HomeTech.fm - Episode 274 - CEDIA 2019 From the Floor

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

On this episode of HomeTech: We take a break from working the big show to chat about a few quick observations we had at CEDIA 2019. We’ll be back next with with a wrap up and bigger conversation about the rest of our CEDIA experience.

The Home Tech Podcast is supported by you. To find out more, go to hometech.fm support. This is the Home Tech Podcast for who knows what day it is anymore, Jason. I'm tired. It's Saturday. I know that. A few hours left here at the show. We're ready. We're exhausted. I think I speak for both of us, I presume. Are my eyes open? Yeah. I can't feel them. I presume. It's been another busy week, another great show here in my beautiful hometown of Denver.

We've had gorgeous weather this week. Everyone's been commenting on that. We're really lucky to enjoy that this time of year here in Denver. And another amazing show. It's been really a lot of fun here at the One Vision booth. I know you've been kind of roaming the floor, but you've been in a lot of meetings and stuff this week, if I understand. Yeah, I don't know if roaming is the best description of what I did. Like sweating, running between booths just to make the meetings.

Yeah, we have a marketing firm, and they signed us up for meetings, and they got us in front of people. They got it done. Yeah, but I mean, that's one of the main things you're supposed to come here. I mean, I'm not really in the integration space anymore. And, I mean, for the most part, I think it's probably one of the things we'll talk about is that everything's kind of been the same the last couple of years. We've struggled to find themes for the last couple of years. But that doesn't mean that, like, the relationships between our dealers

and our manufacturing partners, like that doesn't mean that those need to stagnate as well. So like we've gone out, we find out, we find like what new products they're bringing on and what they're excited to see and what trends they're seeing. And then we also talk to our dealers and say, you know, what are you guys, what are you guys looking for? Yeah. So it's, it's been a very, I mean, all the, all the heck in this, I'm sure you can attest to this has been very very productive. Yeah, it always is. And I think I did have a little bit of time to go walk around the floor and enjoy that. I've mostly had to rely on people coming by the booth,

and of course our primary focus is to talk about One Vision and how we might be able to help them. But I've taken the opportunity on plenty of occasions to sort of ask them, like, hey, what are the big things you're seeing? What are the big themes and trends? And, you know, I think it's always, it's a deceptively difficult question because this is, at this point, this is a fairly mature industry

and we don't often get those big, like, leaps forward. It's more of an iterative, you know, small improvements here and there and just kind of spotting the little trends that are popping up. So, you know, home wellness is just one example of that. Like I have had several people come by the booth. There's a Delos product is kind of the big one, but circadian lighting, air quality, water quality, things that fit into that sort of category. Starting to see more of that crop up. And I think, I suspect that's a trend that we'll continue to see

over the next couple of years. So that's been an interesting one to hear a little bit about. Yeah, I noticed this year, and we've talked about what we've seen in the past, and what I do see, you guys are kind of, you guys are like in the middle of the hall floor. There's a big column behind us, a big block wall, and it indicates to me that we're halfway

through this giant building right and i noticed that like not too far behind you there's the big black curtain that the the event staging people put up not that you guys are in the back you're almost in the middle but the show's smaller than it has been in the past and there's there's well we talked about this on the show enough there's been like a massive amount of consolidation in this industry and whereas you in the past you had a giant Middle Atlantic booth, a giant Luxor booth, all that is combined in the LeGrand. And now you have a giant Control 4 booth, a giant Triad booth.

Those are all together. And Snap AV is kind of tacked on there as well. So it's like the Snap AV Control 4 booths are all kind of one. Yeah, those two are still separate this year, but yeah, you're right. I bet they'll be the same next year. Yeah, and then you have Nortec over there with Elan and all the products that encompass that. So it's kind of like you walk in, you're like, okay, I've got Sony, LG, Samsung, Control 4, Snap, Nortec, and Legrand. Six booths, you're done.

It's true. It's true. And I think it is, again, a sign of a maturing industry. And I've had a couple people make that comment to me of like, you know, you can see the consolidation and you can see it's sort of maybe a growing divide between the larger conglomerates and then the smaller independent players. And yeah, I think that is a trend that will continue. Not going out on a limb by predicting that, but it will be interesting all the same to see what sort of effect that has on the show here in coming years.

