Latest / Inside Integration / Episode 121: Trade Association News and Old Men Yelling at Clouds

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Episode 121: Trade Association News and Old Men Yelling at Clouds · Inside Integration

• 0:00
  Welcome to the Inside Integration podcast.
• 0:02
  My name is Chris. I am joined, as usual, by my
• 0:04
  partner Jason. What is up, everybody?
• 0:08
  And it seems like every episode we do is about Cydia and
• 0:13
  acquisitions and mergers. It's no longer.
• 0:16
  It's no longer inside integration.
• 0:18
  It's two guys talking about another company that just merged
• 0:22
  with somebody else. It's like.
• 0:24
  It's Cydia, watch, right? Every episode it's like what is
• 0:27
  going to happen? Maybe.
• 0:28
  Right. We're just what we do because
• 0:30
  we're every every episode we just poke CD with a stick to see
• 0:33
  if they're still alive. And there's always, there's
• 0:35
  always something that seems to come out right after we tape an
• 0:38
  episode and. It's it's like that array of
• 0:41
  like machines when you leave the grocery store when you're a
• 0:43
  little kid that's got like the toys in it.
• 0:45
  We put a coin in and we turn it, and out of the CDM machine comes
• 0:50
  a new little bit of noise or a little bit of news about that.
• 0:53
  Yeah. So, so the noise we're talking
• 0:54
  about is, and you may have heard and you may have seen us
• 0:56
  basically a a fund hedge fund has acquired CDs parent company
• 1:03
  Emerald and essentially, you know, nobody, nobody knows what
• 1:08
  this means yet. We'll we'll see what happens.
• 1:09
  But it's it's interesting that fresh off the heels of like, you
• 1:13
  know, a fixer buying, you know, buying light a Palooza and CDA
• 1:18
  coming out and saying, yeah, we're going to change the dates
• 1:20
  around and we're going to do whatever.
• 1:21
  And like some of the, some of the sentiment in the industry
• 1:24
  being like, hey, are these guys still, are these guys going to
• 1:26
  be going in a year? And then, you know, this news
• 1:30
  comes out that they, you know, that their parent company has,
• 1:33
  has been bought. And it kind of remains to be
• 1:36
  seen, you know, what happens and, and whether the shows are
• 1:40
  going to be any different or, or what this actually means.
• 1:43
  There's nothing mentioned specifically about what this
• 1:46
  means for the Trade Organization of CDH, just a lot more of, you
• 1:52
  know, the event thing, right, So.
• 1:57
  I think we all conflate the show with the organization just
• 2:00
  because for so many years it was the show and the organization
• 2:03
  together and education was such a huge component of what CEDIA
• 2:08
  was. I don't know what shifted there
• 2:11
  along the way to, to change that reality or that perception, but
• 2:15
  I I would say that it certainly shifted away from the the
• 2:19
  organization and more to the show.
• 2:21
  Yeah. And and I mean, I just just, you
• 2:23
  know, that the Expo every year is just kind of the face of it,
• 2:25
  right? Like if you ask somebody with CD
• 2:26
  is, they're going to be like, yeah, it's an event in Denver
• 2:28
  every year, you know? It's a big you remember like
• 2:31
  walking into CD of the first time, your first CD and just
• 2:34
  seeing what that landscape looked like.
• 2:36
  Yeah. And, and, you know, I, I kind
• 2:38
  of, I mean, I advocate for that feeling a lot because there is,
• 2:42
  there's. Chasing the dragon.
• 2:43
  Chasing that dragon there, there's something to be said
• 2:46
  for, you know, being a being a junior tech in this, in this,
• 2:50
  you know, in this, in this thing.
• 2:51
  We got this omerta that we've got, you know.
• 2:54
  There's on this thing of. Ours there's there's something
• 2:56
  to be said for that where you know, you, you kind of, you
• 3:00
  know, you're, you're plugging along, you're wiring homes,
• 3:02
  you're doing whatever. And then you get to go to like,
• 3:04
  you know, the city of trade show and like you walk through the
• 3:07
  doors and it opens up and it's like, holy shit, there's 10,000
• 3:09
  people just like me, 10,000 generous.
• 3:12
  But you know, there's, there's a ton of people just like me that
• 3:15
  are doing this as well. And you know, that I don't know,
• 3:17
  man, I, I don't think that feeling could be understated,
• 3:20
  right? Like there's something about
• 3:22
  being a part of something and, you know, being part of this,
• 3:26
  this world that may be larger than yourself and knowing that
• 3:28
  other people are going through the same crap as you are.
• 3:31
  And, you know, if, if CD does go away, I think that's kind of a
• 3:35
  bummer. You know, like that's, that's
• 3:37
  something that is great here, you know?
• 3:41
  100% And it's weird to think about somebody figured out how
• 3:45
  to make a business model out of that show and out of that
• 3:49
  experience that you just so eloquently described.
• 3:52
  That gets super funny to me just to think about somebody.
• 3:55
  I mean, that's the most sales guisey marketing guisey thing
• 3:58
  ever. They're like, you know what we
• 3:59
  got to do, you know, like, yeah, were these guys up at 4:00 AM in
• 4:04
  somebody's kitchen talking about this?
• 4:06
  Or is this like really a deep dive and.
• 4:11
  Yeah, I think you, I mean, you need something like this because
• 4:14
  we are, we are a specialized skill.
• 4:15
  We are definitely, you know, we're, we have a different focus
• 4:19
  than electrical, right? Like and and that's, you know,
• 4:22
  sort of where we are, right? And we touch at the same time,
• 4:25
  we touch a lot of different disciplines, right?
