Strategy in TECH...
On Wednesday, a new company, RLS Creative Services, announced that it was relaunching Connected Design, a business-to-business, trade media property previously owned and ultimately shut down by former publisher CT Labs’ owner, Messe Berlin (owners of the IFA, an international technology show in Germany). In a formal announcement, the new owner pledged a “renewed commitment to serving the design-forward build environment.”
As I am sure that most readers of this post will know, during CEDIA Expo at the beginning of September, I published a continuously updated post tracking which previously announced exhibitors subsequently made the decision to pull out of the event as the COVID Delta variant raged on. A remarkable realization occurred as I worked on that post, literally speaking with dozens, if not hundreds, of exhibitors and attendees for that event – many of them were confused about who owned the CEDIA Expo!
A few weeks back while on a work assignment unrelated to Strata-gee, I had the opportunity to meet for the first time Alice Schmalzl, the new Chief Operating Officer (COO) at CT Lab, the company that owns Dealerscope, Connected Design, and the CE Week show. During the course of a lunch meeting lasting over two-hours, Schmalzl was engaging, articulate, thought-provoking, refreshingly transparent, and funny. I found her incredibly smart, with a strong business foundation, and I sensed she possessed a steely inner-toughness. I resolved then and there to interview her for a Strata-gist profile for Strata-gee readers.
