Scott Tiner

A trained educator, graduating from the Boston University School of Education, Scott is interested in the integration of technology and education. He works at Bates College managing the Client Services portions of Information Technology. Scott directs the Service Desk, which is responsible for the support of all classrooms and computers on campus. He also oversees the campus training programs and specifies and purchases computing equipment for the campus. He stays very active in the AV and IT fields, having presented at both regional, national and international conferences. Scott writes columns and blogs regularly for rAVe [Publications]. In order to continue to develop and strengthen his leadership and management skills Scott has attended the Management Institute and the Leading Change Institute, sponsored by EduCause. He earned his MBA form the Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, at the University of New Hampshire. During his time in graduate school Scott developed an interest and expertise in leadership and team building. As an experienced speaker and writer, Scott is always looking for new experiences to share, learn and grow. Scott can be contacted via LinkedIn, on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stiner or via email at stiner08@gmail.com

Virtual Reality – Create an Experience and Change Lives

For years, my family has watched America’s Got Talent in the summer. It’s a great family show that can be funny, touching and amazing. There have been numerous acts that use some type of technology. A couple of weeks ago however, there was one that really stuck with me. It was Italian psychologists (Simona and […]

In late June, Andrew Davis posted a blog entry here on rAVe in which he declared that “in 10 years or less, what was once the AV industry is going to be a be a footnote in the history of business technology.” In the post he made the argument that software will, essentially, take over […]

As a manager, I’m often faced with the question of what requirements we should put into a job description when we are ready to hire a person. Experience is always the easiest one to figure out. You think about how senior the position is and then you base years of experience or type of experiences […]

For the past several years in higher education, the active learning classroom has grown in popularity. With these active learning classrooms comes an increase in technology. Many of the classrooms have multiple displays and multiple ways of getting your content onto those displays. These may consist of flat panels, projectors and interactive whiteboards. The expectation […]

Video games have long been considered by “adults” to be a way for “children” to waste their time. However, over the past several years, as games have become more interactive and team based, they have become more mainstream. Today, watching others play video games is also a popular activity. According to Wikipedia, the 2017 League […]

Security has arisen as a significant issue over the past several years in the AV industry. Several high profile issues have made people question what they should be doing about security. I (and others) have written about it, trying to give our readers some thoughts about where to start. As I read more about security […]

It’s hard to believe that another InfoComm is right around the corner. As I sit down to write this, we’re under thirty days from the start of the first classes. Up here in Maine, where it’s still winter, we are longing for that humid, warm air. For tech managers, InfoComm can be an overwhelming experience. […]

Over the past dozen years or so, technology managers in higher ed have grown more educated and become more visible in the industry. However, many feel that this group has never been looked at as equals in the industry. We have several organizations that represent us, including an AVIXA council, “Technology Managers Council.” There are […]

I recently attended a conference about service management and ITIL. I went expecting to learn a lot about processes, procedures and rules for providing value for a company and I did learn quite a bit about that in the sessions I attended. However, one session in particular stood out to me above all the others, […]

On October 20th, 2018 Apple announced Group FaceTime for its iOS devices. Three weeks later, on Mon., Jan. 28th, Apple announced a major flaw in this new feature. If someone initiated a FaceTime call, and then added themselves to it, the phone of the original person would start transmitting their audio before they picked up. […]

A couple months ago, I wrote about the various problems that arise when people choose not to use microphones during large meetings or classes. In particular, I was discussing the negative impacts this choice has on people who have some type of hearing issue or hearing loss. I wrote about my belief that all rooms […]

If you are paying attention to the higher education world, you have noticed a pattern over the past few years. Since 2016, over 70 colleges have either merged or closed (the majority of them closing). While most would not call it a crisis quite yet, everyone in higher ed is paying attention and working to […]

This year at ISE, AVIXA will present a conference called, “What’s Next In Higher Ed.” AVIXA has presented unique sessions like this for the higher ed attendees of ISE for a couple of years, but this year looks like the best one AVIXA has presented yet. It has several well known educational technologists and will […]

We recently had a email thread at my institution discussing whether people should use microphones as a standard at all meetings. The discussion started as a result of people having a hard time hearing during faculty meetings. Interestingly, this discussion took a different direction that previous ones had. It was focused on accessibility and how […]

Back in September, I wrote an article called AVaaS: It Just Does Not Make Sense. I had begun to think about AVaaS in preparation for a panel discussion I was taking part in during my time at CCUMC. My biggest complaint in the article was that each item that I have read or researched on […]

Throughout my entire career, I have been an advocate of using technology to help educate. When I was in college, training to be a teacher, I began thinking about this and then my first job out of college was helping teachers integrate and use tech in the classroom. That was a long time ago and […]

