2024 Chicago Tech & Business Summit with RP22 Workshop

In this podcast Walt Zerbe, Sr. Director of Technology and Standards at CEDIA and Host of the CEDIA podcast talks with Bill Ekstrand and Alex Mondragon of Barrett's Technology Solutions, Carl Horne of AV Design & Sales and Hank Alexander of Oasys Residential Technology Group about what they saw, experienced and learned at the Chicago Tech & Business Summit that also hosted a two-day Immersive Audio Design Recommended Practice Workshop [RP22]. 

Podcast Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:01  
I am CEDIA, I'm CEDIA, I am CEDIA, this is the CDM CDM podcast.

Walt Zerbe  0:07  
Hello, and welcome to another CP Podcast. I'm well deserving Senior Director of Technology and Standards and your host for the CD podcast. And today we are broadcasting from Chicago at the Tech Summit, which I believe is the first time we've had a Tech Summit in Chicago. Maybe we had one a long, long time ago. But it's been quite a while if that was the case. And I have some great folks with me who have who are attending the Tech Summit and have had been doing different things at the Tech Summit. So I just like to go around and have everybody introduce themselves. Okay,

Hank Alexander  0:37  
I'll start Hank Alexander. I'm director of Oasis residential technology group. And we're a CI buying group.

Carl Horne  0:45  
Okay. Hi, my name is Carl horn. I'm here with cold digital. We're from Frankfort, Illinois here Chicago suburb. We specialize in a lot of different technologies, a lot of residential systems as well as commercial integration. So very

Walt Zerbe  1:01  
nice. All right.

Alex Mondragon  1:03  
I'm Alex Mondrian. I'm from Barretts technology solutions here out of the Chicago lumbered area as well as Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, cover a big territory home integration. I am with the design department system design and engineering, background, MEP engineering, so a lot of design work that we put into our projects. And here also taking in some of the courses for immersive audio design with theater, so it's very, very awesome. I'm gonna ask you about

Walt Zerbe  1:34  
that in a little bit. Okay,

Bill Ekstrand  1:36  
and I'm Bill strand with Burt's technology solutions. I'm the senior project manager there, again, what Alex said as far as our market where we're at. And I actually started my career with Barrett's back in 88. And then went on to develop custom audio for a couple other locations. And about 12 years ago, we started talking again, and made it happen for me to come back about 11 years ago. Wow,

Walt Zerbe  2:05  
fantastic. come full circle there. Yeah, I understand. A little birdie told me you have instructed?

Bill Ekstrand  2:13  
Yeah, I was part of the experiment. I was one of the first CTO level one, certified installer. Thank you for that level two, good designer. And then I got certified to instruct, and was a member of the content action team. Okay. When I was with integrated control experts with Eric Lee,

Walt Zerbe  2:37  
well, thank you for that volunteering. And I, we can talk about that a little bit after we get into the show. But volunteering pays off in dividends. I know you think we don't have time, I'm too busy. But the networking that you get, and what you learn is crazy. And we can even talk about that. With you attending the RP 22 workshop, you've you've met people that you would not have met and you have three world class people that you would never get FaceTime with teaching that class to talk to what what's your experience been like in that room?

Alex Mondragon  3:12  
I mean, the three people that are instructing it's just really amazing the the level of knowledge that they have, but also the way they are coming at it not only from a standpoint of design, theory, behind design sales all around though the whole scope is really nice, because it's inner woven as to how theater design, the harpy 22 standard really is going to elevate theaters, the way that the movie companies have actually designed things to be heard, and concerts and all the sound engineering that goes into it. So to give that experience to the end client, for what they're actually looking for really starts in design as they're teaching us. Yeah. So

Walt Zerbe  3:58  
you said your designer already? Yes, that's currently immersive audio systems.

Alex Mondragon  4:03  
We have not been doing immersive audio systems to the level that we want to we use third party source to do them. Okay.

