HomeTech.fm - Episode 245 - "Member of Excellence" with CEDIA's Giles Sutton

Episode Date: February 15, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We are joined by Giles Sutton, CEDIA’s SVP of Industry Engagement. We discuss the organization’s new “Member of Excellence” program, their sharpened focus on increasing awareness within the design and building communities, new efforts in workforce development, observations from ISE 2019, and much more! That plus the latest home tech headlines including: Why Amazon acquired Eero. Details on Samsung’s new 2019 QLED lineup. Do we finally have a date for Apple’s new streaming service? Arlo pulls its new Ultra model from the shelves after a slew of performance problems. Crestron and Savant show off their new 2-way Apple TV integrations. Control4 expands its international presence. And more…

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for Friday, February 15th. From Sarasota, Florida, I'm Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Pretty good. Pretty good. Is it cold up there? Because it started to get cold down here. I'm not too bad. Yeah, I'm not too bad today. It's like 58 out there. 58. Ugh, frigid.

Don't know what to do. Hey, I had a flow incident this week. Oh, yeah? Yeah, yeah. Tell me more. So you put a flow in, right? I did. I think we talked about that.

Yeah. And so it's like one of these devices. You put it in, and then you kind of forget it's there, right? It does its thing. It protects you. It's peace of mind. And all that's great. Well, I was sitting down at my desk working the other day and I got an alert on my phone. It said, hey, we noticed your water usage is much higher than

normal right now. And so if you don't take any action here, we're going to go ahead and shut your water off in five minutes. And instantly my mind went to the fact that the toilet upstairs the previous night, the handle had been a little bit loose. We're doing some potty training in the house right now, and so the kids have been sort of playing with the toilet handle. And I thought I had it fixed, but sure enough, walked upstairs, and the toilet had been running. So I was able to rectify that problem and let the app know. And I thought that was pretty cool. You know, it's a small thing, right? It's not like it prevented anything catastrophic from happening

in my house, but it was nice to know that it was looking out for me. So I thought I would share my story because again, it's like this device, you sort of put it in and kind of forget it's there, right? Yeah. Yeah. I've been swearing i'm going to do this like review right of this thing but the problem is is it it takes uh it takes forever to review something like this because it just it doesn't it doesn't set up like in five minutes um but but one of the things i did when i was putting it in is i didn't put it in right like mostly on purpose it helps if you do it right yeah yeah it was mostly on purpose. It helps if you do it right. Yeah, yeah. It was mostly on purpose. So what I did do is I didn't quite tighten. Well, I guess I did. I tightened the threading up, and then I noticed there was a little leak coming out, so I just tightened it up really, really tight.

Tight as two, you know, I could get it with two wrenches. But I knew that, you know, it really wasn't on there really well, I needed to put some more like pipe stuff on it. So, um, I come back the next day and felt underneath it. And sure enough, there's a little, like not a leak, but like a condensation, like it would be a, it would be a, it wouldn't be a drip for hours, you know? So I was like, let's see how long flow takes to get this. And so I just, yeah, the other day I got a little thing that said, um, said, Hey, um, you've got a small leak somewhere and you need to, you need to fix that. And we're not going to bug you about it. I mean, we're going to bug you about it unless you don't want us to, you've got a small leak somewhere and you need to you need to fix that we're not going to bug you about i mean we're going to bug you about it unless you don't want us to but it's a small leak so i thought it was pretty cool that like it actually caught that

it must uh what i did was i heard it i was sitting up working here at night and i heard the thing close outside uh you know the little servo motor closed the valve and then sometime later that night i got a, um, a notification that, you know, there's probably a small leak going on. So I'll have to go out there and fix that one of these days. Um, yeah, it shouldn't take much. Well, and a couple and Chris gambles in the chat room tonight, giving you some advice, Seth, hire a pro time. That's funny. Uh, and Eric makes a good point. Like the, the incident that I had is something a leak sensor wouldn't have caught. So it's kind of cool to have it actually monitoring the flow and the pressure in the pipe.

So anyways, I thought that was kind of neat and wanted to share. Yeah, no, definitely. That's pretty cool. I'm enjoying this device and I'm enjoying the other one that I have that people have asked about separately called. See, I don't even know what they're called because I don't even look at these things anymore. Sense, which is an energy monitoring thing. And I'm kind of like playing around with them both, but they both take like an extremely long amount of time to set up because they're not, you don't just plug them in and go. Like you have to wait around for a while. So

I will be hopefully gathering my thoughts to that. And I put in our live channel, I went ahead and put a picture of what my little leak looked like before I quasi-fixed it. And then after I fixed it, the little bubbles didn't show up there anymore, but it does leak still. So I have to go out there and fix it one of these days. There you go. All right, well, let's jump

into our show. We are going to be joined this week by Giles Sutton, the SVP, Senior Vice President of Industry Engagement over at Cedia. And we're really looking forward to sharing that conversation with you. Giles joined us to talk about Cedia's new Member of Excellence program, which is something we'll dive into. And again, look forward to sharing that, as well as some of his thoughts from ISE. He was out there in Amsterdam, and neither one of us were lucky enough to go to that show this year. So we'll look forward to sharing his thoughts on that. So be sure to stay

tuned. In the meantime, we're going to jump into some home tech headlines here. Seth, what do you say? Let's do it. Samsung has announced its 2019 TV lineup featuring new 4K and 8K QLED models. The company is also updating its Frame TV and Serif TVs. Samsung says its updated lineup features its new Quantum processor, which will help deliver the company's best viewing experience to date. The new lineup will offer 4K models in a range of different series spanning sizes 43 to 82 inches, and the QLED 8K line will be available in five different sizes, ranging from 65 all the way up to 98 inches. Apple is in the final stages

of preparing its new streaming video service, according to people familiar with the matter. Apple is aiming to launch the service in early April or early May, and the service will allow its customers to sign up for existing digital streaming products and it will allow the service will allow its customers to sign up for existing digital streaming products and watch them in the ios tv application apple wants to simplify mobile video viewing by housing content in one app instead of forcing users to launch

separate apps for each service so does everyone else yeah exactly input zero but this is this is apple zero i guess i don't know what yeah it's cool to see they're getting close april's right around the corner so we've been talking about this for quite a while and we'll be interested to see if they're able to uh finally get that out there there's an event on march 25th if i remember correctly i saw that flow across the news feed so that's probably going to be the announcement yeah i would think so arlo the camera company wireless camera company, generated a lot of excitement at CES 2019 when it announced the Arlo Ultra 4K model. This model, unfortunately, has been met with a wave of consumer dissatisfaction after the release.

Customers have experienced connectivity issues and shorter-than-expected battery life. In the most severe cases, the stream did not meet the promised 4K resolution. Arlo has been actively trying to address the problems via firmware updates, but has decided to pull the cameras from store shelves until the problems are completely resolved. Hmm. Wow, that's interesting. Bummer. Yeah. Savant.

