SPEAKER_00 0:03

Since the inception of the Custom Integration Channel, trade shows in North America have treated residential and commercial work as separate worlds. But my guests today are making a different bet. Seeing the ever-growing number of integrators straddling both Resi and commercial work, they are bringing these verticals together for a brand new industry event coming in 2027. In this episode of Insights, I'm joined by Tom Doherty, Director of New Technology Initiatives at HTSA, Jim Pierce, the CEO of ProSource, and Jen Heinel, Senior Vice President of Expositions America's at Avixa. Together, they represent the team behind Reside 2027, a brand new residential trade show co-located with Light of Palooza and Infocom at the Orange County Convention Center in June of 2027. Our conversation covers the origin story behind this exciting new event, how it compares to other trade shows in the industry, and how the team hopes a deep focus on training and relationship building will define the event's success. As always, this conversation was originally recorded live with audience questions woven throughout. For the full video experience, check out the link in the episode description. If you're a believer in the power of in-person events to elevate the industry, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. Hello, everybody. Welcome to our July edition of Insight Sessions. I am Jason Griffin, Director of Product at OneVision Resources, and we've got a great discussion lined up for you today, providing a sneak peek here at Reside 2027. This is a big new event that I think is going to do great things for the industry. It's going to be co-located with Infocom in Orlando, uh, June of 2027. And it's going to unite for the first time large commercial residential trade shows into one experience. So I'm a big believer personally in the impact of these in-person events, and I'm really excited to learn more about Reside, and hopefully you all are as well. We've got three great guests that are going to help us do just that. I'll give quick introductions to them here in just a moment. Before I do that, I just wanted to encourage everybody to chime in today with questions, comments, or feedback throughout the course of today's webinar. We would love for this to be interactive and to hear what's on your mind in terms of just thoughts and questions about the event. So please do feel free to drop those into the chat uh throughout today's event. Getting to our guest introductions, we've got Jen Heinhold. She is the Senior Vice President Expositions Americas at Avixa. Jen is um uh she leads the strategy and operations for the company's exposition and conference portfolio in the Americas, and that includes Infocom, Reside, and Lidapalooza. We've got Tom Doherty, he's the director of new technology initiatives at HTSA. Uh he's the former founder of Litapalooza, which was acquired by Avixa in 2026, and he's got a very long track record in the industry. He was the co-founder of CEDIA in 1989 and its first elected president, CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient in 2001, founder of Eshin and Grace Note, and a Lutron Hall of Fame inductee. So a busy, busy guy and uh a track record here in the industry that speaks for itself. We've got Jim Pierce, CEO of ProSource Buying Group. Uh, ProSource is a nearly 600-member group that is focused on creating strong and productive vendor relationships. The group also focuses heavily on leadership and operations training as well as best practice collaboration. Jim is also a 40-year veteran of the consumer electronics industry and is proud to serve the ProSource membership. So, Jen, Tom, Jim, thank you all three for being here. Looking forward to jumping in. Getting right into the um sort of meat and potatoes of today's event, I wanted to come over to you, Jen. And I want to start with actually an audience question that came in uh prior to the event uh from Dean Wilson. And so Dean is a longtime industry veteran, longtime believer in CDA, which is kind of the big industry event, of course, that everybody knows and has been around for a long time. And he said, you know, as somebody who's been in the industry for a long time, he's just now hearing about Reside for the first time and would love to know like what's it, what's its purpose? How does it best fit in? How should he think about it in relation to other industry events? So, Jen, if I could come to you and have you give us just kind of the uh the elevator pitch for Dean and others in the audience. What is Reside?

SPEAKER_03 4:11

Yeah, thanks, Jason, and thanks, Dean, for the question. I'm really excited to get to share more about Reside today and appreciate the platform and opportunity. Um, we actually just announced the launch of Reside in um May. So it is brand new, as you mentioned, Jason. It's a co-located event with Infocom and Lytapalooza, focused exclusively on that residential and custom integration audience. Our exhibitors will include solutions for home automation, consumer electronics, controls, and then as I mentioned, it'll be alongside Infocom and Lidapalooza. So there's no physical barriers between the two events. I think the biggest thing from a differentiator to CEDIA and what currently exists is that a VIXA is a community-driven organization, right? Our mission is to serve the industry. And we saw an opportunity to expand from just exclusively serving the commercial integration uh industry in the United States to expand into residential. And the the first opportunity we took in that is the acquisition of Lidapalooza, which you mentioned it took place in April of this year. And we quickly decided that the best home for Lidapalooza would be alongside Infocom. And then the bridge between Lidapalooza and Infocom is reside, right? So it's just a natural progression, putting those three shows under one roof. I think it's worth noting that CD Expo is owned and operated by Emerald Expositions, which is a for-profit organizer. And, you know, our mission is different. Our mission is to be community first, to focus on educational excellence, which we have well proven at Avixa with our CTS and other educational offerings at our shows around the world. And um we're really excited about what we're building with the community, which is why I'm joined here by HDSA and ProSource.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You mentioned other shows around the world. Avixa is obviously a co-owner of ISE, which also brings together large commercial and residential trade shows into basically one big show. Talk about your excitement about that particular aspect and bringing that combination to uh North America for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 6:49

Yeah, well, it's it's wonderful to have in the family uh, you know, proof that this can work and actually a great inspiration and model to follow with ISE. So I think North America deserves its its ISE of its own, and and the way we're building that is with Reside.

