Frank Pellkofer has been CEO at several companies in the AV IT space and board or committee member of several organisations including the Order Of Odd Fellows whose mission it is to improve and elevate the character of man. The Petaluma music festival which funds musics in local schools and the Mid-Pacific Information and Communication Technologies Center, that helps improve career pathways for thousands of students.
He is currently CEO at Utelogy, A Software-Defined Platform to Control, Manage and Analyze Your Enterprise.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AB IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive we are the crown jewels in the I key and we have to act like with the look and feel like your email like their voice over IP like their security like a virtual people always say well you know software off somewhere to find what what is here is what happened network of that network doesn’t go out we are so defensive about our industry that we don’t understand I see that we’re preventing our own chest like not great looking at ourselves actually specialized IT bars springtime greetings from sunny central Europe my name is Patrick Murray and by the time you hear this it will probably be cold and rainy here again today’s guest has been CEO at several companies in the FBI T. space and his linkedin profile shows a more charitable side where he has been up award committee member of several organizations including hello to my music festival which funds music and local schools and the mid Pacific information and communication technology center that helps improve career pathways for thousands of students as you all know I love learning and teaching solve all behind that and he’s also on the board of order of Oddfellows whose mission it is to improve and elevate the character of man that sounds pretty darn interesting he’s currently CEO at utility a software defined platform to control manage and analyze your enterprise ladies and gentlemen Frank tell cover Frank welcome to the show well thank you Mr Murray how are you today I’m doing excellent how how are things by you very good here in California the seven forty five AM and %HESITATION you’re in my second favorite country on the planet dear Deutschland yeah the if I was ever going to have to go somewhere else that would be the place I choose what brought you I know you’re interviewing me but what brought you to turn the tables that love not money so my what I believe to my wife’s hometown she had she had family in my hometown and lots of back and forth over the years and eventually she won that battle so that that’s my story and I’m sticking to it so Frank is there anything about that immediate called out very good stable Deutsche we can do the women on the podcast in in German right miss everybody or in one week maybe maybe the next one that’s a good idea for a show is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to correct or expand upon no it’s the pendulum music festival we raise money for a band instrument augment teacher salary well the Oddfellows is an organization that dates back to the UK in the seventeen hundred and it’s just all about the community educating orphaned centrum and then yeah mid Pacific a call them pick on the Pacific ICT and it is an initiative in the western United States among community colleges which you know several hundred and it’s all about making sure that the I. he he Asian cracks or dressing the types of things that are coming so that they put out students at the have the information they need to be successful sure I I imagine a lot of the changes that we see in technology easily schools will need to keep pace with that and that must be a really hard challenge especially at the community level yeah I think it is a challenge because the you know Moore’s law yeah is got got got a pretty good element of truth to it so and if you do anything in education you know that curriculum is it takes it takes up a good effort to put together piece of curriculum for a single class and if Moore’s law has technology improving and doubling its capacity every you know you years it’s a big effort to keep pace with the status of technology so but they use a bunch of business leaders on different committees to help no drive their curriculum advance that I I like being in that in that space interesting interesting stuff so it looks like your background is more I. T. based please correct me if that’s not correct accurate how did you get involved in AB well I built my first control system when I was in fifth grade no way I am yeah I had a eagles cassette tape that’s how old I am and effective with the let it be album and I’d ask my dad to take me down to the local hardware store we bought a he bought me a piece of why would a couple of light potentiometers dimmers in some AC receptacle and we built a box and I plugged in a few different like a cheap little plastic fiber optic you know fountain light then the yeah spinning you know kind of the way to the drama Dellums or the or I don’t even I’m not in the in the life of that date colored pieces of plastic with the lights behind it and and I spent a couple days building my box and then I went to waited until it was dark I had my parents to the next door neighbors come over and I put on the of the first title track of the let it be album in all two and a half minutes like made the lights go on and off and what I thought I was cool thing I wish I had that big that is cool you have any pictures of it I would only in my head that the and then I got into the AV business you know through like so many of us through life music you know if I play mandolin cheaper than a psychologist to play music %HESITATION and does it have some opportunities so you know in the in the nineties to produce MAV loved it thought it was very cool and it was way to make money and I haven’t really looked back %HESITATION I’ve had to learn like he and I really had to learn the last decade the ideal solution selling you know I had two good mentors and partners and you know people Helen helping me along the way like you all I’m I’m always trying to learn always curious now how did that guy you do so well have happy customers to pay them so much money what did he do what expectations did he that I did not so yeah it’s not always the they talk the technology that that is the deciding factor in these things there’s there’s often some nuances involved with it that %HESITATION yeah that they can only be learned sometimes you could learn them as one plus one is two more but more often than not it’s it’s a it’s a more nuanced thing that %HESITATION that you can’t directly just kind of learned you just kinda have to be around it and experience it a little bit so I like that you mention the fact that the mentors or important to you %HESITATION how do you did you just kind of bump into somebody that that helped you along your way or did you actively the seek a mentor and and how did you go about that process what was it a was even like something you set out to do or did it just happen oh yeah in fact my very first business was a coffee cart college I was going to and and so I reached out to the CFO of the college I knew he had gone to UC Berkeley’s graduate school of business and then I also reached out to the dean of the business department professor Alistair Milroy who owned a shoe manufacturing company in the UK before he got in the teaching of I said Hey here’s an opportunity but I don’t really know what to do and never had a business before wondering if you guys can help me and they did and that I kind of got me hooked on the idea of mentors it and I’m not sure how many people on the planet which I don’t have an ego but you have to set aside your ego and really be willing to embrace your vulnerabilities and take a good hard look at you know what you think your strengths are and be willing to hear what other people think your strengths are not you know so I kept portfolio I mean I always you know one two three %HESITATION I mix them up but I keep in touch %HESITATION at least once a month to you know go to lunch have a phone call a great thing to do mentor say advocate for them great stuff I really appreciate that out that also the the tactical advice of keeping in touch and meeting at least once a month I’m actually in the middle of of the book %HESITATION ego is the enemy so it’s funny you should bring that up right now and now it does have a lot of %HESITATION knock on effects putting putting the ego to the side it just kind of a makes the glass empty in and ready to to receive the knowledge so let’s jump back to a V. could you tell me about your most successful project and and what made it special for you cool well for me there there’s so many you know there are some projects that you know don’t go well they all end we well yeah but you know you know how that goes I’ll have this the most successful project at least as far as you tell if you’re concerned is in the California community college system is we started in in higher education it was a way for us to do that our technology in an enterprise level without having to fly around the world we could do couple hundred three hundred five hundred thousand rooms %HESITATION and to do it in a in a in a region even though the longer sales cycle but I would say the Los Angeles community college district the C. I. O. name is Jorge mata they are the largest community college on the planet they have something like a quarter million students in any given semester if nine campuses yeah multi billion dollar operating budget and then they’ve got a problem I mean they’ve got a couple of thousand classrooms and when I I met Jorge at a CIO conference you know I would do what I always do which is you know not tell me about what kind of challenges you have with your technology in the classroom or conference rooms about that in it hit challenges you know are like nothing you would hear in a typical AV conversation because they really had nothing to do with video on the screen the quality of the audio challenges were decidedly Aikikai challenges I have no insight into my room I issue propriety it seems ridiculous but I have to pay so much money for a box that really running that you’ve got a chip in there at a PC that’s been locked down I have several hundred people on my I. T. staff and I have a choice to have to either hire one or two people with a very highly specialized skills that they go away I’m stuck or I have to hire a third party you know with this with this skill set and done yeah so so those are some of this pain and he wants the ability to have we deliver a ubiquitous user experience regardless of what integrator you use but it goes further you go I’m spending twenty five thousand dollars a cluster on average two thousand classrooms seven year refresh fifty million dollar eighty budget right so divide that by seven years that’s a very significant amount of money sure and he’s responsible to board of trustees faculty taxpayers in his case and and he wants to understand what the effective the technology having unlike student learning outcomes for instance right then fact this goes to about a value conversation that I hope we can touch on put so well we did a first it was like fifty rooms of proof of concept and then we did another eighty rooms and then we did a project that couple hundred rooms it ended up being about three hundred fifty rooms over the course of two and a half years triple redundant you know virtual environment circuses datacenters he’s got three data centers spread throughout the south land will third one is virtualize they just picked all the boxes for him and he didn’t force that he he he let it run its course it was evaluated by all nine campuses directors like pee on each campus that to me from a sales perspective was just a highlight from a technology in its success perspective it was a highlight from the I. O. level and a very large enterprise with a couple thousand rooms it was a highlight and my favorite quote is I always say well you know software also where to find what what is right it all fear fear fear in Horry goes so we had our Australian partner out if he came into her disability here’s what happened network goes out Jorge across my network doesn’t go out I have utility I have you told you getting right next to my payroll server what if my payroll server goes up and he had it all you shouldn’t be in this role if you’ve got network problems like that it’s the truth rank yeah so anyway very big highlight except and then they ended up buying a you know a seven figure option on a on a five year plan for your contract with us and you know we love it and that was very successful everyone happy teachers students Theo our company just when when when I really really love that story there’s so many elements that I’d like to touch on I don’t think we’ll have the time to hit the mall but %HESITATION you found like the golden end user who really just laid out these needs was launched knowledgeable of the network right just sink my network does not go out AV people not all of them of course it’s getting better but you know everybody tries to do this private network where we close everything off into our own little networking called a network and that’s not really the idea we’re not taking full advantage of everything that standards based networks offer to us there’s like I said there’s a lot I want to touch on but I’m curious about that so what kind of a issues did you run into in in the first few rollouts with that project well a network issue actually the very first one he had a campus that was you know a hot mess of the network and and it was a it was a major issue but we spent a lot of time really focusing on the customer what the challenges were and it and remember this was the PLC we didn’t get past this that one we weren’t going to get that we was going to be yet in all likelihood so so helping them understand what the problem was instead of a big finger pointing exercise teachers would call a river are still gonna James Gonzalez on this project teachers would call on a Saturday they had shattered the clock this isn’t working you know he’d have to walking through he would go there a lot of days you know for for a couple of months to hold their hand but also to really make sure that he was understanding what that pain point was and understand the customer use case scenarios and so instead of a finger pointing will this doesn’t work because we knew they understood at a at a intellectual level but the possibility could be needed to improve their network so that that’s how it went in and %HESITATION we work with the I. T. department we’ll sell network but in their case their HP we work very closely with Cisco’s well but in in their case it’s an H. P. network and we were able to work with their team and I would say from an integration perspective that’s a huge huge requirement if you’ll have high level specialists like you know CCIE which are not cheap people or people like our mutual friend Misha Vander stoop on your team you’re not going to be very successful in the new paradigm twenty work in the old paradigm right that’s not going the way I would argue that right now it’s just the rate of growth with hotel rooms boardrooms conference rooms collaboration spaces is double digit it will be double digit for several years to come as far out as we can see in the future so there there I would argue the only room for both in the and that it could it comment there but it’s a recurring theme throughout the network yeah it comes up quite yet like the old I don’t even want to call it old but the very specialized highly customized one off type rooms that could get very complex they’ll always be there and %HESITATION they’ll always be custom and you don’t kind of the island so we do you know that the customisation and maybe a hardware based approach is kind of okay but if you’re but you can’t scale so %HESITATION anything that needs to operate at scale many many hold rooms or middle sized conference rooms we’ll need to start take advantage of the network I just want to point out the lesson that I got from that last part of the story because my next question was you know what kind of trouble did you have and how did you solve them you talked about hands on support and of course support really is the secret sauce to agree business and long term customer relationships but you pointed out that it it it improves your knowledge of how your systems are being used and that was and that was intentional it wasn’t just a group provide great support for the customer to it to win that customer over which of course is a great thing to do anyway but you also saw value in in learning about your own products and and how it’s being used and I I think that’s a really important point of that story so after that you’ve got you’ve got this projects with some kind of the perfect end user lots of knowledge budget you’ve got this proof of concept you move beyond that and and did the large roll out what was kind of the next step and what what activities really provided the most traction on to get you to where you are today well on that particular project he was repeating that PLC process on as well I mean you can imagine right so in pollution sale you know the monstrous find pain you pay if you gonna boil down that’s it and but it is any enterprise environment if if you’re not the thing the committee right for constituency if you will the users the technical the business folks CFO sucker and the financial well I would say maybe maybe you’re executive sponsor director level not using then you’re not you’re not captain to the source Monica that are key all the values good plucked out of the project at that point commodity one one to ten are for men and so %HESITATION in think about consultants in our industry right they’re the ones that are tapped into the value tell me what you’re trying to achieve challenges trying to overcome projector they’re the ones that are sitting there with those four constituencies and having a conversation well I mean fix it go have those conversations and there’s nothing wrong with the night he or maybe you know far I prefer to call them that you’re having those kind of conversations in your value added reseller as opposed to an integrator integrator implied your technical that your value proposition but you’re also fighting margins of your of our you’re probably having the conversations with core constituency so relative to your question our conversations were multiple multiple they you know they have a your district technology committee with all the I. T. you know leaders from all the top nine campuses they have a user group committee two years about they all meet quarterly so you can imagine though one report on your progress ask questions what have you learned you know there’s seven camp of the year that haven’t you two camps is let’s share what you know what you’re and it developing trust with all of those constituencies over the course of time and of course it doesn’t go perfect there’s people that raise questions and and you know fear uncertainty doubt we don’t have that then you’re not either asking the right questions or or or not it’s a normal part of it all only get to go to all of that and address them one by one they even went so far as to hire two different consulting firms outside of what they normally higher to design classroom one was an I. T. bar in the Midwest an IT consultant in the Midwest one was an eighty consulted in the Midwest it with other state to a value away again to the old paradigm you know giants in the industry yeah that that was a particularly proud moment because now there’s something published in the public record that we scored perfect scores you know in a whole bunch of areas and you know very respectable and you know leaders in our industry that I was a proud moment sorry I probably got off track what would you get not at all we have always asking you how you gain traction with end users because you kind of alluded to it the way a V. projects flows from from my perspective as a programmer and for many integrators as well is the end customer in lists of consultants to make a a a specification and that is what we see right and and that’s and then the project gets done and then maybe there’s some contact with the end user afterwards to %HESITATION to fill in the blanks that were missed in in Madame in in that process and dumb I’m noticing it already now that it is it’s it’s a different business flow being AB programmer there were just a few manufacturers that people choose from and the phone would just kind of ring right the everybody else would do the hard work of marketing and sales and the phone would just kind of ring but now with software based solutions where even if you’re doing something open source if it’s affordable or not doesn’t really mean much of a difference there’s there’s some there’s this new marketing and sales process that it’s just inherently different than than something that’s hardware based so that’s something I grapple with a lot ends you definitely answered the question quite well it’s really enlightening these these four constituencies that you that you spoke up and down that was definitely I would I would add you know in the end you just said it and I’m coming from a place of deep respect that but you said you know you get to the project you go through your having in the programmers in particular are very well positioned to hit in the matic shift in approach that I’m talking about from a just from a stylistic approach to value added sales solution sale but you said something that I just broke down contacting the customer afterwards small changes in follow up I would argue there is no afterwards that may be the biggest issue that the AV industry has a lot to continue on this conversation with this particular customer okay community college district two thousand rooms nine campuses do you take in a two thousand room license off the table subscription it done and for the several AV you know integrators along the way you know we’re trying to get them to go in with us we can’t get them that you know were looted were bad you’ll die you know no one ever got fired for hiring big blue IBM right sure well well now that we’ve got the license and now that they’re moving forward with with implementing okay new building coming on line here new building their twenty five rooms here fifty rooms there and that will go on over the next five years actually the refreshing every room on the platform of the next five years and not a single AB integrator they look at these folks it’s twenty five rooms I don’t want to bid on what you tell you they’re not in there asking if they are the only intelligent they’re calling us in any to quote this is impossible to put the system on you tell you plot so not like completely and totally missing the target altogether but the worst part is to them that twenty room project fifty room project is the start and end that said there is no ongoing there is no enterprise conversation and and I see it repeating itself over and over again back I want to start a class called enterprise solutions only Brimble come I keep telling myself I want to do that psycho I would argue that I’m gonna go off of off road here go crazy we were talking recently about you and I about the IT industry twenty seventeen was a three point five trillion dollar global industry and depending on what numbers you look at the AV industry twenty seventeen was about a hundred and twenty billion maybe a hundred and fifty billion somewhere in there globally which is about three three and a half dance you know cake of the total like he global spent in twenty seventy five would argue that we in a V. have been so defensive and I’m for maybe I owned an immigration company in California for decades that that that we are so defensive about our industry and we don’t understand I see that we’re preventing our own success by not in bracing and looking at ourselves actually specialized I. T. bar we are the crown jewel like he and I would bet you would never talked about this but I would be willing to to to say go out on a limb and say Patrick you have been involved in AB project where you struggle to have a meaningful cooperation or communication with an IT department weather was the network folks with it with the datacenter folks whatever they are I wouldn’t give us the time of day or the information we needed or they throw up their hands and said you had to build a different network winning one yard you have probably absolutely ASEAN and the result of that is we said okay the truth of the matter is that not what they want they want your stuff our stuff on their network they just don’t believe us we can’t have a coherent conversation yeah when we’re done with the project and the building opened up and all the contractors could become you’ve probably been to those kind of party the lobby party where they celebrate they bring in you know the the people that founded the building the people that built the building users and everyone get to spend a couple hours you know with cookies and punch and you know etcetera where the black people you’re showing off the board room they’re showing off our technology we install they wouldn’t have given the time today and I’m I’m being a little cheeky there but you get my point right we are the crown jewel in the IT industry we have to act like it with the look and feel like their email like their voice over IP like your security like the virtual desktops and when we do that whether you’re using our technology here you tell he or whether you’re using you know our competitors technology we it makes the AV world show up in a completely different way and here’s what you’ll experience you’ll experience and I key department going well I get it thank you conversation done you got to be able to talk about the security protocols which you you know measure that guy is probably you know took top ten globally from the network perspective John chambers of Cisco he was like up there in in in John chambers whenever John chambers within the media Michelle was there supporting him that kind of thing Michel does you know network reference architecture for companies that have ten thousand rooms globally in you know eighty countries hundreds of city where the crown jewel of I. T. that’s my claim and I’m sticking to it I love the mindset specialized IT VA ours and and and that the I. T. people basically show off our stuff because Iraq is a rack and %HESITATION you know video is much more interesting so can we can we get a little tactical because the message to me is loud and clear I love it but there are some steps to get there so what what should a company with a traditional AV backgrounds or even a an independent programmer like myself what are some steps they can take maybe you break it down what what should a sales person be doing what should a technician or a programmer be doing to be able to have better conversations with with IT well first off so I I mention the poor constituencies right technical users executive director I two years ago she also but you need an executive sponsor for us it usually director right here CIO of my experience with it and they’re not all like that Minami be clear this you know I’m being very general here applying at a high level but HV world it’s very comfortable talking to technical people at a customer site right an AV department yeah if there is one I find it challenging not to talk about technical well and there’s a very important space for that but that is I would argue the biggest discipline the biggest thing we have to discipline ourselves to a boy on demand to elevate conversation the director level how do you do that applause and I HV integrator today I would be doing small regional shows with the ideals I would not have it if you ever come to you elegy boost that these kinds of things you’ll never see a piece of equipment in our place ever ever ever okay death of a sale because I’m not here to show you the thing I’m here to find out your challenge that’s the key thing is not to do that tactical focus on the strategy number one right small regional the audio show government education you know small medium businesses if you’re big enough to handle large scale you know fortune ten thousand companies you know great if you’re not avoid them because they’re huge and cumbersome you can do a lot of damage from a you do a lot of great things I should say with a law firm that got you know fifty conference rooms in three locations in your state right sure and there’s a lot of good value to be had here so that’s the first thing the second thing it’s just focusing on the paint in those conversations strategy and I might thing is when I’m talking to CIO I will say so for our first meeting I only fifteen minutes of your time twenty minutes Max will make it quick I want to get to the word no as fast as possible and I want to waste your time or mine okay then I say but I get the meeting then I say what I really want is just you by yourself none of your team I don’t want to bring your integrator to mean you and usually she or he will agree to that then I shall tell me about your challenge what you pay because their team is there day will not tell you what their challenges are they want a candid peer to peer conversations almost like a mentor relationship yeah and I swear it’s a fascinating don’t tell you one of my challenges you know my eighty integrator they think they hold me hostage you know the TV broke when my team won out they got a new TV you know they just want to hang it and change the code that two weeks before that but you know the integrated could come out they want to try to get out of well you’ve got a thousand rooms in that you know in every room requires that you know once or twice over the life of the system that that’s a Burr under the saddle their their world is not should be able to do this I had an employee quit on my voice over IP canceled you know that that that their email account cancel their voice over IP account yeah I had a night the bar install the voice over IP them but I can manage it I can make changes been up a new account these people want let him have what they want then the next strategy that value now you have an honest conversation okay sounds like we’re not at the word no what’s the best next step who should I talk to your organization to get this going my goal is to have a proof of concept I want you to go by five rooms in any good CIO or any good director like he is not going to make unilateral decisions gonna send it down for betting to their team if they don’t they’re not good now we get permission to go start having meetings with the team sponsored by the executive we got our exact spot I’m going to go through that and then that’s when I would bring in someone senior like you right and I’d say well you know please make Patrick Murray he is highly technical been here done that and I think that for programmers in our industry they’re the best position to do that as opposed to being your install technician the programmers are the ones that understand architecturally at the high level how these things go together there is a one the one constituency navy that had both conversations about what are you trying to achieve with this user are you trying to achieve user experience so that’s when I bring those people in preventing and I will and if their network experts I’ll leave it at that if they’re not then you know I treated as user experience expert then I will also bring in a network expert and my goal there squash the network conversation factor that comes up Bennett if you got the right person they’re gonna you know good customers because they will what the effect on my network what your security protocol how do you avoid you know X. Y. Z. how many hops on the network what do I gotta do what ports you’ve got to be opened up tracker tracker and that conversation will pop up like you’re in it go in fifteen minutes and now they’re open to everything else that you want to talk about you still have to go through and that you know invalidate the network architecture in support of this paired up right but you still need now there had the you shut down the whole voice in their heads and you’ve got there full attention instead of every time you bring something up there thinking security how that’s going to work where do you expect work which I consider AV programs to be at a network expert which I it I believe that yeah AV programmers are the best suited and have the closest you’ll that in our industry to be able to learn and fill those roles and like you said earlier you love to learn I love to learn you know I I got it in a at one point you twelve years ago now but believe me if I can do it anybody can do it in it now helps me in my conversation so tactically those are the first few steps and my goal is to get to a proof of concept from the business owner’s perspective it takes some money and really the new value here is A. V. as a service when you tell it to the platform that enables back managed service provider that’s one thing right but in the AV industry we’ve done this idea of a services contract what a services contract it’s nothing more than an actuarial bat between me and the customer they’re betting that their maximum exposure is at and I’m betting that I built the system so well that I’m in a pocket that money you know and wore this for a year right and what kind of a long term relationship is that when at the end of a specific project we’ve now got a bet against each other basically some sort of insurance policy two eighty years of service five I’ve done all that heavy lifting up front understand your problems to quell the concerns of your team to earn your trust to prove that the concept works now we’ve got a relationship now we’re actually got a partnership where a partner a trusted partner a trusted value added part margins are now healthy the relationship is awesome and now I’ve got a subscription model so where do you go if you’re a business owner well go finance the pure Cisco reseller I don’t know what what their arms under some nexus half or sixty percent of the of the you know project involves disco equipment don’t finance the whole thing the whole con of finance companies out there that can bond the idea of AV at the service just as a subscription there is no upfront cost you gonna take whatever gonna pay fifteen hundred dollars a month for this conference room with dual screens in a disco that sex twenty you know of buying up you know to Sarah sound bar where whatever it may be right whether Hubbell rumor complex order and you can price it accordingly and what you’ll find is that and it’s actually not that hard to sell in fact it’s a huge asset to most entity especially in the corporate space because instead of having to capitalize the put on their books straight line you know amortized and appreciate it’s just only expendable suddenly in companies leave things all the time and until we change the whole model to look like %HESITATION my voice over I pieces restriction most of my video is now subscription most of my C. R. M. is now subscription most of my ERP I don’t know what the number is but a vast majority it think that IT departments by our bought today as a subscription so we need to change the business model we need to change the failed approach we need to train up our AV programmers which are very well positioned to leverage this and in it and then at that point you know it just becomes a matter of implementation and we already understand that we can go in and have those conversations the gossip I plugged the TV in two or you know ungrounded you know isolated ground I knowing that have like a hermit shoppers are so much war you know sixty cycle home an audience that’s an expertise that we have right and and not another part of our our value whole conversation in the subscription business model it worked six eight times trailing twelve months rather than whereas the contracted model it word for the five times even huge difference in valuation on top of the huge difference in margin I’m on a mission not just for my company industry that I love I’m on a mission to get our margins back be the crown jewel of I. T. and to eliminate fear that I think a lot of people in our industry have because we’re undergoing this paradigmatic shift but I’m here to tell you there’s nothing to be afraid of it safe we’ve been doing it for decades for five competitors like me Barco bought media along you know what this could start I would argue are little better and I say that with a smile on my face but it could stop Kramer bought I rule it’s not I got nothing against my competitors because they were out there doing this paradigm shift as well like it like explores in the old days so nothing to be afraid of call us call them will will walk you through it will have the conversation will take the time the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago the next best time to plant a tree today again thank you so much you’ve got another call to take in a few minutes but I definitely would like to have you back on flora a part too because you just laid out and a business plan basically you’ve you gave us the entire game plan to get from where we are to where we need to be and I have a lot more success and not only that the motivation on top of it I really do appreciate that and I thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today if anyone would like to get in touch with you how would they do that well our website you elegy dot com you T. E. L. O. G. Y. dot com I’m Frank helicopter you can find me on linked in course I always want to talk about you tells you but really a rising tide list all ships and you know you hear me talk about our competitors I’m so happy they’re here so I want to have a conversation and we can do this together Patrick let’s work together to elevate the industry and that’s what our party is that I see at Infocom the called the machete club has nothing to do you’ll never see us mention our name if you’re in an on board with the shifting paradigm and join us whether you appreciate what we bring to the table or what our competitors bring to the table not none of that matters us there were all good we all have a good solution what matters is that we’re changing our industry and if in the end of your on board with that you know having those kinds of conversations you know all be on all the time because I’m gonna keep it neutral I’m not going to make this about our company it’s about our industry me yeah my company will just ride with that conversation absolutely there’s I mean just the numbers you were mentioning comparing IT Davy there’s lots of elbow room so even the word composition is %HESITATION the it does direct competition I think is a not really what’s going to happen how this will play out at least for some time so thank thank you so much for being on the show Frank and will definitely do a part two some time you got it my friend thank you so much out leaders stand choose it is and we got on this muscular shell Patrick here again Frank got you all excited about software and living up to the moniker of being the crown jewel of IT you’re going to need some new skills and more importantly mine’s a new way to think about a new approach to designing and delivering projects so I encourage you to go to learn even program dot com just read the home that’s it just read the whole page that resonates with you then go ahead and click the button at the bottom of the page and sign up for the starts and some females with more ideas technical info on how to start expanding beyond the comfort zone that’s learn AB programming dot com all right get out there role adapts and let’s live up to specialized role in IT I’ll see you next week thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to solve thirty find survival dot com
Steve Greenblatt is probably least known for being one of my former employers. His AV career began by spending a few years working as a Systems Engineer for Crestron, then he went on to found what was probably one of the first Independent AV Programming companies, Control Concepts. With over 21 years in business, Control Concepts is one of the longest running AV programming business out there. He is also host of AVNation’s A State Of Control.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive what we used to do you use to be magic right we nobody touch screen twenty five years ago it was scary we’re living in this this really boxed in world of hi Terry software say what I was looking at a seeing what can we do to augment that how could we stand apart from others how could we use other programming languages to be able to make systems more powerful I think that there needs to be more awareness for it from the every day eighty programmer as to being able to story offering and look beyond what got to the point that they currently are at %HESITATION today’s guest is probably least known for being one of my former employers his ABC career began by spending a few years working as a systems engineer for Crestron then he went on to found what was probably one of the first independent TV programming companies control concepts with over twenty one years in business control concepts is one of the longest running TV programming businesses out there he’s also host of eighty nations state of control and his name is Steven Greenblatt Steve welcome to the show thank you Patrick you glad to be here is there anything about that introduction that %HESITATION you’d like to correct or expand upon that sounded great and I appreciate all the acknowledgement and die I feel like I’m just a guy that said I try to help the industry get better and I look saw an opportunity to take what was done ad for manufacturer as it internal person and and dad with a little bit of confidence from my dad and from others say I hate I went and dad took the lead but it’s been a great adventure and dives back then to aid the flexibility of being able to explore what the future looks like from the control system programming and and other software development perspective yeah you’ve probably seen a lot over the past few decades on your own but %HESITATION you mention that jump from working for Crestron and deciding to go off on your own could you %HESITATION what was it that really motivated to you to do that what were you seeing in the industry what kind of opportunities did you think were available what was kind of going on in your mind at that time the industry was a lot different than now say and and I I know that that that’s probably look dad is set as an obvious statement but the question was a much smaller company and %HESITATION and it was the right time in the right place I was young enough and there seems to be a big needed a big demand for programming what I really did what I went off a bio days I wanted to be more relationship based rather than just looking at trying to get projects done and tried to satisfy deadlines in trying to make sure that sales were happening I I looked at it is or for personal level and and thought they do what we’re doing can be done a little bit more individual where where we can really get to know a client we can develop solutions that are really geared toward their needs I we could really focus on what it is that a wide and do what we’re doing at at a higher level it I kind of looked at it prior to almost look like an assembly line had to get a lot of projects out to do word order to keep up with the demand that I had not that we don’t have to work at a fast pace world now but what we can do now I think is really invest a lot more and be able to get more satisfaction to out of the work that we do a very very interesting so it sounds like you were way ahead of your time %HESITATION in in terms of user experience right that’s all the buzz word lately especially with Infocom changing its name and I think that’s really what you’re talking about is instead of just turning a projector on and off really focusing on what the users need absolutely %HESITATION aid user experience and and it’s funny because things like this a lot of times come up and you don’t really realize that at the time and then you look back and you say you know what we’ve been doing this for a long time but but it was also the relationships with all the players involved so only until recently and and this is kind of a shame but only it over the last baby I don’t know ten years we’ve really engaged a lot more with with the clients in the clients didn’t really understand door or get to be able to have that direct relationship with with with a programmer who we were always kind of behind the scenes and so is the relationships that we were developing back dead were more with the integrators and then maybe with consultants and and now with bad your factors but the integrators we were braced us because we help to fill the void that they needed in order to be able to complete their deep the puzzle indoor and and provide that solution so we were helping them strength in their resources and their offerings and then it took awhile honestly for the clients the end users to be able to identify with us and to know that the work the end product that they were seeing part of that contribution came from a programmer and somebody who daisy at they have been engaging with directly and it it’s sad it’s kind of interesting absolutely you touched on a few things there that I want to circle back to sometimes I wonder it’s it’s sometimes it’s obvious how AV projects how they flow how they actually happened like where do projects come from there’s a customer there’s a bid spec it goes out to bid an integrator gets it and then maybe a a programmer gets involved at some point along the way but there are also other times where integrators have a direct relationship with end users and that’s like you were kind of saying that’s not really common that up a software developer or programmer would have that kind of relationship when did you start to kind of see that change is there any kind of catalyst that happens that kind of made end users more aware or maybe a particular vertical where that awareness happens as opposed to another one you just talk a little bit about that you know direct contacts with end users and and anything you see about like what made that happen well it started way to weigh it with having some advocates and and having whether they were a somebody who is a two way streets to fan at work or so or or who is a partner or weighs eighty at an integrator hired us or consultants who who saw the type of work that we did they they needed to elevate our role within the project the needed they do we we have to give some of the credit to them for being able to identify the importance that we could play for the client and and bringing us to the table and and getting the clients to understand who we were that that was the starting point of it I think the other shift was a as were more systems he came mainstream and became part of the the landscape of of the clients organization and and and they care importance was elevated and and they they reliance upon that was so important they realized that they needed to have consistency and consistency from room to room and and a lot of that comes with being able to rely on a programmer or software developer to you to provide that solution and and be it be that clue that takes you from project to project and helps to maintain your standards and helps to be able to be the one that they guides them to maintaining the consistency it’s very easy to say you want to be state have standardization but it takes a lot of discipline to to really actually do it and I think that what once the systems grew in such a large number it was critical that that standardization was there and and clients also the end users clients I know of it you’re changing words but they they have to work with different parties state you know whether it’s based on location are based on costs are just based on bad where they have to work with different integrators and having a programmer to cut it to to be the bridge from from integrated into greater project to project was very helpful for them to maintain that standard so I think that that’s really where the turning point was that’s the that’s pretty interesting so advocates the people who were planning the projects %HESITATION realizing the importance of the software and also how the %HESITATION the end users started to realize that they needed these standards there’s there’s kind of a synergy there of of the consultants really %HESITATION seeing your value and the end users as the systems grew larger did that have anything to do with %HESITATION I guess it’s kind of how once the iPhone came out right then everybody kind of knew what we did we no longer just fix TV’s it was like people understood that we rooted AV signals from here to there was there anything else you saw in that kind of collaboration space that that made it happen like hotel rooms or an advanced video conferencing or anything like that Hey I think of the easy one to point to and say putting the systems on the network and okay you know being able to say that you had all these systems at your finger tips and they were now kind of inter connected and rather than having a lot of one offs that that may have also been in another part where we really though I thought started to go off to say that we’re we’re now looking at day says it from a holistic standpoint rather than this unique high end boardroom we have we have a a lot of systems that have different I levels of complexity different levels of capability but the experience needs to be very similar and the user shouldn’t have to go and learn how the system works for when they’re going from room to room they should be able to feel comfortable and in education I think was where that was first adopted because professors need to walk into a room to be comfortable and they’re not going to necessarily teach in the same lecture holler classroom I either daily basis or even I know from semester to semester so they shouldn’t have to go re learn this they they should be able to say where we’ve we’ve we’ve back to walk into a room and show comfortable teaching are presenting their yeah via the university space really seems to be one of the more educated verticals in AV they they they kind of understand the most about what we do I’d like to shift gears for a minute