Although everyone in the AV market who is already on LinkedIn or Facebook knew it already, QSC finally made it official, this week, that it’s hired Cory Schaeffer as director of systems solutions for QSC Systems.

Cory has been in the ProAV market for over twenty five years and was the co-founder of Listen Technologies Corporation. In her role there, she brought assistive listening solutions to more than 30 countries and advocated the importance of the assisted listening solutions for better customer experiences.

This is a big-time win-win. Cory is probably one of the best-known people in our industry. And, QSC will benefit from her exposure to the market (assuming they let her continue her volunteer roles leading some of the InfoComm projects as well as helping to build the presence of women in the AV market – which I believe they will). And, not only is she known, she’s respected — she’s the kind of person that has no enemies. In fact, we did a feature on her in one of our first, ever AV people series (this was back in 2012 and the videos that accompany that piece have since been made private, but the article describes her personality perfectly).

I’m a big fan of Cory. I have known her for the entire 25 years she’s been in this industry and have admired her, continuously, throughout her career. And, I’ve been fortunate to work with her on a few different industry projects. She is focused, driven and loves the ProAV market.

But, this isn’t simply a management hire for QSC. This is a directive to the market — even though it may not be obvious to everyone: QSC plans to entrench themselves in the systems market.

Long known for their live sound products, QSC entered the installed systems market with one of the most creative products at InfoComm this past June, the Q-SYS Core 110f.

But, hiring Cory and putting her in the position of Director of Systems Solutions means, “we plan to come out with more systems products and they’re coming soon.” Oh, and I will bet money that they will add video to them. You just wait and see…