Daily updates from ISC West 2018

Friday

Just before the show floor opened I met with some of the FLIR team. Brian Karas, the company's director of vertical market development, to hear a bit about the cameras FLIR plans to release later this year.

On the show floor I stopped by the MKS booth. The company recently announced a revamped approach to its dealer education,�Micro Key University,�and that has been going well, according to Joe Ligouri, company COO and CFO. “We've put out our first few videos and we've gotten some positive feedback from our customers,” he said.

At ISC West this year, mPERS manufacturer Freeus, announced the latest iteration of its Bell mPERS offering. Brock Winzeler, Freeus' COO, discussed the newest features to the updated product including a 4G LTE connection, smaller size, reduced weight, and announcements to the user, such as letting them know the unit is charging, among other new features and aspects. Winzeler said the roll out is coming at the end of Q2.

I then met with Jim McMullen, president and COO of COPS Monitoring and David Smith, COPS Monitoring's VP of marketing and business development. McMullen mentioned that while at the show, Lydia Security Monitoring's brands collectively passed the 3 million account mark. McMullen also mentioned the company's recent focus on PERS and mPERS technologies.

I stopped by the Rapid Response Monitoring booth on the show floor and caught up with Christopher Denniston, the company's director of marketing and contract development. He was positive on the turnout for the show this year and stated that they had the opportunity to introduce their latest innovations to many dealers and integrators. “In the past 12 months we have added 30+ new services and feature integrations. This year's show attendance allowed us to widely spread the word on these solutions, further existing dealer relationships and start new partnerships” Denniston said in an email interview after the show.

I remember when IDIS made a big splash when it came to�ISC West 2015 as both a first time exhibitor and one of the 10 largest booths at the show. At the company's booth this year, the company was showcasing its new H.265 IR PTZ surveillance camera, which has received two awards for its design: a 2018 international iF Design Award and the Red Dot 'seal of quality' Award.

From there I went to see Arecont Vision. Jeff Whitney, VP of marketing, showed me some of the latest offerings from the company announced at the show. Arecont is rolling out a new line of cameras, its Contera line, as well as its own software solution, ConteraVMS, a cloud managed recorder, Contera CMR, and a web service, ConteraWS.

My last meeting of this year's show was with I-View Now; I got the chance to catch up with I-View's president Larry Folsom. I-View Now has created a couple new integrations, including with Mastermind—along with a new service that will allow end users through Mastermind to cancel alarms request dispatch or call the operator in the event of an alarm. The company will also be able to connect with Ezviz cameras, a self-installed line, and act as the conduit for alarm and video to a monitoring center. On Thursday, I met with Marek Robinson, who recently joined the company to lead its dealer program and dealer engagement.

ISC West 2018 was a great show this year. As always, it was great catching up with professionals I've known since I started in the industry and meeting new faces.

Thursday

While the show floor has a nice buzz of excitement, new technology, and the chance to meet face-to-face with professionals I haven't seen in a while, it's always nice to get out for some fresh air with the Security 5k/2k. It was a bit windy, but the sun was bright and it was a warm morning walk.

Back in the ISC West exhibit room, I first met with Keith Deaton,�the recently appointed COO of Sargent and Greenleaf. Deaton gave me an overview of some of the company's solutions, such as the A-Series ATM lock that has a larger display which can offer more information to a technician.

Courtney Brown, Security Central's president and owner, greeted me at the company's booth. I also spoke with Jamie Byrd, Security Central's service delivery manager, and Craig Swallow, managing director for SoloProtect—a personal safety device designed for discreet alerting and monitoring escalating situations. The two companies recently formed a partnership, aided by SoloProtect's integration into Bold's automation. The device, which also holds an ID card, can alert a monitoring center of a user's potential risk. SoloProtect's device can then transmit audio for an operator to listen to and decide on further action.

At the Honeywell booth I met with Bruce Anderson, director of external communications and social media, Trent Perrotto, senior manager external communications and media, Michael Coniff, global product marketing manager, and Jay Ramachandran, director of product marketing. Ramachandran showed me some features of the company's upcoming residential platform, which will aid dealers and alarm users through having an easy process for users replacing components. Coniff gave me a demo of MaxProCloud and its updated interface.

Each year,�Security Systems News�does on-camera video interviews at ISC West. This year I interviewed Brian McLaughlin, CEO of Alula, the new brand for Resolution Products and ipDatatel; Mitch Klein of the Z-Wave Alliance; Joey Rao-Russell, PPVAR's vice president; Matt Narowski, Bold Technologies' VP of operations; and Avigilon's president and COO, James Henderson.

You can look forward to those videos being posted on SSN's website in the coming weeks.

