Last month I wrote the Star Wars Guide to Recruiting New Talent, in which I gave a nod to NSCA’s new IGNITE initiative and their efforts to drive interest in the AV industry with technology minded young people. It’s an important initiative, as industries that grow “gray” typically face huge challenges. Look at the gaming […]
I was at InfoComm Connections in San Jose on March 3rd and 4th and had the opportunity to meet up with my industry peers. One of those opportunities was presented to me by QSC’s Cory Schaeffer in the form of an invitation to come over to McCormick and Schmick’s for the Women in InfoComm mixer. […]
There is a great new program and movement taking place in the AV Industry called Ignite. It is a program run by the NSCA to try and create interest and excitement about a future career in the AV industry. Just based on the involvement of Chuck Wilson, Kelly Perkins, Michael Shinn, and Laurie Englert (who […]
If you haven’t heard yet, Apple has issued a public response to the US Governments request for software that would allow them to circumvent encryption on an iPhone. The long and short is that after the San Bernadino attack was found to have ISIS ties, the FBI found themselves in possession of the attacker’s iPhone. […]
Let me start by saying that I know this blog is going to draw criticism from both sides. This is a long standing argument in the AV community, one that has yet to be universally agreed upon, and I’m certain this piece will NOT change that fact. There will still be people who fall on […]
Like she is prone to do, Kelly Perkins of AVI Systems shared a great article on LinkedIn recently. It was a piece in the Harvard Business Review called Collaborative Overload. It’s premise wasn’t a crack at the overuse of the “collaboration” buzz word, although that is a problem in itself, but was aimed at the larger […]
If there has been any trend in AV that is glaringly apparent over the last few years, it is that the amount of hard codecs being sold for video conferencing is declining. Although videoconferencing is being more widely adopted, the hardware sales dollars are decreasing, in a huge extent because the codec has gone to […]
Let me start this blog by saying that there is never a better way to demonstrate the differences in multiple projectors to a client than to set up each projector in the venue at hand with the correlating screen and actually do a multiple projector shootout. It’s the only way to see how the projectors […]
Three wise men followed a bright star in the sky. They traveled a great distance, hoping to find the prophesied savior that would deliver them from certain doom. As they approached the star, they stood in awe as it started to descend from the heavens. They dropped to their knees and bowed their heads as […]
Have you ever been abducted by an alien? No? Well, me neither, but I think we’ve all heard the tales. One night, while out in the woods, a light shines from above. Someone looks up to be blinded by the light and instantly levitates off of the ground and is pulled into the ship, where […]
With the impending premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens here in two weeks, I thought it would be fun to explore the AV phenomenon that changed the whole course of the Rebellion… The Princess Leia hologram. Join me on a seven-minute romp through holography to explore whether or not we could build this with […]
I will admit straight off that this post is somewhat of a rant, but I am tired of bad customers. The customer, despite claims to the contrary, is not always right. My wife does a lot of marketing work for everything from Comic Con to auto shows to demonstrating espresso machines. She is amazing at […]
Sometimes the genesis of a blog is a funny thing. I listened to a TedX talk about a month ago on open source culture, and immediately had the inspiration to write this piece but just hadn’t found the time yet. Then last week, Alan Vezina of Jydo, a company I’ve heard of but still need […]
Well it’s been a couple weeks since my last piece on CTS, and I figured the cooling off period was just about over. Needless, to say, my last piece created a lot of great conversation, as well as a couple of follow up blogs from industry consultant Leonard Suskin and even rAVe founder Gary Kayye. For […]
In June of 2014 I earned my CTS certification at InfoComm in Las Vegas. In fact, I was so excited at the time that I threw out a challenge to other members to follow me to the CTS-I and CTS-D certifications as to get 100 more people on the roster that had both the CTS–I […]
My wife is a beautiful and extremely intelligent woman. She currently does promotional marketing work, as it pays well and is typically done on the weekends, which allows one of us to always be with our kids. She has worked everything from auto shows to BlizzCon and ComicCon to technology trade shows. The roles have […]
