This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features our host Ron Callis interviewing Tom Doherty, David Weinstein and Joaquin Rivera. Recorded live on Friday, January 5th at 12:30 pm EST.

About Our Guests

Today's show features 3 industry luminaries - Tom Doherty, Director of New Technology Initiatives at HTSA, and a veteran of the Consumer Electronic Industry with a remarkable 40-year career. From pioneering Tom Doherty’s Custom Audio and Video in 1985 to instrumental roles in founding Escient and expanding Gracenote, Tom is a CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Awardee and a Lutron Hall of Fame inductee.

Joining Tom is David Weinstein, the Vice President of Residential Sales at Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. David's vast 45-year experience in the lighting control, shading, and lighting systems business is an invaluable asset to our discussion.

Completing our lineup is Joaquin Rivera, Co-Founder of ByDesign Vision & Sound Marketing. With a 15-year tenure at Stewart Filmscreen and a series of industry accolades, Joaquin's journey from production to VP.

Interview Recap

• What is new for Lightapalooza 2024
• Lutron and Ketra's plans for the event
• Why integrators should not miss this event
• The growing importance of the lighting category in the CI channel

SEE ALSO: Crestron Director Discusses the Need for AV Education Programs and the Future Impact of AI on Programming

Transcript

Ron:

Hello, hello. Ron Callis here for a special episode of Automation Unplugged. This is show and today is Friday, January th. And this is officially the first show of And yours truly, I'm just coming back from a nice holiday break, spent personally Christmas and New Year's in Europe, Vienna specifically with my family.

Ron:

And today's my first day actually back in the saddle here at One Firefly. I have an amazing team here at One Firefly and they held the fort down for me the last two, three weeks. And couldn't think of a better place to be than with all of you and specifically with our fine guests. So we're gonna jump right into it because today's focus is the upcoming Lightapalooza conference. And that conference is gonna be taking place February th through the th. And it's gonna be at the Renaissance Phoenix Glendale Hotel and Spa. And if you're curious, you could go to Lightapalooza.com. That's Light L-I-G-H-T-A-Palooza P-A-L-O-O-Z-A.com. And you can learn all about the conference that we're going to be speaking about here for the next minutes to an hour. So who do we have for our guests today? I'm going to announce everybody and then I'm going to bring them right in. So we have Tom Doherty. He's Director of New Technology Initiatives, HTSA. And you know what I'm going to do? I'm actually going to bring them in and then I'm going to read all of their titles so we get that for the audio podcast. Let me go ahead and bring all these smiling faces in, then I'll get everybody announced. There we go. Look at this fine audience.

Ron:

All right, so we have Tom Doherty. He's Director of New Technology Initiatives at HTSA, and he is the Lightapalooza showrunner. He's the man behind putting this whole vision together and actually making this event happen. Tom, how are you, sir?

Tom:

I'm great. Thanks for having the show and inviting all of us.

Ron:

My pleasure. My pleasure. Appreciate you guys joining here on a Friday afternoon. And so we have David Weinstein. He is Vice President Residential Sales at Lutron. Anybody that's been in the CI space for more than a minute knows David and knows that this is the man, the myth and the legend himself. And he is the immediate past chairperson of CEDIA. And I say immediate, David. That yesterday was your last board meeting?

David:

Yeah, it was my last board meeting. And we worked to do some business of naming the new board members and the new executive group, the officers. That will be announced shortly publicly.

Ron:

Awesome, very exciting. And we have Joaquin Rivera. He's a principal, also a legend in our industry, anybody that's been here, all three of these gentlemen. Like this is an all-star cast, folks. You've got to tune in and get your popcorn just to hear these guys espouse some wisdom. But we have Joaquin Rivera, Principal of By Design, Vision, and Sound Marketing. They are a rep agency in Southern California. Now, Joaquin, you actually cover more than just Southern California. Is that correct?

Joaquin:

Yes, sir. We do Southern California, Arizona, Vegas, and Hawaii. So, you know, great area of the country when it comes to temperature. I can't think of a better place. I would say that I'm here in southern Florida, but southern Florida is only beautiful for its weather, maybe four months out of the year. The other eight months, it's pretty sweltering, pretty miserable, in fact. You have lovely weather year round.

Joaquin:

Just about. Just about. All right, Mr. Tom, we have Lightapalooza coming up around the corner. High-level question. What's new for ?