SPEAKER_00 7:10

Got it. Tom, I'd love to come over to you next. As the founder of Light of Palooza and uh longtime CEDIA industry veteran, founder of Cedia, in fact, some of the questions that I've gotten as we started to announce this event on social media and so forth, I got a handful of comments, people sort of trying to tease this apart. So I'd love for you to um zoom in and really clarify like this is a separate thing from the CEDIA show. How does it compare? How does it contrast? What do you guys hope that you can do differently to bring people in and help them sort of justify coming to maybe maybe both events or coming to uh to reside?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Well, Lidapalooza has you know had tremendous growth over the uh five conferences or four short years, and the primary element of that and the draw has been the education, and that's you know where we've gotten the the most uh feedback. Uh, for a number of years, um, the vendor partners that both Jim and I have with HTSA and Pro Source have been wanting to participate in Light of Palooza, even though they're not in the lighting game. And primarily because of the um integrators that have been attending and the reps and the conversations uh that occur. And um, so we you know been hearing that they liked what we put together and how we had curated it, um, and that they were looking for um some sort of co-location with Lytapalooza. Uh that led to Jim and I talking about, you know, that the industry and the manufacturers are were looking for an alternative uh to what has been. And um, you know, both of our organizations are very focused on the education side. That's the primary value that our members get out of it. Um, and uh Jim and I, I was sitting in his office, uh, he and I talked from time to time, and I mentioned that um, you know, I don't think that we could, you know, put together the rest of the industry together. Um, it's a big lift. We have organizations that uh we run ourselves, but that I you know made the note about Avixa that they are known for education and they are a not-for-profit, and they have a model like ISC. And a little over a year ago, I mentioned I think that Avixa is somebody maybe to reach out to. So um, you know, I I don't know if I'm answering your question, yeah, except that the manufacturers have been in my ear and in Jim's ear for some time. We knew that the Light of Palooza was a proof of concept, but it we needed to include the rest of the industry. And there is a lot of value in um integrators traveling as compactly as they can to take advantage of also the other areas that they're involved in. More and more of them are doing either light commercial or some of them are doing substantial commercial. So the the concept of being able to have a model like ISC uh made a lot of sense to us. So it's something I was noodling around in my head and kind of shared it with Jim. And then uh last year's uh conference in Denver, just a lot more chatter in my ear from manufacturers and other integrators that um ultimately led to myself requesting an introduction to the right person at Avixa.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

Got it. And and one thing I know in our um preparations for today's event, one thing that you mentioned to me that I think would be a good thing to disambiguate here is that when when we talk about comparisons to CEA, we're talking about comparisons to Cedia Expo, which is different from CEDIA as an organization, right? So drill into that and just make sure that everybody's on the same page about uh the accurate comparison that we're making.

SPEAKER_01 11:15

Yes, it's confusing for everyone. People say the word CDA and have been um, you know, like Kleenex uh for 35 years. And I always ask, well, what which which one are you talking about? Are you talking about CDA Expo that's Emerald, or are you talking about CEDIA or the organization? And um our you know, reside Letapalooza Infocom, this co-location in 2027, is um really a response from the manufacturers in our community, you know, looking for um what Lidapalooza has been like, and but bringing the rest of the residential community together. And then just my sense of the industry and integrators, uh, people want efficiency. I knew that by adding the rest of the integration channel of residential manufacturers, that that by itself would have grown the attendance of Lida Palooza. But, you know, to do this other part and then have a have a Vixa and Jen, uh her leadership and the team, you know, we could put on a first class event um and really lean into the kind of resources that they have. Um so you know, I I really don't think about um Emerald or CD Expo or CD of the organization. I think about the overall industry and what's the value proposition for the integrator, the rep, and the manufacturer. Yeah. And you know, it just seemed like um, you know, things change. And there's you know, you have to innovate and you have to evolve. And I just felt like this is the thing to do.

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Agreed. Yeah, and I think that's a great segue. We will um, you know, now put put the CDIA thing aside and spend the rest of our time focused on reside and what you guys are doing. Just wanted to make sure to give the audience we've got a lot of questions, right? About like what is the difference, what is this, how does it compare? So I appreciate y'all starting there and helping sort of tease that apart. Jim, I'd love to come over to you next and talk about things um from the pro source angle. It does look like your microphone might be muted, by the way, before I toss this over to you. Um from the pro source angle, how did you guys first get involved? Tom mentioned it uh very quickly. It sounds like you and him were chatting. I'd love to hear the origin story from your perspective. And then the second part of the question would be what are you excited about in terms of the overall event and what it can bring, both to ProSource members as well as to the industry at large.

