HomeTech.fm - Episode 317 - Designing from the Outside-In with Lutron's Melissa Andresko

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

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, September 4th. From Sarasota, Florida, I am Seth Johnson. And from Denver, Colorado, I'm Jason Griffin. How are you doing, Seth? Good, man. Good, man. Are you getting ready for Cedia? I suppose. We've got a webinar that we're doing, and they had sent out emails saying, hey, we'd love if you recorded it ahead of time. I think they're kind of terrified that things are going to go sideways. So Justin, my colleague, and I at One Vision decided that we would go ahead and do that and get it off of our plate. So we went ahead and recorded our

webinar today as opposed to doing it live next week. We'll be in the session to answer questions and stuff like that. But that's about the extent of my Cedia plans, to be honest with you. So they're done. You're done. You're done with Cedia. I'm done. Yeah. I got this huge weight lifted off my shoulders. It's an, it's incredible. We get off the phone and I think what that means is typically what I think that means is that you just go fishing. Like that's. Well, that was what I did last year. You're right. And, and I think, uh,

I do have, I do have a day on the calendar planned in late September to go fishing. I do not have a camping trip planned like I did last year, but I do have a day to get out and do some fishing so looking forward to that as well yeah absolutely well we're getting ready for some cd plans here at the home tech podcast so this year unlike the last couple of years we haven't been able to we're not going to be able to do our uh home tech happy hour virtually i guess i guess we won't be able to do it in person. So we can do it virtually. We're going to do it virtually.

I guess is where this announcement is going. That's right. So yeah, we've got some plans. That's right. We got to keep the tradition alive. We can't just capitulate. No. We got to do something.

We're going to have it. Home Tech Happy Hour. If you couldn't make it to San Diego, you couldn't make it to Denver, you can make it to our Zoom webinar. No excuse this year. So I think it'll be fun. I think it'll be a lot of fun.

I've got some good ideas we're going to get together. It's going to be different. It's not going to be your, you know, I'm not going to make fun of CD webinars now that you just said that you have to do one and recorded it. But it's not going to be recorded. I can tell you that. It's going to be live. All live. All live.'ve got some some big plans so i think we need to we need to start getting folks registered yeah so head on over to hometech.fm happy hour uh and there you can find

out by not right now but there as we record but by friday when this goes live you will see you got a deadline now yeah exactly this is how this is how i work under pressure live, you will see. You got a deadline now. Yeah, exactly. This is how I work, under pressure. You will see more information. Nothing gets it done like a deadline, right? Exactly, exactly. HomeTech.fm slash happy hour is how you go sign up, register for the event, and we'll be sending more information

and talking it up a little bit more as we get closer to Cedia in the next couple of weeks. Yeah. Well, let's jump into our episode here. Before we jump into headlines, I want to tease our guest. This week is Melissa Andresco. She's the Chief Corporate Brand Ambassador at Lutron. And she joined us for a really fun conversation.

We talked macro perspectives. She is a longtime industry veteran. She's been with Lutron for 22 years, which is a long time to be in the industry period, but also a long time to be at a specific company. She's also a woman in technology, which is unfortunately all too rare. And we talked about that as well and got her perspective just on the evolution of the industry and the evolution of Lutron, as well as jumping into some of their specific products, namely their smart wood blinds that came out recently. So it was a great conversation, and be sure to stay tuned for that.

But in the meantime, Seth, what do you say we jump in to some home tech headlines? Let's do it. Apple is planning to add augmented reality content to its Apple TV Plus streaming video service, seeking new ways to attract and retain subscribers and drive interest in AR technology. In the new feature, elements of a TV show like characters or objects would be displayed on a viewer's phone or tablet and integrated into the surrounding environment, according to people familiar with the project. What say you, Seth? No, no, no.

No? Bad apple. just a hard no yes hard no this is all right so I sit down to watch tv to watch one of your beautiful shows like for all mankind or uh you know that that I sit down to watch tv I don't I mean maybe on a second watch through I would utilize something like this to kind of like have elements of like behind the scenes like our director's commentary or cuts like that like i would i would think that would be neat but no don't don't mess up a tv show by requiring people to walk around with their phone looking you know for characters around their house uh no no different experience yes for sure it it does my understanding of this from bloomberg is that this will be part of like bonus content so it won't necessarily be integrated into the air quote main viewing

experience but rather kind of like the bonus features that you used to get at the end of dvds i can deal with that yeah like director's commentary and that kind of thing well we all know apple has this like AR push coming, right? Tim Apple has been talking about it for like years now. He's been saying that they were excited about AR and kind of like pushing the company that direction, pushing the conversation that direction. So, I mean, there have been rumors about Apple glasses.

Like, first of all, glasses are are just jason you and i wear glasses nobody wants to wear glasses well you're not going to need them once elon musk has his general link chip implant yeah that's wired into all of our brains so yeah so no apple don't do this don't mess up your tv shows maybe in bonus content you can you can put this in but i i just i don't know i'm not i'm not a big fan of the gimmicks make good shows. And you don't need the gimmicks. Sounds simple when you say it like that. Yeah. It says this may be debuted next year ahead of a headset in 2022.

Supposedly this was, was slated for release later this year, but COVID set that back so we'll see we'll see uh speaking of virtual events and in virtual reality uh spotify is reportedly testing out virtual events a feature that will connect you to a concert live stream directly within the app based on screenshots shared by a security research jane mucan wong sorry. Glad you got that one. Manchun Wong. Wow. Thanks, Jason. On Tuesday, the new feature would list virtual events in a specific location and links to tune in.

