I am CDs. I am CDA. I am CDA. This is the CDs CDs podcast.
Go to go to one. It's incredibly useful.
It will reset your whole year. It'll you know, it just inspires you
to to to get back in and it gives you new ideas and new opportunities.
And I've never come away with less than 100 ideas of things
that we can do. We all, as business owners,
know that we have to spend time working on the business,
not just in the business. And it's so hard when there's a
thing that needs doing and you just prioritize the client other than,
you know, say, training, maybe. But when you take yourself out of
the the day to day and in my case, fly to another country, you are
absolutely focused on exactly that which you cannot do while you're in
your office doing a day to day stuff. So the whole process is great.
Hello and welcome to another CTA podcast.
I'm Walter Irby, senior director of technology and Standards and
your host for the CTA City Podcast. And today I am, uh,
we are recording from the, uh, Tech Summit that just, uh, just
closed up in Australia, in Newcastle. And it's been an amazing, uh,
amazing time. Uh, good turnout, great topics,
lots of interest in people listening, uh, attending training,
show floor, all kinds of stuff. So I would like to go around.
I've got some guests here that have been attending.
I'd like to go around and have everybody introduce themselves
and then talk about the event. What did you see? What did you do?
What did you like? What would you like to see?
What would you like to see improved any of that stuff?
So I'm just going to go from my left to my right.
So I'm Jake Fuller, the owner of Automated audiovisual
and integration company in Sydney. And, uh, yeah, we do integration.
We do, you know, I do podcasts as well.
I'm lucky to be on the second podcast with you as well.
Well, so we. I'm lucky. We caught up last in Denver,
which was awesome to be at the Cedar Expo there.
And yeah, awesome to be here at the Australian Tech Summit.
So thank you for having me. Oh yeah. Thank you for being here.
Hi, my name is Kristian. I work at Len Wallace Audio here
in Sydney. Uh, general manager of that company.
Um, yeah. Just been great to be here at
the Tech Summit. I've been quite a few years coming
here, and I always enjoy the company. Um, seeing seeing old friends and,
um, just having a great time. Yeah, that is one good part of this,
isn't it? The, um, just like at the CTA
Expo and the Integrated Systems Europe show that the networking.
I'm always, always amazed at what, since we've become such a remote
world, when you're in person, just stuff happens.
The conversations I've had just impromptu with people and the ideas
I'm coming back, back to the United States with would have never gotten
if I wasn't around with you guys. So much more in depth than
having it during Covid times. Yeah, but but it's not possible if
you're not just like, I don't know, standing around and somebody just
talks about something and boom, next thing you know you're on a
subject and then you got an idea. So that's great. Yeah.
Good afternoon. So my name is Brendan Reid from
Automation Associates in Auckland. And uh,
we're based in New Zealand and, uh, yeah, I've been enjoying the,
um, the Tech Summit. It's my first one for a, some time.
My, my last one in Australia was pre-COVID. So it's been a while.
Um, but you've enjoyed this one a great deal. All right.
So who wants to start? What did what did you do?
What did you see? What did you attend?
I had a really interesting experience with, uh, listening to the Mag
Theater on surround sound was, uh, connected with the Chernov.
And, um, it was a room that had literally holes in the ceiling
because of a renovation. I think they're going to do so,
um, a very open air room. A lot of bass was lost in it,
but it still had a lot of accuracy and it sounded really,
really nice and not not harsh on the ears and really comforting.
So for a reasonably priced home theater, I think they're going to do
well here in Australia. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I sat in quite a few
education sessions, and I know that's a really amazing thing
that we have at the Tech Summit. It's not just the networking and it's
not just seeing the cool products, but it's also, you know,
learning more about what we can do as an industry.
And, you know, you and I also hosted a session as
well while in design documentation. And yeah, it was just amazing to,
you know, sit in, you know, all these different sessions,
not just about our industry, but yeah, you know, and that's another
highlight of tech summits like this is having outside industries
come in and sort of, you know, immerse themselves in what we do.
And, you know, these are industries that are related to us in some way,
shape or form, but, you know, being able to, you know, look at
ways like education pathways and being able to get certification,
especially in, you know, in the regions, you know, you know,
um, really recognized by a lot of the government bodies as well,
is something that I know we're all pushing for.
So, yeah, that's something that that is being worked on pretty,
pretty hard here in Australia to get and, and also in the United
States to get our industry listed as an official trade.
And then once that happens, that will have a lot more visibility,
I would say, and maybe a little bit more power,
but we're going to need that too, because one of the things that I
think was one of the highlights of this show was talking about the
ethics and technology design and, uh, privacy,
security and liability and where exactly we fit in all this stuff.
