San Antonio’s history might tell us to “Remember the Alamo,” but a group of highly successful integrators perhaps instead will “remember the Total Tech Summit,” as Total Tech Summit 2024 took place at the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Resort & Spa earlier this month.
As usual, the Total Tech Summit event, comprising split tracks for residential CE pros and commercial integrators, attracted some of the brightest minds and vaunted vendors.
Radio Hall of Fame Keynoter Espouses ‘Intentional Enthusiasm’
This year’s keynote to the entire audience, sponsored by D-Tools, provided a bit of a reprieve from the usual economic forecast or call to better digital marketing messages.
Sonny Melendrez, a local and national Hall of Fame radio personality, shared benefits of “Intentional Enthusiasm” in his keynote presentation. Photo courtesy of The Photo Group.
Rather, local Radio Hall of Fame personality and motivational speaker Sonny Melendrez delivered a talk centered on “Intentional Enthusiasm,” something that certainly resonated with a crowd of passionate smart home and pro AV dealers.
He recounted several entertaining and compelling tales of how this commitment to intentional enthusiasm throughout his life helped him achieve a decorated career highlighted by a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction for being among the Top 100 Radio Personalities of All-Time.
Melendrez augmented the message with anecdotes about others he’s encountered who have conquered similar goals or fell into serendipitous situations.
Total Tech Summit Panel Sessions Provide Food for Thought for Commercial Integrators
Day 2 began with breakfast panel sessions among the individual CI Summit and CE Summit tracks. The commercial integrator attendees commenced their agenda with a Day 2 breakfast panel, “Entrepreneurial Frameworks for Running Your Business,” moderated by Charmaine Torruella, Q-SYS’ enterprise accounts manager, business development.
The panel featured insights from Shawn Hansson, CEO and founder, Logic Integration; Jarrod Hillman, president, Hillman Audio Video; Alex Fortin, president, NDS Integration; and Brittany DiCesare, CTS, director of sales and operations, Control Concepts, Inc.
Together, they examined business frameworks like the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), which enable an organization to embrace a process-driven approach, rather than solving problems in an ad-hoc manner. It can also be useful with recruitment, retention, company culture and succession planning.
On Day 3, the commercial track finished up with a breakfast session, “AI and AV: What the Future Holds,” led by Amala Reddie, associate editor, Commercial Integrator. This buzzworthy panel included Bill Fons, regional vice president/AI Influencer, CTI; Blaine Brown, vice president of innovation, workplace, Diversified; and Jerry Blayne, product engineer, services, AVI-SPL.
Together, they sought to differentiate “automation” from AI while also diving into thorny issues like the ethical use of AI, what kind of training team members need and whether AI might end up dislodging people from their jobs. It was a heady session, but one in which people left the room more knowledgeable about this subject than when they entered.
“This year’s Total Tech Summit brought a burst of creative and entrepreneurial energy to both San Antonio and the integration community broadly,” says Dan Ferrisi, group editor, commercial and security, Emerald, who put together the CI track content.
Ferrisi continues, “When about 150 top-tier integrators come together with insightful keynote speakers and a raft of key vendor partners, the mind-sharing and partnership-building is second to none. It’s the reason why many TTS guests seek to return year after year, and it’s why the list of applicants seeking to attend grows every year. Plain and simple, TTS is where thought-leader integrators need to be.”
CE Pro Brings Strong Education Offering to Total Tech Summit 2024
On the CE Pro side, the perennial “Fresh Horses, Emerging Technologies & Services to Ride to Success,” kicked things off.
This year’s wide-ranging business boosts came from panelists Adam Zell, president, Boston Automations, who shared how his company leverages supplier technology design services; Michelle Ferlauto, COO, SoundVision, who detailed what went into the company’s launching of a separately branded security division; and Eyal Akler, founder and CEO, ATTYWON, whose team has benefited from selling and installing LiquidView Virtual Windows in classrooms and residential rooms without views.
For this year’s Day 2 networking luncheon, each track worked on roundtable-format responses to questions that ran the gamut between business operations, recruiting and retaining employees, inflationary pricing, labor rates, and other important topics.
Day 3 on the CE side featured a breakfast discussion, “Growth by Franchise & Acquisition: Scaling Your Future,” as merger and acquisition activity has heated up in the CEDIA channel of late.
Gavin Lantzy, president, SaaviHome – whose own franchise model was scooped up a couple of months ago by national franchisee Daisy – and Tom Redhead, co-founder, SuRe InnoVations, whose Saskatchewan-based company has been in the process of adding a location in Edmonton, Alberta.
“The reason I take time out of my schedule nearly every year to attend,” Beverly Hills Smart Home’s Jay Dobensky says, “is because I don’t feel there is any other event in the industry that can give me such a personalized, one-on-one opportunity to speak to your peers.” This was his 20th CE Pro Summit
“And the format, the environment keeps that relatively small form factor so there’s no overwhelming massive event where you’re suffering from sensory overload. This is really a tight-knit group who understands the business of the industry extremely well. You get to talk about things that are working, that might not be working from one year to the next.”
For both tracks, the time in between breakfasts and lunches was reserved for one-on-one and group “boardroom” meetings with Total Tech Summit’s sponsor vendors.
“We get to meet and engage with the vendors directly in a very tight format where we get to express our experiences to them privately, and if necessary, talk to them at the outside events that we have every night,” Dobensky notes.
Evening Activities at Total Tech Summit 2024
Total Tech Summit Attendees were given a guitar kit with instructions to do their charitable activity. Photo courtesy of The Photo Group.
Evening activities at Total Tech Summit 2024 were highlighted by the 4th Annual Cornhole Cup and a charity project, “Band Together Under the Stars,” during which attendees and suppliers collaborated on building guitars for the HeartStrings Foundation.
According to Darrance Tezino, director of technology services, CenterPoint Energy, “I can’t tell you the experience that I continue to have year over year, and it brings me back. The peer-to-peer sessions — the involvement that I have with my peers in the industry where I’m able to drop the guard and actually have tangible conversations that benefit me and my employees and the growth of my company. This is why I continue to come back.”
Tezino adds, “I encourage you to come, learn and grab your peers to just grow with them in the markets that we’re going to face in 2025. I welcome you to the next Total Tech Summit in 2025. Apply now, and I hope to see you there.”
Next year’s Total Tech Summit will be staged Nov. 10 to 12 at the Renaissance Orlando at SeaWorld in Orlando, Fla. Learn more at TotalTechSummit.com.