Savant at ISE 2019 demonstrated two-way integration with Apple TV, showing how anything in the Savant smart home ecosystem could be navigated and controlled through an on-screen display via the Apple TV. The solution was made possible by the long-awaited API for two-way IP integration that Apple announced last year at WWDC 2018. I saw a picture of this and the rumors that we saw from, not rumors, but like there was a dealer event. I forget what Savant calls that, but we were kind of getting some updates from, I think, Robert, who was

getting them like sideways from somebody else. I thought it was like a savant app that you get to launch on the Apple TV and not so much an OSD that it's just an app that is branded savant and you can launch it. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. We'll definitely have to keep an eye out for this. If you're a listener and a savant dealer, we'd love to know more. I think Chris gets the award for wordplay of the night, Snapple TV. It's a good one. Yeah, yeah. They may have some copyright issues with that one. Speaking of new Apple TV integrations, Crestron also showed off their new IP control of Apple TV out at ISE 2019. This includes the ability to use voice commands via the TSR310 touchscreen remote, as well as support within

Crestron's new home operating system, which by the way, we'll have a link in the show notes to an article from Technology Integrator that has some cool pictures of that new interface. Looks definitely a nice refresh there. Crestron dealers can now leverage Apple TV, Siri, and HomeKit technologies to enhance clients' lifestyle experience with their Crestron integrated systems. Yep, that 310 remote's getting a lot of good reviews. It looks like a pretty nice remote, but you pay for it. Oh, yeah, indeed. investment in worldwide smart home growth. Control 4 announced the expansion into New Zealand, Switzerland, Ireland, and the Northern Ireland region of the United Kingdom. Okay. Yeah. Augmented, augmenting the companies. I'm going to get yelled at by all the people in Ireland and

Northern Ireland for like stumbling across that. But yes, I do remember that there are two countries there. Okay. Augmenting the company's current local presence by working directly with home automation integrators in these fast-growing markets. Yeah. So some plans for growth here. As I understand it, I think at least in some of these markets it was available before through distribution, but they're now offering dealer direct in these markets. So Control 4 continuing to expand and grow there. Good to see. Yep. I knew that they had grabbed up the guys in New Zealand and wrapped those up and basically

just hired the distributor and said, you're not Control 4. Right. Yeah. Thanks for playing. Cool. Well, let's move into the big headline here of the week before we jump into our interview with Giles. And that is, of course, Amazon acquiring

Eero. Reading from the headline here from the press release, I should say, Amazon has announced that it will acquire home mesh Wi-Fi maker Eero for an undisclosed sum. Quote, we are incredibly impressed with the Eero team and how quickly they invented a Wi-Fi solution that makes connected devices just work, said Dave Limp, SVP of Amazon Devices and Services. We have a, quote, we have a shared vision that the smart home experience can get even easier, and we're committed to continue innovating on behalf of customers. Completion of the transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. this one this one had people worked up into a lather it did and i don't get it like i mean ero was uh was a a company kind of like formed i don't know it was

one of the first ones uh that were doing like direct to consumer uh wi-fi mesh networking like they were they were the first to roll out the gate with this like super easy, beautifully designed product and app that would just make setting up Wi-Fi easy post like when Apple decided they were like no longer interested in making the airports. Right. So everybody who was like looking for or waiting for Apple to finally come out with an update on the airports, Eero came out and they said, I'm going with that thing because that looks awesome. And everybody moved over there. And for the most part, they've'm going with that thing because that looks awesome. And everybody moved over there. And for the most part, they've been happy with that product. I think if you talk to anybody who's used gyro, I don't think there are very many complaints out of the product itself. I think there were some gripes about some features that went missing between the version 1 and version 2.

But for the most part, everybody was really happy with the performance they got out of the product, standalone product by itself. I've got it at home, and I love it. I mean, I haven't had any major issues again. I think it's sort of Wi-Fi is sort of like we were talking about flow earlier right you put it in and assuming let me say it this way wi-fi is one of those things where you only really notice it when it's not working exactly right and i i haven't really noticed it so that's a good thing yeah yeah i mean that's and that's kind of how it's designed to be right like it's it's kind of designed to sit there in the background and do its thing and uh you got

yours put in without having to like retro wires around your house to put in a more traditional system like Ubiquiti or like a ruckus system or something like that. You could get away with popping in these little, what are they called, extenders in farther parts of the house. And Eero just kind of sets up this nice little network and you don't ever have to think about it again and that's that's really great so i people are really happy with the product and then like they sell to amazon people people kind of have the mixed you know reviews on amazon right like uh amazon is one of the companies that like have a direct interest in in tracking every movement that you make to you you know, get you on their site and sell you more junk, right? So naturally, people made the connection instantly from, you know, from Eero being sold to Amazon to now Amazon has a router in every Eero home and knows exactly what

each independent device is, you know, looking for on the internet and maybe even, you know, depending on your connections, encrypted or not, where they are and what they're looking at. So, I don't know. I've seen some damage control by the Eero guys, like, hey, this is not what we have in our terms of service, and we were committed to never doing that,

blah, blah, blah, blah. But then again, there are other companies that have had that stance before when they were acquired by bigger companies and slowly have made, you know, changes over time to, you know, reflect what, you know, people pay in the bills want. And, and that, that there, there's no doubt in my mind that that could happen with Euro, right? Like, I mean, there may come a day where it's, you know, you, Amazon gives you some incentive, uh, to, to flip on a switch where, you know, Hey, you get five bucks off shipping or, you know, or free prime or something. If you flip this switch and use our router and, um, you know, you, you may think that's great. And, and you'll want to jump in

and be part of that program. Uh, and then people who are concerned about their security may not think that's great and either, um, either move off or, or do something else with their, with their, with their wifi. So, um, I don't know, like it's to me, like it's, it's a big to do about nothing right now. Uh, I think it's great that Eero was able to make this exit. I think it's a great exit, but, uh, man, the security folks came out just with, uh, with like, I don't know, like conspiracy theories on, like, what was going on here. Oh, yeah, of course. It was wild. And you kind of expect that, right? Like, when – I get it. Like, we'll link to a story in the show notes, hometech.fm slash 245. A good story from The Verge, why Amazon buying Euro feels so disappointing.

And, you know, while I don't, I think it's a fair piece. I think the headline is a little, I don't know, clickbaity maybe. It's not, the article is pretty balanced, I feel like. And ultimately, like I empathize and I understand when people make the argument of like, gosh, can't I just have like one device in my home that is not owned by Google, Amazon, or Facebook, you know, or Apple. Like, I understand that. But ultimately, I think this is kind of the new normal, right? You get these like darling products like Eero. And, you know, they have models that like, they're not really set up. I mean, part of me, I don't know, this is pure speculation, but part of me thinks that a lot of these companies, that's the only thing on their mind. Like let's build a company and try to get bought by Amazon or Apple, right?

And that's the whole plan. And I'm not saying I know that about Eero, clearly. But, you know, these sorts of acquisitions are very common. I mean, it makes people are talking in the chat room right now. And it makes perfect sense why Amazon would do it, you know, better Wi Fi in the home, for all of the other stuff that they've got going on speakers, cameras, doorbells, you know, you name it, screens, media sticks, all of it, Chris is sort of pointing that out. So that side of it makes sense. Part of me, again, wonders if there's just sort of a target of opportunity here. And who knows, maybe even if Eero had set out originally to try and sort of conquer

the world and stand on their own two legs indefinitely, it's a tough road when you're out there selling this sort of hardware product with such skinny margins. Clearly, they weren't making a ton of money on the hardware. So what is the long play? And I don't think any of us can be surprised when this stuff happens. So I'm simply being pragmatic about it. I understand people's concerns. I don't personally lose sleep over them. There's plenty of other things that concern me in this world more than if Amazon has a little bit of information about my internet usage. They know plenty about me already. I buy so much stuff on their website. They've got a pretty good picture of sort of who I am. And to me, this sort of feels like a drop in the bucket.

