As promised, here are some random thoughts from the National Retail Federation Loss Prevention Show in Orlando earlier this week…

Video was everywhere – 3 out of 4 exhibitors at the show had some form of video in their booth, many of them demonstrating some form of video analytics (tracking people in and out of their booth, showing examples of check out lines, peering at the bottom of carts looking for people sneaking things through checkout)

MVaaS providers still in the minority – Most of the video providers were still of the traditional DVR in the store, run thick client on your laptop, works great in a single store variety.

ADT is the mothership -  I must have met 10 different people that are at various security/integrators that were either very recently at ADT and left or had worked there for an extended period of time at some point in their career.

The recession isn’t stopping retailers from investing in video – judging by the case studies presented and the reactions we got from retailers, the challenging market conditions aren’t causing a shut down in video investments.  Articles like this one suggest that perhaps the opposite might be appropriate.

Never hold a customer event at a Howl at the Moon Saloon – One of the larger security integrators hosted a party there.  I won’t get into specifics, but it’s a good thing this wasn’t a conference for HR professionals.  Never thought of getting customers to do an R-rated version of the hokey pokey as a customer retention tool.

ROI is king – the LP director at a large Fast Casual restaurant put it bluntly.  If you can’t demonstrate a very positive and very quick ROI, the C-level team will never go for any LP investments.

I’ll cover the high points of some of my specific conversations with partners and customers tomorrow…