The feature isn't yet available publicly and Spotify isn't saying anything about its details. This is actually cool. I miss concerts. I miss seeing live music. I is actually cool. I miss concerts. I miss seeing live music. I like this idea. I think it's got legs. And I think Spotify, it's just really interesting to watch their strategy unfold with podcasts and now concerts. This story also says that they're reportedly thinking about getting into music videos. And I think Spotify heard an interesting podcast where a tech strategy writer was talking about what they're doing. And it's just interesting to watch

because ultimately they could potentially be in a really good position to monetize on these services because they've got a lot of information about their listeners versus a lot of other maybe platforms that might do podcasts, for example, don't. They don't have great data on who the people are that are downloading it. So from an advertising perspective, which I suspect is Spotify's main sort of play here, this looks like an attractive proposition. I'll be curious to see how this works out. Well, advertising and subscription, they want their premium provider of this music service that they, you know, you pay monthly for it. So they don't so much necessarily need the advertisements as they want people to pay for their service. Well, that was the interesting thing about the conversation I listened to

was that the fellow, and I forget his name, I'll send you a link and maybe we can put it in the show notes, but he was actually talking about podcasts specifically, and it struck me as a little surprising to hear him say it, but he made a really compelling argument that, honestly, their play, at least with podcasts, is less about subscribers necessarily than it is about the advertising dollars because of how targeted they can be and getting people into the ecosystem and then monetizing on the advertising side. So really interesting conversation. And anyways, it all just ties back to the broad theme of,

it's kind of fun to watch what Spotify is doing right now. Yeah, well, I'm not a fan of their podcast play, but it's a different story. Separate conversation. Separate conversation. Samsung Electronics has unveiled its first foray into the 4k ultra short throw laser projection laser projector space with a unit dubbed the premiere the company will begin to roll out the premiere globally starting from the u.s europe korea and other regions later this year the unit will be available up to 130 and 120 inch models that support a laser-powered 4k picture resolution when they wrote the the headline there

samsung debuts its first ultra short throw projector i'm like this is probably the first projector i've heard of from samsung i i really haven't seen them in that maybe as like the little small ones you set out on your desk and do like a small presentation with or something. But I haven't seen them do any larger projection displays like this. So this is interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I agree. And it makes sense. They're obviously a very well-established company in the display space, and so I think moving out into this tangential but highly related segment of the market is a logical move. The home office and work-from-home trends driven by the coronavirus are paying off for Best Buy. The retail giant announced its sales for the fiscal year 2021 Q2,

which ended on August 1st, rose 5.8%, more than double their expectations. The good news doesn't stop there. The company reports that sales during the first three weeks of August were up 20% from last year, and the online sales in the U.S., at least, rose an astounding 242%. Jason, everybody's home. You got to buy stuff from somewhere. Yeah, no doubt. That was the interesting part of this story to me.

There's so many industries and so many companies out there, unfortunately, really struggling and really hurting through this pandemic that we're all grappling with. But Best Buy's out there crushing projections. And I think anecdotally, I don't have any hard data on this, but anecdotally, we're seeing similar trends in the integration space across our partner base at OneVision. We certainly haven't heard much about any sort of slowdown.

Everybody seems just as busy as they were before, if not busier. And so I think that we can sort of consider ourselves fortunate in this industry that we weren't pilots or working in casinos or anything like that. People are at home, you're 100% right. And they want their home technology more so now than ever. And I think we're all fortunate to be in an industry that services that in these crazy times. Yeah. Rashid mentioned in the chat he's been way busier. Everybody I have talked to, and I can tell you all of our customers are busier.

We're having some good months too. And it's astounding. I mean, everybody still wants technology to go in their home. They're home all the time now so they can see how bad their wi-fi was during the day when all the kids are on trying to do you know remote learning and they're trying to do video conferences for work it's like yeah you gotta upgrade the wi-fi get it get on the wi-fi six now that now everybody is home you need the wi-fi six so right yep yeah it's definitely an interesting trend to observe rashid said the struggle right now is finding a competent tech i think also product finding equipment yeah finding product

that is the one thing that we're hearing about that's that's hurting hurting businesses right now is just not not being able to get projects done because they can't get the equipment everything's slower don't don't do just-in-time ordering. Trust me. As a distributor, trust me. Greg says AVRs do not exist. It's tough out there on that front, for sure. In a world obsessed with hygiene and cleanliness, imagine if you didn't have to wipe anything down.

Imagine if your lights did it for you instead. LIFX intends to make this a reality with the announcement of the LIFX Clean, a fully functional white and color smart light that also uses germicidal and antibacterial lighting to disinfect surfaces as well as surrounding air. Okay. Timely. Yeah.

Timely product release here. I wonder if they had this planned before or if they sort of rushed to get this to market. I find this really interesting. I don't know if I'm going to run out and buy one. I'm not all that concerned about my house. We just sort of wipe things down and we're kind of being careful generally. But I don't know. This just makes me think. The big takeaway for me was I went in my head to all of the conversations we've been having in the industry around home health and home wellness. And surprisingly, I hadn't really considered this or heard this talked about much, but I could certainly see this being a component of sort of the integrated home wellness landscape for those clients who are interested in that sort of thing or or just any end users in general yeah i don't i wonder if this works first of all and like i i put a link in our chat and in

the show notes here for the uh big ass fans haiku clean air system purify your air with uvc and ionization technology so this is kind of like going around right now these little uvc and purple lights that shine and disinfect the the air and surfaces i suppose that that the light shines upon um but i wonder if it works i wonder if it's not just like yeah i don't know this story particularly the uvc mentioned in the big ass fans story surprised me a little bit because this story about the lifeFX one says UVC light is commonly used to clean surfaces but is not safe for humans and animals in extended amounts. So instead, this one uses high-energy visible light or HEV light, which has no harmful effect on humans or animals and doesn't require protective equipment. However, it does take longer

to disinfect. And it goes on to say that these lights will clean the surface in 5 to 10 seconds. Continued use of the light will keep the bacteria levels low. And then it says early tests indicate that 70% of bacteria are killed within about 2 hours. The closer the light is, the more effective it is at cleaning. And then it says if used as under cabinet lighting it can reduce uh by greater than 80 percent over two hours and up to 99.99 overnight that's not bad yeah that's a good idea like because you could turn on your under cabinet task lighting slash yeah you put it over like the high touch areas. Yeah, yeah. Just disinfect your counters overnight.