I think a lot of people were like, wow, I didn't really think this
deep about it. So that was a great session.
Good questions. Uh, we also did a podcast on that,
which I'll probably be posting next week to.
So for those that weren't here, you'll be able to hear a little
different side of it. If you were in the class,
you'll hear a different side of it. But this is huge for us.
Um, we just wrapped up ten minutes ago, a meeting with, uh,
uh, some city representatives, as well as, uh, skills recognition,
um, um, and TAF, New South Wales, which is our education here from New
South Wales and some Queensland guys. And it was an hour of these guys
going back and forth talking about how they can slot in this education,
home theater, home automation, creating these categories for the
students to learn along there. Uh, could be an electrician path.
So adding on to your electrician is a home automation. Yeah. Uh, skill set.
And that's going to happen. And maybe even. A certificate path.
I think you guys called here for, like, a trade school, which we
would call in the United States. Yeah. Certificate.
Certificate of completion, I think, is what we can get pretty quickly
and might happen by next year. Wow. Yeah. Fantastic. Exciting. Brandon.
So I was just, uh, tweeting out my first career was in 1998,
and it was a New Orleans. It was a big fire in the roof felon.
And, uh, every time I go to a city, I come away, uh, reinvigorated,
refreshed. I got a phone full of ideas here
on my notepad. Um, and it comes from lots of
different places, though. So the training is a source of of
ideas and lots of information. Um, the show floor, of course,
but also just chatting to people in the hallways.
I mean, you know, you can get. So I just met a guy who's done an
amazing system down in Melbourne. He's been a member for only two
years. This thing was a $2 million install.
Like it was an incredible job. And I just got a bunch of ideas
out of even chatting to him. You know,
we happen to meet in the hallway while we're having our sandwich.
So, um, this site, I get so much out of these and he does come from
all sorts of different places. So even the awards ceremony last
night, looking at what other people are doing and getting exposure to,
you know, other ideas, it's incredibly useful.
Projects over here, we're like, wow, the level of work in New
Zealand and Australia in Asia-Pacific is impressive.
It really is. It was amazing. The fact that we run, we won.
We won, uh, two international awards and they all came from Australia.
I think that says that level of work that we're doing is quite high.
Absolutely. And to tack on that as well,
you know, the volunteering as well. Um, I've got a couple of volunteers
on this podcast as well. So yeah. And that, that and that, uh,
award as well. Haley won that again for Australia.
So I think we've had that for the last seven years now
volunteering awards in Australia. So I would just like to commend
everybody in Australia for their efforts in volunteering.
I know, you know, as you've you're aware from the States, our time
difference doesn't always line up. It doesn't line up. Yeah.
No, no it doesn't line up. Yeah. So um yeah, it's just a really
big effort that we're down here. Uh, we're trying to push our
industry as much as we can. Yeah, I should shout that.
I should point that out since you brought it up.
Volunteer of the year Matt Manolis. So that's like that's all of the
world, right? And then we had design and build
volunteer of the year Regan Webb. That's a second person from here.
And then Haley Dailey is new volunteer of the year.
So out of 123456 things you had 50% of them. Yeah that's awesome.
Huge labor of love I think for all of us. Yeah. Mhm. Uh all labor love.
But yeah I guess you know it's hard work but you guys do love it.
I mean I do love the camaraderie here.
Everyone seems supportive of everyone.
And it was neat at the awards when somebody won to hear everybody else
like be really excited for it. That was cool to hear.
So yeah, a lot of volunteering, you know, where across multiple
groups as well down here. So we've got quite a different
range of, you know, paths that people can volunteer.
And so if you are thinking of volunteering definitely jump on.
Yeah. well go. Ahead. I just think one of the byproducts
of being a volunteer for me, um, being somewhat new to Australia is,
is the friendships that I've gained from it are. Yeah.
These volunteers have all their numbers, and we talk to each other
about random things throughout the year. And that's really special.
Yeah, absolutely. And I as I was talking about
volunteering in my sessions, I said, everybody raise your
hand if you're too busy. And everybody raised their hand.
And I said, guess what? Every volunteer I have on
standards also said they were too busy until they started and
then they found time. They're like,
I don't want to miss this stuff. Like you said, the networking.
You're never going to get to talk to any of these people if
you just rung them up. And the professional development that
happens and how you can apply that. So yes, you're doing something
for the community and you're assisting CDA, but you're it's
professional development and you're improving your businesses.
So it is not a um, yeah, I'll just give a little bit of
time to see to you. It's actually beneficial all the
way around. Yeah, we all learn. We all learn at the end of it.