• 4:27
  We touch networking, we touch audio video, we touch AV, you
• 4:29
  know, we touch programming and installation and hardware and,
• 4:34
  and, you know, all these, you know, construction, I mean, all
• 4:37
  these things that, you know, you, we have that in common.
• 4:42
  But yeah, it, it definitely it, it was more, you know, I don't
• 4:47
  know, I mean, maybe maybe the challenge here is that it is
• 4:50
  just so many different things that are kind of under the same
• 4:54
  banner, right, Where, you know, it's residential low voltage
• 4:57
  installation or, you know, commercial low voltage
• 5:00
  installation. And you know, that's, that's a
• 5:02
  hard thing to kind of quantify, right?
• 5:04
  Like there's a lot of different training tracks that you can put
• 5:07
  in there. And with more training tracks,
• 5:09
  you need more volunteers. And with more volunteers, you
• 5:12
  need more classroom space, you need more materials, you need
• 5:15
  whatever it it feels like we've kind of got away from a little
• 5:19
  bit. Like I remember, you know, when
• 5:20
  I was a young buck, there was installer one, there was
• 5:23
  installer 2, there was designer. Like that was, you know,
• 5:26
  designer was a big deal because, yeah, it was pretty intense.
• 5:29
  And they got into you know how not to, how not to turn a house
• 5:35
  into a wreck when you're you know how to estimate these.
• 5:38
  Things, well, how not to burn it down, how to, I mean, I can
• 5:43
  remember taking those installer classes and that was part of my
• 5:48
  comp plan. Like that was like, if you
• 5:50
  could, if you can show on paper that you're certified and you're
• 5:54
  X amount of dollars and you're going to take your 500 a year
• 5:57
  and you're going to throw it in the Kitty for your own
• 5:58
  membership. That was a pretty, that was a
• 6:02
  pretty bold, you know, statement of intent.
• 6:04
  But you know, certainly in my formative years as a tech, it
• 6:07
  was like I wanted to be a cocky bastard and know everything that
• 6:11
  I couldn't know about, about everything that I could know
• 6:15
  about. Not that you could ever tell
• 6:17
  from this podcast. And now all of those people, and
• 6:19
  now all those people like us are just the old, you know, the old
• 6:23
  curmudgeons that are that. Are yeah, now we're the old
• 6:26
  cocky bastards that have already done it all already and realized
• 6:29
  that we didn't know as much as we thought we did at the time.
• 6:33
  And it's only that's only until recently that we figured it out.
• 6:37
  But super fun to to think back about just the legacy of that
• 6:42
  show and kind of what that impact is on on a tech on a
• 6:45
  person who's never seen it before.
• 6:47
  It is a different convention experience I think then many of
• 6:51
  the ones that I've been to. It's just a different plane as
• 6:55
  different flavor. As you'd expect and you know to
• 6:58
  to read this press release about this acquisition, you know,
• 7:01
  there's a lot of focus put on B to B and events and that kind of
• 7:06
  thing. And I mean, I guess you could
• 7:09
  put education kind of in that bucket, right?
• 7:11
  Like education is engagement and it, it's, it is very much
• 7:15
  business to business and manufacturers are providing
• 7:17
  trainings and that kind of thing.
• 7:19
  But I, I don't know, I don't know where you know, I don't
• 7:23
  know what this changes. I don't I don't know if this
• 7:25
  changes anything other than like it's, it's kind of another
• 7:28
  reason to worry like. You know.
• 7:31
  Private capital has never got into something that's and, and
• 7:35
  made it better as far as I'm concerned.
• 7:37
  You know, like that's, that's sort of the thing, you know,
• 7:41
  private equity, it's got a reputation for, you know, in
• 7:45
  shitifying everything it touches.
• 7:47
  You know, there's, there's a, there's a, there's a trend here,
• 7:51
  so. Yeah, I'm reading the, I'm
• 7:54
  reading the official Apollo press release and it says
• 7:57
  Emerald and Questex together will create a scaled B to B
• 8:00
  events platform with approximately 160 events across
• 8:05
  complementary end markets, combining Emerald's category
• 8:08
  leading exhibitions with Questex's differentiated events
• 8:12
  portfolio and 365 day digital engagement.
• 8:15
  Oh, Can you imagine the absolute amount, like just the piles,
• 8:22
  handfuls of Adderall you would have to be on to try to focus
• 8:30
  through all of that noise as one of these employees is one of
• 8:33
  these people trying to collate all of that out and suss it out?
• 8:36
  160 events across complementary markets.
• 8:40
  So that, I mean, that's got to be everything from lighting to
• 8:44
  furniture to cars to I mean, good Lord.
• 8:49
  You know it, I mean, if they have if they have the muscle and
• 8:52
  they have the the team size to be able to do more things like,
• 8:56
  you know, lighting, you know, lighting events and events with
• 9:00
  interior designers and you know, that sort of thing and do it in
• 9:04
  a lot of different markets. That's that's definitely a weak
• 9:08
  point of integrators, right? Like if you're an integrator and
• 9:11
  you know, you'd be, you'd be well served to, you know, know
• 9:15
  your local interior design community, right?
• 9:17
  Like, you know, go and present to your local ASID chapter or,
• 9:21
  or whoever. If Cedia and Emerald are going
• 9:25
  to facilitate something like that, then that's a real value,
• 9:28
  right? And maybe, you know, maybe, and
• 9:30
  again, this is just speculation, right?
