rewrite this title InfoComm 2026: Iowa State’s Mike Pedersen on Why Higher Ed AV Must Embrace AI Fast – UC Today

For Mike Pedersen, Infocomm always feels like coming home.

“It’s a little bit like a family reunion,” he told UC Today at this year’s show in Las Vegas. “I get to see so many people I know and acquaintances I’ve made.”

But beyond the networking, Pedersen, Audiovisual Experience Manager at Iowa State University, had serious business to attend to, including speaking at the HETMA Higher Education Summit, a day-and-a-half event dedicated entirely to higher education AV professionals.

His session focused on a topic close to his heart: standardisation. For universities managing dozens or even hundreds of classrooms, standardising AV systems delivers benefits that ripple across the entire institution. “Instructors can walk into any room, and it looks familiar,” Pedersen explained. “They don’t have to worry.”

From an operational standpoint, fewer SKUs mean bulk purchasing and tighter cost control, a significant advantage for institutions under constant budget pressure.

Day-to-day, however, the challenges are more human than technical. Helping instructors feel comfortable with classroom technology remains an ongoing task. “Sometimes you’ve got to tell them how to share their laptop screen onto the projector,” Pedersen admitted. The solution, he finds, is patience and careful one-on-one support.

On the wider industry landscape, Pedersen is watching AI closely. He highlighted a prototype system from an Australian university that uses AI to autonomously test classroom AV equipment overnight, checking projector output and audio quality, then raising a ticket if something is off. “Those are the types of things that are coming,” he said.

“Labour savings and improving overall reliability, that’s going to be huge.”

AV over IP is another trend he expects to accelerate, with falling price points making the technology viable for an ever-growing number of spaces.

His takeaway from Infocomm 2026 was unambiguous: “AI is everywhere. If you’re not coming up to speed on it quickly, you’re getting behind.”