Walt Zerbe  4:10  
Gotcha. All right. Well, great. I wanted to find out your reasoning. The reason why I asked is kind of a loaded question. Some people that have been doing this for 20 years have sat are now sitting in the class. Because they they're just they just have the right attitude of you know what I can learn some more, learn some other tricks. And a lot of new people are sitting in the class but we've I think we have a little bit of a lease the United States the mid band of people would need to get in that class as well. But what what's your experience been like today? Yes. So

Hank Alexander  4:41  
it always says we attend all the texts. We hit them all. When we went we don't go to are the ones in Canada. We have a team up there already. But we find the tech summits the level of education is really good. It's phenomenal actually, especially when you're talking about immersive audio and was some new technologies and getting into those things. The vendor content is good. And we come to meet with new vendor new vendor partners, obviously dealers in the market and attend some classes. And it's been a good show.

Walt Zerbe  5:17  
Great. Did you attend any classes yet? Or do you plan on attending any?

Hank Alexander  5:20  
I attended one vendor class? Okay. Otherwise I've been we've got a booth out on the floor. So I'm, I'm doing the booth thing most of the time. Okay.

Walt Zerbe  5:30  
Yeah, right. I gotcha. Let's move right on down the line. What have you done today? What do you think of the event? Well,

Carl Horne  5:37  
well, so far, it's, it's pretty great. I'm here, just basically to try and expand horizons, just like everybody else is. But a lot of close contacts with dealers and vendors. So I'd like to, I always like to stop by and say hello to everyone, you know, named a face, make sure everybody remembers who I am. So we can keep close contact. I found that extremely important. Especially if it's somebody you haven't seen in a couple years, it's just very important no matter what, you know, what the installation was that you were getting equipment from them for or anything like that. Is this your first one? Summit? Yeah, yeah.

Walt Zerbe  6:12  
Okay. So what's your overall impression? So far? The event as a whole?

Carl Horne  6:18  
Yeah. I mean, it's, I've been to a lot of different expos. And stuff coming from previously in work to being mostly exclusive commercial, to now expanding into high end residential systems of all types, lighting design, you know, these are all new things where I'm always constantly thinking, how can I? How can I integrate my past knowledge of stuff to the residential market, we're doing a lot of really cool things like digital movie posters with touchscreen integration with them. So you can walk up and change that without going to a computer, things like that. The woodworking aspect, a custom cabinetry, custom rack, not just racks, but I mean, as in, pick your wood finishes, we're doing custom work with our own cabinetry company in which we own. So starting that about two years ago, or two or three years ago, has really helped expand the business, too. So you could do residential, right? Yeah. And not just that, because we were with cold digital, always doing residential as well, but just to be able to bring design to the next level, and offer everything in between that in between the systems or the lighting, and it really just makes for a cohesive system, and how can we support it? And yeah, for the client, and so always looking for new new tech to sell. And, yeah, okay,

Walt Zerbe  7:51  
Bill.

Bill Ekstrand  7:53  
So for me, it's opportune to get out of the office, and actually put faces and names together, right? Yeah, you do so much communication nowadays over email and even texts, right? We're, we're, we're too busy. So to be able to take a moment, we're, we're local, we're 10 minutes away, to get over here and, and, and see people and then see the technology and go by the booth. I haven't gone by booths in a long time because I am focusing more on the day to day. That's my concern. But to be able to get out. Have my guys here have you know, we've got a bunch of technicians are here as well. And to have them being excited about oh, did you see this? Oh, come on, you got to hear this. That is like what I got into the business for and having these opportunities having a Tech Summit, haven't CEDIA Expo, any kind of dealer training, where you're getting to see people face to face? As opposed to seeing brochures or getting an email about something? Yeah. And actually seeing it, as opposed to somebody saying, oh, yeah, we were at this training. And we saw this. And it was really cool. It was like, okay, when are we installing it? Oh, probably not gonna see that for you know, get into a design here in six months. You know, get to see your stuff upfront, see stuff upfront, and actually hear from it from the manufacturers and from the distributors. What, what's new out there? What's what he got going on? Well, we got this, but we're also working on this. Being able to, you know, in to make some old connections, right. See some people's faces? Yeah, I've seen a lot. So he's great. But having having the ability to get off site and do it in person and be able to see the technology firsthand, is always I think, better than hearing it secondhand. Yeah. One of the things I've always tried to do is be able to pick up something from any training or any Expo that you go to right if you learn one thing it was worth it. Yeah.

