I didn't see them there. That seems strange to me but apparently I would be horrible in the marketing world. If I were Yaesu I would have kept my mouth shut until I had the product ready to go with operational examples complete with on site networked working repeaters back to somewhere else with users on the other side for the public to interact with, which is exactly the opposite of what they did the last few years.
If I were Whistler I would bring every model, even the preliminary (previously 900) powered up for a demo with literature to hand out and at least explain what my future intentions were. Give the consumer something to look forward to. Give them a reason to want to buy your product. What does it do? What's unique? Why should I want to buy a scanner that looks like a RadioShack last year model only painted black?
If I were Connect Systems I would have had a stack of radios to sell and demo models that I pre-coordinated with the DMR guys across the room to have operational examples for people to use, with a rep or two to help explain the device instead of a stack of order forms. The item they had on hand was still in the box in the plastic. It wasn't even turned on. There were so many DMR signals available they would have had to kept a stack of batteries on hand but instead they kept it in the box turned off with only one banner to illustrate what it looks like powered up. They didn't even take a picture with the backlight on. I do better than that with Ebay auctions.
The best product representation I ever saw there was Thales several years ago when there were several live Liberty multiband units available for people to actually try and I don't think they even have an official product booth. We are talking about $6000 radios. Sure, they are spending your money (taxapayer funded defense contractor) but still, why can't Uniden or Whistler do that? It wouldn't cost that much. I would organize a group of beta tester like trusted coordinated individuals and entrust them with new devices then send them out into the wild for the weekend. It may be the digital age but word of mouth is still word of mouth and with the internet age it would be amplified thousands of times in no time.
Maybe they think it's just a ham transceiver thing or something, I don't know but it doesn't make sense to me why Uniden wasn't there. Were are talking about a Chinese mass produced product. It's not like they can't afford to have a few banged up and fat fingered by grubby oafs (they are already trading you new for a refurb due to the headphone fiasco) so what's the real loss? Several units in the field for a weekend would surely result in untold thousands in sales but what do I know, I'm only an end user but people like to see why they are worth buying.
By the way DMR is where it's at. Literally everyone that wasn't 80 years old with a 1997 Alinco drowning in RF with blaring open squelch while you are tying to have a conversation had one. The area DMR repeaters had to have been running red hot. They were 24/7. I setup the dongle in the 3rd floor hotel room miles from the main event and caught a surprising number of DMR simplex calls and conversations with DSD. The amount of DMR traffic was shocking. XPR8400/8300 repeaters could be had at a fair price if you looked around so the infrastructure is readily available to those interested and it appears many are jumping on the bandwagon. Heck, I had to force myself to walk away from the sale of one repeater just because I knew there would be hell to pay if I went home with an empty pocket and only a black aluminum box to show for it. If the scanner receiver manufacturers don't figure out a way to circumvent whatever issues it is they have with DMR they are losing ground by the day. I'm going to have to start using my XPR7550 just to scan a local neighboring county and I could see a day when my county goes that direction as well. Sure, the major metro areas may be Phase 1 and headed to Phase II and all that but the rest of the country seems to be adopting DMR. It's filling a hole left by outrageous pricing of grotesquely cost prohibitive state of the art P25 systems. It's rapidly taking on P25 for smaller agencies and businesses alike.
DMR is what P25 should have been.
Maybe I've seen too many episodes of Mad Men or something because the conversation among the group I was with consistently turned to the advertising (or lack thereof) of a majority of the vendors.
If I were Whistler I would bring every model, even the preliminary (previously 900) powered up for a demo with literature to hand out and at least explain what my future intentions were. Give the consumer something to look forward to. Give them a reason to want to buy your product. What does it do? What's unique? Why should I want to buy a scanner that looks like a RadioShack last year model only painted black?
If I were Connect Systems I would have had a stack of radios to sell and demo models that I pre-coordinated with the DMR guys across the room to have operational examples for people to use, with a rep or two to help explain the device instead of a stack of order forms. The item they had on hand was still in the box in the plastic. It wasn't even turned on. There were so many DMR signals available they would have had to kept a stack of batteries on hand but instead they kept it in the box turned off with only one banner to illustrate what it looks like powered up. They didn't even take a picture with the backlight on. I do better than that with Ebay auctions.
The best product representation I ever saw there was Thales several years ago when there were several live Liberty multiband units available for people to actually try and I don't think they even have an official product booth. We are talking about $6000 radios. Sure, they are spending your money (taxapayer funded defense contractor) but still, why can't Uniden or Whistler do that? It wouldn't cost that much. I would organize a group of beta tester like trusted coordinated individuals and entrust them with new devices then send them out into the wild for the weekend. It may be the digital age but word of mouth is still word of mouth and with the internet age it would be amplified thousands of times in no time.
Maybe they think it's just a ham transceiver thing or something, I don't know but it doesn't make sense to me why Uniden wasn't there. Were are talking about a Chinese mass produced product. It's not like they can't afford to have a few banged up and fat fingered by grubby oafs (they are already trading you new for a refurb due to the headphone fiasco) so what's the real loss? Several units in the field for a weekend would surely result in untold thousands in sales but what do I know, I'm only an end user but people like to see why they are worth buying.
By the way DMR is where it's at. Literally everyone that wasn't 80 years old with a 1997 Alinco drowning in RF with blaring open squelch while you are tying to have a conversation had one. The area DMR repeaters had to have been running red hot. They were 24/7. I setup the dongle in the 3rd floor hotel room miles from the main event and caught a surprising number of DMR simplex calls and conversations with DSD. The amount of DMR traffic was shocking. XPR8400/8300 repeaters could be had at a fair price if you looked around so the infrastructure is readily available to those interested and it appears many are jumping on the bandwagon. Heck, I had to force myself to walk away from the sale of one repeater just because I knew there would be hell to pay if I went home with an empty pocket and only a black aluminum box to show for it. If the scanner receiver manufacturers don't figure out a way to circumvent whatever issues it is they have with DMR they are losing ground by the day. I'm going to have to start using my XPR7550 just to scan a local neighboring county and I could see a day when my county goes that direction as well. Sure, the major metro areas may be Phase 1 and headed to Phase II and all that but the rest of the country seems to be adopting DMR. It's filling a hole left by outrageous pricing of grotesquely cost prohibitive state of the art P25 systems. It's rapidly taking on P25 for smaller agencies and businesses alike.
DMR is what P25 should have been.
Maybe I've seen too many episodes of Mad Men or something because the conversation among the group I was with consistently turned to the advertising (or lack thereof) of a majority of the vendors.
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. I would also like to see the Analyzer feature enable.