Tom:

Well, we have expanded number of courses. We have a significant number of new exhibitors. The show floor is sold out. Last year, we were taking up a little less, a little more than half of the space. And this year, the complete show floor is full. So those are some of the real high level stuff, more education, more exhibitors, more people registering. The other part that's new is we've added a new related category. We've observed a lot of interest in growth with power. My first introduction of Serious Power for the CI channel seemed to be what Joe Piccarilli was doing with Rosewater. But since then, you know there are a number of people and awareness amongst integrators to be more expert in that subject matter. So we have added a number of education courses that are related to power. And Joe's got something that he calls "What's Your Power Plan?" And that narrative will be really a good part of that conference. And there's about seven exhibitors that are either intelligent panels or whole house power conditioning to battery backup. So another new, I'm seeing that as another new way for integrators to have dialogue with architects, builders, clients, and getting into jobs early on the design side. So we're excited about that.

Ron:

I'm going to jump over to the floor plan. And David, I know that Lutron attended last year. This is the third year of Lightapalooza. And Tom, correct me if I'm making a mistake there. I think that's correct, right? This is the third year.

Tom:

This will be the third, .

Ron:

And so David, last year, Lutron attended with the Tiny House. I know I was out at the conference and I actually enjoyed the tour. And I got the shading and the lighting and the Ketra demos in the tiny house. And this year, you guys have stepped it up. You have the largest floor space at the event. Maybe at a high level, kind of what is Lutron seeing in Lightapalooza?

David:

Sure. Well, first, Ron, thanks for inviting me to your show and having me participate. I'm very excited to be here today. So look, last year, we had to come up with a creative way to be there and showcase our products. And Tom knows, you know, we were working on a new booth design for the following year, CEDIA Expo and lots of time and we had a little gap on when things would be ready. So we had to come up with a creative alternative way last year. And it actually turned out really well because the Tiny Home Company is not very far away from where the Renaissance is in Glendale, and we were able to create that amazing experience. This year, interestingly, that booth is going to be used at the kitchen and bath show this year. But we came up with an opportunity to utilize a good portion of what some of the things we did at CEDIA Expo. So it's a really great experience booth. And yes, it is a significant square footage. But we're also believing that this is a wonderful opportunity for us to continue to inspire the industry to invest their time and resources and build collaboration around this category. So now is the time. It's very exciting.

Ron:

Tom was mentioning that this is an opportunity. Well, I'll go at a high level. You know, the design space, designers, architects, custom builders have a high level of interest, David, in lighting, lighting and shading. How do you see that Lightapalooza helps maybe the audience, the attendees, the dealers, the reps, the other constituents that attend, better understand that space or better be tuned in to serve them?

David:

Yeah. So I think there's several levels. One, and all of us here, manufacturers, reps, Tom, who has incredible industry experience now running HTSA and leading this Lightapalooza show myself. To me, first of all, it's the internal collaboration within our industry, the CEDIA world, to get people's mindset, whether you're a rep, integrator, manufacturer, that we all have to work and drive the effort of building collaboration between the integrator, the architect, the interior designer, the builder/developer, and even the lighting designer, all important collaboration folks. Secondly, many, in our case, panel as an example, you know, when you have on that panel, a lighting designer, an interior designer, an architect, a manufacturer, you're telling the story about how the industry can work across the industry, build these relationships for the benefit of the client. So I think, first, it's the integrators listening to one another about expanding beyond, you know, talking to yourself. And then it's bringing outside industry partners in to learn and get excited about what we do as an industry, because we're really, frankly, an unknown to how all this magic happens. And then finally, I think people leave the show with certain ideas, and then they take these things locally. And I just think that's how the seeds of inspiration grow into, you know, fertile fields.

Ron:

Love it. Joaquin, is this how many, what quantity of Lightapaloozas have you attended?

Joaquin:

Every single one of them, the first one, I had to chase Tom around to make sure that he would let us in, because, of course, we were not an integrator. And we also were not part of HTSA. So I thought that it was, the first one was only for HTSA and it wasn't. So this would be my third one.

Ron:

Tell us about your general impressions. What was the first one like? How was the second one different?

Joaquin:

So, well, I think growth, right? And extremely needed. When it comes to lighting, we understand that it's such a huge opportunity. I always tell my dealers, hey, look, three things, I mean, things that are really needed, right? Water, food, and light. Okay, so we love our speakers. We love, you know, our theaters, but those are not needed. Every single one of your customer needs light. So there's a really good opportunity that you could add to every single one of your projects, at least $of additional sales. So that confidence needed to be built on the dealers without knowledge, without the training, it's impossible. So there was no training at all available in our channel when it comes to that, unless you were a part of a buying group. So this opened at the doors for the, you know, the typical integrator. So learning the first one was such a big deal. Just not, there was, as I said, there was nothing available out there. Just the fact that it existed was already groundbreaking. Correct. The second one was even better. They added other design classes. They added more technical classes. So we're definitely looking forward to the third one.