SPEAKER_02 13:48

Yeah, thanks, Jason. So, you know, my my perspective on this really started when I visited ISE for the first time and uh over in Barcelona. And it was um it it's a show that that was very impressive to me from a couple different points of view. I think that is our industry has changed and the custom integration uh business model has changed over time. It's amazing what these guys do is they begin to expand into multiple different categories. What that has caused, you know, uh is multiple, you know, kind of shows in the industry. And you know, and I think that efficiency for vendors and for you know integrators, you know, it's just becoming more and more expensive to address these different verticals that they're getting into. And what I saw at ISE was one place that you can go and cover multiple business verticals in one place, and uh and there was also an energy about ISE that is you know excellent. I mean, it's there's a great vibe about it, everybody's very excited about it. The education is amazing, and it and so I thought, okay, so when Tom called me up and you know, we met here in Golden, um, you know, I had kind of been thinking about it, but Tom made the, you know, he connected the dots to begin to put us with the leadership team at Avixa, you know, ProSource, and uh, you know, in HTSA. And so um, I think for our members, the the way that I'm thinking about it is um when you go to that show, you're now going to be able to uh address your lighting and shading business with all the very best manufacturers in the you know in the United States. You're able to address your uh residential business, which is the core business that you know this industry is kind of grown out of. And um, I think maybe as important is uh really beginning to connect with the commercial industry. The commercial industry largely is a really big business, you know, a lot of specifiers, big jobs, that kind of thing. And and frankly, I've struggled to connect uh our membership into the commercial relationships that allow them just to say yes. You know, I have 10 car dealerships. Can you do all of the conference rooms? I just want to get to a point where we begin to build the relationships with the commercial side of a lot of our existing vendors and begin to open the door to a you know, kind of more of a direct relationship for our members. And so it's one plane ticket to really address all of your business. And I would say the the final comment that I'll make is VIX's passion and excellence. We met with their training team, is uh is superior. They have very, very good talent, they're very well organized around training, and I think bringing training across the multiple verticals in one week, an owner is able to bring his team to the show and truly uh have a very efficient way to address all portions of their business. And that's I think what excites me uh the most about this this new partnership. And you know, Jen and her team are amazing, and uh, you know, I look forward to partnering with them.

SPEAKER_00 16:58

Yeah, that's great. And I I you the one thing you touched on there that I mean there's a bunch of stuff, but one thing that resonates with me a lot is the the relationship aspect of it. And I mentioned at the in the opener that a big believer in these personal events, you know, like I always leave feeling um energized and motivated, and so much of that has to do with, of course, you know, seeing the new technology and all that stuff is great. The education is wonderful, but so much of it also comes down to just getting that FaceTime with people in the industry. A lot of us have been in the industry for a really long time. We've made a lot of friends that we maybe only get to see once or twice a year, right? So I think bringing all of these events together is gonna be just just kind of like a magnet for bringing so many people into one venue and that the bang for your buck that you can get in in that sort of environment in terms of the networking and reconnecting with old peers and relationships, I think can be a good idea.

SPEAKER_02 17:47

Yeah, and I think the other thing, Jason, you bring up a really good point. Um, in our planning meetings for this and all of our discussions with the you know leadership team at Avixa, um, the word that we quite like use in every single meeting is building the community and building the connection points and creating an environment that does, in fact, you know, continue to strengthen, re-strengthen that connection in this industry because very best practices, having relationships throughout the entire industry is really a big driver for a lot of the media, you know, small and medium businesses in the industry so that they're able to learn and grow together. Um, I think that's a really, really important um, you know, kind of I would say mission that Jen talks about quite often in terms of our execution at this event. So I would expect that there is gonna be an awful lot of community at this event.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

I love that. Jen, I want to come back to you if I could. We got a question from um Dwayne in the chat. He said for those manufacturers and vendors who serve both commercial and residential, will they have booths dedicated to both a shared space combining all of their offerings? Are they gonna have like multiple footprints on the show floor? How should how should people think about that?

SPEAKER_03 18:56

Well, honestly, in the initial conversations that we've had with manufacturers, I would say it's 50-50 on going bigger on the Infocom show floor and integrating residential products into their Infocom booth versus having two booths at one at each event. And it really depends on the individual manufacturer's goals and quite frankly, structure. You know, some I sit down with say to me, Jen, I have two different marketing teams, two different sales teams, obviously two different product lines, and it just doesn't make sense for us. We're not structured to do it in one space. We want to highlight each and focus in on each audience that you know you're driving during Info Comment Reside. So we, my team and I are here to talk through the pros and cons of each. And I think it really, again, depends on your marketing goals and strategy as a manufacturer. I will say that, you know, I mentioned this in the beginning, but we the events are co-located, but they're in one long contiguous space. So for the attendee, we really are focusing in on a journey of solutions, right? Starting with the traditional Infocom solutions, going into reside, and then Lightapalooza. There's no physical barrier to the spaces. We actually are just going to have one expo pass, one badge for all three shows. So there won't be any hassle or friction points to explore the three shows together during the week. And we felt that that was really important.