here and and talk a little more about the business about independent programming as a business you’ve been doing it for a really long time if you had to pick just a few things that you would attribute to your your ex success and longevity to what what would they be customer service is very important obviously and and I think that that holds true in every business we’re we’re also very protective of making sure that we maintain a a solid reputation and we me and we do right by people and and die and sometimes that means that we have to sacrifice things and sometimes we have to go above and beyond Darryl costs to make that happen and and that that’s something that I’ve always kept in mind I I think another one that has bubbled up for me and it took me awhile to realize this route which transparency you have to be honest with people you have to be able to tell them the good news and bad news you have to be able to tell them when something is going to work and when something’s not going to work you have to tell tell them when you’re not ready and you need more time to get something done even if they don’t want to hear that I think all those sure are are very critical and being able to to be ten success in and build trust because really what it’s about and and I am sure that I’m repeating some of the obvious but people do business with people and and what we do is provide technology and what we do yet as a by product of that relationship is is develop software and and do easiest implementation but it’s the relationship and and knowing that we have each other’s back and knowing that that we can be there to stand behind our work and and be behind what we say we’re going to do is is really what’s critical yeah yeah you do need to be reliable so %HESITATION you mentions that transparency part which I get completely but up personally I I find it hard sometimes to get people to understand like when we say we need these for things to do our job war this time frame is ridiculous we are going to be late if we try to stick to this I have a really hard time having those conversations do you do you have any tips for me how to communicate these things better it is tough it is tough because nobody wants to hear bad news I think that being able to well well what is it depends if it’s a new relationship or an old relationship because if it’s an old relationship I think that there will be some give and take in and there will be some some trusted knowing that when you really say that it’s the truth rather than having the buffer and the padding and add because a lot of times what I found a new relationships do you start off based on what you know and what you’ve experienced in the past and many times as unfortunate by clients have bad experiences in that may be why they’re making a change so they have to protect themselves today go that extra time they’d go the extra contingency is and and they want to make sure that this goes well and and they they don’t necessarily trust you when you tell them they did it the information that you’re you’re sharing because they’re skeptical know when it’s when it’s eighty existing relationship I think that there needs to be you if you point back to may be a past experience where you’ve worked with somebody or were you really map it out with the what are the things that I tell people is that you I know that we want to make this deadline for a quiet and today we know we we have this project now okay do that let’s talk about what it’s gonna take to get there because it’s not totally in my control and I can commit to doing this for you but I can’t control the information that I need or the responses Aidid or the approvals that Aidid at the time that it takes to get them so yes we we want to commit to this time frame for you but we have to understand that it everybody has to take part in making that happen and dad I know I don’t know if that’s really answering the providing it it did there would be a true answer that’s going to to be able to resolve these types of conversations but at least it’s helping to I think ease the situation and make people realize that ADD can’t just put all the oldest son somebody else to to make a deadline it’s the programmers faults that never happens so I’m maybe could you describe your ideal customer or the projects flown that that best works as a programmer the the way to to really approach a project I think most successfully is is to take the time up front to to really out wide what a what those expectations are to take to get the information to be able to almost come up I I think one of the things that a via and fortunately lose is that it is a lot more promenade is just traditional software development is the time it takes to really define a goods back in a good scope and and here the research injured as to what it is that we’re going to develop and and all the use cases and all of the personas and and that those are all things that go into software development and a lot of times that it’s totally glossed over in it AG so if we were to be able to take time to really sit down and and define what the client needs and who’s going to use the system and how they’re going to use the system have that documented side often approved grabbing see easy part after that yeah as and that and and a lot of times we we compromise all of the hard work that goes it up Friday and there we were wondering why the project did go well so it may I think proper planning and documentation and being able to to really explore all of those the what ifs and and make sure that everybody is in agreement as to what we’re planning to do usually results in a much better outcome yeah I see this more more the deeper I get into real programming how much how important it is to really document everything of course you have to do it anyway but and and having that conversation of course is a is the great first step but I’m what do you do when you meet some resistance on that day there are of course great integrators out there everybody has great intentions but time is always precious right there’s never enough of it and it’s really easy just to skip that step because you’re a smart guy you could figure it out so I will never skip this step of coming up with what we call a control specification which is some type of a document that says this is what we planned to do anytime there we’ve had to sacrifice that it’s been really only a handful those projects never go well and that step in our process is so critical because it forces us to think through all the details of the project it forces us to be able to explain and present what we planned to do and then it forces all the parties involved to be able to take the time to read review it and and be a good and have the opportunity to provide feedback hopefully they provided approval and sometimes it opens its doors to a lot of conversation by chance your question a little bit more about when you when you add are met with resistance I think that what we need to fall back to that is to be able to make some assumptions say he is based on my experience this is what I’ve done in the past and ended start going down that road will we start with a blank slate that usually makes it a lot more difficult to really get to the outcome that we’re going to you kind of have to steer the quiet you have to have to try to show the get give them options at that all the options that you are okay are comfortable with and packing rather than give them options that could lead to additional time or effort or complexity and that’s unfortunate it out because it you but that that’s that’s one way of being able to to handle the situations where you’re met with resistance I like that limit the options or you know at least suggests the options that that you know will lead to a good outcome did the control spec you were talking about what when does that happen typically in the project flow before after a contract is rewarded just yeah city we love to say before but it’s right at its afterward our process and and that that’s where the what what what is the shortcomings or one of the the %HESITATION I is that the sad parts about what we DO it out a lot of times what we would love to do is be able to get paid to develop that and and then say were any give our price based on that but many times what we have to do is we have to do to put out a proposal that we use our best assessment of four weeks think the clients looking for is you based on the questions we can ask in a pre into cells phase and then what we do is put together that specification at once were awarded the project and and we’re actually getting into it and eight it’s a tool for both parties so it is so it does have some value even for programmers to be able to ensure that when they actually sit down to do something that that they can do it once they can do it accurately and also there are are no obstacles hopefully preventing them from being successful yeah you’re almost guaranteeing your own success by taking that step and I’m going back again soft it’s a normal process in software development it’s it’s consulting comes first right to figure out what is it that we need to do unfortunately here in Germany you see you see specifications or or a I’ll try one it’s called it’s a bid spec and it’ll say programming as the customer wishes right and so basically what what do you do all you can do is make a quote based on a list of black boxes it’s it’s a it’s a real challenge and I think it’s one of the places where AV can do a lot better in an adopts more software standards it’s the only thing I’ll add to that dad I wouldn’t that that may be helpful for a client is to look at extending that relationship with with the programmer after the project’s died so that they can get that personalization and what we call user preference changes I think that that’s the interesting part of being able to have a relationship with a programmer to be able to continue to grow with them beyond the completion of the initial project and did this way they they don’t feel stock when they have this and say I really wish that it worked a little bit differently or I I it would be so much better if I had destruction or these buttons were placed differently and and day it could all be done is just a matter of having that relationship with the programmer writes it so how do you go about navigating that transition from maybe the integrator being your customer to their end user becoming your customer I would first start by offering that follow up with a user preference follow up and and put that day as it either an option or or as a base price and say the fact that we all know that when systems get in did they require some break in time so wouldn’t it be helpful to be able to have this catch so that the client can feel more comfortable knowing that we’re going to be able to they’re gonna come up with a list of five modifications and and they just men said we’re we’re going to address that list for them within reason and say thirty forty five sixty days whatever that might be whatever it it works fast and and I think it is a great way to of making the client feel more comfortable to that they don’t have to think of everything up front so it might be a great selling option two for the integrator and then discuss at that point there’s no more installation typically involve to it if it really may just be a matter of the project manager the program or the client get together to figure out what that is adjustments are are and there may be an option after that to be able to have maybe a meat it’s a great band or some type of a support structure to be able to continue to do those changes as they come up excellent so I’m starting to see a little bit of a theme in in the advice you’re giving me and it’s a I’m gonna boil it down to playing the long game I I I yes that’s true it it’s not about it not not about getting quick wins it what we do it’s it’s more about really building trust and add relationships and really getting a client word with you add knowing that there you’re gonna they’re gonna grow by having you on their team great stuff so well what changes are you seeing in the industry what what is a what’s on your radar I think they were all seeing a shift in moving away from is much hardware and I think that that that should be fairly evident there there is that also a big impact as consumerization as I call it in the industry where expectations are now being sat for our people using technology in their daily life and being able to go to El electronics store online and you do it having all those DIY solutions tinkering and what we used to do you used to be magic right we you know we touched a screen twenty five years ago it was scary now everybody’s dead that’s that’s all they know how to do in fact I think here you talk about little kids walking up to a TV and tried to swipe it out so it’s you know who what the expectations are being set now well before they are seeing what is being provided on a professional level and at what is being these communication systems that are that are mature enterprise grade but that’s not to say that the expectations are are influencing what we’re doing because they are a day you know eight eight eighty here all the time it just works and you and why is this so complicated and why it what Weiss’s cost so much and and it’s it’s really playing a big part of what we’re doing it in fact and this is the part that a I don’t quite understand but I needed seeing systems that are there years ago we we went from having rowboats to have a control system and now we’re almost go back the opposite where you see systems in a project where they say I we did need to control with this we just use their about are we going to get out and we’re going backwards now how is that any easier yeah I wonder about those systems excuse me if it’s just to save money I think that it it it’s the wrong solution because you can provide very cheap control now a days but a if they’re looking for simplicity even that I mean that too remotes that are delivered with a video projector for example you you need one or two of those buttons and guide their nightmare exactly so I I had and I would I wouldn’t I would argue that it is that it isn’t cost it’s just that they’re not getting the right solution sounds like some opportunity there I would say yeah so what kind of steps are you or your company taking to kind of prepare for this change I mean it’s already happening maybe you’ve taken some steps already to %HESITATION to be able to provide solutions that are more familiar to %HESITATION to consumer solutions so so about seven years ago we had a key higher they came on board and and at the time it was a little bit of a rescue is a little bit of future thinking and and visionary thinking by the thought was at the time and and and he sat as a software development background in the thought at the time voice work we’re living in this this really boxed in world of of proprietary software let’s say and and it it hate does the job and it’s working and and I wasn’t going to complain it was what we do but what I was looking at is is seeing what could we do talk about that how could we stand apart from others how could we use other programming languages in the power of I tea which was a you know probably not as mature early AB converged as it is now to be able to make systems more powerful and and be able to to maybe address these needs that clients have that they don’t even know that nobody even knows how to stop so that’s what are the steps that we took an ad we’ve we’ve really gone down that path there for a number of years in in the first couple years you know we’re just getting our feet wet but but now we’ve started to get known for doing more software development in war that less reliant on projects and and more OJ she adds event dinner theater in terms of being able to provide unique solutions so for examining sample yeah what what we talk about a lot is made aware of that and middleware has a lot of different herbs but but you know a good example of middleware is being able to take it a navy system and take some software or system that’s external and rate get a translator let’s call it that makes the to talk together so it may be exchanging authentication information it may be exchanging scheduling detail it may be for connecting with building controls there’s so many different ways of being able to provide that solution it and now what we do what we do there can be sold either as a product to be you to to to solve that particular need or can be used to prevent a bigger solution ad we could be involved in that solution or we could just be providing that one piece so that others can then construct a solution very interesting %HESITATION you mentioned a bunch of things that really aren’t AV but we deal with all the time like integrating with calendars maybe a directory and and dealing with that kind of authentication is is that should we be doing everything do we need to choose do you do you see a space to do you know normal AV routing and user interfaces and also provide these kinds of integration is or is it really necessary like you did is that to hire somebody who who really does specialized that sort of thing I think that there needs to be more awareness for you from the every day AV programmer as to being able to explore these offerings in the end at look beyond is white gotten to the point that they currently Iraq at you know and and I’m not saying it’s for everybody because it’s not it’s not the easiest thing in the world and quite honestly I started off being a programmer and have moved on to doing more business related roles but I don’t know if I would be able to make that job very easily without really investing in myself and taking the time to go there but but I think that the future easy programming needs to consider the fact that we have these these other powerful languages and tools at our disposal and in order for us to overcome the idea that we’re gonna go back to just using their about what we have to be able to be for fighting more solutions that clients will value and I think that they’re very willing to pay for them but they have to have a they have to solve it a need and they have to address white or they have to see if a client money or that you know there it went once you can demonstrate those things I don’t think that we’re going to be limited by cost fascinating I love the sentiment where I have a lot of trouble is %HESITATION is getting the real feedback right because there are plenty of ideas and software opens up so many doors and anything really is possible but but really figuring out what is useful to a particular market I find that to be really challenging I I don’t disagree and I think that this is why we do podcasts and this is why we do you develop content and and you’re with the D. yeah I give you a ton of credit for with the things that you’re doing and and I think that you are very much in the minority unfortunately but we have to market ourselves we have we have to put ourselves out there we we can’t be insulated anymore are we and and it’s challenging and I I’ve I wish that I could do more marketing that I’ve been doing it and maybe that’s not the right term but right do you have you have to be go eight going out and getting face time with people you have to be going out and letting people know white is capable what what what you could provide it and also listening I think it that’s key to not enough people listen to truly what the clients asking for instead they just try to hit them with the solution that they know that they’ve done in the past and they they try to he said it would it with this client now and and dad and and that’s what are the other changes that that’s certainly been happening in the industry but but is far as getting feedback I think there will we have to put ourselves out there and we have to be able to find where the audience is clients are becoming a lot more involved and invested in this industry and a quite honestly they they have a lot of strength right now they they’ve hired a lot of people from the industry internally they why do you types of systems that provide their own services have the road up keep and they do you need to really show them that way your brain to the table is something that neither don’t have or they can’t do themselves to do they speak the same language like do they even call AV well it depends on who you’re talking with and and where they’re coming from if it’s if they’ve developed this by hiring people from within the industry that they still probably colony the but if they’ve built it organically then it’s probably stems from my tea and we have to adjust to what that I. T. mindset is to and and and that’s driving some things as well and and and I think there’s just there’s been more talk about software as a service and coming up with a with more I. T. said check solutions and and that I I need to also get more educated on how we find our place with within the I. T. world that and understand the language they speak and I try to learn it more and more every day yeah that’s that’s kind of what this podcast is all about in a thank you for the compliment earlier by the way the reason I started it it’s it’s yeah I guess you could call it marketing but really it’s it’s just trying to get the conversation started and %HESITATION talk to people who are smarter than me that have some thoughts on this just to kind of I don’t know what should the light on on the many many possible directions this this whole thing could play out here where we’re building community and and tried to engage with people and at that’s where things that I’ve learned to you is that you have to put yourself out there but you also have to give away free knowledge in order to draw people into you absolutely Steve thank you so much for being on the show if anybody would like to get in touch with you how how they go about doing that I you can visit our website control concepts that control concepts dot net about a bunch of social media platforms at Steve Greenblatt and as you mentioned at the top I proud to be the host of the state of control which is not easy nation and dad love to be able to share some more of these types of conversations with the audience and you’ve been on multiple times to bed that very valued yes with that very important perspective on things in data that that’s just a a fine and dad were engaging part of what I do and I feel like it’s just one way of contributing to the industry and and also growing as a professional absolutely it’s always fun to be on a state of control but I have to admit it’s a lot more stress free being on this side of the microphone that’s funny asking the questions all right Steve take care good talking to you thanks thanks for having me Patrick thanks for listening to the show if you enjoyed this discussion if you liked what you’ve heard if you want to hear more discussions like this please go to I tunes legal review to the show get in touch with me somehow and let me know that you’re out there listening and that’ll motivate me to keep doing these shows get mad so if you’re driving whatever said something in your calendar to give you a reminder to go to I tunes thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to software defined survival
Micha Van Der Stoop started his career at Cisco where he was involved with everything from designing and implementing their internal office networks to business development for Cisco’s Proof Of Concept Lab.
He also he worked at Shell Global Solutions where he was responsible for the global Reference Architecture and Solutions designs for AV, collaboration and CCTV.
He is currently Managing director at IDM Solutions, a Consulting & Design firm in the Netherlands.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive and then all of sudden there is a space that start thank and we asked cables stick if you are well I and I thought that was the area with those opportunities that the IT space but everything that sits in the datacenter space is more reliable more feature backs and infinitely more welcome to software defined survival my name is Patrick Murray in today’s guest star his career at Cisco where he was involved with everything from designing and implementing their internal office networks to business development for Cisco’s proof of lab kind of proof of concept glad he also worked at shell global solution’s where he was responsible for the global reference architecture and solutions designs for AB collaboration and CCTV is currently marketing director or you’ll have to correct me if I get that wrong at IBM solutions which is a consulting and design firm in the Netherlands welcome Misha Misha fenders correct me on all that in a second welcome to this well thank you very much them yet so mischief on the stove sis which is console the rest was the treaty at pretty corrects managing director of IBM solutions from the Netherlands them will brief you statements sat through excellent thank you for that is there anything you’d like to expand upon about about that introduction and you know I I think in light of the conversation that we’re asking is the the the backgrounds that I have and the legacy that that we carry Kenexa every well into this into this topic and I came from an IT backgrounds and like most of the people I’ve met so far in the AC industry and and that I see background has been as a result many firsts as being dispersed as voice over IP deployments in Europe going away from traditional P. B. access to and an IP enabled said medical manager at the time going for the first wireless working with universities in the Netherlands and around the world to develop the wireless protocols and the standards and to go from real standards based CCD feet to an IP enabled should your surveillance system and yeah due to Cisco I actually rolled into the yeah that AC space realized that it was well a fairy boon regulated says space and and so a lot of opportunities and and those opportunities are now how I have few years later finally manifesting itself in this whole topic of IP enabled said I T. enables and and clouds enables connectivity the wild west of AV can can you tell me a little bit about that transition what happened there at Cisco that got you involved with a yes it was in their way was very very interesting so the wild west of IT was in the mix that early nineties it was fantastic time where I have projects would be left right and center offices will be deployed Cisco’s internal offices will be Abby would install an office a week and when we had done everything in that so the in in Europe later Middle East Africa as well and even later into full at emerging markets if there was something new that’s is glad you would just go in and add that that’s gave a lot of space for interface and for personal development ad for networking in the broadest sense of the words and at one point we we got in full into the holographic telepresence and we helped to develop that’s which was absolutely fantastic but it was always the DAC portion where Wesker Prisco some projectors science and all those kind of things and starting to realize there was already some hate it’s different worlds rather we knew at a field the from all the office of the officers that we deployed but we never really got around to it **** as an IT yeah organization and the screens were the present screen Satele drawn first it was just screens in a room that sway you connected to the PC with CJ or or and may be the CIA if it falls fillable and but it was there and then and starting to add to talk to the guys that did show production that we organized that the Cisco networks and just go live for a few years there were all these companies like yours Johnson coming in and bring in all the states heaps and heaps of kits and equipments and it was at one and say Hey seem to work quite well and at the same time it couldn’t work with anything that we had which was sick why did you make money and starting to stink and starting to work for a company that says like well date got everything that you’re doing needs to be per faces doesn’t matter where you are and then all of sudden there is a few space that started saying it needs to be absolutely perfect and and we have cables the stick if your arm to run for a while why ends and Anya in that space coming from that sell across the presence of the projects I realized that there was a whole market out there where we could so we could actually and it was and well off the two thousand census was two thousand seven I think that that it was my real first introduction that into this into this area and I thought that was the area with all those opportunities that the IT space had in the early to mid nineties so I got into its and it’s being that is being very much it’s very fun is very fun right I like the way you were you you compare the opportunities that it did we always say that AV kind of flags ten twenty years behind IT and %HESITATION that’s one of the things that I really I really haven’t thought about is that you know this in the during that transition the early years of IT there was a lot of opportunity and and that may be present now on TV as well and you also talked about how he could work like the show production guys in the AV people there their stuff just it was so different than I TT and and dealing with data let the AVIC convergence right but it’s it’s it’s actually more of a clash at the time it was was was definitely a class or if it wasn’t even a day but just Santa parallel boss that would never cross and read that damn band videoconference came along it was a your friends but say the experience and some local people in your show except the but the experience of safety was really or as people coming in and now I do you support the war technical support and to come in and explain to people how the the remote control work of video conference system and then use ice the end to dial out because you want to do something really really difficult and all of a sudden there is this as the easiest to telepresence portfolio for Cisco but also the political mad telepresence solutions that came there that all for one touch panels really kicks **** whose phones that could be controlled said there’s always the a lot of technology development and going on dad’s what would let Fritz out all the technology that’s it’s in their **** it can be easy and that was what what the present was about in the beginning it’s easy is high quality you don’t have to do anything and of course in the very first deployments were difficult and sent to build a telepresence system mad at the show which we did so is like going around all Cisco’s expose that was also a lot of work you would be the I. T. equivalent also show guys because it was lots of boxes and screen somewhat ask you but installing that in all fairness and all of a sudden leasing that’s for years and there are still many of the systems that have been deployed says a hideout almost twenty years ago that I still see around and I guess that testifies to the stability off that IT environments and a since we last week we actually had a company yak coming %HESITATION square in the not so let’s see they were saying that the still have offices that use got three and it still works and that was a deployment of thirty years ago Sir can you imagine that any of the A. C. technologies would still work off thirty years that it’s as an aim for signal the bin as just that a cable between your laptop and your screen buds infrastructure cabling because I had to get three would also do still sufficient data for for what’s what their applications work so that’s that’s I guess the promise all flights he did this a long term investment so you need to have a long term strategy need to make your decisions rights you need to understand the the IT space in order to really leverage swat is coming up in the a few space because there’s definitely benefits in the in the a few space and set the opportunities are such that it’s within the a few space you will be among if not to the desktop contends producer on add on a corporate network and the D. emailing your friends it’s it’s only small portions but start to do IP encoding and streaming that still sign it’s all your video surveillance then all of a sudden if that’s in the a few well or in the next realm good that’s where the content is and if you order one that’s controlled the contents than that you can also see the well get your the one that probably both from to come at it a customer and what’s what’s this goes said in one what’s discussed description was said back in the day it was the plumber off the internet so if your if you’re going to build the house shaking too cold Lamar or are you going to call the architects and that’s what it is what this is about and that’s also works with these opportunities are about Saturdays you want the architects to to tell you not even the consultants anyone to ask people with with a very wide on the standing to to give you an overview on how you could move forward how you can really have a long term investment and not all that’s how you can secure your whole environments as to well whatever left will you require and say we work with companies that that that work up to J. weeks lawful lab and military security rates and at that that’s completely different ballgame than that what standards AC or even standard IT is all about yeah absolutely there really put things through their paces in the in the in the defense area you touched on a whole bunch of stuff there we’re not going to get through it all but there’s a few things I’d like to circle back to and numb I really like the way you talked about that how that cat three infrastructure still does the same thing as today’s so you’ve got this long term standard the planning was you know this thing will always have data that goes over but what happens is in AV is that the signals change right we have completely different signal types today HDMI than we did many years ago which was all analog so it wouldn’t even be possible to make any kind of an in a long term infrastructure in that sense but now that we’ve switched to digital I guess %HESITATION everything could be over the network because it is now just data but %HESITATION that the mindset of taking that long term architecture approach need to catch up to the end is as complex as it’s a complex ways is not very complex transition but you need you need to make that transition and you need to think about its and what you also see is that the industry as a whole and the industry is not backing that’s as that idea and why am I saying that so the industry is obviously backing the idea of standardized cabling which just why AC based you came along you can use your your your cat five or cat six that will better infrastructure buds it’s a different protocol so therefore it doesn’t transfers over the network that shoe that you have which is set a which is a problem AT be is also a problem because a few beats I have there is that many fantastic things about its but the problem and the real problem is that none of the and the prices stats that I know and probably none in the world will have to fool a few be enabled infrastructure so unless you’re coming in the segregation road again and you start to deploy your equipment parallel to the I. T. network then you and you’re not going to see the benefits off a few B. as social that is that’s one thing and that that that there’s other protocol standards and to do the or regional implementation all done so without to dent the domain controller Watson IT protocol absolutely as it runs on an IP network it can you can communicate to multiple devices that was a moment surveying troll elements into it but at the same time it would end cross she leads and if if you if your a night do you know that C. lands are my logical groups of IP addresses that you have in the building that belonged to separate ranges and sometimes say you want all of them to talk together sometime she wants to apply axis list or as like strengthen your security even further good with them to without any of the security considerations you could not all from one network segments to the next whereas from an audio perspective to why wouldn’t you want to go from the first floor to the second floor in the building and that that’s a logical box and and and if you follow that pause why would you go outside label to to another building because arguably you can see aching hole or as we swayed and with this in the few that were happening we using soon which is software and goes over the internet and it’s it’s pretty good but there’s always a need for better or more reliable quality or a quality that runs in parallel to your to your common office tools because your in in trading Adam excuse you begin trading they have all sorts of lights you go through the whole arm and say you got your direct communications and then there is always online stats that are happening and also to you Lou cats at the mixed stack protocols where is the only way to deal with it is oh for an I. P. naval networks IP is pervasive and it really needs to be professors to the matter to the letter and and and and to expand upon that even further add the the whole new line of thinking at all everything in four K. space for instance it’s fantastic it’s four KT sixty four full four planets as soul which is almost bus were set aside that were already with AC at the time but it’s do customers really need debts of course this whole area of customers that will need it but in a standard office environments where arguably for gay will be quite useful and that some of the displaced vehicle or affordable so why wouldn’t you have four K. but to to have a four K. solution that okay the move off I think two thousand sixteen it was with us at all we got four K. for for a rat and sixty frames at ten gig really cute as a well let’s stand gig line on that than kicking my network so when I call icons really deployed that maybe one or two units and now we’re at the we have that same quality but we do it at night mac I completely nine then that make it my network and one or two units but if you understand how the infrastructure is being built dads Debbie guns and quite incredible we’ve done deployments with with hundreds of IP encoders decoders if you start to follow that nine hundred make roads that and look at what the up links with your switch capacity needs to be there and it’s not even back Frank best is just a plain capacity that doesn’t exist eating in any of the testing and the prices and and that’s the whole point you need to you need to have that architecture bring it together and say yeah that’s fantastic and there is a need for it’s a medical lab we use fiber connections where you have some compromise quality maybe that Indian exploration you need to have and compromise quality Oxley in entertainment you once after quality because that’s what people pay for but then there is a whole other remained stats just one so bad good quality then will not see the difference and that don’t really care about the difference if if you are one on art should be sell the X. or Y. and as long as it’s sort of similar them it’s it’s fine and deuce people which is good ninety percent said it not ninety nine percent of the enterprise said environments only one that’s as anyone to half that pervasiveness again they want to be able to say I’m an engineer all want to have quality that is better than what my scarf business can get supplied me or I want to run a comb and sharing feats to a colleague in another building or in another country in parallel to my meetings that I’m running because I would just working on the problem why would you not allow them to do that’s so why would you go for an infrastructure that steers to that route so there’s a few things I want to address their %HESITATION you mentioned a bunch of protocols right so each she Beastie ABB even Dante and he did a great job of of breaking it all down and %HESITATION making the argument that everything has to be IP I totally agree with you there and %HESITATION it’s it’s a real challenge to find a protocol that that is purely IP and and please by all of all the rules state that I. P. requires like V. lands are there any protocols out there that you have your eye on that album which to fill all those seats yeah able you see you see that the protocol start to develop a then to get to to do maintenance here we’ve being that talking to the alternates the people and and many people are talking to order dates and said a day understand now what what needs to happen we’ve been talking to two people of QC to buy an ad two two and short at the stifles protocols can work in and prices like that shell or any of the other companies and all of videos sights you see there is always the markets and this list H. two six four eight two six five and with it which is old which is all good but that’s that’s it and that’s where where do you make the choice as a manufacturer at are you going for in these markets are you going to say okay we have this solution and it’s uncompromised quality is fantastic and I can testify as some of these products are really really cute **** at the same time as the that that’s that’s a fairly small percentage of the markets and if you go to it’s still very cute but is not fantastic and then that there is a difference in how you yet it’s very subjective what you want to fly but then a you can get to that reached so is there a single protocol no there is not a single protocol it’s it’s just stack it’s an idea all saying statue that you need to do Hey it’s about security that’s that’s the way that’s a TCP IP protocol as we built it’s it’s old different layers different stacks and different elements steps that have been described and that that that are compatible SNMP as the is one of those said things eighty two dot one ax is something and and if this if you’ve if you consider that said if you do your engineering backwards and that’s what’s so that we’re doing in our test lab was almost a manufacturer’s we start to talk to them we get their products was deserved okay you can do whatever you do whether it’s video or audio or you can do that very well Bucks now lets states to be the other way around would this product be suitable for an enterprise not on its quality sat on is downright qualities but on what is around it because what this the enterprise needs the enterprise needs monitor ability so you need to be able what your devices doing you need to be able to to maintain a surface level and that is ideally five nines so that’s five minutes downtime year of the loss and you need to to have control because you can only get that kind of stability if you can control lets you need to have security Adam there’s old and new chapter now way in in Europe whiskey deep yard the general dates action regulation what are you going to do with all the days that where are you going to stall rates can you actually at the front end of the network where you are going to transmit contents can you do something there embedded there’s a whole bunch of stuff that it’s our questions to manufacture our debts that are outside off their core business center or businesses for instance forget switching back and it’s not security that it’s not as a remote operations but it’s very important AA if anything’s probably the most important thing in enterprises today absolutely absolutely that’s that’s come up a few times on the show is a because of the switch to IP based software dealing with data we need to start engineering backwards instead of starting with the equipment that we’re used to and and the gear we should be starting with some wealthy end user experience and obviously like you mentioned in the enterprise you have to consider their needs first and if you work backwards from there then %HESITATION to show probably only have a handful of solutions that that will work for you I like the way you broke down those different pieces of wood and enterprise needs that there could be a a product roadmap for for some out there looking to develop a product you talked about it so it all comes back to architecture is what it sounds like dealing with work yen’s I’m I’m just curious I don’t know if this is off the beaten track or not what what do you think about ten gig networks are they going to become pervasive or is that something that %HESITATION will will be %HESITATION unique no ultimately you will you will get that as %HESITATION but said it comes down to cost reports and then there there’s a few companies in the world dad’s pretty much have dominance over the switch markets and so Cisco juniper HP as few others extreme but they already start to play in the margins and and if you look at their portfolio is not that they don’t offer ten gig switches butted in there were courses that they have then kick is not that common and it’s also that in the end the price and said it’s it’s it’s a stack later you can access layer of all the switches that is where all the a few quick mind will be connected to my old cameras and encoders and decoders senior screens and anything that you ask then you got your distribution later on if you have a larger networks and you will have all your sure first ad and your HP services connected that there might be a core later these days you see you collapse score distribution pending on the model buds those are big investments and if you if you start to talk about investments and we we had the we spoke about the late one infrastructure cabling early X. cabling is the investment that will stay in your building the longest started to get three different we long for your your gets Pfeiffer as feisty York at six at six a it’s it’s wrong you you pulled that it’s a lot of work it’s it’s all right it’s often and it requires a lot of construction or lan is like tearing down buildings full ceiling school debates all those kind of things you don’t do that very often so if that stays there then we know that we have right now on most well not most but on a lot of the cables that have been deployed in everything that will be deployed from today onwards you should be able to run thank rights that’s most notable books and then you got your switch architecture and with the switches you need switches export extrication there is always the all and line of thinking how to go to two full wireless and a wireless protocols become better day become more stable and their race five G. coming up where to potential at the moment staff already managed to get speeds of one point zero five gigabits per second on five G. but the potential Lestat it can actually get to ten under kinky along on the stock protocols as soon as the terminals are there and I think that I read to actually this morning from one of my old school collection article that said that the five G. would be able to do Adam a million devices per square kilometer and that’s that’s how which could serve so then at even if you are coming to transmit everything on on Dan cake that and maybe not but there’s another interesting salt there and talking about software there there are a lot of and it will not not a lot but there are few companies now in a world that start to develop new what protocols that start from scratch that unstable we got eighty six for now let’s starts the H. two six five that’ll really re engineering compression protocols from the ground up making use of common off the shelf hardware and and and it can do compression and in in a much smarter way and off of even seeing as I’m com and was actually the NTG for for Japan is now doing the H. K. that they want to run for the Olympics in twenty twenty or something like that at what twenty twenty two but Adam what what they were saying we can do that eight K. compression or dated eight K. resolution of four times four K. on eighty five megabits per second so if that’s the case then what does that mean that means that you need to have a proper hardware encoding and decoding of course which is expensive if it’s if it’s a novelty but at the same time it also means that you can have incredible and resolutions over very limited spends with and then you don’t need to upgrade to infrastructure so will the cost be in upgrading your infrastructure I think over time bad things reprises will drop one kick will become or ten gig will become a standards but if you look at the one kick now there’s not a lot of applications acts actually do require one kick your PC in the office is not system benefiting all that much and benefits off one cake is dad’s it’s quicker in timing so even your your voice packets will perform better on a one gig laying down on the one on the mac link but it’s not that you need all that space and that’s so that meant that it is difficult for the difficult thoughts but I don’t think that studying video protocols and an old compression dad step nine hundred mac or ten cakes as uncompressed SD and Sir it will go to the novelty solutions that will use a fraction of that over your existing network and then you can really make a all you step forwards well really great stuff great overview we don’t know how it’s going to play out we have the infrastructure in place with the the cat cables but I’m I like the way that a you know compression may be the answer instead of %HESITATION increasing bandwidth that saw interesting take you mentioned a test lab research lab and I’ve I’ve heard from a few people about this can can you tell me a bit about your your research laboratory yes yes it was a what we have in in entering into ball when we started the company we started to provide consults and actually we started with implementations them and I thought well I day since this is really brothers complex job it’s hard work and the then you need to you need to prepare and that and we see implementations you have staging area but it never really stuck to his only tested if the stuff that you have selectable paper stuck to work together from from that architecture is a said there is a solution architecture that you need to create and then you need to implement the technology but that’s technology as set gets skits I’d be connected you need to know to quality off that technology before you do that Sir I don’t like it sweat and when I asked to make decisions purely based on a custom or manufacturers spec sheets because it’s not it is not that is not true it is often the stuff that is not in there that becomes important and I guess everyone knows the as the