Literally, by a little bit, and figuratively, by an order of magnitude for me.  A couple of folks from Envysion went with me to ISC West this year and personally it felt a lot smaller than in years past.

On the literal side, it actually wasn’t as much smaller as I had expected it to be from a pure attendance standpoint.  I don’t have the actual stats, maybe they will be posted somewhere, but one of my colleagues that is on their planning board told me that attendance was down 5-10% depending on whether you were talking about exhibitors or attendees.  An even less formal source (my cabbie) said that all of the trade shows were way down this year and that ISC West seemed down to he and his peers as well.  To be honest, you couldn’t really tell that much walking around the halls as it is such a big show that there were people everywhere.  While Stanley and Cisco were some big names that didn’t make it and a couple of booths were notably smaller than in years past, it didn’t seem too different as a ton of companies were represented there.

The big difference to me was how much smaller and more manageable it felt to me personally.  ISC West has a very strong place in my Envysion memory, as I went to my first one just about a month after starting the company.  I didn’t come from the security or video world, we hadn’t even started to develop the new MVaaS platform that our customers are using today, and I was still trying to figure out where we fit in the market.  My first hour at the show 3 years ago resulted in a mild coronary and early signs of an ulcer – I was completely overwhelmed at all of the different providers, almost every one of which was demoing some kind of video, many of which were touting web-based solutions.  I kept asking Rob Hagens “remind me again why we are different?”.  I left that first show a little frazzled and without a very clear understanding of where we fit.  Although I was confident in the idea and approach we were pursuing I couldn’t be sure that someone else wasn’t already doing it in the vast security and video market that I had been exposed to.

We have worked hard over the last few years to both better understand and better communicate how Envysion and MVaaS differ from what other providers are doing.  My quick two day trip to ISC West this year was evidence to me that after all of our efforts, I finally understand the industry well enough that to know exactly where we sit and why we are different.  It was this understanding that made ISC West feel a lot smaller to me than it ever has.  I understood who the majority of the players were and what they did.  I had spoken personally with or at least looked into most of the major players there.  I now knew enough about the big hardware guys and big security integrators and knew where there core focuses were.  I had a sense for a lot of the smaller players and knew who was getting traction and who wasn’t and in what type of markets.  I don’t claim to understand the industry better than anyone else, but for me it was a very different experience going to this massive conference and really being able to put everything in its place.

I’ll write another post this week on the two key takeaways I had on our major differentiators in the market that became incredibly evident to me at the show.