA en Directo, we received over 2,400 entries from Latin America and Spain. All this interest must be well channeled, so if it is fruitful, we will actively help you to get the most out of it.
In the meantime, we ask you to remain healthy and full of inner strength to face the current and coming challenges. To change the course will require robust and wholesome people. This is a tough situation, and yet it is incredibly interesting, creative thinking will be a keystone to achieve positive outcomes. We would love to hear from you and hope you will share the way you are facing these course changes, these new realities. Please email us at [email protected].
To read this article in Spanish, click here.
About Rodrigo Casassus Coke, CTS