Ron:

How does the dealers in your marketplace? And by the way, I probably butchered your total territory that you are responsible for. So let's just clear that air. You represent a lot of different manufacturers. What's the geography that you do represent?

Joaquin:

We do Southern California, Arizona, Vegas, and Hawaii.

Ron:

Okay. What's the general knowledge today around lighting and shading, both lighting control, fixtures, lighting design, shading? And what responsibility today do you see that the rep, you know, even broader than just yourself and your agency has in bringing that education to those dealers?

Joaquin:

I think education in general, I mean, as technology keeps changing, you're never really % educated, right? So education is always needed. When it comes to something as new to our channel as lighting fixtures, we need as much as we can get. I believe that the attendance is going to be pretty high this year at Lightapalooza. But that doesn't amount, the entire attendance does not amount to, let's say, Southern California dealers. You know, so we still have a long way to go. We have, let's say that we are able to gather dealers to go to Lightapalooza from my territory. There's still of them that need that education as well. So, you know, we, as a rep firm, it is our job to push our dealers to go and get educated. Again, especially because this is such a huge opportunity, right? You're already doing the automation. You're doing the control. Why wouldn't you have a chance of selling the fixtures? And it is profitable. And one of the things that, you know, we do big our integrators do big systems that if something happens, something goes wrong, you gotta get on that phone within, or you gotta be on site within an hour or so. With a lighting fixture, it's not that critical. You know, no one's going to call you at o'clock at night. One of my fixtures is off. You got to come and fix it right now, right?

Ron:

So if the lights are off, you're going to get that call, but maybe not one fixture.

Joaquin:

Yeah, yeah. Go ahead, Tom.

Ron:

I see Tom raising his hand.

Tom:

I just wanted to pick up on a point that Joaquin met, because there was a lot of confusion or misunderstanding about the first conference on who could attend. And you know very quickly, I've been with HTSA since and I was originally brought on to help our group get successful and understand what it took to get and add fixtures. But my board or our board and John Robbins is actually the leader of HTSA, I had this vision of having a conference around lighting and John and the board both felt that it was something that should be open to the broad industry because we truly believe in rising tides, lift all boats. And we also know that this being a new category and integrators getting into it, we as an industry have to instill confidence and have success so that it's already challenging for a builder to go, wait a second, you know my electrician does the fixtures. Wait a second, the lighting showroom does that for me. Or wait a second, I've got, you know, you're not doing that. So we recognize that, first of all, I've been doing this myself since around long time. And the lighting stuff is complicated. And there are a lot more variables in this. And we do a lot of complicated work with home theaters and these other things. This is a whole other set of skill sets. As an industry, when we took on shades, we learned you know about measuring windows and ordering shades properly and openness factors on fabric. So, but with the lighting, it's that much more things can go right or wrong. So we really, we did our best to let people know like Joaquin and others that were not HTSA members. In fact, we had AZION members, pro-source members, and non-buying group members and reps attend the first one. But it still was not really known. And then the next year, you know people are still surprised. Wait a second, mean I can come. And we still get a little bit of that today. So I'm proud to be associated with HTSA and that our board and our leadership agrees that this should be an industry event. We've gone out of our way. I don't think you'll find any HTSA branding on the website. And we partnered very closely with ProSource last year. We're working more closely with AZION this year. So I just want to, you know, yeah, my full-time job's HTSA and HTSA members represent a pretty large number of people that attend our event, but it's open to everybody. And we want everybody in the integration channel to attend this, to engage with these vendors and to learn because it can only benefit all of us. We believe in unity. We believe, you know, a lot of, a lot of industries and ourselves, you know, try to put down their competition or talk smack about this or that and, you know, heard the story about Robert Mondavi in the early years, the wine vineyards in California in the early 's or late 's used to badmouth each other and Robert Mondavi got everybody together, so what are we doing? We need to be building everybody up and that's what, you know, it was really the 's that started off the California wine industry and our industry should be the same way we don't compete with the other groups. You know, we don't look down if you're not part of a group or not and that's why it's open to non-HTSA vendors and it's open to non-HTSA people. So I want to kind of kind of amplify that. Thank you.

David:

Before you ask a question, I just want to add, if you don't mind.

Ron:

No, yeah, no, I saw you raised your hand. I saw you wanted to contribute.

