This Week In Marketnews: CEDIA Expo Survival Guide

Marketnews: Custom Corner: CEDIA Expo Survival Guide

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New At Marketnews: Building Alliances

My feature story "Building Alliances" that ran in the May 2010 print issue of Marketnews is now online.

Marketnews: FEATURE: Custom Corner - Building Alliances

It's also a great opportunity to bust out the dreaded handshake stock photo!

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This Week In Marketnews: CEDIA Expo By Remote

Marketnews: Custom Corner: CEDIA EXPO By Remote

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CEDIA Honors Dr. Floyd E. Toole

Great news for a great man.

CE Pro: Dr. Floyd E. Toole Wins CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Award

The Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA) has named Dr. Floyd E. Toole the recipient of its 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award.Toole, honored at CEDIA's annual Electronics Lifestyles Awards Banquet, has been a pioneer in the acoustics industry for more than 40 years.His research has focused on small-room acoustics and evaluating the relationship between technical measurements of audio equipment and listeners' perceptions.

Dr. Toole is one of my personal heroes, and a remarkable scientist and researcher. All HiFi enthusiasts owe him a debt of gratitude, even the crazy ones whose psychoacoustic audio voodoo is dispelled by the results of Dr. Toole's exacting research.

His course "The Room And The Loudspeaker" remains my all-time favorite class offered through CEDIA.

Well done, Doctor.

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Speakercraft's Expo Booth: What All The Fuss Is About

So, your curiosity is killing you, and you want to know what is driving all those anonymous Internet haters leaving irate comments on CE Pro's website absolutely bonkers?

Marketnews has an entertaining video posted to their site, an interview with Speakercraft exec and super cool person Linda Van Zanten, as well as footage of the Lucent Dossier dance troupe in action.

Marketnews: CEDIA EXPO 2008: SpeakerCraft, No product, but all show!

So, now you know! Tell me what you think in the comments below.

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Speakercraft's Burning Man Expo Show Becomes a Firestorm

I was going to leave this alone, I really was, but the anonymous commentariat has gone absolutely bananas on the subject of custom vendor Speakercraft's booth show featuring LA troupe Lucent Dossier at CEDIA Expo. Who knew that some performance artists could generate so much controversy?

CE Pro: SpeakerCraft at CEDIA 2008: Awesome or Annoying?

At nearly 100 comments, some furious, some supportive, clearly my friends at Speakercraft have hit it out of the park from a publicity standpoint.

Personally, I've got little interest in what people who post angry anonymous comments have to say. It's hardly coincidence that the commenters with the most cogent and articulate things to say post with recognizable real names, as opposed to pseudonyms. Player hating is lame.

Never mind that some of the more outraged commenters sound like they represent the American Taliban, based on their reaction to seeing a little skin, more importantly, you have to search far and wide to find a vendor who supports their dealers to the nth degree the way Speakercraft does. They really do "get it" with regard to what dealers need from their vendors. It seems likely to me that the people doing the most squawking about a little artistic T&A at Expo have never actually benefitted from Speakercraft's platinum-class service and support, and thus, can't see the forest for the trees.

*pictured above: Speakercraft's Dave McCoy and friends.

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This Week in Marketnews: CEDIA Wrap-up

Marketnews: CEDIA EXPO: Custom Corner: Let’s Wrap it Up!

pictured: MediaMax's movie servers show great promise.

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Serious Photo Journalism From CEDIA Expo

Big props to CE Pro's Jason Knott and Julie Jacobsen for bringing us both the Best and Worst Booth Babes from CEDIA Expo.

Pictured: Nicole McClain from Nexus 21 has an uplifting experience.

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Video Distribution at CEDIA Expo for Marketnews

Custom Corner: CEDIA EXPO Distribution Round-up

*pictured: Owner Kevin Knoll of Knoll Systems, a video distribution vendor with some exciting new products at Expo.

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Covering CEDIA Expo for CE Pro

The show ended yesterday, but the reports continue to filter in.

Integrator on the Scene: Zektor, Speakercraft, Little Giant, Nexus 21 and Leon

*pictured: Speakercraft's Neat 7.5 is totally bezeless, leaving a smaller footprint on the ceiling.