Mike Zydor, Affiliated Monitoring's managing director, and Daniel Oppenheim, Affiliated Monitoring's EVP, talked with me about the effort the company has put into its relatively new Texas facility, which is redundant and load sharing with the company's main facility in New Jersey. Oppenheim highlighted three key trends he sees for Affiliated: PERS and mPERS, interactive video, and further development of its software.

I then went to meet with Justin Bailey, president and COO at AvantGuard Monitoring. Bailey mentioned that the company has had a strong start to 2018, adding on large dealers. He said that the company has been working with dealers on its hybrid monitoring options, which allow flexibility in control over monitoring, with options like part-time monitoring from an alarm dealer's facility and the other part with AvantGuard.

At the CMS booth, I was able to catch up with Tony Wilson, president, and Jennifer Marshall, CMS' marketing and communications manager. I also got to meet Heidi Hicks, the company's business operations manager. The three of them outlined for me CMS Message Center—a live answering service now integrated into its CMS Compass dealer portal. Wilson, Marshall and Hicks also went over the company's integration to monitor Reemo Health, a mobile health platform designed into a watch—the company's first step into mPERS-style solutions.

My last stop for the day was the Dahua booth, where I met Tim Shen, marketing director, Jennifer Hackenburg, product marketing manager, and Rebecca Colesen, digital marketing specialist. The three of them went over some of Dahua's working on, like AI built into cameras, showcasing uses with facial recognition and traffic at the booth.

Wednesday

My first show floor meeting of this year's ISC West was with video and IoT platform provider Gorilla Technology and the company's CEO Dr. Spincer Koh and Gorilla's senior business development manager, Winnie Koh.

I spoke with Spincer Koh more recently on the company's Security Convergence Platform that compiles data from cyber- and physical security sources. On the show floor it was great to see how Gorilla's platform helped with a string of ATM hackings.

My next meeting was with Cliff Dice, president and CEO of DICE Corp. DICE's sister company IPtelX, an alarm industry focused telecom, has now passed two million subscribers, Dice told me on the show floor.

I also caught up with DICE's vice president of operations, James Beaty. He told me about the similarities and differences between the new SMS Check-In mass notification system that DICE announced recently and other SMS capabilities the company has developed.

At Milestone's booth I met with Courtney Dillon Pedersen, the company's communications manager for the Americas. We talked a bit about the positive feedback the company has gotten following its MIPS 2018 event.

Mitchell Klein, executive director of the Z-wave Alliance talked with me about Z-Wave's approach and purpose at an event like ISC West. One is to promote the products of participating alliance members to the dealers in attendance; another is to represent the ecosystem that Z-Wave technologies create, showing the value to other potential partners.

IC Realtime earlier this year announced the company's�new video search platform that uses natural language called Ella. Andrew Nassar, the company's general manager, talked with me about the new dealer portal for the Ella system. The company announced the new portal on Tuesday of this week, which is entirely separate from IC Realtime's portal for its current dealers; a dealer doesn't need to sell IC Realtime's other products in order to access the Ella portal.

At ADT's booth I got to meet with Bob Tucker, ADT's public relations director, Joe Nuccio, president of dealer partnership for ADT, Ken Rosen, senior director of training and recruiting, and Muawia Bishr, president of MAGNA Smart Home, a new ADT Dealer. Together, they gave me a picture of what it is like to be a new authorized dealer for ADT, such as the benefit of having a strongly recognized brand.

From there I went to the Bosch booth, which was quite abuzz with a variety of products, demonstrations and new booth features. I first spoke with Paul Garms, director—regional marketing, intrusion, for the company. Garms talked a bit about how the company has utilized cloud connectivity in some of its products to ease installs for Bosch's dealers. Sean Murphy, Bosch's director of marketing for North America, video products, showed me through a new feature to the booth: an interactive marketplace where attendees can get beverages or food while seeing real world applications for Bosch solutions in retail, loss prevention and marketing environments.

At the Mivatek booth I got to speak with Joe Liu, company CEO. Liu outlined some of the big changes for the company, such as switching to solely OEMing products and changing the name to “Mivatek Smart Connect,” among others. Switching to be entirely an OEM allows the company to focus more on engineering instead of channel branding, Liu explained.

From there I stopped by the Kwikset booth. Chris Hummel, territory manager—Northeast, gave me an overview of five new locks that were either recently released or would be released in coming weeks, including its Obsidian lock and Convert conversion kit to change a normal deadbolt into a smart lock.

MONI in late February announced an exclusive, long-term licensing agreement, which would result in the company completely rebranding to BRINKS Home Security. This branding was present at ISC West this year, with the name all over the company's booth. Jeff Gardner, CEO for MONI—now BRINKS Home Security told me that this is the first public appearance of the new name, and that a full rollout of the brand is planned for May.

