First, let me say this was an extremely difficult list to narrow down to only 10. Not to mention the struggle for what goes first and what goes last. But, in my experience, these are the top 10 reasons for a career in AV! 1. Job Security I’ve been doing this for 20+ years now. […]

What AV systems can be put away? Written By: Kate Couch and Tony Sprando Design over function is often an argued topic amongst the design community. We think that these things are in lieu of the other, but that isn’t always the case. In many circumstances, the ability to get maximum function and purpose out […]

  Photo by: Kate Couch with Canva Written By: Tony Sprando and Kate Couch  What we believe and what we feel about a situation has strong ties. This usually circulates around the values we attach to something. When you reach for an apple in the grocery store, you hesitate and hover for a moment to […]

Written By: Kate Couch and Tony Sprando Whether you’re new to the audiovisual world or an old pro, a glossary of words to help you understand what we’re referencing in our articles and communications with you is a helpful tool. Below is some common audiovisual lingo with its proper definitions. It’s broken up into different […]

By: Tony Sprando and Kate Couch Like many other people, I enjoy listening to (somewhat loud) music while I work. I can zone out of the background noise and get to the important stuff. I have noticed something recently that it is a shared interest, as I also hear others’ loud music while I work. […]

During End User Day of LAVNCH WEEK 3.0 in February (in partnership with HETMA), I enjoyed listening to end users speak about AV security. It was particularly interesting to me since I had just written a blog on how the SolarWinds hack should serve as a lesson to the AV industry. I was tweeting a […]

Photo By: Robert H. Pexels.com  Solving problems of outdoor electronic screens and touch screens.  Written By: Kate Couch with collaboration with Tony Sprando  Outdoor TVs, touch screens, and monitors are nothing new. They’ve been used for decades to display things like game scores, travel plans, city maps, advertisements, bus and train routes, and general outdoor […]

By: Kate Couch Solving audio problems in commercial buildings with multiple uses. In last week’s article, we focused on solving audio problems in a residential home. However, AV Bend works primarily with commercial buildings. Though there are a lot of the same principles, working and solving commercial problems looks drastically different than solving problems in […]

  By Tony Sprando and Kate Couch “Age appears to be best in four things — old wood best to burn, old wine to drink, old friends to trust, and old authors to read.” — Alonso Of Aragon Age is something we have been redefining for many years as a human race. In the ’40s […]

In the greater context of AV systems and design, Mark Coxon asked in his Tech Talk presentation for LAVNCH WEEK today, “Why do we bother with all this stuff?” There’s no ONE answer to using audio and video to tell a good story. So how do we do it? Turns out a lot of the […]

For all of the massive technology improvements and innovations within the AV industry, there is irony in the faster obsolescence of digital equipment compared to the analog age of AV, leaving customers vulnerable to unexpected end-of-life notifications of planned obsolescence at the discretion of the manufacturer and reducing the life-span of digital AV gear. In […]

Customer acquisition is time-consuming and expensive, so it makes sense to treat prospects and customers as valued people when they’re looking for your brand on social media. As a person who has a great deal of understanding about the time, effort, and costs of new prospects earned through marketing, I am acutely aware of the […]

Technology is an ever-changing environment, and the world of AV technology is no different. Change allows technology industries to thrive, given that the people working in the industry see it for the opportunity it represents and embrace their new futures to pursue it. Many times embracing change means that it’s time to retool our businesses and part […]

For the past two years, the ProAV audiovisual industry has been consistently trending upward, demonstrating strong demand for technology solutions that enable people to communicate and collaborate more effectively. To gauge the ProAV industry’s performance each month, the Audiovisual and Integrated Experience Association (AVIXA) created the Pro-AV Business Index in September 2016. Since then, the […]

Church AV needs are wide and varied, but one of thing they all have in common when it comes to technology: Church AV tech needs a greater focus on innovation than new inventions. Innovation Over Invention Perhaps my favorite example of a firm that gets innovation and obsesses over it is IDEO, a firm that […]