David:

Why is it so important? So look, here's the other thing that for all of us to think about in our industry, right? Here's the thing. The light's been around since you know the world started, right? The sun, it's fire. Follows the black body curve. And then man created fire, right? It also happened by lightning and things. And for many, many years, for most of the history of lighting, since Thomas Edison's light bulb, light was basically fire. It was a tungsten filament. And by the way, I know I'm the oldest guy in this room. My early days as a rep, you know, it was just incandescent, and then it was halogen. And then the Tfluorescent came out. There was no HID. There was no compact. There was no LED. So my point is the lighting industry holistically has been around a long time. But it's somewhat in a paradigm paralysis. And Lutron, as an example, with Ketra, you know, made a very specific decision. We're all going to sell digitally addressable lighting, system-oriented lighting through integrators, right? Very big commitment. Because we felt that digital addressable lighting, which most everybody's going to be talking about in some way, shape, or form at this show, requires a higher level of competence, expertise, integration. So where I'm going, why it's so important. Part of what we're working on as an industry, and I know Tom is working on it and Joaquin is a local rep. We're trying to shift the paradigm and take advantage of the opportunity and help the industry to actually be a primary driver of lighting systems. Because in fact, it's not you know the same old light analog commodity product anymore. It's systems oriented. So more than ever, it's important that integrators embrace digital addressable lighting because it's very similar to the other things that are digitally addressable that they work to integrate every day. Very important. David, just to stay with you for a moment, do you see lighting and shading? And you know I'm going to say to look at this from your previous CEDIA chairman perspective, looking at the industry as a whole, looking at all of the players, the dealers, the consultants, the reps, the manufacturers. And then when you look ahead, I mean, what's your position on the role of lighting and shading? Lighting being control and fixtures and shading fitting into the ecosystem?

David:

Well, CEDIA just did a podcast along with Butler University and a consulting company on the state of the industry. And in fact, overwhelmingly, the industry, integrators who participated, looked at the category of lighting, control and shading and lighting as one of the largest incremental growth opportunities and the largest growth margin contributors for their business. So I think to Joaquin's point earlier, everybody needs light, right? You need water, you need food, you need light. Light is life. So I think, by the way, shading is lighting control. You know I always used to say in my early shading days that zone one is the sun. You have to control it. And everybody buys a beautiful home. They put big windows in. They don't think they need shades until the first day they live there at a certain time of day, the sun is glaring its heat. So what I'm saying is, you know biasly, but truthfully, the categories of lighting systems, lighting control, and shading, which is also lighting control, actually are one of the most significant, important categories for our industry to embrace.

Ron:

At the show, I just put on the screen here for our podcast listeners, and this is right from the Lightapalooza website. I put the schedule of education. Now, Tom, I'm going to come back to you and talk about the broader set of education at the conference. But specifically, Lutron has three courses that I think you guys are offering on a number of days. David, could you take us through these and maybe speak about a high level, what is the course and who should attend?

David:

Yeah. So first, getting started with Lutron is basically what it says. If you come to Lightapalooza, but you're not yet affiliated with our company, come to this seminar to learn about mainly our luxury solutions, which would be around lighting systems, shading systems, and controls, and learn what it takes to get started as a Lutron integrator and what you can expect from us and what we expect from you. It's that kind of a course. The second one, Lutron Intelligent Lighting Portfolio Update, really is an evolution of where we started with the acquisition of Ketra. Even before that, our Ivalo products, what we've done since that time, and where we are today, and maybe a little about what's coming. So it's understanding intelligent lighting solutions, which for us is not just a lighting fixture, but a system, digitally addressable, full spectrum, all those kind of things. And you'll learn all about why. Why is this important? And how can you differentiate yourself as an integrator by focusing on these innovations? Excuse me. And the final one is really a subjunct. It's kind of like Tom talking about some new categories at the show. We came out with a new enhancement, a new innovation to our Lutron designer software, which is called Advanced Canvas View. And it's a new way to utilize a tool to utilize the ability to pull in things from other plans and drawings to create amazing designs and to make designing a home control system more intuitive and actually easier and more impactful in terms of how you go from an idea to a finished product. So those are the three sessions. We're going to repeat them over two days. And we're very excited about the education element of Lightapalooza as well.

Ron:

And I'm just reading here. And Tom, maybe I'll come back to you for clarity on this, but this says the Lutron courses are included with the registration fee for the event. I read the first one, which is getting started with Lutron. The next one, Lutron Intelligent Lighting Portfolio, also included with registration. And the third one, Advanced Canvas View. At a high level, Tom, there's lots of different courses, and I want you to maybe talk about as showrunner, how you thought about putting education together for this event. There's manufacturer content, but there's also higher level lighting content and such and some of these are included, and maybe some of them require additional fees. Can you kind of speak to that?

