Residential Tech Talks Residential Tech Today

Joining us on this week’s podcast are Alex Capecelatro, the CEO of Denver-based Josh.ai, the voice-controlled home automation system, and Amanda Wildman, the co-owner of TruMedia, a respected custom integration firm in Ada, MI. As chairperson and vice chairperson of CEDIA, respectively, Capecelatro and Wildman are two of the best people to fill us in on all things CEDIA.
The professional smart home industry’s global trade association recently completed a record year for new member acquisitions, its first-ever CEDIA Smart Home Day on Capitol Hill to lobby for integrator recognition, and a return to financial and organizational stability with a balanced budget and extension of CEO Daryl Friedman’s contract through 2027. To top it off, the organization just announced the addition of Paul Dolenc and Mitchell Klein to its leadership team to help bolster growth and expansion initiatives. Today’s guests discuss all of that and more on the podcast.

On this week’s podcast, Jason Griffing joins us from Highlands Ranch, CO, where he is director of product for OneVision Resources, the remote support and RMR provider to custom integrators. Jason is responsible for overseeing the development and strategic direction of the company’s service platform, serving as OneVision’s voice of the customer, advancing their product roadmap and R&D initiatives.
Prior to joining OneVision in 2017, Jason spent a decade as a residential integrator doing everything from pulling wire in dusty attics and wiring racks, to project management and operations.
Jason is on the podcast today to tell us about several new initiatives, including OneVision’s Flex Support packages, launched back in August, that were designed to make it easier to get started with remote support and recurring monthly revenue solutions and ProVision Signal, a dedicated on-call management solution designed to make it easier for integrators to build a robust incident response plan that ensures clients get the level of service they need for their technology issues, 24/7/365.

On this week’s podcast, Chris Lehnen joins us from Portland, OR, where he is a business development manager for Luminii, a manufacturer of architectural lighting solutions. Luminii was one of the lighting fixture exhibitors at the third-annual Lightapalooza conference held last month in Glendale, AZ, where the company showcased its specification-grade, low voltage fixtures, including a new LED linear product range and micro-optics solutions ideal for the custom integration channel. Our guest today comes from the CI space, having spent many years with the AV brands iRoom, Origin Acoustics, and SpeakerCraft, but now after a year and half immersed in the lighting fixtures business, he’s just the person to call if you’re looking for a high-end LED linear or low-voltage micro-optics solution for your next project.

On this week’s podcast, Eddie Shapiro joins us from the Washington DC area, where is a chief AV designer and owner of the custom integration firm, SmartTouchUSA. Eddie, who recently completed his three-year term as a CEDIA Board member, just this past week joined a contingent of CEDIA representatives in the nation’s capital to advocate for current and future generations of the smart home industry during the Inaugural CEDIA Day on the Hill. Meetings with political leaders on March 6 addressed two critical matters: The Freedom to Invest in Tomorrow's Workforce Act (S. 722, H.R. 1477) and creating a classification of “integrator” in the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) system. While this is just the first in several follow-up conversation that we have planned on this topic, we wanted to start with Eddie’s unique perspective. We also chat about the recent Lightapalooza conference in Glendale, AZ, where Jeremy witnessed Eddie taking more notes than any of the industry journalists attending the event!

On this week’s podcast, Charlie Porritt joins us from Portsmith, New Hampshire, where he is CEO of Russound, an internationally respected leader in manufacturer of audio products and technology. While it seems as if those of us who know Charlie today only associate him with his 24 years at Russound, they’re failing to recognize early stops in his career at such other legendary brands, Harman and SpeakerCraft. Today we’ll look back a bit on our guest’s career arc, finding out what wisdom he picked up along the way and developed on the job in his career role, and explore some of Russound’s recent cool product introductions, including the AVA Series mini AVR, which is now shipping.

On this week’s podcast, Richard Litofsky joins us from Rockville, MD, where he is co-founder and CEO of madVR Labs, the developer of the Envy Extreme and Envy Pro video processors for the high-end home cinema market. Ric is a serial entrepreneur with an expertise and focus on several technology categories, including, of course, real-time video processing, which we will dive into on the podcast. Many CEDIA EXPO 2023 attendees felt that the home theater demo featuring madVR tech video processing was one of the most impressive looking and sounding demos of the show, so we knew it was only a matter of time before it became a topic of conversation here on the podcast.