content protection issues that you could have between different types of equipment there’s one doubles testing but said we are in the realm all schools and the price so we test for security or read the remote support and all those kind of things and then you can see that it’s it’s just not there there’s only a few companies that are not even call systems that have a couple of products that are secure most of them are not secure and some of them don’t even consider security anyhow test lab we’ve said let’s let’s not get to the test all does this I’d be encoded to decode it works very well when it’s on the same switch no does it very well works very well if it is sits on an enterprise environments so your whole speckled lan switches from hopes if needs be we’d be half that’s basically in the lab to showcase we got them cakes which you’ve got five where we got a wee wee cuts everything that is required but we can also start to simulate and did the network between an offshore platform and your core environments and once we note latency specifications Adam also satellites which often around two seconds if you know your jets are correct restricts and you know to back up laws says if if you should do quickly monitor your links or your us your I. T. department wanted to the links we can all take those parameters and put that in our test equipment and then we can really showed customer if you are going to deploy this solution if you’re going to deploy this camera Dan this is what you’re going to see it is not as beautiful and as pretty and as quick when it was all running on the same switch this is the real life is this acceptable and then that’s from there you can define as today’s you can start to say if there is there’s a percentage said old network or there are network as the districts where it’s always goods and then there is a point where it breaks any in between you can you can split it up any way you want so you can say everything left off the bar is good and everything right if the bar is is wrong but it’s Andrew what is acceptable to you might not be acceptable to me or vice versa so that’s what we what we tests as we tested the security we test if it can integrate into control platforms we get a we test if it integrates into the as into the monitoring as tools ideally into the I. T. monitoring tools because they’re very sophisticated birds but it depends on the on the level of customer at IT monitoring tools once are also not not that cheap that it requires quite a bit of knowledge and it provides you with so much information that if you’re not familiar to this type of trouble shooting it will become very complex to to comprehend and birds but yes security reports always useful whether you use it or whether the I. T. department uses its because then you can also gonna say Hey my equipment is supposed to use all these sports but in actual fact we render reports and is using all these TCP and UDP ports that wall according to documentation shouldn’t be necessary so please feel to those out because those are security vulnerabilities addresses all fell you chain there where and it is hard to put a price to security but you know that once you get taxed it can be very costly and once it’s down is also costly so that is that’s important with another interesting seeing is we tested and security cameras sometime ago notes on the quality of the video feeds but on the full you must if you DO feeds forces want to manufacturer specified and the specification was that the manufacturer said we do full HD as on thirty frames on or back for seconds okay but the reality was that it actually did some twelve microseconds so one camera on a gigabit network not going to make a big difference but it’s in video surveillance all of sudden you look at on that shelf cameras if not thousands of cameras and then head that suggests that that’s that’s a fact or on top of what you what you saw it’s it’s going to implement your network designed it’s going to implement the stories that you require add that race this performance issues on the on the servers that need to be coats the defeats so it has a very big impact and then again you need to be able to tell the customer there are ways to really get to that for Mexico for macro sale states bird said it was compression in full instead acceptable breasts and and we we help people with stats in the in the lab to prove their radical chaps and we’ve done that said as successfully as of the last couple of years for various companies and those like one of the companies have gone come this close it now but said we made a cute said to us very not sold the sign and in the Netherlands as works for an integrator it came from a graph came from the IT space and they’ve asked us to to come up with a few design and and and and be sold that’s everything that we did we were able to to make it the sign that was not only add about six times cheaper as well to completion and hats and in place at the time but it also was more effective in terms of how to operate it and at a speed that’s the benefit was completely based all on all software hardware components installed SD yes cameras or as servers birds with the software you can you can start to look at analytics are you at the mall it’s raining which which which promised that this company could have much more efficient supports ad with the analytics it meant that a lot of the work that was done manually previously could be done automatically there is the way that you bank and say we can change control codes actually without a programmer it’s it’s just reckoned drop so we don’t have to have these states enormous high skill sets sold for of engineers in our company I still sting gets you’ll wish you to have fled the highest skills so that you can get buds it is not your your business to per I need to maintain equipments that now maybe you don’t need programmers and you you can ask that skill somewhere else hands and by having the piece you did this this architecture roadmap backed up by let testing in the face and and and one of the things that we we obviously do is we work across the friend saw them fields in it that because she’s a we work at the IT and security and all the official I am and if you water areas as well you start to get an awful ideas and you can also start to do that not full six there is is a quick mundane day to send the world that is identical to what the AC world that has think about men and speed used but also think about it I teach your real workers and with everything that sits in the datacenter space is both cheaper more reliable more feature backs and infinitely more secure server so that it is it is really time to for everyone to Luke across different boundaries and and just well removes the yeah the blinds sounds like a a really really powerful exercise where you know like you said we could learn a lot and %HESITATION improve things and and make things cheaper and more reliable more flexible I think we could do an entire show just on what you found while doing this but if you had to pick just one thing like something that comes up all the time preferably regarding AV where could %HESITATION AB manufactures or solutions software whatever it is is there any one place where we could really use the most improvement well I think it is it’s it’s moving things to the to the cloud or to a central location at mass of first it’s central to the building and bear in mind to the time and the stability of your network which arise for country and that’s if you’re if you really get into that mindset all’s consolidating your technology stand the only things that you need to have in your rooms our endpoints cameras and go to decode the screens bud no longer at the old friends codex no longer and DD DSPs because that will become centralized and if that sits in the cloud the F. of fairies solid and stable basis to build upon because then it doesn’t matter if there’s a screen change every every year or if your screens a need to be replaced or or any of those kind of things Hey your your core and then sits at the central location and once it’s it’s it’s it’s central location there is a whole layer off of innovations that it’s that you can use as ad there is the set analytics can be applied and and and Alexa as you mentioned before the show could be applied to to do room control but there is also the layers of and as software defined control solutions like what do you tell if she offers you spoke about that with John to make a last week dads as sit at that layer all ski as off the clouds that it can have control that can integrate into all the solutions and dad will have to promise to you to be as a software platform integrates with all these different services and I think gathered those those type of platforms can generate a lot of golf recurring rest and you and and long term customer commitments to any of the integrators fascinating fascinating moving to the cloud kind of like the all the benefits that office three sixty five offers doing that for Evey could be a really interesting business model so really quickly last question if you have any advice for anybody who’s interested many companies integrators manufacturers in moving more in that direction what would be the first steps that you would recommend I am rollouts as a long term fashion shows a really understand from your customer what it is that they want this and that and and notes is trying to see through what they have seen and what they want to date because that we always gets the bigger questions of all I’ve seen this a in this company or in that building and we want it as well and then turns out that what they sold was three years old but it’s ignore the technology get to the to do work flows get to process this and see what they want know dad’s there is always security in fall flat because otherwise you’re going to play anymore going forward there is alway monitoring in full because otherwise you cannot keep up your end of the bargain in providing the support and the stability and hands and you had just planets out to plan it out and then once you have your plan is for every genet what it could be very specific but it doesn’t mention brands it doesn’t mention equipment so that it is the is the conceptual flow off what you want to do then you can start to specify that at some point you’ll have contestants Hey you come just say Hey we’ve run a pair and it works once because do you screw the D. statistics on escalates no one asked them as I haven’t seen it from the manufacturers is not in any of the reporting is not in any of the tenders but if the customer knows sits before the integrated dust and the customer has a huge advantage in defining the SLA criteria if the integration that was at the front step and they can just dictate the way that they’ll set up their **** lace and in general if everyone just knows where where the tipping point in in quality a creationists then you can go forwards and then you will be called say that this very proactive and consultant to integrate their customer doesn’t really matter that it’s you can you can control you can shape that the the future excellent so planned tests and the deploy and be aware of what you’re what you’re prepared to guarantee in the industry yes great %HESITATION I think we’re going to have to do a part two some type of thing that it would be very nice if anyone would like to get in touch with you how would they go about doing that I can be a complex it’s and it’s %HESITATION from our websites said W. W. W. IBM and solutions got an L. and I or at my email address Nisha which is with the C. H. at IBM debt solutions stuff and I’ll wonderful Misha thank you so much for being on the show thank you as well eight Patrick here again Moesha was nice enough to mention products that we’re working on called catch connect it allows you to turn basically any device on the network into an LX a smart home device you could also use it to integrate IFTTT with devices and AV systems which opens up a whole New World of possibilities now today is April twenty seventh two thousand eighteen and catch connect is currently in public beta we’ve got a few tutorials up at catch technologies dot com and if you have a few minutes and this sounds interesting to you please go check it out and let us know what you think we’re really looking forward to your feedback so that we can make this a really awesome product so check it out let me know what you think catch technologies dot com and remember it’s still in beta so please don’t use it on any live projects yet all right thanks a lot thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to psalm thirty find survival dot com
Erik Calissendorff has spent most of his career working on some of the largest mega yachts in the world. He also spent some time working as a software developer for a data analytics company called Tibco Spotfire. And I’m guessing that while he was working as an ETO, he had some ideas and eventually decided to execute on them and develop Plejd. Plejd is a control system for entertainment and comfort systems, lighting, shades and heat and things like that.
If you go to the https://www.plejd.com, it looks like a simple lighting system, but I know from speaking with some of my contacts in the yachting industry that it is much more than that.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive nobody ought to see it would change usually change any of the other one after we get from the most praise musing custom although since it is to make them into a meeting for us expensive really by the technology is between the ages and the two thousand of us change things happen like in every day invented a control system and apples this is why are we doing it this way Haiti Patrick Murray here I just wanted to take a quick minute to apologize for the audio quality on today’s show but I still think it’s worth listening to that’s why I’m publishing it because today’s guest gives us some really interesting insight on what it’s like to work on mega yachts which is a segment of the AV industry that if you’re not in it you may not be aware that it exists at all and they have some really interesting challenges that they need to deal with on a day to day basis and Eric came up with some interesting ways of solving them so again I know there’s a lot of audio guys out there and this may hurt your ears a little bit but it might just be worth it to have a listen cell I promise I’ll do better next time enjoy the show welcome to software defined survival my name is Patrick Murray today’s guest has spent most of his career working on some of the largest mega yachts in the world he has also spent some time working as a software developer for data analytics company called tibco spot fire and I’m guessing that while he was working as an EEO he had some ideas and eventually decided to execute on them and develop pledge pledges a control system for entertainment and comfort systems like lighting shades and he for those of you who are familiar with the marine part of a V. there’s a whole sector of AV where they work just on these mega yachts and the person who kind of lives on the boat and takes care of all the AV equipment and everything else that’s electronic his job is and ETL he’s an electronic technologies off officer so just to give you a little background there that’s what we’re talking about when we say you DO now if you go to pledges website it looks like a simple lighting system with a nap but I know that speaking from some of my contacts with some my contacts in the awning in the street that it is so much more than that and that’s why I wanted to have on today Eric Kolis indoors welcome to the show Eric break is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to correct or expand upon I got to deliver of expansion of mean is gonna start in this ten years ago now or the company after that story needs to be a long time before that and basically what a goal to go into him over the edge of an old house I’m points out this is the thing a long time for no houses to be ready and finally a few years ago on an opening in the global market lighting system which is not working on our homepage that’s the reason for that kind of shift in our marketing efforts excellent so we’ll get to that more later on I want to go back to the beginning though just to kind of really get a feel for your background place how did you how did you get your first job as an EEO it’s kind of a long story about that I don’t have to tell you the bass family started many years ago a tune like that they sell was working us our computer specialist armed forces since we don’t and had decided I wanted to travel the world so unsettled went down to the Mediterranean on the stay there for the summer and then in the summer of folk well I need to get around the world a contest in Europe so anyone can be a flight trip around the world is not much challenging that’s our said our Yasser strip mall land Orsino to look into it and I thought well oceans big container ships to learn all about windows that’ll really the case realized almost on the Mediterranean so one thing led to another and that but in the summer had come down choose your altar and I hope some of the most in Europe and get over to Atlantic and see the rest of the world but unfortunately for both are as all of you has been there is but for smaller only because there’s some stuff but the bigger York’s basically for bankers and leave again so they’re out to get on the grin off so they just stopped fill up on gas and then keep moving along right handed to him on time to pick up anyone or to shift to the whole persisting cold so they can now there walk around their little rock and I think this is what was more or less of them another option was based in the back all the way to Italy and then the show crippled you give them that Africa and basically that’s where only the clothes that I was a little bit down by this nation that that will most likely be our military and so based on the way back from the the rock era stumble across are the reason that some of them coaster on the porch and one thing led to another and are they working enough for them I think we thought there was no like Smalley also micrometers maximum and only speak your levels like thirty four meters was a Swedish flag young and I’m sorry about that myself is your gonna have been are gonna be working on the basically I just woke up to the dock goes yeah anyway and then pull the rotor and pressed them to myself any kind of both women do I really know you lots of luck yet Adam could shut down the one thing that’s another and I worked there for a month or so and during that time is that it opposes up into balls around there yeah looking for some other work to do the crossing and eventually after some time I got a cold Roma measure for a big help to the time I didn’t know what job they will see us and it was one of you big big along yes all of them need some new clothes deliver up to your money I have also your home their own way of not only our own will look back up to the north part was simple sweet and so on awfully back home but I thought well is much much chance to get on the big you also get some real experience and that can how do the rest of chocolate also out of the rain and big deals on my life traveling with him to see you all done as much experience as possible so that will this is so and then yeah position and that they will face as a background doesn’t know a to say that it is kind of our house janitor for the office misleading care of the index sitting here is more votes than all the rest of it cleaning from morning till night that that sums it up pretty much exactly do yeah so I got on the ultimate organising because it is mostly drama which is another very famous yup I would say it’s one of the really big X. expedition awesome yeah I think is very well known if you industry and it’s very easy to recognize because two giants locks on this off thank one the state setting up the the same size there is something here Morial as well on back let’s face it tenders for these young yes especially as we don’t mean anything off of that size is so you shot and that’s a tender so yes you have been asking yeah it’s amazing some of the things that they do when they’re building these things so I love that story ends whenever I meet anybody who works on boats I I always ask them how they got their first job because it’s always something similar well I walked up to about the job yeah and then you just work your **** off and %HESITATION if you can do what you say you could do eventually you’ll get in some kind of a position where yeah where you’re in charge of more than keeping things clean and I’ve heard that similar story many times in the auto industry and I always get a kick out of hearing it and up I like the way you decided I want to travel the world but you wanna work doing it how do I get there while %HESITATION maybe building some kind of career I don’t know if that was your intention but %HESITATION when I I find that kind of interesting too yeah I mean if I’m here is my ideals I mean yeah one from the world but then one can you was getting back to the science and technology it at some point in my life but not something different I wanted to travel and over let’s not focus on my career so there is a reason I was quite happy to do do you they working in that yeah number two number of basic rights are they going to look on the base yeah they offer me their radio Serb position which back then was the same as the deal with today and you didn’t have a name for the year there was no report of data into his own position in his own name there’s also the small thank you so much for all her I mean that I would help out a little bit but I’m reluctant to do that I’m already on deck and yeah nothing else in the us there is a break from my little experience but one thing led to another and after a couple months as a realizable polishing is being less than the vanishing in the left is not really what I want to do the rest of my life and I don’t like being on the seat so I still do destructor air so that right so you see you didn’t plan on on getting into technology was really just to kind of take a break from work and you’ve certainly found some mindless work to take care of but you kind of fell in love with being on the boats and found the way to use your technology skills on their %HESITATION what is so what is a typical day like for an EEO when we were teens is this make sure everything’s they worked off the lights and depending on what kind of cool and those you have I mean I will send you the last person to go to see it because yes quite often autism make yeah set up with the bands or what if somebody is sitting movies or one example is there a loner who was really into football and basically we were in that ask at this time and you have been up to Alaska please there’s always very worked very well up north is wrapped in Sweden where I’m coming from and the other thing is that a lot of fjords and mountains to stop them he tried to watch TV two things to bear in mind or soul the sellers are at the creator which meets the third most BR lower down nor I think you have the satellites the kind of become the problem we have all these fields and stuff in the latest one because honestly mountains are quite high but it was the first kind of issues that need to have evolved from the mother’s return receipt anything about all the other thing was basically said owner had a really big game coming up and you really want to watch this film Alaska isn’t the biggest the soccer fans as such so there was no the station that was even brought companies looking for us nearby calling you come up with the idea well you see it having the right to the scene back in Europe and I’m sure a I’ve also read you give them a call and then roll you should build so you have to do the only good news programming we didn’t know before a couple of satellites and you should be able to get two of you can receive we hope all the sounds very him so there was a call modernism yeah for now the owner wasn’t that much but from our perspective we have jammed his permission I think was like hang around like that US it also hurt me because you know since it is impossible on from that day until two weeks later on the actual game well song also missing the guests were talking about that with like are you should the challenge for us and we had a meeting showed me what he gave us all yeah I mean it’s kind of amazing %HESITATION that things like that are possible but %HESITATION yeah obviously money can solve a lot of problems if you have it so what were some of the things that kind of push you towards developing a new control system yes so the damn thing the normals challenges for your own war with this you know there’s one thing that they don’t understand them for good reason I would say this is the kind of I mean if they have the money to do whatever you want them no it’s not is never a good answer sure it is not an answer all you need to find a solution for whatever they wanted one with another in call the company’s new gaming consoles to come with some new equipment and they look up to their TV and well see that is found the control system which has promised everything or anything else way way before I form will see them or types I mean right we will something quite there seven a I haven’t really seen touching myself before I got on the office I mean using American or online in some magazines but you never tested before this when I was about afternoon in also something else death row is become yeah I can do it but to have to now used this to start a TV they have to take his own remote to change their input on your receiver and then you have to take this for the remote to do some of the crazy stuff and if the owners are looking and you say okay all this money what does have to be complicated yeah and I mean it hasn’t I have a computer back on my cell phone I was really impressed with what we’re also must offer both will this is related in this country I mean this is engine technology I mean why are we doing it this way still I mean you always knew no question they mix in the US as well I mean and they started nothing it was like my Canadian stuff like that they we can make a name for himself and all the technology is between the ages and the two thousand the loss big change things happened and if I like that everyday reinvented their their control system on their approach to things yeah I just wanted to to follow up on that you’re you’re right the paradigm has not changed and I think the example that you gave where somebody comes with a new source and it’s just one so you know it’s a typical thing I the Xbox is new I want to play with it I bring in in why can’t I just plug it in and use it and I think that’s a very simple example but you face much more complicated things when you’re working on a boat for example at this time of year it’s it’s pre season in the Mediterranean and over the winter many vessels will be in the Caribbean and when they get back to the Mediterranean they’ll be able to pick up different satellites so they’ll be times where you’ll have to replace twenty thirty sometimes even fifty satellite receivers and of course you’ll have to adjust all the programming with that and if those are I are drivers are kind of hard coded which is normally how it is then that could be a pretty big job that needs to be done at least twice a year ends anybody looking at this you know people are so busy it’s it’s hard to step back sometimes and say I know there’s a better way to do this why her we you know making this thing dynamic what why can’t it just switch I’m in Europe I’m here and there why can I just have thrown I or file onto a server somewhere and have the control system read that out instead of having to physically go in and re compiling and re install everything so you’re right there is the paradigm it really comes from conference rooms as far as I could tell where you build it once you put it in and then maybe they’ll be some maintenance in a few years but typically they’re left alone so these systems really are not as flexible as they could be so I feel your pain and then the other thing I would say so have our conference room where our residents as well I mean they are the most in moving their station senior editor of one position and yes making notes move basically means that the school you have chosen this normally down the road a few boxes also if your property you call them and they got me on our right another side I mean usually change any of the other world when you have the biggest problem in the most against need for assistance you can plan on that yes I know myself I mean sometimes you have to get a program result in the complete two weeks to get them onboard yeah lots a skymiles Yemen the poorest by the time you get the programmers aboard a yes or left in their quest to have this is not the not any interest anymore so yes very difficult situation in much higher the malls in their environment and typically station I would say alright so we’ve worked on some of the same boats we we’ve never met each other personally this is the first time we’re talking and %HESITATION I know that some of those projects you can see how these programs evolve so I dont will to believe it builds and then it’ll have a refit every two or three or five years and maybe the programming will be done from scratch but more often than not you’ll take the old programming and build on top of it and after a few years these programs turned into like these Frankenstein objects you do and I think you know some of the code that I’m talking about and it’s easy to blame the programmer right but when there are ten or twenty programmers that were involved over all that time it so it’s really hard to blame anybody for that situation and I wonder if we could benefit from adopting more a more modern software development techniques like things like add child development and %HESITATION ends and back up paradigm’s like using get hub for example to store your code and even share it so other people could see it and maybe be more motivated to to write cleaner code you have any thoughts on what we want all the things we mention is the reason we’re why started played in that we have our own control systems stuff because I too limited in the founder from the media existing system wrestling next to name a few what the their systems at the base of black folks fusee is even anything which is really good if you want to do something very spoken very specific but a lot of times your whole thing to work and you as a programmer you can as we have to talk to get this working stretching the functions we require them make does work that you have no time to go through it and make it real nice and then published because as you know and I guess the audience might be a no it’s one of the V. is the last thing to go into a reset or I’ll do they need you need to have the need to have the walls need to have that docking unit and everything is in place mostly without me projects like a loss you run over time which means they will have to have some of the time is the lost people so many people so there was a scramble for time to get things finished my favorite part of the projects I mean anything I mean this is the reason for my travel while stuff I mean I like to send to like to really do things that people don’t think it’s possible to our times yeah about the same time you don’t make a lot harder than necessary either so balance no I I really don’t enjoy those those times because generally a many times people start coming coming up with new ideas when you’re trying to execute on the old ideas and it just turns into an impossible situation way too much so I I’m always an advocate for planning more in the beginning and and trying to avoid those crunch times because with software I mean honestly everything should be able to be tested offsite before you even see the boat you should be able to test all of your code get all of your user interfaces approved %HESITATION and even get most of the equipment and tests directly with that as well and that avoids a lot of those things but for some reason that that kind of planning like you said AV is always last and and the programming is even more of an afterthought yeah I mean nothing’s happening seasons two thousand seven in itself but enough about the pattern the last such hasn’t changed that much there are some new players meals yourself on a some of them the core four is also having a different two things about those two out of there way too limited for the young in this room but at least they have a more finished product in this easy dressing room right so what are the things that make him the yacht industry special what what are some what are some requirements for control systems in the mega yachts that are that that may control a little bit different two biggest ones this was a plan for change I mean nobody nobody ought to see it would change retirement I will not be satisfied with five year old TV’s online they wanted their latest and greatest so there will be changes from you know and I was using a server using as a particular run working on we got our nation is is what should be a song by the time that the livery that’s changed already so is always moving it back roads that this is the biggest one in the market for the second one is in the states and we’ve got four which means you can’t plan for being on site to do all the changes you need something that can be managed by the crew will be managed remotely you see interesting so let’s shift gears and start talking about pledge a little bit can you give me a really brief overview of of what makes it different than than other types of control systems course were so basically please respond if the core I. there was space we have something that David manages to solve from you don’t need to program everything some more conversation and setting up down the shore programming but if you on the inflation side of things within the design of software to okay program itself them what that means is when the nation basically tell the consistent so I these kind of devices low res and the fires receivers major changes screens projectors since long before invested telling them how to make this all these opportunities with universities in Aberdeen the blueprint to ask translating to the language of their system and then the system so can find all the right in this room I mean to you all these different sources as I can find a path from the repair mission to ensure through there extender to your local theater to the TV well in that the cross from where you work it too menace AOL all this water to be available to all the sources are in this room and you get the next was able to test the same kind of sources and get it over and over again right what we doing instead of facing the same issue print on the system find out this is what actually is impossible to do in order or rooms adding sources would you recommend the next you will basically removing sources say well maybe in the case of I don’t want them to have access to that orders to sell my books for example when you remove it so you kind of revoking their methods of somebody else isn’t it is capable of doing everything in the room with things you don’t use interesting so you’ve created a data model that can handle different types of data points inside of a framework correct and so so you’ve got like your typical AV system how do you handle when something comes out of left field with I don’t know maybe and a special audio processor or two or three dips displays or things like that yes I was in this one room unit with our system is basically what we decided we made a rare genetic so the system we have in there softer side of things doesn’t he know what EDS is completely AV independence means you can raise if anything service once we do screens for the screens or even you would use it for something different some way of modeling the well defined path through a maze more less can you say that again modeling the world to find to find the path from a to B. basically is yeah I’m going to of our yeah maybe some would say you have a mentor contaminated point in somewhere could make you can get to the exit of how you get there you don’t really know until you try out all the different paths and saw what this is doing is is fine though ask for your automatically that is very interesting I like the way you describe that okay so where does the system run what kind of hardware do yes this other thing basically is our focus was to make to the brain of the system to speak so we are server based they control system and network base I should say is one of them is basically reinstalling a server on the on the office than me using whether they’re hardly one to use for actually control what end points so when the lawyers this mission mission if we are part of a day in the H. one of biggest overseas you can also move on their part is not and will never prays musing custom hardware for all their employees controls metal release simplify program of the consent process since it is to make them into a meeting across that’s an expensive really box yeah it is focusing on the basis is because it is a big name this seems a lot of clients will to have Christian hardware them I mean there’s something wrong with the already existing programming to make them where I’m reliable all times so we don’t mind that interesting approach so an end does it matter what kind of server use or do you need something particular like is it always axes Lennix our computer here of independence so I’m basing this is software itself is written it off as he can offering to me definitely wants and if somebody needs a device driver would you would you up bring that into the pledge system would you write the driver yourself would a developer like myself have a way to integrate third party products with pledge or what I need to use something like a an external a third party control processor to to integrate something new yes men who have currently a spectrum of two different layers so have their call ya systems then you can make the drivers in the language that’s what we do ourselves or we used to do all that then I’m kind of this and that the language we use them as a corporation five days in the country configuration five to make simple drivers along with and I are cold some simple rules for their lan network Asian as well that’s what you do is mostly used for the devices and even receiver some that some this year’s and stuff like that so it’s not just that one we condition is willing to wait as long but it’s not something you would use for like the latest game for a very heavy media from then you do have a dedicated drive about four I was a ninety percent of the drivers who do not we do need this you never get a language which is based on XML file as some rules onto it yet that some really it’s a really interesting point I want to take that apart a little eighty to ninety percent of the devices don’t really have that much logic that you need to write in a driver you mentioned colitis gape obviously that’s a media player so you’ll need to arm if you want to get a movie list or something like that you’ll need to parse out a lot of data and that’s deal definitely need some logic to do that but that really is not most devices out there now a days it’s actually an exception their import their important pieces of the system but %HESITATION most devices generally are relatively simple send the commands and receive a commands and that’s about it now you have the right to mean saying the biggest problem with new devices today is not the complexity will be doing this morning yeah imperfections on how to do it and when he does examples like projectors and TV’s and stuff like that that you have for the homeless will do something yes some quirk students doesn’t respond to messages during the first or second spot upwards and handle seven months in seven states that that was a step in the fishermen devices the complex as such is just find out how to work more death do you think some they will have a standard control protocol I’m gonna for example I mean if you have the whole market now which is only working on color mean you have did you have a very good gonna systems yeah I was on the Exxon with other so but even there is something looking like BSNL onto the I don’t think it’ll ever happen I’d love it to you it would you know there’s nothing special about your power on command but no I’m not in that respect I would say that he can come back with all respect goes go back ten years then everyone had a higher remote printing and you can use my are to get some basic control for everything knives things which network which was a real life but it seems fun there’s no one way to do control for everything anymore yes so that always means a bit of a a bit of driver writing a bit of human labor take to get that thing under control yeah there has to be done that’s nothing to happiness unfortunate form there is we want to network and more of arms control her he would like because you’ve got a few back and the more robust condition the furnace quite often you get these Sir in the locked as well might have not someone on the list offers means that a Christian allows you to don’t share it means even if you can see the traffic you can really do much with it less important in some respects yes the way apple handles security on the one hand I can understand that they want to put security at the fronts but %HESITATION it is very frustrating for guys like us when %HESITATION more we want to control something in and %HESITATION and our control my break because they push an update next week that so not an ideal situation so tell me about your customers what kind of %HESITATION companies or or end users have the most success with a pledge system control system of basically in tune off years ago or who are we party would be the age of being a the letter in then that the nerve that runs so they do a lot of concessions non mostly that Daystar sold signs for the audience you as we speak right now okay relations yeah BBH means van back I had a holler I’ll put a link to that show notes they are %HESITATION yeah it’s a Dutch company that does a lot of integration work perhaps one of the biggest systems integrators for AV in the yachting area I’ve done a lot of work with them myself in the past and anybody who’s in the out of business in Europe definitely knows that name so what does a typical project look like like say I’m an integrator and I want to get involved with pledge I want to use it on a projects what what would be the first steps to get started and maybe some of the steps at the end as well installation this work will organizations are going to do is get the reference of the dispensation of mission before so what can we could but a system already to connect and is there a particular format that you like to see for that really I mean any kind of normal S. committees will do just fine I mean okay into the chorus basically no we can put them up as I use on the different devices and this well what kind of brands on their device models they are come within the core information we need right and then they still getting into something that into our nation’s language so they smoke five missions and then you use the okay what’s in our database already on the what’s new devices after being there and for the running on the new devices to the device firestorm existing ones basically read the US this is being okay and then what about commissioning then the interpreter would take that programming on site or would you guys help remotely how does how does that all work out number anything to do all that himself on this wealthy corporations can do a lot of us all one thing I would say is this new in two stages of the First Nations and you have to move great thing you know how the system is supposed to work and was supposed to be there this if you have nothing around the old system in like a nominal which means you will get there you are only a touch panels to the older compound’s being sent them house also breaks you got a few forays all the sources I know the rules of a letter if I could do and then when you have a computer and then you can race to take it on site and stuff and it all yet so you can do most of their lifting before you even step on board which is a vehicle and they talk about the timing and stuff mission before absolutely is there any kind of monitoring built in or or any kind of service level agreement type of them when outlines so mean currently we are sending one I find ourselves to resume a head over to the nation we have some answers agreement in the media provides for upgrades in this world being available if they need some changes and stuff like that seasons otherwise I mean this yes and server yeah you’re welcome remote login to the server and see log some nasty was going on yeah which okay Sir are you doing anything with the data like collecting data and maybe a dash board to see how the rooms are being utilized or anything like that then none of the moment but this you could expand on it requires about yeah them very seem to need as you go right and that’ll leave me right into the next question are there any do you have any interesting plans for the future that you’d care to share with us I mean to be honest I mean the big focus not has been there ever since markets which that’s really a llama blow our minds so I mean we started about two years ago and last year was the first really on the market them dangerous in there most of the action is just in or any kind of exist they should we have so been raining everyday exciting in the face it means taking up with quite a lot this last year and this year that’s what I’m sure what what kind of customers do you have in in residential as it is an end users or lecture shins integrator saying there wholesalers today locations so they are direct customers but those leading the team is using is is you and me on the back and he wants us I think now in Sweden we have the sixty thousand Alexis told in different houses from their motives to the sound border so you were basically all over Sweden on every single the town more or less so it’s very very quick out of options we’re excited about that them before too expensive other parts of Europe as well very nice if you could put your finger on any one thing or one or two things why do you think there was such rapid adoption yeah I would say this is simple the bathroom doing so smart didn’t give her the more like systems some respect and we do different from other people is a minimal knowledge from user experience them how to make something as easy to use and it is just all to something that’s been made extremely a yeah cost efficient as well so or about thirty percent more love difficult on diversity getting these smart dimmer with all of these other benefits for the Christians along and say well maybe someone else if I go to the old lady Aurora young kids okay technologies severing standing army always giving them is different because the best ever and this make my job easier and faster so this was his only reason for living up to his death really good prices oath problem for people here now solves a problem blame being easy to use and install and and of course or cost is always a factor if you were would you have any advice for someone that has some new ideas and is thinking about turning it into a product whether it’s an application a piece of software may be a small hardware products do you have any ideas or advice for them on on what their first step should be to to bringing that into the world I mean they don’t advice most learning that there are some of the right to self of what you need is an account of it and there were like this you will need to be a product and we need to look at doing and will have the first nation to great causing it would take your time and with the hard times in the past but it will be our roller coaster in all respects on the FDA would we need to put in that first and then stick with your idea all right put on some body armor believe that what you’re doing be ready and then put on your body arm be ready to persevere and go through some tough times first have your partner and the U. close family and everyone to support as well closely at when will they will be involved in this just to give you the time you need to work on it or other ways so you need to have that there for Iran you happen to be with you in it devils required absolutely absolutely having %HESITATION could support team is absolutely critical it’s not talked about very much either in them in the tech world at all but %HESITATION yeah if if the people you you live with and see every day aren’t on the same page as you then it’s going to make things that much more difficult so Eric if somebody would like to get in touch with you how they go about doing that yes to email us on our newly mentors him for it played up come this close to me and my colleagues so some will definitely connected using that unless you have a whole but just one play dot com up on them Nina cooling unit delta local excellent Eric thank you very much for being on the show this was a great talk so much and I’m looking for to hear more from you thanks he Patrick here again just one more thing before we wrap things up if your navy programmer or if you have one on staff and you’re ready to make the switch to software defined now is the time to start learning go to learn eighty programming dot com and where ever you see an opt in box go ahead and put in your email address some really useful information so you can get started learning right now we also have paid courses at learning the programming dot com by step how to use these new programming languages and how exactly how they apply Evey systems so if you’re at least remotely interesting go ahead and go to learning the programming dot com check out the free stuff in role in one of the courses and get started today set aside a little time each week and before you know it you just might make your own control system like it all right see next week thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to software defined survival dot com
We have two guests on the show today, Wes Hatchett CEO and Nick Melin, VP of Customer Success at Control Envy. Both experienced in the world of AV and software. Along with a great team, they’ve taken that experience to form Control Envy.