Walt Zerbe  10:03  
Oh, good point. Hey, before we move to Alex, you mentioned something that I thought was key and that you, you'd like to spend most your time in the office. So traveling you, you're not spending a lot of time to so this event being regional, and being local man, you decided to step out of the office?

Bill Ekstrand  10:21  
Yep. For sure. I know, my days of being on the road, out in the field, right. I, I spent most of my career as an installer as a technician, as a programmer, as a, you know, I used to say, a fireman, I'd go out and write Yeah. Now I'm more of the role of Smokey the Bear. And we're preventing fires before they wake him up.

Alex Mondragon  10:49  
You should see the poster he has all by his office is smokey, only you can prevent forest fires. That's hilarious.

Bill Ekstrand  10:56  
So I spend my time now planning out projects to avoid having to be out there in the field. Yeah, all your experience from being guys on the field or, you know, they're not the ones having to do that. Cool. So it is it's nice to get out of the office and be able to like, again, but names to faces and you know, shake hands and stuff up, you know, for real? Yep.

Walt Zerbe  11:20  
Cool. Alex, he wanted to chime in here. Yeah,

Alex Mondragon  11:24  
I was just gonna say I think what's nice about these summits is not only do these technicians be able to get out and see some of this stuff, but then that feedback and come back in, where we have a philosophy where, you know, they find things and if it makes sense, and it works, you know, design will adapt in order to make it work for us as a whole as a company. And really, I'm sure a lot of you are seeing this our industries at a very pivotal point where it's changing where these technologies, especially lighting and things like that coming in is is really huge. And really, what was nice and RP 22 class that ties in with, with what we've started to do in our company and focus on design is that, in order to keep up with this stuff, we need to lead by design by putting in the engineering, it's no longer just showing products to clients, we really need to lead with design. Don't be trunk Slammers, as we like to say in our office sometimes where you just show up with a bunch of boxes. Yeah, you know, that doesn't really mean a lot to the clients. They're they're buying the relationship and that trust of that we are the experts, and that we can take care of all of their smart home needs. That

Walt Zerbe  12:38  
it did I slip you a list or something with both hands on because you seem to have really gotten better?

Alex Mondragon  12:45  
No, not at all. Manage is really the philosophy of what's really driving us and our company we we've hired on, I was the first hire on for the design department. We had just one person I was, you know, overseeing it all. And then since then we've expanded and you know, the the goal is to continue growing that department.

Walt Zerbe  13:04  
Okay. Awesome. And literally, I just picked you guy, I just walked around the show floor and said, Hey, you want to be on a podcast? And I get a look at me like I got, you know, so a weird face, which I probably do. But they're like, Yeah, sure. And then I say, well, there's no video, and then that that increases my chances like 50%. So literally just grabbed you guys right off of Florida. So would you want to add a few things about your experience at these. And the other thing I wanted to say that was cool that that bill said was you've got vendors, but you also have distributors and a way to get the product,

Hank Alexander  13:38  
a lot of different ingredients, a lot of different walks of life. I want to give props to bill because I thought that Smokey the Bear thing was the coffee. Oh, no, he's got a poster. I was. I was like, wow, it's probably anyway, it's really good. I like that. Yeah. So attending all of the tech summits, you know, for us, it's about the face to face. It's about, you know, meeting new vendors, New Dealers, and the networking between each other, the dealers and the vendors, but also peer to peer networking, we see a lot in these, where, you know, you're you're talking to somebody and they go, oh, yeah, we had this problem, or we did that and we fix this or you know, just finding out what's going on and helping each other out. So the peer to peer networking, and I don't know, as somebody who attends all of these around the country, I would just say if there's a CD, a Tech Summit coming to your market, like go, you're gonna see something, you're gonna get FaceTime with the vendors. Hopefully you get FaceTime with Oasis. But, you know, shameless plug, sorry. It wasn't. Anyway, I would encourage you to go to those tacks on ones because you're always going to see something new and you're going to run into somebody who you maybe haven't seen in a bunch of years and it's their great events.

