InfoComm's AV Executive Conference

This week I was fortunate enough to join other AV business leaders at InfoComm’s second annual AV Executive Conference. If you would like to get my reaction to the first full day, I wrote about it here at Commercial Integrator. This post is more about the event as a whole and how it compares to other, similar, events.
In my new capacity as director of operations of Innovad, I have had the need to learn all I could about the business of AV. Before now it has all been about programming, designing, and implementing systems. Now it is marketing, employees, and bottom lines. I’d rather miss a command return than mess up on a customer relationship. That is the position I am in, and I do love it. It is just a bit outside my comfort zone.
Two separate events have helped me incredibly. The NSCA BLC, and the InfoComm AV Executive Conference. It is unfair to call these two “competing” events. From my view, the BLC is geared for middle to higher managers. It offers various general sessions with great speakers as well as several classroom-type courses over the course of two full days.
AVEC is more focused on the C-level executive with higher level executives also being comfortable in the environment. This is more of a day and a half event of highly focused information. There are side classes available, but these are before the general sessions during breakfast time. From Dr. Yves Pigneur, we received the biggest fire hose worth of information. He is the author of The Business Model Generation. The idea was to take a look again and again at your business plan and continually adjust it as your business evolves. As a group, we were pushed to develop our own plans with our own groups. It was very interactive and hands-on. 

When you have an event like this, the obvious question is whether or not it is worth the investment. I would absolutely say yes. The number of people I networked with and the information I am taking away alone was worth it. Plus, it was at a nice resort and that is never a bad thing. Hopefully I will get to go next year when it is in Florida.
Thanks for taking the time to read my blog. Have a great week.