Honestly, again, I don't really worry about it. I have no plans personally to change my network out. I'll continue to use Eero. We'll obviously cross my fingers that nothing major changes, but ultimately this just means the product is going to be better resourced and be able to hang around for the long haul with the backing of a company like Amazon, assuming they don't squash it. But I don't see that happening.

I don't see a compelling case for them doing that. I got to say, like, well, you kind of asked this question, like, what do you expect? Like, we all want these like the goal in the smart home is to have, you know, a contiguous like all put together like complete system. Right. And you're not going to get that with like every individual small manufacturer out there making it. Of course, of course, these big guys are going to own 90 percent of the smart home. You know, like, of course, Apple, Amazon and Google are going to end up owning own 90 of the smart home you know like of course apple amazon and google are going to end up owning that much of the smart home facebook and they had their shot with gaffa they're out they can't they can't even they're gone it's something that ship has sailed

yeah so like we were dropping gaffa but uh it three out of four ain't bad. And of course, these guys are going to own the smart home completely in their own realm. So I fully expect... I mean, Google has their own router, right? People really didn't flip out about that when they came out with their own thing. Amazon has money to buy people and buying a router manufacturer that has great reviews on their website. I'm sure they looked on their website and said, who sells the has great reviews on their website. I'm sure they looked on their website and said, who sells the best? And they bought them, you know, like, I'm

sure that that was the, uh, the, the way that they found Eero. So, um, yeah, I, I don't know. I, I'm not, I'm not worried about this. There are plenty other options out there. Um, you know, if you're, if you're worried about this thing, uh, like you can move to Ubiquiti or some other enterprise system and you're going to pay more for it than the $300 or $400 that Eero costs. But you won't have anybody spying on you if indeed that feature does come one day, right? It's completely made up in people's head right now.

And Eero could just hold the line and say, no, we're never going to introduce any kind of feature like that in our systems. And we're going to have these awesome Wi-Fi systems from here on out. So right. I'm happy for him. And like you said, well, more well-funded. We've already seen, seen like the fruits of the Amazon app, the ring acquisition by Amazon. Like we were seeing like more features, like tons more features come out with ring, uh, new product lines being launched. So like, I mean, this is only good for Eero and the product team

there. Yeah, I agree. So we'll have to keep an eye on it. Obviously, the concerns about privacy, again, a lot of information out there. Amazon, of course, says that they have no intention to alter the current privacy terms, which would prevent Amazon from doing any sort of nefarious tracking of your internet usage, everything is subject to change in the smart home. So, you know, keep an eye on that if it is something you're worried about. But ultimately, I think this will be a good deal for the vast majority of people. Yep, absolutely. All right. Well, all of the links and topics that we've discussed here can be found in our

show notes, once again, at hometech.fm slash 245. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter, where we'll send you weekly show reminders, as well as occasional other updates about the great things going on here in the world of Home Tech. Don't forget, you can also join us in the chat room live Wednesday, starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Find out more by visiting hometech.fm slash live and following us on Twitter at Hometech Podcast. All right, Seth, well, what do you say without further ado, let's go ahead and jump into our interview with Giles Sutton, again, the Senior Vice President of Industry Engagement at Cedia. And let's go ahead and get started. Hey, Giles, welcome to

the show. How are you? I am excellent. Thank you, Jason. Thanks ever so much for inviting me on. Yeah, absolutely. I'm glad we were able to make schedules line up. I understand you're here stateside for a little while in the midst of a very, very crazy travel schedule. So I really appreciate you taking some time out to join us. And we're going to jump in. We're going to talk about Cedia's new Member of Excellence program. Really looking forward to that.

Also, some of your experiences out at ISE in Amsterdam recently. I look forward to jumping into that as well. But just in case we have anyone tuned into the episode this week that is not familiar with you and your background and what you do at Cedia, why don't you give us just a quick personal introduction? Cool. Well, thanks, Jason. Yeah. Well, my name's Giles Sutton. My name seems to be impossible to pronounce in the US. But yeah, Giles Sutton. I am Senior Vice President of Industry Engagement at Cedia. I've been in the role, I think I'm coming up to about eight months now, seven or eight months. Prior to this role, I was an integrator in London, ran an integration firm called James and Giles. Last 14 years, it was an award winning firm, CD award winning, restaurant award winning, control for award winning. So I'm proud of that. I've had a lot of experience on the integrator side in a very, very competitive market, which London is one of the most competitive and challenging markets, I should probably say, in the world as well.

Very difficult and expensive place to do business. My role covers a lot of different aspects from membership, you know, the structure of our membership through to outreach to industry partners such, you know, in the design and build profession as well. So very wide ranging. I obviously also have the fantastic opportunity to talk about Cedia with people like you, Jason, as well. So very much an outward facing role. So yeah, super excited to be here. Thanks ever so much. That's great. Yeah. And I think, and for the benefit of our listeners as well, this idea of sort of having somebody like yourself who's really dedicated to this sort of outreach and industry engagement is a great idea. Talk about sort of the genesis of that role

and give our listeners a little taste for, we were talking about before we hit record here tonight, what your, the next couple of weeks of travel look like. And I thought it was a good sort of example of what you're out there doing, sort of evangelizing for the industry. Right. Absolutely. Yeah. So, I mean, my my role is is definitely going to be split between industry engagement, clearly, which is sort of internal industry, if you will. So certainly, you know, I'm in India at the moment visiting our headquarters here. But also, you know, in amongst those kind of visits to the headquarters, I'm also out meeting integrators as well, trying to get their perspectives on things from around the US and around the globe as well. So I've also, you know, in the seven months or eight months I've been at Cedia, I've also been to Australia, met integrators there as well. Obviously, being based in the UK as well.

So very much sort of internal industry engagement, but also external. So I am also very much going to be evangelizing, as you say, with our industry partners, design and build professionals as well. So next week, I'm going to be attending design and construction week in Las Vegas. I think I'm going to be attending design and construction week in las vegas um i think i'm going to be involved with maybe five or six uh different kind of either panel discussions or classrooms teaching um which is so exciting so i'm actually out there really sort of promoting the industry uh to design and build professionals as well and we have a whole roadmap uh for the next um for the for the whole year basically where i'm going to be attending a lot of these kind of events, media opportunities, media one-on-ones, roadshows, this kind of thing. we've we've been very sort of open about we've become very very focused on approaching designers and architects so that is a obviously a very big part of my role and one which really kind of

resonates with me because I pretty much built my my business based on developing those kind of relationships so I've always felt when I'm talking to designers and architects I kind of speak their language I kind of get where they're coming from. So I think that's the reason why CDO hired me, because I think I can really bring that to the organization. Cool. Very good. Well, speaking of roadmaps and sort of strategic planning and developing new initiatives, let's jump in and talk about this Member of Excellence program. It's really the main reason I wanted to reach out and engage and have a chance to catch up with you. We'll jump in and talk about some of the specifics and qualifications and the why behind it. But

if you can sort of concisely explain, give us kind of the elevator pitch. What is Cedia's new member of excellence program all about? So I'm really so excited about this program and I'm, you know, delighted that it actually finally came to fruition and we launched it at ISC officially last week. You know, it's been in conversation in some of the conversations that I've had since taking up the new role because I've been so excited about it and it's been hard for me to keep it a secret because it's been so long in development. But yeah, it's really a way for CDA members to distinguish themselves and to find a way to actually promote themselves as leaders in their markets, essentially. So this really stems from being a CDM member for, for, you know, the entirety of owning an organization. And actually, at one point, you know, being a CDM member was kind of a badge of honor, because there were certain,

