Emerald, owners of CEDIA Expo, has announced the launch of the Commercial Integrator Expo, which will be co-locating with CEDIA Expo 2023 in Denver, Colorado next year. The announcement was made by Emerald’s group vice president Jason McGraw in an official outreach to the industry during CEDIA Expo 2022.
The notification reads:
“After much research and monitoring of the convergence of commercial and residential technologies over the past several years, we are excited to announce a new focused event, Commercial Integrator Expo, which will be co-located with CEDIA Expo next Sept. 6-9, 2023 in Denver.”
Commercial Integrator Expo will be a full featured exposition and conference addressing the needs of today’s fixed installation professional audiovisual systems professionals and technology managers in corporate, higher education, hospitality, retail and resimercial market settings. The new event will feature a dedicated commercial AV exhibit show floor and robust conference program supported with instruction by industry experts and supporting organizations to be announced.
The New Announcement Addresses a Keenly Felt Demand
With CEDIA Expo being a well-recognized event for the residential integration industry, the choice to co-locate both events will bring together both residential and commercial products and education under a single roof. There is already a tremendous amount of crossover going on between the two sides—what with the growing preference for resimercial tastes on projects—and so the decision to co-locate both expos has been one borne of customer demand, more than anything else, according to Emerald.
From home/hybrid offices to flex spaces to the redevelopment of commercial spaces into residential dwellings, there is simply far too much hybridity occurring among the profession and not enough resources to address that interplay, the company notes.
Existing industry events also do not fully address the connected AV/IT environments in corporate, higher education, hospitality and retail settings from an educational or product mix perspective. This event, the company notes, aims to open up the tens of thousands of commercial channel professionals to the products and education they need to keep ahead of the curve while also opening the possibility of expanding their business up to residential systems integrators.
Could This Also Present an Opportunity for Designers and Architects?
Given the growing interest CEDIA Expo has placed over the years with introducing more design-forward exhibitors and products to the show, it will be curious to see if this transfers over into some of the commercial products and education. There are also plenty of design-forward exhibitors that have commercial offerings in tandem with their residential.
Combined with the same push towards more resimercial tastes and a borderline mandatory presence on commercial projects at this point, the potential for designers and architects to learn quite a bit from one of these shows is higher than one might originally expect. That’s especially true with the trend we’re seeing right now with certain commercially focused wellness products working to greatly accentuate the design of the spaces they occupy.
It will also offer a tremendous amount of networking opportunities, both with product manufacturers and industry professionals. With the best of commercial and residential AV products and solutions under one roof at Commercial Integrator Expo and CEDIA Expo, it’s certainly an exciting announcement as we look forward to the future of the integration industry.