Tom:

Sure. First and foremost, the first year and last year, we surveyed attendees and we received survey responses, and we asked specific questions about the education and what did we not do that we wanted us to do, and that sort of thing. And then, of course, you know all my ears to the ground. And it's just, you know, part of it is that we knew that there's going to be some people that are going to be attending it for the third time in a row, and they're going to need new stuff, more advanced stuff. And we're going to have some people that are going to be first timers, so we need to emphasize having some intro stuff. So I based it on that. I also you know worked pretty closely with David Warfall on the first two conferences and this one as well. And he and I talk a lot. You know We're both there kind of on a full-time job trying to raise the growth of this category education-wise. So there was that. The other part of it was that it's really difficult to predict what the demand is going to be. As a reminder, the very first year in order to attend this conference, some people paid $to attend it, like a professional conference. And then last year, we had it as $and it graduated up to depending on when you registered, and it included everything. And so trying to predict what classes people are going to go to, we ask them to register. And so we can figure out what size room, how many seats, how big should the video screens be? And you know people register. And you know for instance, David Warfall was he's got people registered. Okay, great. We'll have a room for show up. And everybody's complaining about there's no place to sit. So, you know, A, we increase the number of faculty, so there's more faces. If you click on Education, it'll show more faces on the education side. So it's not just Peter Ramonella who this year will be in person. Last year was via Zoom live, but it was bidirectional. And we'll talk about that later maybe. But we've got him and David and several other people. I felt that some of the, by keeping the fees low, some of the education, we ought to charge something for some of it, A, so that we know exactly who's going to come. And if you pay for it, you're going to take the seat. And if you don't pay for it, well, I don't have a seat for you. So I can predict the room. So there are out of the sessions, of them are free. A lot of them are like $which is about half or less than other conferences, lighting and industry otherwise that are charged for the same length of content. So a lot of courses are $or some that are that are two hours. Some of these $courses are the most popular. The most popular course again is Peter Romanello for his, you know, strategies on recess fixture placement. That's still the number one thing.

Ron:

Why is he the most popular for those that are listening or watching that don't know who Peter is?

Tom:

So Peter has been teaching in our industry for a number of years and a number of integrators also use him.

Ron:

Uh-oh, did Tom freeze? He did. All right, David. I'll jump over to you. Do you wanna, oh wait, is Tom coming back? Oh, I'm sorry.

Tom:

Yeah, so Peter's an IALD member, International Association of Lighting Designers. And so he's a pure lighting designer the way architects are pure in that they're not allowed, an architect's not allowed to recommend a window or a building product and profit from that. And there's a section of lighting designers that operate like that. So Peter is a pure lighting designer who loves to educate and he is, I'll just tell you this, the very first year, he taught three days in a row, eight hours straight, four two-hour sessions. And Joaquin was in that. He had people sit for hours over three days listening to him talk and they didn't get enough of him. So he's very compelling, he's very knowledgeable, and he just talks straight. Now, lighting designers are like interior designers and architects. You can have five of them. They can all be incredibly talented, but they all have different approaches. So Peter's not the end all be all. A lot of people love David Warfall. People like Glenn Johnson. So he's going to be here this year. And we have Amir Mali and a number of others. So it's just Peter is known by a lot of people because he's been teaching for a while. And David Warfall is also very, very strong, very, very strong in terms of popularity. So maybe I should stop talking.

David:

Can I quickly comment on Tom's great commentary about lighting design courses and guys like Peter Romaniello? Here's the deal. When this whole new industry started relative to lighting in the CEDIA channel, the lighting design community felt very threatened. This is a general statement. And they felt like the integrators are their competitors, right? Now, Tom's really worked hard to change that by saying, you know wait a minute, there's a very finite number of lighting designers on the planet, and there's you know million homes in North America. They all need lights. So there are areas of the country, and there are jobs where lighting designers just can't have visibility. The budget won't allow it. So we've got to teach things to integrators. But what's happening over time, and I've seen it from the very beginning and to a lot of oscillations, more and more lighting designers are getting what I'll call an abundance mentality. And they're realizing by letting go a little bit and the rising tide floats all boats, by them being an advocate and a partner and a collaboration member to the integrator, then everybody will benefit. So I think, again, back to what we talked about earlier, one of the great things about this event is building trust and collaboration across the stakeholder community.

Ron:

Makes sense.

Tom:

One more point to stay with this. I'm doing a lot of this stuff based on my original experience with how CEDIA evolved in home theaters and audio, video, and automation. And in the very earliest days of CEDIA, a dedicated home theater was brand new in ''That was brand new stuff. And it was primarily led by a guy by Theo Calamarakis. He was the first guy to publish like, wow, you can build a real movie room. And so the earliest education was Theo teaching, then Tony Gramani teaching, Russ Hirschelman teaching, Keith Yates teaching. And these guys were all experts at it. And everybody wanted to learn from them and then pick up the skills and learn to design theaters themselves. And that's the thing. There's this need. There's not enough professional lighting designers in the residential space. And if you're really motivated and you want to learn, you too can achieve these skills because it's all about ultimately experience and doing projects. So that's why you know I feel it's important that our channel have the opportunity to learn best practices from the experts so that they can make the decision, do I grow this organically or do I know enough now so I can interview and hire somebody with that experience, so on and so forth. Is following the same.