Yeah, absolutely. Brandon, Brandon's the organized one.
He's he's like, got a notes in his pan.
And I wanted to talk real quick about my find of the show.
Oh, the perfect surprise, the surprise training that I wasn't
expecting too much from, but actually, it was, uh, life changing.
So then, uh, man, it must have been in 2000, mid 2000.
I turn up at City or Indianapolis, and on the show floor is a big booth
from Google Home. Yeah, Google Home. And I thought, oh, if Google are
here, I start a clock running until the end of the industry, right.
Because they'll take it over, will be disintermediated and
it'll all be over. You'll go buy these things from
Bunnings and it'll be the end of an end of days.
And ten years on, I'm still here. But I came to this class.
It was called IoT. Is is it the end? And I didn't get to sit in that one.
A fantastic course on, uh, how you can leverage what the
gaffer crowd have done. Uh, the Googles and the Amazons
and the Facebooks and the apples and so on, how you can leverage
what they're doing to hit a different part of the market,
or to enhance what you're doing at your current end of the market.
And it has completely changed my attitude towards this, this fear
that I had of, oh, it's here, it's all over and it's now it's
like this is a massive opportunity, which has been a problem that
had been with me for ten years. So that was that was my find of the
show, that that class was fantastic. Yeah, I think that's it's a
transitionary phase we're going through in home automation and
watching that presentation today. Um, using the home assistant
software, which is, um, open, open source software.
Everybody's contributing to that. So you have a device that needs
to be controlled. Home assistant will probably have
the, the, the, um, the software to talk back and make that work.
And then you can put it into your iPhone or your Android and you
have home automation. Well, I. Guess it's leveraging communities as
well, which is a big part of Cydia. Yeah. Is community.
So, you know, it's it's only a matter of time before, you know,
this becomes part of the normal. You know, it'll be our job.
It'll be our job soon, you know, and yeah, but with more and more
devices adding capabilities of integrating, it's just a no
brainer that it's just literally going to be everywhere at a.
Different take on it than you guys. I was never threatened by it.
Um, it raises awareness, which is something we always had
an issue with. So it's certainly made, um,
this word smart home and automation, you know, and I don't love the
word smart home because they're not smart and they are homes.
But it's the thing that apparently people, um, get because like,
the question, you know, the question I dread. What do you do?
And you're not like, I'm a plumber. You got to go through this whole
diatribe, right, just to explain what you do.
But we've had DIY products that we've been dealing with forever.
Um, VCR, CD players, TVs. Uh, when the iPod came out,
everybody thought that was a threat. And when Spotify and iTunes came out,
everybody thought that was a threat. And all it did was grow the pie.
They're just more tools for us. And now what's happened is in
the early days, you had to create your custom systems very,
very in a very difficult manner because they didn't exist.
And then a lot of products started to come in and then they became
packages and now anything goes. So you can you can integrate any
level of product with any level of product fit,
fit any budget and get any, um, result that you want now because
they're just all ingredients and you guys are all the chefs.
So it's and that's the way awesome. Now that's the way it should be.
We should be able to use any product with any product. Yeah.
I don't think it's going to be a yeah I don't see it as a threat
because People still won't. It won't work reliably.
Their Wi-Fi might not work. It does weird stuff.
They don't know how to, you know, connect A, B and C, and I'm sorry,
but matter isn't going anywhere fast. Right now I know maybe was great,
but they they're just having such a hard time, you know, getting this
universal language out to everybody. You guys are the guys that make a
talk to B and do it reliably. Yeah. And I think more and more people
are going to need that. People are. It's just too many choices.
It's it's too difficult to do, um, even like back in the day,
we would deliver hardware and walk away and people would put
physical media in things. Now we're delivering streaming
products and they need help. They're like,
where do I find this sporting event? Where do I oh, now it's no
longer here. Where did it go? There's so much opportunity for
us to curate and be, um, and be like a concierge as well.
I was expecting we would be out the door and down the road because
they'd go to Bunnings, buy a thing and there's nothing for us to do.
But the reality is that there's so much choice in that space that
a client of ours who's trying to go it alone is going to turn up
at a shop and be like, well, shall I get this one or that one?
It turns out from this class today that if the kids have got
Android phones and the parents have got Apple phones,
there's a problem there out the gate. Yeah,
not everybody can work together. And this solutions through through
the course on how to deal with that. And so there's money to be made
in that segment alone just from dealing with those issues.
So that was that was my find. That's cool.
The greatest the greatest shock of the show was hearing this morning at
far too early, I have to say, um, in the day that if you've installed a
network ever, you're liable for any breaches on that network forever.
