2 weeks Ago By David Richards
CEDIA who has taken to handing out gongs and senior positions to questionable custom Australian installers and owners of Custom install businesses, is facing a major problem with organisers of the recent CEDIA Expo in the USA appearing to hide the “real number” of attendees. CEDIA who is dependent on revenue from their annual Expo’s has not said whether revenues from the recent show are also down. Data from the September 2024 CEDIA Expo in Denver, which is run by Emerald Expositions, have revealed a troubling trend according to US industry web site Strata Gee with numbers plunging this year to just 12, 239 attendees from a worldwide audience.
Of this 305 were attendees for the first time with only 8,567 previous visitors to a CEDIA show passing through the door. At this stage we don’t know the number for Australian or New Zealand attendees. The 12,239 official attendees include both the CEDIA Expo and CIX, as well as integrators and all exhibitor personnel.
Verified attendance data on the exact number of attendees to this once-a-year trade show is gauged by the verified attendance of those actually passing through a scanner to enter the show areas. The fall in attendees comes as integrators in Australia struggle and CEDIA hands out awards supposedly for excellence and contribution to the industry to the likes of Matt Manalis the CEO of EXperienceONE and a shareholder in Captivant that is being pursued by the ATO after the Australian Tax Office commenced proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia to wind up Captivant Pty Ltd over a $500,000 tax debt. Three of the four shareholders of the Company as of June of this year were Matt Manalis, the Chairman of CEDIA’s Certification Commission, Regan Webb who was recently flow to the USA by CEDIA to get an award and Brendan Cousemacker who we believe has quite the Company.
Despite questions to CEDIA, the US led organisation has failed to respond as to why they thought it appropriate to hand out awards to custom install executives liked with multiple custom install business failures. As for the CEDIA Expo, the organisers Emerald Expositions is suddenly having number amnesia telling Stra Gee that they “don’t” have a meaningful breakdown between the number of attendees at CEDIA Expo vs. Commercial Integrator.
“I find that difficult to believe as a modern company like Emerald generally has lots of data on its events” said Stra Gee..