you know, entry requirements to actually achieve that status, right? You know, the market has changed. You know, there are so many companies in our industry. And we know that smart home has pretty much exploded. And it's growing and growing. So we really felt the need to create some kind of way for members to distinguish themselves, differentiate themselves in their markets. Yeah, certainly. And I saw the tagline around this new program, encouraging inclusiveness and celebrating excellence. Is this a little bit of a shift for Cedia? I mean, in the past, like you said, when Cedia

first started, I think joining it as an integration company, as a home technology professional company in and of itself, joining Cedia, like you said, was a bit of a qualifier. And then it sort of got to a point where at least some integrators in some portion of the industry at least sort of felt like, I think maybe that Cedia had, it was no longer that, right? It was, you know, still maybe an important trade body, but it didn't represent something necessarily special, just being a member in and of itself. So address sort of those, was this member of excellence program sort of aimed at addressing that? And if I understand correctly, giving integration companies maybe a way to separate themselves from just, you know, using air quotes here, just, right, being a CDM member? So it's not necessarily a shift. I think it's really just addressing what the market is asking us for. Our members have been asking us for this kind of initiative for quite some time. I think Cedia has a role to play for every type of company, whether you are starting out and just a technology enthusiast through to companies that are very well established. So I think this is really just addressing a need. I don't think it's a revolutionary shift for the organization, but I think it is a necessary initiative to bring in. And, you know, I've been incredibly encouraged by just the amount

of applicants that we've had literally in just the first week, we've had 40 applications, you know, already gone through the web, the website to actually put in to apply so i think that is that is really amazing and to see uh you know i think that the the idea of this uh program is really um to encourage continual education and development we feel as an organization that education is the cornerstone to to to to operational excellence within organizations, to employees feeling like their careers are developing. So if you look at the program closely, you will see that really everything is geared around education and certification.

That is, you know, the CDS certification is the only qualification that exists within our industry. There's no other qualification to the extent that even within Europe, it is actually a qualification that is recognized by a body called City and Guilds as well, which means it's actually, you know, it's actually a certificate that's recognized by academic institutions. So yeah, I think it's a very seedier initiative in that it's about education. It's about also promoting our industry as well through outreach efforts. But it's also about, you know, good customer service is also very important that that comes into it as well. And there is, you know, a requirement to submit references from three customers, but also to trade references as well.

And we ask, we had that drafted by our legal team. And there are questions within those trade references about the standing of the company that they are endorsing. So yeah, it's, you know. So let's talk about that a little bit. So what is it, you know, if I'm an integrator and I'm listening to this and I'm interested in applying, number one, and we'll get into this, is, you know, what does that sort of application process look like? What are the mechanics of that?

In other words, is it online form? Do you sort of do an interview? Give us a taste for that, as well as what are some of those specific qualifications? You mentioned ongoing education and trade references. Walk our listeners through what that looks like. Sure, absolutely. So first of all, there's two tiers. There's the CDA Advanced member, and then there's the CDA Member of excellence. So that's important to understand. So the first thing, you know, I would probably encourage most companies to apply for the

CDA Advance member if you have a certified individual on staff. The CDA Advance member, for those that have sort of historical context of the organization. It's, you know, not too dissimilar to the entry requirements that we had at one point, right, to actually join the association. And I, you know, again, referring back to when I set up my business in 2005, you know, I remember when you had to submit even sort of project examples of project work as well. So, you know, in terms of the actual submission process, there's a whole online, there's an online portal. I mean, you just go to cd.net forward slash programs forward slash excellence. And from there, you can click

through to the portal to submit all of the information that is required. The process, if you qualify, you know, if you have quickly identified, you know, that you do qualify and we can go into some of that detail, the process should not really take you longer than about 20 minutes, 20 to 30 minutes. The time-consuming part is probably going to be going to your customers to get those references and relying on your manufacturers that you work with to supply their references as well. So you're going to have to go to them and you have to use the template that we provide to actually go and get those

references. Once you've got all that and you can just submit through the web portal and wait for the verification process to be carried out, which we estimate will take probably between three and four weeks because of the volume we're kind of seeing at the moment. But yeah, in terms of the requirement, the CDR Advanced member requirement requires a certified member of staff on hand. You need to supply those references that I mentioned as well. So the three customer references, the two trade supplier or manufacturer references. And you need to also be, I say it's like our cheerleader designation. You need to be either a certified outreach instructor, which means you're out there promoting our industry to architects and designers. And there's lots of information on how to get that, get that certification, which is free of charge, by the way. But, you know, we can talk. This is a great initiative that I'm really

enthusiastic about. But, you know, I could talk for hours about. But anyway, yes, you need to be an outreach instructor or a senior volunteer. And, you know, in addition to that, you need to have been trading for at least two years. You need to submit all a certain number of your technical staff, uh, need to invest in, in a certain amount of, um, education per year. So, so really quickly for anyone who may not be familiar again with that, you call it, I think the advanced member. So there's Cedia advanced member and then member of excellence. Number one, the advanced member walk, is that a new, is that sort of related?

Is this part of the member of excellence release? Or for people who don't know, is that something that's already been there, number one? And number two, am I understanding correctly that being an advanced is sort of a prerequisite? Is that how it works in order to become a member of excellence? That is correct, yeah. The advanced is kind of the base level. Exactly. We've not had it before.

Absolutely not. This, this, we're calling it the member of excellence program, but you know, there are two, there are two tiers within it. Um, the member of excellence, uh, designation is what we want our members to strive to achieve, but we recognize that is extremely difficult. And, you know, just to talk about that tier just a little bit, you know, that has much more stringent requirements in terms of the education and certification that is required. But also, you need to have been a CDA award finalist or winner, um, in the past three years, which, you know, that means that you have, you are the best in class. You've had your work scrutinized and judged by your peers. You know, this is extremely difficult to get, you

know, and, um, that's why, you know, we have these two levels really. Um, so got it. Yeah. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm seeing here on the website. So requirements, it looks like for the member of excellence program, craftsmanship, so selected as a CDA awards winner or finalist, shortlisted there. You have mentioned also certification. So it looks like a percentage of your full-time technical staff holding a certification that is based on company size. So looking at the smaller companies, you know, one to two people really needs to be everybody. And then you work up right to where if you've got a very large company, 50 plus people,

it is a smaller percentage of the workforce that has to be certified. Correct. So, you know, we, again, this comes back to how we believe education is, you know, we again, this comes back to how we believe education is, you know, the cornerstone to to everything we do as as an industry. We are a technical industry. Things are constantly changing and and developing. So, yeah, we there is a need to carry out training. Just to be clear, this is not this is carry out training. Just to be clear, this is not, this is not CDA training. Of course, we would love everyone to be taking just CDA courses, but this is, manufacturer training, manufacturer training, product training does, does also qualify. It could be for, for, for if you're all of your full-time staff it could also include you know management or sort

