TechSec Day 2

I know many of you have been refreshing your browsers for hours, desperate for the latest TechSec news, so I apologize. (Those of you who've actually been refreshing your browsers, please seek psychiatric attention.) Anyway, Day 2 was pretty hot, actually. The video analytics panel, featuring Alan Lipton from ObjectVideo and Doug Marman from VideoIQ, was standing-room-only. The big message (which you already got if you read the newswire) was that analytics actually work now (huzzah!), but you have to actually have a plan for using them properly, just like you have a plan for each piece of technology you're employing. Analytics are no panacea, and Alan did a great job of showing what analytics can't do - i.e., see in the dark without help, see through fog, pick out a face in a crowd of 100,000, figure out if four pixels of information is a person or not, etc. Then Doug presented a great business case for analytics in use in a virtual guard tour application. This just seems like a brilliant RMR opportunity for even a small integrator selling to your average car lot. Also, there was a real buzz around the show floor, as people really seemed to be putting two and two together, getting creative with how different manufacturers could work together to make integrators' lives really easy. Particularly, the command and control software makers (you can get the full list of exhibitors here) were getting a ton of attention. Anyway, without further ado, here's the video that gives you a free pass to the day's activities. It was a great event, and I'm already looking forward to 2009, which will again be in Dallas. Okay, I'll admit I'm partly looking forward to it because it gives me a chance to hit Austin afterwards. On Wednesday night, I hit the Continental Club. That place rocks.