SPEAKER_00 20:32

Yeah. I'd love to stick with you, Jen, for one follow-up question on that, which is you you we're talking about the manufacturers now. You shifted into the attendees. There's obviously lots of stakeholders and constituents involved with throwing a big event like this. I'm curious on the vendorslash manufacturer side, you know, vendors and manufacturers obviously play a really critical role in creating a successful show. What do you guys hope to be able to bring to the table that would be compelling or maybe different if I'm a manufacturer or vendor evaluating attending this event?

SPEAKER_03 21:06

Yeah, for us, it's all about bringing the larger community together and making sure that we have the right quality and creating what I kind of call manufactured serendipity, right? So the right abilities to have networking, time dedicated to the show floor. You know, Jim talked about the larger community. And while Jim, Tom, and I are representing three very specific organizations, when we're wearing our reside hats, those are set aside, right? We're talking about how do we serve all the buying groups? How do we serve those who are members of CD OARC? We want to welcome them. And I think you know, what we're really driving towards is building an education program, building a show floor with the community voice as a part of it. So we've already put together And Manufacturers Advisory Committee, right, to help us shape the right solutions on the show floor. We're building an education committee to make sure that the training and the conference sessions that we offer are relevant and that it's a good use of time, right? Beyond money, everybody's so time resource constrained. So that's a big piece for us, making it efficient, effective, and a good use of you and your team's time.

SPEAKER_00 22:28

Got it. Tom, I'd love to come over to you. There's a question in the chat uh about Lytapalooza and commercial lighting specifically. So Jason Knott writes uh has Lytapalooza traditionally included commercial lighting? Does it foresee increasing commercial lighting education and products to that show? So can you speak to uh commercial lighting and how that plays into Lidapalooza?

SPEAKER_01 22:52

Completely different business than the residential side. Um and no, um, we're not gonna be pursuing folks that just make products and serve the commercial channel. However, you know, I'm guessing that Jason's asking that question as to the relevance of the people that attend Infocom and what relevance it might have, or I'm speculating that's what he might be going towards. I don't know. Um, but on the um we do believe that the Infocom folks will be interested in investigating and probably wanting to create relationships with many of the lighting fixture manufacturers, primarily the linear side of it. Um, we don't expect the Infocom uh attendees that primarily do commercial work to spend much time on the residential A B side. They really don't cross over as much as the residential people kind of cross over to like commercial, but these commercial folks do do a lot of conference rooms and other applications where linear makes a lot of sense. And you know, the residential side is used to a direct relationship where most commercial is distributor. So this will be an opportunity for Infocom integrators to you know talk to the linear and some of these other companies where they could use product and develop direct relationships. So I think that that's that's where that's gonna happen. So quick answer no, we're not gonna go after high bay lighting manufacturers or fixture manufacturers for warehouses because they don't serve that channel. Infocom doesn't serve that kind of commercial lighting channel. Um, so there's a quick answer, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

Yeah, and I I think you're probably inferring correctly where Jason was was um sort of gesturing at with that.

SPEAKER_01 24:49

Jason, don't hesitate to call me.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Yeah. There you go, Jason. Uh open invite. Um, Jim, I'd love to come to you next. So there's a question in here. You know, ProSource, you guys are a 600-member group, so you interface with lots of integrators running different types of businesses. Raymond in the chat asked, with the show being wide open to um all attendees of three different events, would the idea be for commercial integrators to learn more about the options that the CI industry can offer? Um, since many of the brands offered in CI aren't like accessible to commercial. I guess talk about just generally, like if you're if you're an integrator, you know, if I'm an integrator and I'm looking at this show and I'm maybe maybe primarily commercial, like is there value? What's the value in me kind of getting more exposure to what's happening on the CI or the residential side? How do you think about that?

SPEAKER_02 25:36

Yeah, I think Tom kind of touched on it. Him and I have had a lot of discussions on you know on this topic that you know, both the commercial, you know, really um commercial focused businesses, you know, would might be able to build some residential relationships to the extent that they know the CEO or something like that of a you know particular project that they're working on. And then the reciprocal also applies where residential, you know, they also, you know, um, you know, they basically work with a lot of CEOs and business owners and and and really beginning to build that cross relationship between these two categories. And and I do think it, you know, I you know, I think over time, my one of my hopes is that we do begin to build those direct relationships. Right now, every a lot of a lot of this is through distribution, right? And for you know, those of us that have been in the industry a long time, the really special vendor relationships are the direct relationships because you can really learn from each other, you can create products together, you can create strategies together. And I think that that has been a, you know, I I would say a bit of a gap between both commercial to residential and residential to commercial. And so, you know, um I think that over time that those relationships are gonna you know begin to get built and we will grow the overall pie for the consumer electronics industry ultimately.

