HTSA Plans 3-Day Lighting Education Event in Dallas This Month

The Home Technology Specialists of America buying group plans a three-day dealer educational event Feb. 22-24 on lighting integration, it said Wednesday. The event will include eight hours of lighting fundamentals training, 16 hours of lighting design workshops, eight hours of panels and “nearly 24 hours” of manufacturer training sessions, said HTSA Director-Technology Initiatives Tom Doherty.

Lightapalooza 2022, spearheaded by Doherty, will be at the Dallas Hilton Anatole, about 5-10 minutes from the Dallas Market Center, home to the 2,000-square-foot ProSource Lighting Technology and Learning Center. HTSA chose the Dallas location “because it is so centrally located, easy for all to get to, has reasonable weather even in February, and there are some of the lighting vendors with showrooms right over at the World Trade Center and nearby,” said Doherty.

In addition to Doherty, Lightapalooza will be led by Conceptual Lighting owner Peter Romaniello, HTSA Chief Learning Architect Keith Esterly, and David Warfel, founding designer of Light Can Help You, who's also heading the lighting center and ProSource lighting initiative. HTSA has no formal relationship with Warfel, said Doherty, saying Warfel “serves the broader custom integration community and has a lot to offer both HTSA dealers and non-HTSA dealers who are attending."

Though attendance at Lightapalooza is exclusively for the custom integration channel, attendance isn’t restricted to HTSA members. Of the “couple of hundred” registered attendees, about 90% are HTSA members, a spokesperson emailed. Cost for dealers is $750.

“Lighting is by far the fastest and largest growth category for the HTSA members and our industry at large,” Doherty said. “Lighting integration, control, fixtures and wellness lighting can be mastered best by in-person discussions, sharing experiences and live engagement,” he said, saying HTSA was the first organization to bring expanded lighting solutions, such as fixtures, to dealers. Lighting is a “key area of success” as a natural extension of lighting integration and control, he said.

Lighting company attendees include DMF Lighting, WAC/AiSPiRE, Elemental LED, Ecosense/Soraa, Coastal Source, Crestron, Colorbeam, ERP Power, Proluxe, LF Illumination, Tech Lighting and Lucifer Lighting. Participating vendors include both HTSA lighting vendors and nonmembers; it’s the first time non-HTSA lighting vendors will be part of an HTSA event, the spokesperson said. WAC and Colorbeam aren’t HTSA members “yet,” said Doherty.

HTSA will gauge the level of collaboration and success of the “focused, educational event” to determine whether future conferences will be held, Doherty said. Interest has been high, and other lighting vendors asked to attend, he said, but HTSA had to “keep to the space we allotted for this year.”

HTSA Executive Director Jon Robbins called Lightapalooza “an important next step on our path that began in 2017 when we introduced entirely new categories to the industry, such as specifying and installing lighting fixtures, wellness lighting and more.”