Five Months In: What’s Next for IAMT

Five months into the successful transition from IABM to IAMT, IAMT Chair, Josh Arensberg, reflects on the journey so far, the association’s evolving position within the industry, and the wider transformation reshaping the MediaTech ecosystem. As new markets, technologies and opportunities redefine the boundaries of MediaTech, he explores the role IAMT is playing in bringing the industry together, driving change and helping shape what comes next.

When IABM became the International Association of MediaTech (IAMT) at NAB Show, Las Vegas, earlier this year, the change was deliberately more than cosmetic. Behind the new identity was a larger question: what should an industry association look like when the industry itself is rapidly evolving?

For IAMT Chair, Josh Arensberg, that question sits at the heart of the transformation.

“We thought it was really important to show how the industry is transforming,” he says. “We knew that as our member community are looking for new revenue, new products, new areas of growth, that it really meant that we needed to be an organisation who could be there for them during this moment of transition.”

 

An industry without its old boundaries

Consolidation may dominate many conversations about the MediaTech market, but Arensberg sees another story unfolding alongside it.

“With every bit of consolidation that’s happening and transformation, there is new opportunity that’s coming into the market,” he says.

The transformation of established media businesses is occurring at the same time as entirely new categories of content creator, distributor and technology buyer are emerging. Live production is extending beyond television and content is being produced anywhere there is connectivity.

For IAMT, those adjacencies represent one of the greatest opportunities ahead.

Arensberg points particularly to areas such as venues, sport and live production. Connectivity, once one of the industry’s fundamental constraints, has become an enabler. At the same time, technologies for localisation, translation, dubbing and automated distribution are lowering many of the barriers that once separated markets.

“As IAMT looks forward, what we really want to do is make sure that we are helping to address: What is new? Where are the innovative Start-Ups? What are areas that have not been addressed previously? And how can we make sure that our member organisations have the support?” Arensberg states.

“It’s really important for our members to understand that as we look to address these new opportunities for growth and these new places where our members can go and grow their business, IAMT will already have been there, will already have boots on the ground, will already have local representation and will already create a community that you could engage in.”

Rather than simply representing an established industry, IAMT wants to help its members identify where that industry is going next.

 

From industry association to growth partner

For Arensberg, IAMT’s role is not simply to convene the industry, but to reduce some of the uncertainty involved in deciding where businesses should invest, expand and compete.

His shorthand for the association’s ambition is simple: help members know what’s next.

That means combining relationships and industry engagement with evidence that is increasingly valuable in a difficult commercial environment. Many organisations no longer have the internal resources they once did to maintain large research and market intelligence functions. IAMT, Arensberg argues, can increasingly operate as an extension of those teams.

“Let us go pull that data. Let us go run those surveys. Let us go help pull it all together,” he says. “The decision-making process right now is very quantitative. If the market’s there and we can show that to our members, then it makes sense to grow in those areas.”

It is a model he sees at work inside Verizon, where IAMT’s business intelligence is used to help understand the value and trajectory of areas including sports, media and live production – ultimately informing better business decisions.

Community, events and connections remain important, but increasingly value lies with helping a business decide where to place its next bet.

 

Building the connective tissue of a global industry

As companies move into unfamiliar markets, the value of an international association lies partly in its ability to shorten the distance between opportunity and access.

IAMT’s relationships across the wider technology and industry ecosystem — and its presence across Asia, Europe, North America, South America and the Middle East — are intended to give members routes into conversations and communities they may otherwise struggle to reach.

For manufacturers and service providers, that could mean understanding an emerging customer segment. For established global organisations, it could mean identifying where MediaTech intersects with a wider technology strategy. For smaller companies, it could mean accessing intelligence and relationships that would be difficult to build independently.

 

The democratisation of broadcasting

Look three to five years ahead and Arensberg believes one development could push that opportunity considerably further.

For years, the industry has talked about the democratisation of content creation. His argument is that the logical next stage is the democratisation of broadcasting– a shift that could substantially expand the broadcast technology market.

Arensberg sees particular untapped potential across Pro AV and other environments where sophisticated content production is becoming possible without the infrastructure historically required by broadcasters. The implications extend beyond finding another adjacent vertical to sell into. If the definition of a broadcaster changes, the definition of the MediaTech ecosystem changes with it. That creates a need for someone to connect those new buyers with the manufacturers and service providers capable of supporting them.

“I think it’s the IAMTs of the world that are going to help pull that together and create an ecosystem of both manufacturers and service providers to support that model,” he says.

It is perhaps the clearest expression of what the transformation is ultimately trying to achieve: not simply responding to where MediaTech has moved, but helping organise the ecosystem forming around where it is going.

 

Five months into the journey

Reflecting on the first five months of IAMT, Arensberg is candid that transformation requires experimentation.

“IAMT is forever growing and learning from our industry,” he says.

He credits IAMT CEO, Saleha Williams, and the wider IAMT team with accelerating that process — pushing the organisation into new areas, re-engaging the community through meetings and events, and moving early on subjects such as AI and convergence.

“Change is never easy,” he says. “But Saleha has the full support of the board and myself to really go out and push into new areas, new ideas, and help raise up the organisation and the team to do things we’d never done before.”

That willingness to experiment and learn, point towards an association becoming more outward-looking, more globally connected and more deliberately focused on the commercial questions facing its members.

 

An association for 365 days of the year

Ultimately, Arensberg wants the transformation to IAMT to change how businesses think about membership.

The familiar benefits remain: community, events, industry meeting spaces, intelligence, reports and access to customers and peers. But his ambition is for those individual touchpoints to become part of something more continuous.

“IAMT is an opportunity for a company to holistically benefit in a way that’s not just a one-off meeting that is going to happen once a year,” he says. “We’re there for you 365 days out of the year.”

IAMT is moving to a central place where companies are begin to see their effect: as a source of intelligence when they need to make a decision; a network when they enter a new market; a meeting point when they need to find a partner or customer; and a voice capable of bringing together an increasingly fragmented global MediaTech ecosystem.

Five months in, IAMT’s direction is increasingly clear.

As Arensberg puts it, the transformation is ultimately “an investment in the industry’s future” — and in building an association capable of moving with it.