Bringing your Conference into the 21st Century, Episode 1: USB Type C
Hopefully you would have seen my top 5 technological Trends that I think will be popular this year. Now when I say this year, I mean they will begin to gain mainstream attention and will continue on to change the world we live in, our daily routines, health and fitness, hobbies and habits, the way we work and yes even the way our conferences and exhibitions work. When it comes to conferences and exhbitions I have identified four of these five trends that would work perfectly in the conference and events world, splicing this with some promotional product ideals creates new and innovative ways of bringing yesterday’s exhibitions and conferences into the world of tomorrow.
USB Type C
We’ve seen it all before, a speaker turns up to give his speech at a conference and doesn’t have the right cables, or is having issues with the over complicated AV system, where possible scenarios involve the sound working without video support or the video is working but is in black and white or at the wrong aspect ratio, I have even been to some conference centres which only use an S-Video input, I mean… who even uses S-Video anymore?? Then the AV team need to rifle through their bag of connections and dongles, realise you only have a HDMI input on your laptop but their connector only changes it from S-Video to VGA, ah yes but now we have another connector which changes VGA to DVI, still not quite
their so let’s add on another connector to change DVI to HDMI and by the time you get there, the video quality isn’t great and quite frankly now your visual support aid has become a video hindrance because rather than giving your speech you’ve spent 20 minutes out of your 45 minute allotted slot sorting out the AV problems.
Now how does USB Type C instantly solve this issue, the answer is it doesn’t, well not directly and not instantly. What USB Type C WILL DO (with time) is replace the need for all other types of cables, as I explained in my previous white paper, USB Type C support not only replaces the functions of current USB, where it is used as a plug and play connection for pc peripherals, and as power supply to portable electronic devices, but USB Type C also will support sound and visual transfer also, thus replacing all other Audio Visual cables. In the not too distant future, there is a possibility everything will be solved with one cable, a double ended USB Type C cable, and all ports will be USB Type C ports, and although we’re not saying go now and implement this into your conference room, it would not hurt to look into integrating a USB Type C port in your AV panel, if/when it needs updating.
There is another way USB Type C can help you “bring your conference into the 21st century,” in the past when attending conferences I have received products like a folders, stationary items and USB flash drive, in my technological trends white paper there is a product that could crossover here. I mentioned a USB Flashdrive that was double ended, one end being your generic USB plug in, and the other end being a USB type C connection, this provides you with the flexibility to plug it into a great range of personal computer and mobile devices. More and more people are switching to tablets and smaller computer; the USB type C is now allowing devices to go smaller and thinner by not having to incorporate the large USB port. This is a solution that can be looked into from your next conference down to its backwards compatibility and if your USB flash drive is USB 3.0 it will transfer at faster rates also!