• 9:32
  Like I'm just kind of reading between the lines.
• 9:33
  The press release literally says nothing other than we bought
• 9:36
  these guys and they're not public anymore, right?
• 9:37
  But. Well, yeah.
• 9:39
  And it it, it does underline kind of of the financials here,
• 9:43
  which we can talk about in a second.
• 9:44
  But finish your thought. I want to talk about the dollars
• 9:47
  because it's kind of crazy. Yeah, I mean it, I think, you
• 9:50
  know, that would be a benefit, right?
• 9:52
  Like here's, you know, here's a weak point, right?
• 9:53
  You got to do, if you're a business owner, you got to do a
• 9:55
  lot more outreach. But the time that you're going
• 9:58
  to spend figuring out, you know, who the players in your market
• 10:02
  are getting into here, whatever, if these guys could come in and
• 10:06
  say, hey, look, you know, for we're, we're going to put on the
• 10:08
  vent here and you know, we'll handle the lead management or
• 10:11
  we'll handle this or we'll handle that.
• 10:14
  That's big. I mean that that's a, that's a
• 10:17
  major, major value. Not that they're going to do
• 10:18
  that, but that would be something that they could use
• 10:22
  their their powers for good on. Right.
• 10:25
  Yeah. Well, judging by the
• 10:27
  Ticketmaster paradigm, I assume that that's not going to be the
• 10:30
  case, right? This.
• 10:34
  Is going to be. The Dollar General, this is
• 10:38
  going to be a monopoly that we broke him up at some point.
• 10:41
  I'm just kidding. I don't really know that to be
• 10:43
  fact, but I'm just looking at, I mean it really is a one stop
• 10:47
  shop. I mean, obviously this has got
• 10:49
  to pass some legal scrutiny and that kind of stuff still, but
• 10:51
  sure. I mean at 5 dollars, $5.03 a
• 10:56
  share in cash, representing a 42.1% premium to Emerald's
• 11:01
  unaffected share price, which implies an estimated closing
• 11:04
  enterprise value of approximately 1.5 billion with
• 11:08
  AB for what they they purchased here.
• 11:13
  I on in the next sentence is the Emerald board of directors
• 11:16
  unanimously approved the transaction, said Yoink, and ran
• 11:19
  right out the doors as fast as they possibly could.
• 11:23
  I made the. There was a swirl, there was
• 11:27
  there was a board thruster. Size, puff of smoke and.
• 11:31
  Yeah, there's a bunch of silhouettes of of bodies that
• 11:35
  ran through the walls with bags of cash in each hand.
• 11:38
  Oh my God, I had no idea $1.5 billion didn't didn't have that
• 11:46
  on my radar for the valuation of what an emerald would be worth
• 11:50
  or could be worth. Didn't.
• 11:55
  Nope, it didn't. Didn't have the math done on
• 11:58
  that one. Well, that is in, in fairness,
• 12:00
  eye watering. In fairness, Emerald is much
• 12:03
  larger than just Cedia. Right?
• 12:04
  Like they they. I I realize that and and I know,
• 12:07
  I know the shows are huge, but it's hard to put a dollar amount
• 12:10
  on a thing that doesn't actually produce a product or like boxes
• 12:14
  don't come out of it. Like my brain just doesn't work
• 12:17
  that way, you know, like there's no hard goods to go.
• 12:20
  Oh, well, here's what you generated.
• 12:22
  So it's got to be you can scale the math from there.
• 12:24
  This is shows this is experiential.
• 12:26
  So hey, why not put a $1.5 billion price tag on it?
• 12:30
  God bless them. Good, good job, 42% upside.
• 12:35
  Nicely done you. Know these I mean this is a good
• 12:38
  thing for CDA to be a part of because if you look at some of
• 12:42
  the oh absolutely other stuff that they do they do things that
• 12:44
  you've probably heard of like the NKBA, which is the national
• 12:48
  kitchen and bath show, which is a massive thing every year and.
• 12:53
  Huge. Huge.
• 12:55
  Shows there's some synergy there, you know, there's some
• 12:57
  definite like home technology can now be a part of a couple of
• 13:01
  different things, you know, different hospitality events and
• 13:03
  different whatever. So yeah, I mean, I guess you
• 13:07
  know, I guess this is where we are, right?
• 13:09
  Like we're we've been saying it for a while.
• 13:12
  We need to, you know, we need to up our image, we need to be more
• 13:14
  lifestyle focused. We need to, you know, basically
• 13:17
  pitch technology as a luxury item and, you know, something
• 13:21
  that can make your life easier and fits in with all the, you
• 13:25
  know, amazing fixtures and whatnot that you're gonna
• 13:28
  specify into your project. This seems to work.
• 13:32
  You know, I, I don't know where private equity comes in, but you
• 13:36
  know, here we go and. Well, I mean, it's got to be the
• 13:40
  customers to a lot of this stuff.
• 13:42
  And I think we've talked about this at large between, you know,
• 13:44
  the Kaleidoscape conversation and all of that.
• 13:47
  We act like, I think at least a lot of integrators do or maybe
• 13:52
  people in the industry act like this, like wealth is some bubble
• 13:56
  to intelligence or awareness. Like, you know, there's, there's
• 14:00
  just these super wealthy people that are little lambs that don't
• 14:04
  understand technology or don't understand this.
• 14:06
  Now they've aged with us, right? They're the same.
• 14:10
  They're, they're our peers. So there's aware, maybe more
• 14:13
  aware in some cases of what this industry is about.
