ATLANTA--ASIS International, which took place here on Sept. 15-18, was an opportunity to see first-hand the technologies available to solve some of the industry's challenges. Developments in analytic technology and the power it brings to video surveillance had a large presence on the show floor. I met with Scott Schnell, president and CEO of VideoIQ, who demonstrated the power and capability of analytic technology with its searchable video feature. Schnell simply outlined a human in one video screen and the system searched six hours of video for similar figures, and in seconds listed results by confidence levels. At the time of the show, VideoIQ had just begun shipping its new line of analytic cameras and encoders that, in addition to analytic technology, also have built-in speakers that allow operators to use two-way communication over VoIP. Schnell said VideoIQ is also incorporating solar panels into its cameras.

I also stopped by the ioimage booth for a demonstration of their analytic technology, which includes an auto-zoom, PTZ-tracking feature that follows a detected human as it moves through the screen. The company also recently began manufacturing its own analytic camera and encoder product line. Sagy Amit, director of sales and engineering for ioimage, said the company is currently working in the commercial and military sectors, but is trying to focus growth in the lower commercial perimeter security market.

In addition to analytic technology, there were several companies that develop software systems to bring together disparate systems from different manufacturers into one alerting application. Vidsys has an open Physical Security Information Management software system that does just this, and it offers the ability to feed live video to a PDA device. David Fowler, senior vice president of marketing and product development, demonstrated how an iPod could receive live video feeds and control the PTZ camera with a simple tilt of the phone, taking advantage of the iPhone's built-in gyroscope feature.

I also talked to Orsus who offers Situator, a product-agnostic software system that generates a unified view of various products for an end user. The software notifies an operator of an alert, pulls up a GPS-based map to identify the location of the alert and also lists proper response procedure making it easier for operators to quickly identify and respond to alerts.

In addition to the new technology on the show floor, a highlight of ASIS International was the opportunity to hear James Carville, the former lead strategist for Bill Clinton's presidential campaign and a prominent Democratic political strategist and his wife, Mary Matalin, former assistant to President George W. Bush and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney, and currently a strategist and consultant for the Republican party, discuss not only the excitement of this election season, but also remind the audience how two people with passionate political differences can manage to get along.

"This election has eradicated any model used to put together campaigns," said Matalin. "Everything is different, this is a different paradigm." While Matalin supports Republican John McCain, she predicted that the successful candidate will be the one who demonstrates that he can act in real time about current issues impacting the country, such as the fluctuation of the stock market, the energy crisis and international issues.

James Carville, a supporter of Democratic candidate Barack Obama agreed with his wife about the uniqueness of this election year. "Describing this year is incomprehensible," he said. "We've never seen this precedent and, in all likelihood, it'll never happen again."

Carville also emphasized the need for candidates to take immediate action and to start openly discussing their course of action. "The standard of living is slipping away and that's why there's an enormous interest in this election," he said. "There's a sense of angst and concern and it should motivate candidates to do something right away."

So, in the midst of such a heated political season, how do these two manage to co-exist as a married couple?

They don't talk about politics at home and they maintain individual TV-watching rooms, explained Matalin. "I haven't even read his half of the book," she said, referring to the book, All's Fair: Love, War and Running for President, which the two co-authored together in 1995.