And yeah, you know, that spot you missed with the Lysol wipe or whatever. Yeah. That's nice. Greg, it will not cook your food, Greg. I'm sorry. Yeah, if you need the microwave life effects bulb. It's forthcoming. Yeah, yeah. It'll be on the market soon.

That's right. All right. Well, all the links and topics we've discussed on this week's episode can be found in our show notes at hometech.fm slash 317. While you're there, don't forget to sign up for our weekly newsletter. We'll send you show reminders and other occasional updates about all the great things going on here in the world of home tech. Once again, that link is hometech.fm slash 317.

And don't forget, you can join us in the chat room live on Wednesdays starting sometime between 7 and 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can find out more about that at hometech.fm slash live. Absolutely. I do have an announcement on that.

I've got to the chat room that's on there may not or the live stream actually may not load on there in the upcoming releases of google chrome so we had this problem before where you had to like turn something on i'm gonna have to fix that jason so that's gonna go on my list of things to do this is how second second task list of things to do that i'm gonna this is how i make my task list i just announce them on the podcast and then i have to do them. And then you're on the hook. Yeah. Well, it's a good thing. You're quicker at getting things done than I am at least around the house. All right. Anyways, let's, uh,

let's go ahead and jump into our interview. Again, we had a great conversation here with Melissa Andresco. She's the chief corporate brand ambassador for Lutron and we hope you enjoy. Hey, Melissa, welcome to the show. How are you? Hi, guys. I'm great. How are you? We're doing great. We're excited to have you, and we're looking forward to jumping in and talking all things Lutron. But we always like to start our interviews with a little bit of personal background and history. So for the benefit of any of our listeners who may not be familiar with you, why don't you give a quick introduction and highlight some of your background and what brought you to where you are today with Lutron?

Yeah, thanks. So I have actually been with Lutron my entire career. So two weeks after graduating college, I marched through the front doors of Lutron as a 22-year-old ready to take on the world with a degree in journalism and political science. My role today, 22 years later, I am the chief brand ambassador for the company. So I oversee a lot of things related to company reputation, storytelling. I am the spokesperson for the brand. And yeah, it's been an amazing company to work for. And it's been just incredible to see the amount of change that I've seen, just not only at Lutron, but in the various industries in which we,

we operate. It's been, it's been phenomenal. Yeah. I can imagine. I'm looking forward to diving into that. That's a long time to be with a single company, especially one in an industry as dynamic as this one. So definitely look forward to hearing your perspectives. And let's start there. Let's talk a little bit about the evolution of Lutron and what have been some of your big takeaways as you've watched the company adapt and evolve to the changing market over all these years? Yeah. So, you know, the Lutron started in the early 1960s. And for maybe some of the listeners who aren't familiar with the brand, the very common rotary dimmer that many saw in their grandparents' homes and then maybe homes that they're in today.

Really, our first entree into the market was that rotary dimmer. came nearly 60 years of continuous innovation for lighting controls, fixtures, and we're talking everything from your single dimmer that controls one light up to and including these sophisticated systems that can control every light and shade in a home or every shade on a college campus or a football stadium. We really run the gamut of there and everything in between. I mean, there's really very little we can't handle. Yeah, absolutely. And that's been one of the recurring themes in the years that we've been doing this podcast. And Lutron comes up and we talk about the company frequently. And I think one of the things from my humble perspective

that Lutron has done really well is adapted to serve multiple market segments. And when I say that, I'm specifically referring to the segmentation between lines like Caseta, Raw 2, QS. And I think you guys have done a nice job of having clear segmentation, but also having a consistent experience and value prop throughout those different segments. So talk a little bit about how you guys think about that challenge and approach it as a company.

Yeah. And the one example that I would really love to share, and it really makes it very real. When you think back to the 1990s, home theater, the term home theater was just coming into, we're kind of mystified by this, you know, this fact that you could have, you know, a movie theater-like experience in your own home. And, you know, Lutron actually introduced its first connected lighting control system in the 1990s, and we also used motorized shades. And what was interesting about our history with motorized shades is that in the beginning, they were very much a product only for the most luxurious of homes. You know, they were costly, had to be installed when the home was being built, you know, not being able to have a shade for that weird window above a bathtub that so many people have, you know, all these are real

problems that any size home has, not just mansions and these luxurious homes. So that was kind of an aha moment. You know, we took a step back and said, okay, how do we bring shades and these wonderful automated shading systems to a broader market? And we introduced what is still available today called a battery-powered honeycomb shade that today we make many different varieties, can be installed, you know, on any window. If you can hang a mini blind, you can hang a mini blind you can hang a smart shade very very easy install very affordable you know they started under five hundred dollars a shade so great example of how we adapted to the market you know realizing that these problems were ones that many people were having