of administrative marketing training as well so you know it doesn't have it can be non-industry specific training as well so I think that it's important to distinguish that you know we're going to have a lot more education opportunities as an association by the end of this year, we'll have 72 online training courses as well. Low cost, quick and easy to do, easy to pause, come back to. So we're going to be trying to provide more kind of education opportunities as well. And that's all going to be delivered through our new learning management system. Got it. Very cool. All right. Well, let's shift gears slightly to what you get, right? So obviously, you know, you want to, if you're an integrator, presumably become a member of excellence in order to make yourself stand out from the competition. But clearly, it's not just

enough to slap that member of excellence logo on your website and watch the money roll in, right? You got to actually get the word out. And if I understand correctly, Cedia is going to offer some additional sort of tools and promotion in order to help those members achieve better visibility. So talk about that a little bit. Yeah, absolutely. So first of all, we've already carried out some work to our finder service as well. And, you know, some people may say, well, I never get anything through the finder service, the CDF finder service. I never get any leads that way. Well, we're going to be through our efforts with our new PR agency that we've engaged for specifically the design and build industry. We're going to really be trying to drive a lot more traffic to the kind of find a CDA member

area of our website. So first of all, CDA advanced members and members of excellence will have will be priority listed. So they'll rank above sort of basic members as well. So that's the first thing. Obviously, there's the logo that can be used on marketing collateral, but also the trophy as well for our members of excellence, which is a great, you know, everyone loves receiving a trophy. It's a great way to promote your business. In addition to that, there is going to be education discounts and priority, you know priority for education booking.

But most importantly, when it comes to our sort of PR opportunities, and as I mentioned, we are putting a lot of effort behind promoting our industry to, I can't stress enough, to designers and architects. Our members of excellence and our advanced members are going to be at the top of the pile, really, for those opportunities. And, I mean, you know, just this week, for example, we were featured in the Wall Street Journal. We had an opportunity that came to us to talk about media rooms and how the sort of changing face of home theater, how it's not just, I say just, but it's not simply, you know, proper home theater systems. People are looking for

multi-use spaces and media rooms, and this is becoming a lot more prevalent. So the Wall Street Journal contacted us for their mansion supplement. And we spoke to three, you know, CDA award winning companies. And they are thrilled. I mean, if you look at that, they are thrilled with the coverage that they got. They also interviewed me as well. So these PR opportunities, CDA is on the radar of the media, it's going to increase. So this is where we really see the strength. So at the moment, we know we have a lot to do in terms of just promoting our industry and the organization as a whole. But, you know, once we've achieved some sort of foundational kind of work on that side of things, we can start to promote why designers and architects should use CDM members of excellence. You know, why that should be the companies that they look for.

So, yeah, that's very important. And we also, I don't know if you remember the I Am Cedia campaign, which is a promotional video that we've done for some of our members in the past. We will also be offering that to Cedia members of excellence as well at a hugely discounted cost. So that is something that we we um have at the moment there are more benefits that we really hope to bring to this program as well we've got some big ideas which i wish i could share with you um around some of our events that we host but um we you know we want a group of ambassadors, that we can sort of drive that are really

are kind of our, our, our guys. So, yeah, I'm, I'm really excited about that. Very cool. It sounds like you're definitely, um, in my humble opinion, got your sort of mind in the right place in terms of, like you said, building that awareness. And I think that's one of the areas where Cedia really has a unique opportunity to serve as a voice for a, you know, and this isn't unique to our industry, the Cedia industry. We're a dispersed workforce and we're a lot of small and medium-sized companies. And so, you know, getting out there and having that sort of a platform to speak on and get out to the media and get their attention and get the attention of big builders and architects and things like that at the trade shows that you're going to, I think,

is a great place to focus the energy, again, in my opinion. So we're going to shift here and talk about ISE in just a moment. But before we move off of the Member of Excellence program, I know you've got some educational webinars coming up to kind of let the industry know a little bit more about those. So take the opportunity here and plug those and let people know how they can find out more. Thanks, Jason. Yeah. Well, as I said, the website, the web address to go to is www.cedia.net forward slash programs, forward slash excellence. And on there, you'll uh some links to our upcoming webinars we have two next week uh the first one on february the 18th um so i would encourage you if you're interested in finding out a bit more um a bit more detail than i've just gone into uh please do uh

sign up for one of those webinars we've i say we've got three coming up. We'll probably offer some more as well. TakeUp's been really great so far on the program. So yeah, I would really encourage you to check those out. Cool. We will have a link to those in the show notes as well at hometech.fm slash 245 if you want to go check that out. So shifting gears here as we wrap things up here for a few more minutes giles i know you were recently out in ise or at ise i should say in amsterdam

give us uh give us an idea of how the show went from an organization perspective how was how was the attendance how was the manufacturer participation uh what was that like this year wow i mean you know j Jason this show it never fails to stagger me really on the way that it continues to grow I mean again a record breaking year for ISC you know

I think just over 83,000 attendees the show goes from strength to strength even in light of the fact that it's been it will be moving to Barcelona. There still seems to be absolute, you know, attendance numbers that just blow it out the water. So, yeah, it's amazing show for us. We have a full education platform there. Uh, it's, it's, it's amazing to see, uh, so many of the, of, of US, uh, manufacturers over there. So many, so many familiar faces, um, which is fantastic. Um,

yeah, for us, it's, you know, it, it, it, we, as, as I think some people are not even aware that we own half of that show. Um, so i think people and get confused that we actually don't own our expo anymore so you know it is interesting isc is such an important event for us um as as um as as an owner of it with avixa so yeah it's a great show i mean for me some of the highlights um was certainly i I had the opportunity alongside of ICSA to present to 200 students from technical colleges all around Europe, all around Northern Europe. Some came as far as from Spain, from Southern Spain to attend around the Netherlands, Southern Germany, from technical colleges, doing various different

studies from media technology, sound technology. And I love this. You told me about this before the interview, and I think this is so cool. So there's another area where I think Cedia has a really unique opportunity, right, to serve as a force for good, to solve a problem that really has plagued the industry for so long, which is the labor shortage, right? And this is what you guys were after with this. So talk a little bit about how that, you know, how that went, what was the material like, how was it received? Yes, that's actually, you know, I should touch on that as well, Jason, you're right. You know, we are also super focused on workforce development. And I think unbeknownst to a lot of members, we've actually got two people now in our workforce development team.

So we're also addressing, I believe, the needs of the industry and that we want to attract new talent. Recruitment is a huge problem. You know, I know that from past experience myself. So this really comes into the whole workforce development plan. I basically stood up in front of this class of 200 people and told them about the exciting industry that we're in. I mean, honestly, everyone, all the students were just staring at me so engaged. I was so excited about this i spoke to them about the different roles that exist the different things that we do um you know how our

industry really suits individuals that have a really kind of broad sort of technical knowledge so um that was amazing and it was alongside of vixer as well who did kind of uh who led also a discussion about the sort of pro side versus the resi um and then the students then did a tour of the show um and then they all came back for a q a um super energized that i you know eyes sort of lit up as they saw all the technology um yeah and then they were on their way. And I think it is something... I would imagine that, you know, ISE, that trade show floor, which I've only had the privilege of attending once, would be quite the eye opener for a group of young students who,

presumably before this event, probably had very little of an idea, if any, that this sort of industry existed. Absolutely. I mean, they were also shocked. I gave them some kind of examples of salaries, of wages that you would get for kind of junior technicians through to project managers, through to business owners. And, you know, our industry pays pretty well, right? Yeah. And that's important. I thought it was important to touch on that because everyone thinks workforce development is a technology industry issue is an issue for our

industry, but it's not. And, you know, we've, we have to fight for these kids. Okay. Because it seems to be a problem across industries. Um, that's been my experience of attending some interesting, um, association cross association groups. Yeah. No, I was at the, um, the, uh, Ozzy own conference here in Denver last year. And one of the best presentations I thought of that whole conference was a woman, and I'm going to draw a blank on her name, but she gave a really great presentation. And she was not from our industry. She was from, I think, like the HR recruiting type of field. And she talked about exactly what you're saying, which is, you know, yes, you guys are being plagued by this problem, but this is not unique to you. It's called the middle skills gap. And it's a very, very real problem across multiple industries. So I think your point of making sure that as an

industry, the folks in the home technology profession don't get lulled into a sense of this problem is unique to us. We're actually, like you said, competing across multiple industries, which, if anything, I think makes the problem even more challenging and more daunting. Absolutely. I completely agree. And, you know, from having had discussions with some of our manufacturer members as well, I know that it is definitely on their radar as well.