Walt Zerbe  14:56  
Yeah. Okay. Yeah,

Bill Ekstrand  14:59  
I'll add something to that two is, as far as the peer to peer the face to face. We're in the same market here with call with home audio, and just had a lunch just sitting at the same table with the guys from home audio. And you know, just start chatting in, you know, we find out we're not the only ones having, you know, networking issues with, you know, a third party, we won't mention anybody's names or products. But you know, now you've got that shared experience. Like, okay, you're you have the same issue we're having. Alright, and they're easy. Yeah. And then then it leads to Oh, yeah, well, we have this guy in Naples. Oh, we've got this guy in Naples. Oh, so here's how we're handling it. You know, we're working with a third party down there, you guys can maybe, you know, leverage somebody down there as a partner to help you take care of clients in that market, then you can't complain that oh, well, we're gonna have to, you know, we have to ship everything down. We have to have guys down there to accept it. We have to have the manpower, if you can pair up with somebody, right? Absolutely. And it's like, Bob light bulb went off like, oh, that that's a great idea. So just having that ability to talk to somebody. Yeah, we're in the same market. We're competing, but we're not right, there's enough of a pie

Hank Alexander  16:14  
I love. Never know what

Walt Zerbe  16:16  
was gonna happen. That's one thing I love about this community is where we all have each other's backs and learn from one another.

Alex Mondragon  16:23  
And faces, you know, phases stay the same. It seems like in this market, yeah. Just like life happens, right? I mean, so you know, and all of a sudden, you're moving to a whole nother territory, or, you know, vendors are changing, or different things like that. But you have those relationships. And that's why it's important, in this in this industry to is just having that respect for one another, because you don't know, you know, maybe this person, you know, doesn't exactly match you. But if you're not nice to them, and now all of a sudden, they're in a different company that you do use that that can come back, but also the collaboration is amazing. Like everyone's saying, Yeah, I guess

Carl Horne  17:03  
we can't forget that we'll always need help with something. You know, and that's, that's why COVID times was so hard, because, you know, being stuck in our own bubble, we may have still been really busy with certain projects during COVID in this industry, which was great. But the problem was that we were so closed off that, you know, the competition, which like you said, it's shouldn't even be necessarily worrying about it, in certain situations, will became became maybe an issue for a lot of people. Yeah, but just remembering that there's not one of us on every corner, that there's you know, you'd have to reach out to find people like us with our expertise. So,

Walt Zerbe  17:41  
back. Yeah. This is awesome stuff. I just wanted to talk about a few of the classes here. So we had advancements in lighting technology, integrators perspective on training, documentation, and building confidence. How AI Language Tools can revolutionize workflows for technology integrators, RP, 22, immersive audio standards, what is it and why should I care? And then we have 25 ways to increase profits for smart home integrators and 25 ways to increase profits for home integrators. It's, it's a part one and part Two. So the point here is there's tech, there's distributors, there's education, and there's business. So it's kind of we're trying to round out the event. So does anybody have any last minute things they'd like to say? Thank you for having me.

Alex Mondragon  18:32  
Yes, great at educating us and keeping us up to date in an ever changing technological market. Well,

Walt Zerbe  18:38  
thanks, and we are nothing without volunteers. And we're nothing without people showing up. So we are also reliant on you. So it's a good, good relationship. But I want to thank you all for giving me 20 minutes taking your time off the show floor. You got to get back to class. And we're going to wrap up so thanks very much for listening to the podcast. And stay tuned for other ones in the future. And as always, I will ask you to please keep an open mind.

Speaker 1  19:03  
I am CEDIA, I am CEDIA imcd This is the CDN CDN podcast.