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Yeah, love that. Um, Jen, I want to come back to you. The audience is sending such good questions. You guys are making my uh the audience is making my job really easy today. So uh Mark wrote, you know, that he keep uh he keeps hearing um I know Mark is an integrator, uh he keeps hearing the manufacturers tired of spending so much money on trade shows. And he says, you know, if you have their ear, please let them know how big and fancy their booth is does not matter. Uh he goes on to say that their product offerings and their people matter. So the biggest benefit in going to a trade show for integrators, Mark is saying, is seeing what manufacturers outside of our daily use usage are doing and finding products that we didn't know existed. So I'm curious, just in your discussions with manufacturers, like how would you encourage them to think about getting maybe the most bang for their buck and providing the most value to their dealer bases at a show like Reside?

SPEAKER_03 27:44

Well, that's where you know Avixa's focus on education is so important. And we have our manufacturers' training, and we have obviously audio demo rooms and and and we actually have on-site activations that we built at Infocom this year. We intend to do one for Reside as well, where we had a fully integrated space, and that came out of direct conversations from specifiers who said, Jen, I don't come to Infocom for a box. I come to build out a full room solution, whether or not that's a retail space or a hotel lobby or a conference room or a broadcast suite. And um, we brought those to life at Infocom and we partnered with the manufacturers to do that. And each of those areas had sessions, case studies from each specific one. And, you know, so I think really sitting down with the manufacturers and having them think about more than just the booth. The booth is valuable and it is a wonderful, the show floor is an amazing place, right? To just explore. I always encourage people to actually leave a couple of hours on their schedule to, you know, go off into the far corners of the exhibit hall and just see what you find because that's that's really the fun stuff, right? Is just coming across a product that you're like, oh my goodness, I've I've needed this for the last three years. And I I didn't know even that it existed. So um, so I think there is a play between having the products on the show floor and being able to showcase what's new and different and the next iteration of a of a product, and then also tying that into a larger piece of education, especially with that that tie not only to training, but real life examples of how the technology is being used.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Got it. And Jason, to kind of add to that real quickly, the the expense for the vendors to do you know multiple shows all over the country is it's very, very expensive. I mean, these are big investments into the integration, you know, community. And I think that one of the really interesting things about the reside show integrating, you know, into a larger show is it does allow um, it reduces the overall expense for the vendor so that they can in fact invest in the things that Jen is talking about, invest in training, invest in the programs necessary for all of you on this call to be successful. And so I think it's another interesting benefit, you know, to give our manufacturers a platform to talk to all of you in a more efficient way.

SPEAKER_00 30:31

Yeah, definitely. I and I think it's not it's not just money too, it's time and energy, right? Being on the vendor side, I know. And we're we're like a services and software company at OneVision, so ours is relatively easy compared to a big you know hardware manufacturer. But even for us, there's a lot involved in just logistically getting travel arranged, getting stuff shipped to the booth, getting stuff transported out. So uh it's definitely you have many facets to this conversation, and I think that the um evaluation that any that um vendors will be making, that manufacturers will be making of this event will definitely take that into consideration, these sorts of uh economies of scale, um, so to speak. I'd love to shift gears a little bit. Education has come up a bunch of times. Dwayne dropped a question in the chat that segues perfectly into where I wanted to go next, which is you know, reside uh specifically is described as a purpose-built event for the residential channel. He says, What can we expect the focus to be in terms of hands-on training and educational tracks? Tom, I'd love if you could speak to that. What's your guys' core focus when it comes to education um at the event? And Dwayne's question is specific to the residential side, but you can feel free to speak about it more broadly as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Yeah. So let me take this uh first. Um this is exactly um what the channel is looking for. And so one of the benefits of this uh three-show location is we expect um integrators to uh spend more days than they have been. In the past, uh people would invest not quite a week, but a you know, a good number of days. And um with Lidapalooza, people attended three full days, packed with education, so on and so forth. This last one, um, we had two manufacturers that took advantage of true hands-on training. They shipped in uh, in addition to their booth, you know, complete hands-on training kits. Uh Control 4 brought in eight stations uh where they were able to do hands-on training. Uh, they they had that, they were short, they were one hour kind of quick trainings, uh, but they were sold out and they delivered eight of them uh during the course of the uh event. Prolux uh has been on doing a roadshow the previous years, doing certification training, a full eight-hour, complete hands-on. They had about 30 folks in there, 30 stations, uh, and they delivered that full hands-on experience. Um we know that integrators want that kind of value, not just to sit in and hear a lecture or a presentation. Those things can be valuable, but we will be partnering with manufacturers to um encourage, investigate, understand what they think they can accomplish during that week. And uh we'd like to see flight cases full of products and their technical training team. You know, often these manufacturers host regional certification courses on their own through the course of the year. And I want to encourage them to think about that date in Orlando in June and having their certification course and their hands-on training during that event. So that's a primary focus of mine, and I know us doing that uh will drive a tremendous number of of uh our our industry's residential integration folks. So, Dwayne, you know, count on that.

