OK, so on the second day of the show I found the best thing I have seen so far this year. And it isn’t a product.

It’s a program.

Let me back up a bit.

This morning, two longtime friends and colleagues from “down under,” Rod Brown and Jonathan Seller, introduced me to two friends from Wahroonga, which is outside Sydney in NSW (New South Wales). Rod and Jonathan are InfoComm management in Australia, and the two young men they introduced me to, Benny Caswell and Tobias Ogle, have created a program they thought would interest us at rAVe — and it certainly did.

Benny is the AV specialist at Knox Grammar School in Wahroonga. Toby is a former student, now a volunteer — and they have created a program around AV for students at the school called “Tech Crew.”

Many of us at InfoComm had our first experience with AV at the grammar school level. I did, and it not only pointed the way to my future career, it changed the way I felt about school. I think many other InfoComm attendees have had similar experiences.

But they happened by chance, and the program that Benny created and Toby has helped him grow formalizes a way to give the boys in the school a positive experience with being part of an AV crew. And they have put such structure and thought into the program that our international association, InfoComm, considers them an example to be used with other schools. And the program is so popular that there is a waiting list to get in.

And they’re right.

I sat down to do a 20 minute interview with Benny and Toby, and spent an hour, fascinated by their program — and their enthusiasm. That interview will become the basis of my next podcast. I was going to use it for this post, but as we finished the interview they handed me a video, created by the boys in their program, that truly says it all. And I want you all to watch it.

I have written many times about the power that our industry has to communicate in ways that can improve people’s lives, but “Tech Crew” has gone beyond that — they are actually doing it.

Watch.

JRR