Just one of the things I noticed and dealers are coming to the show they're not looking for what's the latest home theater speaker that I can get. They're not like looking for what's the latest home theater speaker that i can get right they're coming here looking for like solutions to to like particular projects that they're having uh that they're coming into and saying i have this project going on i'm looking for the solution what do you know exists you know i was kind of like standing behind some of those conversations

and was like oh i know what you could use and kind of getting involved with that but like it's it's yeah i've noticed those conversations have popped up a lot more than, you know, what's the latest, uh, what's the latest speaker that, that, that that's out there. And is it made of Kevlar or, you know, whatever, you know, whatever random substance they come up with. That's right. Well, one of the other surprising, uh, trends this year, Seth is the, uh, is the urinal pads. Okay. Yes. We, we have to talk about the gorilla year, Seth, is the urinal pads. Okay, yes. We have to talk about the guerrilla marketing that was, I'm not going to say, I'm not going to fully blame it on One Vision here.

Because there's great minds think alike, like Josh AI also. Well, let's start with One Vision. Because you guys had this idea. You went into the bathroom and you used urinal pads that's right that's right yeah it was uh it was an idea that that we came up with show let me say yeah it's been a hit it was uh you know it was an idea to kind of inject some levity and get some people laughing uh so we put these uh these little urinal pads in the bottom of all the urinals here throughout uh maybe not all, but many of the urinals here in the convention center that say, relieve yourself of the burden of service,

One Vision, booth 2651, and then the web domain. And I can tell you, myself and Joey, our CEO, who's also a longtime industry guy and has a lot of friends in the industry, as I do, I've been getting texts and messages all week with the pictures like, hey, well played, nice job. And most importantly, though, I will say that I've had at least probably four or five really great prospects come by the booth here. And the first thing that they've said is, hey, we're here because we saw the urinal pads. Good marketing. The cost was worth it. Exactly. It feels like it's straight out of the guerrilla marketing playbook.

But interestingly, you know, no connection, no strategy talks involved. But Josh AI had a similar sort of strategy, bathroom-based marketing. They went to the stalls. They went to the stalls. And I think one of them, I think I heard there might have been multiple of these. I'm not sure, but I know the one I heard about was don't forget to wipe. And then below it said, you know, at Josh AI, you have the ability to wipe all your data off of the device. And here we care about privacy.

Because they're shooting for that, you know, anti-Amazon, Google privacy angle type thing. Right, right. So that was clever. It's very clever, very smart for them to do, given the news that we've seen over the past couple of months. Surrounding companies, I mean, all those big three companies, Amazon, Apple, Google, they've all had privacy concern issues pop up. And it was a smart move by them to go in there and stick things up on the back of the stalls. Yeah.

You turn around, you're like, oh, that's funny. Absolutely. And then again, this was kind of a surprising theme of the show, but Hagai, many of the listeners to the podcast will probably know Hagai. He's well-known in the industry, founder and CEO of Access Networks, and a very charismatic, well-known person in the industry. They went and they had these life-size, I don't know if they're quite life-size, but they're big. Close enough. Cardboard cutouts of Hagai. And they went and spread these all over the convention center, unsanctioned as I understand

it. And said, come say hi to Hagai. And he was in different silly poses and stuff like that. So it's fun. I can't recall a year in the past where I've seen, you know, several different kind of guerrilla marketing things. It kind of injects some humor into the event. And I think that's great. So I was telling the team here that the one, I think, downfall of what we did this year is that next year now we have to figure out something to one-up it. You're going to have to one-up it, right? That's going to be a challenge, but we're up to it. I was just about to say, I hope the does continue because um the show uh used to have i mean i'm i'm not going to say that the life that the show used to have was great i mean uh i'm thinking of the the uh what is it the speaker craft circuses

that were yeah that were that is true yeah not not my favorite thing uh that that that went on uh here but they got people talking Yeah, for not the right reasons. But the show's kind of been kind of a corporate feeling for the past couple of years after that kind of died off and was no longer accepted. And then, yeah, I'm glad to see that there's some more humor and things being brought to it. So I hope the trend does continue between other vendors. Yeah, absolutely. That's kind of fun. to see that there's some more humor and things being brought to it. So I hope the trend does continue between other vendors. So it'll be cool to see. That's kind of fun. Some of the other sort of offbeat trends, and this is going to be kind of a shorter episode here. I know you've got to fly and get off the show floor here for a flight,