• 14:15
  So they've got extra money, they made their money with Bitcoin or
• 14:19
  Tesla or God knows what. However else they've they've
• 14:22
  quoted their lifestyles. They're the modern, we're all
• 14:25
  the modern robber barons of our time.
• 14:29
  But the the fact is that they obviously are seeing
• 14:34
  opportunities. And if they got entrepreneurs
• 14:37
  that are wealthy people, of course they're going to take
• 14:39
  shots. So it makes absolute sense.
• 14:41
  Like, I'm surprised it actually hasn't happened before now,
• 14:44
  Franklin. We've been poking around it for
• 14:46
  long. It's, it's well, yeah, because I
• 14:49
  think, and, and again, I'm sorry for the commentary on the
• 14:52
  industry. I think that when you look at it
• 14:53
  from the outside, it looks a lot like a bag of snakes.
• 14:56
  Where, you know, there's if, you know, if you're just looking in
• 14:59
  here, you're saying like, oh man, there's control systems,
• 15:02
  there's audio, there's high tech audio, there's low tech audio.
• 15:06
  There's, you know, there's stuff that sits on a shelf at Costco.
• 15:09
  There's, you know, so many different flavors of televisions
• 15:13
  and technologies and everything else that, yeah, you know, if
• 15:15
  you're looking from the outside it, it does, it looks like just
• 15:18
  kind of a bag of snakes. And, you know, somebody's going
• 15:22
  to look at this thing and say I don't want to try and unfuck
• 15:23
  that. And, you know.
• 15:25
  Yeah, no way for sure. I got it.
• 15:30
  Throw a brick in there and put it in the leg.
• 15:31
  Pretty much, yeah. What's what?
• 15:34
  Was that Jake the Snake from wrestling days or?
• 15:37
  See. See what swims out right?
• 15:39
  I mean, that makes sense. Yeah, it's it is crazy.
• 15:45
  I mean, again, another big organization taking a shot at
• 15:51
  this industry from a this is from the presentation.
• 15:55
  This is from the, you know, the Kabuki theatre end of it, right?
• 15:58
  Like this is where the the touchy feely stuff happens.
• 16:01
  This is where, you know, hearts and hearts and minds get won
• 16:05
  over. And a group like this that
• 16:07
  again, their costs scale. So now they can pivot all the to
• 16:11
  the same shippers. Like there's, there's layers to
• 16:15
  this move that are actually pretty brilliant.
• 16:19
  And it just, the price tag gets gnarly 'cause it's, it's gnarly
• 16:23
  town. That's where we live now.
• 16:25
  It's it's true. And you know what?
• 16:26
  It's it's not even worth trying to make sense of it.
• 16:29
  It's just better to let's, let's wait and see.
• 16:31
  Let's see what comes down to pipe and if this show is better
• 16:35
  because of this, then great, man, that's all that matters,
• 16:38
  right? Like awesome.
• 16:40
  And you know, again. And then we throw, you know, we
• 16:42
  throw the, you know, the Evixa wrench in the works, right?
• 16:45
  So now, OK, this is the Evixa start making their shows more
• 16:50
  less commercial, more accessible to guys like us.
• 16:52
  Maybe, you know, and competition is healthy for the market,
• 16:56
  although, you know, this market's such a narrow piece of
• 17:00
  the pie, somebody's going to die soon.
• 17:03
  Yeah, you know that's. Or does it?
• 17:04
  Yeah. Does it become a department
• 17:06
  store model where it's like, oh, there's the convention is in
• 17:10
  town and we're going to go to this department because that's
• 17:13
  the stuff that caters to me. But there might be other floors
• 17:17
  with other stuff on it, like a like Aces model, right?
• 17:19
  Like where it's just everything all smashed together.
• 17:22
  Sure, I. Don't know.
• 17:23
  There's, there's a ton of different permutations that this
• 17:25
  could all take on. But again, yeah, Apollo, you
• 17:31
  know where? I had no idea, but Apollo has
• 17:34
  $1.3 trillion in assets under management.
• 17:37
  They're quite large. They are quite, quite the
• 17:39
  behemoth. Yeah, like.
• 17:43
  Another example of Here's a huge company that nobody knows
• 17:46
  anything about that's worth all the money.
• 17:48
  I mean, they're the guys behind the curtain pulling the strings,
• 17:52
  right? Them BlackRock, you know, like
• 17:54
  you could, you could get down. To.
• 17:56
  Yeah, quite a few. They're, they're out there and
• 17:59
  nothing, you know, nothing negative.
• 18:00
  But yeah, this is these are the folks who operate in the shadows
• 18:03
  and basically own everything that you breathe, look at it and
• 18:07
  touch, you know? Sure.
• 18:09
  I thought that was you were getting highlights.
• 18:11
  I didn't realize you had a tinfoil hat on.
• 18:13
  I mean this is how. You know.
• 18:17
  You can't, you know, I found that you need to, you need to
• 18:21
  have a little bit of healthy skepticism in this world.
• 18:24
  Oh, I agree you. Know.
• 18:26
  Yeah, the okey doke is not really where anybody needs to be
• 18:29
  these days. Right, exactly.
• 18:31
  You know, watch your ass, right? That's how.
• 18:33
  Sure. Yeah, that's fair.
• 18:35
  That's fair enough. But I mean, I'm excited to see
• 18:38
  just what this means for CEDIA, the event itself.
• 18:42
  Like if all of a sudden it's gonna be, maybe we're gonna see
• 18:46
  some cross pollination. Maybe we're gonna see more Cutco
• 18:49
  knives. Maybe we're.