And that freaks me out. Yeah, I. Didn't say that one did.
I said that. Yesterday. I've got networks going back 30
years. Yeah. I'm. So I'm suddenly hearing that I'm
liable if any of them get hacked. My God. Wow. I did a podcast on that.
Uh, well, that's the most recent podcast,
I believe. And we talked about that. And I asked that very question to
insurance people and they're like, yep.
Well, you still need to worry about that. And I'm like, what?
That was a shock. However, a few chats later and in
fact, part of the next class, the um, the ethical design, um, class, uh,
there was a lot of conversation around how to mitigate that and
discussions to be had and talking about a concept called positive duty,
where you raise it ahead of time with the client.
Here's the landscape, here are the issues.
Here's what we're going to do. Here's our practices.
And front foot it. And don't sit back and worry
about the the thing that's just happened to me with a dry tech
router recall affecting 70 sites. Wow. Uh, 70 security holes.
Uh, don't sit back and worry about that.
Just get out there and front footed and deal with it and talk about it
as an education piece with your clients going forward so that you're
that company that's, you know, on top of it, you're explaining
the risks, explaining the issues. And another interesting one that
came out of that session was, I don't know how many times I've
clicked accept on a client's TV while they're sitting next to me,
giving me their passwords. And so I'm accepting terms and
conditions for them, which now who's liable for that?
And so liability is a thing that I've always sort of thought belonged in
America and didn't really have too much, but the rest of the world.
But it's, um, it's it's, it's yeah, it's, it's come,
it's come home to roost. So it's good to have had those
conversations. And so I have some plans in place.
I'll be talking to my team next week about ways to mitigate those, those
issues, which are maybe big ones. Speaking of click click to accept
just made me think of another comment from IBM systems where if you have an
LG TV, the amount of information that they're pulling from your
viewing habits, if you're watching something off an HDMI cable, like a
Blu ray player or a PlayStation. They're pulling all the stats,
and he's I think he said between 11 and 3 in the middle of the night.
They're uploading it all up to LG and I know exactly what you're doing.
That's some some sort of breach of privacy.
And that that's not ethical. Yes. But unless you agree to it in the
Eula, when you hit the reset button. And you just accept and of
course you do all that. Yeah. Because you don't read that.
Nobody does. Yeah. Interesting isn't it?
The only good thing I see about the scary stuff is people are now
starting to understand the risks of being online and that, you know,
getting hacked and having, you know, an identity theft.
And how many times have you had, like, fraudulent charges and you had
to, like, stop a card, change a card. So this is it's this is becoming
commonplace in people's heads. So I'm hoping that will translate for
us, that they won't be so, uh, eager to go after us because it's kind
of the way of the world right now. But when when you run through
all these scenarios, it's it's freaking scary.
So that's what we what's what we did here. Okay.
Everybody's been hacked in one way or another. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
And it's going to continue to happen and likely get a lot worse
with AI and everything else. So another surprise for me.
This show was, uh, RP 23 class. So I hadn't heard about AP 22, um,
until I was judging on the Emmy Awards panel, and, uh, suddenly
had to learn quickly what it was. But, um,
I'm sitting in the room thinking, oh, I'm going to come into this room
and everybody's going to know what P23 is and all about it. It's okay.
Nobody else in the room knew anything about RPA 23.
We were all learning together. So it gives me some confidence that,
um, two things. There's a plan in place and there's a
goal in mind and there's something to work for, and it's nice to have a
standard to to work to that makes things easy for lots of reasons,
but also that I wasn't alone. There was a lot of other people who
were like, what is all this stuff? And every class I taught about
that what is one hand went up that I knew what that was.
What is? What is color volume? I'm still not clear, but at least
I know what I what I don't know now I've got to go learn about.
So I found that really useful too. Yeah.
The other classes seem to be really good for people that I taught was the
performance facts that we hope to get out around Integrated Systems Europe,
and it's just showing people the data that they get in general today is
not enough data for you to make an informed engineering decision of.
Will that product meet the need that I'm putting it in?
So we showed a cut sheet from a speaker that's released in a
residential market, and we showed the exact same cut
sheet for the exact same. Well, we showed a cut sheet for
the exact same product that's released in the commercial market.
Tons of data, all the data that you need.
So we are this this performance facts thing is, we've gotten a group
together to find out what do we need, what's essential that we need to know
about a speaker and an amplifier. And what's nice to know and
think of like a nutrition label and a box of food.
So we're we're going to be next um, soon, um,
releasing that and manufacturers were going to be asking them,
please give us this data because we need it so we can really design.