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More CEDIA Expo reporting for CE Pro

CE Pro: Integrator on the Scene: PlanetWaves, Knoll, Brother

My friend and CE Pro editor Jason Unger is absolutely swamped, so we're a little behind on getting the updates posted. Your patience is appreciated.

Pictured: the P-Touch Edge PT7600 from Brother is one sassy little label maker.

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Denver Dining, Etc.

Dinner last night in the hotel lounge while I worked was grilled chicken quesadilla and tamarind pork riblets, the later with a molasses BBQ glaze, chopped peanuts and French fried sweet potatoes. It was as artsy looking as it was delicious.

Notable mention for breakfast goes to the hotel's Carnitas Rancheros, a pulled pork and frijoles quesadilla topped with two eggs and salsa. And absolutely amazing. Here's what that looked like:

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CEDIA Expo and its ups and downs

Marketnews' Christine Persaud has a fantastic blog post that lifts the veil on what it's really like to work a CE trade show.

MarketnewsGadgetTalk: CEDIA EXPO: The Sub-Cultures of the Tech Trade Show

She did a great job of capturing the experience of those of us who have to work long hours at these shows.

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Speakercraft brings Burning Man to CEDIA Expo

Never content to be ordinary, and in keeping with their whole weirdness theme this year, my friends at Speakercraft hosted a performance art happening, presented by the Lucent Dossier Vaudeville Cirque, a dance troupe from Los Angeles.

A big thanks to Speakercraft for putting on such a spectacular show!

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Dining In Denver, Redux

I totally forgot to mention that last night the Marketnews crew and I had a fantastic dinner at the Trinity Grille, on Broadway across from the Brown Palace. Since I'd dined there last year, the group accepted my recommendation, and we had a wonderful meal.

I've been on a big caesar salad kick this week, and Trinity Grille's concoction was head and shoulders about all the others. The main course was peppered venison with portobello mushrooms, port wine demiglace and parmesan risotto. The venison was superb.

The only downside to the evening was an incident of cultural misunderstanding: maybe it's normal here, but we were shocked that the server hand wrote at the bottom of the bill "suggested gratuity = 18%." Our host was incensed at her temerity, and while the service was adequate, let's just say she suggested her way to a lot less than 18%.

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Random Observations on CEDIA Expo

Despite total attendance being down by all accounts, you can easily judge how successful the Friday night vendor parties were by how subdued the attendees and exhibitors were on the show floor this morning. As a matter of fact, my 9am appoinment was late opening up their booth because they had a little too much fun last night. Additionally, it's noticeable how empty the press room is, even despite the promise of free food.

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Rumors about Planar true: Vidikron is toast

I reported earlier on the rumours swirling that Planar was going to roll up the Vidikron banner. Now it's confirmed.

CE Pro: Runco Phases out Vidikron Brand, Reveals Opal Technology

Runco is phasing out its step-down Vidikron brand. The new "focus, focus, focus is Runco, Runco, Runco," says Andrew Ard of KA Marketing, an independent rep for Runco."We've decided to realign our business focus so the center of our business is Runco," says Gerry Perkel, CEO of Planar, the parent company of Runco. "Runco is the key brand, Runco is the key product portfolio. ..."

It's probably for the best, really.

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What's in store for Hitachi?

Looking around the Hitachi booth at Expo, I've really got to wonder what the future holds for them in the video category.

Granted, they've bowed a really cool looking 50-inch Plasma that's only 1.5 inches deep. But the planned 42, 50, and 60-inch models aren't slated to be released until Q2, 2009. If history has anything to teach us, it's more likely to be Q4. That's a long way off.

Mostly, I'm just dissapointed in their decision to permanently scrub the 85-inch model that was supposed to have been released this year.

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Speakercraft Gets Weird(er)

Don't get me wrong, I am a huge fan of both the products and the business philosophy of Speakercraft. As a dealer, you'd have to look long and hard to find a vendor partner as supportive as they.

That said, their theme at this year's Expo is kinda creepy. First, there's their banner ads all over the DCC of creepy looking performance artists.



And then there's the look of their booth, which is reminsicent of Day of the Triffids:

I recognize that alternative lifestyles, goatees, and full-body tatoos are part of Speakercraft's corporate image, so maybe I'm just too square to "get it."

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Reporting on CEDIA Expo for Marketnews

CEDIA EXPO: Custom Corner: Course Review

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