I believe. And so we wanted to just do kind of a quick overview, and we'll jump in deeper into some of these takeaways here on a future episode. But I know like, of course, we'll talk about the control manufacturers, what we saw there and some really cool stuff in displays and 8K. Big TV art seems to be like a big thing. I know Samsung kind of blazed the trail there, but Sony was highlighting some of that at their booth, as well as LG, even a third party company I saw called Frame My My TV, which they actually have been around for a little while, I think, but they had a dedicated section of their booth where they had stuff for the Samsung frame TVs. So if you don't like Samsung's options, you can now go to a third-party company. So I think this idea of

making TVs blend in more into the aesthetic was an interesting one. And it kind of segues into a broader theme of just a continued kind of convergence of trying to get the design to fit in better with the types of homes that these integrators are working in. People don't want to see those giant black squares. They want to see something on them. And I totally love this idea. I've been seeing those. The Samsung TVs are super popular, but I would like to see that feature kind of built into more TVs, not just like putting images on the wall, but like Samsung, we went by their booth

and talked to the guy. And there's a whole like, you want this picture, you want it to have a different mat. Like we can do a standoff mat on this. We can have the mat that goes over. And it looks really, it looks just like a mat. It looked real. It was hard to tell the difference between that and a real one. So, you know, so that was cool. I think seeing the Design Connection Pavilion kind of back corner of the convention center here, I know from talking to Giles as listeners to our show, if they heard the previous episode with him, you know, Cedia is

doing a lot of outreach to the design community and the NKBD, the National Kitchen and Bath Association has a small presence here, as does the ASID, American Society of Interior Designers, I think is what that one stands for. So it's cool to see those organizations here. And I think that's a great way for CDI and integrators to continue to spread the word about the industry is through those various design, architecture, and building channels. And I think there's a lot of ground that can be gained there. Absolutely. I love to see those types of partnerships pop up. So I know we were trying to shoot for a real quick episode. We're running up on our 15 minutes.

I've got to run out the door, catch a train. You guys have this awesome train. Yeah, out to the airport. I get you to the airport. Beautiful. I love it. I just sat there and rode that, and it was so calm. The bus is a different story.

I have some videos that are pretty funny from the bus. Yeah, it's a mixed bag. I will say, Denver, been a beautiful place. Very disappointed in your bird population, Jason. Yes, the bird population is thin. I noticed that. There's literally in the entire city probably three or four birds. I've seen the kids get the ride around.

Yeah, there's some other brands, though, I think. Yeah, there's like five different brands out here. And you'll see, you know, you've got a group of three or four guys. You'll see them, like, sitting on the corner, but there'll be four different apps that you'll have to open and figure out how to get this stupid thing activated. Which app am I using? Yeah, we are going to do a quick one to wrap up here. I know just kind of a preview of coming attractions.

A lot of energy stuff, I think. Again, off the beaten path stuff, these newer trends that are popping up. Energy management. Again, those design connections, lots of like motifs, like the Google booth, the Vivint booth, the Ring booth, so all very like motif based. So highlighting the technology, you know, sort of more in its real environment. Again, the continuation of trends with the blurring of lines between consumer DIY and pro continues.

And then probably the big one we can dive into more is the consolidation and Snap AV and Control 4 and what sort of effect that's going to have on the channel is something a lot of people are talking about this year as well. Yeah, I mean, it will be interesting to see what the combined resources of those two companies will do. So with that said, Jason, I think we can wrap it up and put a pin and see you at 2019. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm glad we got to get together and record a quick on-location show here.

We'll get this one out and then we'll look forward to diving in deeper next week. Sounds good. Yeah, thanks a lot. Thanks for tuning in. We'll look forward to talking to you again here soon.