So everybody seem to get it. They're like, ah, right.
Once I went through it they're like yeah no brainer. Mhm.
So I think it needs to be measured exactly the same way
from every manufacturer. As we're doing that,
we are citing which industry standard tests you should use to
do each one of these parameters. Because we're not we don't make
up test. That's a whole nother level of
standards. We have absolutely asked for that
so that all the data is the same. Yep. Mm 100%.
Well, back in the day, I was a cardio professional for a while.
And, um, the amplifiers were saying that we can do 5000W if
you did the math and a 12 volt battery with a 100 amp alternator,
you simply cannot get that power. Mathematically impossible.
So I always think back to that, that the car audio amplifiers.
I just don't trust a lot of the specifications I see anymore.
That's exactly a lot. Of it's marketing. Right?
Yeah it. Is. It's to push products, which,
you know, but it's really good that we are looking at other avenues
and manufacturers hopefully should come to the party, which I believe
some of them are already. Yeah. And they don't need to put this
public facing. They just need to be able to have it
available for you and you need it. So you know,
they don't be worried about it. So are there any other comments or
things people would like to get across here that you think would
be beneficial to talk about what this event. Go to. Go to one.
It's incredibly useful. It will reset your whole year.
Yeah, it'll. You know, it just inspires you to
to to get back in and gives you new ideas and new opportunities.
And I've never come away with less than, you know,
100 ideas of things that we can do. I do like your word reinvigorated.
I think that is the actual perfect word.
You know, you got your head down to the grindstone and you're doing
your thing and you're like, okay, I'll go to this show, and then you
leave the show and you're like, wow, that was refreshing.
And it does kind of reinvigorate you. It's really great. So happy you went.
And yeah, yeah, you're ready to go back to work.
I think that's really important because we we all as business
owners know that we have to spend time working on the business,
not just in the business. And it's so hard when there's a
thing that needs doing and you just prioritize the client other than,
you know, doing site training, maybe. But when you take yourself out of
the the day to day and in my case, fly to another country,
you are absolutely focused on exactly that which you cannot do.
You know, while you're while you're in your office doing your day to day
stuff. So you hold the resources. And the weeds and the problems.
Exactly. Yeah. So I guess I guess the main message
would be here, you need to take time to do some other things.
Get an open mind network and learn. Yeah.
I think that's the reasoning behind having these tech summits
in smaller towns and relieving. We're not having them in the big
Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne. Yeah. And we're going to small towns
so we can't work. We can't just duck off and do a
quick install or something. Yeah we're here. It's strategic.
Yeah. It actually was. Yeah that has been.
A problem in the past. And Sydney people come in for a five
minutes and then duck out to a job. And they're not they're not getting
the most out of the out of the show. Yeah. Thanks for bringing that up.
There's an expo in Sydney that happens every year called integrate,
uh, which I attend, but I'm usually there for 2 or 3 hours,
and it's a four day event, just like this one is a three day event.
And you were here the whole time? Yeah. Yeah, I'm here the whole time.
I'm only there for half a day. I got work to do, you know?
So this is nice to be out of town. A really good point. Yeah.
It's commitment to, I guess, you know, as you said, working on the
business, working with colleagues, being able to ask questions.
You know, we all run businesses in similar fashions.
You know, we all come across the same sort of, you know,
growth points or, you know, technical problems or. Yeah.
What do you do in this situation? Yeah.
And I mean, that's the big thing that I've had learning from,
you know, different people, you know, not just the training sessions,
but also having chats, just generally speaking, had quite a few chats
last night at the awards. Yeah. Like it was a completely
different scenario. But yeah,
you you've got a relaxed environment. It's not as stressful and
strenuous on the business. So you can have those, you know,
I guess let the chains free conversations.
And yeah, it's really, really fun to be here. Perfect. All right.
Well thank you all so much for giving me your valuable time.
I guess at this point, you're going to go back to your businesses and
start picking up where you left off. But thanks for coming to the event.
And and thanks a lot for sharing your experiences here and the support
for CDA. Thanks for having me. We're nothing without volunteers
and members. And I just wanted to say before we
go, thanks to Paul and the Australian cricket team as well. Thanks, Wendy.
Thanks. Fantastic job 100%. Now I'll get in my car and drive
home. Just kidding. Just the water. Yeah. All right.
So thanks for listening to this podcast and listen to this advice.
Make sure you're always learning. Volunteer.
Make sure you're going to events and networking.
It's just part of the picture. Take the time and thanks for
listening. And I will ask you to always
keep an open mind. For more information on Cydia,
visit Cydia Net.