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I have worked with more than a thousand small businesses since the end of the recent recession, and they all have one thing in...

Hands-on experience is better than any sales pitch or training session. I have always found it difficult to explain in words and pictures some...

When it comes to security, our industry has been lucky to have flown under the radar for so long. Unfortunately, cybercrime is becoming a...

As a movie lover, I always try to watch the Academy Award winning movies for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Mixing as they often...

You may remember that I had a key employee put in his notice a few months ago. If you read that story, then I...

As we were preparing to tour Triad Speakers’ manufacturing facilities in Portland recently, my fellow journalists and I were given a detailed rundown of...

Recently, I had to look up my actual start day back in 2002. Here I am 15 years later. It had me thinking of...

I participated in the AV Nation ResiWeek podcast this week, and while chatting with the other guests about my recent blog post about freight...

If you are a little slow this summer, take the opportunity to do some tactical and strategic marketing. A good friend of experienced a...

The fact is that most of us come up with great ideas every day. You easily identify problems in our businesses and, with a...

The hype about CEDIA 2017 continues to get stronger, and like a building groundswell, CEDIA is guaranteed to deliver a totally tubular wave of...

More and more, we are seeing clients shy away from some of the more “professional-grade” products toward more consumer-centric solutions. The premium in price...

What goes up must always come down, unless the thing that went up is a price increase. Once vendors get consumers used to paying...

Uber figured out the barrier to entry into the taxi industry boiled down to a simple question: “Do you own a car?” The rest...

Gone are the days when buying groups would meet only twice a year. Gone are the days when integrators and custom retailers were satisfied...

Last year I wrote a blog bemoaning the fact that manufacturers frequently pitch us new products to test, and then want us to pay...

When something that’s been installed for years fails and the manufacturer no longer supports it, and there is no similar replacement, you can run...

It’s never been more important to think critically about the perceived value that you deliver to your customers. The connected home is undergoing an...

Like most of you, I read the announcement by Lennar Homes touting its new “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED Home Design” home plans powered by Amazon and...

Christmas, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and now we have Prime Day—an Amazon online holiday created by them for their Prime subscription service. According to Business...

After the CEDIA show last year, I was beyond excited about integrating the Amazon Echo into my Crestron system at home. As soon as...

Preparing for the imminent release of Luc Besson’s latest film, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (releases theatrically July 21), Sony Pictures...

Take a look at the day-to-day operations of any integration company: salesmen keep the pipeline full, engineers crank out schematics, project managers move between...

The past year has been good for AV professionals. The industry has grown. A recent release illustrated this fact, showing double-digit annual growth for...

For a few days of time, it can really boost morale and culture in the organization while investing in your employees. They appreciate it...

Last April, HTSA introduced the EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System), and earlier this month 30 members of the buying group attended a day-and-half master class...

You think your house is clean until you see it through someone else's eyes (or is that just me?). You think your technology is...

With the first half of the year wrapping up, I was talking to a couple of other business owners about how their year looks....

We’ve posted ads at the local technical college, posted on the job board at Craigslist, and had “NOW HIRING EXPERIENCED TECH” on the marquee...

These are clear signs of healthy demand for connected home technologies amongst the target market of home builders, who surely wouldn’t be going to...

The wireless network is at the forefront of users' minds because they use it so frequently, and frustration can run especially high when it...

We all know our systems are heavily reliant on third parties to deliver primary services to the home like cable/satellite, telephone, and internet. And...

“Have you seen what we’re doing for our members?” asked the clean-cut DirecTV sales rep in our local Costco. I’d heard this siren call...

Day two at InfoComm in Orlando, and I am seeing three themes emerge: the extension of laser projectors, wireless BYOD devices everywhere, and the...

I’m a little late on my game and just started looking at flights to CEDIA this year. With the long flight, I was considering...

It would be difficult to miss the sheer volume of new product announcements coming from Draper over the last six weeks. The 120-year-old projection...

The nature of my work gives me the opportunity engage with integrators all over the country on a regular basis. One of the topics...

Even though E3 doesn’t officially open until Tuesday, Microsoft kicked off the news on Sunday afternoon with the official announcement of Xbox One X....

When I started boiling it down in my head, there are really five major things that have had a massive sea change and lasting...

Many of our Apple-centric clients will want the Apple voice solution, and will be the Sonos discussion all over again: they’ve heard of something...

Monday’s WWDC keynote presentation software and hardware announcements were, for the most part, in line with rumors and expectations. For those of us in...

We recently ran into a billing dispute with a large client. It’s a six-figure dispute. The client feels that we didn’t communicate a change...