Strategy in TECH...
Crestron Electronics announced today that it is returning to the CEDIA Expo show for the first time since Strata-gee broke the news of their surprising exit from the event four years ago in 2016. This announcement marks a triumphant return for a company that has seen its residential business soar over the last few years, particularly with the launch of their Crestron Home software solution.
Strata-gee reported last week that a group of 20 exhibitors had written an open letter to petition Joel Davis of JD Events – the producer of the AXPONA high-end audio show – calling for the cancellation of that event. The exhibitors making that call included some of the more prominent names in the specialty audio community – and their argument for a cancellation was well-articulated in their petition.
Now, several dozen more exhibitors have joined that original group to also call for its cancellation.
Emerald Expositions announced this week that Sally Shankland, it most recent CEO who had been hired in June 2019 to replace resigning CEO David Loechner, has died following her month’s long battle with cancer. The company says Shankland passed away at home peacefully.
IFA 2020, a huge consumer electronics show scheduled to take place in Berlin on September 4-9, 2020, is now canceled, the organization behind the event announced this week. It is yet another show joining a long line of mass, in-person marketing events to suffer this fate. The promoter is promising “an innovative new concept” to replace it – which some speculate will be a virtual online conference.
In an “Open letter to Joel Davis of JD Events,” a group of 20 prominent personalities in the high-end specialty audio industry – who are also contracted exhibitors – call on the producer of AXPONA to cancel the event. AXPONA had already been previously rescheduled by its production company from the originally planned April 17-19 dates…to August 7-9, due to the expanding COVID-19 pandemic.
Now some exhibitors are publicly calling upon the show’s producer to fully cancel the event for 2020 altogether, as COVID-19 – and the economic damage it’s causing – continues to be a major issue.
AVNation, a largely podcasting group of integrators in both the residential and commercial AV space, this week held a somewhat abruptly announced, but ultimately successful online learning event they call their LFH – or Learn From Home – virtual residential event. Essentially an online conference with multiple presentations from a variety of industry experts, the event gave COVID-19 isolated colleagues an opportunity to while away the hours of their isolation…and perhaps learn something in the process.
Now, the group announces it will offer a new LFH event targeted at the commercial channel next week.
Yet another trade show bites the dust as CE Week joins a long list of shows canceled due to the nationwide Coronavirus epidemic. This cancellation is no surprise, as CE Week was only a little more than 60 days away and planned for the Jacob Javits Center in Manhattan – a facility that is in the process of being converted to a large hospital for victims of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic that is hitting New York City and New York State very hard.
Emerald Holding Inc. (NYSE: EEX), formerly known as Emerald Expositions Events Inc. – a national exposition company that is home to both the CEDIA Expo and CE Pro magazine – has announced that they are postponing all events for the first two quarters of 2020 due to the rapid spread of the global pandemic Coronavirus (COVID-19). Given their position as one of the largest producers of B-to-B trade shows in the U.S., this is a major development with huge impact on the various industries their shows serve.
ProSource wrapped up their annual Summit, this year known as Summit 2020 on March 11th. The event had barely wrapped up when within days many other organizations began canceling their events due to the rapidly propagating coronavirus epidemic sweeping across the U.S. ProSource barely got their event completed just as health authorities around the country began restricting gatherings such as conferences like theirs which congregate a lot of people in one place at one time.
And now we know that there was another attendee at the ProSource Summit 2020 – coronavirus COVID-19, an uninvited guest, visited the group’s annual event..
Just days after canceling their Vancouver Tech Summit, CEDIA announced last week that they are canceling all remaining Tech Summits currently planned for the rest of March and for all of April. This move is being taken as a response to the growing coronavirus pandemic sweeping across the globe.
