Strategy in TECH...
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend the CEDIA Tech & Business Summit at the Hilton Hotel in Hasbrouck Heights in Northern New Jersey. To my eyes, this was a well-attended event and I was impressed with how the Association has put together a well-oiled machine that shows some real progress in elevating the value of attending a regional industry event like this.
Data from the 2024 CEDIA Expo in Denver, CO this past September shows a troubling trend – attendance actually declined…and declined appreciably – from the 2023 version of the event. And this decline took place even though the promoter has combined CEDIA Expo with a new event (new last year), the Commercial Integrator Expo (CIX), which was probably an effort to boost attendance numbers.
It’s September again and that means the approach of Fall, kids are back in school, and it’s time for CEDIA Expo. So like many of you, I packed my bags and headed to Denver, which almost feels like coming home again. But will the show this year be [musical reference] a Rocky Mountain High? Or will it be a Low Rider?
At the end of July, CEDIA announced that it would be holding a new kind of event called the CEDIA Symposium on the day before the CEDIA Expo 2023 opens. The association is all-in on AI apparently, and this symposium is all about AI in custom integration. The announcement promises it will offer “an engaging afternoon of thought-provoking discussions led by industry visionaries, AI experts, top integrators, and manufacturers.”
From the very beginning, there were, in my eyes, troubling elements to this initiative. Little did I know what was to come – that CEDIA would choose to bar the news media from its CEDIA Symposium
CEDIA has launched a new workforce acquisition initiative called CEDIA NextGen: Smart Home Career Toolkit. Designed to provide integrators the tools they need to improve and expand their outreach to attract new candidates to the smart home industry, the association has created an impressive series of multimedia tools to grease the skids in getting new recruits through integrators’ doors.
CEDIA held its annual member meeting just a couple of weeks ago in mid-December. The version offered this year was decidedly different than those in the past. This is likely due to the professional association management style of the organization’s new Global President and CEO Daryl Friedman.
CEDIA and staff offered members a slick marketing package of largely pre-recorded content and carefully controlled live content. But was it too slick? Did it really brief members with a balanced picture of both the successes and the challenges that CEDIA is facing? Or was it just a form of advertisement for the association?
About five seconds into our phone call, before I even had a chance to explain myself, AVIXA CEO David Labuskes suddenly burst out: “Oh! I know why you called me!” This reaction caught me off-guard as we’d never spoken before. But when he went on to tell me why he thought I had called him, he was right on the money. It was a clue that he is a deeper thinker than many executives I reach out to, and as we spoke further, that impression only got stronger.
Another surprise was that Labuskes knew me (and Strata-gee) better than I realized…
Emerald Expositions (NYSE: EEX), the national B2B trade show company that owns CEDIA Expo, CE Pro, and Commercial Integrator surprised the industry at the recent CEDIA Expo 2022 by abruptly announcing that next year they will be “co-locating” a show for commercial integrators at the same time and in the same facility. Reaction to this announcement was…to put it mildly…mixed. Is Emerald trying to imitate the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) show – an event for both residential and commercial businesses – by launching an ISUS (Integrated Systems United States) event??
Do you wonder why there was a mixed reaction to Emerald’s move? Read on…
On Wednesday, CEDIA Global President and CEO Daryl Friedman sent a letter to all members advising them that the election process for new Board members has been completed – and that the slate of three Board-selected candidates for the three open Board seats has now been filled by Stephan Goodhue, Jennifer Mallett, and James Ratcliffe. The cheery tone of the letter belies the fact that the election process was viewed by many as tainted and has inflamed anger from what seems to be a fairly significant percentage of members who resent losing the opportunity to vote for a candidate of their choice.
However, in this letter, Friedman did allow that “…we need to do a better job of communication.”
Perhaps one of the more surprising events at CEDIA Expo 2022 – at least in my mind – was an event that took place early in the morning on the first official day of the show floor opening. This event, the CEDIA Advocacy Town Hall in which the organization intended to discuss the extent of their political advocacy conducted on behalf of the membership, seemed to me like something unlikely to draw much attention…or attendance.
Boy…was I wrong!