Rumors are swirling! Sharp is getting ready to ship 8K displays only 4 years ahead of any real content and others seem to be hot on their heels. With the rapid proliferation of 4K and the current, unwieldy amount of content, infrastructure, and bandwidth currently available to distribute it, it is only natural that we’re […]
Almost 3 years ago I wrote a piece asking AV professionals “Why are we talking to IT guys?” Given my recent arguments for video over IP and the potential eclipse of AV Integration firms by large IT managed services providers, you may think that a very strange question indeed. However, even in today’s world of […]
I find it ironic that I am doing another book report considering how much I hated doing them when I was in school. Maybe I hated doing them so much because they were usually on books that I would have never chosen to read on my own and I had little interest in them. The […]
It has been a couple month’s since we all gathered in Orlando. Some of us were there to find the latest and greatest technology for our new projects, while others were there to unapologetically promote our AV wares. The last two years we have heard that InfoComm has set new attendance records, with over 39,000 […]
If you’re like me at all, you received dozens of emails before InfoComm15 touting game-changing, disruptive, and innovative new technologies. Given this cacophony of infinite hyperbole, you would assume that innovation at InfoComm this year was in full effect. I mean “WOW” was even the tagline this year for Pete’s sake. However, now that the […]
Humor me for a minute. Imagine you own a cherry company that has a cherry orchard and makes cherry pie. The upside is that people like the pie, they recognize your brand, and they buy it frequently. There is a problem though. It costs a lot to grow your own cherries. In fact, you have […]
The reviews of InfoComm 2015 have been varied. As a manufacturer, the show was great for us as we accomplished our product education and relationship building goals. For others, some said they didn’t see the WOW factor, others were WOWed, and others still saw great products but felt “facted to death” because no real storytelling was built […]
I had the unique pleasure of helping an existing integrator open up its business to new verticals to see where it may be best suited to be profitable based on the type of work involved. If you work for an integrator, you know that each vertical market has its own unique personality, especially when it […]
If you are an AV integrator reading this post, you are most likely very familiar with the term “Scope Creep”. It is a term that typically describes what happens when a contracted project starts to grow incrementally at the end-user or client’s request. “Scope Creep” has been a traditional sieve for project profits, because in […]
You can probably tell by my writing, that most often I still think of the world of AV from the perspective of being an integrator. As such, before the show I get really excited about exploring the show floor and giving my impressions of what I see and the potential new releases have on affecting […]
I have meant to write this post for a while, but it seems that I was writing so much on UHD and 4K I thought I would wait a while. With NAB behind us, and InfoComm15 coming up in a couple weeks, I have seen a lot of focus on UHD and 4K content and players. […]
Infocomm 2015 will be teaming with manufacturers showing their wares! In 2013 I made it my mission to find Courage, Innovation and Passion on the floor. Last year was my first year with a manufacturer and I was decidedly busier than ever on the floor, though be it in one location. This year I’m making […]
This week I did something I have never done. I took down a piece of content at someone else’s request. What happened with AV Power Up! 5 Reloaded? Please spend a few minutes with me in my audio blog to find out, and then hang around to have a larger discussion about how the legacy […]
Last month I wrote a blog on Extron’s efforts to define a True4K specification. For those of you that read it, you already know that I myself was confused by the language Extron used in their True 4K specification, so much so that the specification led me to draw some incorrect conclusions about their new […]
Every year as Milestone employees, we fly back to the mothership in Eden Prairie, MN for an annual sales and product update meeting. The kicker? This always takes place in Decem-brrrr or January. Given this fact, the meeting is affectionately called Freezing at the Lakes. This year in January we made the pilgrimage and stayed […]
I was an AV integrator in the residential space. I had a client who wanted a projection screen in their media room. I called my screen provider and related that I needed a 147”, 16:9, electric projection screen. I was given a quote and a part number, let’s say it was XYZ123. I ordered XYZ123. […]