• 18:51
  Gonna see imagine that was just that was the flyer last year
• 18:55
  like that was the, you know, the trial balloon that they put up
• 18:58
  just to see if, you know, is this gonna work?
• 19:00
  And then next year it's all gonna be you know.
• 19:03
  Well, I mean, you're seeing a lot of stuff sneak in, right?
• 19:06
  Like there was, I mean, it was awesome.
• 19:08
  It was a great booth. What was it?
• 19:10
  Laundry jet was the one where that was the one that you like.
• 19:13
  You put a hole in your wall and it's basically like a central
• 19:15
  vac system, you know I'm talking about.
• 19:17
  Yeah, it was like a big, like a big hamster wheel thing.
• 19:19
  It was like a mouse, like a mouse tube.
• 19:22
  The kind of situation I was really entertaining to look at.
• 19:25
  I don't know if that sold any laundry shoots or whatever they
• 19:29
  call it, but. You know, it sucks your soil
• 19:30
  drawers like to the other part of the house where your washing
• 19:33
  machine is and, and that's a pretty cool, you know, I I
• 19:37
  think, but again, not traditionally, you know,
• 19:40
  integration, right, like not not really traditional integration.
• 19:44
  And we saw other stuff last year like Brown and Nutone, you know,
• 19:48
  like those aren't traditionally AV or, or, or integration or or
• 19:52
  CDA channel Health and. Wellness.
• 19:56
  Yeah, health and Wellness and, and that kind of thing.
• 19:57
  And, you know, with, with the scope that Emerald has and
• 20:01
  Apollo has and, and, and all these things, yeah, maybe we
• 20:03
  will start seeing a little bit more bleed over right where, you
• 20:07
  know, maybe we're. Well, I mean, colder was there
• 20:10
  last time, right? They were, there were some, you
• 20:12
  know, some colder items. There were some, you know,
• 20:15
  water. You know, water sense things
• 20:18
  that Kohler had and, and and oh, by the way, outdoor.
• 20:21
  Heaters and all of that good stuff, right fireplaces, outdoor
• 20:24
  heaters, those are big opportunities so yeah, we'll.
• 20:26
  See. So what's happening?
• 20:27
  Yeah, I. You know, yeah, it's, it's I
• 20:29
  guess it's already happening. I'm just, you know, me.
• 20:31
  I want to look, I mean, I want to turn it up to 11 immediately.
• 20:34
  I'm like, let's, let's make a mess, you know, like let's have
• 20:38
  this, let's have this be a complete ADD lover's dream
• 20:43
  because just like, Oh my God, so many shiny objects.
• 20:47
  We've got the skiing simulator over here with the ski simulator
• 20:51
  over there. And then we've got the, you
• 20:53
  know, the hover chairs and the water massage table.
• 20:56
  I mean, we, we make fun of, you know, we make fun of Infocom and
• 21:00
  we make fun of CES because it's like the personal massager show
• 21:03
  with, you know, AV is a little bit of a side plate.
• 21:07
  But hey, maybe, maybe that's the direction that we're heading in,
• 21:10
  in our little thing here, you know?
• 21:13
  I wouldn't, I wouldn't be surprised.
• 21:14
  I mean, the home entertainment, gaming, that kind of stuff from
• 21:18
  the simulator side, golf Sims are a huge part of the business.
• 21:21
  So why isn't that maturing? Why isn't that technology
• 21:24
  maturing into shooting sports and those kinds of things for
• 21:28
  people's homes like or interactive arcade versus the
• 21:31
  home theater. You're still selling a screen
• 21:33
  and a projector, but now you're dealing with, you know, it's not
• 21:37
  movie night or it's not solely movie night.
• 21:39
  You know, that differentiation, it's just so, so much more
• 21:44
  scattered. I would say like it, it seems
• 21:46
  kind of odd to think about, but like a truly just dedicated home
• 21:50
  theater, Like that space in your house where it's just a movie
• 21:53
  room seems like very luxurious, seems very opulent at this point
• 21:58
  compared to like some of the, you know, 2500 square foot
• 22:02
  houses I put, you know, movie theaters into in the early
• 22:06
  2000s, you know? I can.
• 22:08
  Seems like a different world I. Can see that and this kind of
• 22:11
  speaks to you know, us kind of talking about the the death of
• 22:13
  dedicated theater and that kind of thing.
• 22:14
  It's just it's not really a death.
• 22:16
  It's it's more of a repurposing. And you hit the nail on the head
• 22:20
  with golf simulators, right, Seeing a lot more of those we're
• 22:22
  seeing. I mean, one of my son's friends
• 22:25
  has a batting cage in his basement.
• 22:26
  That's the same principle as a golf simulator other than, you
• 22:29
  know, it throws a baseball at you and it takes up the same
• 22:32
  amount of space as a golf SIM or a theater, right?
• 22:35
  So, you know, in the upper Midwest, I'm sure that there's,
• 22:39
  you know, probably hockey simulators right Where you.
• 22:41
  Know I was just about to say you got to get the hockey one.
• 22:44
  Skeet shooting seems to be a popular one and like simulator
• 22:48
  for crisis. Sure like do you really need
• 22:52
  PTSD from from a hostage negotiation in your basement?
• 22:57
  I mean 50 inch screen. There's there's some affluent
• 23:00
  preppers out there who would definitely deal with an end of
• 23:03
  the world simulator so that they could practice their aim and not
• 23:06
  have to go to the range, you know for sure.
• 23:08
  I mean, I mean, you know, NATO rounds are a dollar bullet.