Control Envy is an automation, control and monitoring platform that takes a software first approach to provide custom solutions that are gorgeous and full of insights and data.
Control Envy runs on many platforms and ticks all the boxes of being a software defined solution.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive its right to be skeptical of at the level of the state a lot of the projects that you know we’re all involved in or and many times control systems actually control it was really a friend a lot of these online courses are your friend in such a way that you could never have accomplished the same sex if you had a much more limited set of resources available to close maybe on the house what five hundred members to be ineffective integrator insults and no matter which technologies you’re using get above the surface all focus on the actual outcomes are and then choose your tools based on those instead of being tied down to one box greetings everyone in AV lance welcome to software defined survival my name is Patrick Murray and today we have two guests on the show both experienced in the world of AV and software and along with a great team they’ve taken that experience to form control Andy control envy is an automation control and monitoring platform that takes a software first approach to provide custom solution that really are beautiful user interfaces are just gorgeous and it is also full of insights and data control and be runs on many platforms and it takes all the boxes of being a software defined solution so please welcome to the show west hatchet CEO and Nick melon VP of customer success at control envy Nick and Wes welcome to the show gay thank you glad to be here Patrick thanks a lot better thanks for taking the time to us to talk with me tonight it’s nighttime here afternoon there is there anything about that introduction that you guys would care to correct or expand upon well I think it was great %HESITATION I’m listening and I’m looking forward to listening to that one back but yet now it’s a and I like you know of course we’ve known each other for a while and so it’s been neat to arm the able to to let you see more and more of what we’ve been doing and and you know how that’s really materialized into a complete system and like you said really focused on the data aspect of getting getting behind more than just being the touch panel you know as far as how we look at programming and what we’re providing correct so we’ll get more into the solution in a few minutes first I’d like to hear a little more about your background so I have some stock questions that I like to ask people and I’ll split them up between you so Wes how did you get started in AV how did you wind up in this crazy business my first job in a V. was at hi fi buys which was a Twitter company so I was doing sales essentially my first year out of high school wanted to take a year off before college and just get a save a little money and which ended up being spent on guitars and I think that interest in music get everything out in the music business lots of it just drove me to that first job in high five guys and %HESITATION through some friends and just other you know other things getting into that world’s it was several years later not too much later but a few years later that I really became aware of everything that was happening around control systems and get going in that direction interesting you are the third guests to be a guitar player so %HESITATION including myself as for guitar players have been on this short lived show so far watch out guitar players you might wind up with a career in AV or to the wise where industry failed musician force more musicians one way yeah Nick tell me about your most successful projects in navy and and what made it rewarding for you oh man great question well my background in AV started at from the construction pass strangely and then from general construction I came up through doing alarm systems and ended up because of that working on some very high profile security projects and I was introduced to a project that we was going to have star Crestron integration arms but they really wanted to make sure that the interface was really usable and so it was a great joy to basically be able to be involved in the scoping and design of the entire infrastructure but then knowing that I got to have creative control over how the interface with and eventually end up being years and that project was twenty plus zones of audio and video a couple of different media rooms fifteen plus touch panels and has been running successfully with only a couple of minor glitches for ten plus years now I’m so I look back on that one and think about all of the the the pains and and difficulties that go into designing interfaces when you have to deal with bitmaps and what not instead of you know the web development tools that we have now and I think the young guns don’t realize how easy they have it compared to what we dealt with this in years prior so but a lot of good memories came out I was not I’m not sure if you bring up a lot of memories for me with that that maps and I’m not sure if it was easier I think that says a funny word we were certainly there was a a tighter limitation by far and what we were able to do %HESITATION said the message the methods were very old school I give you that definitely a great point grade point HTML five is certainly not easy dealing with C. S. S. can %HESITATION can drive you crazy for sure but %HESITATION of course you have really great looking graphics that go along with it and a lot more possibilities that you could do so there’s always that that give and take that you get more power more responsibility and easy I love your respect of that word yep Wes whenever somebody tells me something easy I I tend to get a little bit afraid so tell me guys what separates what differentiates differentiates control and be from other control solutions in a nutshell if you could do that you for what yeah well I think like you said it’s it’s hardware agnostic and one of the things that’s interesting about that is that we don’t focus only on one platform so whereas you know even our work and raspberry pi right now we have existing in a couple of different languages and I think being at a philosophical level really open to having our concept of what the system is and letting the hardware landscape involved you know as we know it will and so there’s you know there’s all kinds of hardware hardware and digital signage all kinds of places that we really have an embedded approach you know to our mission of what we want to do and that goes along with our open source license which I think is the other big part of what makes us different is that not only are we you know actively engineering and looking at the architecture of so many hardware platforms but we’re open source while doing it and that enables us to build a wide network of partners approaching different kinds of systems in different ways so you bring up open source ends there can be a lot of confusion around those two words so can you give me like just a brief really brief definition of what open source means to you yeah out what it means to me is that I have access not only to the out well I guess coming from AV perspective you know we we all talk a lot about source code and having the source code to our projects and as far as it related to say a Crestron projects having your source code if you had all of the graphics and everything else yet you were able to change whatever that project was on what it means to control and be is that not only are you able to change what a project is but we also recognize in this new era that you need the ability to change what the actual product engine behind it is all the way down to work flow in terms of how these projects are designed to Floyd and tied together so I was gonna say so I would to me it it means that I have access to everything necessary to me to make the solution work it’s for my use case is is the practical application I think why open source is important and there’s also a transparency side gets into security and there’s of course a lot of a lot of ways you can expound on that but I think what’s most important to me is that I know the solution can never change in a way that I don’t want because I could always develop on what I’m already comfortable with so it helps you to remain agile and flexible you kind of hinted towards this that it really is a huge topic open source there are many different %HESITATION legs of that ox octopus that you can get into about the benefits of it in the end it basically just lets you view the source code and %HESITATION in in this case even change it if you need to so maybe if you could talk briefly about licensing and and how that affects open source well I think in open source what you primarily about what you see the large open source based companies selling at a license level really is their support their support as well it you know including things like SO ways behind a performance of certain systems and that’s how we look at %HESITATION yes through our partner network and in the projects that we work on it’s it’s really that the the software license you know that you are purchasing is effectively purchasing our official support and and you know the ability to stand behind your deployment excellent so we’ve got open source we covered a bit and now you mentioned SL ace and that kind of gets more into the the business aspect of open source so how you make money with open source can you tell us again in a in a nutshell this is a huge subject as well but out what is an SLA how could apply to us in AV Nick you feel like dealing yeah Assoc SLA is a yet another acronym I and I think that should be a term yet another acronym for %HESITATION service level agreements and service level agreements are very familiar to enterprise purchasers of our software solutions and even not open source operating systems like clinics are produced with as delays as an option that you can purchase from red hat or others and what a service level agreement means is effectively that as a business you can rely upon a certain level of uptime and functionality from the subscription that you’re maintaining and if those agreements are ever compromised in any such way that there is a form of compensation that you’re entitled to as the receiver of the SLA so the benefit is that open source can continue to develop but the software can be provided to you as a service instead of you having to have all of those developers on staff in order to modify the open source tools in the way that you see fit one of the drawbacks to the open source environment when X. is that yet in many times it’s at years a whole bunch of code and tools and do with it what you will it’s a bit of your left to your own devices our companies that can modify open source software to the point where they can provide a stable SLA help you to bridge that gap in between open source and standard commercial software great explanation so can you give me a a practical application that that I as I am in a V. guy would understand well let’s think about for instance zoom meetings are I I don’t know what zooms our current SLA practices are but if you think about zoom as something that eight be companies are becoming familiar with it’s a service it lives in a cloud it ties into your hardware and the systems that you may house in an integration project in yet that software does not necessarily live inside the integration itself but it’s a service that has to stay up constantly has to be reliable and has to be available whenever your meeting is kicked off in your room the implications of zooms cloud service going down mean that suddenly your video conferencing system itself is compromised by a missing service so in that context an SLA around a hosted service such as soon would ensure that you as a business never experienced the implications of that down time and if you do there’s comp station for and could this supply really to the hardware to the TV not turning on and things like that boy in that case that side no there’s no isolates I’m aware of the go down to that level but right but something like a data collection and monitoring and things like that you could provide some courts sort of a guarantee that that things will be available yeah okay so we have started working on a project together and one of the things that %HESITATION came up was in the very beginning of the process Nick you were talking about user stories can you tell us a little more about your ideas on user stories and how to communicate the expectations of projects yes Sir so it to answer that’ll go back a little bit to the question that you asked west and that was what are the most exciting things to you about for instance having control and be available as a tool in your toolbox for me what that comes down to is it being such an open platform that all opportunities are still on the table when you’re having a conversation with someone about what they’re trying to achieve and what that leads to is instead of approaching projects our conversations with a with a number of technical constrained it’s like we have to use this hardware and there’s already X. amounts of devices that have already been determined and now I just need a price you can back up from that conversation to the level that consultants typically approach it and at that level you’re not talking about those implementation details you’re talking about what’s the final outcome what’s the end results that we want to achieve by even taking on this project and how is that in results meet the needs not only of the business that you’re servicing as a client but of your own business and so that’s where user stories come in their way to define in such a way that designers and developers can understands us a second language around what the outcome is that they’re trying to achieve and the store worries are written from the perspective of the final user and the final user might be somebody of of different flavors like for instance if you’re looking at a remote service management dashboard or monitoring platform the user in that case might not necessarily be the same user that’s touching a interface inside of a board room one person might be monitoring the health of the system the other person might be actually using the system so those are two different users the typical language around a user stories actually very simple sentence it’s as a user I want to do acts so that I can accomplish why and using that framework you can have discussions with businesses or even with end users such as our estate homeowners to discuss with them while they’re actually trying to accomplish so that you can lay out those goals without having to get down into the weeds and when you have a platform is open is control and be that becomes a huge benefit because the options available to you are so broad that if you started by trying to lay out all options you would never be finished so instead you lay out what is it that a person considers to be successful or desirable and then you can go to find that and work backwards to be solutions that will fit good stuff I like that equation that X. Y. Z. equation of %HESITATION of making a framework so so that you know where you’re going this is come up several times on the show already obviously experience is a big buzz word lately but it’s really important it’s the right way to approach the projects and like you were saying there are so many possibilities out there especially when you look at more open platforms and commodity hardware did the possibilities really are endless but you don’t need to do everything you just need to do a specific set of tasks so once you have this user story hammered out and everybody agrees on who the players are in and what who the users are and and what their goals are what are the next steps what would a typical project look like Wes you want to extend yes so I think they a lot of what we’re doing on the data side and the you know the insight side of room usage in and those statistics integration with building systems would typically be in an office environment where that side of of the product is really a big part of it and of course that’s like well you saw said I at sea in the smart building wing and that was very much the type of demonstration you know that that we had set up there was so I think we very strongly picture our system and you know a lot of the projects that we work in indeed smart building %HESITATION arena what we’ve also found and Nick is as just started working on a project in that stuff very similar in feel but a different end result being the amenities spaces and and and do you and finding that you know a lot of those same needs again it really depends on who which person in the user story you’re talking about so like make reference the what the end users in either case care about is different down facilities managers or or building staff but they share those things in common and even the idea in those spaces where you could you could paint the amenities space for the hospitality space traditionally I think a little more in the residential direction though we’ve been having conversations where the day you want to have easy access to skirt so that people can communicate around the world so I’m I’m seeing a blur there are now only that even between the commercial and quote the residential side where for a lot of people that are interacting with multiple systems in the office at home where they hang out on things like access to a consistent calendar and having information even at that level with scheduling I think can apply in a lot of markets really interesting take on it obviously the technology that we use at home Skype and facetime and things like that are very similar to the things you’ll use at work zoom or anything like that %HESITATION Skype again shows up at work as well but I like the way you tie that back to even your calendar because your schedule is your schedule right it doesn’t matter if you’re working here at home if you have to be some place you have to be some place so it’s an interesting spot where some more integration could could even take place so getting our hands dirty with control and the what what what do I need to do right so so I’m a I’m a navy integrator maybe I’m a programmer what what happens once everything is hammered out we know what we know we need to do we know what equipment is in the projects what happens next typically what we’ll do with a new partner so you know if it’s our first time working together and we’ve we’ve looked at a project that looks like it’s a great fit and have gone through that process to establish budgets and all of that that will be determining what what role am and this is partly determined by skill sets but you know what role do you want to play not only in this first project but in the evolution of of where you want to go with us because we do have some partners who are primarily on the project management and design site and don’t necessarily have the desire add to get their hands dirty as you said with respect to say the software so we actually all for software development as well in our solutions group and so working with a partner we can not only through our souls but then also through other development partners on put that together so that it so that everyone can play the the role that they want to play so that’s the first thing is we’re not it’s not just stay a software product we’re the only people working with us are programmers first given the model and then you know the market where we come from obviously we work with a lot of programmers suit and that question then becomes which languages are you proficient in and that has you know is also determined by the architecture of what is being deployed %HESITATION so if we’re doing a Crestron system for example %HESITATION that’s gonna be architected in a certain way and and we’re controlling the fits and there may be tasks that even that you know as someone who’s the Crestron programming side could take ownership of then and help works through the development out as far as you know how things went down altogether especially if their legacy systems being considered any number of things there so that’s really the next step is in terms of what we’ve defined %HESITATION dinner for working with a software developer and we have a list of art these drivers are going to be developed for this project and this type of custom functionality %HESITATION we do most of our work through we’re really all of our work to get you know through version control center matter what it is on the next step there with the developer would be to share resources with van and you know be the guide rails and in their support to whatever part of the project they had taken on who along with us on their way to becoming a trusted consultant and that that’s essentially our you know a program of this certification if you will but it’s going through the process to where we can actually put a project in your hands from the beginning and know that you would be able to answer that entire train of thought and also have access to our engineering department as you need it just say Hey here’s a request I’m getting in that’s actually we haven’t seen that before so let’s talk about it that’s what we provide I think that’s pretty cool that kind of flexibility and customization it’s not only in the platform it’s also built into the way that that you’re offering the services well so even if I don’t have any software skills on staff I could rely on you for that or if I do then %HESITATION then you’re flexible in that way so are that’s that’s pretty interesting approach for sure and %HESITATION is probably influenced by your software backgrounds and even using things like %HESITATION get just to exchange information is also on I love the sound of that because dealing with Dropbox or even emailing files is it gets to be a headache really quickly so having that that one place where everything a repository where everything is always up to date makes makes your life a lot easier I think that that subject by itself is something that is maybe worthy of its own conversation even on this podcast in the sense that version control practices when I first got into this business I wasn’t familiar with them I didn’t realize how far along that those practices had already been done I looked in other software industries and that’s kind of true of many things in a beat in the sense that what we experience in our evolution as an industry has has already been experienced in other industries like for instance IDE as six to six to ten years before we’ve experienced at and that includes even the are developing solutions around certain problems and version control itself is one of those things where if you as a programmer find yourself trying to figure out naming schemes and folder schemes for files that you don’t lose track of which version you used for which particular purpose and what you really need to be looking at is a version control system and by its nature control and V. because it uses languages that are already well established within version control system such as Java script and nasty sharp you can make use of things like defend your files where you can see a line by line difference without having to do remains and even being able to check dad’s a version history so you can see a time line of every change you’ve made and when you may have deployed that changed to a site so that if you ever have to go back and reference rents it project that you may have touched six months ago there’s that track record there’s that audit trail history that helps you as a developer as much as it helps anybody else and it it can happen within a system that’s built to handle those kinds of changes instead of just drop box or your own file versioning system so that those kinds of practices are in a lot of ways new to AV programmers and yet that then nice thing is there’s a lot of prior art for two to really take yourself to the next level yeah it’s it’s all been done before there’s no reason to reinvent the wheel and %HESITATION that’s one of the knock on effects of open source is here kind of motivated to work to use these these technologies and best practices just to make your code better and more manageable and it it just makes sense so Wes you mention the raspberry pi before obviously Crestron would probably be done in simple sharp and I’m sure you have hooks into %HESITATION using simple windows with that but if you were to deploy control and be on a raspberry pi for example what what programming language would you need to have the skills and to %HESITATION to do that if you wanted to do the programming yourself primarily Java script it is Java script okay so for like your typical AV programmer what would you recommend they do to start transitioning into %HESITATION yeah it’s a Java script I guess code cadmium yeah I mean there’s there’s a lot of tools out there that even things such as our %HESITATION alerts language is a written within Java script snippets and that during the beta days of control in V. I was participating as a project manager external to the team and using it to solve some of my own problems me and I was amazed by the fact that the the Java script syntax was really powerful I’m I wasn’t job script programmer at the time but because there’s such an open community of Java scripts on the web I was able to think about my problem and go out and find a snippet of code I that was recorded in like I think it was W. three scenes standard yes and drop it into what I was trying to accomplish with my alerts and it was the search to completion was a course of probably fifteen minutes yeah and it’s really amazing to realize how much prior art there is out there that Google is really your friends a lot of these online courses are your friend in such a way that you could never have accomplished the same thing with such speed if you had a much more limited set of resources available to you like for instance a closed forum that night maybe only has what five hundred members because of need the limitations of a particular manufacturer and and how they released their SDK those things just are problems that are solved by having open source communities I’m really glad you brought that up because obviously it’s a it’s a huge problem you know the the community is small and it’s it’s relatively close some people aren’t open to sharing what they’ve learned that much and when you get some more web based technologies the mindset is completely different and I remember hearing an interview with the the one of the main developers are first developers of Java scripts and he was saying that the whole intention of the language was for it to be quickly shared and copied to help people just do stuff so your example there of you wanted to do something you copied and pasted it into your code and it just kind of worked is really a great example of the power of of that of open programming open source programming so anybody’s afraid to Java script don’t be get out there and start grooving and just try it I think you’ll be surprised at how approachable is so would you have any advice for integrators that are more interested that are interested in moving towards a more service based model using things like the raspberry pi getting away from the old black box paradigm well I would say first of all try to involve yourself in conversations with and users as much as possible it’s less about the solutions and more about the outcomes or I guess that is the solution but it’s it’s more about the solution lies about the individual components and when you start thinking in that context you can consider all systems of any minute any manufacturer is simply a tool in the box instead of something that you are beholden to I used to have a saying back in the earlier days of control systems before we went this open source route that it many times control systems actually control people instead of being in it of controlling so if you think about it your project is constrained by the limitations that are stat by technology within one manufacture but it’s not just me project it’s all of the businesses involved who are your programmers they have to have a specific skill set who are your integrators they have to have specific relationships that entire IT recipe doesn’t necessarily happier but the end user’s best interest in mind so to be ineffective integrator and consultant no matter which technologies you’re using get above the surface of all of that focus on what the actual outcomes are and then choose your tools based on the house instead of being tied down to one box so that would be my advice is to it’s more of a mindset change then it is necessarily a hard skill great stuff west you have anything to a you’d like to add to that I was thinking as in a few directions while while you were talking there but I I think that I mean that pretty well I think covers it is just really keep an open mind to it and it’s right to be skeptical of new at the level it in the state comes you know what a lot of the projects that you know we’re all involved in our so that’s one that we completely understand and I think it’s you know talking to people talking to I. T. departments you know and not in a confrontational way but just in trying to better understands alright well if if we were able to modify this in a certain way then it would look like a good solution to you and you know that’s that’s really I mean there’s there’s obviously like you said a lot of change we we’re coming from where you picked one manufacturer and that was that was pretty much it you know in terms of how how you were going to get to the finish line for project in there’s a lot of different ways now absolutely great stuff guys if anybody would like to get in touch with you learn more about control and be how they go about doing that trolling be dot com is a good starting point yeah we’ve got a contact form there where you can give us some information just a little bit on your background and if you’d like to see a demo and you know what what market you work and all that so we can get just a little information and follow up with you immediately and then we said we’ve got a solutions group that can actually put a project into action armed with you if you think it’s it’s gonna be something good for your project or if it’s something that you want you would want to put in front of them and get get your hands on on a demo or something that you could actually take an and test the waters with so I would say yes starting at the website and go from there so one think the cool thing about that contact form is that it’s the same thing is the user interface for control NB is it not %HESITATION gotcha yes so it I mean it does it that that’s a really interesting point but yes fundamentally a lot of the same web widgets and HTML five things that we tie in from the app and that’s really cool that you picked up on that because to me it it hasn’t gotten to that point yet but our long term goal with the website is to include interactivity from these various HTML five components and things inside the interface because I mean that’s that’s what’s dope for right in the short answer yes the control and the contact us form is actually built with our own tools yeah nice way for people to a get a little taste and feel of it gentlemen thank you very much for being on the show thank you very much better look for to begin sometime absolutely thank you take care Hey this is Patrick again we talked about a lot of great stuff on this episode like open source and version control and how to know when you need it which is probably all the time and we talked about the raspberry pi Java script and house solutions like control envy use Java script so if you want to program them you’re gonna have to learn how to do that and make mention some great resources like code academy and I really encourage you to get out there Google around and find some information and just give it a try set aside an hour a week for forty five minutes a day whatever it is put it in your calendar start really simple and small open up a telnet connection to a display or some kind of AV device and start sending come some commands over to it and there’s plenty of information on the internet to get you started if you have a hard time getting up and running with Java script I recommend checking out no rate it’s a drag and drop editor from IBM completely open source and free and they developed it to control the I OC to make it easy to control devices which is exactly what we need they make it super simple to make TCP connections HTTP requests and some more advanced stuff as well and then you create your strings in Java script and send them off to devices it’s a great way to have some early wins so check that out and when you’re ready to really use this stuff in a project and get into infrared control serial relays all those things we need to deal with writing device drivers saving stuff to a database running reports check out my courses at learnAVprogramming.com because it will save you a bunch of time I’ve been through it I went through all the forms I’ve Google to my **** off I’ve searched and searched and tested and tested and now I have a system where I could use these things on real projects and I documented at all in the book courses at learning the programming dot com so there’s no reason that you have to go through all that again now these courses aren’t exactly cheap but they will save you a bunch of time and I think you’ll wind up using them as a resource as well it’s not the kind of thing where you just go through the courses and that’s it I find myself going back to the lessons over and over again when I forget how to do something when I just need a reference what were the steps to get from a to B. I go back to the course search on the table of contents find exactly what I need and then I’m back up and running again so that investment will be a time saver on and on into the future and if you go to learn a programming dot com anywhere you see a sign up box go ahead and sign up and I’ll send you some free information to get you started and then you’ll get a little bit of a feel of my teaching style and you’ll be able to see if things are for you or not alright so get out there get started give it a try ends let’s bring this industry to the next level thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to software defined survival dot com
Colin Birney has had an interesting career path working for both AV integrators and consultants and on the other side of the equation too for large end users like Hess Corporation and Google. He’s had a nice mix working in AV and IT as well as some time in the film industry as a sound editor.
