It’s Labor Day so I have been reflecting on how grateful I am to be working.  Over the past several years I have known quite a few AV folks that have lost their jobs or had to start over.  In many cases these folks had some trouble landing for an extended period of time, despite the fact that they had amazing resumes.  It really made me think of how fortunate I was to find employment so fast.  I wish I could say it was all due to my own efforts, but I know that the reason I found a home was because I also had a lot of help from my industry peers.

Given that, I wanted to take a minute to recognize some of the efforts of others in this industry, that kept me interviewing, kept me motivated, and ultimately led me to an amazing home with Chief and Milestone AV Technologies.

I know, I know, it is atypical for me to shower praise in a blog, so be warned, there will be no “snark” in the following paragraphs.  It’s about to get a little sappy.  In the words of Clark Griswold, “Lot a sap in here. Looks great! Little full, lot a sap.”

To prove chivalry is not dead, I first want to give a shout out to all the “AV Ladies” who extended a hand.  Jennifer Willard at Women in AV was great at helping me figure out what kind of position I was looking for, Martha Brooke at WyreStorm got me in front of two companies that were hiring based on her industry relationships, and Penny Sitler at Draper quickly connected me to her local man here in CA so that we could explore potential opportunities in the OC.  I met these three ladies directly through my involvement with rAVE at InfoComm13, so who says blogging and networking at tradeshows can’t have value?

Thank you to Jason Griffing at DSI Entertainment Systems and Todd Anthony Puma at The Source Home Theater.  These are two people I’ve actually never met in person.  I know them mostly through Twitter and the Blogosphere, and they both reached out right away to learn how they could best help, and immediately started giving me some prime suspects to look at in my area.

Some locals that made a difference were Randy Reece at Draper, who took time to help me isolate some integrators he knew that may be in need of someone with my talents, and Paul Self who just wrote an article on the new IMAX Private Theatre.

My old editor Tom LeBlanc wrote me an amazing letter that I will keep forever as a reference.  Who knew editors could write?  (Sorry Sara!)

Specific to my landing at Milestone, I have to thank Chris Neto of AV Help Desk for sending the Job Description and link my way.  After I filled out the application, I quickly tweeted Joel Hagen to make sure someone fished it out of the pile. Thanks Joel!

Finally I have to give a thank you to rAVe’s own Gary Kayye and Sara Abrons for all they did for me.  I can’t list it all here, but they let me promote myself on the site with a blog about my job search and relentlessly promoted and supported me for the month I was out on the market.  I owe them both a lot.  Thanks!

So at the end of the day even if HDMI is a disaster and we need some better quality standards tied to our industry certifications, (OK, so I said no “snark” but  I had to sneak some in somewhere) the one thing being out of work for a month proved to me was that we have some AMAZING, GENEROUS, and GENUINE people in our small little AV world.  I can’t wait to meet even more of them in my new role over the many years to come!