• 23:12
  So I mean, you can pop off a lot of laser caps, pop off a lot of
• 23:18
  laser caps at it for for 0. Bucks.
• 23:20
  So I like the old Chris Rock bit where like, you know, we just,
• 23:22
  we know we shouldn't ban guns. We should just make ammunition
• 23:24
  prohibitively expensive where, you know, you gotta spend 20
• 23:28
  grand on a bullet. You better really hate that
• 23:30
  motherfucker. And I think this is the
• 23:34
  solution. Fair, but no, that, that is a
• 23:37
  good point, right? Like these, these things that
• 23:40
  we're doing in our houses and it's kind of an extension of,
• 23:42
  you know, what we did during COVID where, you know, you, you
• 23:45
  tricked out your your Home Office and you put the
• 23:47
  technology in and, and you basically, you know, it was at
• 23:51
  that point it was a classroom, it was your office, it was, you
• 23:54
  know, gathering place. It was where you could video
• 23:56
  conference with grandma and all that other stuff.
• 23:58
  Like this is kind of an extension of that, right?
• 24:01
  Like maybe, you know, maybe we're in, this is going to sound
• 24:04
  so freaking nerdy, but like maybe we're just evolving to the
• 24:07
  point where it's like holodecks in our house, right?
• 24:09
  And like maybe that's the very, this is the very beginning of
• 24:13
  it, right? Like here's a dedicated room in
• 24:15
  your home that you can watch a movie in and be comfortable, you
• 24:19
  know, hit, you know, hit balls for an afternoon, whether
• 24:22
  they're baseballs or or soccer balls or whatever.
• 24:26
  Like, you know, yeah, maybe the holodeck is something that's
• 24:28
  happening. Maybe we're maybe we're getting
• 24:29
  to that point. Storm the beaches at Normandy.
• 24:33
  With your grandpa, I mean, I would love to put my 10 year old
• 24:37
  in that situation. I think that'd be great.
• 24:38
  OK, here we go. All right, buddy, load up.
• 24:41
  All right, ramps going to drop. Here we go.
• 24:45
  Watch out for the MK 80s. Yeah, watch out for the MK 80s
• 24:49
  on the on the wall, on the wall over there.
• 24:51
  Lookout. Crazy.
• 24:52
  Exactly. But you know, maybe that's the
• 24:54
  next evolution of of what we do, you know, and you're seeing it a
• 24:58
  lot, right. You're seeing a lot of dedicated
• 25:00
  gaming products where it's basically, you know, a gaming
• 25:04
  rig is like, you know, 6 monitors, they're vertical.
• 25:09
  They're, you know, completely surrounding you.
• 25:10
  There's racing simulators that folks really get into.
• 25:13
  And we saw a lot of that stuff at CEDIA, right?
• 25:15
  Like, you know, motion and chair, whatever, you can do it
• 25:19
  all. I think we're going to see all
• 25:20
  of that stuff merge together at these shows.
• 25:23
  I think, you know, as, as it's all, you know, order to disorder
• 25:27
  or, you know, distinction to integration.
• 25:31
  I, I think it's all just becoming assimilated like the
• 25:33
  Borg just to keep the Star Trek theme going.
• 25:36
  It's, it's, it's futile to resist.
• 25:39
  This is a this is a bold, this is a bold, bold thing, man.
• 25:43
  Like, you know, the, the ripples of some of these changes aren't
• 25:47
  immediately thought of and, and it's obviously impossible to to
• 25:50
  know what those, you know, forward knock on effect is going
• 25:53
  to be. But I, I think in this case,
• 25:58
  the, the cost of doing business at, you know, at that level just
• 26:02
  means that somebody's got to be the bigger snake and eat the
• 26:04
  little snakes. And looks like Apollo's a
• 26:06
  pretty, pretty big snake. Had a trillion dollars of, you
• 26:10
  know, managed assets. Oh my God.
• 26:12
  Absolutely. And, you know, going back to
• 26:15
  these things that we can't really see coming in these weird
• 26:17
  new technology uses, like, don't you want to be the guy to tell
• 26:21
  your client about this thing? Rather than having your client
• 26:23
  walk over to you and tell you, you know, if, if you can pitch
• 26:28
  a, you know, if you know that that person is a giant hockey
• 26:30
  fan and our kids all play hockey like that is something to pitch.
• 26:34
  Here's your, you know, here's your hockey SIM in your
• 26:36
  basement. And you know, that this, this
• 26:39
  synergy with stuff like, you know, Apollo and, and, you know,
• 26:45
  Emerald and, and, and that kind of thing, that kind of synergy
• 26:48
  with a lot of different things that we sort of peripherally
• 26:51
  touch. It's it's probably a good thing,
• 26:53
  you know, it's a good way to get informed and you know, should be
• 26:57
  pretty good. Keeping keeping everybody
• 27:00
  looking for new opportunities yeah I I initially my reaction
• 27:04
  to this was holy crap, but I think.
• 27:07
  It that was that was my reaction too since we literally just
• 27:11
  posted the episode. And the freaking.
• 27:13
  News article came out and it was like, oh, all right, well, shit,
• 27:17
  OK. Here, here we go.
• 27:21
  Yeah, let's let's go. But yeah, this is this is a,
• 27:25
  this is a big one I'm looking forward to seeing.
