CEDIA has unveiled plans for a new event in 2015 that will bring together company owners and managers, manufacturers, and sales representatives to solve common business challenges in a hands-on, collaborative environment.
With the theme “Small Changes. Big Impact,” CEDIA Business Xchange is scheduled for April 29-May 1, 2015, in Houston, TX, at the Hilton NASA, a waterfront facility offering a unique meeting atmosphere for attendees, including an opening reception at the nearby NASA Space Center.
Planning committee members for CEDIA Business Xchange have included integration professionals, manufacturers, CEDIA staff, and members of the media. Committee member Jamie Briesemeister, from Integration Controls in St. Louis, recognized that working on one’s business is difficult when tackling day-to-day challenges, so it’s important to “step away from the routine, surrounding oneself with industry peers who are experiencing some of the same woes and celebrating some of the same successes,” opening the doors for “reflecting on business operations, customer service, sales strategies, and more,” she said.
At CEDIA Business Xchange, peer-to-peer information sharing across non-competing markets will provide opportunities for integrators to benefit one’s personal business, while improving the industry as a whole by creating better business practices across the nation. The conference will emphasize “deep-dive” working sessions on the most challenging business issues as well as providing the when, why, and how for implementing new strategies and processes in ones business.
Patrick Hartman, from Diversified Systems International in Reno, NV, also serves on the Xchange planning committee. He said that the main reason to attend CEDIA’s new event is to “mind-share” real-life business situations with industry colleagues and allow everyone the opportunity to bring back “big impact” solutions for improving their own business practices.
“In the past few years, CEDIA professionals have been requesting more ‘mind-sharing’ opportunities and classes at EXPO and beyond,” Hartman said. “We saw this first hand last year at EXPO 2013 with sold-out classes, and we saw post-EXPO 2013 requests for more roundtable/forum-type classes.”
Unlike traditional business conferences, the Business Xchange will provide relaxed, meeting environments to address every-day business challenges, as well. “We expect that CEDIA’s new ‘un-conference’ type event will also allow attendees to concentrate more on finding new strategies to implement immediately at their business when they return home,” Hartman added.
CEDIA Business Xchange will offer sessions on High-Performance Teams, Operations Excellence, 5-Star Customer Service, and Building a Brand.
To learn more, visit cedia.net/businessxchange.