to your caseta you know it the story about Caseta is actually very interesting, and for your viewers who might not be, not viewers, your listeners who might not be familiar with Caseta, Caseta is what we call a solution for light in the home. It certainly can be, but a lot of times people are using Caseta for key areas. Outside lights, lights in your entryway, lights in hallways. And, you know, for Lutron, we had these, you know, stacks of our grandest of grand, what we call a homework system, which is really the kind of the creme de la creme of our residential systems. It can handle, you know, tens of thousands of devices

on one system. And then we had a system called raw to select. And then we had our single light controls at retail that were non-connected devices. So we sort of had that missing layer. It was either you had single light dimmers or you had to go jump up to a pro like raw to select or homeworks. So again, taking a step back, looking at the market, realizing there was a need for a smart connected lighting control system that would be a affordable and be ideal for whether it's a, you know, three room apartment, or, you know, up to, you know, 2500 3000 or so square feet. And, you know, again, I'm proud to work for a company that, you know, has these aha moments and says, Okay, what can we do to better serve

better serve our customers? Yeah, the evolution I've seen Lutron have over the past, I just say, Jason, we've been doing this, what,, I just say, Jason, we've been doing this, what, five years, just the podcast, we've been doing the home technology beat a lot longer as integrators, but I think five years, and Caseta came on the market somewhere in between here and there. But at the very beginning, we were seeing like, everybody use like, the point solutions, you know, the color changing light bulbs and that kind of thing and and jason and i knew that that's not really that's not really like a good long-term thing it's good if you're renting it's good if you have like a dorm room and you want to light up and it's good

if you want to put in like accent lighting but like having having the ability to kind of like move quickly move into a market space like that for Caseta was, it was just a great idea at the time. And I, now when I hear people, it's funny, I listened to podcasts, both on like the pro side, like that we're on and Lutron's like a household name. Right. And then I listened in the consumer space and they're like, Hey, I got this really cool system. Have you ever heard of Lutron? And I'm like, Oh my gosh. Like, yeah, this is this is it's it's really two different worlds but um yeah it's it's amazing to see how much caseta has brought the name lutron into the the um the the zeitgeist i guess yeah people who are getting involved with home technology i always i always judge uh by how many people on planes

me and say what is lutron and now i haven't been on a plane since March, but I feel like in the last, you know, 12 to 16 months, I've had a lot more of the, oh wait, you guys do the smart lighting thing, right? So it's interesting. It is definitely something that people are thinking about. And, you know, I think this points to really the bigger point that, you know, five years ago, smart home products were viewed as gadgets. I mean, I remember walking the floors of CES. Really? They connected that to the Internet? Like, just because you can doesn't mean you should. Like, and, you know, you walk the floors and you see these things that it just doesn't make sense.

And, you know, it walk the floors and you see these things that it just doesn't make sense. And, you know, it's a party trick, right? So, you know, when I look at the market and how it's evolved, today, smart home is about solving problems. And it's about giving people, you know, freedom. And we're all, you know, so many of us are home now more than ever. And it's, you know, being able to schedule what time my lights turn on and off, automatically turn on and off based on sunrise and sunset and connect with all my other smart devices in the house. Like, it's just, you know, it's no longer, it's just no longer that party trick.

It's really about making it simpler and just that, you know, giving me that peace of mind of driving up at night to a well-lit house and, you know, giving me that peace of mind of driving up at night to a well-lit house and, you know, being able to kind of shut everything down right from my phone or with a command to one of my smart speakers. Yep. Well, you mentioned the Serena Shades, and that was another big, I don't know if it was a big, it seemed like a big pivot, or not pivot, but like movement. It's like lighting control. It makes sense.

Lutron does lighting control why not do shades um but I was kind of in in in a different part of the shading market and then Lutron got involved I'm like oh I recognize all of this this is great as a dealer I mean the software and and things you guys had released was just genius you could tell it was really well thought out how the parts and pieces all went together. So now it looks like you guys have released the Serena Smart Wood Blinds. So let's talk about that product a little bit. Yeah, so I mentioned earlier, Seth,

about when Serena entered the market and that it started out as honeycomb. And then we've had different versions of the Serena shade come out. So yeah, we just recently wood blinds and not just any smart wood blind. These are incredible. These have features built in that will actually, they will automatically tilt based on the sun's position. So, you know, we talked earlier about, you know, so that you're not, you know, ruining floors, ruining furniture or artwork, you know, these smart wood blinds are going to, the slats are going to tilt throughout the day so that you're

never getting that direct sun right where you don't want it. You know, it's open enough that you've got the light, but not that harsh, direct ray that's going to end up, you know, making marks on your floor. So we're very excited about the wood blinds and just how smart they are and advanced. And, you know, our brand of smart shades is the most connected smart shade on the market. So you're going to be able to connect it with your voice controls and your lighting controls. And it's going to be a great addition to the home. And I have a fun statistic to share with you. I did a study and 30% of the people we surveyed told us that they leave their window coverings closed most of the time because it's too difficult to actually open and close them. Oh, I see a hand raise. I'm guilty. So and imagine somebody who's,

you know, living alone or, you know, maybe has wheelchair bound or has trouble, you know, reaching for that mini blind rod to be able to have your shades raised and lower your shades for you, or to push a button right on your app, or to use Lutron's Pico remote control to control the amount of sunlight. I mean, it's refreshing. It's going to give you a whole new appreciation for your space when you have this natural light. Yeah, that's an interesting stat, but I have to say I'm not shocked to hear it. And I'm a big believer just on many levels in the importance of removing friction. And I think we often, we underestimate how little friction it takes for human beings,

