Last week’s NACStech show in Dallas provided an opportunity to see the latest in technology for convenience stores and petroleum retailers. There were about a half dozen video providers exhibiting at the show, as video is a long-established technology in the convenience store environment. The combination of late-night hours, customers who tend to pay with cash, and a proclivity for single-employee shifts makes these stores targets for crime, and the industry has long relied on video to combat this. Demonstrating our Managed Video service to this crowd was fun — with lots of oohing and ahhing at the ease of use and the ability to look at an unlimited number of stores through a single interface.

The most fun, though, was one of the after-hours networking events, where everybody was standing around with a beer in hand, talking a little bit about their work and a little bit more about their hometown and their kids.  I happened to end up in a group that included a couple of guys from a major oil company with operations in over a hundred countries around the world.  When I introduced myself and said that I was in the video business, one of them said that their company was looking into whether they could find a video system that could be used across their entire enterprise, from refineries to retail outlets to office buildings. Cursing the day that I signed an employment contract that didn’t contain a provision for commissions, I told him that my company offered a Managed Video service that was designed specifically for the purpose of viewing large numbers of geographically dispersed operations like his.

While it’s becoming more and more common to find people who understand the value of Managed Video –  it was really quite a rush to hear that this concept has caught the attention of a global company! And even though the conversation quickly turned back to the merits of living close to one’s grandchildren, I did manage to get a business card for some post-show follow-up.