With 327 total guests and 138 sponsoring companies in attendance, the CE Pro, CI and SSI Summits are poised to grow again in 2018.
The 2017 Total Tech Summit was held from Nov. 1-3 at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, Fla. featuring the top custom, commercial and security integrators in the country for 2.5 days of best practice-sharing, educational content from industry leaders and high-quality vendor engagements.
For the 10th annual CE Pro Summit, 131 hosted guests represented 115 companies. In the sixth annual Commercial Integrator Summit, there were 106 attendees from 88 unique businesses. The second annual Security Sales & Integration Summit brought together 90 guests from 79 different companies.
Many of those guests, first-timers and veterans alike, recognized the many benefits of the event.
“There are a lot of great vendors here this week,” says CI Summit guest Tim Boyd, president of SAVE Electronics. “I’ve learned a lot of new and exciting things that are coming out in the industry. And being able to talk one-on-one with some of the manufacturers and let them know some of our pitfalls and frustrations of things that they could do better to help us and also them letting us know the things we can do to help them.”
“It’s been a good opportunity to meet not only with the vendors, but the other people attending from companies that aren’t necessarily competing in our same space regionally, but are doing the same thing in other parts of the country,” adds first-time SSI Summit attendee David Vermillion, president of Vermillion Systems. “So, it’s been valuable for that reason, for sure.”
The 138 sponsoring companies represent the highest number ever for an AE Ventures-produced hosted style event. The guaranteed meetings with high-quality guests, boardroom presentation opportunities and general session sponsorships provide the businesses ROI potential they can’t get at typical industry trade shows.
“I go to a lot of these shows per year, and this is my favorite by far because of the guaranteed one-on-one nature of the meetings, because of the way the booths are set up, because of the level of people that are here. They are the right kind of people,” says Tigerpaw Software senior technical trainer Tony Mehner. “They are the people that we want to be talking to. And, there are a lot of people who are wanting calls back within the next couple weeks, and they are interested in seeing what we have to offer.”
“Through the presentations and through the one-on-ones here, we were able to have that better, more detailed, entry-level conversation,” explains iPoint VP of sales and marketing Brian Good. “Fifteen minutes is enough for me to essentially show you what we do and to check the boxes, if you will. So, if it’s something that’s interesting, we’ll find time later to dig deep… And, I’m going to be really, really busy for the next couple of months. There’s definitely been some good lead opportunities here.”
The Total Tech Summit will be hosting CE Pro, CI and SSI guests again next year. That event will be held from Nov. 7-9, 2018 at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center in Pittsburgh, Pa.
To view a slideshow of photos from this year’s event, click here.