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The next plus-sized pro AV trade show on the annual calendar is InfoComm, coming up in mid-June in, yuck, Orlando, Florida.

I'm always curious about what will be new and different with the show, and that's particularly the case in 2025, because there's a new person running things.

Jenn Heinold joined show owner/operator AVIXA late last year as the Senior VP Expositions, Americas, so for the last several weeks she's been in drinking-from-the-firehose mode as she learns more and more about the industry, ecosystem and how people think about and use InfoComm.

Heinold is a lifer in the trade show business, and while she has run tech-centric trade shows, pro AV is new to her.

We had a really good conversation that gets into her impressions and thoughts about the industry, her perspective on ISE, the AVIXA co-owned sister show, and plans for what will be her first InfoComm in June - including what will be different and new.

We also get into what, if anything, will be affected by all the trade and geopolitical turmoil that's bubbled up since the US presidency had its four year shuffle.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jenn, thank you very much for coming on. You've been on the job for how long now? 

Jenn Heinold: I've been with AVIXA for just over three months. I joined in December as the Senior Vice President of Expositions for the Americas, and I'm over InfoComm in the U.S., which will be June 11th through the 13th in Orlando, Florida and then I'm also responsible for our new InfoComm America Latina launch event, which will be in October in Mexico City. 

Did you know anything about the Pro AV sector before you got involved? 

Jenn Heinold: No, honestly. I ran the largest satellite technology show in the U.S. for 15 years. So I've worked in technology, but Pro AV is different and I find myself now everywhere I go looking for display screens and how audio sounds. It's so fascinating how quickly you become immersed within the industry and you notice that it's everywhere and it makes our experiences better. 

You'll be a display nerd in no time. 

Jenn Heinold: I'm working on it.

So have you always been in the trade show business? 

Jenn Heinold: I have, yes, I dedicated my career to trade shows. I am super passionate about what happens in a face-to-face environment. I love the serendipity of it. I love that what I do helps businesses grow. The community aspect is amazing, right? Bringing people together with a common goal or challenge. The education that we can provide at trade shows. You can do a month's worth of meetings in three days. You can do a trip around the world in three days in some cases, right? 

So I just love the format and really believe in what it can do for businesses and I'm excited to produce InfoComm.

Because you had some background working with technology trade shows, has there been much of a learning curve? Setting apart the obvious that there are different companies and all that, but I guess their needs aren't all that dissimilar, are they? 

Jenn Heinold: No, I think the commonality in working on technology shows is that you have the same structure where there are channel partners that are working to sell and integrate products, but then you also have all of the end users who use a specific technology. So I think it's important for us to be a forum for both Pro AV as well as our end-user audiences, and make sure that they each are fulfilled and feel welcome at the show and find value in the show. 

You went to Integrated Systems Europe a few weeks ago, I saw you there. That was your first big Pro AV trade show, I assume, and I'm curious about your impressions. 

Jenn Heinold: Oh, gosh, I was blown away by ISE. How could you not be? But for me, I was just so impressed by what the exhibitors did on the show floor. They really pulled out all the stops for ISE and the energy is amazing. It was so valuable for me to see the technology all together in real life, and then also to be able to meet with exhibitors here directly to know what are your strategic priorities for 2025 and beyond. Who should I be focusing on making sure that I have at the show, so it's the best for our exhibitors and our attendees alike? 

I'm sure you were walking around with people like your boss Dave Labuskes both at ISE and InfoComm. Did you get some sense that ISE is its own thing? InfoComm runs differently. Yes, there are the same vendors and everything else, but apart from the obvious of Barcelona versus Orlando or Las Vegas, it does do things differently in some respects, at least.

Jenn Heinold: Yeah, absolutely. I unfortunately don't yet have the comparison for InfoComm. I know what our plans are and what we're focusing on. ISE clearly has an amazing global footprint and InfoComm, while it is international, does skew a little bit more to North America just based on the location. 

I think we at InfoComm have a much more training program and educational offering, which I really think is valuable. We need to not only nurture our current workforce and make sure that they have all the tools they need to succeed, but focus on the next generation as well, and I'm really proud that InfoComm does that.

One of the things about ISE, as you said, there's not as much of a focus on training, there are certainly conferences and things like that, but it's more aimed at end users. 

Do you find that you're getting exhibitors and other people saying, hey, it would be great if we had more end users if there was more kind of focus on that part of it, as opposed to, I sometimes refer to InfoComm is something of a gearhead show, and I don't mean that negatively, but it attracts the people who are going to go look at things like cable connectors and mounting infrastructure and so on and stuff that maybe somebody who's an experiential designer for a creative tech shop maybe doesn't care that much about.

Jenn Heinold: Yeah. I will say that for 2025, we definitely are emphasizing the end-user audience. They are a key segment for us. Actually, one of the first things I did within my first week, Dave, was look at our end-user segments and compare what groups naturally grew when we were in Orlando versus Las Vegas, right? Just who organically was coming to the show and what I saw was a big increase in education when we're in Orlando, house of worship, retail, restaurants, and hospitality. None of this probably surprises you, but as we built out our marketing campaign, we've decided to really double down our investment on those segments that are organically growing in Orlando.

I grew up in trade shows and marketing, so this has really been a passion project for me. Making sure that we have the right audience in InfoComm 2025 is my number one priority and I had to prioritize when I started at AVIXA so I had six months to really execute the show. So if there is one thing that I'm focused on day in and day out, it's the audience at InfoComm this year.

When you say audience, are you hearing from exhibitors that they want to see more I end users or they want to see more partners because I think of an InfoComm as being a hyper-efficient way for a manufacturer to have a touch with a whole bunch of existing and potential resellers, and maybe not as worried about having like General Motors or some big retailer walking around. 

Jenn Heinold: I hear both, Dave, and I think distributors and integrators are a super important part of the ecosystem, just as the end users are. We are putting more end users on Stage on the show floor this year, as well as within our conference program and I think, having the end users talk about how they are using AV technology only drives more end users to come to the show. That's what they want to hear, right? Uses cases of how they had successful installations, and how they have better employee engagement because of their conferencing and collaboration tools. We've got some retailers actually who will present how they're deploying AV technology in their stores, and what it's doing to improve their business. So we are making a real focus on that piece along with, of course, all the traditional content and certification we offer for the gearheads, as you said.

I assume that's a bit of a tactic as well in, that if you invite, the Head of Digital for a big bank or big retail or whatever it may be to the show to do a speaking gig, there's a decent chance he or she is gonna bring some other people with them and then you've got people with big bank on the name tag walking around the show and you're able to talk about, look at the kinds of companies we're attracting.

Jenn Heinold: That's absolutely a tactic. The other tactic is when we market to these end-user segments, and they go to our website, perhaps cold, having not really known much about InfoComm, and they see like-minded people on the website speaking, they realize it's an event for them too. 

When you got involved, was there a discussion about how are things working right now? The old line about, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Or were there things that you were told that are where we would like to grow, here's like where we would like to change things, that sort of thing? 

Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I mentioned some of the dee