Part 2: How the 5 Books of ITIL Can Relate to AV

June 17, 2020

In the last article, I gave an overview of what ITIL/ITSM are and how a similar methodology could be beneficial in the AV world. In this follow-up, I want to discuss the five volumes or books of ITIL and how they can translate to AV. A repeat of the disclaimer: I am in no way […]

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Shifting to a Remote Collaboration World

April 3, 2020

With everything that is going on around us, we are seeing plenty on the news and about folks having to work remotely. Over the coming weeks and months, we will see quite a bit about how we’re not keeping up and that business continuity is failing. Based on what I am observing first-hand from my […]

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UI vs. UX: The Battle for Happier Customers

February 6, 2020

Like most folks out there, I spent many years not understanding what UX (User eXperience) was and, more importantly, what the difference between UI (User Interface) and UX was. Over time I came to realize that what was being commonly delivered as a UI in the AV world did not translate to good customer experience. […]

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The Importance of Language and Communication in Technical Industries (Particularly AV)

January 15, 2020

For this article, I wanted to step away from AV and all that fun stuff and talk about a far bigger issue, which is communications. One thing that became very clear to me very quickly when I moved from being a long term “AV guy” to being an end user is that we have some […]

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The Sensor/Data/Analytics Footprint

December 23, 2019

This is part four in a four-part series Christopher Gillespie has been writing about the relationship between end users and integrators, particularly with regards to corporations or educational institutions that have a large number of conference rooms. See part one, his introduction, here, part two on the AV bill of materials here and part three, […]

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The ITSM Architecture

December 19, 2019

This is part three of a four-part series from Christopher Gillespie. Read his introduction here and his piece on the AV bill of materials here. Years ago, maintaining and reporting on the inventory was a matter of many spreadsheets, maybe a home-baked database, perhaps it was some hybrid, or maybe it was Crestron Fusion or […]

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The AV Bill of Materials (BOM)

December 16, 2019

Standardization… the holy grail of the corporate customer. Years ago, when building out a technology space, enterprises relied 100% on the expertise of AV integrators and consultants. This worked well when the spaces consisted almost exclusively of just a few really big complex ones (auditoriums, boardrooms, EBCs, etc.), but over time, starting in the early […]

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A View from the End User Side of the Fence

December 4, 2019

The good folks at rAVe [PUBS] reached out to me and have kindly asked me to contribute on a more frequent basis around here. As it happens, I had something that I was working on that I would like to start with that’s a little broader than what I have written previously. I mentioned something […]

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Standardize the User Experience

August 28, 2019

Everybody says they have standards… but what does that even mean? Are we talking about a locked bill of materials? Did you mean that certain gear is non-negotiable but other stuff you have the flexibility to substitute (you mean whatever manufacturer you have the best back-end rebates from? yeah… we know)? How tightly are those […]

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The Cost of a Meeting

July 22, 2019

So after about 17 years working as an integrator, as a rental staging guy, and as a manufacturer, I got my first job working as an end user. I figured that based on my background and experience that this would be a no-brainer. I mean how hard can it be? I know all this stuff. […]

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Conference Space Stakeholders — Trying to Please Everyone

June 24, 2019

In my last article, I spoke of the need to design the spaces we deal with not by thinking about the tech stack, but instead from the perspective of an experience. But in order to do this, we need to understand WHOSE experience we are referring to. For the most part, when we design a […]

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Don’t Bring Me Gadgets… Bring Me Data!

May 29, 2019

By and large, our industry has four players… we have manufacturers, we have dealers/integrators and consultants (let’s be honest though, they are really two sides of a coin) and then we have the end user.Twenty years ago, a user would come to a consultant or a dealer and say… “I need a room built out!” […]

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