He currently works as a consultant and has some great ideas on how to manage and support AV projects.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive but the vast majority wins out there aren’t complex and I answer I mean I think when RTC is I don’t think people would be buying systems if they knew the actual cost of Google have projects where thousands of times and if your methodology so and it was five my name is Patrick Murray audio visual greetings to everyone listening today welcome to software defined survival today’s guest has had an interesting career path working for both TV integrators and consultants and also on the other side of the equation too for large end users like Hess corporation and Google he’s had a nice mix of working in AV and I. T. as well as some time in the film industry as a sound editor he currently works as a consultant and has some really interesting ideas on how to manage and support AV projects Colin be any welcome to the show hello how are you grace how are you doing well living it up and used to be sunny Florida mention this on a break today but today we’re we’re just hiding indoors so I was a good time to do a casting yes indeed it’s freezing here so I’m happy to be in his well so is there anything about that intro that you’d like to correct or expand upon not really %HESITATION that kind of that kind of covers and I’ve been I’ve %HESITATION pulled cables and ceilings and I’ve you know put together large managed service contracts and I run the whole gamut as far as the industry goes and it’s been a really really interesting ride and I’m I’m now just in my stage of %HESITATION consulting for myself and see where that goes excellent so you mentioned pulling cables how did you get started in AV tell me about your first job or project got started in the navy %HESITATION I actually started on night started with guitar and I love playing guitar going to concerts when I started getting the college and I realize you know I always want to be in a band I really is at the end of the day sound guy get a and everyone else go home maybe at a free beer hot dog when the bard had oftener well I really should be on the other side of this work so I decided to start doing a lot of mixing at the same time that I was doing a working on an engineering degree in industrial engineering and when I got done really feel like going into the I guess that has that were available inside when you sought out some integration work I went to a few folks that I knew and asked them to anybody who’s hiring or you know whatever I can get going and I ended up on the installation crew to sort of drop down and you know told me the last soldering iron suppliers and some stuff and study showed up a little bag and started doing it and it was something that I really enjoyed it really dug into it and I was able to move pretty quickly from installing into being a design engineer SPL picked me up after about six or eight months in you doing two jobs with them and I think from there things just sort of took off so that was my introduction into the industry and my time on the integration side and then %HESITATION following us feel like my kind of disappeared into the corporate world for the next decade before re emerging as a as a as a butterfly in the consulting side that is an interesting analogy they’re going into a cocoon and then re emerging as a butterfly at like that so in AV everybody has their nightmare projects can you tell me about your most rewarding AV projects and what made it special for you %HESITATION on hand aid I think probably the most rewarding was one of my most recent I worked on Google’s Singapore office and by admin tasks with basically there never too large and spaces there’s a customer space and there’s a massive video wall of in their lobby one of the first things you see when you come in the door of their of their offices and for me being part of something that was custom built actually getting to go to the factory in China for acceptance and testing and seeing how those are made and then watching all go up anything from start to finish that was so it is so rewarding or some exciting to see where everything you know the whole kind of process and supply chain all the way down to having it in an up and running %HESITATION and thankfully I was there to see see the opening to see people’s reactions and it’s such a stunning piece I mean it’s probably thirty feet tall notes of the biggest video all but it’s definitely press any any imposing when you when you walk in and they’ve been able to do a lot of really all of you know cool up things for people that are that are visiting the been able to have your local you too celebrities come in and they’re they’re getting is just playing a massive collage on the wall and you know they’re super excited it’s like that that to me is the best things like I I appreciate really good wiring and good craftsmanship and young intricate design but when someone has a positive reaction AT that to me is the most rewarding thing I can see yeah arm I have a come up with that once or twice already on this on this very young podcast is when the install falls into place it’s it’s really like wow okay it’s it’s a very relaxing thing and and %HESITATION these you know it’s it’s nice to have but really the icing on the cake is when you get to see how the system is being used and now as a programmer that’s something I hardly ever get to do but when you when you actually get to see people experiencing what you created that really is on an amazing thing that really makes it all worth while I think I agree and I and that’s kind of been my mantra for most of my career I mean one of the most impactful classes I had when I was in college was this woman taught a course on user interface and she she designs mostly cockpit layout and so her her impression of user designs like it has to be good and it has to be able to back out and things you know she’s in a situation when she designed for things where if you switch songs which you can die right thankfully I don’t think you’re I have ever had that that level of pressure but she seemed impressed I mean the fact that there’s you know there’s research in their standards and there’s there’s reasons for everything you do the size of the buttons all that you know down down to the details that really that really piqued my interest and as I started in SPL I ended up similar to you I interviewed him restaurant programmer and you know most of my days were spent our next you know two and a half years designing interfaces and trying to get around and get my head around the way the people working in Iraq the thing that I bills and for me going forward from there day user experience was what drove me you know I I wasn’t you know especially being on the end user side I wasn’t really in the business of trying to meet quotas are please manufacturers I was in the business trying to please the people that had to use technology and I think that’s a for me it was a really cheap part of the way I work arm the way it works now thing is everything is based on making sure everyone has a good experience I love AV like touching and playing with and I want people to experience with the way I do but they’re not gonna experiences that way if it’s through a weird interface and I’m okay with that you’re okay with that we can play in those windows ninety five looking actual words and have a great time but most people don’t have that kind of enthusiasm so I wanna make it something that’s quite a moment kind of see the magic of what it is you yeah it’s not only the enthusiasm it’s that they usually have other goals and other expectations when they’re in these rooms that we create like you mentioned that the guy flying the plane his his job is to fly the plane he can’t really be too well awed by the technology when he’s got a job to do and it’s it’s the same thing even when you’re doing something as mundane as giving a presentation or was standing in front of a room you know you just want the stuff to work and it’s it’s secondary to are so what you’re trying to do so what was it like working a cool it was massive I I think the biggest thing about Google is just the scale of things I mean I was able to work and you know fifteen plus countries on projects a lot of travel a lot of %HESITATION interaction with different cultures it definitely was a logistics exercise in many cases in Europe but not as much aged definitely %HESITATION but it was I don’t know is it was a really good experience is really good exercise in scale and I think that’s for me I was glad to see someone that had sort of figured out scale because I think one of the problems that when I talk to other integrators especially smaller integrators they struggle with that because they have a method that works for ten rooms twenty rooms thirty rooms when it gets in the one hundred two hundred five hundred you know Google have projects where thousands of times land and if your methodology so labor intensive you’re not gonna be able to yeah I can we will strive you know has companies are getting to the scale in alternately everyone is moving towards smaller cheaper rooms and on the arm right there in the days of having one video conference room for the floor that everyone’s were invited for just doesn’t really exist use you and I think that sort of scale is is real important it also gave me an insight into how to manage it you know insulation is one thing but managing fleet about sizes is another in nineteen nineteen thousand million points so that’s you know that’s something most people aren’t going to encounter at any point in our lives and I was really really happy to get a chance to work with that scale and understand and I think it you know it helps temper the conversation with other folks when they you know anxiety over the number of rooms the hands it could be worse you could twenty times it is overwhelming %HESITATION so what are some things that are that you noticed operating at that scale that that Google did or does to our kind of alleviate that that labor intensive type of installation let’s talk about the install side first and then we’ll talk about the management side so I think in the install side the one of the best choices they made in the they continue to move towards is owning everything they own the design you know you don’t integrator just don’t make drawings they can handed Ryan and they go on the court again because there’s no room for there’s no room for product variation there’s one bill materials that set you know any any deviation from it means a deviation in standard from you know that a fax support affects their supply chain facts the way that they I mean they would buy it would by and large ball would have agreements with with other companies that they would buy X. number of units and they would sit on and distribute them for jobs as they came up so I think that they they understand that are going to be simple and the standard is possible is very little deviation on in their standard design they have to be a really really good reason for it so it’s a it was all driven by kind of a very high level engineering I imagine whereas in navy on a smaller scale were a lot more open to adjusting things kind of on the fly maybe leaving things a little more open and it %HESITATION yeah both with pros and cons I’d imagine yes and no I mean I think the those are you know a lot of the prisoners exist on risible to users users will complain that while I wanted this where this isn’t quite right but you know that’s that’s obviously con but I think on the pro side you’re able to provide such a high level of of experience across all that you know you start getting variation experience are suffering from one room to the Max and United and in that situation where you go from one room to the next lax and every room looks different every touch every pieces experiences different people all preferences but you know there users know that if they walk into a certain type of room it’s gonna behave a certain way there’s no there’s no uncertainty in there’s no question about it yet makes it a lot more usable when things operate differently from room to room it almost becomes unbearable to up for the end user to even to even figure it out every time and now they wind up not using this technology great and I think with the fact that they tucking in young finally put a name to something that you don’t pass as well as you it becomes a product the room itself is a product like a product that has a life cycle of the product and there’s a lot to be learned on the way yeah I mean it’s not exactly the same with the way you know after elders of product manager Dr while we have product we have features we talk to users we got more features with a guy who can her family after releasing new products are new birch and then it has this has this nice clean life cycle that kind of builds itself and it’s built often user for the young music that feedback and I think in their case when you call a product that makes it a lot easier to say well there’s no variation I mean they’re they’re slight you know they have slight variations built and he could work with what is it going to buy cars yeah you know here you go and it’s like well can I have a different engine like now go get a different car this is and you know this isn’t what we do you know you can get you can get a spoiler eating and you know leather seats but ultimately the car the product the software everything that’s that’s treated and that is going to be standard and that’s just it’s an easier way to build and manage something out of very large scale I love the way that sounds especially as a programmer to know exactly you know what things should do how it should behave what is expected and more importantly how to get signed off the exact steps on how to get there it all sounds really great but %HESITATION we don’t all operate at this scale that Google does so take like your typical integration company would they be able to can you imagine a company like that taking this idea and saying this is our conference room products and offering just that and only that for maybe two or three different variations of it and and succeeding with that kind of a business model so that that you had a beautiful sentiments and experiment has been tried several times like you know if you people who started the this idea of a company where the end user doesn’t own the room the lease and it gets refreshed at the refresh cycle of the product new features roll out and can be you know there either part of the release or you can you guys tell Hey we have an option now to add new wireless screen sharing do you wanna do not you know sort of an add on kind of thing and I think right now no one has the appetite and I think it’s also a little too no one meeting insiders or the end user the end user I think the end user still needs customisation at a product level that can’t be satisfied by one whole room product you know Crestron tried that with the you know the lingering system or whatever or I probably know this woman but you know it’s like choose your issues you can’t come in and in the meanwhile rand in just I don’t think the end users are ready to buy but I definitely think that an innovator can go to and you can say look let’s take all your room is amazing generally town I shovel them into these buckets and let’s call each of these pockets of products and let’s give them your features and crown is you can work with and make it easy for your facilities planning in your life cycle planning AB team to design and manage and own the means and obviously there’s always gonna be our lives and that’s fine giving cover ninety percent use cases ninety percent standard is way better than a hundred percent on not suing him slightly so %HESITATION but definitely still on a case by case end user basis I think so but I think it’s the right I think it’s the right way to approach Amy even on a small scales this and what this is this is a product you should have a lifecycle should have a way to gather feedback we should understand that and I think ultimately most aid the organizations want to be like that they want to have a strict three or five your refresh cycle in one house you know they have these plans when it always something always just kind of unravels and never quite works out and you end up with things that are ten or twelve years all the action those one in them and a bunch of varying standards and I think it’s just because the art isn’t there at the moment yeah it would be nice to us of course these things that are predictable just makes it easier to run a business %HESITATION but like you said that that not just really hasn’t been cracked yet in any kind of a reliable way so I’ve been talking to a lot of AV pros lately about using open platforms on link then and the one thing that keeps coming up is is support so you know I like to use the raspberry pi to do automation control or even using an iPad to control devices directly and this stuff works the technologies absolutely there to do it and I’m of the belief that anybody who could program and AV system can learn these other technologies to so technology training really aren’t the issue but the support issue that keeps coming up they talk about even having on site support from a manufacturer so if you’re going to use something open source you obviously won’t have that and they’ll be savings right you won’t have the premium price point either and I kind of think if this is like a self service type of approach because if you go open source you have to take all the responsibility you have to own the solution yourself do you think that self service type of a approach has a place in pro AB I absolutely think it does I think that there is a nervousness too because you don’t get to you know throw the integrator out into a wall and boy they they really messed up this time let’s try different integrator it’s on you gets on the quality of developers you hire on the quality of of admins that you hired to manage usually I think from a cost perspective all their friends but it’s a new ground for the new realm in a way of thinking around something that was always just you have a black box it ran into that stuff when it died you replace the were all good to it being a little more living in in front of you and I think that scares you know definitely scares eighty people you know and I know that the the transition from you know makes you know nice young BNC cables to get five minutes you eyes and you know the source of all Sir is in all sorts of worry for for many people but I think it’s the next step in evolution in integrating appropriately with you know with the I. T. scene because really they’re they’re tired of everything is joined together and I think if you can create a mutual partnership you’re gonna end up in a better place because now you have a vested interest in making sure that your product is good and it works in a supportable you know if you have your network team monitoring your AV devices they’re much happier yeah so given your I. T. backgrounds what would you look for in an AV programmer or integrator or even a consultant as far as you know developing those kind of mutual partnerships I well I mean I think you need to take it slow I I definitely think it’s worth looking at existing use cases I think that’s the hardest that’s the hardest bridge to get across another you know might have talked about this a little bit sad yeah I can say all day long and you demos and things like that until I see it working in a real application with users actually touching it I don’t have a ton of faith and I think that really it’s gonna take a few someone going out and increasingly use it so I think you can start small start with replacing your digital signage infrastructure that was easy you need a box the place and stuff for the network okay let’s replace small grants require let’s see the failure rate is correct metrics on NASA thing for me I you know I come from I come from less of the design integration side and more from a managed service I want to know what it’s gonna do over the next one year two years three year five year what’s my failure at what is the refresh look like was the total effort that it takes to maintain the system because that’s key to a lot of a lot of design the gets left behind is what’s the ongoing cost yeah and that’s that’s the thing that’s really difficult right now is that if I put in certain manufacturers hardware my ongoing cost is really high and the level of technician I have time to work on it is really high in the total cost of that system isn’t a hundred thousand dollars it’s she wanted thousand dollars and that’s a big difference I don’t think people will be buying systems if they knew the actual cost of support you know like that and I think that the benefits towards something that’s open sourcing software base and you know and I think more importantly it’s she once you’ve developed your standard in your software rolling out another unit is not you know that barely that thanks that’s kind of thing goes on the corporate card any fifty rather by the king died on that I just when I was on violence is why not you know and I think that’s that’s where the value is in he in reducing that kind of ongoing cost yeah they’re gonna fail every piece of hardware does in summer some better than others but you know I think you just need to dive in and start gathering data okay so there’s a few things that you mention that I want to %HESITATION I want to come back to a little bit you mention price %HESITATION and sometimes the price comes out the same because you need a higher level of talent to integrate these commodity type solutions so that’s kind of a wash but does it offer more is it the flexibility that makes it so attractive or is that is that a big deciding factor as opposed to yeah as opposed to proprietary yeah I I think it is I think also because the whole town is more available for development see I can make saying some people don’t believe that I I think it’s on it’s all in what you choose you know yeah can hire you can hire a program team he he I I feel it’s easy to hire program team is a find a really good he’d be programmer right I mean you you and I both can probably name her top five favorite programs and there aren’t a lot of others that are just like stellar were you you can run into a really channels the situation of the just not there just gonna try and where is there is a million calories in Silicon Valley has I don’t know how many people and they’re all mostly programmers and I think you know if we if we go back to the idea of you know products you know product icing when you build the product when you initially come to and when you go three features unions friends so I bring twenty people and I just working in the ground for two or three weeks straight and then we stop and I think that that kind of developments like I can staff up really high for a brief time to get a lot done in software developers are used to working so if I have a future listen I want to get somewhere I can do is spent making a lot farther than I would having someone just on a lot of your having my AV department are you reading thing around and I think that’s where the benefit is that that and that cost is relatively fixed I say okay I’m a product of a life cycle and I’m refreshing every three years means every three years are spent and I was spent with a large number of resources but I know they’re only going to be there for you know three weeks six weeks however long it needs to be in that to me is is a lot more manageable than just saying well she’s going to be ongoing forever you roasting me playing with this and tweaking it and doing firmware upgrades and looking at the new version of whatever whatever it may be how do you how do you want to play because I think I’m going to a steady state and just lock it down which I don’t have to I don’t have to buy the new version restaurant pocket on my code library I can just drop in and you know there’s obviously security patches and things like that but that’s that’s just basic maintenance of a young winning some firemen yeah you’ll be making updates but now that has to do really with what you’ve developed in the beginning so it almost sounds like that day are typical AV community are not the people to be doing things like this that that it becomes more in the realm of the IT department and software developers almost yeah I would say so that yeah the needs to be features a question but I think that most of it isn’t hard to achieve anymore and granted we’re talking about the like I said probably the ninety percent of cases which is yeah hall rooms five six person rooms you know rooms with functionality that are that are very basic when you get into really hiding spaces yeah it doesn’t work it doesn’t work now if I needed any note DSP program all I am not in that like finding an intense race with you know an H. yes the Iraq bone all that’s like yeah I’m gonna go Evert your roster need all of you know network there’s no question but the vast majority wins out there aren’t complex and I think the vast majority solutions are over engineered for something that’s not a complex answer most people want to share their laptop with the screen they want to make an audio called when we could get a call you can meet those three features regardless of how you make them you’re probably going to be successful in most most world you’re in again I’m I’m not anyone over symbols on easy but in any realm that’s kind of what it breaks down to the communications I want to teach or to be heard on the scene yeah box it’s not a really it’s not a really complex problem that you’re solving for for probably ninety percent of you use cases I think it’s when we can start digging into more creative solutions yeah definitely just as a little side story I I have actually done it once I went to freelancer dot com and had somebody or hate an iPad app for me and it was just the user interface but I gave the specs and a lot of it was adjustable from a a text file and I got it back in two days and then I hooked it up to my end devices with TCP connections anyways yeah I mean it was great the guy was in China so I gave the specs I went to sleep I woke up I got a report it told what the change in in two days the whole thing was done and the price was pretty much the same as what I pay for navy programmer so it really is a valid way of getting things done I just think a yeah people are afraid of of different technologies any kind of change is obviously a bit scary one of the other things you talked about was %HESITATION having the metrics to decide if if this is the right thing right so there’s always gonna be that first projects where you don’t have any data but once you do have that data presented to other customers you can show the people and on your future projects you could %HESITATION make decisions based on that data so what are some of the things that that %HESITATION that prevent us from actually collecting data if it’s so valuable I I mean I think part of it is just not you know that’ll lag in AV behind IT AT is very well I’m not gonna in we have a list as a lot of a lot of customers who are struggling with their IT side just like maybe sign in gathering meaningful data and really it’s about getting information about incidents so what problem happens something valuable is in that whether it’s the product that failed the reason it failed the reason is recorded and and that just builds over time you one incident doesn’t mean anything incidents and can turn into a problem you know then you identified as a problem and you can start to identify you know certain products that aren’t good for that you need to consistently have the same the same issues over and over and I think really the problem is that traditionally the equipment doesn’t really enable good metrics you don’t have a global reporting so you can on the on a piece of never there’s a lot of companies out there trying to change that I think there’s a lot of there’s a lot of good monitoring software and %HESITATION I think deeply moved to having everything IP connected in a room is great because then you can start to gather that that pilot data but it’s still it’s still something that needs a lot of work and attention from my point of view really at a basic level I just need to know something’s liable and not a good place to start if I put in this you know opinion brand X. TV and let it run for three years was reliable cost me to have to use tons of man hours replacing the CD’s or trouble shooting them or did they just kind of sit and do their job that’s the kind of that’s the kind of data that lets you make okay warned now to save version two point of this product coming to stay with that same no manufacture or many no different direction because it wasn’t quite what I what I wanted to be so I think at a very basic level just reliability to school with and you can really begin to any number of things you know that’s where %HESITATION especially talk about telephony or or video conferencing there’s just so much data the hole from there but it’s almost too much and I think that’s where some of the modern modern tools we’ll help you can set thresholds you can set boundaries to the data you collect because we collect all yes you can you can start doing data mining and really dig in and try to find trends but ultimately no one has time for that at this level you know if I’m trying to optimize something that makes me money that’s one thing but I’m this is a system that costs money right and I think that’s where that’s what people want to spend time on a given day so I think whatever level of data you can collect is gonna be useful clicking no data not you know that’s that’s not gonna help anyone but the very least just getting a list of what goes wrong I mean look at and and try to find trends that’s that’s the starting point and you just go from there he started having more data more information as you go as you notice things that should be collected you figure out a way to collect them excellent so some of the push factor here once in awhile is that %HESITATION there will be companies who will never let you send anything to the cloud to be stored any thoughts on that or any thoughts on how to get around that would you just stored locally on a server %HESITATION but I think that that opinion is breaking down really quickly because it’s getting harder and harder to maintain the inference is an exchange environment okay yes isn’t feasible when you weigh the need attention security versus the reliability like I am hundred times more likely to have a locally hosted managed exchange environment go down verses accomplished one you know that’s just the numbers are just against you can’t possibly have enough exchange servers running you know and make it reasonable from cost perspective than they can running in the cloud in the cloud they’ve optimized everything yeah that’s why when the Intel but came out everyone was curious because losing a few percent efficiency that’s calculated and so a few percentage like is is massive scale you know people people running local Serbs like Cain trips whenever we need multiplied out my millions it’s really really cool and I think for people that don’t think that we should host nation host anything the cloud I don’t I don’t really understand that I don’t think it’s any more secure on these any more reliable getting in on premise thing is just a control thing yeah what it what would you want control over the tune this is something that I had a lot of discussion with the navy is that what Abel information is your AV system sending out that will just devastate you some new about it like when did you see her HM my ankle one a single tear allies goodness candle is all it’s horrible and I think you know that that to me you know to get back to you know how many made awhile ago you talked about your collecting data and sharing it doesn’t happen every every end user I am not gonna say every end user but most end users closely guard their AV system you know my my my dream world would be that if I develop a new product Sam I’m in I’m in user I. developing new products I get down to design a run for a few years I have user feedback I have metrics I have tons of information I have a complete design when I release version two point no version one final goes a consortium someone else can use it yeah early on in my career we made a world of difference for me to see effective well designed systems or even poorly designed systems with the data saying here’s everything we did wrong absolutely out there in the wild and that doesn’t happen people act like yeah like drawings are just just like closely guarded secret of someone gets a glance at that time we can start correctly industry wide open and that’s the system Sir you know I I don’t I think that is staring I understand one integrators because that is their hi Terry piece of information that’s something you know a lot of them have a design that you kind of you know when you’re creating your customers but for an end user why not why don’t you share that when you open that out to to the rest of the community because a lot of us could stand to learn from it absolutely so it sounds like a obviously open source the motivator behind that is because that’s how programmers learn to code mod most programmers used some kind of open source at some point in their life to %HESITATION to learn how to do what they do today and it’s just more I don’t know what it is I think maybe because it’s it’s more based on the individual and the immediate need I need some code to learn from right now and they appreciate that somebody gave it to them so they’re more willing to open source their own stuff so other people could could learn from that it will be nice to find a way to get that on an organizational level where people approach your systems with these products mindset and once once its archives wants to point oh comes out that one point no could be a out there for other people to learn from and it would probably improve our industry overall Sir really interesting take on things yeah and I think really my my view open sourcing mystery movie open sources mom giving someone for free like well you look for yeah yeah you look at it look yeah and that’s how you know like when I was learning HTML back when I was you know I was in early high school and you know what I was getting on like I learned by viewing source and just pulling it apart it was all visible I can see I can download scripts and look at things and that to me was such a valuable learning tool just beginning to look at it and I think that part of the you could go back to part of the reason that I think a V. industry struggling with getting new talent and most people drop in and have no idea what’s going on yeah because they don’t have a chance to then they’ll get a little sneak preview of it he was going off on the industry believes you should give that a try well what is it Hopkins the secret in that and that’s something you know on on linkedin I’ve talked to a number of people that have just they’ve asked for advice you know I’ve I’ve met them through other forums or even just on linkedin and they just reach out to unite I’m always you see someone interested in I try to give them as much as I can because to me just being able to see what the work looks like hopes to make a decision and I think the work is attractive but I don’t think it’s very transparent at the moment but you do day in and day out and and honestly I don’t really know what most eighty people there day in and day out maybe that’s why it’s that I don’t know what the day after day you know because I don’t agree for more I guess yeah weight in this one sanding is imminent firm where there is a lot of that to every project you kind of start from zero %HESITATION basically probably because we don’t know adopts these modern software development approaches where a lot of things are open source so you don’t have to repeat yourself over and over you you know just taking a package that’s already done in using it in your projects just dumb doing that is kind of a challenge right you got a copy and paste it make sure things line up the right way and things like that whereas with something like I’m a big fan and no jazz you just type in an PM in the name of the package you want to install in its party or project it’s it’s ridiculously easy I’d love to see more that maybe but it’s with the closed source approach it’s it’s almost impossible to start doing things that way so let’s talk about some different technologies we are we had a chat a few weeks ago and %HESITATION I know you’re also a big fan of WebRTC having worked at Google and I was really surprised this is actually my sweet and from what I just said there are a few open source projects pure GS and simple simple here are a few of them and the I was able to make my own video conferencing application in just a couple of hours using these open source technologies and it was based on WebRTC so what do you think if any WebRTC what kind of an impact it’ll have on on TV I think role so I mean I think when RTC is or used to change everything because it’s so because it’s been open source because it can adopt as a standard across all devices in any field you don’t go to the end of the page on that and you’ll see it’s like every browser except for internet explorer because it’s gonna be different but as does or not iOS android whatever Samsung’s Nero S. as in male supporter because Dane realize that there is a need for a year cross platform wave communicating it’s not perfect not subject to the whims of network and and things like that but I think for me just a pure development standpoint you know if I if I have a small company I can I can use liberty see free doesn’t mean websites I can just go in and type in a you know type in a random string a letters at the end of their address and it spins up a room and I’m gonna by people in the same experience you have on hang out facetime and experiences like that it’s a collaborative environment Jack I can talk to people and I think it’s it’s a really important %HESITATION two important piece of technology in changing the way we think about collaboration and I think one of the biggest things you especially you know bringing global into it one of the biggest things that they did was reduce the cost point that they could be so widespread is so saturated that everyone has access to it you know who I am in preparation for your for talking here I can I can I wouldn’t get a refresher on the you know the the history of video conferencing and it’s always been this this too will pass of hardware versus software you know you had intake should tell you Mary hardware based hardware hardware hardware you hadn’t seen you seen me the old Cornell written you know is basically the first software based video conferencing platform when its route and it’s always kind of band these two signs of things most of my first experiences with a video called video crossings and forms a Yahoo messenger and MSN messenger and scrape the sort of social platforms and I think people like me that grew up using social platforms for video don’t really want to go into a work environment and have this like heavy restricted way of conferences and I think that whatever T. C. helps unify a lot of the differences like obviously as a you know as a company we can’t like well everyone’s on face now not gonna happen doesn’t work because I mean you know then you get tied back to hardware again run but having a standard that’s open across all platforms you know the Saudis open across software doesn’t matter what you’re running your own home you’re running of RTC and I think that that ability to heavily saturated video into the environment is really valuable neon and like you said you could get up and running in a few hours with the basic you know costing service yeah I was I was really surprised at how approachable it was really was about the greatest programmer and it’s was a pretty amazed at that I like the way you pointed out that that dumb it is really a software defined solution sometimes I have a hard time explaining what software defined means and that’s a perfect example of it like if you if you have to use facetime then you need their hardware so it becomes hardware defines but when you can break free of that and %HESITATION application will run basically anywhere with minimal requirements and then %HESITATION then you deal with the software defined solution and things just become a whole lot more flexible and yeah and even like agile so this is you talk about it from the point of view of more of like collaboration video conferencing face to face meetings have you given any thought of using it as a WebRTC is is like a screen sharing solution on on a local network yeah absolutely I mean I think it works like I think they’re still having most end users and most likely people can wrap their heads around UC and UC is is a buzz word that’s been around for a long time and I guess is not a buzz word it defines something really specific and that’s chat video screen sharing you know it’s it’s it’s a way to collaborate across multiple platforms and I think that when RTC is definitely a good way to do yeah audio in screen sharing Chattan screen sharing I think it’s it’s uses are just however you choose to work yeah definitely okay so the last time we talked you told me you were a about to make you were traveling and you were gonna make a few stops on your way back growing growing up in the nineties it was %HESITATION pretty difficult not to escape that decade without getting a few piercings not not the big hole in your piercings that that the kids have these days but it was a very much a thing having piercings and of course tattoos are very popular would you care to share with us some of the things that you’ve been experimenting with lately that are kind of more technology oriented but along the same so RIAA I am I am fascinated by and and I and I think my first exposure to this and you know we’re gonna call by acting because you know you need a cool word for it all right though bio hacking is where you implants little bits of electronics into your body and then we’ve been doing this for years and years and years with animals take a little castle it’s got you know their name and address and information and animals on the scanner when you get that information humans have the same ability I’ve got plenty of little pockets of skin and places where I can hide things that you know won’t Jackson people don’t actually know about and so I am I am embarking on on my first two lance wanted be %HESITATION NSC along we are ID just because you never know what you need to clone and can refer to future proofing and there’s there’s obviously higher higher density medium you can put in with a little more pain and suffering but it’s an interesting way of working and I met a man in London and %HESITATION covered in tattoos he’s like I thought it was just some kind of insane writer in a bar started talking to her and she worked in security at Barclays and he broke the tactics cards so he he wrote an absent is the operator studio technique ardently getting attacked a car is a cold it was like that everything read out like this is a problem holy ground short sightedness I’m just thinking that you know because you have the proximity your say you said in a matter of minutes and take your card cloning here clone it’s my hand and I can walk around town just buying stuff however I want yes I have your information and I thought it was fascinating as I started researching some of the housing where it is and it’s all very %HESITATION yeah that’s not recruit at this point but there is no last name probably about a hundred to two hundred thousand people have some kind of implant that they’re working with other it’s you know magnetic so they can sense shields love like Christians do that so you can see if wires hot right now approximately to the magnets that are in your skin because it helps enhance the the sensitivity and I see your ID also pleased to store in Christian Jeez some people use it just for basic things like unlocking the phone it’s really about having having a little bit closer physical security of what you own you might my jeans situation would be to walk around with nothing but my hands and be able to buy things unlock my car and started unlock my front door and just not have to carry around cheese and dongles I mean I was just care and are ready but what’s the fun in that exactly sounds a little far fetched in in %HESITATION sci fi but %HESITATION yeah I I definitely think things like this will become more prevalent as as the use cases and applications become more commonplace and the reason I wanted to do it was you are talking about people who are just freaked out and part of it is like I I wanted to put into to educate myself I think there’s there’s two years it was a mistake ology because you understand it’s like yeah it’s a little are what’s the big deal right out what you know I I don’t I don’t understand that one of the people understand because we have super freak out when you talk about including implanted making all the tracking it’s like okay so that’s impossible I would have to be in an RFID reading worlds groom yeah inches away from me at all times to his hat that I have this season for me I’m the only one that knows that I have yeah not anymore what two or three of them to know where a lot of options the nose so I really like that overcoming your fear of technology by just educating yourself and learning about it given getting hands on that’s something that I think the AV industry could really do a lot more of so given your experience working with the enterprise end users what what some tips or advice you have for maybe integrators or software developers to kinda differentiate themselves and like even like a company like Google do they even use thirty party software no it’s now in the use of a little restaurant so there’s there’s crush on controllers needed most of it is developed in house as part of their their video boxing solution %HESITATION just just be clear you know because we don’t win touch on issues related yeah they run entirely on when RTC their entire platform so this may help develop the standard use it extensively in there can you sketch for why an open source platform can be deployed on a massive scale I think the biggest thing you can do is come in with concrete creative ideas I think a lot of end users are ready for something new you know me and we’ve been offering the same thing in just a little bit different flavor year after year that’s why you know she was like Infocom I attend them and I like them but I couldn’t skip probably two years at a time and not really a mess that much said yes there’s nothing in there but generally you go from Bruce Willis like %HESITATION woman different hardware you know different screen greetings slightly different there’s just little incremental changes and I think that end users would be excited by something new and different how would you kind of find out so there is this if it’s going to be new and different they obviously don’t know about it yet right otherwise they would be asking for it so there’s like this gap and I guess creativity is where that plays a role of you know what would be useful and and and creating something like that and and raising awareness about it any ideas on how to fill that that void there I hate I mean I think just showing off you know it it takes nothing to build yeah we talked about this site you know TV with little chaos that’s conduct a laptop with my PC sessions you can share like I’m just felt I just bill wireless screen sharing system that cross your minimal cost is minimal you do without interfaces and he’s in codes you can you can get a proximity sensor and gonna turn on loss and creates a unique code every time so there’s your security built than theirs features built and I think the fear is if you show something off like that and they ask for it when you got a deliberate gonna build it in so it’s it’s I I really think I don’t think integrators having some of to do that you know they they right now don’t have you know it’s it’s such a tight competitive market margins are pretty well set across all you know everything that yeah we differentiate you but also you’re putting you know you’re putting money at risk by going in and developing a solution and can take and mark your sense of on the toes manufactures I think really the place where I’m from is being used thing to ask for and some like me I believe heavily in in educating your educating without any strings I don’t like giving presentations where I get you know about ninety percent of them like you want the rest of the story sign up for my newsletter or hire me like I want to give you tools to start playing yeah maybe all you know maybe I’ll need help with it but maybe it’s just enough to spark your interest and get you going I’m really excited to see what the education market is going on will be later Cornell there goes digging and definitely when suddenly Cornell as from Cornell was the one who wrote see you singing which kicked off the whole computer based video conferencing movement so they have a history of of being innovators in in this case and I think that as you see more in action use cases you are you being a really good one it’s in use you can go see yeah about him is not is not just an idea you know we’re in right now we kind of we kind of sound like drainage but it’s on get up yes it’s happening it’s real and it exists just because you don’t see in this not being pitched year Bruno in above if you get above the you know the sales pitch and and what’s sort of the norm freeing starting to those sort of weird pockets of that you’re gonna find people doing really unique stuff that works really well he has so much to unpack there and think about %HESITATION we’ve been gone for awhile now do you have a few more minutes I do okay because there was one other thing that came up at the end of our last talk and that was contract manufacturing I think so is what is really going to get people excited because you were mentioning right is that that the margins are pretty much the same across product lines across integrators so what are you competing on basically I don’t know how much you’re willing to give up so maybe he actually contract menu manufacturing equipment could be an interesting way to arm to get back in the game somehow what were your thoughts on that I I agree I mean I think that’s that falls back in this idea of reading something as a product unifying if I understand you know what I was sitting in most cases you drop in this you know if you started managing and use a product you drop kind of in the middle of something by you have an idea of how many wins you have an idea of what’s needed and you can start looking for those opportunities to manufacturing equipment have it manufactured for it you know microphones is a good example and cables you know the markup on those isn’t saying I can get a six dollar microphone on Ali express granted after a hundred of them six all my component performs pretty closely to anything that most major manufacturers put out you know just local one hundred my that’s huge that’s a huge opportunities to you doctor to have control and a lot of those companies are making that want to work with you they want to work with you to improve the product they want to work with you to customize a and so you to start developing your own standards and making things around you know even even down to just you know it’s like I just want we want the court to be a different color cool yeah let’s do it let’s give you some noble designed flared what you’re telling I think there’s a huge opportunity there to re evaluate the way that you do you know if you know you the ownership of the beyond beyond what we have now and again I don’t want to pick extensively on integrators but they’re tied into a system that doesn’t you know that that kind of get you in if I can find a way to work through that around that I have I have opportunities to to explore this place is some sort of junk some sources and that’s where your valuation process you know your sample of everything out there and see what works and what doesn’t and then make a decision and go and I think that ultimately the the sense of ownership and they sent me on the actual levels control is is pretty cool yeah it definitely increases you do have to have some kind of scale in order to do that bottom yeah definitely a new approach that I’m kind of fascinated pie yeah I’ve I’ve spoken with a few folks and a good friend of mine is the material science %HESITATION engineer and he is the head of paramount for lighting company and when he first started in that role and no manufacturing experience and he said you know five years later you’d be surprised how easy it is to get a product made exactly to your specifications really brought me specify at you can source those parts because ultimately that’s what everyone else is doing then they’re going out there going on the finding someone make the driver will make their enough time allows you so make the driver some make the chat the other body yeah there’s there’s obviously still those your boutique shops that do things I am working on his part you find a company that does injection molding phone company that makes little drivers behind some put it all together and then you can pretty little bottom and there’s really no difference in going out and doing it yourself other than the effort and the confidence to do that in again that’s a level of ownership that I don’t know the lot of people are comfortable with same thing with owning your own design you can easily run your own design and layout sources of income that they will say this is what you’ll be installing but you’re responsible of the end for owning at I’m sure you do not everyone and I do want to carry out that that you know when we do talk about these ideas it’s not for everyone some user groups yes some users are going to respond well to it they want something that is extremely stable extremely reliable extremely not sent those can’t be but there is an element of you know there is some experimentation before you to release one Dato yeah sure and I think that that’s I think that that’s the challenge is it is having the confidence to take a risk and I think that’s you know that’s one of things that that I mean more than anything impacted need from being it rules they have this idea of what’s called the moon shot in a man shot is an actual risk I’m putting my money on my reputation or my job on the line for something that I think will be revolutionary and what they did when they developed their GDC system based on liberty scene was that they said okay we have a huge traditional infrastructure we’re tired of it it doesn’t work for us as a market scale they wrote their own video conferencing platform that’s insane yeah but it cannot massively it turned into a product for them on the market with that as a part of the G. screen right okay even if they never took the rest could still just being struggling through the simulation paramount says with their video conferencing infrastructure the limited you know they be they be cutting down on our video called because they just can’t support it so I think there are ways to take those looming shots within your environment you know build up a tolerance for risk you know try I assume it costs a little bit and if you fail it doesn’t hurt quite so bad and scale up from there until you’re just you know taking crazy risks excellent I love the sound of that contact anybody like to get in touch with you how they go about doing that %HESITATION you can get in touch with me on linkedin %HESITATION just my name calling Bernie be I are any why you can also email me call and ask Bernie consulting dot com and I will be happy to chat with you about whatever I’m always down for good okay lively discussion about the future of a zillion and what’s good and what isn’t %HESITATION so I’m I’m happy to chat with folks you know I’m not I am a consultant but I think I’ve been told by a lot of people that I’m not a very good one because they don’t sell enough so if you email me I never getting around asking if you need any help but I’m always happy to talk and and and offer suggestions and going in the right direction when you’re looking for something new and different that’s what I want ultimately I want to see our industry change once you get better and more creative and I think that is going to start with a few key people stepping on taking risks excellent thank you so much for being on the show count absolutely thank you better take care after hearing and thanks for listening to the show if you enjoyed this discussion if you liked what you’ve heard if you want to hear more discussions like this please don’t I leave a review subscribe to the show send me a comment get in touch with me somehow and let me know that you’re out there listening and that’ll motivate me to show so if you’re driving or whatever asks you reach to set something in your calendar to give you a reminder I thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes find survival
Jonathan Mangnall has a long history working with video distribution systems. He was Sales Director at Endeleo which was acquired by AMX in 2006, which as you all know way acquired by Harman in 2014. And our guest remained on a Sales Director and VP of Enterprise Sales through that time.
Just last year he decided to shift gears and embrace software defined AV by founding U-topia Technologies, which distributes Utelogy’s AV control and management platform.