SPEAKER_00 34:08

Yeah, definitely. Jim, I'd love to come to you as well. I know that education for ProSource is a huge focus of your guys' uh organization. What are you most excited about when it comes to the education tracks that you guys can provide at this at this new combined event?

SPEAKER_02 34:23

Well, I think that you know, when you look at um an integrator, there's various operational functions within the business. And and quite often, you know, an owner of a business will come to a show or a regional show or whatever it might be by themselves, you know, and then they have to come back and translate all of the learnings that they found to their organization. Um, you know, I love Tom's vision of, you know, um developing a curriculum that you know makes it uh you know really a great idea to bring your project manager and your sales manager and installation manager, and you're able to really spend time together as a team and individually getting really good at your particular profession in the you know in this industry. And so I think that while we haven't fully developed the curriculum yet, you know, I do feel a responsibility to, you know, uh make sure that our curriculum addresses the various you know areas of these businesses that really drive the you know the overall you know success. And so, you know, I think that um you know what great looks like to me is that teams of uh you know, teams of leadership teams are coming to this show as opposed just to an individual owner. And I'm pretty confident with the resources that Avixa has and the knowledge that Tom and I bring to the table in terms of what works and what doesn't work, that the curriculum will be delivered uh in a really solid way and uh and we'll be able to, you know, hopefully achieve that goal.

SPEAKER_00 35:52

Love it. Jen, I I don't want to leave you out on this one. I know training and education is a huge focus of yours at Avixa. Talk to us about the process that you guys use. You have a I'm a lot of experience doing this. So, what is the process that you guys are using to develop these education tracks? Are there maybe opportunities for integrators or vendors to get involved early and provide feedback? Give me the high-level sort of um how is the sausage getting made, uh, so to speak, when it comes to education at the event?

SPEAKER_03 36:22

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Jason. Beyond partnering with manufacturers, which I talked about, and we we did multiple different trainings at Infocon with manufacturers this year, including, you know, a three-day Zoom boot camp. So it comes in different forms and fashions between among you know, a single session all the way into multi-day certification offerings from both Avixa and manufacturer partners. We do a complete call for presentation. So that's where we reach out to the larger community and say, you know, tell us what kind of case studies you have, tell us what kind of sessions you'd like to hear about. What speaker have you seen in the last year or so that really was impressive that we should talk to and recruit into our program? So we do that and we have um education committees that are focused on solution areas. So on Infocom side, it's you know, digital signage and broadcast and others. Jim talked about really our focus on reside being more about looking at the structure of the um residential integrator firm and who are the key stakeholders there. What kind of training do they need, and how can we build out, you know, tracks specifically for them. So um we will be opening up um, as I mentioned, our call for papers in October. Um, so be on the lookout for that to have a voice in what we're building.

SPEAKER_00 37:52

Got it. Jason Stevenson in the chat, by the way, said uh in response to what Jim was laying out, said, This is the kind of training the show needs. As an owner, I always have issues sending my staff due to lack of true training, keep sales on the floor and real education in the classroom. Jen, I'd love your response to that. And how do you think about making sure that the training is, to use Jason's word, real, and that it's not like a sales pitch. And how do you sort of um divide this up and make sure that you're kind of sending people down the right paths?

SPEAKER_03 38:24

Yeah, well, you would probably be surprised to learn, Jason, that every one of our sessions goes through not only a vetting process by those within the community, but we actually have a speaker trainer, right? So before they present at Infocom, they're doing a prep session. Um, and if they're if it does smell a little too salesy, right? There, there's there's a place for that, right? We do, we do try to, you know, intercept that before it goes live at the event. So we invest a lot in making sure that the the quality is there. And that is important because again, as we've talked about, the resources are so valuable, your time is valuable, and you want people, good education inspires, right? And it makes people do their job better day in and day out, and it energizes. And that's how we want people to leave feeling after a week of Infocom and reside in Light of Palooza.

SPEAKER_00 39:24

Got it. Got it. I'd like to shift gears here a little bit and talk about um specifiers have come up just in passing a couple of times. And Tom, maybe I'll come over to you to start this one off. I got a question from the audience ahead of the event. Uh, Greg said, we have uh found tremendous value in bringing specifiers and builders to light a Palooza the last few years. What is your vision for specifier visits in this new context in this combined event? So, Tom, can you speak to that?