And we've had a lot of manufacturers really pledge their support for this initiative, which is great. So we'll have some financial backing around that as well. I really want to make it possible for members in their markets to be able to try and achieve some element of workforce development. That has to be the end goal really is, you know, CDA can only do so much, I think in terms of, um, creating, you know, trying to create some momentum, awareness, awareness, exactly. Um, I think I would encourage also, um, members to be able to actually do this in their own areas. And that's something that, um, our workforce development team is working on right now, is actually creating a program.

We're starting within the state of Indiana, because clearly that's our local, our state that our HQ is based in. But creating a program that is funded by by the government it's government funded right so uh the the cdm member does not have to pay a penny um can take it you know you can take a chance on that on that high school kid or college uh student um and take them basically through um a boot camp that basically leads to qualification um to certification so um I'm super excited about that. Once that is live, we can then start to roll that out across the US and then across the globe.

So yeah, there's this huge opportunity there. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It is a huge opportunity. One more question on that and then I want to bring it back to ISU a little bit. I know, I just remember we just got on a tangent about workforce development, but it is also exciting. You know, sometimes tangents are okay yeah it's an important topic uh what i'm actually curious how you went about i think you said you

had 200 students what did the process of of recruiting and getting on those folks radar look like how did you how did you attract those people to the show to come learn more? So I have to admit, we've worked with Avixa on this. And Avixa have actually got relationships with technical colleges and schools. So it was really through having a network of teachers. It also has to be funded. I mean, you know, you have to you can't expect the colleges to to pay for for their students to to attend this. So and just find their own way there. So it's funded so that all the coaches are laid on and the transportation is all covered to get the kids there. So buses, buses for those of us in the US. Oh, yeah, buses.

Exactly. Yeah, so that's something I think we as an organization are very keen to do ourselves as well around our events. Absolutely. Cool. All right. Well, yeah, in the couple of minutes we got left here. Talk about, again, bring us back to ISE. Sounds like it was a very successful show from an organization perspective. What would you say? And presumably, I'm on the vendor side of the business now, so I know what these trade shows are like. You don't get a lot of time to run around and look at all the cool stuff on the show floor. But from your unique perspective and your experience that you had out there at the show, what would you say was kind of the biggest sort of single trend that you picked up on? Well, firstly, I think it's interesting being in a slightly different role myself here in that I've gone from being an integrator through to an industry role. So I'm spending a lot more time actually talking to, you know, the company

executives, the management, as opposed to looking at all the cool gadgets and cool new technology. I'm, I'm so enthusiastic about the optimism and positivity that there is existing in the industry at the moment, that show that had, I see there was so much energy, um, energy there. And that's, that's the first thing that really struck me. Um, the other thing, you know, obviously we're seeing so many more acquisitions and, and, uh, which, which is really interesting. Um, it seems every year, you know, there's less companies, I guess, because of the way the brands are being absorbed. So that's interesting. You know, that is probably changing. And, you know, I think Cedia probably needs to consider

that, that there probably are going to be less manufacturers in the future. You know, we are. Yeah. Sort of a sign of a maturing industry, right? I mean, sort of a natural market force that, again, is not totally unique at all to our industry, but definitely something here on the show we've been talking about a lot more is those mergers and acquisitions. And what does that mean? It is an interesting trend, I agree. Right. And, you know, we saw some interesting ones like Control 4 acquiring Neo, the remote control um which was very interesting um very much looking at it i think from a kind of industrial design kind of perspective on how that

can affect all of their um user interfaces you know the sonos and uh sonance partnership as well um that that's and how that works with um with the i think it's called is it the true true image or true sound the the room correction tool yeah um forgive me if i i called it the wrong thing there but it sounds awesome hearing the sort of ab option ab of that um and you know i thought i thought i was also blown away by the lg uh sort of the curved screen display they had there, which they had brought over from CES and the sort of roll away screen that they're doing. Yeah, so the bendable OLED technology. Yeah, there's some really, really interesting stuff happening in the world of displays. Certainly right now, that's something we've been talking about as well here on the show.

So definitely glad to hear that you had a great time out there. It sounds like it was a successful show. And thank you for, again, for taking some time to come on and share with us what you've been up to and what Cedia as an organization has been up to. It was really great to learn more. As we wind things down here, Giles, what is next for Cedia? What's got the team really excited here as we start to move closer to the second quarter of 2019? Well, I mean, there's just so much happening. And I think, you know, we've had a new board come in. And we had our first board meeting at HQ. And one of the things the board

members said is, Scott, the new board members, I had no idea you guys are doing so much. And I think that's, you know, we've got, you know, a really big education team now, so much education content coming out, including workforce development. You're going to say, I said, touch on the outreach efforts that we're doing. And we've got our entire roadmap for that. So, you know, there's just, there's just a lot going on, I would say, within the organization. And I'm super excited about where we're moving. So just watch this space, really. There's a lot more to come is what I can say.

Sure. And if our listeners wanted to connect with you or learn more about any of the topics that we've discussed here, what would be the best way for them to do that? Well, if they're Cedia members, then, you know, reach out to me. You know, I'm gsutton at cedia.org. Please just email me if you've got any queries or concerns. Or on Twitter at Cedia Giles. It's probably another good way to connect. So yeah, that's probably the best way to reach me. Otherwise, find me at one of our events. For example, I'm attending a lot of our technology and business summit events as well, our local events that we're carrying out. So, again, you can find out where the local event in your area is. So I'm attending a number of those as well.

Great. Well, Giles, thanks again for taking some time to join us and sharing all you've got going on. And we'll wish you the best of luck moving forward, and we'll look forward to reconnecting soon. Great. Thanks, Giles, thanks again for taking some time to join us and sharing all you've got going on. And we'll wish you the best of luck moving forward. And we'll look forward to reconnecting soon. Great. Thanks, Jason. All right. Take care. All right. Well, that will do it for our interview with Giles. Hope you enjoyed it. I definitely had a great time chatting with him. Seth, what do you say we transition here into our mailbag? I think we got a great one this week. Yeah, let's take a look. It's a great one as in like great in size because uh uh listener scott yes he wrote us he wrote us a uh what do they call it a novella or something like it it's how do you do 3 000 words on on

it's great though hey he did it yeah yeah no it's extremely good. So Scott says, first of all, I am in all caps, extremely upset with the loss of Neo and I'm not even a customer. I've been watching them closely and had just been waiting for the technology to mature a bit more before I bit the bullet. Who's in the market for a $300 remote? I certainly am. And I'm not a pro or a custom installer. I'm just a consumer with a moderate income who has a fair amount of technical skill uh and then he goes into like you know a number of things that are on his uh right shelves yeah pretty sophisticated you know media room setup basically kind of outlined all receiver dvd player yeah yeah um he said he struggled with urc and harmony uh remotes getting them set up correctly and doing their thing so he says, so where do those people who need universal remotes go now as companies sell out, close up shop and so on?

