Mobile Electronics' Editor Todd Ramsey declares MERA's Executive Director Chris Cook "safe" at KnowledgeFest 2010. MERA successfully brought the industry together at this year's event.

By Todd Ramsey

Earlier this year at 2010 CES, InstallerNet (the new owner of the Mobile Electronics Retailers Association) had an announcement about the whole changing of the guard in a press conference on the floor of the show with the theme “Come Together.” It was unclear at that time what that would mean, but after having just returned from the 2010 MERA KnowledgeFest trade show in Dallas, I can say first hand, as a participant in the seminars and as an attendee for others, MERA did just that. The industry really did come together.

Of course our own Mobile Electronics magazine Industry Awards were fantastic. Thanks to all of the industry colleagues who attended and laughed along with my “How bout that ride in?” comment during my speech and our funny video put together by Joni Owens and the creative staff at Bobit. We were proud to honor our industry’s people and the companies making a difference.

On to the KnowledgeFest event! First, let me say kudos to ALL the presenters who worked to deliver highly relevant and engaging content at this year’s KnowledgeFest. I think the sessions were all great, particularly because they came from industry people, which was ideal for this audience. I know many of you who attended found them to be highly relevant to your business and your job.

MERA was not shy about keeping attendees fed, engaged in networking round the clock, and highly focused on the many themes of industry change discussed throughout the event. I think everyone got plenty to eat and not enough sleep!

Some of the keynote speeches during lunch each day on the show floor included executives from Pandora and RIM (BlackBerry) who were publicly saying to manufacturers in our business that they want to work with us to create technologies that work in vehicles that our industry can install. A lot of big-picture stuff there.

By far, networking was the one thing that makes the in-person attendance priceless. You’d never really know the value of making that effort to go to KnowledgeFest this time around if you did not see and experience it for yourself. Really, it was a vibe that was absent of any doom and gloom and that, for whatever it’s worth, was enough for me to say there are still many great opportunities out there for our industry if we can focus on the positive energy circulating at KnowledgeFest. They already announced that next year’s MERA KnowledgeFest will take place in the same location August 28-30, 2011.

From the perspective of industry education, the seminar program at KnowledgeFest was one of the better ones I’ve been involved with in a while. Nearly all the presenters for the technical classes at the event were MECP Master certified, and I think it showed in their level of expertise, the caliber of credibility, and their willingness to share their knowledge with any of the attendees. So many of the owner/manager and sales sessions were led by successful retailers, including several sessions by our Mobile Electronics Single Store Retailer of the Year winner, Mitch Schafer from Mobile Edge. This was an excellent environment for approaching any of the experts and to talk one-on-one with them, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning.

I will summarize the 2010 MERA KnowledgeFest event with an analogy (because I love analogies). If this KnowledgeFest were a car build, we’d say the engine fired on ALL CYLINDERS the first time out and that the things to review were very minor, such as tire pressure or the torque of the lug nuts, and in the context of the show, mostly related to scheduling. MERA can focus on improvements to an already successful event for next year, and the good part is they have 10 months to do it. Archiving the event for revisiting by attendees in an online format was discussed and would be a great way to keep attendees engaged and interest potential attendees. In other words, I think it was an overwhelming success from the perspective of professional education and also from the perspective of re-positioning the “New MERA” in people’s minds. It’s what it needed to be. It was great, and I’m going back next year.