·
5 minute read
Summary
On this episode of Direct from the Expo, the Collab Collective’s Craig Durr speaks with Rob Whatley, Director of Innovation and Technology for AVI-SPL, live at Enterprise Connect 2026. Filmed during a show floor walk, the conversation offers a partner’s perspective on how the event is evolving, along with early impressions of announcements, industry direction, and what attendees can expect as the week unfolds.
Their discussion covers:
- Event Evolution and Venue Shift: How the move away from Orlando is influencing attendee experience, networking opportunities, and overall show dynamics
- Changing Industry Presence: A noticeable reduction in vendor footprint and what it could mean for the future of enterprise-focused events
- AI in Customer Experience: Key themes from sessions, including AWS demonstrations of agentic AI in call centers and real-world enterprise use cases
- Strategic Partnerships and Innovation: Insights into AVI-SPL’s work with platforms like Zoom and developments around Google Beam and immersive collaboration
- What to Watch Next: Anticipation around upcoming keynotes from Zoom and RingCentral, and expectations for how the event may evolve in the coming years
Transcript
Craig Durr: Everyone, this is Craig Durr of the Collab Collective. Welcome to Enterprise Connect 2026; this is one of my favorite shows. It's one of the shows where we talk about enterprise communication, customer experience… and this year, it's moved to Las Vegas. Now, what I love to do when it comes to these shows is do a show floor walk. And this is when I have friends, and you walk me around. And I've got somebody queued up that I want you to meet.
Come on in, Rob.
Rob Whatley: Good to see you again. Good to see you.
Craig Durr: This is Rob Whatley. He is the Director of Innovation and Technology for AVI-SPL.
Rob Whatley: Hello, everyone.
Craig Durr: Yeah, last time we spoke was at Zoomtopia. I was just thinking about this.
Rob Whatley: That was two years ago.
Craig Durr: It has been two years, right? Where are you guys right now?
Rob Whatley: We’re right behind with a lot of great announcements this week.
Craig Durr: I know, and there's even some more coming out. We're gonna see a lot of good stuff tomorrow. But this is what I want to do. This is a great opportunity to get a perspective from a partner, someone in the channel, of what they think about the show. So why don't we just do this: we'll take a walk down, and we can just talk about the show in itself. How about that?
Rob Whatley: Absolutely
Craig Durr: So, this is what I want to know. Let's start with the idea thatEnterprise Connect has been in Orlando for God knows how long, right?
Rob Whatley: Forever… VoiceCon and all that stuff way back.
Craig Durr: I know all the name changes, exactly. So here we are in Las Vegas. What do you think of the venue? What do you think of the change?
Rob Whatley: By the way, I love the venue, I love the change.The challenges with Orlando was it's trying to get a little stale for the first part. Secondly, though, I think most importantly, now that we are here in Vegas, as opposed to being landlocked in Orlando, people actually go out and buy belts and go to get food, do all these different things that they need to do around here because they're not landlocked at the convention center in Orlando. The other thing is that the show has shrunk.
Craig Durr: It's gotten smaller. I've heard there’s been about a 20% decrease in what the vendor does as well.
Now, this is what I was really interested in looking at. I felt like since the show has been in Orlando for so long, it kind of exhausted the opportunity for customers to come into the experience, and it wound up to be a lot of industry people. That's where I met you. It's like we started an industry talking to industry. I was hoping to see customers come here now that we're moving to the West Coast. But it's early, so I can't tell you as of yet. We'll get some days later, but we'll get an idea from that, too, right?
So they have challenges, right? A little bit slower, a little bit smaller.
Rob Whatley: That's correct. And Microsoft's not here, Cisco is here, but they basically have just a really small booth… they've got some good products to talk about, but none of that is actually here. You don't see the needs of the world that are normally here as well. So it's just the entire motif of this conference has changed, and it seems like each year, it's just getting smaller and smaller. So how long do you think potentially it's going to last? I don't know, right?
Craig Durr: We'll have to see. The other thing also, I think, is a pattern that, as it's doing in its namesake, it's leaning more into the customer experience side as well. So it is very much like you said, VoiceCon and those old names. It's getting back to customer experience, voice centric, so we're seeing people like Dialpad... We're seeing people like NiCE here and a lot of those call center voice interaction moments. Do you still think this is an opportunity for them to come in and share their story?
Rob Whatley: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, AWS gave a really good story today on stage. They were talking about call centers and their agentic AI working with insurance companies. It was pretty powerful, and I was sitting there on my phone... You know, sometimes you sit there, you get things going on, and then all of a sudden they started this demo. I just put my phone down. It was pretty powerful.
Craig Durr: It caught your attention. That was great. Let's keep walking that way. All right, so that's a good thing. So you saw AWS on stage. What else did you see on stage today?
Rob Whatley: Well, it wasn't a lot. They just basically had AWS and had a panel of folks talking about AI. So it's just, obviously, a recurring theme. You can't stop talking about AI. They were talking about AI, definitely with a few different use cases behind how folks are actually using AI. But tomorrow, you got other keynotes with Zoom coming up.
Craig Durr: Zoom and RingCentral are going to be there as well.
Rob Whatley: We're looking forward to seeing what Zoom has to say because they have a lot of announcements all the time.
Craig Durr: And you guys are a great partner with Zoom.
Rob Whatley: Yeah, we're a platinum partner with Zoom. We do a lot with Zoom. We also consume Zoom's products.
Craig Durr: That's right, and you are actually also involved a lot with some of their innovative products right now—the HP Dimension, Google Beam, Zoom partnership, right?
Rob Whatley: We are really involved with Google Beam. There’s so muchI want to tell you about that, but I can't. But there's a lot going on between our companies when it comes to Google Beam and Zoom.
Craig Durr: I tell you what, why don't we do this? Why don't we go ahead and just fade into the distance and we'll take a look around and bring some information back to people.
You're right; you hit this. You got a lot to show with Google Beam coming out. I'm looking forward to that. Back to this event, it's day one—there's still a lot to see. We got two more days to see what's gonna take place right now. I am looking forward to those keynotes tomorrow, like you said. That'd be some good information too, and I'm just beginning to explore the show floor. We'll see what happens.
Rob Whatley: Yeah, I hope so, and hope we see more customers here. Just hopefully, all the things that we're seeing are not necessarily true. Maybe the show will grow next year, right? But we'll see.
Craig Durr: How about we go explore, and I'll tell everyone goodbye.
Hey, everyone. This is Craig Durr and Rob Whatley. Thank you for joining us. We're gonna bring you some more updates from Enterprise Connect 2026.