SPEAKER_01 39:52

Yeah, that was uh something that we took on um really starting with our second conference, where um, you know, as an integrator, I had personal relationships with certain architects in my market, certain designers in my market. And I reached out to you know, our membership and um kind of ran by them. Uh, I think that this is the ideal opportunity for you to bring somebody that you have a relationship with to Lytapalooza, uh, because I think there's I know that there's real education that they would benefit from. So our effort was encouraging integrators to um invite or target folks that they work with every day that they know would benefit from it. And and it resonated with them that, yeah, they would come to something else on the education side. Um not so much to come to the show floor. Um, that obviously was a bonus. And so, in fact, we had a number of our uh integrator attendees bring architects and uh designers, and we surveyed uh all attendees these last several years and got responses from some architects saying this was by far the best education event I've ever attended in my whole history, including architectural conferences and so on and so forth. These the our uh training at Laidapalooza was not Sales E. We hired and brought in, you know, real lighting design professionals. We brought in academia, uh the head of Parsons New York's lighting department, the head of uh Mount Sinai's uh health and wellness, uh the head of Oregon University's um lighting department. So the education is strong, and folks like interior designers and architects, they also don't want to sit in and hear a salesy thing. Um and so uh I think that that will be our strategy is to help equip our integrator attendees, uh the rep attendees, to promote to that community and the message is education, um, not hey, come to the show floor and look at all these gadgets. When these integrators bring that architect in and they're out of class, then it gives that integrator the opportunity to kind of act as a docent or a, you know, a tour guide one-on-one. And then the other part that our integrators took advantage of is that, you know, especially if they sponsor that architect to come, you know, then they have dinner with them. Then they have that much more, you know, they kind of have them captured for a day. Uh to, you know, A, that architect observes the kind of relationships that that integrator has with all of these top manufacturers. So it was a win-win as opposed to just you know, shotgun approach. Hey, yeah, integrators, builders, you ought to come to this event. I think it's best, especially in these our experiences have been best when the integrator does that um education and uh exposure to what this, what this, why they should come to this event.

SPEAKER_00 43:18

Yeah. So so to that end, Tom, is do are you guys going to be focused on engaging with the specifier community directly, or is your focus more on enabling the integrators and giving them the tools that they need to bring in specifiers from their local market? How do you guys think about that?

SPEAKER_01 43:36

Well, so we've also been uh growing the number of professional lighting folks that have traditionally never attended a residential A V show. So uh I think that um specifiers, lighting designers are people that we have community with that we would directly reach out to. Uh my recommendation. Recommendation will be to come up with marketing materials and things that can equip the integrators to encourage directly their relationships to attend. Not so much as reaching out broadly, at least in this first year, is but we'll see what happens and how things evolve.

SPEAKER_00 44:24

Yeah, I would imagine that that would be a higher leverage approach because the integrators already know in their local markets who are the big players, who are the folks that are actually going to be interested in an event like this, versus, you know, like a shotgun blast kind of spray and pray technique to the broad specifier community. Let the integrators help directly.

SPEAKER_01 44:44

I've always been about the targeted approach. I recall, you know, uh back in the day, uh, early days of uh custom installation, we would have people that would come in and work for us, uh, or marketing people that would say, Oh, you should do radio ads, you should do TV ads. I said, Why should I, why do I need to do that? All I have to do is drive around Carmel, Indiana, and see where holes are being dug and look at the builder's name. I can know who the potential customers are. I don't need to, I'm not in the retail business. I'm in an individual, high return business. And I think it's the same approach is that we have the top integrators in the in the country attending Light of Palooza and our members of ProSource, HTSA, and other groups, and they know who the top architects are, and they can grow that relationship on a one one-to-one basis and have a much richer engagement and have them uh attend the kind of education that we're doing, and they'll get real value out of it. They'll be happy that they came. And um, so that's that's what I would recommend that we do is much more targeted instead of just broadly. And that resulted in integrators bringing architects and designers from all corners of the country, not just people that were local to the area that, yeah, I'll show up for the afternoon. So I think that there's a bigger play here.

SPEAKER_00 46:13

I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, Jim, I'd love to come over to you. We're coming down the home stretch of our time, and so I'm gonna go round the horn with with uh with this question. As you guys are thinking about this event, it's just under a year away. I'm sure you've got a lot of stuff to figure out. What are you thinking about in terms of success metrics, qualitative or quantitative, whatever direction you want to take it? What would make year one of this new combined show successful, in your opinion?

SPEAKER_02 46:42

Yeah, um, it's a good question. So, you know, I'll let Jen get to the quantitative. We do have some goals. I don't know if she wants to talk about that or not, but you know, I think if, you know, for just for me and my seat, if if Pro Source is able to come to this show, uh, develop new relationships that maybe they didn't have before they came to the show, you know, we will be having you know various ProSource-on-Lear events. So we will still maintain that that connection to, you know, within our ProSource family, but also they begin to uh you know come to this event and they're able to, geez, maybe I pick up you know three or four commercial relationships that I never even knew existed, or maybe they they have not been coming to Light of Palooza and now they're able to come to that show. And so, you know, I think that you know it really is about building relationships within the you know the integrators and you know and the vendor community. And we'll have all of the um, you know, we'll we'll have various strategies to to set everybody up for success to come out of this show, uh, feeling like was a really, really good investment.

SPEAKER_00 47:44

Yeah, I love that. Back back to that focus on relationships. I think that's a a wonderful area to to be like striving for as hey, this is successful if people can come and really create new and meaningful relationships. Jen, I'd love to get your perspective on the same question. What what would make year one of this new event successful in your eyes?

