Indianapolis, IN — Tough economic times are making strange bedfellows as CEDIA has agreed to provide its education curriculum to a once rival trade show. Beginning with its March 2009 event, CEDIA will offer its CEDIA University classes during EHX’s Spring Electronic House Expo in Orlando and plans to do the same for the November event next year.
The March 11-14, 2009 convention will provide 55 CEDIA University core courses from CEDIA’s five colleges. According to CEDIA, those 55 courses have been customized to meet the needs of EHX attendees and will address training needs, such as system design, technical skills, emerging technologies, and business and strategy instruction.
This is the second time that CEDIA has formed a partnership with EHX. The first time ended in 2004 after two years when, according to CEDIA COO Don Gilpin, attendance of EHX’s education sessions no longer provided enough return on CEDIA’s investment to warrant further involvement.
“Back then the revenue stream simply wasn’t there,” Gilpin explained. “Since then we’ve created CEDIA University, with five colleges and our core curriculum, which is really the marquee education in the industry. We think the product we have to deliver now will get people in the seats.”
This year’s partnership announcement comes on the heels of a CEDIA EXPO convention in Denver where, according to reported figures, attendance dropped by at least 4,000 people from the prior year.
