When you talk about immersing yourself in a tremendous endeavor as well as doing something which thoroughly drives you – you can relate first-hand if this mirrors your experiences. AV Power Up, a show which began in March 2015 with some of the AV industry’s most well-known #AVTweeps making up “The Crew” – Christa Bender, Chuck Espinoza, Hope Roth, Stacy Kringlen, Johnny Mota and Jeremy Caldera (along with myself) – has become one of the well-known podcasts in the AV media space, and in fact certain members of the Crew, Hope Roth and Christa Bender, have gone on to host their own shows The Floating Point and Tech Chaos on rAVe Radio.

Last year, the members of AV Power Up got together to do a show on the Thursday morning of InfoComm and, well let’s just say it will live in AVP lore. On Friday three of us got together to do the show that appears on rAVe Radio which helped to define our efforts at the show, however what I had envisioned for this year’s InfoComm was in essence five-fold – actually in terms of the number of guests we had on both of the shows we did on Wednesday and Thursday as well.

Back in April, I began formulating the plan for two shows and eventually came up with the concept – one show as a tribute to our current Crew members – Johnny, Stacy, Katye McGregor Bennett, Victoria Barela, Justin Watts and Deron Pinchback who bring it with every podcast we do, as well as past Crew members and many of our terrific guests of the show, beginning way back with the very first episode “Power It Up” – and yes a guest of this show did appear with us on Wednesday.

That Wednesday show titled “Friends of AVP” was literally two months in the making as I began by putting together the plan in terms of having as many guests as possible on the show with us, and then reaching out to all whom I had considered. Victoria Barela was my chosen producer for the show (she assistant produces AV Power Up on a regular basis) as hosting duties, according to the envisioned layout, would encompass all of my time. Victoria for almost two months regularly spreadsheeted the names on the guest list and then worked with me to fit them into segments – six in all – that would rotate during the show. Johnny Mota worked to put together the actual podcast station and knowing what I was looking for arranged for an 8-mic setup which would perfectly accommodate the show.

Hmm – this was one of the scenes I envisioned…

At the same time I planned a Thursday show as well (never to be satisfied with just one), as was the case with what a few of us did for ISE with two early morning shows on a different podcast from the U.S. last year. This Thursday show would be with exhibitor executives, and one which I undertook in reaching out to a number of major industry companies through Marketing and Press/PR to arrange for the guests. After all was finally complete with both shows lined up the week before InfoComm, I felt like we had two excellent ones put together. However what comes next, as with anything of this magnitude, is of course the execution where as they say anything can look impressive on paper.

Wednesday: Friends of AVP

“Show Time” came at 4:00 PM PDT on the dot as Johnny, who was doing the recording (I normally record the AVP podcasts), said let’s go and our first round of guests – Kelly Perkins (AVI Systems), Linda Civitillo (AVI-SPL) and Mike Shinn (IMS Technologies) stepped up to the mics, told us what was happening with each of them and played a great buzz word game with us too (which was repeated through the show). After about 15 minutes came the next round of guests, of course more of our favorites Megan Powers (Trade Show Internet), Marika Aquino (Tier PM), John Greene (Advanced AV) and John Antanaitis (Polycom). The following round included one of our favorite Crew members, as Penny Sitler (Draper, Inc.), Hope Roth (Riordan Brothers), Hailey Klein (PSNI), and Anders Lokke (Pexip) stepped in.

Round 4, well let’s just say that was the “expect the unexpected” segment as more former Crew members Chuck Espinoza (InfoComm Intl.) and Jeremy Caldera (Zdi Inc.), along with Alison Maxson (Barco), Bill Nattress (Biamp) and Lynn Nattress, Bill’s wife all stepped up to the mics. While most knew what these industry guests on the show could potentially bring, it was Lynn Nattress who gave us the story of “the AV wife” which she did to a tee. Round 5 brought us more greatness with Paul Zielie (Harman), Jane Johnson (Pivot Communications) who was the guest from our very first show, Joey D’Angelo (QSC), and Rachel Johnson (Pivot Communications). The final round gave us some of our most favorites, along with being the interesting grouping of the day with Jan Sandri (FSR), Gina Sansivero (FSR), George Fournier (FSR) – and The Bradford Benn (Harman). A perfect closer to this one. 

AV Power Up! – Episode 59: Friends of AVP at InfoComm 2016

Justin, Bradford, Gina and myself

George, Jan, Johnny and Victoria

And yes, this happened…

Chuck, Jeremy (twice) and Justin (holding Deron)

Thursday: Exhibitor Executives

Like the day before, the record button was pressed at 4:00 PM PDT for the second AV Power Up podcast at InfoComm, this one with certain industry executives. So who came to the (podcast) table to be with us?

1. AVI-SPL: John Zettel, CEO, Dale Bottcher Sr. VP, Sales and Kelly Bousman, Sr. VP, Marketing
2. Crestron: Jeff Singer, Director, Global Marketing and Dennis Fink, Technology Manager, Audio Solutions
3. Pexip: Amy Kim, President of the Americas and Jordan Owens, VP of Architecture
4. Logitech Video Collaboration: Jason Moss, Global Head of Go-To-Market & Business Development and Sudeep Trivedi, Head of Business Development and Partnerships
5. Barco: Hans Dekeyser, Vice President, Strategic Marketing (and Alison Maxson, Press and PR Specialist)
6. Polycom: Ashan Willy SVP, WW Systems Engineering & Product Management 

AV Power Up! – Episode 60: InfoComm 2016 Special – An AVP Discussion with Exhibitor Executives

A bonus – video taken of Ashan Willy discussing a “new UCC mindset” with myself and Crew members Justin Watts, Johnny Mota and Victoria Barela (with some of the signature humor involved as well):

Show over, and the celebration – already looking forward to doing the show at InfoComm 2017. Thank you one and all for participating as guests of the show, as well as to our outstanding listeners. Many more shows of course to come on rAVe Radio.

And we’ll see you next time…