• 27:28
  I mean, CD of this year is actually something if I attend,
• 27:32
  which I'm not sure I will actually, but it's not it's not
• 27:36
  it's not a lock. But if I do attend, I'm
• 27:40
  interested to see what it's going to look like and what the
• 27:42
  buzz is going to be around. Like I'm definitely not ever
• 27:46
  going to Denver again to, you know, I can't wait to go to
• 27:51
  Vegas next year, right? Like I guess that's the first
• 27:54
  that's the first away game that that they're playing for for CDF
• 27:58
  for 2027. So that'll be fun.
• 28:01
  Personally, I think that you'll see, I think you'll see an
• 28:04
  uptick the first year that it's not in Denver.
• 28:06
  I think you'll see an uptick because I think guys will want
• 28:09
  to check it out and I want to see what it's all about.
• 28:11
  And, you know, flights to Vegas are cheap, you know, God for,
• 28:15
  you know, maybe we stop bombing Iran and messing with our gas
• 28:18
  prices. But, you know, flights to Vegas
• 28:21
  are pretty cheap no matter what and.
• 28:23
  Why mess with a good thing is, why fix it if it's not broken?
• 28:26
  Yeah, can. Can Apollo just buy Iran and we
• 28:29
  can stop with all this horseshit?
• 28:30
  Maybe. I mean, maybe that's their own
• 28:31
  goal, but you know, it's, it's, it's something, there's
• 28:36
  something to be said for a new thing, right?
• 28:39
  And you know, people wanting to see what the new, you know, what
• 28:43
  the new setup is and what the new jam is.
• 28:44
  But if they go to Vegas and it's the same, you know, it's the,
• 28:48
  it's the same city experience, just in a different city, then
• 28:52
  you know, maybe, maybe there'll be a problem, right?
• 28:54
  Like, OK, maybe we're not going to, we're not going to go to
• 28:58
  Orlando or or whatever. I want to see that Convention
• 29:01
  Center just rocking with CD of people.
• 29:03
  That is something that I'm definitely keen to experience.
• 29:06
  But just just, I've never been to ACD in Vegas.
• 29:09
  So I've been to lots of CDSS and lots of infocoms and God knows
• 29:13
  ISC Wests and all those other things out there.
• 29:16
  But that that's not what I've ever done.
• 29:17
  So that would be, yeah, that'd be high on my list just to see,
• 29:20
  just see all my friends from the industry.
• 29:22
  There it's going to be, I think it's going to be well attended.
• 29:25
  I think that first year is going to be well attended.
• 29:26
  Well. And and again though, it it all
• 29:28
  depends on the manufacturers, right?
• 29:30
  Like where and what is that going to do to this year's CD,
• 29:33
  right? Like this year's CD is already,
• 29:35
  you know, locked and stocked in Denver.
• 29:37
  Are manufacturers going to say like, you know what, this is the
• 29:39
  last one in Denver. We're going to, you know, we're
• 29:42
  going to skip this one, right? And are, yeah, are we going to
• 29:45
  jumping off the ship? Are we going to nose dive and
• 29:47
  say like, you know what, we'll save a year and, you know, this
• 29:50
  year we're going to do Infocom instead and have a bigger
• 29:52
  presence or something like it remains to be seen, you know,
• 29:54
  and this is all, it's all just speculation.
• 29:56
  I don't know anything about anything ever, but.
• 30:00
  Clearly, clearly in this podcast, you know that.
• 30:03
  We've been doing this for three years.
• 30:05
  If you don't know that about me, then I'm an idiot.
• 30:06
  Yet you know, whatever. But but yeah, it's it remains to
• 30:11
  be seen. You know, stay tuned.
• 30:13
  You know, the finally got some drama in this industry that's
• 30:16
  not a Tron war and we'll we'll see.
• 30:19
  It's gotta be due right. But one, one other thing I want
• 30:23
  to, I want to touch on and not to put you on the spot, but you,
• 30:30
  you were a part of that router call that the FCC router call.
• 30:36
  I was not. I wasn't.
• 30:37
  Dude. I mean, I'll, I'll continue to
• 30:39
  buy things off Aliexpress. That's how I feel.
• 30:42
  But was there, is there anything worth paying attention to?
• 30:45
  Is this just that they just kicked this can down the road
• 30:47
  another couple years? And that's basically the crux of
• 30:49
  it. What what?
• 30:50
  What is the deal with this? Yeah.
• 30:53
  So I mean, I'm, I'm not the spokesperson for the FCC or
• 30:56
  anything like that, but they're trying to define a clear
• 30:59
  delineation between what enterprise grade and what
• 31:02
  consumer grade is. All of the enterprise grade
• 31:05
  routers be exempt from this ban. So anything that's really at
• 31:11
  infrastructure level, really sensitive things that you want
• 31:14
  to make sure you have an open gateway to Shenzhen for sure.
• 31:18
  You want to make sure that you know, Beijing still has access
• 31:21
  to those sensitive pieces of machinery or whatever, whatever
• 31:25
  we're scared of there. You want them.
• 31:28
  You want. Them accessing your baby monitor
• 31:30
  camera, your Roomba camera, you know all those things.
• 31:33
  Exactly, Exactly. Because I think by and large,
• 31:37
  those machines and that stuff talks in a language that very,
• 31:39
  very few people understand. Yeah, it's, it's called
• 31:42
  Cantonese, right? Yeah, like the sensitive, the
• 31:47
  sensitive nature of of the communications between some hard
• 31:53
  power plants would just say, for example, right.
