ISE 2018 is far from Tabatha O’Connor’s first ISE, but it’s certainly her first as global president and CEO of CEDIA – a role she’s been acting in since last year.
She and the CEDIA leadership at the board and staff level have been working for the past year to lay the foundation for future success by developing a unified, three-year strategy for the global organisation. The fruits of their labours are being announced at ISE.
“CEDIA is committed to members and their success, and this process created clarity around the priorities that provide the most meaningful benefit to them individually
and to the industry as a whole,” she explains.
The strategy defines three areas of focus for the organisation: education; increasing professionalism though standards, guidelines, and best practices; and deeper engagement and partnership with the design and build community.
Noting that the health of the industry depends on it having a well-trained and professional workforce, O’Connor sees CEDIA’s education offering broadening in terms of availability – becoming available digitally, and also across a wider geography, with over 50 regional training events in 12 countries reaching as far as India, Colombia, Australia, and China.
Driving member and industry successCEDIA’s second area of focus will be on creating standards, developing best practices and defining guidelines to elevate professionalism and drive member and industry success.
“We will be deeply engaged with relevant standards bodies to create and influence the direction of industry standards,” she says. “We’ll also collaborate with manufacturers to facilitateadoption of the standards in new product development.”
Last but not least, CEDIA’s new strategy sees it developing deeper engagement with the design/build community. O’Connor continues: “Throughout the strategic review process, we looked long and hard at how to move the needle for the industry. And for CEDIA members, we determined that the optimum way to achieve this was by building awareness and creating demand for CEDIA members’ services with architects, builders, and designers.”
In November last year, CEDIA broke ground on its new 40,000sqft HQ – another example of how CEDIA is reimaging and reinventing itself.
“We’re incredibly energised about the future, for both our industry and our association,” concludes O’Connor.
“We look forward to sharing our progress and success with our members.”
It looks very much as if she will have plenty to share.