and we're all guilty of this in areas. It can take a very minuscule amount of friction to prevent us from doing something as little as walking over and opening the blinds to let some sunlight into our house. And I think that again, when we talk about the smart home and some of the more compelling use cases, they can be really simple things, right? They can be the little things that remove that friction and allow us just to enjoy our living space a little bit more. Yeah, exactly. I mean, especially for people with super small windows or windows that, again, are hard to reach or, again, limited mobility. I mean, this is really a game changer, especially for people in those kinds of situations. And they're beautiful. I mean, one of the things that our shades are known for is that they will raise and lower in perfect unison. The smart blinds will

tilt in perfect unison. So not only are you getting the benefit of this smart shade, but it just looks beautiful. We've got a couple different types of woods for the wood blinds when it comes to the regular Serena, the Fab, hundreds of different options to choose from. So it's just going to be a great addition to your from. So, you know, it's just going to be a great addition to your decor. It can blend in or it can stand out. We've got options for both. Yeah. Yeah. And I love the look of wood blinds personally. And we have a few in our house and my excuse for not raising them and lowering them as often as I should is they're, they're typically the path is covered by about a million different toys that my kids have put on

the floor. But anyways, that's an aside. Let's keep moving here. I did want to ask a little bit about the natural light optimization feature. I think that's what it's called. Correct me if I misstated that. And specifically, I wanted to talk about the setup process for somebody who's interested in these blinds. How does that work? How does it know when to tilt the blinds and how quickly and that sort of thing? Talk to us a little bit about that. Yeah. So when you, when you open up the Lutron app, you're going to set up what's called the facade finder mode. So it's essentially going to use the compass that's in your phone and it's going to determine where you are and that's going to determine the compass that's in your phone and it's going to determine where you are.

And that's going to determine the schedule that the wood blinds will tilt. So they're going to, you know, try to and so that, you know, you're again not getting that that direct glare. So it's really simple to do. It's just, you know, kind of a few button clicks. It's very intuitive on how to get it all set up. And then based on that, they will automatically tilt based on the sun's position at that specific time and they will automatically adjust. So if a homeowner wants to customize it though,

absolutely can. So maybe you don't want it to be closed at that level at a certain time of day, you need a little bit more light. You can absolutely manually adjust it or you can put them on specific schedules so that you are able to have that full control at all times. Gotcha. I love that balance of having something you can sort of set and forget and have the system make intelligent decisions for you, or you can go back in and say, hey, if I want to roll up my sleeves a little bit and dial this in, I have that option as well. And the last thing I wanted to touch on, on the smart wood blinds is

pricing. Talk to us a little bit about the pricing and availability for these. Yeah. So, um, a great place is Serena shades.com. And that is a Lutron's dedicated website for Serena Shades. And it's a great place to start because some people can be really intimidated by the thought of ordering a custom smart shade. And I'm here to tell you that there's nothing to fear. You can go on the Serena Shades website. You can build your shade. You can watch multiple videos on how to measure you know you know showing you exactly what to do but you know it to be mounted you know above the window in the window every single option it's we walk you through the process and you can you know rest easy that you know your shade is gonna be delivered to you

it's going to fit and if not call us call us. We will find a new shade that's going to be correct. You can also use serenashades.com to find a pro. There are people out there who simply either don't want to attempt it or they just, you know, they can't and they want to hire somebody to come out and do it. So, you know, serenashades.com website, you can find a list of specific to shade installers or on Lutron.com, you can find a list of installers who will do all areas of the home. So whether it's, you know, lights and shades, light shades, temperature. So we make it really easy for both the DIY customer and the Do It For Me customer. Got it. And can you give me a sense for where the pricing on the wood blinds

starts? I know it's obviously infinitely variable depending on materials and the size of your windows, but give us a ballpark on where those start. Yeah. So the starting price that we will talk about, average size window is about three feet by five feet. The starting price for that is $599 per window. So again, price is going to vary based on obviously size, the material you pick, obviously number of shades. So it starts at... Great. I want to zoom out now. You alluded to this earlier and I want to come back to it because I think it's an important topic and I want to hear more from you on it. It's this idea of sort of moving away from gadgets and party tricks in the smart home towards a model where both individually,

Lutron as a company, as well as the industry at large are focusing more on problem solving and solving real issues for people, whether those be true problems or just providing more delightful experiences. Talk to us a little bit about your perspectives on that and sort of where you see us at as an industry in that macro kind of curve. Yeah. So I'm not sure what year this is going to happen. I originally said 2021, 2022. We'll see if it happens. But I believe that the term smart home is just going to go away. It's just going to be home because we've now are living in an age where so many of these products that we don't even realize are necessarily smart. We're just enjoying the benefits that they bring and solving our everyday problems. And

what's interesting too, is that the term smart home means many things to many people. I mean, I've talked to customers of ours who look at a motion sensor as smart home. I walk into my laundry room, the light goes on. I leave the laundry room, the light goes off. Like that's a smart home to me and that's okay to them. That is a smart home. You know, I've seen people who have a single, you know, possible smart home device in their house, all, you know, with if this, then that tricks lined up with everything. I mean, it's really over the top. And then there's the happy medium of people who, you know, are living with, you know,

smart lights, smart thermostats, smoke detectors, cameras, you know, are living with, you know, smart lights, smart thermostats, smoke detectors, cameras, you know, locks. And all of these things together are just making life that much simpler. And, you know, I remember years ago when people, you know, I obviously have a house full of Lutron products and whatnot. And I remember, you know, four or five years ago, people would come over and be like, your shades move up and down. Like, how'd you do that? And it was such a new concept. And they're like, wow, are you, are you lazy? Like what, you know, what you can't raise and lower your own shades. Then when you see that, okay, when I'm getting ready to watch TV or watch