Read More...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today on software defined survive it is a world that accepts disruption of the moment so it’s a good time to be doing the still of the business for those that want to but there is a lot more business for those that do you want to change and surprise great and the getting greetings everyone in AV lands my name is Patrick Murray and welcome to software defined survival today’s guest has a long history working with video distribution systems he was sales director at Angelo which was acquired by amex in two thousand six which as you all know was acquired by harmony in two thousand fourteen and are read our guest remained on as sales director and VP of enterprise sales throughout that time and just last year he decided to shift gears and embrace software defined AV by founding utopia technologies which distributes utilities AV control and management platform please welcome Jonathan mangle Jonathan welcome to the show thanks Patrick in debt thanks for the introduction and that yeah we’ve been around a long time and in this space them but I think it’s time for bed is disruption so excited about what the future brings absolutely is there anything about the introduction you’d like to correct or expand upon no no that’s at the very start because it was an delay have not in the lead but set now we’ve we’ve been around a long time and this is a bunches of that started and a liar went to a mix and a few few remains and went into the home and Jenny and it was it was a fantastic journey in them I think something that we spend a lot of time doing was understanding customs needs were changing the way that we sell to people and that really leads into the software defined AV stuff because it’s all about the user the user experience the way that our customers interface with the technology both from an implementation of management center uses going to be at that takes is along this paradigm shift into software as a service threw up through the time amex we spend a lot of time understanding the custom Jenny and moving the sales process from being talking about technology to understanding the outcomes people needed I’m focusing on that so exciting to bring that learning that in the great learning that we got from those businesses into this New World and and you know it is all about the customer it is all about the outcome and and I think that software defined ate meat gives a better outcome to a lot more people than you know the key areas scuttle had we scale and a business that historically has been very difficult to discuss and the only sea world allows us to do that yeah absolutely it will we hear this word experience a lot lately with Infocom changing their name and just in general user experience instead of user interface and things like that and %HESITATION in AV yeah we I think you know you’ll always need some kind of hardware where the software will need to run but I think we get the sequencing wrong where we may come to a customer with solutions and present our solutions instead of first finding out what what it is that they need what their outcome is and I think the sequencing is is very important you know what what the order is what do you do first instead of looking at your solution look at what the customer needs and %HESITATION you mention that quite a few times and I think that’s a really important part of a software defined or any kind of solution at all whether it’s proprietary or not yeah I got you you’re exactly rights and the the the AV industry particularly because he’s grown up with experts in audio people that was sound engineers experts in video I’m that focus is always on the latest and greatest technology we need to have four K. we need to have whatever it is from an audio perspective he’s all about having the very best specification people have driven by product specifications rather than saying what is it these guys want to do what does it makes you look like how many people are in the group how they communicate I’m you know and sometimes the solution needs to be at the right price and it needs to be good enough to do what they need to do I’m a map is where the outcome can be defined more clearly I’m people don’t get hung up on crating something around a specification which is a technical specification model said go and you know in all of these things can be dependent on the environment using it all of those things importing these people can have a good meeting quickly reliably and at the right price absolutely I remember when I got started out one of the first companies I worked for the engineer and sales person would actually attend meetings at at the customer just to find out what their work flow was was like and I think that %HESITATION has kind of gone a bit missing over the years could you tell me a little bit about your most successful or rewarding AV project and and what made it special for you yeah that’s that’s a really good question and and and very relevance in it it was a large and insurance reinsurance company in London a couple of years ago and and they had a great sales team with me after that said amex in those days Jeff Gordon and his crew and we spent a lot of time is actually a on and going in moving into the island censored and ready interestingly that whole business as you might imagine the insurance reinsurance probably not the most exciting topic in the world but was depends on a lot of people wandering around London with reams of paper under the wrong having meetings with other interesting insurance people and they had fairly dowdy dull offices around so that the Devonshire square level market area multiple offices and I’m one of the biggest challenges as we got into understand the customer was actually around HR and staff retention staff recruitment and getting the right talent in that business and having the right talent is critical for the growth of any business so is there any relocated from multiple buildings to these new shiny cheese grated soured Monday the big focus was on that people the the experience they were gonna give them this wonderful new office space and the tools that would enable them to do that job back to but really importantly at a platform that they would create that would make them want to work there for longer also importantly to recruit the best talent you know from the graduate so what coming at a university that would come to this place and go wow that’s a place I want to work that’s a place that’s in line with the great experience I’ve had with technology it might wonderful university that’s you know the place for me so when we started the journey with you know as always we wanted to talk about how all product was back to the non compact which is in all of these key areas but as we went through that whole sales process we probably met thirty or forty people from the organization on I have to say probably less than ten percent of those people anything to do with technology we met everybody from the receptionist to that he eight to the CS CIO CEO who were interested in what this technology would mean to them how it would change the bottom they worked in a whole host of uses that we evaluated the products as we put in these proofs of concepts sounds simple and we won the business because we listen to them we spend an enormous amount of time understanding that needs discussing what they the outcome was they wanted understanding what that work flow was how they would interact with this but also educating them on on what using a new style video collaborative system would would me and at the end of the day and it causes to win the business and you have do we have the best products we we probably thought we did but it was really all about driving to the rights have come so your question was we had the most satisfying style you know in recent years because it takes all the boxes of what we’re talking about now that was incredibly satisfying buddy to sunset then set the standard for global romance and you know and again one of the things as we’ve all this conversation is you know from a sales perspective who for many organizations perspective you want to sell it once and deploy often so from the the end user is going to be you may want to specify it once and deploy often because it’s a huge cost involved in evaluating technology understanding how it’s going to be road where it’s gonna deployed and if they can be deployed in all the places you want to I am because not everything can be supplied everywhere and and often times the single biggest problem that but whatever the guy is the global head of meeting space is arriving have is actually around global logistics and supply chain so yeah I did a really great sales process to really untested outcome and you know we need more of that and that’s really set the scene for many organizations now they want to have standard solution they want to understand what it is that they use is making and that was one of them got to deploy that everywhere around the world simply quickly and at minimal cost absolutely as a as a programmer you’re singing to the choir programmers hate writing the same code over and over again you should just do it once and then you know deployed over and over again so that’s absolutely are extremely important point made here but what I really like about that story is how you pointed out the knock on effects of the systems that that we install it’s not only about collaboration in maybe a collaboration system but if that fails then that company may not attracts the right talent they’ll have staffing issues because of the technology deployed in that office and I think that’s a really interesting point to make is that the things we do have more facts than than what they’re directly intended for yeah and and yet a part of this is understanding in the stake holders are in the decision making process for a new project and often you know in the old in the old days it was the AV guys because they wanted to talk about speeds and feeds and they were obsessed with the technology the real stake holders now all the uses its corporate real estate it’s a job because you know they won’t arrive right solutions for that company and that is in a week might be the sales ladies because if it’s a sales organization they want to know how that can communicate faster with the customers with their colleagues I’m to drive business efficiencies to improve whatever it is that the organization does so yeah it it’s it’s a critical part of it and it’s not no longer nice to have it is mission critical and a V. typically hasn’t been if if if we didn’t used to work you know they’re just not use it or go to another space and it didn’t have the same cachet you have we don’t see eye sees coping ninety nine point nine percent uptime and a V. there I say because it’s our industry was probably eighty percent at best people got used to that we got used to the mediocrity as as we move into the I. T. space and you go video ever I’ve created with the products like SP aside and then there’s some things that are coming to the fore now I expect enterprise grade delivery and the getting so that’s a good thing yeah so we’ve got up our game a navy we want to %HESITATION change with the times let’s let’s shift do have something in common she’s gonna say and you have some are and some months and data that the still lots of business for those that don’t want to but there’s a lot more business for those that do want to change yeah there’s a lot of opportunity there but of course changes hard it’s difficult it’s scary and %HESITATION that’s kind of why I’m doing this podcast just to talk to people and get ideas and and some ammunition and some %HESITATION maybe some body armor on and how to make that change face the changes that are coming so let’s shift gears here and talk about the solution that you’re working with now you tell OG what is it that a difference differentiates utility from other control solutions I am I think primarily that they did it isn’t hardware dependent and there’s a couple things so it’s it’s seven based its cloud based it’s incredibly flexible it’s very agile and it’s it’s typically very low cost because there’s no hardware is next and see each other on the control room the room you don’t necessarily need an expensive touch final I’m and importantly we’re actually yeah I’m agnostic to one of the other systems that are installed so if people have an existing state of control technology you know from the big to an amex or Crestron we can control environment but we can also control new environments directly I’m using our own technology from a touch for new touch final point of view you can seven fights demo five owns it any device you want it could be a fine it could be a template or it could be at a desk lamp see them display touch display that it’s running android in something like that and you said the critical thing here is that it is software and it doesn’t have to be sold as a as a capital cost for project it can be sold as an operational expense which takes is into the as a service model which is something that is I think becoming more mortal to bounce around in the AV space is clearly something that’s been going on for a long long time in the icy world and but really that’s that’s where we come to with the solution and interestingly there’s not a whole week to talk about other than you can control you can monitor you can manage you can do meeting rooms you have a an online help desk everything that you would once in in this perfect AV world I’m you can have using a piece of software because with talking to the equipment and and receiving information once the Paso but you can also talk back to me equipment to make you do the things that a control system makes it do so really really simple inexpensive can be sold as a service so people effectively get more day one the may yet than they ever anticipated because there’s no capital outlay required if people want to go down that model yeah it’s it seems like a software and as a service %HESITATION kind of go hand in hand if there was some one thing so if you think about your your most successful dealers installers integrators and customers however it is it’s distributed which we’ll talk about the second if you think about them what and had to pick one or two things that really sets them apart the reason why they have success with you tell the jury what with those with those things me I am I think they understand the value of and a long term relationship with their customers said they’ve built some kind of a managed service model which represents you know ideally twin at ten to twenty percent of their their existing revenue if you don’t have a service model and you don’t have that mentality then you may not be the right organization you know the difficulty is that the majority of of of all current integrate Zampa right and and this is you know drug driven by the the end uses that operates on a capital expense model because the the time when a bi solution solutions refreshed and renewed it’s been driven in the event is normally moving into a new building when he moved to new buildings big capital costs put together which covers things like getting free they then have all of that AV solution until they move buildings again that’s not the case with on C. you know I see is refreshed when he seemed to be refreshed based on business outcomes the business needs I’m and you should be able to do that with a V. as well so there are organizations that have a service model and we’re talking to some of those at the moment and they’re excited what’s utility can bring that serves as the regions of the customers with small hands that they can have remote so that customers you know and and effectively they can extend this service model they can be we can say the word they can charge more for the service to give them a better outcome you know things like all you help facility to be on the cool directly to help desk and beat all of that on prime moral strength to support and I’m in a room more all of those sorts of things critical the site some businesses get they sometimes and and some some of the integrators will continue down the the traditional route sure foot for those so this also comes a lot is if people get it or don’t and I have a hard time coming up with a better way of saying that myself but it really is you either you understand and see this thing coming or or you or I don’t know I think everybody does understands that changes underfoot and but a lot of people are grappling with how to change and it really does come down to adopting a new business model and I guess it doesn’t have to be an overnight thing what would you say are the first steps would be the first step for a company that maybe is a little concerns but knows they have to make this kind of change it’s it’s a great question and it’s something that that is that an organization and as it you know with the border set you tell you we talk about a lot is what is our roots in markets and what are the critical factors of identifying all rights and I think so the will to change it is the most critical thing me the I think the ownership of the business need to look at where they want to be in a few years time you know because some business is the ownership is getting older and older there’s no succession plan that full they don’t really know what I’m there is some young guy organizations that have a very forward thinking and and it may be because they have an exit strategy I’m you know maybe they will insist make themselves attractive to be acquired by larger IT company you know there’s there’s all sorts of things I think importantly that people have the wherewithal to change their business model and it is no longer business as usual I’m any doesn’t mean they have to change it I would not you can run as a service model currently with capital models so you have these things are mutually exclusive I’m but it’s all driven by the ownership and if people come to me and they don’t understand the proposition and it’s not the band then that’s absolutely fine we’ve we’ve but we’ve got a loser early and we gonna move on to the next because because there is a whole heap of people out there that can help to deliver this and not all of them are in the traditional and the spice right which brings up the next interesting thing we had a short conversation before this call and you were talking about that that way AV projects are done it may be done by other types of companies can you talk about other types of a distribution channels or other types of of companies or markets that up me kind of replace some of what we do yeah absolutely and and this is happening right now %HESITATION interestingly there’s an organization we worked with this and that and the I. S. who work for me the largest integrates reigned in battle looks they were quiet last year by a French company an IT company called gonna come a multi billion euros organization rates in seventeen countries but they sell IT is a service their ambition is to ten a I S. again this is based on the leadership of the ice wanting this so you know it’s a great because they’re a forward thinking organization but these guys want to create ATV as a service backed by clinical I think they spend tens of millions of dollars every month on IT equipment that they then finance inputs into that customer base I want to take that model and replicates in the eighties space so that they’re an example of someone that he’s doing that here and now so you know in terms of a target audience like utility those guys are a great opportunity but if we also then looked back at the office environments we’ve lived in and works and for the last twenty thirty forty years is that is that I know a bunch of organizations that have had a presence in probably every office without work and those of the print copy guys you know there are some great models out there some great training grounds sales people alike since Xerox and Ricoh work these days who have sold photocopies and princes to multiple organizations they sold its X. model as nobody owns a fax a copy expected he rents it all of these devices now typically RP connected so if there was ever a need to service them or to send that will tell me that done automatically over the network and all of these network devices all of these organizations have a large number of break fix engineers all over the country support school of their customers I’m interesting me one thing that most organizations do less so now is prince copies so these these companies are looking for the next thing that replaces printing copying which is and collaboration if people have a meeting now yes they still use the document but it’s digital you can amend it you can change it you could draw on it you could modify real sign that the end of the meeting you send it to the rest of the the meeting participants said these guys interestingly %HESITATION neck customers because they typically got a three year contract that IT savvy because all of that device is Iraqi connected they understand the service model they understand what it means from a business point of view to a new customer and to own them for a long period of time what they have now is the opportunity to sell more services and and more technology into these places so we had a print copy market is something that is really interesting and I know who people like Rico are investing heavily in in people and that infrastructure to support this they have a monstrous customer base around the world and you know the people we’re talking to any man judiciary is is massive when you know the critical thing here is that many of the meeting spaces that are less complex never they were armed with solutions light utility there’s no programming nearly configuration and you can create a consistent level of experience an outcome really easily remotely in many of our customs rituals in that want to deploy the same solution all over their state whenever the world we have to manage monitor that and deploy it centrally without expensive technical resource on site is is music to everyone’s is fascinating fascinating you know in business it’s always important to know who your competition is both present and future and I think the way the way you did that you what kind of zoomed out from what we do and just kind of had a meta look at what we do and if you picture everything in the office as just appliances including the AV equipment then %HESITATION that can give you a completely different perspective and allow you to our to maybe yes and who your future competition might be and it could be come from completely out of left field something like a photocopy companies would be completely unexpected but it does make perfect spent sense when you are when you explain it that way absolutely and and I I think you know we’ve also got a look at what’s happening in the rest of the world in terms of wet disruptions coming from and the things that we do now in our everyday lives we didn’t do very few years ago and we’ve we’ve we’ve very quickly changing at that this New World and the critical bit here is that the majority of people in the gonna be using this technology are just regular consumers and the guys that go down the High Street by mobile bite on the contract and and you know they buy the thing that they like them if it’s as simple as that wait wait can be talking to tens of thousands of organizations that have no idea about what brand of technology is that they use in their offices they just know that they get a good I’ve come and they don’t care absolutely and and what should so another point you you touched on was that no programming ends this is also an interesting kind of %HESITATION dichotomy with software defined solutions you can do a lot more configuration so just a quick question where do you see guys like myself AV programmers how can they still provide value in this kind of an environment okay does it is a couple of points there is that the the the old Davey space isn’t going to go away is still going to be lots of big boardrooms conference rooms conventions senses stadiums they need the arts and crafts style of programming complex one off solutions those on going away what’s happened here is the market is as gods and monstrously big you know by the proverbial fact true maybe even a hundred you know with the we talking about whatever it is fifty five million meeting spaces around the world you know if you actually start to do some modeling around many spaces you want to have on the management in your business over here to tell what that looks like from a financial model that becomes really exciting so going back to the program is there’s loads of work still for everyone today because in reality there’s never really been in the program is to go around what what what what’s happened is the market’s got bigger and but as the market gets bigger is go bigger in terms of volume meeting spaces that are typically less complex and you know and while some show lots of companies will tell you differently a meeting room in a bank is the same as a meeting room and insurance companies Sam’s a meeting room and legal company echo doesn’t need to be any different what does need to be is robust proven and we’ll give you a great outcome every time we doesn’t need to be buggy because you just have to buy a different piece of code because someone’s a different in that room that’s not where we want to get to all of that stuff will still exist however one of the things that we want to do we want to build a community of people that are able to write drivers and you know as we go further wider into managing different technologies we still need drivers and in a way writing drive is all day every day of we already have a community with it within the challenging business across the world the right to drive is all the time so there is an opportunity if you can program in C. shop and there’s lots of young kids out there that could programming C. shop as well that they can help and so I’m like we have to adapt an adult new methods and processes whether it’s from a child’s point of view an implementation point of view and programs need to do sank nothing’s forever and people can keep on doing the same things forever I’m sure this will be a living so we might but there’s there’s also lots of different ways of doing things you know we always need grace and uncool user interfaces you have people looking great stuff and I smell on live it’s a different it’s a different different things that we need to but it it still programming and and %HESITATION writing codes and but but to a different level it states that you had some great points there out will there’s but so they’ll always be a need for custom right they’ll always be custom projects that don’t fit into any kind of a framework some of the other things that you mentioned were like HTML five and C. sharp and I’m really of the opinion that you don’t need to be young kid out of college to learn these new languages I’ve done it myself it takes a week or two or maybe even a month of of some painful learning it’s not exactly easy but once you get over that initial hardship of of the of changing how you think about things I think you’re much in a much better position because you bring all of that AV experience that you had with you on to these new platforms and it it just it could be really powerful and I think it’s a it’s a big opportunity so you mentioned writing drivers what would that look like a like an absolute type of the thing or would an integrator find a programmer for the special drivers that he needs yet I’m and the I mean it’s it’s there’s two things here that it would be great to have a driver that does everything that a product can do but if you had something complicated like a video will control the you know you don’t necessarily need a drivers to be able to change the color balance you need drivers to be at a do whatever it is you want the use it’s we have to do which is maybe some presets in some configurations with the video that comes back to looking at the outcome first absolutely %HESITATION but because we’re managing and monitoring it may be that there are states of that device that you want to manage and monitor but you wouldn’t necessarily need to control you see what I mean are you wanna know what what’s going on that you may want to know the temperature you may want to know the utilization but you eat at night needed to work so sometimes the drivers may need to be more complicated and complex and ending up it sounds less so I’m so we want we want to build a community of people that are right respected to understand what the outcomes are put them back into the intelligent machine will verify them and and you know they’ll be there up in the cloud for everybody to use and and that’s growing old son you know because one of the one of the things it’s important here is that some people want to buy solutions not utility only for the management and monitoring I’m so into a number integrates is actually now you have a larger states custom is they they manage but they didn’t have the granularity and in terms of what they can manage and monitor so this gives them the opportunity but again drivers will need to be written for the sum of the legacy equipments and that but that’s the same with any software solution absolutely you if your ends correct buying a safety for your business you’ll spend whatever millions is on that but then another probably five times that implements thing you you you you can’t just plug it in and he’s gonna do everything round that day needs to be the appetite to to do the legwork as well to get the outcome so in those instances so going back to you know skills of people like you sell this stuff to be done that absolutely yeah Sir when yes there’s just nothing nothing’s going away and in the same way that you know as as a business as as running a sales team getting a sales team to show that they’re right focus from the capital sale sewer I don’t take sides whether getting an amount per month is actually very difficult thing to do you know of sales people to coin operated and if you change their business model everyone has to adapt so it’s not about if the if you go through the whole market everything needs to change I’m you know something’s going to change radically some things need to be tweaked but it is changing and the only way to succeed is to embrace change and move forward with it and as with every walk of life some people do some people down and then it is a it is a world that accepts disruption of the moment so it’s a good time to be doing it great for is the Monaco again that it is a world that accepts destruction that is true we see it all over the place they requested a I’m Frank Pellkoffer CEO of Utelogy. said I should ask you about the machete club where the mission I cut out the machete clueless is sorry that Frank yeah that sets up a couple years ago and it’s really fat people in the industry you will go out with a machete and they will Wade through the jungle than that will create a new path for is because the raw the complexities of an old state organization where people say this is the way we do it in a recount do it that way so sometimes you need people to bludgeon you and Frank is set this up with a number of industry friends and and people in the industry that like to think a little bit differently and who out frankly out for a bit of destruction and so I went to the machete club drinks evening in that an icy and it was in a remote location in a very funky are on the side of the dock somewhere nice you can tell me where is because I’m not really sure how we got there by bus and but it was it was a great it was a great evening and there was lots of like minded individuals that that they wanted to talk about changing and understood the need for change not change for the sake of it but you know where do we go in the future and people that on I am on a freight to throw ideas around and then you know this is a great quote that I like to use it was from an ice hockey man Wayne Gretzky that you miss a hundred percent of the shots you know and I don’t think that’s really true you’ve you’ve got to really look at the market and and try things not everything’s going to work but you know if you got a file fail quickly and fell cheaply but let’s have a go and because I’m just doing everything the same way and expecting a different outcome is is it is not really the way forward so we have to adapt to changing the machete club is really all about is people out that some young some old that I’ve got some great ideas and he provides a platform for people to talk to each other and to have those ideas and and hopefully driving forward and you’ll probably see a lot of stuff coming out soon Adams machete club members because that’s where the entrepreneurial spirit lies and then I’m excited that with parts of excellent I think that is a great sentiment to wrap up this show on if anybody would like to get in touch with you or find out more about utility or the machete club how would they go about doing that and my website which is evolving as you dashed hope yet don’t tack and my email address is Jonathan the mangled it you don’t you dash terapeuta track and alright go to the utility websites as well and you can find one of our contact details that but Sam we’re out in the market we are disrupting it’s phenomenally exciting time and %HESITATION I’m excited to be possible thanks very much for your time Patrick Johnson thank you so much for being on the show she is alive Patrick here again thanks for listening to the show if you enjoyed this discussion if you liked what you’ve heard if you want to hear more discussions like this please go to iTunes reader review subscribe to the show send me a comment get in touch with me somehow and let me know that you’re out there listening and that’ll motivate me to keep doing shows so driving or whatever asks you to set something in your calendar to give you a reminder to go outside thanks thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to software defined survival
Jim Spencer works in the trenches as a university support technician. But don’t let that title fool you.
He’s introduced some pretty innovative ideas that we dig into in the interview.
He started his career in HiFi getting involved of everything from sales to installation and service then moved on to working as a lead technician for a commercial integration company before landing at the University of Notre Dame where he helps support their technology needs.
Here is one of Jim’s presentations on 3D Printing.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and the way we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined today software defined survival the other kind of no control systems that we’ve done are the ones that don’t actually have it all folks walk up and use it as they want and then they disconnected walk away when they don’t there are many sources a Patrick Murray here before we get started just a quick one about today’s guest he talks about so more traditional control systems that are certainly not software defined solutions but the way he’s using them the applications he’s come up with are pretty interesting and you’ll probably find it useful but the real reason I wanted to have on the show was for his insights on three D. printing and how it applies to AV and we get into that towards the end of the interview I hope you like it good morning good evening good afternoon where ever you are the world’s welcome to software defined survival my name is Patrick Murray and today’s guest works in the trenches as a university support technician for AV but don’t let that title fool you he’s introduced some pretty innovative ideas that will dig into it later he started his career in hi fi getting involved everything from sales to installation and service then moved on to working as a lead technician for a commercial integration company before landing at the university of Notre Dame and I’ll have to ask him from saying that properly correct yes yeah all right where he helps support everybody there with their technology needs so welcome Jim Spencer two software defined survival welcome Jim Sir so a pleasure to be here thanks for having me yeah thanks for jumping in at short notice I appreciate that is there anything about the introduction that you’d like to correct or expand upon Nobel sounds pretty good gone from ma of you know I find residential to a commercial educational to to being in higher ed so it’s been interesting stepping stones along the way and learned a lot of of different nuances that have helped one of the other and and you learn multiple facets of the industry and it’s interesting what transfers it is very faceted and new once there’s there’s like this core knowledge that you could carry over everywhere but especially going from Razzie to a university is a yeah it’s it’s in the details that you need to always be as rich fault though the user of the programmer well it depends on who you’re asking is that one of the customer there you go so how did you get started in AV so my first job that was directly related AV %HESITATION actually probably was automotive one of the jobs that wasn’t listed from the intro that you read my very first job when I was fifteen I worked at a used car lot in the dirty secret of Karloff’s is they buy a lot of insurance recoveries and racks and things like that and one of my first jobs was actually wiring up cars ahead stereos it’d been stolen so somebody with a box cutter cuts you know eleven or sixteen wires are money here and in the stair stereo in that dash and you’ve got to put any unit from a junk yard or something like that so you learn really quick you can go in with a double a battery and pop your speakers figure out what’s what and you know you’ve got your constant twelve volt in your keyed switch twelve volt near ground and you know I started work on the wires almost as soon as I had a job and that’s really what stock so did really well with that I was also involved in a lot of pro audio did stage performance was a guitarist for a long time and and had a lot of experience with that so it’s kind of band this passion in this underlying theme moved into hi fi actually my uncle owned the shop that we worked at we were a BMW dealer did Macintosh two vamps and run co and you’re really really high and stuff which interestingly worked in a very conservative town like ran so got a lot of experience there and also learned a lot of people skills about how to speak with different customers and I saw people of all different classes and stature some jobs and professions and and picked up quite a bit of fog tax that I’ve used in the industry there which my uncle retired then I moved along to vist AV that you’d mentioned that was the university vendor or I did my first conference rooms and learning spaces and things like that and that led to a job at the university where I’ve been on the front lines of a couple different teams and it’s been really enjoyable here nice thanks for that overview you hit on a few things I want to I want to go back to their as especially the car audio thing I could really identify with what you’re saying with like the car battery to figure out what wire the speaker was connected to and I had a lot of the same experiences when I start a navy of really that down and dirty you know cut the cable and figure out what’s going on with it but yeah that’s that’s a very analog thing right if you were starting out today I don’t know if you’d really have that kind of experience sure with loudspeakers and things like that that’s still analog and sure and and that would still work that kind of idea but I wonder if from somebody coming up in in this more digital environment would have that same that same kind of experience and also if that still has a lot of value right yeah I mean you can’t troubleshoot HDCP with a double a battery in a twelve August light no chance at all right so it’s a lot more cerebral yeah and I think that was really good kind of %HESITATION from the ground up like you’re saying from a foundational level that may not exist for some folks in the industry now really learning troubleshooting skills that is something that I I’d argue is almost borderline are it’s very very hard to teach people that logical sense to where if you get a trouble call you almost know what it is and what you’re gonna do to fix it even if they described it poorly just based on the room designer what the code is are you on unfortunately it sometimes something you’ve %HESITATION inflicted on yourself but having that sixth sense of of knowing what’s wrong in being able to troubleshoot is really really helped by starting at the very very ground level like that so you mention you play guitar as well and yeah I look there’s a lot of musicians in this business obvious out ends to marry that back to the trouble shooting idea I really think that especially as a guitarist for you have a lot of pedals and stuff you know you’re always Patchen stuff around it has a lot to do with signal flow does that’s really what troubleshooting comes down to in my mind is you know there’s this chain of of events of devices and connections and somewhere in there something is wrong so having that mental model of the signal flow or just that that that concept of you know it starts here and it ends there and there’s stuff in the middle I think is really helpful when trouble shooting yeah and you also figure out those really weird quirky things too like I hear the harm until I touch the tone knob on this specific battle somewhat alright you’re putting a piece of tape there to apply the same pressure and you know things that shouldn’t work that way and and have absolutely no reason to be fixed that way you accidentally find out you learn little tricks of things to look for an you know ways to read things that can save the day sometimes definitely definitely so you never know where that experience will come from yeah I think I heard a lot of things about ham radio guys having yearly interesting tricks you know and same kind of thing that you’re saying with cars and and guitars it’s really hard to learn those accidentally you have to be in the field and get that experience from one common places yet for sure for sure so everybody navy has at least one story usually too many stories about the nightmare projects Roger let’s let’s not talk about those can you tell me about your most rewarding AV projects and and what made it special for you how interesting most rewarding project let me think for a moment on that I think I pause because side it’s not that there’s a lack it’s because there’s no overabundance owner pick one that really feel special you know I think that’s a an exception for most people it’s easier to pick the %HESITATION the nightmare project sure sure yeah that that exist far too common unfortunately I guess I’ll just brag on our most recent classroom upgrade we’ve gone from systems that include analog only to analog and digital on until recently we’ve offered a VGA connection everywhere and we decided you know let’s let’s do this right let’s do this the real way let’s have a full four K. HDCP to signal path will go digital only in fact think Intel just dropped the bites on the chip that even support analog video to wear new laptops won’t even do that anymore so we designed a completely four K. compliant system minus display devices we haven’t gotten there on the actual displays yet almost all HDMI in digital switching HD based TV control over IP also adding functions like cameras were never had them so we could do things like this where there’s a zoom call in a room previously that would have been a quick check out and and sneaker net install we’ve really really been able to roll all the great ideas that we can a droll over for the last few years into a system that is affordable and works and and trying to build a bare bones program dot from a lacking functionality point of view but from a not over constrained point of view and it’s been a rewarding project so far got two pilots and plan to do about ten more and so far so good we’re planning to keep on Truckin with all right tell me more about the control over IP aspect of the program when it I want to know about that sure so I gave you a preview on a comment yesterday on the weapon are but a lot of our devices are Crestron connected displays which means that I think they call it one different thing in the sales brochure versus simple windows I think it’s a room you connected display in the programming language but basically it’s it’s kind of what CC was supposed to be but never was where there’s a standard set of commands there’s there’s one simple and it has on off volume up down mute that I think they’re sixteen input sources in a lamp hours out put something like that but it’s a just generic enough to work and just you know specific enough not to be over specific symbol that top basically put in the program and you run it and then you point the device back at the IP address of the process so that you want and it just works been a couple of tanks and bumps in the road and and it’s been a learning experience but I can write a program and swap a projector a flat screen or whatever we need to just by changing the menu on that device to point back at the processor so it’s our first time doing that before there was always this fear of the network you know it’s the device that we don’t own and manage and we don’t have the key to that closet we can’t do the the patching our cell phones which rules and and all those sorts of things obviously with the AVI to convergence we should have left that thought process behind about ten years ago we’re just starting to get warm to that reality now and %HESITATION doing IP control the way that we have been is really what brought that to the surface for us and and made us realize yes this is working yes let’s plan systems around this it’s not just an experiment or something to do in your development lab it’s it’s something to deploy and put everywhere yeah definitely it’s a it’s nice to hear that you had some success with that %HESITATION connected solution I don’t think it’s the gleaming star the the everybody wishes for you know I I don’t think people by displays specifically for that feature or a you know it’s not in the comparison grades when you’re going between models but it’s been a nice convenience instead of having to find a specific module for specific display every single time sure sure glad it’s working out for you control is often an afterthought unfortunately so you mentioned the jumping on to the network and having some concerns about doing that and of course I see it all the time in AV projects we we make like an isolated network right a lot of people for that very thing you were talking about that fear of having to integrate with a a real I. T. system and yes deal with the I. T. administrators and things like that will either avoided altogether or make your own isolated network so so how how was that experience working with the I. T. department and getting your devices on their network sure so I I think the evolution in mind set in higher there used to be the computer guys and then there were the AV guys and AV guys were real quick to draw a line with well chose a signal on my VGA cable so it must be your problem yeah there’s a lot of finger pointing back and forth between the two different silos and it’s been that way with networking and a lot of places to really lucky to have great really approachable network guys but they’re also constraints that they have to follow you know there’s information security to worry about we’ve got a little bit of a typical network that zone so there’s a student zone in a faculty staff zone and what we’ve been able to use quite handily is called the campus services on and that’s where they put printers and devices like that that all parties need access we learned that lesson early on actually with versus solstice we had a wireless display solution and we’d registered in the student zone because that’s where a lectern computers were in public things in the first time a faculty member wanted to have the faculty staff meeting in the room it didn’t work at all you know those parts of the network didn’t touch each other so we’ve learned a couple of little tricks like that and how that works now we’re actually on the edge of Rome system which I’m not sure if you’re familiar with or not it’s it’s kind of a cooperation between universities so five got my log in at Notre Dame I could go to you know pick somebody do Georgia state Oregon wherever that may also have eduroam and I’ve already got a log and I don’t need to be added as a guest or %HESITATION approach their I. T. desk or anything it’s shared network access wifi generally between universities fastening their other nuances overheads are but not screen sharing or anything like that it’s just a to get on the network yeah it’s mostly your password eighty get out to the web kind of stuff okay so that’s another kind of thing that we’ve learned with those wireless video systems you can be on the network that says it’s the right one but internal folks versus external folks have a little bit different set of rules yeah absolutely as they should and those are the things that you need to watch out for it it really comes down to planning in the end long just to our industries change that’s kind of the evolution that networking is gone through at least that’s visible to me is you can make those things more accessible to more people and really offer that convenience but still keep it secure and and working efficiently certainly certainly so well ever since Infocom changed its name to affix a yes I need to let your doctor of love it is right for you well if if you see that in German it’s it’s much much worse it’s you wouldn’t say it in front of your mother it doesn’t say how to cut it all but we’ve gotten so experiences kind of become a buzzword since they’ve done that and dumb it’s something we should always be emphasizing in AV we should be thinking of the user’s first and thinking of the black boxes lasts right but I think this idea is kind kind of come up more and more so what is your approach when you’re designing a system or or upgrading in existence an existing one as far as experience is concerned yeah so this is changed a lot %HESITATION in the short time I’ve been in the industry it used to be all about the gear you know you look at the spec list and you had to have the right number of ins and outs and and now I mean the new systems with things like and be accessed via sigh you just put an end point everywhere and you figure out the program in the middle and and you were not worried about big switchers and and things like that anymore at least for moving that direction it seems but the experience is really paramount and that’s something that took the industry a little bit to figure out I think I think it’s because of mobile phones and smart devices and and you know how things have changed towards material design over time and things like that you know somebody goes up your touch screen there used to be a a receptionist that had a binder and she opened it to the right page and and you know you’d see the fourteen steps that you needed to turn on the room and and things used to be really disconnected and tedious and somebody walk into the room and say well I just turned on my I pod and I go here and and click on this and it works why can’t I do that here originally I think our industry thought will think of all the buttons you’re missing all the features you don’t have and we didn’t think of the user experience you know the what’s the actual expectation of someone using the room versus what can it do and and what all can we cram in they’re kind of two different actors and we had to choose one so I think the industry slowly been warming up to it we’ve certainly been changing our philosophy when we go into things like that a good example is a building that we put up and twenty twelve beautiful classrooms I mean they’re they’re full video conferencing suites where you can actually one classroom connected to a second classroom or push to talk microphones at every seat there’s Cammarata nations so students can ask a question in either room in the professor can see it that’s in the recording and and it’s really really elaborate an amazing but it’s tedious to use the the touch screen looks like a control console and we get more calls from folks that just wanna show one thing actually set up like a broadcast studio you pick your source and get a preview but then you’ve got to send it or hit that take button or whatever but you use on it to actually routed to the display and I don’t think that’s anywhere else user facing on campus in hindsight that’s not the way we should design those rooms the next revision will be really really simple compared to that press on the thing that you want to see and and maybe that means you want to see it should just do that yeah that’s this a flexibility usability trade off and you know sometimes there are rooms like that that require that kind of functionality but it almost sounds like a room like that needs to be staffed right there has to be a technician presents it to make it to the top rated because you need that training without it right and you can train the folks but you know we’re we’re digital natives somewhere around this Saturday we’ve got a comfort level that the average person definitely does not so they have other things on their minds right there is occasion to make sure that and that’s kind of the underlying philosophy in higher ed that’s driven this is the professor shouldn’t have to worry about anything but its content yeah you know if there’s a production %HESITATION that needs to happen any part of that that you can automate or streamline or or make you know half of a millisecond quicker and more efficient we need to do that that’s what we all the customer and you know we we should start thinking of them as clients instead of customers it’s our obligation to help them and we’re providing these things and it it should be a partnership instead of a service provider you know yeah absolutely %HESITATION they use these things every single day yeah right and so it’s it’s it’s amazing how much of a affect you could have on somebody’s everyday life how they were you know if they deal with it every day they got a fight with a touch panel or doing something just because we provided this functionality that they probably only need ten or twenty percent of the time right I I I get this feeling that collectively in a V. we try to cover every base possible and try to make things as rock solid as you can and %HESITATION we kind of %HESITATION get into this phase where you know if they’re only using eighty percent or eighty percent of the time they do the same thing that’s what we should be doing and only that and that’s kind of where all these web services and and mobile apps and things like that that people are used to using that’s where they focus their attention is on that eighty percent use case and that’s how they make these things so simple answer we kind of way it as the same you know that eighty percent and the twenty percent extra functionality that they may need it someday probably will need but they don’t use it every day we we give that the same waiting that’s kind of how I I see I see how this plays out sometimes and I think there’s a difference in markets too I remember from the residential days you know somebody that bought a specific device you know say it’s a Blu ray player or something they’ve compared it and you know Stereophile magazine against the eight other competing models and they know their does the special chapter scrubbing feature if there’s a button missing that customers going to tell you yeah it was called the the AV repeat was missing from the touch screen and world thinking like who ever use is that we got the request you know and and it’s the exact opposite in commercial spaces and I read spaces one because expectations are different you know the focus of the room isn’t gear centric and two because you’ve got multi user spaces it’s not the same person