THE ERT INTERVIEW MATT NIMMONS
A Member of Excellence would also demonstrate award-winning craftsmanship and a dedication to advancing the industry certifications, where multiple staff have undertaken industry training or CEDIA courses. It’s a way of making sure that the best people are rising to the top and being given that status.
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Q: There have been a lot of new initiatives and schemes introduced this year. Why is it important for CEDIA to refresh its offering? MN: Although CEDIA is a membership association, our deliberate focus in the last few years is about being less of a member-centric organisation and more industry-focused. We want to be there for the wider industry, which is evolving and changing. There are the traditional businesses that have always been there but now a lot of other new businesses are being formed. Retail is another channel looking to take advantage of the elevated awareness and increased knowledge of the general consumer, around the smart home. To give you an example, Hughes Electrical has been part of a working group that has helped to get the apprenticeship to this point and I think it just elevates the entire industry when you have an apprenticeship programme in place. We want to be the connector and we want to be the community of choice within the smart home space. We also host a number of Tech Summits – one in London, one in Scotland and one in the North of England; we’ve been running these for about three years and they’re always very well attended. These are free one-day events where around 20 businesses will show their products and there’s training alongside this too. It’s been successful and we’ll be rolling it out again in 2020.
Q: The 2019 EMEA and Global CEDIA Awards took place in September. How was it? MN: It was fantastic – a really great evening! It’s the flagship event that we host every year, this year at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and we normally have about 400 guests attending.
We introduced the CEDIA Awards in 2006 and only had five or six categories back then; today we have nearly 20 and some of that is reflective of how the market is evolving. Awards cover Best Home Cinema, Best Integrated Home, Best Media Room, Best Showroom, Best Software and Best Training Course, to name just a few; a multiple-award winner this year was Perfect Integration (UK) – they do integrated home automation and audio visual systems. There were some fantastic examples of the work our members do, and security and lighting control are definitely growing parts of members’ projects more than ever. But home cinema is still the sexy beast of the industry! And we’re seeing that consumers still want these dedicated rooms in their properties, coming in at various price points.
Q: Why is the CEDIA Awards an important event for the industry? MN: I think there’s always been a perception that CEDIA has always operated at the very top of the triangle and represented the work of very high-end installations. While that marketplace still exists, we are certainly seeing that middle ground expanding where there are solutions at varying price points. From a retailer perspective there are opportunities
to grow in the connected smart home space and provide solutions and integration at much lower prices. The Awards recognises the work of our community and elevates those who are doing great things – designing single media or cinema room installations, or home integration solutions. It’s a great programme with real international flavour and, as a member, it’s free.
We introduced the CEDIA Awards in 2006 and only had five or six categories back then; today we have nearly 20 and some of that is reflective of how the market is evolving
Q: What will be new at CEDIA next year? MN: We will continue to produce our podcasts, white papers and thought- leadership pieces to help the industry move forward. But one thing we’ll be launching,
that we’ve been working on for a while this year, is a new all-encompassing website. We’ve had five different websites in the past – including an education and an Awards site, so we are consolidating all of these sites to one main site…
www.cedia.net. Depending on who you are you’ll be served content relevant to you.
Another new thing next year will be our new
Learning Management System (LMS), which is an online portal for people to take training. Taking time out of a business to go for training can be difficult and sometimes costly; we would always be a strong advocate of face-to-face training, and CEDIA has always had slightly limited online training, but the new LMS next year will kick start a new hire track with 25 hours of learning modules across seven different courses. For retailers in the home technology sector, this training can be done any time and it’s much more accessible than a whole day out for just one session. All these new initiatives will support our curr ent membership better and there are some exciting developments to look forward to in 2020!
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