a movie, I say, Alexa, turn on movie time. And next thing you know, all of my family room shades are lowering in unison, my lights are dimming, and my home theater setup. So again, that solved a problem for me, because I didn't have to go around and individually, you know, turn things on and off. Same thing with, you know, getting ready for entertaining, you know, you got a million things on your mind mind if you're having a house full of guests the last thing you want to have to do is you know get this light perfect that light perfect turn these lights off so people stay away from this area so you know again I think people are almost just expecting now to have these conveniences and I think we're going to stop calling it a smart home. And it's just that this is the, this is how our life,

what our lives have evolved to is, is living this really super convenient, you know, kind of hands-free life. Yeah. I, I, as odd as this sounds, one of the first pieces of technology I installed in my, in my house was a, and this is a previous house, even it's like one of my, my first house was a, was is a previous house even it's like one of my my first house was uh was one of the lutron it was like the motion detection things where i think you were just talking about it it was like the maestro line it wasn't anything smart but it yeah it totally um i think that was like the the biggest like trick at my house i had all this other stuff i had tv TVs and remotes and everything.

And like, nobody cared about that. They walk in the bathroom and the lights turn on and everybody was like, okay, now what do I do? I was like, well, you can go to the bathroom. It's like, the light just turns on when you walk in the door. Oh my gosh. So funny. Yeah. You know, one of the things that I love is how much thought Lutron puts into making sure our controls are intuitive. You know, you talk about somebody puts into making sure our controls are intuitive. You know, you talk about somebody walking into a bathroom, lights are turning on, they're turning off. You know, we always think about the factor of that this control might be used by a six-year-old, could be used by, you know, an elderly person who's, you know, visiting for the weekend and

everything in between. So how do we make sure that it's intuitive, that you don't have to be, have a, you know, a PhD to operate the lights? And, you know, how do we, how do we make sure that, you know, things are, buttons are, you know, you get that, the click when you're actually, you know, pushing the button to know something happened. So we really put a lot of, a lot of thought into that outward facing design. And our company founder, Joel Spiro, he would always say, we design from the outside in, that the product has to be as beautiful

and intuitive as it is functional. And when you look at the simplicity of our keypads and the intuitiveness of the dimmers and knowing where to push to turn it on, adjust it easily, I think we've done a really good job in that area and have made it simple for people to, to adopt these products in their homes. Absolutely. I agree with that for sure. Well, Melissa, I do want to say we're coming up on our time here and I do want to hit one more topic before we break away here. You mentioned you've been in

this industry for 22 years, did you say? Yeah. Wow. So that is an incredibly long amount of time for a woman too to be in this industry. It's mostly a male-dominated industry. I'm thinking of all the places I ever worked. They were all, you know, male owned businesses. When you go to the shows, there's typically staffed by, by sales guys and that kind of thing. I, I, here I am, I've been using the term you guys with Lutron the entire time. And thinking in my head, no, I should probably stop saying that. But I, I, I, it's so hard. It's a hard thing to break, you know, after you do it for so many years, but, um, what, I know you've been involved with, uh, women and technology, uh, in the, in the, in the industry and in and outside of our industry as well. Um, how, what is your take on how to get more women involved in the technology industry? Because I think the broad viewpoints from like men, women, children, older, younger,

like I think having everybody at the table to go over those things that you just talked about when you're designing a product is absolutely important to get all of those voices at the table. So what is your take on how to get more women involved in this industry? Yeah, well, you know, my barometer is, you know, sad to say always, how long is the line for the women's restroom at trade shows? And I have noticed it is the year. So that's a good thing. It tells me that there's more, more, many more women in the industry when you have to wait. You know, it's interesting when I, when I look back and think about going to Cedia Expo for the very first time in 1998 and 1999 and looking around, wow, I, you know, one of these things is not like the other. And that one of these things

is me because, you know, there were not a lot of women back then. And it's exciting to see that companies really are focusing on diversifying talent and, you know, that they've got a lot of diversity and inclusive efforts going on at a corporate level. And, you know, there are groups out there that have formed that are, you know, strictly for, you know, helping women succeed in this. Women in Consumer Technology Organization is one of them. And, you know, it's about women coming together and supporting other women. And to me, that is something I am very passionate about, regardless of the industry. I, you know, I think it's a, I mentor a lot of women of, you know, varying ages and career stages. And the one thing that I always want them to take away is give this back to someone else,

help another woman who maybe feels uncomfortable speaking up in a room full of peers who are mostly potentially men. And I'm so happy to see that so many companies, like I said, are making these kinds of advances and that women are, we're seeing more and more females popping up in in fortune 500 brands and and in our industry yeah I mean it's it's incredible so it's really encouraging and I'm gonna continue to you know spread the word of

mentoring and and women supporting other women. And five years from now, we're going to look and see that there's more women than men at these shows. Wouldn't that be something? Don't quote me on that year. It'll probably be a little bit longer than five years. Is that a prediction? Can we mark that down?

Yeah. No, it's great. I agree. I feel like things are trending in the right direction, but there's still so much opportunity. And I agree with what Seth said. I think that getting a more balanced mix of viewpoints and getting more women into the industry would be a great thing for all of us.