Ron:

Joaquin, what are you seeing there on the ground in your market? Are you seeing that the dealers you serve are designing these systems, i.e. providing lighting design. I'm being specific and regarding fixture specification with their in-house team. Are they coming to the lighting designers that have been named here? Are they coming to you and your staff? What is, you know, the state of January ? What are you seeing as normal?

Joaquin:

So I think we're still early. There's not that many integrators that are hiring lighting designers yet. There's a few that are the larger integrators that have their own in-house lighting designer. And honestly, to me, that's moving fast. A lot of them are still depending on manufacturers to help them with their lighting design. And of course, we try and help them as well. But I do believe that by doing this with Tom, Warfall has grown tremendously. And so right now, at this point, I believe that the end results can be with a lot of integrators understanding how much of a, or how big of an opportunity this is, that they're gonna start to hire their own lighting designer, but not all of them will. So there's, you know, the growth of companies such as Warfalls, I think it's just gonna increase. And of course, as far as reps, we are also, as reps, we are doing the same thing and trying to hire lighting designers to support our dealers. It's just, there's always that fine line, right, of, you don't wanna be competing with your dealer or you only wanna give a certain amount of support. So, but, but I think that that's going to be a big growth in our channel as far as integrators, hiring lighting designers. It's coming.

Ron:

Same question to you, David.

David:

Well, I was going to just add on to what some of Joaquin and Tom's points. The other thing I'm going to say, rep organizations are playing an increasingly important role in being a catalyst for this growth. And many reps, and I think Joaquin is one of them, are investing in their own incredible design and showroom spaces, experience environments. You know, many of our greatest reps in the Northwest, in Arizona, in Colorado, in Florida, have amazing design centers. Some of them actually have hired folks with lighting design experience. And they're trying to make these, to Joaquin's point, not competitive with the integrator channel, but make it like Switzerland and encourage their local communities to come in with their architect, come in with the client, to come in with the builder. So more and more reps are investing also in this business to be a local source of knowledge, experiential, and inspiration.

Ron:

David.

Joaquin:

I'll tell you to add on that real quick. Yes, we definitely, we purchase a building to do that. And the highlight is, you know, human-centric lighting, how to do the demo. As soon as we came back from the first, we wanted to buy a building, but it was a bit of a different plan. After we went to the first Lightapalooza, we realized, I mean, we knew we already had a couple of lighting lines, but we knew that that's gonna make such an impact in our, I guess, revenue that we decided, "Hey, we really have to move forward and purchase a building." So we did. And as I said earlier, that would be the crown jewel, the demo of lighting. Yeah. I mean, we do have big, big stuff here. We have a -foot wide LED video wall, a $projector, $There's a lot of cool toys.

Ron:

Yeah, Tom.

Tom:

So this again is following another arc. You know, the early 's, when Crestron and AMX came on board, we had this transition where the dealer's tech or somebody, you know, mainly had experience in teaching IR remotes codes. And then eventually they had to learn to be able to write code. And for some, it took a while for them to justify the investment in paying for a top-level programmer. They might have found somebody from college that knew C++ and, okay, learn Crestron Simple or learn AMX's stuff. And then ultimately, they realized that they had to have a programming department. The same thing will absolutely happen. It's just a matter of time where every integrator will have expertise in-house to be able to do lighting design. Now, some will make a decision like they did with Crestron where they would hire capes, a third party to do the programming. And so the Warfels of the world and other independent lighting designers that are going to serve the CI channel, those are absolutely going to emerge. But I totally see that, you know, I know like one of our members, Navot, AiSPiRE, early on, he's one of our earliest adopters of lighting when I came on board. And he said, I'm just never going to hire a lighting designer. I'm just going to use a Warfel or Peter. I can't justify. I won't have enough jobs. Well, then he hired one a few years later and he's unbelievably successful and now he has a second. So more and more of our members have hired people. They started off using a third party or they'll do a hybrid where they'll do a Warfel for a lot of stuff. They'll do have somebody in-house for the right kind of projects and they'll hire a Peter or some other high-end lighting designer. Or they'll communicate to the high-end lighting designer that's been brought onto the job. We're fine with your doing it and we'll respect your design and we'll execute the project. So we're seeing this movement is happening. Tom, when you think about, David, I'll come back to you in a second, I promise. Tom, when you think about the revenue, you know, distribution of your, and I'll just speak from your members, you could speak about it from the industry at large or from the maybe the data set. Don't want you to disclose any proprietary data, of course. But when you think about dealers at large generating revenue from different categories of services, services or solutions. What are you seeing is the role in revenue of this lighting category? And I'm going to break lighting into control systems, whether retrofit or new construction. And then I'm seeing this other category of fixtures. And David, I'm going to come back to you because I have a question, a meta question around kind of the role of fixtures replacing the system. It becomes the system, like if you think about it in terms of a Tetra system, and then shading. And because I'm imagining this question for you, Tom, I'm imagining there are folks listening or watching that still have a very minor or nominal component of their revenue coming from these categories. Yeah They still aren't in it yet. And so what are you seeing as the trend? And what are you recommending? What should it be?

