Take 500 (and counting) exhibitors large and small. Mix in 20,000 technology integrators. Add hundreds of subject matter experts, trainers, and speakers. Sprinkle liberally with Southern California sunshine.
Stir.
That’s the recipe for CEDIA 2017 in San Diego — and this year, the chance to broaden one’s knowledge is greater than ever.
Exponential Learning
The training offerings for CEDIA 2017 have expanded: CEDIA has added more than 70 courses this year, and the total number of classes and labs has crossed the 150 mark. As always, there’s a solid balance between business and technical training, with familiar faces handling the former. Some examples: Leslie Shiner (The ShinerGroup) has constructed a pair of courses on maximizing QuickBooks specifically for integration firms. Larry Heuvelman (TheOwnerConsultant.com) will examine the challenges of “Being a Good Boss.” Patrick Hartman (Diversified Systems International) and Frank White (Weld2 and Stay Tuned) dig into approaching the classic tough customer with a course specializing in “Hardballing.” And Frederick Ampel has tips to help you close a deal — tips that are rooted in primal human behavior — in his class titled “The Art of the Demo.”
On the tech side, there’s a new course in “Properly Securing a Residential Network” from Bjorn Jensen (WhyReboot) and Ed Pepitone (Audio Video Systems, Inc.) that addresses, among many other issues, how a home system can be compromised by anyone from the client to the HVAC guy. Some “old standbys” have been completely updated, too: MetaGeek’s Joel Crane was instrumental in a total rebuild of CEDIA’s Wireless Network Technologies Learning Lab (which covers “all common types of Wi-Fi that are out there and some non-Wi-Fi technologies as well,” according to Crane) and the Advanced Wireless Networking Learning Lab as well.
A CEDIA Training Pass is available at a deep discount for CEDIA members, and early-bird special pricing is in effect through July 14. As always, the opportunity’s there to take any of CEDIA’s Certification exams, too.
Exponential Insights
The CEDIA Talks return to the association’s booth on the floor — 20-minute, TED-style presentations that cover a broad variety of issues and concepts relevant to the CEDIA channel. Deeper dives can be found in CEDIA’s Open Sessions, panel discussions covering topics such as cybersecurity, HDR, ATSC.30, “The Great Dongle Debate,” and more. Each lively Session runs from an hour to 90 minutes, and the Talks and Sessions are free to CEDIA attendees.
The opening keynote is sure to be fascinating as well: Dave Evans, Co-Founder and CTO of Stringify and former Chief Futurist for Cisco (where he coined the term “The Internet of Everything”), will share his expertise on emerging technologies, as well as insights on how the IoIT — “The Internet of Intelligent Things” — will open up vast new opportunities for technology integrators.
Evans — who holds numerous patents in the fields of connected cars, networking technologies, virtual people, IoT, and more — gave us a glimpse into one aspect of what the keynote will address in a recent interview with CEDIA: using the data gathered by the IoT to improve the human condition.
“Once you start adding different types of things, you now get insight you simply didn't have before,” Evans explains. “It’s the old adage that you can't manage what you can't measure. And whether it's grand issues that we're dealing with, like climate, or small issues like in your home, the ability to get data from those things, to get insight, to manage things — it could be your utility bill, it could be your thermostat, it could be an entire city, it could be an entire planet.”
Exponential Excellence — and Sunshine, Too
This year’s CEDIA Awards Celebration should be one for the books: an evening of honors, eats, and camaraderie is slated for Wednesday, June 6 at a venue that only the city of San Diego could provide. This year, the CEDIA Awards will be handed out at a banquet on the deck of the USS Midway, a floating naval museum. The night’s festivities include a 1940s theme complete with music from the era — and the chance to cheer on the winners and hopefully pick up some hardware yourself.
Beyond the Awards, the setting for this year’s show is unparalleled. The San Diego Convention Center sits near the water on the edge of the “Gaslamp Quarter,” a district featuring food options and entertainment venues draped in Victorian Architecture. (The Quarter is celebrating its 150th Anniversary this year to boot.) Other nearby attractions include Coronado, beautiful beaches, Little Italy, the San Diego Zoo, and PETCO Park, home of the MLB’s San Diego Padres. The town’s also a craft beer mecca, so much so that a great many brewers (Green Flash, Ballast Point, and the ubiquitous Stone Brewing) have found success with national — heck, even global — distribution.
CEDIA 2017 runs from Sept. 5-9, 2017. Register today.
