In 2007, Jody Thomas founded Emergent, where he serves as President to focus on emerging vertical technology applications and channel strategies. Mr. Thomas serves as a business and product development consultant to his clients, bringing vast experience encompassing many aspects of AV and IT systems integration, management processes, market analysis, facilities design, product support, development, training, rental services, and events staging. Particularly significant is his renowned expertise in applying the very latest of technologies to organizational structures and businesses processes in order to improve business efficiencies increasing revenue and profitability.

 

From 1997 until 2007, Jody Thomas served as CEO and Partner at Kayye Consulting, which provides consulting services to various audiovisual manufacturers, integrators and associated industry organizations, offering training, market development, product development and business development services.

 

Mr. Thomas has been actively involved in the professional audiovisual industry since 1989. He has volunteered much time to the leading industry trade association, ICIA/InfoComm. He has served on the Board of Governors, and serves as an adjunct faculty member as a frequent speaker, instructor and facilitator for trade association educational offerings. He is former chairman and current member of the Information Technology Council and member of InfoComm's Professional Education and Training Committee, where he has been involved in curriculum development efforts for InfoComm's Installation School and new AV / IT certification initiative. In addition to InfoComm, Mr. Thomas is an annual instructor at other industry trade shows, including the National Systems Contractor's Association (NSCA) and Custom Electronic Design & Installation Association (CEDIA). He also co-authored the book "Basics of Audio and Video Systems Design" (ISBN 0939718197, Amazon.com).

 

Prior to his role at Kayye Consulting, Mr. Thomas was with NEC Technologies as a Marketing Analyst. He was significant contributor to product development, support and training programs in NEC's Visual Systems Division, which manufactures large screen graphics and video display systems. Mr. Thomas also previously served as Vice President of Sales & Marketing for A&V Company, a Greensboro, NC based audiovisual solutions provider involved in rental, corporate events staging and video duplication. He was instrumental in the formation of A&V Company's systems solutions division, which served the customers of A&V Company with integrated and mobile presentation systems, as well as meeting productivity solutions. He has also served as Chief Technology Officer for Pacifiq Technologies, where he was responsible for overseeing the information technology deployment within a geographically diverse startup company, in addition to defining technical specifications, and directing the efforts of developers the deployment of its services web portal and its e-commerce solutions.

 

Jody was responsible for the technical creation and deployment of KNews (now a DigitalMediaNet property), the audiovisual industry's first email newsletter, then rAVe (www.ravepro.com) and rAVe Home (www.ravehome.com), two of the most widely read email publications for the commercial and residential audiovisual markets. He has served as an editorial consultant to these and other industry publications.

 

Mr. Thomas uses his business and technology experience, along with a unique perspective to guide manufacturers and channel partners in the development, implementation and execution of business strategies, products & solutions, sales & integration channels, training & support programs, with a focus on emerging audio-visual and communication solutions. His desire is to continue using his balanced and methodical approach to bring success to manufacturers in the emerging communications industry.