Tom:

Well, I mean, once shades were introduced, you know in the very beginning, people were like, "Really, I'm gonna sell shades?" And then after they did a few jobs, then all of a sudden, it's like, "Oh, this you know wasn't just three drapery tracks, they did roller shades in this house." And pretty soon, the shade budget was, you know, almost equal to the full AV package and approaching that, especially when you combined it with the lighting control system. Because if you were doing shades, you were probably doing it because you were doing Lutron lighting control or somebody else's lighting control, and you were adding their shades. But the bulk of the business in the channel has been Lutron lighting control and Lutron shades for some time. The contribution of fixture sales mirrors shade revenue. You know So if the shade job is grand, it's probably easily or grand, or grand with the lighting fixtures going in. So very quickly, shades, lighting control, and fixtures are much more significant than the AV automation package. And it's really going to continue to trend that way just because the commoditization of television displays and so on and so forth, unless you're smart enough to start promoting micro LED in these giant video walls, you know that's just the natural. The reason to do, the reason, you know, the big game is to get educated on this so you can talk intelligently, having the ability in your showroom or some facility to be able to demonstrate lighting to people. Because what's amazing about lighting is that people believe their eyes and most people haven't seen good lighting and going through general commodity contractor grade lighting in your showroom and then switching to specification grade and showing lighting layers and what wall washing does and how the space is transformed before their eyes in minutes. They're all convinced. Then you have to, then they all wanna know, 'cause I've lived this and experienced it, what's the next step? And it's like, well, we need to do a design and here's how we do the design. And if you're doing the design, just like if you design the audio video and you design the lighting control, you're going to be providing the fixtures and the rest of it. And as you complete those projects, we've learned that a lot of architects don't like doing lighting layouts. They just want to draw elevations and most of them, most of them. So once I started providing lighting design services in the Indianapolis market where I'm originally from, it took some time, but very quickly, it was like we were seeing projects before we would ever would. So it's a journey, it's an arc, and it has to do with education first. You need like what Joaquin and what David has talked about is that. And then networking and learning from your peers, 'cause you can relate to the other integrators because you all have the same vocabulary on everything else. So if you can talk to one of your peers that's a little further down the road, you can learn, and they're gonna tell you where they made mistakes, what they wish they would have done, or what they're doing, and how they're finding success. And now the reps are educated on this as well. So that's the real value of this visit to this conference is all that, yeah, seeing the products, taking the trainings, but just the chatting at lunch and breakfast and dinner and at the bar is the kind of energy that is what the foundation of what CEDIA was in its beginning years with automation, with home theater.

Ron:

I'm going to put on the screen here because I can't help myself. David Weinstein will appreciate this. Our good buddy, Leo Dest Blast from Elise.

David:

Yeah, my old buddy at Lutron, you know, traveled around the country with him. One of my first jobs at Lutron, I was in two cities a week beginning in and Lee was right there with me. Hey, real quickly, Ron, because I know we're running out of time, but I just want to reinforce a couple of points that Joaquin and Tom talked about. Tom used the word arc. So I like to use lessons from history, right? And shading is the lesson. First of all, I said zone one is the sun. It's the largest light source on the planet that we receive, and you have to control it. Early on, you know, back in I'm sorry, back in we introduced the first digitally addressable shading system for the integration channel, right? We went from manual shades to kind of mechanical shading motorized to then digitally addressable. And just like with lighting, in the early days, everybody said, that's crazy, shades. They're too expensive. No one will ever buy them. How will I do it? Well, let's fast forward to Shading for Lutron in the home systems world is greater than % of our revenue and still growing significantly. Dealers have embraced the category. Many of them, most of them have specialized folks that focus on the shading side. They can measure. They can install. They can do drawings. They know how to sell. They know how to work with the architect community. My prediction is that lighting systems are going to follow that same trajectory, that same arc, and it's going to represent an even greater opportunity than lighting control as a separate subsystem and shading. And I know you were going to ask me a question earlier, but here's the interesting concept. The whole idea about the newest generation of lighting is it's I'll call it decentralized dimming. The dimming is built into the system, right? So when you look at the install cost, you have to understand a lot of what typically went into electro closet goes away. In many cases, a lot of the wiring goes away. And now this intelligence system not only produces light, but it actually has the lighting control system built into it. That's really compelling to understand that and to promote it.