that always owns the same space they’re moving around you don’t know who they’re going to be if you can train them in advance things like that and again it’s the last thing that somebody using one of those spaces should have to worry about the professor doesn’t care at all what the video switching is how it operates they just know if they hit laptop they want laptop to show up that’s more than one button press we failed them so tell me about this a one button studio concept sure so the history of it I’m sure many folks are already familiar with it but I believe in two thousand ten Penn state had these really nice studios they had you know professional lighting and sound treatments and and high resolution cameras the needs the other places and they were great and it was a combo kit news our studio we’d love for you to spend time you’re kind of a space that wasn’t closed off and on by department and and things like that but people were intimidated by it and and didn’t come use it and they kind of thought about that philosophically for a bit and said well because it’s too hard to use let’s make up a one button studio so I’m sure that’s the description that they gave it that then became its name instead of vice versa but who knows but the concept as you walk into a room with a thumb drive get in hit the record button you record whatever it is that you want to you know capture hit the button again and you walk away with your video you don’t have to set anything up you don’t have to stage anything or or you programming or or really any production you’re just hitting a button and walking out with a video and that caught on like wildfire in what was really interesting about it we’re talking about different customers and different expectations actually saw that coming from the academy more from more than from the tech people we had professors asking for it before anybody in the IT group thought and that’s a really cool idea there is that skepticism kind of like with putting things on the network or you know collaborating with the computer guys that Sloane is to change which hopefully is a character trait where we’re getting rid of and moving beyond soon here but yeah they the professors actually would approach us and say Hey we saw this thing we think it’d be really cool we think our students would love to use it let’s do that so that happened to us and we said man we should put one of these in and when we looked at it the Penn state system runs natively on a mac many I believe so you’ve got to be able to pull a and B. licensed foreign administrates are OS X. of some sort than their app runs on top of that there’s a couple of video switching things and they’ve got a chroma key in a green screen thing and and there’s part of it little do picture in picture and we looked at all the things that it could do and said you know basically were were putting a studio quality microphone and camera into a room instead of a camcorder we want to be that simple let’s let’s get rid of this green screen thing let’s get rid of this picture in picture thing let’s just do a quality recording that that’s what we’re asked to do and Hey we’ve got these lecture capture devices in the closet and we’ve got this camera left over from this project let’s just work together was stuff that we’ve got so we looked at it and we had like a set up a recording device already that was a call in a V. appliance instead of a computer which made us a little more comfortable because our department isn’t generally computer folks well I can poker capture HD and and halfway know what I’m doing or or the %HESITATION SMB three fifty one something like that where is an app written for a mac it breaks I really don’t know where to start fixing it so that that made us pretty comfortable then camera wise you know we’d selected different things for for different jobs in the past but we didn’t need a studio quality camera that had fifty seven little buttons on it and its own menu in its own firmware and and we said why don’t we just put like you know Panasonic makes this can that’s our own search a camera that kind of shaped like a soda can has no extensible buttons on the outside of it you plug in HDMI cable into it and you get video through that it’s it’s as simple as that just work like so we put a recording appliance and an easier camera on a shot gun Mike and then we said well how do we initiate this are we make the button do something so we’re we’re Crestron house our request run program that starts the recording when you hit the button and stops recording when you hit the button again should we added some studio lights along the way and one of the things we’re proud of actually off the record button is by the door of the room you walk to where the axis marking the spot in the beginning of the recording then you walk back to the back of the room to hit the end button so we wired up to use a guitar amp pedal an homage back to my life sound days I guess nice you can hit the stock box from the acts on the floor and not have to edit out the beginning and ending of your video very nice that that’s a cool little hack I like that is that does that have anything to do with the no control interface just had a few things in my notes from the emails we exchanged yeah so on the one button studio I would call a low control interface when I’ve presented on this at conferences before actually you know we’ve done it in jest but we went into our one button studio that’s actually built to the Penn state model and we found every single button that we could there’s easily a dozen I’m on the camera there’s a switch on the microphone there’s a video switch that’s got a a toggle in to push buttons and they picked a monitor that had front facing button so I’ve got this mean collage of the fourty buttons that are in the room of the one button studio in ours is literally just one it’s a big red mushroom but it looks like a game show buzzer everything else is you know behind the scenes are locked in the rack and and there’s only one button and it only does one thing and we haven’t had to explain it to anybody yet it’s been great that’s perfect that’s that’s the kind of feedback that you want no feedback right inches either it’s broken it doesn’t work at all or it works perfectly yes it’s it’s perfect for the phones are down nice so was just about no control which is kind of the next evolution of that yeah no controls what we started doing our collaboration spaces where previously if you walked into one of our team rooms are a bunch of laptop cables and there is a touch screen and you you know press the button that you needed to make your thing go off on screen and and it was kind of that old school traditional control mentality now our thought is well every person on the planet we goals are mouse to wake up their computer monitor why don’t we just do that with the PC in the room C. wiggle the mouse the video signal starts and there’s a pretty good chance that means you want to see it on the screen so let’s turn on the TV let’s switch to that employed and you do need to press any buttons makes sense that a step further and you do that with laptop imports there’s magically you know if at a moment in time sink appears on a laptop cable probably means you are shown on the screen just switch to that one why do you need somebody to push a button to say that yeah we didn’t want that they see their thing they go crap they unplug the cable it goes back to whatever it was before old auto switching is really the the magic that’s made that happen not the device is necessarily need to do that but if we can sink detect we can program that behind the scenes end up pretty safe to assume what someone wants to do in a room like that based on video sync yeah it’s a I’m really amazed that it kind of took us so long to reveal it to make that exist in these it’s not even standard yet it’s it’s popular but it’s not it should be a standard feature that like when video was directed you switch to that input and okay you can disable that if you want but it really should be the default yeah and I think my theory on that is a little bit of it was hardware related you know you didn’t want a room to turn on automatically when the computer came on if it was a project of the took ninety seconds to warm up and it’s recorded off you had to wait a few minutes now you know with the laser projector you can get on and off unless there’s a desk than some of our flat panels actually so five still years ago when %HESITATION flat panels became affordable to use and meeting spaces we started doing that and we got rid of those are you Sir pages and and stuff like that that previously would initiate timers and add extra steps and buttons and we started to streamline one flat panels became more common now laser projector we decided to treat him the exact same way where there’s no harm done you’re not you know adding up lamp strikes that are fatiguing your Lampson and things like that but just turn it on its quick if the off button just turn it off that’s quick to an auto switching kind of lends itself to that there doesn’t need to be in on button because you’re not fatiguing your gear at a plant powers are damages done by this thing just turn it on because you wiggle the mouse right right if you had a great point there I mean the technology changes a lot faster than our habits aids is the programming somethings for so long in a certain way and you kind of take it for granted yeah and %HESITATION yeah I think it’s a really great idea just to look at you know and inspect the things that you do the normal standard practice is that you have every once in awhile and and just look at him and say you know do I need to do this anymore and you know right up down pages start up bar graphs things like that completely blocking out the user from doing anything because of video projectors starting up maybe there was an argument for that ten years ago but you’re absolutely right today it’s like it’s it’s it’s why would you do that at all yeah you don’t need windows X. P. are you really really really sure you want to shut out we’re serious yeah that’s just unnecessary now devices are quick and and you’re not damaging anything there there’s no reason to put that in to protect anything anymore yeah yeah the other %HESITATION go ahead I’m so bored no go for it yeah I was gonna lab rate that the other kind of no control systems that we’ve done are the ones that don’t actually have controls at all we’ve got a couple of rooms where there’s just a wireless collaboration device and the TV turns on based on a timer at seven in the morning and turns off at ten PM or or whatever it’s set to and folks walk up and use it as they want and then they disconnected walk away when they don’t and and there aren’t any sources to switch it’s all user controlled by the device they’re connecting to instead of what we think of as traditionally the gear one I’ve got some theories about doing that with occupancy detection is a little bit of lecture city to that that was course the next question is is it it’s just on all day and yeah there was no source connected to two shows a black screen I guess right will chose the IP address for someone to connect to our okay a connecting instructions yeah and we looked at it and and the power consumption on the new LED TV’s is decreased from what the old CFL back light displays were to where we don’t feel that bad about leaving TV’s on and we’re seeing high utilization so %HESITATION convenience certainly cost something and we we decided to spend it on some electrons there and it’s worked out so far right right if of course there’s a lot of parameters to take into account their you have is the room occupied like are the rooms being used so how often is it you know just idle and on and %HESITATION again that technology catching up the power consumption is less so these old fears we used to have of %HESITATION wasting energy and things like that aren’t may not be as valid anymore I think that would be a great case to start collecting some data right to see you know how often is sink is attached compared to how often the TV is actually on and then then you could actually run some real calculations and know exactly how much is being wasted or not beyond compare that to you know whatever it is what kind of %HESITATION efficiency you lose right for somebody fumbling for the remote are looking for a touch panel that that that kind of has a real cost to yeah you mention experience and that that really has to be the priority in a space like that if you walk in and there’s any inconvenience people just tend to walk away and then if it’s there and it’s on and it works and it looks inviting that’s worth a little bit of a spend sometimes definitely and then cook more collaboration happens which is yeah there after yeah and for the power consumption inefficiencies and things like that you know if you weigh that versus utilization everything’s IP connected everything’s got to dash for kind of a program there’s a way to collect those metrics and and actually find out absolutely that that’s a part of this whole thing that I’m really interested in is is collecting real date on how systems are being used and now and you’re making decisions based on that I think that’s a someplace we could do a lot more as an industry it’s powerful then for sure so let’s let’s shift gears here yeah and dont talk about three D. printing sure I watched when you’re womanizer part part of it on three D. printing and sure sure seems like you have a lot to say on this subject so I got a few questions here but I I think I’ll just %HESITATION let you have added what what how do you %HESITATION well let’s let’s put a female top of it how do you how do you use you know how to three be printing applied to AV if at all sure are definitely does some the backstory is it was a personal hobby of mine and I mention that elaborate building that had pushed talk microphones everywhere we had an issue where students would push their laptop into the push to talk button so then the camera points directly at them it turns our Mike up in the mix and you know them being on Facebook or doing work email or whatever they’re doing interrupts the capture of the class then or shows that to the video conference at the far side so we we were looking for a way to protect those push to talk buttons and they’re kind of like a disk shaped thing that you can get from any direction we put kind of a crown shaped piece around them we looks like the crenellations of a chess rock that is kind of a protection ring that goes around those push to talk buttons and that’s decrease the number of occurrences from dozens of times per day to like once or twice every couple of weeks we’ve seen a huge huge reduction in the number of false triggers on those buttons because we three D. printed a little thing to make it a little harder to hit the button externally so that when the initial project that was like the justification of Hey maybe we can actually use this we’re actually lucky enough to be able to borrow a printer from a colleague in another department was moving in need a place to store that was better than a storage unit so we kind of chanced upon being able to access a device like that work with us since then we’ve made dozens and dozens of things my most recent project actually are you seen the the Logitech spotlight the new presentation remote okay it’s kind of a side note we’re on a tangent now but it’s just really cool in a room where you’ve got twenty screens or something it actually is software on the computer that highlights that area of the screen and is distributed ensuring a video call arts record and the capture or whatever you have it’s a lot more useful than pointing in dot of laser on one screen that students may or may not be looking at right anyway these are a chargeable so when we get a call that it’s out of batteries we can’t fix that people need to be able to recharge these so we’re making a doc that’s three D. printable in fits in a dust grommet and hopefully we can get people into the good habit of returning these to the dock to always be fully charged and then they’ll be less likely to walk away in people’s briefcases to so that that’s our latest project with printing but there’s been a dozen in the middle holding things up and racks making little clips to hold devices on brackets on nothing structural we’re not doing TV mounts or anything like that I mean you probably do this and designs all the time where it’s like man I I need this one little widget I swear I saw it but this one’s ninety degrees wrong and you you dig terminal annex catalog and then you go to a grand website and realize that there’s fourteen million products and you go to you know once you spend ten minutes looking for something I catalog if you can draw on CAD you might have that thing an hour later you know click print before you go to lunch you might be able to install the thing that you couldn’t find any supplier’s catalog when you get back all right so so you mention CAD there and that’s what I want to know about just sure I know it’s it can be huge subject but if you kinda just give me a brief overview of what the process is so you’re walking around you’re you’re looking all over the place you have all these ideas now because now you can make anything right yeah yeah so what what is the process like so cat is computer aided drafting drafting is %HESITATION what we all did on those plans will tables in high school with the ruling elaborate %HESITATION you know mechanized rulers over ninety degrees and basically our design process we’ll do what I like to call napkin CAD that’s when you’re at luncheon on the bar napkin with an ink pen that you borrowed from other waitress you’re you’re drawing your system design you’ve got the lines between boxes and and you know you’re you’re roughest sketch that you come back to the office with a lot of these start with napkin cat and then you can open up a programming with real tools that use basic shapes like squares and circles and triangles and drawing lines you make a representation of it and then you pull that two dimensional shape into a three dimensional one if you need to then you can make a drawing on the side of it to put in a recess or draw something out and to work slowly start to learn but you think of these objects that you want to design in their basic more fundamental shapes and then that’s how you construct them out of components that exist in that software so you cannot have building blocks in CAD that you could kind of these together and make it kinda like legos I guess there are some that I go back and like legos others are one in particular called tanker CAD and it’s also neat that its browser based you don’t need to install anything that was going on and you can drag and drop whatever shape you want you can combine them you can cut with them to put holes in things and there is a lego integration with that actually after you design something you can either turn it in the lego bricks or vice versa that company is is Autodesk who in my opinion at least is kind of leader of the industry right now they’ve got integrations where you can wiring channels and LEDs on battery clips and switches and things like that in it just automatically generates the shape that you need to three D. print from at all kinds of neat things so there’s there’s that building blocks kind of CAD there’s the clay sculpting kind of CAD where you end up with a a sphere and you can drag different tools on it to make organic shapes some people also three D. print from things like Photoshop you can create three D. objects and really well or full blown CAD where you’re doing what a designer would do an orbiting around in three D. and and you’ve got such powerful more professional tools there there’s a whole spectrum of what’s out there amazing so so once you have this design done in software yeah I I guess it’s just a file that gets uploaded to the machine yeah so it’s generally called an S. T. L. file about a thirty year old format that starting to show its age hopefully replace it with us some initiatives that have started as of late but you’ve got a wire frame then which you can think of kinda like how a computer graphics work in video games or house CG I works before they put your rendering farm to get high fast accounts and things like that you’ve got this shell of the shape and you put it into software that does what’s called slicing and that’s actually what generates the G. code in the machine code that a printer runs on and and the instructions to build that object and it it builds at one layer at a time I always tell people it’s kind of like making a loaf of bread one slice at a time does the bottom layer in the stack second layer on top and and successively you’ve got your shape so and what about the materials are there different kinds of materials or yeah so the most common material aren’t released recently most common as a B. S. plastic which chances are if you look around on your desk and there’s a hundred plastic things I bet should ninety eight and a half of them are a B. S. plastic other materials P. T. is what water bottles are made out of that’s %HESITATION polyethylene mixed you can print and nylons I said that a B. S. was recently the most popular I think today what’s the most popular materials one called the LA that saw the acronym for poly lactic acid it’s actually a vegetable starch plastic it’s a bio class so it’s a little bit more green it’s something that’s compostable and it’s got some properties that make it pretty forgiving for the average printer to use so fascinating the whole range but you can also get things that have carbon fiber chopped in %HESITATION you can get magnetic materials you can get conductive materials flexible things there’s a whole range of what’s out there and that’s just the printers that print with melted plastic there’s a couple different varieties that are different styles of machines on top of that wow so when does it make sense to start looking at this like obviously it’s something that is easy to get excited about so big it becomes a hobby for you then obviously just go for it right right like at one point %HESITATION does it become common place just to have a three D. printer in in an organization I’m not gonna say home yet but like in general mid to large size organization do you think that’s going to become commonplace so I I think especially in higher read a lot of people already have something on campus either your engineering department or science or art or even the libraries a lot of times we’ll have a maker space and and some kind of facilities what’s missing and I think that that key that you need before you get started is the inspiration you need that first project rethink man we really need this thing but it just doesn’t exist yet so that that inspiration would spark you saying well how can we make one and if you’ve got a printer on campus can probably go use it for a few Bucks and and make your thing and then you’re hooked it’s it’s technically called additive manufacturing but a lot of people have taken to calling it addictive manufacturing once you’ve started it just keeps going you get that mindset and %HESITATION you know if all you’ve got to hammer everything looks like a nail right there’s an awful lot of nails out there excellent excellent it’s a really cool I’ve got to make the time to look into that some day or at least get my kids turned onto it and now I see what they come up with sure sure next time there’s that thing let me know right well Jim it’s been a real pleasure talking to you %HESITATION going everywhere from the V. in user experience down to three D. printing this was a lot of fun it was thanks for having me again if anybody wants to get in touch with you sometime is there a is there a good way they cannot reach out to dance with or anything like that odd yeah please Sir honestly sending emails just fine my dresser Notre Dame’s in the directory can look up or a it’s J. Spence for at and T. for Notre Dame dot EDU alright Jim thanks for being on the show thank you eight Patrick here again thanks for listening to the show if you enjoyed this discussion if you liked what you’ve heard if you want to hear more discussions like this please go to iTunes leave a review subscribe to the show send me a comment get in touch with me somehow and let me know that you’re out there listening and that’ll motivate me shows get more so if you’re driving or whatever asks you re to set something in your calendar to give you a reminder to thanks a lot thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes going a software defined survival dot com
Justin Kennington has a background in hardware engineering, he spent some time working for Google and also as a technology manager for Crestron’s DigitalMedia products before moving on to Aptovision and creating the Software Defined Video over Ethernet Alliance, a.k.a. SDVoE.
SDVoE aims to create a standardized hardware and software platform for AV signal distribution.
Because it is software defined, it could have a lot of consequencens for the way we do things in AV.
Transcript...
this is a software defined survival where we talk to AV IT professionals and software developers to find out how to leverage software to reinvent ourselves and we do business we listen to their stories and ask for advice and tactics on how to survive and thrive in a software defined what today software defined survive Netflix’s in YouTube’s in the world all gone through the same transition of analog digital relying more on software is not a bad thing my name is Patrick Murray for everyone out there sitting behind a rack on their way to a job site or changed to a laptop welcome to software defined survival today’s guest has in background in hardware engineering he spent some time working for Google and also as a technology manager for Christians digital media products before moving on to Activision ends creating the software defined video over Ethernet alliance also known as STV away as the view we aims to create a standardized hardware and software platform for E. V. signal distribution because it is software defines it could also have a lot of consequences for the way we do things in AV so I’m really excited to talk to Justin Kennington about the future of software defined AV welcome to the show Justin hello thank you for having me excellent to have you on the show as one of the first guests I’m is there anything about that introduction that you’d care to correct or expand upon while I’m not nearly as impressive as you made it sound but I have no intention of correcting that nice a little bit of modesty goes a long way so AV you know it’s kind of this weird niche industry and %HESITATION nobody really grows up saying they want to work in navy there’s usually a story behind it so %HESITATION tell me what’s your story how did you wind up working in audio visual wow I don’t think I’ve ever answered that question on the record if you want to know the honest truth I was sitting in my living room in Mountain View California where I did he said work for Google as a hardware engineer I was about eleven beers into a case of course light and programming like writing this custom software stack to make my I pod control my home theater and I was bored and thinking about career he stuff and I was like what should I do next was like well I like this kind of like stuff I’m doing right here somebody would probably pay me to do this he would pay me to do this restaurant across from the pain to do this stuff so I’m like I don’t even know where the restaurant is right on and I started a website like restaurant I come home where is it Rockley New Jersey **** I was hoping for Sunnyvale right to the black tie and I look at the map I circuit pretty close to New York City I could deal with that and does so I called the guy who knew a guy and I said Hey when you when you talk to them over there telling you know a guy who works at Google and is thinking about coming to take a look at your shop and so as to be sure Google that’s important and those are served up the next day folks across from called me and said Hey we want to we want to talk to you had this new product line called digital media and they needed someone to take charge and run it also you know in in an interview on a cross country move later there I was in the world maybe was sort of a front row seat to the analog to digital transition digital media crow exactly and will blame it all on the silver bullet right on on the eleven course lights you know the one thing you will do is slow you down if you go so I remember when when DM first came out and like you said that was a big transition from from digital from analog to digital right a lot of talk about the analogs sunset and not write the first DM had had like three wires for every signal and it was a lot different than what HD base T. looks like today right just one cat cable but it was a really big change at the time it was actually an improvement you know you look at those three wires today kinda looks a little Frankenstein dish but if you take a step back to analog whose RGB HP and three is better than five three is better than five and even audio on top of that you could have up to seven cables and that’s kind of how I grew up in navy was %HESITATION you know stripping back Kovacs and crimping DNC’s on these connectors things that you just don’t deal with today at all so what were some of the challenges about those first steps with with digital media you know what was hard is is we didn’t know what we didn’t know %HESITATION you know question was in a great spot at that point because I mean they had analog video switches you know Big Five wire BNC high band with also points but what really known for it right question was very much known as a control company and it was extranjeros it was where the name auto patch on a patch and got picked up by a Max of that were sort of seen as the the video guys and some questions in a good spot to say look we think there’s digital video thing is going to be beating and and frankly we don’t have a lot to lose so let’s let’s give it a shot and so in the early days what we underestimated was just how much of a lack of understanding and knowledge there was out there in the design and installation community about digital video systems right we thought it was going to be easier for us and easier for them and it turned out to be so for those first couple years with three wires I’m talking in two thousand ten yeah there were a lot of of challenges in the it upset a lot of people right because they were frustrated you know installer frustrated and have to go back to the job fix this fix that early on we figured out that you know education was key to this and this and this is how the DMZ the digital media certification courses eat when we realize like all my god like we’ve got this new product line of course a new product line in a two new paradigm has has bugs and problems six of these people installing it just haven’t been given the opportunity to learn about this New World so DMC got created armor back in like two thousand eleven twelve when when the training it really gotten up on its feet we we show these great graphs that showed like in a number of DMC training people and you see this big you know increasing her and you overlay on that number of digital media support calls and you see this like huge fall off like the real like well education is hugely important so so educating the the customer base improving the product and then finally that moves from the the the original freeware approach HDAC once that became available you know simplified things and and next thing you know Crestron is is the leader in that matrix switching digital video space right the other guys who had such a vested interest you know in their analog stops didn’t make the jump I remember going to you know Infocom twenty ten income twenty eleven Infocom twenty twelve and every year being nervous like although you know extreme gonna happen this year AMXs gonna bring something perhaps real competition it’s gonna be tough gonna show up and it’s nothing you’re still talking analog you guys Sirius I’m in so so restaurant got such a big head start you know by bringing the right technology at the right time and being willing to just suffer the the you know the settlers get the error of their the arrows absolutely that’s what that was but then but then you’re the first one first one there and and that’s what is tablets Crestron as a real leader today and in that digital video distribution space definitely there’s still a they’re still seemingly way ahead of the pack us or good head start really it doesn’t go away too quickly into yeah really gives you a boost that lasts for a long time huge that so there are a few other things you mention that I want to circle back to obviously I didn’t think the biggest challenge would be education but it does make sense now that you say that but what I really like was that you use data to see if what you’re doing was working as you do that and the training aspects right so the number of certifications against that type of support calls that you were getting it really shows the power of data why don’t we do that more navy it’s well it’s hard it’s hard %HESITATION because good data is bigger data and it’s it’s often hard to find you know big data sets MTV you know individual companies you know integrators programming houses and things are so many of them are relatively small it’s hard to build up a solid data set that you can really make decisions based on %HESITATION you know Christ has a great advantages of having such a big reach that they can build that kind of data set %HESITATION in maybe we as an industry can find ways you know through through a mixer through the through organization and and in smaller groups smaller companies working together to start building up data sets right you know thinks it does that for their for their annual or semi annual like market trend analysis report but how to use that at at the smaller level is is a great question and it’s it’s I think it just needs focus needs people to realize that it good data is highly valuable is the best way to make decisions on enemy willing to put in the time and effort to do it right sometimes it can be hard when you’re in a crisis situation or a high pressure situation and and and you need to make decisions quickly it can be hard to say you know what let’s take a step back let’s take a breath let’s gather information and analyze it before we react just just that sort of emotional %HESITATION challenge can be what holds us back from from data driven decisions yeah definitely great great inside %HESITATION I’d like to retire back to you know the human factor %HESITATION and that need for the need for speed and to make quick decisions and %HESITATION data needs time to develop before becomes usable so let’s switch gears and talk about is the V. only what does software defined mean to you it’s it’s the way the world works today and what we’re trying to do with S. EBOV is is show the AV industry that that’s the way the world works and show the AV industry how what I mean is you know today when you when you decide what smartphone you want to buy rain you’re you’re probably an iPhone diary entry rate that’s not about heart that’s about a software plus it’s about the experience that the software creates and how it makes you feel it’s about the applications that are built on top of those platforms and which ones are most important to you and then once we get on down into it sure like if I decide I don’t want my phone I need to decide do I want to eat or an axe or whatever I want to enjoy it I maybe I wanna Samsung or LG here what have you but the first decision you make is what software platform appeals to you no that’s true in the in the enterprise I. T. world software is everything there rate if your I. T. house like you might be everybody in your enterprise runs windows everybody in your enterprise runs mackel straight and you might you might have a world where where route you know this year the I. T. director gets a good deal for H. P. and decides this year were buying HP products and we buy a bunch of computers and laptops network switches but then a year and a half two years from now we need to refresh you need some new items and it turns out del is having a sales we sell you know we’re gonna buy a bunch of dell’s today and nobody thinks about %HESITATION well then that’s fine by some double let’s throw away all the leech P. stuff in replace everything now because the hardware is less interesting the hardware is truly interoperable what matters is the software and so we’re going to drive to a world where IT it were easy works a lot more like that IT model right we’re software is what drives the decision making more software is what creates the experience and more hardware is a a necessary component but a secondary part of the decision making process thanks for that I really like the way you are you sum that up with a different types of of computer models so when when software is the first decision you make then you then you just basically have a lot more flexibility and agility with with the hardware decisions that of course you’ll need to make right the software does need to run somewhere I I say yeah it’s some somewhere electrons need to wiggle exactly even if it is in the cloud right there’s hardware in the class exactly right exact well last night that was my Google background right I was in the platforms group we build good luck as bills the data centers right if you’ve never had the experience of of being in a warehouse with seventy five thousand computers while I I recommend it the first time I walked into one I remember the guy I was with said welcome to the point where we turn electrons into money nice like that’s it isn’t it that’s the thing here fascinating they must have some cooling bill %HESITATION actually Google’s good one of Google’s main insights in the early days of of how data centers are constructed today was to cut down on cooling costs immensely it turns out we were wasting a lot of energy keeping computers cooler than they need to be so modern a modern data center headed by Google now fifteen years ago is like eighty eighty two degrees Fahrenheit instead of like the sixty five degrees they used to be held that really is that because the technology has changed or is it just we were over doing it back then I I you know I’m not the expert on that history I don’t think there’s any like fundamental technology change in terms of of how they are trying to handle it it’s been about that managing this concept of a hot Islander kuliah yeah she higher away from the cold air right so actually if I’m trying to just to describe this without pictures but imagine that the area your standing in front of computers is sort of the cool out now that still eighty eighty two degrees %HESITATION ate my international friends forgive me I’m I’m speaking Fahrenheit so it but that air is getting sucked through the computers into this chamber behind them that’s now hotter because there’s been heated up by the by the sea and and it’s only a matter of the gets sucked out of the building through the air handlers to whatever mechanism is cool right and sometimes the mechanism is Hey let’s let’s only build datacenters words really cold outside is it used exhaust that heat and then draw in cooler from the outside and and not have any sort of air conditioning the building yeah modern modern data centers are all about energy management or is S. as is as I was taught when I was there were thinking about queries per joule that’s our that’s our metric here how about that all right yeah you get more yields of out of the electrons the cool where they are and anyone who’s electrons and more money than the more money fascinating modern day farming so anybody who’s sitting behind a rack and had a HVAC duct blowing in their faces they were trying to our things up will will appreciate that site you will meet your your data centers built wrong yeah exactly all right I’ll have to go back to that job that was a long time ago so do you need to take that no no no no no okay so back to STV we why is there no a this or do you have a place in STV away always because I’m a I’m a video guy and and neglectful of that question from a marketing perspective but but let’s be clear that the the the software defined video everything that platform absolutely considers audio from Handal stereo audio multi channel audio down mix between the two can send audio independently from video we even have building on the platform Aurora multi media who have taken the STB elite platform and all they can do but then added on for example Dante devices to their hardware so now the the STB a lead part of their platform can interact with feet Dante hardware in in the broader parts of some AB system where this is all so yes of course audio as well as control are significant and important parts of this all right so you talked a bit about what why is the V. only exists I’m curious about that time right before the alliance got started what what were your real main motivations and concerns about about making this leap the the challenge that we face is you know we recognize that that AV over IP hasn’t as a category as a general approach %HESITATION is obviously the next important step for our industry and yet everyone out there especially today everyone out there has some kind of product to meet that challenge to meet that new paradigm but there’s no concept for anyone manufacture of having these these pieces fit together and and work together intelligently right arm you know it has to be assigned Kotor works with SCSI decoder and and that’s it %HESITATION and and back to my I. T. example that’s just not the way of the world right can you imagine if if your HP laptop couldn’t send an email to your dell laptop it’s makes insurance it’s a ridiculous question right arm and yet and yet that’s how we’re okay with that in AV it seems but that’s not okay alone and so and so the real impetus for us the VLT is about %HESITATION trying to build a standard approach to how we do AB override Pete also that the hardware can become interoperable with one another so that in our own Aurora box can talk to Izzie box just like an H. P. box can talk to a dell box all because only once you solve that inter operability problem can you then have the concept although other software platform if if if android phones didn’t talk to I fold it would be a very different world than what we have today is wouldn’t be successful product because people have preferences right somebody once an application works one way me once an application works another way on him by building instead of building products like like an SBS I request from the acts or a or a just and power instead of building products we build a platform we thought that we could really help gives the AV industry the tools needed to sort of grow up rate and and to live in this world where user experience is is at the forefront of what we do all the time and to create the tools needed so that software engineers programmers and can build the applications that the users demand without being without having to also consider at the same time what hardware do I need to have yeah so I’ve been having a lot of great conversations lately and it seems like a navy were really just a custom to selecting the box first selecting a hardware first and you mentioned user experience and of course everybody knows that’s where the where they should be starting and %HESITATION but we start with the box first possibly because there is no other there’s no standards out there really to do this sort of things ends what you’re talking about is building a platform where you can have the user experience come first and and pick and choose the hardware that you’re working on do you think that kind of flexibility and agility obviously you you believe that will be good for the industry overall but for people %HESITATION integrators and programmers working in AV what kind of effect do you think that could have on their business will they need to change their business model at all obviously will still be selling hardware but but there’s gonna be some kind of change that affects our our day to day I think it it just gives new opportunities more than anything right it doesn’t it doesn’t take much away from what we do today the fact is as we set electrons need somewhere to wiggle right so so even if the decision making changes at some point we need to buy some hardware we need to install some hardware we need to plug it in right now maybe if we can standardize well on some of that plugging it in part comes a little smoother a little easier all but someone still has to do it when it comes to programming systems up there are always going to be customers who need and demand you know specific customized solutions for their application right I want my carpentry work exactly this way and so programmer can continue to serve that calling it the way they always happen again meaning STV we might make that a little bit easier because if if we get to the world where estudio is is as ubiquitous as we plan then that then that program were coming in to customize something for an end user is customizing on a platform that they’ve been well versed in are well familiar with probably already built some libraries of their own so it’s it’s easier to come in and tweak what they already have and start from scratch in the new opportunity I think is is once you build up when it comes more feasible for software programmers Evey programmers and engineers to to identify certain types of applications that are common in start to build those and and sell them even more generically %HESITATION again just like software works in the in nineteen right like if I if I want a platform for or having an audio video conference like run right now I can go build soon charge people money to use it because enough people want that application right if if if we have a solid and ubiquitous platform of the developers can feel comfortable that that there that they were custom needs can always be mad but that the more generic problems that they need to solve the don’t have to solve over and over again they can solve them once and then and then commercially offer that solution because the platform that makes it possible is available everywhere so it sounds like a STV OP apps that’s exactly the world I would love to see right I think were it’s gonna take some time to get there right there’s a lot of transition we have to get your we’re still as an industry transitioning away from the matrix which right not to rest easier we offer performance that’s unique in a V. over IP world because only has the theory actually replicates the performance of the matrix which there’s no latency compromise is no image quality compromise other other radio over IP solutions are about Haiti I’ll give you some great flexibility some good scalability but you’re gonna have to pay for that in latency and quality and that’s fine as a short term solution but as the only actually replaces the matrix which so we’re we’re getting through that transition as an industry %HESITATION then once we really stabilized on TV over IP as how we do things it’s time to start really changing those mines and showing people the value of as opposed to the value of individual products but absolutely I will I will know that the alliance has succeeded completely when when one one day there’s an STD apps store and anybody who has a good idea for a piece of the application right that created and sell or make a business well obviously given the name of this podcast you know that I’m on board with that too but %HESITATION I’ve been using software defines control for a few years now and by that I mean controlling devices directly from an iPad we’re using a cheap processor like a raspberry pi for control and all of it technically works great there’s absolutely no issues with it technically reliability you can I mean raspberry pi’s Aline Xbox so even security wise it’s it’s not an issue but there is a ton of resistance to the solutions sure and not from any user’s state really don’t care as long as things %HESITATION work as they expect then they’re fine with it but integrators and consultants are kind of quick to call when I’m doing a science project so why do you think there’s so much resistance to software based solutions I think it’s just in its its its history and its workings what’s easy and it’s again that lack of education that’s what the alliance has to go that’s about all we have to go fight is to teach and show people %HESITATION that when the IT industry became the identity industry everything was okay right relying more on software is not a bad thing and in that moving away from this older paradigm of the hardware defining the application actually as real benefits for system designers and for system installers it makes their job simpler it makes our job a repeatable and it allows them to have more bandwidth and capability to be able to take on more work in to be able to deliver better suited as sort of more custom tailored experience to those users there there are there a lot of focus a little more on each of their customers user experience as they focus less on the the raw details of this boxer that box which is you know that’s something that that some people love to do it’s a world that they were moving away from and and that move is inevitable so it’s it’s it’s our job as an alliance show people how they can not only survive in this New World but strive and take their business to new places that are just as interesting and justice profitable or more so than the old way so what do you think the technology is kind of clear but what do you think like it from a business perspective what do you think about the model will look like in say five or ten years you know that’s that’s hard to say because we’re enabling a lot of new and different approaches right ATV as a services is an idea that started to see kicked around places and that becomes more possible once we have a handful of the right platforms available it’s hard for me to predict that will be all the way there in five years up but I think we will be in a world where software much more and more is is is the key selling point for any system right user experience and software that drives it I I think that’s just inevitable because because those two resistant frankly will be will be taken over by those who embrace it and and get to use this as more flexible more responsive business approach to satisfy the customers that are being satisfied by those who stick to a up your hardware world yeah it’s some I’m on board with that but it’s it’s kind of hard to believe when when everything is still kind of moving so slowly and and there’s a lot of the old ways of doing things just don’t seem to change at all but %HESITATION as they say things happen slowly and then very quickly that’s it said well we’ll look back and see how my goodness I mean it’s like I guess a member of the pioneers take the Arabs yeah and that’s and that’s where we are right now we’ve got to keep driving this forward right we’re gonna find the like minded individuals the folks everybody that’s a member of the SDP alliance guys like yourself who are really pushing this message of %HESITATION software defined controlled software defined experience right we’ve all just got to find ways to work together to show people the benefits of this and then one day we’re gonna look back and say wow I can’t believe that anybody ever did this a different way yeah there are some gifts is anybody is anybody looking back at wistfully at their analog video switches today I don’t think so now that they’re looking for ways to get rid of them so I I know that you’re a little pressed for time and just got a two more questions for you would you care to share any plans for the future that they may have for the alliance or anything else what we have just announced at I MC and and we’re launching at the end of this month officially is the the STB only partner consultant program which is a program it’s it’s game to consultants but also says system designers generally you know even those who work for integrators or is independent designers and the way this program works is you can come to the STB we dot org website %HESITATION get a little bit of we put together a nice five module reading curriculum out about an hour hour and fifteen minutes worth of material followed by a you know a quiz on what you’ve learned and once you pass that quiz you’re grounded status as an amnesty deal we partner and that really says that you know you you’ve achieved some level of education understanding about what AV over IP really needs but the STB alone and that you’re someone who can be counted on entrusted to design an STD we based system from any of the member manufactured right we have thirty five members today most of whom are building encoder and decoder devices on the spot you’ll be you’ll be trying to design with any of those products are and and then we’ll list you publicly as you know someone who can be counted on to build a high quality design on the system so that’s something to look for you can go to escape the only daughter works to sign up to to get the notification as soon as the curriculum is available this month all right is it is it out yet is available yet it is not available right now we’re on the needles to see %HESITATION Steven got right we’ve got it in in beta right now to a couple of a of test Guinea pigs just to make sure that the curriculum you know comes together in a cohesive way and then we’ll be launching in the next days excellent looking forward to that do you have any advice or tips for someone who may have a new approach or solution whether be software based or otherwise and is trying to find an audience for it I think so I think my main messages is stick with it right look at what’s going on in in all the industries that surround us all the other electronics and communication industries right telco IDE of video distribution through the at home right now flexes and you tubes in the world all gone through the same transition of analog to digital type pizza platform what we’re all trying to do here is is only accelerate the inevitable we’re not we’re not actually trying to create something that might not happen so just stick with it are and and she she could believe that this is where the industry has had it and that all we have to do is is create the right tools and and educate people right that’s a studio ease goals around us offer education of come come communicate with us we have ways you want to work with us about that and and and let’s just all work to drive this transition together because it is going to happen thanks Justin that’s just the kind of motivation that I need because it is hard yeah yeah well eating anything worth doing is right out there you go so if anyone would like to get in touch with you how would they go about doing that you can reach me at Jake can internet as the VOA dot org %HESITATION but I must recommend you check out the website you can read a little bit about the technology and the platform and STV OP dot org you can sign up for the newsletter and kept up to date on all of our latest goings on anybody on the newsletter list of course get an announcement as soon as that new training curriculum excellent Justin thank you so much for being on the show you gotta Patrick good luck with the new program thanks take care eight Patrick thanks for listening to the show if you enjoyed this discussion if you liked what you’ve heard if you want to hear more discussions like this please go to I tunes leader if you to the show get in touch with me somehow and let me know that you’re out there listening and that’ll motivate me to keep doing these shows get mad so if you’re driving or whatever said something in your calendar to give you a reminder to go to I tunes thanks for listening to software defined survival for transcripts and show notes go to software defined survival
Tim Albright is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV.
