Lewis CaliburnIn a personal letter announcing his retirement, CEDIA CEO Daryl reflects on his time at CEDIA and shares what’s next for the future.
Dear CEDIA Community:
I wanted to share some thoughts with you, both personal and on the broader industry.
Personal news
First, some very bittersweet news for me: I’ll be retiring next year. I consider it an honour to have led CEDIA and got to know so many of you over these five years. This CEDIA Channel is unlike any other – a true community.
I often tell my wife Marcia, “I wish I had got this job 10 years earlier.” I would have loved to come into the industry sooner and had more of my working years left to give to CEDIA. But time catches up to us all, and early this year Marcia and I started talking about a wind-down plan.
I’m not going anywhere soon. CEDIA has never had the benefit of a CEO overlap, so I wanted to give the Board an extremely long notice period for them to do a thoughtful and unrushed search. There’s no official end date, and I’ve promised to stay on to support my successor as long as he or she needs me. And there’s still a lot I want to do! On that note…
Education News
CEDIA has concluded a complete revamp and rethink of how we provide education. We’ll keep what works well: the only globally-recognised certifications in our industry, brand-agnostic training useful no matter the product, and conferences led by the best experts on two continents at the world’s biggest gatherings of home integrators: CEDIA Expo and ISE.
But we’re also rethinking professional development to give it the stature it deserves as a true career path. Our dedicated volunteers and education staff will be rolling out a new model that is more nimble, more customisable, and will make your businesses more profitable. Leading this effort is the volunteer of all volunteers: CEDIA Chairperson Amanda Wildman. If you know Amanda, you know of her dedication to this community. She is unstoppable.
And professional development is not just for your current employees, it’s for your future employees too. The CEDIA Foundation is providing free training to new entrants to create a talent pipeline. And our meetings with the U.S. Department of Labor will result in the first-ever official U.S. apprenticeship for our channel. Imagine… young people seeing the integrator’s job as a recognised career path by the United States Government – and similar work is happening around the world.
Emerald News
Emerald Exhibitions which owns CEDIA Expo was recently acquired by Apollo Funds, a major private equity (PE) firm. People have been asking me what this means for us.
While I have no inside information on this, my initial thought is that there is only upside for CEDIA Expo. First, Emerald was already 93% owned by a different PE firm based in Canada. That company, Onex, took Emerald public while Apollo is taking it back to being privately held. In other businesses I’ve been involved with, that’s a good move, as the company can focus on building its products and services and be less concerned about meeting quarterly earnings reports.
Second, Apollo seems to be bullish on live trade shows. I kind of love this quote from them: “As AI and digital tools rapidly expand the ways professionals connect and share information, they are simultaneously elevating the value of trusted, in-person gatherings, where industries come together to do business, build relationships, and make consequential decisions.”
Finally, they are combining Emerald with another purchase, Questex. That company also has trade show properties and a year-round B2B online engagement platform. All in all, I am optimistic that Apollo will breathe new energy, ideas and capital into the show.
AVIXA News
In other news, AVIXA did a deal with Prosouce and HTSA to form a residential component of InfoComm. This feels a bit “square peg in a round hole” to me. InfoComm bills itself as “The World’s Most Vital Pro AV Show” and says it’s “singularly focused on applied audiovisual integration.” AVIXA’s own release notes that 90% of InfoComm attendees don’t touch residential at all.
I love attending InfoComm, but I find myself entirely surrounded by enterprise IT folks. CEDIA Expo is and will remain the biggest residential integration show in North America. That’s where my people are. And that’s where I’ll be.
And two final thoughts…
Remember, this is the last year for CEDIA Expo in Denver before the show starts to rotate cities. Let’s make it a blow-out. I hear a bar crawl is in the works for Friday and rumour has it I’ll be buying the first round (for members-only).
With all sincerity, I thank each and every one of you for welcoming me into this industry and doing the important work of making people happy in their homes. I’ve worked in three different industries in my career and never loved any as much as this one. My promise to you in my final months is to work as hard as I’ve ever worked, and to leave CEDIA healthy and prosperous. It’s the least I can do for this community.
Thank you,
Daryl