You claim that we're all early adopters and this is to be expected and that we'll need to wait until the dust settles and this stuff becomes more mainstream before we can feel safe. But you're missing something important that's happening. These days, there's so much pressure on companies to turn profits more and more quickly in shorter and shorter time spans that it simply doesn't allow them time for anything to become mainstream. See the Eero conversation we just had. The fast-paced, impatient, short-sighted corporate attitude of these companies uh live by now fundamentally prevents anything from becoming mainstream anymore 3d tv that lasted all of a year then curve streams were all the big rage not anymore yeah well uh oh you have a massive blu-ray

collection toss that out because now you need 4k and before k before 4k is anywhere near mainstream they're pushing 8k another example of what i. The gaps between the new specs and new technology are shrinking to the point where they're too short for any mainstream adoption, for anything to become safe anymore, and for any standards to be worth anything. Consumers are suffering, the technology is suffering, and the industry is suffering. I think DVD was our last solid technology that had an appropriate lifespan. A lot of my media will be forever DVD only and never even have a Blu-ray release. So I'm keeping my OPPO player, the OPPO Blu-ray DVD player. So lots of good stuff here from Scott. That was the abbreviated version.

Yeah, we cut a bunch of stuff out. Love it, Scott. Thanks for reaching out. And I think you make some really great points that there's a lot of cause to be frustrated when it comes to the connected home these days and technologies do move quick and it can give you a whiplash, right? I think technologies like 3D TV and curved screens, I would put in a little bit of a different bucket in the sense that, well, they sort of, you know, pardon my French, but they sucked and nobody liked them, right? But I get it. Like, the way technology is moving, and we've talked about it on the show with 4K now moving to 8K. We talked just last week about ultraviolet going away, which is something not mentioned, I don't believe was mentioned in this email.

So a lot of great points. that frustration, but it is about sort of buyer beware, I think is what I would sort of classify at least when I make statements about, like we were talking about Eero just a few minutes ago, and it's kind of like, well, what do you expect? These companies are going to get snapped up, and it shouldn't be a surprise. And I'm not saying that that doesn't negatively impact some people, and I'm not saying that it shouldn't frustrate anybody, but I am saying, like, you got to kind of go into this eyes wide open and, you know, take it as it comes. But I do think that the point about the accelerating pace of change and the impact that that is having on consumers is spot on. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I like the part there where he says, you know, these gaps. Okay, well, these gaps are hurting the industry and the technology.

I think in the broad sense it is, like, if you go to any, like, regular Joe, right? Maybe not Scott here, but, like, somebody who does not listen to our show and does not does not like have anything to do with technology. And, you know, they go to work, they come home, they flip on their TV with their cable box remote. And, you know, if they can get it to work, it works. And they watch their TV and they turn off and go to bed, that kind of thing. Like they're, they're not like chasing down these, you know, infinitesimal technology bumps that we have every, every, every year, right? They're not worried about going from 1080p to 4K to 8K to 16K. They don't care about that kind of thing.

And those kind of, like, numbers and specs and everything are just going to pass them by. Like, oh, they go to the store and they say, oh, I got this 4K TV. The picture on it looks – they may never even notice that the picture looks slightly better than their previous tv does um so like i and i i i classify those that type of person is like that person is the majority here like that's that's really what we're up against as like technology geeks right like they're there are more people like that who just simply don't care about what specs their TV has versus like being able to comfortably sit down and watch TV. And I think for, you know, Jason, you're in my career. Like it was the it was a custom integrator that had to come in and sit down with people and explain to them like, hey, here's why you should care about having, you know you know, a better VCR picture, right? Like let's put this, what was that called? That Farajua Farajuda processor.

You remember those things? Yeah. Like I never could pronounce them, but I knew we had them. Uh, let's put that on there and get that, get that VCR looking really good for you. Like, uh, you know, we put all these stuff in, uh, to, to hopefully have an educate our clients like, Hey, there is a, there is a better way of doing this. And you can get a better performing system. And here's why you should like it. Here's the reference material from the movie. If you love movies, why not watch it how the director wanted you to watch it when they filmed it? So there's that whole tech spiel, whole spiel that we have that basically puts in this technology for people.

And it's very small. It kind of goes back to being the early adopter. It's a very small number of people who want that. The rest of the people in the world want to have input zero. They want to be able to turn on and use the Apple iOS app or whatever they're going to have

come out on March 25th and be able to watch TV or whatever the heck they want to get their hands on with one app. Like they don't want to have to deal with all this stuff. So I really think, I mean, even after I listened back to the episode last week, I really think that these, these remotes are just dead in the water today. And, uh, outside of like, you know, unfortunately for for for people like scott like not a custom integrator not a um you know not a pro but he but he has a bunch of gear that he wants to hook up and and it's and it's let's let's be let's be frank here it was it's it's legacy gear right it's this is not how new systems will be designed for the mass market right um yeah you know this is how this is how it was designed in the yesteryear.

Right. And this is how a system in my house would be designed. Right. This is how I would want everything to be. But even I would struggle to recommend where which direction Scott should go here, because I'm not going to tell him harmony. I'm just I'm just not. I'm not going to do it. Not going to do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I agree with you. I think I think the truth is that this sort of thing, DIY, is getting increasingly difficult. Yeah, yeah. And it's just a tough proposition for companies to come out with a product that can sell for a few hundred dollars and can do everything that a user like Scott needs it to do and still remain profitable.

Like, that's not an easy mix for a company to achieve. And so I think, you know, ultimately it is going to be a bigger investment, but if you truly have that sort of a setup and it's not a light setup, I mean, there was a lot of stuff that he listed that was in his media room and he's not alone. Like there are plenty of people out there who have that. I think the answer is thankfully companies like Control 4, for example, are coming out with more affordable solutions. And I totally understand the thought of hiring a pro and having to go with a system like that where you're sort of dependent on a pro. I think a user like Scott could probably get away with, I think Control 4 has some user programming capabilities, Composer Lite or something like that.

If this, then that type thing that they use. Yeah. When, then. When, then, I think is what they brand it. Yeah, that's where I would look, because a company like Control 4 is about as stable as you're going to get when it comes to that sort of an offering. But yeah, in the DIY space, I agree. That's a tough landscape, and companies are, I think, just struggling to make it work. I mean, we talked about it, I think it was last week. Harmony is a really, really unprofitable part of Logitech's business.

I would not be surprised to see that get spun off or closed down at some point in the future. Right. Totally speculating, but it wouldn't surprise me. So I think Scott makes a good point. It's kind of a tough time to be in that position. Yeah. Yeah.

