I love this industry!

Upon graduating from college back in 1987, I was lucky enough to be offered a job at Extron Electronics way back when they were probably less than a 20-person company.  Although at first I didn’t feel like I wasn’t doing what I went to college for (Marketing), the people there were great and it was a lot of fun – not to mention frantic, daily, as we were growing exponentially.

In fact, having been properly outfitted with all sorts of “cheat sheets” written by Ginger Dodier (little, literally, pieces of paper that had the top 20 questions and answers written on them for each product).  I mean these were little – some of the older people at Extron couldn’t read them, in fact.  I am not exactly sure why they were so small, but I think it had to do with making it (technical support of analog and digital interfaces) not look to intimidating.  It was.

In the morning, I would come in and answer the phones alongside Ginger (now with Large Screen Display Group) and Catherine Alvarez (now with Crestron).  Most of the questions were easy, “what interface do I use to convert the signal from an IBM 3270 PC toanalog.”  I would simply look at my cheat sheet (in alphabetical order) and find “IBM” then find “3-2-7-0,” got it!

Then, in the afternoons – remember we were a small company – I would go to the shipping department (more like a table in the warehouse) to help pack and ship products.