I walked over to the Nortek booth where Bill Hensley, senior director of marketing, and Anu Herranen, director of marketing and branding, gave me a tour of this year's booth. Herannen and Hensley highlighted a range of new products, including several new sensors—such as the Stove & Grill Guard, gate and driveway sensor, water sensor, outdoor door and window sensor and a trigger lock sensor—as well as the DIY installed and professionally monitored 2GIG Rely system.

My last meeting on the show floor was with EMERgency24, where I met with Kevin Lehan, public relations manager and branch manager, Kevin McCarthy, national sales manager, and Baird Larson, vice president and director of technology. Lehan said that while the company highlights its new offerings it also wants to convey the strength of its core monitoring capabilities.

Tuesday

I attended the DMP Owners' Forum this year, held at the Keep Memory Alive Event Center, an interesting building designed by architect Frank Gehry. The building features 75-foot ceilings and 199 windows, no two of which are the exact same in shape or size.

Jon Adams, DMP's dealer development manager—Southern California, was the host of the forum this year. He took the stage to kick off the event by welcoming all the attendees and giving each person the chance to introduce themselves.

The first keynote was presented by Jason Young, the president of LeadSmart Inc., as well as an author, consultant and trainer. Young discussed different states of being for employees, they can be either low or high in fulfillment, and low or high in performance. The ideal would be an employee who has a high sense of fulfillment as well as a high performance.

Company culture was a main point for Young. He compared, in one instance, the culture of a company to a tree; it is deep rooted, but what is above the surface (the employees) is the part most people see.

In his presentation Young drew from his experiences as a trainer with Southwest Airlines, a company with a clearly defined vision, purpose and mission around industry excellence and appealing customer service.

In creating a culture of service, Young highlighted two elements: cost and distinction. The costs for a company are easily measured, while creating distinction is more subjective and takes effort.

Next, Richard Turner presented “D.E.A.L.T.,” which stands for the dreams, excellence, analysis, loyalty and tenacity need to achieve things in life.

Turner is a card mechanic, with the ability to manipulate a deck of cards for a desired effect. Turner gave a variety of examples, dealing out winning hands, shuffling a deck of cards in each hand, and shuffling a deck back to its original order—four intact progressions from ace through king.

The difficulty of each maneuver was made more impressive by the fact that Turner lost his vision when he was younger.

Turner told stories about other instances in his life, such as in gaining a black belt in karate, where he applied himself. Everyone is dealt a hand in life, sometimes a bad hand, but they choose how to play it, he said.

“In the game of life, stay focused on your game,” said Turner.

Jeff Britton, DMP's vice president of product design, took the stage to discuss some of the company's newest developments, including a new integration with the Ring doorbell through DMP's Virtual Keypad app. The integration also allows DMP to work with Ring cameras, Britton noted.

Jeffrey Cummings is the director of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health, named after Lou Ruvo who died of Alzheimer's in 1994. The Cleveland Clinic facility collocated with the Keep Memory Alive Event Center.

Cummings gave an overview of the work that the center does to help put patients first, such as eliminating waiting rooms and focusing on hospital training. The center studies a variety of neurodegenerative disorders, which includes people with Alzheimer's or multiple sclerosis as well as boxers and MMA fighters.

Proceeds from events held in the Keep Memory Alive Event Center go to help the research, treatment and clinical studies of the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center.

Throughout the event, attendees were shown brief videos that outlined features of DMP's Virtual Keypad Access, which provides users with a cloud-based access control interface. Several new features for this offering were announced at the forum. Brad Tucker, DMP director of product management and support highlighted some of these, including the recently announced holiday dates feature, allowing users to create exceptions or permissions specific to certain days.

Another new feature is a users page that allows for all users of a system to be managed through the interface. “We're very excited about this new feature,” Tucker said.

The final keynote for the day was delivered by author Cy Wakeman. She advised the audience on the potential negative impacts—lost work hours—that come through drama in an office. The average person spends about two and a half hours per day in drama at work per day, she said, and that totals up to 816 lost hours per year.

Wakeman leveraged her background as a therapist and a human resources specialist to illustrate the ways in which drama manifests. An employee, for instance, can focus too much on the circumstances of their work situation—elements that may be beyond their control—such as the company's need to move their department.

An employee expending considerable energy on combating a perceived problem hurts the objective of the company, whereas taking that same energy and working with company leadership eliminates drama and helps the business' goals.

Each of the speakers had a valuable message for attendees, and I'm glad I was able to attend this year's DMP Owners' Forum.

Before the show, Monday

Soon I'll be heading out to Las Vegas for this year's ISC West. I've got a schedule full of meetings on the show floor, including apopintments at the media stage. I look forward to hearing the latest buzz in the industry and seeing what companies are exhibiting this year. Check back here for daily updates about news and events happening around the show!