News & Trends

AVIXA’s Annual AV Executive Conference Returns This Fall to Inspire

AV Executive Conference 2018

Lightning in a bottle. Hitting the mark. Making the grade. Success. Everyone wants it, but how do you achieve it? And how do you hold onto it? Success can be fleeting. Consumers’ needs, political ups and downs, economic welfare, and so many more elements, impact a company’s performance. While an official guide for success doesn’t exist, yours and others’ experiences do. So, listen and share.

That’s why industry associations like AVIXA create forums. Enter the AV Executive Conference (AVEC). Every year since 2013, industry leaders gather to learn and discuss how to improve their businesses. Through thought leadership, workshops, and networking, attendees have had a chance to consider new ways of excelling in pro AV.

At the conference each autumn, our goal is to arm AV firms with the insight and strategies they need to be prosperous in the coming year. To do this, we look at the economic and employment trends that impact building their businesses, new areas of growth that firms can diversify into, and ways to capitalize on the strengths of their teams.

According to AVIXA’s market research, industries and economies are generally flourishing, however trade policies and protectionist views are acting somewhat as headwinds. Uncertainties related to Brexit, low oil revenues, and fiscal deficit lead to declines for the pro-AV industry. Factors leading to growth include healthy global trade, new manufacturing hubs emerging in Southeast Asia and South Asia, and improvement in the U.S. economy from fiscal stimulus and strengthening business investments.

Although the corporate market represents the lifeblood of professional AV, smaller markets, many of which focus on the consumer experience, have the greatest growth potential. According to AVIXA’s 2018 AV Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis, the healthcare market will grow 10 percent CAGR, from $2.4 billion to $3.9 billion from 2018 to 2023; hospitality will grow 7 percent, from $7 billion to $9.4 billion. The five technology trends rising to the top of the list as drivers of the growth are audio advancements, future displays, IoT for smart buildings, IT and the cloud, and artificial intelligence.

AVIXA works year-round to drive the pro-AV market through industry awareness outreach and market intelligence. We will share insight gathered from market data and conversations with AV end users with AVEC attendees this year, which will help inform their business strategy for 2020.

This Nov. 5-7 in New Orleans, AVEC will focus on diversifying into new market segments to weather potential economic downturns. Increasingly, the same pro-AV equipment and services can cross into different vertical markets. AVEC attendees will learn how to enter these markets to provide services they already offer.

Of course, we’d be doing ourselves a disservice if we only looked inside our industry to learn best practices. That’s why we seek out business pioneers from different walks of life to learn from their vantage points for success.

Joining us this year is Robyn Benincasa, a world champion adventure racer, CNN Hero, former corporate sales expert and full-time firefighter, and founder of World Class Teams, where she advises organizations on building world-class teams of their own. With 20 years of experience as a competitive adventure racer, Benincasa will share how she mastered the skills required to inspire a group of semi-exhausted people through a seemingly endless series of checkpoints, working against crazy deadlines, in constantly changing conditions, all in pursuit of an audacious goal. Her expertise on teamwork in extreme conditions is so relevant for business leaders today. After all, leading in business is an extreme sport.

Also bringing a unique business perspective to the conference is Mark Levy, the creator of the Employee Experience at Airbnb, which has led to significant changes in the ways organizations globally look at the entire employee journey. Levy has now joined Allbirds to lead their global expansion and scale their people and culture with a focus on the employee’s experience. A company’s greatest asset is its people, and Levy will address how aligning the company’s culture and growth strategy allows you to tap into more engaged and productive employees with an increased focus on meeting the needs of the customer.

We hope AVEC attendees will walk away ready to tackle a new opportunity, whether that’s a new market they want to enter or a strategy for increasing the capacity of the business to meet market demand. We also want them to gain new approaches for getting the most out of their time and employees.

It’s AVIXA’s job to make sure you never stop learning and finding inspiration. And it’s your job too. You never know when you’ll stumble upon a great idea – keep your eyes, ears, and schedule open.

Visit avexecutiveconference.com for more information on AVEC 2019 and to register.