If you’ve read my posts before, you’ll notice that I have rarely predicted the death of any particular technology or business model. Sure, I have my ideas on where the industry is heading or which technologies may ultimately win out in the end, but I never go so far as to say this is the […]

People are people, so how people make decisions is a mix of intellectual and emotional thought patterns. This is true for the audiovisual industry and every other industry. In a sense, therefore, it may seem that business-as-usual for promoting, educating and selling audio visual systems and equipment means that your business doesn’t need to change […]

Unless you’ve been in a hole the last few years, you most likely have noticed the increasing conversation in AV about software, managed services, and IP based signal distribution. Given all of the buzz and apparent end-user demand for all of the above, surprisingly, only a select few AV companies have turned the corner on […]

The AV industry sucks at marketing. Everyone knows it because marketing across the audiovisual space is generally equally crappy. It’s boring, over-hyped, and under-designed. Pablum. Noise. Filler. “But we need A4, full-color printed spec sheets handed to us at trade shows,” said no buyer in the 21st century. “The ad of a smiling, stock photo model […]

I woke up Sunday morning to some interesting Twitter conversation started by fellow AV professional Chris Neto about the subject of AV education. The question revolved around whether or not certifications or formal college education is more important in qualifying someone to be successful in the field of AV. To break down the responses in […]

‘Solve their technology pain, then introduce them to a technology strategy.’ That should be the mantra for consultants, systems integrators, and manufacturers selling to the church market. The House of Worship (HOW) market is not without strategy. In fact, they’re some of the most focused organizations around when it comes to their strategic purpose. However, they […]

There are stories of heroism and sacrifice, bravery and suffering and the rediscovering of the word ‘neighbor’ in the wake of what may be the worst flooding disaster in the history of the United States. Beyond the dramatic news coverage of dramatic aerial shots of Houston’s unprecedented floods are the social media feeds of cell […]

In the spirit of the 4th, I submit the AV Declaration of Independence from the Tyranny of … HDMI. Enjoy:) When in the course of industry events it becomes necessary for AV people to dissolve the political bands which have restricted their devices from being connected to one another and to assume among the powers […]

On Christmas day in 2016 there was an invasion.  Over 1.2 million people awoke to find ornately wrapped boxes from loved ones or “Santa” that contained gifts nearly 62 million Americans longed to receive: Drones. Drone sales in the US hit over 2.5 million in 2016, nearly doubling sales of the unmanned aircraft in 2015.  […]

Last week the Integrate Expo took place in Melbourne, Australia and one thing seemed to stand out, according to rAVe, which was LG’s OLED Wallpaper (below). Is this indeed the future of AV? Is it the future of display technology? You can be the judge, I do have my own thoughts. Prepare to be BLOWN […]

We’ve all heard the saying that in a digital world, content is king. Some still stand by that saying and in the face of a never ending avalanche of content out there, others have started modifying it to include variations like relevant content is king or context is king. I don’t disagree with any of […]

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. […]

As it turns out, a new year comes with some new perspectives. As you know I have for the most part of the last year been writing about numerous technologies along with AV/IT (?) –  Cloud, IoT, Virtual Reality and more, as well as features like Convergent TechWeek and This Week (in AV and IT), […]

If your company is not using Snapchat yet, it needs to start doing so NOW. Snapchat is yet another social media tool that you can use to effectively (and easily) market your product, company and/or brand. What is Snapchat? Beginning as a classroom creation at Stanford University, the application developed by Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy officially launched […]

Trial and error, although time consuming, will be your friend in this part of the advertising process. Choosing an ad creative means determining the most effective visual to go along with the content you’re advertising. You have the opportunity to choose a few different visuals, or creatives, to go with your ad as long as the visuals abide […]

You’ve created your page and chosen your target audience. Now it’s time to set your budget. Before we begin, I want to give you a forewarning: I don’t have all the answers as to how much your particular advertisement is going to cost. It all depends. But, that being said, I do have the answers as […]

You’ve decided on an objective, or call to action, for your Facebook advertisement. Now it’s time to actually set up the advertisement. Who are you targeting? What are are you trying to reach? How long will the advertisement run? Oh, and the big question: how much will it cost? This blog post is going to […]