• 31:55
  Those things talk on a different protocol that it would be very,
• 31:58
  you know, it would have to be such a specific, you know,
• 32:01
  narrow set of people that would know what to do with that
• 32:04
  information that it's kind of like, Oh yeah, I did it now,
• 32:08
  right? It's me, it's me kind of thing
• 32:11
  where where the consumer band that they're talking about is
• 32:16
  much more focused on the everyday individual that opens
• 32:19
  up a box and goes, oh, cool, my password is furry Squirrel 75 in
• 32:25
  all hyphens or whatever. And this is my password or my,
• 32:29
  my router name is, you know, Telus 65 or right, whatever it's
• 32:34
  going to be right for the name brand of said router here.
• 32:37
  Spectrum 60. Yeah, sure.
• 32:39
  Yeah, No changes, no nothing. That ban is intended to make it
• 32:46
  so that firmware updates and that kinds of things are much
• 32:51
  more scrutinized and there won't be anything new that's
• 32:53
  manufactured offshore that will be able to be sold to the
• 32:56
  public. So when you think about network
• 32:59
  offerings to consumers, they're really going to have to define
• 33:02
  what enterprise grade is versus consumer grade very, very
• 33:07
  quickly. I think that's the biggest,
• 33:10
  biggest dividing line that I got out of that OK, full
• 33:13
  presentation. So it was a little dry, so.
• 33:15
  So odd. I would imagine with the FCC
• 33:17
  you're right. Like jeez, probably looking at
• 33:20
  his. Little.
• 33:21
  Looking at his board, like, man, there's a lot of nerds in here,
• 33:24
  all right? I was, I was ashen.
• 33:26
  I was ashen faced. I was fair.
• 33:30
  I was, I was so dry. It was so dry.
• 33:32
  Yeah. All right.
• 33:33
  Well, that's that's that's all good.
• 33:35
  But OK, so this is not like this is not a band like the DJI band
• 33:40
  where now you can't buy a drone here or, you know, any of that
• 33:42
  kind of stuff. This is this is more like, all
• 33:44
  right, we've we're defining things.
• 33:46
  We're kicking cans down the road.
• 33:48
  Not the biggest deal. You're still always going to be
• 33:50
  able to get, you know you're going to be able to get ubiquity
• 33:52
  at this point for the foreseeable future, right?
• 33:56
  Right. Well, and I think that's, you
• 33:57
  know, the biggest, biggest take away here and I'm just looking
• 33:59
  at my notes really fast to make sure that, you know, any, you
• 34:04
  know, existing consumer routers can receive firmware updates
• 34:07
  only until March 1st, 2027, right?
• 34:10
  So they're looking at maybe doing a possible extension
• 34:13
  pending FCC scrutiny. And, and really this is more of
• 34:18
  a procedural situation, you know, after some pretty serious
• 34:24
  national security concerns are arising from the sources of
• 34:28
  these switches, the sources of of where where this product's
• 34:31
  manufactured. They're, you know, obviously
• 34:34
  baking in back doors or baking in security threats, right?
• 34:40
  You can't. You can't can't firmware your
• 34:43
  way around. Shall I say so Well, hey,
• 34:46
  that's, I mean, that's a good thing, right?
• 34:48
  Because that's, that's always that's, that's everybody's big
• 34:50
  fear is that suddenly all these devices that are, you know,
• 34:53
  they're cheap from some foreign land turn on us, which will
• 34:58
  probably happen anyway, but you know, your, your rattle will be
• 35:01
  safe and you know, that's, that's a plus.
• 35:04
  So. You got a couple of years still
• 35:06
  and I mean the E the EU is in a far more precarious position
• 35:12
  with this. And actually the USA is because
• 35:14
  the EU, they don't really have a National Defense standard for
• 35:18
  communication. They don't really have an FCC,
• 35:21
  right. Like they have their own
• 35:23
  individual, maybe nationalized situations, but as far as like
• 35:27
  a, a, we'll put it in quotations, harmonious policy,
• 35:31
  they don't have that. So they've got to really get
• 35:33
  their act together because these manufacturers are not going to
• 35:36
  make the US version router and then the EU version router,
• 35:40
  like, because that doesn't scale.
• 35:42
  So yeah, it's interesting, interesting changes, but I don't
• 35:47
  think anything that anybody needs to panic about in the next
• 35:50
  5 minutes, load up on your load up on your network hardware du
• 35:55
  jour early and often. You know, I think that firm, you
• 35:59
  know, firmware and some of the extensions are going to have to
• 36:01
  happen just by virtue of the fact that nobody's going to have
• 36:05
  their shit together, frankly, when, when, you know, March 1st,
• 36:09
  2027 comes around. But you know, they're at least
• 36:13
  they're looking at it and they're looking to protect
• 36:16
  intellectual property, to look protect individual privacy and
• 36:20
  some of that stuff by turning off those back doors to other
• 36:23
  countries. All right.
• 36:24
  Nothing to worry about, folks. Nothing to see here.
• 36:26
  Move along. Nothing to see here, we'll just
• 36:28
  wave your hands over your eyes and you won't see.
• 36:30
  Any nothing to see here all right well, thank you for that
• 36:33
  update. I appreciate that.
• 36:34
  I figured, you know, we'd get into some actual like non
• 36:37
  gossip, you know, news which. I mean if I start now.
• 36:41
  It's true. It's true.
• 36:42
  But hey, if if, if you want to call me or Jason or both of us
• 36:46
  out for being idiots, hit us up on the shoot us an e-mail at
• 36:50
  Gmail at inside.integration@gmail.com.
• 36:52
  Hit us up on the Instagram at Inside under score Integration.
• 36:57
  And thanks for joining us, folks.
• 36:58
  We'll see you when we see you. That's right.
• 37:01
  Take care, everybody.