So I'm definitely happy to hear that you're so dedicated to that. And I'm happy that we were able to have you on the show. I was mentioning to you before that prepping for this interview was actually an occasion for me to sort of pause and look back. And we've had very few female guests on the show, and that is certainly not intentional. But I think it's good. This was sort of a catalyst for me to call that into question. It's not something that I've thought about enough in the past. And I think here on the Home Tech Podcast, we'll certainly try to do our part to shine more light on, on getting more diversity into the industry. I think that's a great thing all around. That's wonderful to hear. I'd be happy to give you some names. I know a lot of great women out there. Yeah. Let's, let's definitely, let's definitely

chat after the show, but, but speaking of that, let's go ahead and wrap up here. The last question we always like to ask is for anybody listening who wants to connect with you or learn more, what would be the best way for them to do that? Yeah. So you can connect with pretty much every social media channel, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, or you can start with either Lutron, L-U-T-R-O-N.com or SerenaShades.com, best place to start. Awesome. Well, we really appreciate you coming on the show, Melissa. Thanks for your time. Thanks so much for having me. All right. Well, that'll do it for our interview. Again, really enjoyed that conversation. I think it's a rare opportunity to speak with somebody who is so experienced in the industry through

one company. I think that gives a unique vantage point. We've had several people on the show who've been in the game for quite a while, but I don't know if we've had anyone who's had that depth of experience at a single company and sort of seeing the evolution of the industry through that lens, I think gave Melissa some really unique perspectives. Yeah. There are very few people who have been at a company. Well, I mean, there are people who have been at a company for 20 30 years but um it's very few and it's not super common these days though there's a lot of movement i guess you know uh with with you know i can say with confidence with our generation jason the way you

get promotions and pay raises is to change your job like typically that is that is how it worked unfortunately but that's that's a generational thing Um, and, but she's not far off from us. Like she's been dedicated. Lutron's a pretty sweet place to work though. And, uh, she's definitely done a good job at what she does, uh, being the ambassador for the brand. I can tell you, uh, Lutron's one of those brands that I, I hold really high up, right? Like that's, if I hear that Lutron's going in on a project i know that you know there's some quality product that's going in it's not you know if there are any problems it's not going to be the product's problem right it's going to be the installer so i uh i i typically uh i typically

i i think that she's done a pretty good job of keeping the brand up and and and in good name so yeah absolutely all right seth well we got a mailbag this week and this one is this one. My friend is directed squarely at you. Oh boy. So I'll go ahead and read it and then you can respond. This is from Michael Zarate, Michael Z been a long time listener to the show. So we appreciate you reaching out. Michael says, is Seth going ever, is Seth ever going to share his review or feedback on the Sense Energy Monitoring System? I remember a while back, he said he got it and had it installed and was working on a review, but I don't think it was ever on the podcast. Hope he can do a segment on it in an upcoming episode

as it would be awesome to hear his thoughts. I'm glad Michael reached out. I totally forgot that we had talked about this. What's the word, Seth? I totally forgot that we talked about this. And I totally forgot that I installed this product in my house. By the way, so much for your task list theory. Yeah, right? Right? You promised us a review.

I guess, yeah. Well, the reason the review kind of fell off the table is because the product kind of fell off the table. And it's not a very it's not it's a decent product. It does what it says. You know, if you read the tin on the outside, it says it's, you know, canned peaches. It's canned peaches like it does what it does and it does it well. Unfortunately, like it's mostly automatic. So you can't turn on like a device in your house like the air

conditioner you turn the air conditioner on and it says oh we found a new thing in your house we think it's in this case motor four it's like well that doesn't help um you you can't turn on like a washer or washing machine and say well well, that thing right there that is this bubble, like it has this really interesting bubble interface. You can't say that. I know for sure that's the washing machine. You can't do that. It has to like guess and then put it into the list of devices that change from time to time. So I don't know. So it does tell you that right now my house is using 3,980 something watts, which is according to this 25% hour.

Actually, that's pretty accurate because I do remember looking at my bill and we are using that 25 cents per hour. So the pricing is done accurately. But I don't know. Like the rest of the product is not. Not. I don't know how useful it is like there's not much i get out of this other than kind of knowing what my overall data is it would be nice if i could get in there and like customize and break things down a little bit more um because then i think it'd be a little more useful and I could find out what was like always on in my house, you know, and, and leeching a lot of data of electricity out. But I don't know right now.

I can't, it's, it's a fun toy, but again, I put this in probably a year or two ago and I, I think it even fell off the network for like six or seven months once. And I completely forgot that it existed got it and um the app email something email it's like we haven't seen this device in six months i'm like oh yeah i haven't huh so i forgot about yeah i forgot about it it went and reset it and it it came on fine and started back up so i don't know not not the easiest thing to install either like you kind of have to have its own separate circuit which i

doubled up with a breaker which you're not supposed to do but i did anyway um so i don't know it's mixed i have mixed feelings about it um i'm not sure i'm not sure i could wholeheartedly recommend it if you had a few hundred dollars laying around and you wanted to play with it, then yeah. But don't expect to do much more than look at a pretty interface for a couple of minutes and then, you know. Yeah, it doesn't seem super actionable. No. Matthew in the chat room says it's for data visualizers mostly. Yeah. So, I mean, if you're into data and kind of just nerding out a little bit frankly about what's going on in your home it sounds like maybe could be a could be an interesting product but it doesn't sound like there's a lot of

utility to it it says right now my inside air conditioner is running and that's what's taking the 2000 watts up uh then i have so it's like what do you do with that right like you're not going to go turn your air conditioning off i can't change my air conditioner out like what am i supposed to do with that i have always on then this i would like to figure out what this is it's always on 635 watts um there is device number two which is 209 watts no idea what that is dishwasher's running one watt i don't okay and then i have two refrigerators each running somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 watts so and then other for 1300 1400 it's like i don't know what to do with any of this and i don't know how i'm supposed to

like classify this um massive product that's coming here so got it here's a bubble thing matthew says it can help when a motor is dying so i i think that's an interesting point that's something that i am i've mentioned in passing a couple of times on the show. I'm intrigued by when and if we're going to see models where the kind of the maintenance and upkeep of appliances in the home does become more integrated into the smart, into the intelligence. I think we've seen some hints of that, but I can envision a future where all of the appliances in a given home are integrated into a unified interface, not proprietary apps like the Samsung app or whatever, but some sort of interface where you're getting actionable data, not just monitoring, but actionable information like, hey, something might be wrong with your washing machine. By the way, we found five companies in the area that service this model and they're available on the following times. Would you like to have somebody come by?