And even saying like go with control four is tough because, I mean, we're not talking a $300 remote at that point. We are talking just the remote being $300. Oh, it's a bigger investment for sure. You're looking at $1,500 minimum to get even the, I think the equipment in the door to your house. Um, and even then there's like, you know, the programming and install, whatever they have to do on top of that. So like it's, it's not a, but, but I'll take a step back. That's what it takes for these companies to be profitable,

right? Like it's not a $300 remote. Yeah. Clearly the $300 remote is not working. I have my concerns. I mean, there are other options out there. We talked about Kavo in the past and I really like Kavo right now. Like it's still sitting here on the desk and I'm not using it, but I really like it. I really like the idea and I'm willing to like give them $100 to invest in it. But I mean, heck, they've been on fire sale for like $60 now dollars now 60 or 70 dollars so um maybe that's something that he could look into it probably won't fit very well into his system but uh and it's not like the greatest remote like in the world but uh it is a

cool idea um and i gotta say like at some point it comes point, if you like these companies that are out there, you are going to have to invest in them if you want them to stick around, right? So it's going to be like you can't sit back and watch them get more mature. Because once they get more mature, they're going to have options. And I think that's what happened here with N Neo. They got really mature with their product development and Control 4 has money and they needed product development. So they picked them up. But I don't know. I think that everything that he listed there, the Neo remote could have done out of the box, you know, a couple of months back, if not a year ago and been just fine. But, you know, I don't know. Then he then he would have been out three, it's, it's a tough place to be

because you're relying on people to continue to buy these remotes every single year. Right. And as I, as I described that first person that, you know, the, the, the vast majority of people don't want this remote. They want to have the remote they pick up with their TV, do everything for them on the input zero. And it makes it tough. It makes it tough. Like where, where's the reoccurring revenue come from in a company like Neo? Yeah. If you, if you sell a great remote and it's up and going for, um, for, uh, you know, three or four years, like where, where, what happens, what happens what happens are you you can't you can't expect them to live off 300 every year i think that's i think that's what uh cavo did pretty good is they have that little subscription service it kind of helps them out a little bit so

there's some really good conversation in the chat room about all of the devices that you might need to control twin cassette deck hd dvd disc, VHS player, you know, at some point, yeah, these technologies can sort of go but go by the wayside. But right. And to your point, yeah, the the media room continues to evolve where fewer and fewer devices need to exist as content all moves up to the cloud and you plug in your yourer and you go digital audio out into a soundbar with, you know, maybe wireless other speakers, like for a lot of people, that's enough. And so these mainstream plays, the mainstream plays like Neo, where they were trying to go for the mainstream, just, you know, frankly, may not be viable. I think is what it really boils down to.

Yep. And where the money is, is where you're going to see the fast development being done. And the bigger companies are going to be able to just reiterate on what they're doing well. Like, you know, Sonos has been around a long time now, 10 plus years, right? Maybe longer, I think about it. But like they've been able to iterate on their product and they're, you know, they're kind of in they're big, their competition as an independent company are the Amazons and the Apples and everything like that. So, I mean, there, there's one company right there that I wholeheartedly support, even though I don't like some of the things they do sometimes. Uh, but it's, it's a great product and it's worked well for me for, for, you know, a long time. And I, I, I need to go pick up a sub

just to support them this year. Right. I just need to like, I need to help them out because I feel like I'm not doing my part for Sonos. Right. That's right. That's right. All right, cool. Well, Scott, thank you so much for reaching out. It was a really great, uh, email and definitely sparked a great conversation here. So really, really quickly before we jump into the pick of the week, I'll mention if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week you want to send us for great ideas, feedback like that, that Scott just sent, our email address is feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out our online form. I really love getting those, especially when they lead to great conversations like this one did.

Yep. Thanks, Scott. Thanks for writing in. This week's pick of the week, I ran across this on Twitter, man. This is the craziest thing I've ever seen. So picture this, Jason. You buy a new smart door lock. The battery runs dead, and the batteries are always inside. So what do you do? What's an innovative way of getting that thing charged up so you can punch in your code and get in the house? Don't leave home without a key.

Well, that's one way. Which sort of defeats the whole purpose, I guess. That's probably the, yeah. No, it is a problem. It is a problem. And this picture is a very interesting solution. So this company, and I have the company here, it is called it's something strange. Amadas, A-M-A-D-A-S has come up with this smart door lock thing that you actually into this like little solar charger for a little bit it charges up the the batteries just enough uh for you to enter your pin and open your door and then uh it says hey after opening and closing the doors the batteries must be replaced with new ones yeah yeah this is not a daily use case no yeah this So I thought that was pretty cool. This is funny.

It's a neat idea, but I have to say my favorite part of looking at this was it's a tweet. And if you look at like, at least at the time that I was looking at it, the first reply was, this is a cool solution for a problem caused by a solution to a non-existent problem. I thought that was great. I mean, it's so true. Like, who needed to really do this? But ultimately, I mean, I get it. Electronic locks are cool.

They're convenient. But yeah, there is always that challenge of what do you do if the batteries die? And this is a pretty neat solution to that. Yeah, and this one actually looks decent. I mean, in the right home, if you had this kind of like hardware in your house, I think this one actually looks pretty good compared to some of the stranger ones that I've seen out there. This one, not so bad. Yeah, absolutely. All right. Well, as we wind down our show here, we want to give a big thank you, like we always do to everybody who supports our show, but especially to those of you who are able to financially support our efforts through our Patreon page.

If you're not familiar with our Patreon page there, head over to hometech.fm. Once again, that's hometech.fm. To learn how you can support Hometech for as little as $1 a month. Any pledge over $5 a month will get you a big shout out on air, but every pledge will get you an invite to our private Slack chat, The Hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for the inside baseball conversations about all things home technology. And Seth, as I was reading that, it occurred to me that I should have gone back and re-listened to how we read it last week because there must have been something like sort of magical about whatever we did there we got three pled three pledges this

week at the five dollar level which uh is awesome so we're really excited about that and want to make sure that we give our big shout outs to all three of you who came on at that $5 level this week. The Home Technology Association is now officially a patron of the Home Tech Podcast, and the HTA is a pretty cool organization. If you're a professional and not familiar with them, definitely go check them out, as well as Jordan Hall and Rashid Duram. We really appreciate all three of your support. Thank you so much for taking the time and for the generosity to go and do that. Yep, and I just saw Rashid pop in here into the Slack chat. So I'll just say hi over there.

But, yeah, thank each and every one of you so much. It must have been something in the water. I don't know, Jason. It's great. When it rains, it pours, And then this is great. So we're really, really, really thankful for each of these supporters of the show here. And glad to have you on board. Yep, absolutely. And if you would prefer not to contribute here financially, we totally get that. There are other ways that you can help us out, namely leaving us a review wherever you download the podcast.

Doing so takes just a few minutes and helps other people find our show. So definitely take a moment to do that. We would really appreciate it. Yep, absolutely. And Rashid is actually contributing to the show late in the game here. He mentioned the 7HUG Smart Remote. That one came out. I haven't gotten my hands on that one yet,

but I will be curious to see what they're able to do. I do remember that finally coming out. We've had them on the show. I can't remember the gentleman's name, but we had him on the show a couple of times to talk about this remote over the years, and now it looks like they're finally shipping, and I just haven't gone down and decided to buy that. So that one's out there too alongside Kaavo

and, of course, the Logitech, which I will not recommend. All right. And Josh from HTA has popped in and said hi as well. So we've got two of our three new $5 patrons here popping into the chat room to say hi. So we really appreciate that. And with that, I think we'll go ahead and wrap up the show. Thank you so much for tuning in and for your support. We really appreciate it. And we'll look forward to chatting with you next week. Seth, have a great weekend.

Yep. You too, Jason. Have a great weekend. Talk soon.