ConsultantRegistry.Org is back from a busy week at the ASIS Conference and Tradeshow held in Anaheim, CA this year.  At this year’s show, our main emphasis was to promote the value of the organization to manufacturers, and to meet some of our members.  It was great to meet some of you face to face and hear your input and ideas.  We have plans in the works for our next organizational meeting at ISC West, so stay tuned.

The goal of the trip was to further awareness of the organization and start promoting some of the new initiatives of CRO.  Many manufacturers have agreed to use the new CRO Open ID platform that will roll-out sometime during the month of October.  We received great response to the organization as a long needed resource and a great value for the industry.  It is our design to generate more value for our members and thereby for our advertising sponsors.  By producing greater sponsorship, the organization has more revenue for future CRO projects like Open ID, and the upcoming iPhone application give away of Security Surveyor (stay tuned for this one as well).

Time was tight while we were in Anaheim, so we made good use of our time there. Our meetings literally started in the airport on Sunday and ran non-stop through Wednesday.  A special thanks to the folks at Salient Systems for allowing us to use their meeting space free of charge during the show as a place to meet with our members.

What we observed at the show….

I have to say, the attendance was the lightest we have seen in any of previous years (15 for me and 25 for my business partner).  However, I think most vendors would agree when I say, with this depressed economy, the people who attended had a purpose in being there.

ASIS is one of the two times a year (ISC West being the other) when most of the Security Industries’ vendors demonstrate their new products.  While we did not see anything to shift our design paradigms, there were a couple of notable pieces parts.  Axis had a notable modular camera mounting system that caught our eye.  Pelco’s new Sarix line demonstrated much improved contrasting light sensor technology.  TimeSight Systems was exhibiting a new way of recording video that optimizes the recording and minimizes the storage hardware.

Thinking forward to next year’s ASIS, we noticed that they are changing their dates and venues a bit. Perhaps they are noticing a change in the industry and are beginning to mix things up to promote more interest and attendance.  Next year’s conference is now almost 13 months away, scheduled for mid October.  We are excited that ASIS will be in Dallas next year since it gives CRO an opportunity for greater presence and visibility.  (For those that don’t know, Dallas is home to CRO’s offices.) ConsultantRegistry.Org is a professional organization for independent consultants in the converging space of the Security, IT and Communications industries. CRO is run as a not for profit by a council of its members and operates independently of all product vendors. CRO can be found at http://www.consultantregistry.org.