Over the past several years my job has evolved more and more into the IT world. This has given me an interesting opportunity to see how vendors act differently between the AV and IT areas. This hit home recently as I began to talk with value-added resellers that want to do business with my college. […]

If you have been paying any attention to the video conferencing world over the last several months, you have undoubtedly witnessed the incredible growth of the software-based Zoom video conferencing platform. We have been using Zoom for several years at my institution and we continue to be impressed with it. The new features however, are […]

This month at CCUMC, I will be discussing how Bates College began to turn around its service operations by using data, metrics, SLAs and dashboards. This is not an earth shattering new business tool, but it is something that I think many organizations still don’t use quite enough or don’t use it in the right […]

Despite our industry’s change from box sales to services, I still see some integrators who don’t seem to understand how a service must deliver value to a customer. As I wrote about last month, I see some who still look at what can deliver money to the firm, independent of value to the customer. With […]

Next month, I have the opportunity to be part of an amazing panel at CCUMC on AVaaS. Being part of this panel has made me think more about the service and do some research on it. I don’t want to spoil the entire panel here, after all, I know that we will have a huge […]

Last month, I wrote about how I don’t want to see another whiteboard advertised as THE solution for the classroom of the future. I stand by that, I still don’t like them, but I think I may have not been clear about one thing, the concept behind what they are trying to do makes sense. […]

This publication has recently been using the hashtag #AVisLIFE. The first few times I saw it, I thought it was neat, if a bit nerdy. After all, my family still thinks that AV means I set the timers on VCRs and wheel televisions around campus. However, recently I began reflecting on my time in the […]

At my institution, we began putting our AV systems on the network over a dozen years ago. The advantages were simply amazing. In fact, we take so many of these for granted today, we forget some of them. For example, when was the last time you thought about how amazing it is that you can […]

I think that InfoComm 2018 may have been the signal to me that I have started to turn from a technology dreamer into a practical user of technology. This transition was realized as I toured around looking at the continual assortments of “collaborative” or digital whiteboards. For years and years I have been searching for […]

In May, Bates College announced that we would be building a new science building over the next couple of years. Many of us on campus have been working on this project for over a year. As the building promises to be an amazing addition to the college, it also presented an interesting change as I […]

Any good MBA student from the last decade can tell you about design thinking. It seemed to be one of the buzzwords of the business world for several years. But more than just in engineering and product design, it has started to leak into all areas of business. It can help determine strategy, it can […]

Something that always fascinates me is how new technology creeps into our lives without even noticing. Several years ago, Google put out Google Cardboard. It was an impressive piece of technology, considering it was free to most people. Slowly, other virtual reality devices have come out, but in my opinion none have really hit the […]

Every winter into late spring, I anxiously await for the arrival of summer — and not just because I live in a cold, snow-filled environment for seven months out of the year. I am anxious for it because at that time of the year summer seems so appealing. The students (and most of the faculty) […]

Last month for rAVe Ed, I wrote an article about school safety. I was inspired by the Parkland students, who suffered a horrible tragedy and decided to do something to make sure others did not have to suffer a similar tragedy. I specifically avoided talking politics and law. I think there is a place for […]

Recently, Extron has become more public about its Global Scripter programming features. I believe that this new path that Extron is taking is going to be a major change for the AV industry. The biggest piece of news is that the Global Scripter uses Python as its base for programming. The potential that this opens […]

Earlier this year I had to attend a funeral. While it was obviously a sad event, it was also not unexpected and people were more interested in remembering the person’s life than mourning the death. The funeral took place at a funeral home I had never been to previously, Jones, Rich and Barnes in Portland, […]

Scott Tiner

Virtual Reality – Create an Experience and Change Lives

Does Certification Matter?

Collaboration Space Interface Design

Esports in the Academy

Security: Start from the Beginning

InfoComm 2019: A Schedule for Tech Managers

Higher Education Technology Managers Association

Human Centered Design

Where to Start With Cybersecurity

Are Crowd Mics a Potential Game Changer?

ROI in Higher Education

ISE: Create Real Value From Your Trip

Listen to What Is Being Said (If You Can)

AVaaS Continued

A Move Away From AV?

Integrators or VARs?

Zoom Continues to Impress

Dashboarding Your Success

Operating Through an Emergency

AVaaS: It Just Does Not Make Sense

Writing and Recording in the Classroom – An Existing (Unsolved) Need

#AVisLIFE

Reliving the Analog Days

No More Collaborative WhiteBoards, PLEASE!

Active Classrooms Demand New Thinking and Design

Design Thinking: How Does it Relate to AV?

VR at the Mall

Prepping for the Busy Season

PASS: An Alliance You Need to Know About

Extron’s Global Scripter and the Value of Being Non-Proprietary

AV Creates an Experience In Unexpected Environments