08.01.2007 — CEDIA Expo is just around the corner. The early bird deadline for course registration is past, and all the good hotels were booked up months ago.

If you’re attending, it’s time to start thinking about how you’re going to make the best use of your time.

Continuing Education

CEDIA works hard to provide you with useful, quality educational courses to help you and your firm grow and prosper. Early on, people at our firm were on fire to sign up for any and every course that was offered. That’s not necessarily the best use of your time or money.

Read the descriptions in the course calendar, and then read them again. Now read it out loud to a co-worker.

Ask yourself, “What do I think I’m going to get out of this in terms of insight or skills that will help me do my job better?” The fact is, at a hundred or so dollars for many courses, you should aim to learn something that you didn’t know before that will help your business.

Don’t forget the free vendor training. Sure many of them are unadulterated sales pitches, but they also earn you CEDIA credits toward the upkeep of your Installer or Designer certifications.

Some of the courses are actually reasonably full of content, such as the ones that involve programming solutions. It’s also a great way to get a closer look at a prospective vendor and ask their technical people some hard questions.

New and Interesting Vendors

I love trade shows, both as an attendee and as a vendor with a booth. That said, the experience can grind you down and leave you exhausted at the end of the day. So, how are you going to productively search for vendors whose solutions can benefit your company?

By signing up for CEDIA’s MyCEDIA application, your company’s profile will be available to vendors looking for new dealer partners. This means that between now and September, you will receive hundreds of emails from manufacturers, agencies and service providers who want to meet you in Denver, and sell you something.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Last year, I screened what felt like a thousand emails from vendors pitching themselves. I winnowed that down to a dozen or so whose product seemed worthy of review and scheduled meetings with them. After multiple meetings with members from both our design and install teams, we ended up with three new vendors whose products have done well for us.

Of course, there’s always the old school approach to trade shows: just walk up and down the aisles looking for something that catches your eye. To make it easier, you can get an electronic map and vendor directory at the convention center beamed to your Palm or Blackberry.

Searching the map is easy. Last year, I found it invaluable to navigate the enormous show floor, as well as after the Expo, to follow up with prospective vendors I didn’t connect with at the show.

Networking Opportunities

By far, one of the best aspects of CEDIA Expo is the opportunity to meet and get to know other integrators in the industry, talk frankly about your business and gain insight from the wisdom of others.

Odds are, someone has been in your shoes before and has sage advice to offer you. I always make an effort at vendor-sponsored shindigs to mingle and get to know new people.

CEDIA Expo is a great time, but plan ahead to make the best use of your company’s time and you’ll maximize the benefits that come from attending.

Lee Distad is a CEDIA Certified Professional Designer for Systems Inc, a high-end audio/video and automation firm in Edmonton, Alberta. For 19 years, Systems Inc has provided consolidated design, installation, and project management services for new home construction and renovation. Systems Inc’s new Web site is under construction at http://www.systemsinc.ca and Lee’s business and industry blog can be read at http://www.leedistad.com