Hosted event and media innovator grateful for past and present customers, partners and team members that contributed to its success through thick and thin.
AE Ventures is proud to be celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of its establishment as a Corporation as of March 30, 2023. AE Ventures was spun out of EH Media, where company founder and president, John Galante, had worked as leader of EH’s event business, founding publisher and editor of TecHome Builder magazine and even a couple years as editor-in-chief of CE Pro magazine. The company started its corporate life as creator and producer of the Electronic Security Expo (ESX) trade show and a fledgling hosted style event, the CE Pro Summit. It grew ESX into the third largest US security expo brand before selling its interest and transferring management of the event to co-owners The Monitoring Association and Electronic Security Association in 2014. It developed an innovative segmentation strategy for the CE Pro Summit, adding commercial AV integration and electronic security integration alongside custom integration in what it dubbed the Total Tech Summit. Total Tech was one of the largest and most lucrative hosted events in the US, when AE sold the asset through EH to Emerald Expo in 2018.
In April 2014, AE Ventures produced its first TecHome Builder Summit in Austin, TX, after rebooting the TecHome Builder media brand which had lain dormant during the great recession and housing collapse of the late 2000s and early 2010s. Again, AE used a segmentation strategy to build a larger TecHome Builder event including high-volume and luxury single-family builders and multifamily property developers and managers.
During the COVID pandemic, AE Ventures turned its focus to video capture of expert presentations and digital media to continue its service. This gave birth to a digital media strategy AE has been working on since 2020 to capture expert content with video, edit, store and post it for use by audience members as they engage on products, applications and process improvements. Launch of the builderinnovator.com portal in May of this year will bring that strategy to life and put it to work for builders, multifamily companies, vendors, solution providers and other industry participants.
In 2021 AE Ventures launched the Housing Transformation Summit to address digital transformation of the homebuilding enterprise and innovation more broadly in home design and construction and business processes and models. Housing Transformation’s content wowed the industry in 2021 and 2022, and the event promises to grow in leaps and bounds as it is positioned side-by-side with the TecHome Builder Summit as the featured elements of what AE Ventures’ Builder Innovator Week Spring and Fall.
Fifteen years of entrepreneurial effort yielded a fair share of swings and misses, too, including TecHomeX in both trade show and hosted forms, TechHome Mediteranneo, a hosted event for the custom install industry of Italy produced on Lago Maggiore in the mountain lake region, the Recurring Revenue Network and Rural Innovator Summit--all interesting projects and learning experiences, if not completely successful business ventures.
“Fifteen years down the road and we’re not just still standing, we’re continuing to take moonshots with strongly differentiated events and media engineered to provide great value and drive extraordinary progress for our participants and the industries we serve,” said John Galante. “There’s a long list of people, companies and organizations to thank for getting us to this milestone in the shape we’re in. Here goes:
- Our current team: Leigh Sullivan, Donna Kent, Ryan Mahoney, Jessica Salisbury, Colin Cocaine, Chaurnice Houston, Katie Swarthout, Katie Beckmann, Bob Fields and Ruben Larios.
- Co-founders: Nancy Franco and Shannon Murphy Few
- Other key team members over the years: Amelia Andrade, Jillian Bateman, Tony Consiglio, Nicole Dreher, Jessica DaCosta, Joe Lautner, Jasmine Leitzel, Wendy Lowe, Andrea Medeiros, Jeff Verklan.
- Interns from Stonehill College and other Boston metro colleges and universities.
- Key service providers: 3 Rivers Entertainment, CoachMEdia Pros, Cultivate, GNA Training, Shepard Exposition Services, T Designs.
- Expert contributors: Jacob Atalla, Ed Bonifas, John Brady, Jerry Calder, Jim Carroll, Anya Chrisanthon, Tim Costello, Kelly Cox, George De Marco, Patrick Egan, Steve Firestone, Marshall Friday, Scott Goldfine, Mike Grubb, Shawn Hansson, Greg Hardwick, Barry Hensley, Jason Knott, Marc Lamoureux, Angela Larson, Tom LeBlanc, Melissa Morman, Pam Petrow, Michael Pope, Mike Moore, Ken Peterson, Avi Rosenthal, Dan Ross, Brad Russel, Brandon Savage, Greg Simmons, Brad Smith, Roy Spence, Paul Starkey, Deana Vidal, Sean Weiner, Taylor Wiederkehr, Monica Wheaton, Paul Williams, Joan Webb, Lisa Kalmbach, Gordon Van Zuiden, Shawn Barry, and many others.
- Allied companies and organizations: Builders & Remodelers of Greater Boston, Consumer Technology Association, Electronic Security Association, EH Media, Emerald Expo, International Association for Exhibitions and Events, National Association of Home Builders, The Monitoring Association.
- 800+ vendors, service and solution providers that have invested in our events and media.
- 10,000+ executives from builders, multifamily companies, integrators, subcontractors and others who’ve invested their time and energy to attend our events, consume our online content and put the ideas, information, and advice we deliver to work in their companies.
“It’s been a fun and inspiring ride and, of course, we couldn’t have done it without you.” - John Galante, AE Ventures President
Pictured: The AE Ventures team, just missing the fabulous Donna Kent!