HTSA 2025 Fall Conference: “Elevate” Through AI

Nearly 100 members of the Home Technology Specialist of America (HTSA) gathered at The Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah, October 27-29, 2025, for the group’s 2025 Fall Conference. The three-day conference brought exclusive opportunities for deeper connection between members and vendor partners as well as industry-specific insights, education, and training to help dealers “Elevate” their businesses, which was the theme of the event.

HTSA 2025 Fall Conference - Presentation — Photo courtesy of HTSA

“Now is the time to elevate our people, our practices, and our partnerships,” said Jon Robbins, executive director, HTSA, during his opening remarks. “Together, we rise higher. Together, we elevate the industry. We are having a growth year this year. Last year was our first flat year in eight years, but we’re up again this year in overall group purchases versus last year, which was flat from 2023. We’re anticipating that that’s going to maintain. We’re past the tariff thing. That’s all it is. A lot is driven by the market and our clients.”

Ari Supran, CEO of Sonance, took to the stage to kick off the conference with a deep dive into the practical uses of AI, highlighting a core theme of the conference. Supran showed how members could overcome the common misconceptions surrounding AI and harness its potential and invaluable tools with confidence.

“I feel for a company to really adopt AI, it doesn’t have to be the owner or the CEO, but it takes a leader to personally try it and see some real, light-bulb moments go off with AI,” said Supran. “Then show the rest of their colleagues and the leadership team what the opportunity is, and have the confidence to make the investments they need to do it. I’m not technical, but at Sonance, I was able to get them to go, ‘Wow, there’s something here,’ and to go hire some technical people. Now we’re really flying.”

HTSA 2025 Fall Conference - Jon Robbins — Jon Robbins, executive director, HTSA. Photo by Grant Morgan

Using AI tools such as Wispr Flow, Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Google NotebookLM to demonstrate how to research, code simple apps with English, and streamline workflows to free employees to do their real jobs, Supran piqued the interest of members, and he encouraged them to lean into learning AI sooner, rather than later.

“I think the companies that are going to embrace AI are the same ones that are going to find more valuable uses of that time,” said Supran. “For us at Sonance, it’s more about empowering our people. I think there’s just a lot of manual things that people are doing that take too much of their time. And if we can smooth that out and make it more efficient, we’re going to do it.”

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“There’s business being done as a result of AI,” Robbins added. “Tech companies are being driven by AI right now, and there are so many new offerings all the time. It’s not about replacing people, and it’s not about replacing products. It’s about transforming from our standpoint; transforming operations to become more efficient, more effective.”

The HTSA fall conference expanded beyond AI, with other educational sessions speaking to the timely topics of optimizing labor profit and leveraging CEDIA resources through its education pathways for techs and PMs, as well as industry forecasts for the next six months and how leaders can utilize and implement impactful ways to communicate with their staff, clients, and vendors for maximum returns.

A staple of any HTSA conference, 1-on-1s returned to help members and vendors make and strengthen essential connections with each other. These pairings enable HTSA members to make the most of their membership and forge lasting friendships within the group.

HTSA 2025 Fall Conference - 121s — A 1-to-1 session at the 2025 HTSA Fall Conference. Photo courtesy of HTSA.

“HTSA is very content-conscious, and we work very hard on creating the right content that’s going to hit those numbers and help the relationships,” said Robbins. “We’re constantly working with our members to talk about culture and how to maintain the people that they have. We call it relationship science. We have arguably the best program in the industry. If you talk to members and you ask, tell me about the relationship science program that HTSA offers, most of them will rave that it’s changed them.”

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“The members of HTSA are keeping up with the changing landscape very well,” said Tom Doherty, director, new technology initiatives, HTSA. “We’ve always been ahead of the curve, and the HTSA membership, as a percentage of the market, is doing much greater per capita of lighting than any other group. That’s because we’ve got an earlier start, and we’re smaller, we’re just 100 members, so we operate more as a unit, and so new ideas are adopted, and we’re staying ahead of it.”

For more information about HTSA, visit www.htsa.com.