Boom, click a button. Right. Right. That would be awesome. Like there's a lot of utility there, but I think until we get there, a lot of these things are just sort of, um, well, they're, they're gadgets to go back to something melissa said yeah in in the interview we just had so what's funny about this conversation now is the app has popped up with one of those little question things that the survey questions at the bottom says how satisfied are you with sense and i don't know like there's not really there's a one is not satisfied at all and sick five is completely satisfied. I don't really know where the, you know, this thing where you shrug your shoulders

and put your arms up in the air, I don't know where that lies on the scale of one to five. Probably a two, three. All right. There we go. Gets a shrug. That's the final answer. So, Michael, thank you for reaching out.

Great to hear from you. And thank you for holding Seth accountable for not following up on what he said he would do. The list does work. See, see the list a year later, still on my task list. There's a big one.

I promised long ago that no one's really remembered about, and I'll, I'll get to it eventually. Yeah. Juicy. Got to listen to the back. Well, I cannot throw stones from a glass

house. So I'm going to, as Robert asks the WSSD in the chat room, I'm going to keep moving here, Seth. We got a pick of the week this week. We do. This is really cool. Speaking of building automation and everything, I ran across this on Twitter a little while ago. It's been sitting here in our stack of cards and it will not go away until we talk about this because this is so cool um this is a building called the palace of the republic it's a building in berlin that hosted the all right volks well i don't know volkskammer i guess the parliament of the german you got the hard ones this democratic republic yeah um it has a ton of building automation in it, and it is so cool to watch giant pieces of building move. I think this video is definitely sped up,

but it's so cool to watch the, you know, press a button. Oh, yeah, definitely sped up. Yeah, and giant parts of the structure go in and out to basically remake this entire room into a uh that's cool different like it one could be like a conference room one could be how you look like it reminds me you know what it reminds me of like stadium automation where they they turn a basketball court into like a concert arena but it's like or like the retracting roofs yeah and all that yeah yeah this was like a precursor to that yeah 19 built in 1973

big speaker arrays dropping down that's really cool it's very cool so check that video out oh cool the the the line arrays the speakers that drop down from the ceiling kind of drop down vertically and then at the end they sort of snapped into like the you know how line arrays are typically they have line arrays back then so i don't know if these were technically line arrays but they were like speakers coming down and they oh yeah curved up at the end i don't know they do look like an array it's cool interesting wow that was cool i did see that oh that's neat uh there's so much cool stuff to see it's so fast i mean you kind of just want to watch it in slow motion some eye candy yeah for sure yeah cool good. We'll go check that out on our show

notes, hometech.fm slash 317. And if you have any feedback, questions, comments, picks of the week, ideas for a show topic or guest, please do give us a shout. We love hearing from our listeners. We read all of those messages, our email address, feedback at hometech.fm or visit hometech.fm slash feedback and fill out the online form. We want to give a big thank you to everyone who supports the show, but especially those who are able to financially support the show through our Patreon page. If you don't know about our Patreon page, head on over to hometech.fm slash support to learn how you can support Hometech for as little as a dollar a month. And any pledge over five bucks a month gets you a big shout out on the show. But every pledge gets you an invite to our private Slack chat, the hub, where you and other supporters of the show can gather every day for conversations about inside what's going on in home technology. We'll definitely be talking about CD in the next couple of weeks, though.

Absolutely. And if you're looking for other ways to support the show, we would really appreciate if you would leave a positive review on iTunes or in your podcast app of choice. Those reviews definitely help more people find the show. So if you enjoy the podcast, please take a minute to do that. We would really appreciate it. Yep. Well, Jason, fun show this week. Uh, glad to get back at it, uh, and, and have a, have a podcast that we've been off for a little bit back on it now, Right in time for the big show. Yeah, gosh, we had a week off last week, didn't we? Yeah, we took a week off.

I totally forgot about that. I think there'll be some weeks off in the future, too, because we're moving into the holiday season. It's a busy time. Well, for a quick update, because we teased it there, Seth, I did receive the PCI solid state hard drive. Nice. I ordered it a while ago.

It just showed up like two days ago. So I do have it, and I'm not going to promise anything, but I'm hoping, I got a holiday weekend coming up, so I'm hoping, fingers crossed, that I can find some time to finally get that done and off the list. All right. Well, I can't wait. I can't wait. But if you hear me hedging, it's just because I'm tired of breaking promises. Well, what could go wrong? What could go wrong? Right. Yeah. Famous last question. Indeed.

Don't forget, everybody, to head on over to hometech.fm slash happy hour to register for the virtual happy hour we'll be having during Cedia. So be sure to check that out if you didn't catch the announcement at the beginning of the show. Here it is again.

Yeah. Absolutely. All right, Seth. Well, have a great weekend. Talk to you next week. All right. Talk to you next week. Take care.