New Educational Offerings At CEDIA Expo 2019, Denver

April 12, 2019

When Samantha Ventura, CEDIA’s senior director of education, began mapping the educational offerings for CEDIA Expo 2019 in Denver, she asked her team a question: “How would somebody coming to Expo this year want to spend their money? So, when we built courses for a business owner, we focused on a lot of the classes that are leadership-based, as well as project management, or sales classes that could really take their skillsets to the next level.”

“We also asked ourselves: If that business owner was to bring technicians along, what would he or she want those people to learn?” Ventura continues. “So we’ve put in a new hire track — a specific class list for those folks — as well as more advanced technical classes that would make sense for somebody to come and bring along one or two or three guys or gals to learn at the same time.”

Derick Abshire, CEDIA’s director of curriculum, adds: “One of the things we've tried to implement this year was identifying the level of experience people have. We have basic classes which are designed for anyone with less than two years’ experience in the industry. Then we have intermediate classes that cover folks with up to five years’ experience and advanced being more than five years of experience in the industry.”

Abshire notes that this year’s curriculum will include new courses — a lot of them, in fact: “This year we had a big push to get new cutting-edge content — this year we have 125 different classes, 57 of which are brand new — that’s closing in on 50%.”

Here are just a few examples of those new classes:

Home Cinema Masterclass        

This class will help attendees learn the secrets of high-performance home cinema design and maximize their knowledge in the strongest revenue-generating sector of the industry. It will feature three “deep dive” sessions focused on video performance, advanced audio techniques, and the cinema environment, taught by three world-renowned experts in the field:

Anthony Grimani, Grimani Systems and Performance Media Industries

President of Grimani Systems and Performance Media Industries, Grimani is a highly respected expert in home cinema design and acoustics. He has worked on over 1,000 theater projects over his 34-year career at Dolby, THX, and PMI. He will explore and discuss one of the trickiest of all design topics – optimizing bass performance for multiple seats.

Joel Silver, Imaging Science Foundation, Inc.

Founder of the Imaging Science Foundation (ISF), Silver will bring all this experience to bear in his workshop: “How bright does a projected image need to be?” He will discuss in detail the impact of emerging video standards and technologies on the desired brightness levels for home cinema, focusing on HDR within a projection-based environment.

Theo Kalomirakis, TK Theaters

“The Father of Home Theater,” Theo Kalomirakis of TK Theaters, has designed some of the finest private cinemas for movie stars, sports legends, and world leaders. Kalomirakis will share his experience balancing performance, aesthetics, and usability in a high-end home cinema, exploring room construction, layout, interfaces, and environmental controls.
 

The session will be rounded out with a panel question-and-answer session offering students the rare opportunity to submit questions on any aspect of home cinema design to this most esteemed expert group.

Connect with Everyone: Understanding Gender Differences in Management and Sales

This hands-on course, presented by industry stalwart Carol Campbell, will focus on gender intelligence. By understanding the characteristics that distinguish attitudinal and behavioral differences between men and women, one can gain a better sense of gender-related tendencies that help illuminate why men and women think and react differently. The experience will also explain how to overcome gender-biased blind spots with our co-workers and clients.

AV-over-IP Methods, Formats, and System Design

Take the deepest dive into the complex world of AV-over-IP ever offered at CEDIA Expo. Distributing video over an IP network is quickly gaining preference over matrix or splitter-based distribution systems. From professional post-production to commercial and residential applications, the course will cover knowledge including current and emerging compression codes and standards, network speed and latency implications, maintaining video features such as HDR, and infrastructure and system design best practices.

How to Achieve Success with LED Lighting (Why Retro-Fit Lamps Flicker, and How to Make Them Behave!)

Use of solid-state lighting (LED) is on the rise, yet many projects suffer from flicker problems. The good news is that LED lamps and fixtures can be dimmed successfully. This course takes participants on a journey through dimming system design, detailing the methodology required to specify stable performance.

You Have One Shot! First Impressions are Everything to Your Client and Their Experience

This interactive lecture will walk home technology professionals through the crucial and necessary soft skills needed for successful job completion. This is a highly interactive class for new and experienced technicians or project managers. Participants will learn and share techniques with peers that create superior job site experiences for clients to far exceed expectations.

Immersive Audio: Unified 3D Speaker Layouts for Multiple Listeners

Immersive sound offers the possibility of life-like home cinema experiences, but also raises challenges with new formats — especially with non-compatible 3D speaker layouts. This presentation will cover immersive sound, the three immersive sound formats, and recommended speaker layouts. Additionally, the course will explore constraints found in high performance home cinemas and proposes unified speaker layouts for multiple listeners. The course will also demonstrate practical implementation in a real project.

Integrating Custom Voice Control for the Whole Home 

Voice control is the new frontier in input technologies and represents a significant business opportunity for home technology professionals. Learn to evaluate today’s voice control options, understand the current capabilities and limitations of the various technologies, and take a close look at real world installations. Gain insight into how these projects were realized and learn how to deploy voice recognition and provide clients with a fully-customized experience, even in complex installations. Discover how to fully integrate voice control with established control platforms from Crestron, Control4, Savant, and others. Take a glimpse into the future to see where this emerging product category is heading.

Registration for CEDIA Education at Expo 2019 opens on April 22, 2019. Watch this space for more details.

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