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Mining For Gold

The new CEDIA Lab hopes to be an organic testing ground driven by raw discovery.

A new kind of testing ground, says Rich Green about the CEDIA Lab, an initiative within the CEDIA Technology Council designed to leverage the valuable intellectual property of its membership, explore new technologies, and research product usability and integration potential.

Green is president of Rich Green Ink, a cutting-edge California integration company, and director of CEDIA’s new Technology Council, a fairly elaborate division of the organization. The Council includes various initiatives designed to create resources and benefit members day-to-day business in the next three to five years.

The Council is a mechanism to distill information, from the edge of CEDIA membership right into the core, and produce valuable resources such as white papers and forums, he added.

Green says that CEDIA Lab is rooted in ethos of CEDIA. For nearly three decades, CEDIA has been the primary organization for educating the trade, sharing information about new product development and deployment, and learning the best practices of business management.

The key here is the Labs agnostic approach. Staying non-denominational will help it become a critical interconnect among installers, manufacturers, and engineers.

Under the guidance of CEDIAs senior director of technology Dave Pedigo, the Lab will test the usability of equipment and research the interstitial space between components. Products may work reliably their own, but do they integrate happily? Do they work well in a larger system? Do they play well together? How long does it take to get the media center of the box? Are the plugs in the most accessible place? How much time could be saved by placing that button one centimeter higher? As discoveries are learned in the field, Green says, members can funnel their insight right into the communications infrastructure.

Manufacturers will surely be keen to review the Labs findings and hopefully apply the wisdom to their own R&D. Understanding how products behave in a neutral environment will help conceive more efficient, integration-friendly technologies that save dealers time and money, and perhaps have some staying power.

Green also hopes that these endeavors will strengthen the organizations focus on cogent standards and make the entity much more inclusive. A collaborative Wiki mechanism has already been established to encourage quick feedback from group members, share recommended practices, web links, jpegs, and ultimately help rank-and-file members get more involved with the group’s direction.

This will be organic, Green added, and driven by raw discovery. There is a new need and strong urge to communicate what our members have learned with each other and manufacturers.”

CEDIA Lab is expected to be well under way by CEDIA’s 2007 EXPO in Denver, Colorado.

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