Ron:

Crazy, maybe simple question. Does the future of electrical wiring in a home in the future change? Does it look different than it does today?

David:

Well, I think everybody should answer. But I think over time, the idea of low voltage right to the light source, it's logical, but here's the back to the point. There are million homes out there. So traditional wiring systems and homes are going to be around virtually forever. But I think you may start to see and eliminating the power supply in a lighting system and just running the power supply somewhere else. And everything gets a low voltage feed. And other than a dryer and your refrigerator, right? But I just believe there's such critical mass to traditional wiring systems. I don't personally see it changing for some time. That's my personal view.

Ron:

No, I think that's it. There's you said million existing homes. There's your answer. Those are going to be around for some some time. So the game's not going to immediately change overnight and go to that local fixture control system. Not yet. Tom, how are we looking at numbers for the show? What's registration like? And if people that are tuned in, they want to go, what do they need to do?

Tom:

Yeah, so I'm looking at the numbers right now. Last year, first of all, our industry, and me included, are professional procrastinators, do things at the last minute. So last year on January th, we had people registered. Total attendance last year was So we were less than halfway there. As of today, we're at So I can't predict what the final number is, but we're way ahead and we are significantly more growth. The challenge that we had last year and the challenge that we had this year is hotel rooms in our block. So our block, we blocked out all of the Renaissance. And last year we didn't have other hotels. This year we added other hotels. All of those are sold out on the peak night, Tuesday night. But there are rooms on Wednesday and Thursday and such. However, there are rooms all over and like I was at the MGM Grand for the CE Pro Tech Summit and it took me minutes to walk from my hotel room to the convention center. I drove from the Phoenix airport out here and it took me minutes from downtown Phoenix and there are hotels within minutes of Uber rides all within this area. So much like at Cedia, yeah, the Hyatt sold out. At a hotel, you've got to take an Uber or minutes away. So there are hotels and people can register and they can sign up now. It's $There's free courses. There's exhibitors. There's tremendous amount of knowledge and it's here at the beginning of So if you want to have a successful and want to be competitive in you best be here.

Ron:

Awesome.

Joaquin:

And I think I'm just going to say that understanding, I think that our industry still does not understand the opportunity or how big of an opportunity this is. And once they understand, even if it is an hour drive, I think that they'll make it. It's worth it.

Ron:

Well, I think that's a perfect point to close on, gentlemen. I am mindful of your time and our audience's time. So I want to thank the three of you, Joaquin Rivera. Thank you, sir, Tom Doherty and David Weinstein. I think Lightapalooza, I cannot wait for it. It is going to be a blast. I know I will be standing on stage for a couple of different events and I will be facilitating some panel discussions. And so I am looking forward to it. And for all of our folks tuned in, by the way, we got our good industry friend, Jason Sayen from Lean Six Sigma. Just saying, he says that's strong. He's referring to the attendance numbers, Tom. So yeah, I completely agree. Those are incredibly strong numbers. So I think on this note, we're actually going to do a custom sign-off here. Got all of us on screen. So what we're going to do is we're going to wave, and we're going to say goodbye to the audience, and we're going to do it here together, rather than me bringing you guys off screen.

Ron:

So let's give everybody a wave, everyone. See everybody at Lightapalooza. See you soon. See you there. Bye now. See you there. Bye.

SHOW NOTES:

Today's show features 3 industry luminaries - Tom Doherty, Director of New Technology Initiatives at HTSA, and a veteran of the Consumer Electronic Industry with a remarkable 40-year career. From pioneering Tom Doherty’s Custom Audio and Video in 1985 to instrumental roles in founding Escient and expanding Gracenote, Tom is a CEDIA Lifetime Achievement Awardee and a Lutron Hall of Fame inductee.

Joining Tom is David Weinstein, the Vice President of Residential Sales at Lutron Electronics Co., Inc. David's vast 45-year experience in the lighting control, shading, and lighting systems business is an invaluable asset to our discussion.

Completing our lineup is Joaquin Rivera, Co-Founder of ByDesign Vision & Sound Marketing. With a 15-year tenure at Stewart Filmscreen and a series of industry accolades, Joaquin's journey from production to VP.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and links from the interview:

• Lightapalooza Webpage
• Lightapalooza 2024 LinkedIn page
• Tom Doherty LinkedIn Profile
• Joaquin Rivera LinkedIn page
• David Weinstein LinkedIn page