SPEAKER_03 48:03

Yeah, I think any event it needs to really focus on this was valuable for my business, it was time well spent, it helped me grow my career and and all of those KPIs we track on Infocom and definitely want to apply to Reside in Light of Palooza. The other thing that um I love to hear, and we do a lot of first-timer programs at Infocom, and obviously this community, there's going to be a lot of first timers, right? Because it's the inaugural event. But I love hearing, you know, oh my goodness, I was surprised and delighted by this exhibitor, or I just happened to connect with this person and they had an answer to a problem I was trying to solve for over a year, or even something as simple as, you know, I got a month's worth of uh of customer service tickets answered in a 15-minute conversation in one of the booths. So I for me, it's really about having the community come together, hearing that the education was valuable, that the connections made on the show floor were meaningful, and that both all the communities really showed up, right? Right, to come together. And I I really feel like that's gonna happen. I mean, based on the initial excitement and conversations, we've got a lot of committed people way beyond the three of us here in our organizations who have already said, you know, we're we're excited to support this.

SPEAKER_00 49:43

I'm I'm thinking about all the trade shows that I've attended and like on the flight home, looking at my you know, stack of business cards or my notepad or whatever notes on my phone I've been keeping, and just feeling like, oh man, there's like too many opportunities. I I don't know how I'm gonna get to all of this when I get back. Like that feeling of like my cup is overflowing a little bit from this event, I think is a great sort of like experience to strive for in terms of creating that for attendees. So that makes a lot of sense. Tom, I'd love to hear if there's anything that you would add in terms of what's gonna define success in year one for you.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

So, you know, these past five years uh delivering Lytapalooza and watching that journey, and um it was never about, you know, the attendance growth. It was always, you know, did the manufacturers felt like they get they got their ROI, which is what Jen touched on. Um, the and and and it was the whole community that did everybody felt like it was really worth being away from their office. But the other big value is, is as I surveyed, was when people said, Well, you know, I wish you would have done this or wish you would have done that, but they they provide that information in a constructive way because they really believed in the event and they want it to continue to succeed. So there were areas where, hey, that's a great suggestion. They, you know, there wasn't a lot of complaining in these surveys. It was more like, hey, this was great, this was great, and it'd be nice if you did that. And they took the time to, you know, in a constructive way to provide, you know, uh advice because they were they really felt invested in the future of Lytapalooza. And I I look forward to, I'm sure there are things that we don't execute perfectly in the first year, and there's gonna be some really great feedback. And I'll measure success when I see the sincerity in their constructive suggestions for what 2028 should be. That's how I'll measure it.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

I love that. As a as a product guy, you know, I sometimes think about the fact that like it's it's easy to sort of get lost in all of the details or even the big picture possibilities, but at the end of the day, like it's just about putting something out there and then listening to your customers and responding to that feedback and just continuing to iterate. And so that that orientation around feedback and making sure that you're delivering a valuable product and continuing to build on top of that after year one really resonates with me. So I'm excited for this event and to see what you all are capable of doing with it. I think it's gonna be great for the industry. Uh, I want to come to you, Jen, with the very last question as we wrap things up today. If anybody is listening, um wants to get involved in the event uh as a whole, are there opportunities for people to get involved, to provide feedback? What does that landscape look like?

SPEAKER_03 52:40

Yeah, well, we we have a website up, resideshow.org. So um we have a form to stay connected with us. We'll get you on the list, send you updates when we hit those milestones like releasing our call for presentations, registration will open early in 2027. So that's a great way to stay connected. Obviously, Tom, Jim, and I are super accessible. So reach out to any of us. I've already really appreciated the outreach thus far. And um yeah, welcome any feedback and suggestions even before we get to the first show.

SPEAKER_00 53:16

That's great. And and let's actually close there, Jen. Uh, and I'll come around the horn on this. Jen, if somebody's listening and wants to get a hold of you directly, what's the best way for them to do that?

SPEAKER_03 53:26

I think you know, going to LinkedIn is an easy way to stay connected. And as I mentioned, um, going through the resideshow.org website.

SPEAKER_00 53:35

Cool. Tom, how about you?

SPEAKER_01 53:38

Um Yeah, LinkedIn is the great way. And my email is very short. It's Tom at H Tsa.net.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

Beautiful. And Jim, if someone wants to connect with you directly, what's the best way?

SPEAKER_02 53:51

Uh yeah, my email is Jim.pierce, P-E-A-R-S-E at prosourceinfo.com. Or if you just want to text me on my cell phone, 303-815-8305. And you know, have easy questions.

SPEAKER_00 54:06

Love that. Love that. Well, thank you all three for your time. Again, best of luck with this event. I think it's going to be great for the industry, and I love the vision and what you guys are doing to make it a reality. Uh, for everybody who took some time out of your day to attend with us live, we really appreciate you being here. Hope you have a great rest of your week, and we will look forward to seeing you on the next one. With that, we're gonna wrap up. Thanks again, everybody, and have a great rest of your week.

SPEAKER_01 54:29

Thank you.