He started his career in radio, and somehow wound up becoming and AV consultant.
He’s also worked as a control systems programmer and university technology manager before founding AVNation.
AVNation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to further the AV industry through education and knowledge. They do that through blog posts and covering industry events and they are most well known for podcasting.
Their flagship podcast, AVWeek, was first recorded in 2011 and provides a weekly overview of the AV industry.
Over the years they have launched several other podcasts like ResiWeek, EdTech and my personal favourite, A State Of Control.
Transcript
This transcription was created with IBM Watson’s Speech To Text service. Computers aren’t perfect. Please keep that in mind when reading the transcript.
Read More...
Pat: Greetings everyone in AV lands my name is Patrick Murray and welcome to software defined survival, where we interview the people and companies in AV that you software to re invent themselves and the way they do business. We listen to their stories and asks for as for tactics and device on how to survive and even thrive in this software defines world.
I’m excited about our first guest on the show he is arguably the most successful podcaster in AV and before you run away saying what the heck does podcasting have to do with software, I kind of see podcasting and blogging as software defined media. Right? That the podcasts and the blogs and things like that, they don’t care where you are and they don’t care how you consume it. They don’t care what time it is like a radio show and things like that so this is definitely a software defined solution and that’s why I’m excited to have this guest.
He started his career in radio and somehow wound up becoming an AV consultant I’ll have to ask how that happens and he also worked as a control system programmer and university technology manager before founding easy nation alienation is a network of AV professionals whose goal is to provide to further the AV industry through education and knowledge something that is near and dear to my heart and their flagship podcast TV week was first recorded in two thousand and eleven and it provides a weekly overview of the AV industry if you’re in a movie you should definitely check out a few weeks it’s a great way to get a a download of what’s going on in the industry.
Now over the years they launched several other podcasts like crazy week ed tech and my personal favorite state of control if your navy programmer definitely check out a state of control well ladies and gentlemen Tim Albright.
Tim: Yeah, way too flowery.
Pat: Welcome to the show Tim. Is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to add or expand upon?
Tim: No you don’t need me on the show now! Yeah yeah I’m good.
Pat: Nice.
Tim: How are you doing?
Pat: Yeah I’m good I’m good.
Tim: I’m excited for this dude.
Pat: Thank you I appreciate that. I got a couple questions lined up here. We could also let this meander and go wherever it takes us.
Tim: It probably will.
Pat: It probably will. So I know you have kids I have a couple kids myself and one thing you’ll never hear a child say is when I grow up I want to be in AV. At least, I haven’t heard that one yet.
So there’s usually a story behind how people wind up in this industry so tell us how did you get started in AV?
Tim: Why are you mention my broadcast and my broadcast background and I was working for radio stations and Lois and must show my my my wife and I Michelle had had had our first child and it was not conducive to having a child was not conducive to being on morning radio which is what I was because you know you get up at stupid o’clock in the morning and you go to bed at you know really early at night and just wasn’t conducive for that and so I was starting to look around and the armada the college that I had had gone to school to school at was needing what they described as a in an engineer and somebody to take care of some projector installs once a month once a year and I was annoyed that day I’m, I’m somewhat technical and somewhat you know I can do that and I was already teaching already a production for them and so I was like sure I can do this and so they they they hired me on and what turned in what what started out as being do a couple of projector installs a year turned into holy cow we have no money and we have to upgrade all of these rooms and we have to adjust the programming in these rooms and we have to learn how to properly designed these these rooms so I quickly found myself taking Infocom classes and taking classes from various manufacturers and getting certified to program Sir your fax first and so I buy it we ended up having our own little small band of of designers and installers for our little college I mean we had a hundred ninety rooms which is not it’s not small but it’s not it’s not the size of let’s say young university of Illinois which is also listed above out for me but it was it was significant for us and so that got me only involved in AV almost from the get go. I mea, I went to my very first Infocomm shortly after starting there because of the lack of knowledge that I had and I need to get ramped up on so that’s how I got involved was you need to do a career change and of finding myself you know in the ceiling trying to put together a five wire BNC and and getting a multi meter out to figure out why the heck my yellow look weird.
Pat: Exactly switching that the black and white wires.
Tim: Well, I started making cables with all kinds of short so that’s why I that’s what I used to multi meter is yeah every yeah eventually got better at it .
Pat : So you mentioned your first visit to Infocomm do you remember what your first impressions were kind of walking into that hall?
Tim: Holy crap, are you kidding me? I fell in love I honestly it well it wasn’t the work and it was in the I love the work it was it was good work and I I still I still control is still my favorite part of of a B. and and probably always will be , but when I walked in the show floor this is this is back in the mid to late two thousands arm so wasn’t the size it is now I was absolutely flabbergasted me, I had never been to anything like that like it before my life I’d never to the C. S. as as a as a journalist I’d been to a number of junk it’s a movie junkets where they fight about interview people in this up now and go see movies and those are smaller by by a large margin but I never been to any be a detriment to CS and so this is my first trade show experience and I walked in the show for and I’m just awestruck and I’m like I don’t want to do anything else I simply don’t want to do anything else and I remember walking around and talking to folks and you know that was when I got to meet a lot of folks that I still you know consider friends today I mean I it was when when I will I met body mind his name is Kevin who happens to work for Crestron but you know met him there and I met them for the folks that just to kind of took me under their wing and said okay here’s this here’s as dumb kid that does not anything let’s, let’s show him a thing or two.
Pat: Yeah there’s nothing like having a mentor in those first years to know an explain things that are that are now probably totally obvious to you.
Tim: And obsolete. Just for the record.
Pat: Well, Yeah, RGBHV byebye.
Pat: So everybody in AV usually has a at least one nightmare project under their belt. Let’s not talk about that. Maybe you could tell me about your most rewarding AV projects and what made it special for you?
Tim: Oh wow, see that one is harder. I can tell you can tell you my nightmare story off the top of my head.
So this is not one that I specifically did but I was in charge of I mention the fact that I work for college and the largest the largest construction project that we were a part of the college I where I went to over the cards that I’ve I worked at was a small community college and it was it was bigger than what it should have been. It’s it’s it has delusions of grandeur at time and it’s a good thing right I’m not I’m not saying that as a negative I’m saying that they have delusions of grandeur and all the times they meet those right so this is a community college who reaches beyond what the normal community college to play does they wanted to do a research center right this organization called script switches scripts ocean Oceana ocean out ripple oceanography is that right oceanic scripts motioning research center are they study the ocean well I live in Illinois, I live in southwest Illinois just outside of Saint Louis. We live on the Mississippi, the biggest outside of the Amazon the biggest of fresh water longest waterway in the in the North America there’s nothing like that. Right there’s nothing and so they wanted to develop a research center I community college, building a research center for the for the rivers.
And where Alton is which is the whole time I live and it actually happens to be right at the confluence between the Illinois Mississippi and the Missouri rivers so not only are you on the biggest river in North America you’re also at this very unique place between where all these three rivers come togther, right.
So that’s kind of the backstory here, they have this this grand idea are they partner with a bunch of people I know like we’re gonna build this, right? It is a platinum level or gold level LEED certified building, right. I think when they started out they were going platinum and I think eventually they got gold. And we were tasked with doing all the AV in this research facility. Now there have been a couple other projects where they they built this this four story twenty million dollar research facility a year or two earlier and we spec’d out right.
That was you’re talking about thirty or forty rooms I think , six lecture halls that was subbed out we helped with the design and we we assisted with some of the direction but we did not do that. We did this research facility and at the end of the day when we had the grand opening and and this that and the other, you walk through and everything’s working and everything’s exactly you know what kind of the way you envisioned it as a designer so it was the first project as as a AV person as an A. V. professional, as a programmer, as a designer, as an installer you could sit back and go: „yeah we did that and it freaking rocks“.
Pat: Nice! It does happen once in awhile. Has it ever happened again?
Tim: No, well like that, I mean we’ve had a couple others while we were there like I said we were there and had the AV because we had to.
Pat: Is that why you had that kind of success with it, because yeah because the control you have over the projects?
Tim: Yes,absolutely! No it was one of these things where we were actually brought in early enough and every AV person in the world will tell you, the earlier we can get brought in the more successful going to half and we were able to do things like you know have conversations about you know the network and have conversations and this is early on with video over IP and integrating we used a,video conferencing system it was like the second or third video conferencing system college never had. We had two of them in this building because they were visiting scientists from all over the world who had their own water ways that they were concerned with they would come to this resurfaced research facility, because it was one of a kind of I believe it still as it was, one of a kind and so you had folks from China on you had folks from our member Argentina and Venezuela coming here. And so they needed to talk to their compatriots in a secure manner so we had we were tasked with creating a secure BTC system and something that was easy for them to use and understand and you know this was back way before anybody considered you know one button usability we had a one button system where they all they had to do was you know come in and and we were working with the the scheduling software and they can hit a button and they were connected to their people. If it was the right time and the right schedule.
Pat: Very nice. There’s a few things I want to impact there. Like somebody told me recently when a professor in a university for example. When they have a hard time with this technology, it kind of takes away from their credentials a bit. Right, if if they’re like supposed to be this really smart person and they’re fumbling around with the touch panel, it it kind of takes away from the authority that they have. So something like a one touch button, you know, where anybody could really use it, then they can get on with their own job.
Tim: So, so I have a story about that. I have over the years worked with a couple integrators in Saint Louis. I still do work for one group. Just because I’ve known him for twenty years and they’re good friends. One of the first times I was on a significant ,college and university in Saint Louis .I’m not gonna say which one. We were replacing a touchpanel and we get there and this touchpanel is concaved,right and this is an old, if you’re familiar with the old Crestron quick media systems, it was a seventeen inch quick media touch panel, so this was not a cheap device to replace. It was somewhere between fifteen and twenty grants and the the entire center of it is concave and I’m like „what in the world happened to this?“
Pat: I think, I know what happened.
Tim: There’s this professor, who has like fifteen doctorates, probably like four or five, but still has a number of doctorates and is the first time using the system and just like any other good programmer you put in a cool down screen, when you’re using a projector, especially back then right.
Pat: Sure.
Tim: And he said, how dare this thing tell me to wait two minutes so I can restart the system. And put his fist through it.
Pat: Wow, he actually punched the touch panel.
Tim: No, no he wailed on the touchpanel, to the point where it was busted.
Pat: Yeah, I’m sure there’s a lot of people listening to this, or I hope there are. Thant wanted to do that themselves once or twice.
Tim: Oh, I’m certain.
Pat: I know a guy, who threw his laptop across the room once, programmer.
Tim: Laptop? I’ve done that too.
Pat: Yeah? I always wanted to, never had the guts to do it. I wanted to believe it, but never had the guts to actually do it. So the other thing I wanted to talk about on that story was. I always like it, because a lot of times we do these projects and we go away and we never see how the rooms are used and usually it’s some generic thing that you know we never really can appreciate at all. So I like the fact that you actually knew about people using the room and how they’re using it. Like scientists coming together from all over the world and actually using your technology to collaborate and really produce results. That’s something I think we don’t get to see often enough.
Tim: Well especially folks like you, right. And you know folks, who are either independent programmers right. You guys are the mercenaries of the industry you get called in or subbed out and you don’t. Alright, you go in and you know, I’ve talked about this before, you’re kind of unique, because you’re in Germany, you get to go around to different parts, different countries in you Amsterdam and done jobs. I’ve done jobs, not a whole lot of outside of Saint Louis but a couple of size and Louis. And you’re right, if you are in this position, you’re never going to go back to that job, hopefully. As long as everything worked correctly and see how they use it. Now being a tech manager, if you are a tech manager, yes, you get that you get that that ability you get that opportunity to do it on two different levels. First of all, if you’re decent, if you are a tech manager worth their salt, you should at least be there or be available for folks especially new an incoming faculty to use your systems. Now you and I both know, that if you have to have instructions on how to use a touch panel the new done a poor job of designing the touch panel.
But there are people with five doctor too that can’t turn on a light switch successfully. Sometimes.
Pat: They’ve got their minds on other things.
Tim: Absolutely they do. So we actually developed a number of modules because we still had we’re still going from one control system to another control system even when I left, because that we have had with at one standard we’re moving to another so we had about three different, types of of control systems are at our college, so we had different models we had recorded them in and let met what made them available to new incoming faculty so I can get used to it right. If you’re in this building with this is the type of system we have in this building this is how you access your but this building it’s just a bunch of you know it’s a it’s a wall plate with a couple buttons this is how you do you you access it. And so, you would still be able to go and and and and walk through and and kind of be available the first couple weeks of of classes, to make sure that everything kind of works and and kind of comes off without a hitch.
Pat: Very nice. Lets a shift gears for a minute and talk about AV Nation. Where did the…
Tim: Why? I’m not very serious Patrick, you should know by now.
Pat: Yeah I’m good I’m getting that, so I’ll try to tone it down a little bit.
Tim: No, you’re fine
Pat: It’s my first podcast , give me a break, I’ll loosen up.
Tim: I have three hundred forty one AV weeks and I am not gonna count the other ones, so.
Pat: Nice, so where the original idea come from?
Tim: Oh Lord, so you mentioned very very nicely my broadcast background. I was weaned and kind of developed as a broadcast journalist at the the preeminent news talk stations at Lewis called KMOX. I had a job before I ever left college there and so I was able to rub shoulders with and learn from some of the best in the business it was it was owned by CBS at the time and so we were trained in the CBS way of of how to gather news. And said that that is my pedigree when it comes to the broadcast journalists part. And when I got involved in the AV industry and fell in love with it, that kind of put that down for a while I still taught on radio production in audio production, but actually since 2006, I was teaching students how to podcast I wasn’t doing it myself, but I I saw it as an opportunity for up and coming broadcasters to cut their teeth and and and kind of stretch their legs and stretch their wings and see what’s possible on in the realm of audio. And in 2005/2006 I was turned on to this week in tech by Leo Laporte. It’s the twit network, yeah he has several podcasts, he’s probably the most successful podcaster period. And possibly Adam Corolla has passed him at this point from a network standpoint I would say that Leo was probably up there. And so listening to that on a weekly basis, he does tech in general, right, so he does you know cell phones, computers and switches and all kind of stuff.
Pat: Everything.
Tim: Everything. And he also does for two hours a week which is way more than than I can I can do.
So I was looking for something, right and, so there were a couple of people who have who have were already doing something not what I was looking for but they were doing something Essien at the time and that’s when I see an atomic medications was doing a monthly video podcast are where they would bring people into a studio and they would talk about a specific project, right. So it was kind of white paper, a video version of a white paper.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: Wasn’t what I was looking for. What I was looking for the twit version of the the AV version of twit, right.
I want the news that I wanted it in a succinct way and I want it on a weekly basis. Nobody had it.
Pat: Right.
Tim: Right and I don’t know that anybody’s still does .
Pat: Maybe in prints, but certainly not weekly, right.
Tim: But not weekly, right. And so on it’s one of these things where necessity breeds invention I didn’t have what I wanted and so I made it.
Pat: Scratch your own itch.
Tim: Yeah, I mean I could see again I’m an old radio guy in and I’ve been in television as well and and I think that that medium has a lot to offer people. You get to learn people’s voices and I don’t mean that any any in the literal sense I mean, folks understand that I am as much, a lover of this industry, as I am not overly serious about it.
And I was I don’t take ourselves too seriously I’ve made the comment both on the air off the year it’s our team and other people. If the projector doesn’t work no one is going to die, right. You know it’s not life and death and you have to understand kind of where your your places in the world. We make experiences. And I’m I’m gonna totally steal this line here, we make great experiences and our job as as a nation is kind of what we’ve developed into and what we were allies and and me still learning how to be a businessman, because I’m a producer that’s my pedigree is, we speak directly to the integrators on a weekly basis, right. Way back when it when I was a radio we had, you will be called an avatar with this is the person that we’re talking to. My avatar for AV nation specifically for a AV week are the folks the integrators who are are driving into their office on Monday morning: Why is it that they need to know for that week to be successful? Right? And that question has driven, darn near everything that we’ve done. It’s driven the deep dive into the other, what I’ll call niche podcast that we do on a monthly basis and that includes the state of control which is controlled automation that includes AV. social which is shell social media and marketing. Which is kind of developed into more marketing and social media because boxing in under understand how to talk to their clients, right. It drove a show actually from one of our underwriters, to look at the on the IT in A. V. and how they each influence each other. It drove a show that I developed probably a year ago with a consulting firm, called on the eighty profession. And that looks at you know ways to make your business better. Has nothing to do with the with the actual technology of AV, but it is about how to be better at your business. You know we’ve done everything from interview consultants who will help you with your business to interview business authors, on how to get consumer consumers. I’d just interviewed a guy who I was turned on to by a buddy of mine that I’ve developed a relationship with the Name Ian Altman. Ian is a fanstastic sales person to bend tastic sales consulting. He’s spoken of a Bacchae spoke in other places you spoke with PSNI and super summit. Well, Ian turned me on this other guy by the name of Markus Sheridan. He is probably one of the best experts that I’ve ever read, when it comes to content marketing, he turned a like this closed bankrupt, swimming pool company in the middle of the recession, he turned around with about a year and a half through content marketing. And reading his story and reading his take on it, is fascinating and it’s incredibly important to people in the A. V. industry. Title of his book is: „They asky you answer.“ It’s very simple.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: Your clients are going to ask you questions. Probably to the sales people, when they ask you questions, you answer it, in a not only obviously you know, Patrick is my client even assuming email say „Hey what about this and what what what’s what’s the steel with with HDMI to that on? How ist his gonna affect us?“ Okay, well first of all: Into the question to the client directly right now this is going to how it’s going to do it this is this is what it’s doing but then you send it to your marketing people and say „Hey we have a question, because, an old rule of thumb in broadcasting is that, between five and ten percent of your audience will ever ever contact you ever, I don’t care if you’re given a million million dollars will between five and ten percent of your of your audience will ever call and we’ll ever email you ever contact you same is true in the business world. Between five and ten percent of your clients will ever ask you a question that is meaningful. You know, how they’re going to be affected you take those nuggets, because I will guarantee you, that at least, twenty of the twenty other clients have the exact same question, they’re just not gonna ask you.
Pat: Sure
Tim: Or potential clients may have that same question- they are not gonna ask you.
Pat: Trash.
Tim: But if you have this piece of content over here, right and they’re searching how will HDMI two do affect me?
Boom you have an article. Boom you have a video whatever, so it’s stuff like this that has driven our content to say you know how it how can we best help integrators and in all honesty also tech managers do their job better and be more successful.
Pat: Great stuff. I mean really does a lot of stuff to tackle their. How do you know what to write? That’s something I always come up against, because of course this idea of putting content out there, that’s all people find you. It’s basically SEO, which sounds a little fishy, if you ask me, but if you are just writing stuff that people want to know about and they do find you, nothing is better than that. And I know what you mean like I ask, I have my online courses and I ask students all the time. „Please tell me what’s wrong?“ and they never answer me. It’s like pulling teeth getting any kind of feedback- out of anybody. And blog posting it takes a lot of time. It’s really time consuming. It’s a lot of fun, because it really makes you dig deep into a subject and become more knowledgeable about it and really start to look at it from different angles that you might not have considered, but again that time investment how do you decide what to write about.
Tim: So we’ve done a couple different things. First of all we started taking our shows and regardless of the show there’s going to be at least two or three different topics on each episode and and we’ve started pulling and culling information from there. But me personally, my personal blog it’s what I’m interested in, right. It’s what’s hit me are within the last week or two weeks and right now this week I am formulating and doing some research for a blog about how the terrorists are going to impact the industry in North America large adversely beyond North America in the US our current president has put tariffs on steel, well let’s not be silly a lot of our products are made with with feel , you know what the rack rack is a big giant piece of steel arm based metal and so I’m trying to do some research right now, because that to me is interesting and that’s a question that nobody’s asked yet. Is how are the how are the policies of not just this president every president, impacting our industry you know you look at what is it Brazil is one of the biggest exporters to us of steel. Guess what, they are also one of the biggest importer of what they are one of the biggest importers of US Cole. To make this deal.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: So you know, you’re looking at stuff like this going, okay you know and at the end of the day whether it’s you know Atlas or it’s Middle Atlantic or its Chief and I’m just naming three you’ve got so many other people sure like a bank, that use steel every single day. And our listeners are users are clients or customers, how are they going to be impacted not today not tomorrow because they’ve already got a warehouse full of steel, but in six months or a year and then how do they decide whether or not to pass that shards alone? You know the first question is is there going to be an increase right. That’s the number one question as you know this Atlas I eat is atlas and their racks had to they have to increase the price of middle when it comes to increase their price and if the question is yes it’s almost like programming right, if yes then what’s right and then you then the manufacturer has to make a decision without a past that that charge along most the time they have to, their business, they have to truck bass along the their their cost increases. And then okay so your you know H. B. can occasions are here city Iowa St Louis your rack price just went up ten percent okay you’ve designed a system you have a spec out will suddenly you’re losing ten points right so how did you recoup that cost and hopefully you haven’t done so are too far out right to where it’s going to hurt you that much. But then how do you how do you adjust your prices again their business so they have to salute laces Hannah and so it just trickles on down to you know the final customer whether it’s education reporter five hundred operation they’ve got to you know explain the situations I look you know. Our metal prices increased down the line, you know.
Pat: It could, putting my programmer hat on, use less hardware. It could cause people to, right?
Tim: That’s actually a good point.
Pat: Just their system design, put less stuff in the rac, right? That big matrix switch can be compressed down to a network switch and maybe the numbers would work out that way. Could be an interesting angle for to solve that kind of issue.
Tim: Where people to more video over IP and not do it over a switcher. You’ll also from a program from a control standpoint to you know move more toward software as opposed to you know a three to direct high, processor moved to software to where I somewhere in the cloud someone the network.
Pat: Now how about that all due to the price of steel you the way things are all kind of connected to each other.
You were talking about how the business podcast and I think that’s another great subject because there really is no how to. And in A.V. for a long time everybody’s always been busy. But with things changing, I kind of wonder, if in a few years from now, the flow of projects will change, just a little bit, if things do become more software based. Right the whole integrators maybe to change their business model. I mean it there was talk of this years ago, as margin started to go down with with Amazon you could buy display on Amazon. But the model still doesn’t seem to be service based for the most part at all. It’s still his margin based model of selling hardware.
Tim: They trying.
Pat: Yeah, well that’s exactly the point. That I’m trying to make is like, there’s no how to, to make that jump. And have you bumped into any resources on on a podcast to try to just help us you know take this thing apart and and figure out a new way to put it back together.
Tim: Not on that possible broadcasters specifically. What I run into is some folks were doing it well. And I’ve run into those folks at different industry events. Two or three of my favorite events have nothing to do with the technology. They all had to do about the business of AV.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: And there’s absolutely reasons to go to ISE, there’s absolute reasons to go to Infocomm and all the other technology trade shows. Certainly you get to see cold things you get to do things you know it and and experience things, but what I would say is that there is more of a reason to go to these business centric our shows as well these business centric meetings.
Pat: Do you have any examples?
Tim: Well there’s the three that I have is my super summit which that’s only for PS my folks, in the CIA’s BLC would stand for business leadership conference and then of ex is a back which is the A. B. executive conference. Is not taken out mean there’s not there’s not a technology showcase their. These are folks that are going to you’re going to have a chance to talk with your peers, what other business owners.
Pat: Right
Tim: And find out what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong and how they can help you and honestly how you can help them. And in doing so, you know you’re gonna be able to see what’s worked in what’s doesn’t. You know we’re obviously that there are regional differences in their cultural differences, not only across you know international borders but also on the scene in the US there’s regional, cultural differences as big as we are. But the basics are the same, right and understanding that and it was it was actually at the BLC three years ago now, I ran into a young man who was in charge of emigration from up in Maine, which is singled out of the way. But but they were doing service and support, as a AV as a service and support through their clients right, they had they had taken the the sass model the software as a service model and convertible into AV rather successfully and they did it through number different ways number one was was the monitoring and maintaining of their systems. But that conversation and coupled with a couple different conversation with some other and integrators who had moved to AV as a service through not only monitoring but also leasing, the equipment.
Pat: The equipment, okay.
Tim: So it’s not yellow you Patrick as the client you don’t own anything, right. My contract with you says you’re gonna have the latest greatest stuff within five years, every year, so it’s my job to make sure that the system is up and running and maintained and that you have the latest greatest you don’t have to worry about you know end of life for a projector or display or a control processor. Your stuff is just gonna work and it’s my job to figure that out. Now you’re going to pay me for that, right you gonna pay me for that, because suddenly you you don’t have a need for a support team you know have a need for you know having somebody physically on site because I’m gonna come within and you know depending on base on the contract but within an hour five hours twenty four hours depending on what the contract says. I’m going to support you, to this to this degree.
Pat: Do those numbers work out?
Tim: It does for some people, it does for some organizations right for some for some clients they get, right.
Pat: Is it really just an understanding thing or because you could put this in black and white: over the next ten years, system it will cost you X. and doing that as a service option will cost also X.
Tim: X, plus some. Understand that, it’s not, it’s not the cheapest option, right.
Pat: But you are not laying out the money up front.
Tim: You’re not laying out the money up front: You’re eliminating in you do you hate to talk about you know people line jobs for your limiting a jobber too are so your cost of off that. Number three you don’t have to deal with the the half life of certain products of equipment and then you don’t have to mess with what do you do with that product that that equipment once it’s been taken out and that is actually one of the dirty little secrets of A V. Especially from a technology manager standpoint.
Pat: Sure.
Tim: What the heck do you do with this crap, once you’ve taken out of the rack.
Pat: It’s useless.
Tim: Seriously I had the office I had it at Lewis and Clark, which is the college I worked at, it was, our head in for our master control for our our internal TV station, okay. So I had it you know five racks worth of equipment the set the other about time. I left there I had replaced everything in that rack, when I got there. It was all old CRTs and an old old analog equipment.
Pat: Big stuff too .
Tim: I all of my gosh I had, replaced everything in that rack to where it was down to two racks. I had a back room full of gear.
Pat: Yeah, try ebaying it.
Tim: Ebaying it is worth less right, because you you get five or ten Bucks. But then so we only end up doing electronic recycling our college had a green initiative in this and other once a year , we electronically cycle and that’s where a lot of those old five wire switchers went right to a company that we knew that that are college had had bedded they knew what they did with the equipment once they got it and and they were responsible about the way that they dispose of it. But you know that’s one of those things that folks don’t really think about because you know I don’t care what the VCR with the doc came from her years ago. This stuff has first of all has hazardous material and right now people think about that but you’ve got lead in there you’ve got ill do it like this electronics have got crap in it that probably shouldn’t go into the ground how do you responsibly dispose of that and some companies absolutely do really good job of that they’ll have a program to where the either get a credit to their their clients are the height say „Hey I’ll take this off your hands and as we know how to properly dispose of it“. Absolutely there is that there’s also I would say a large majority of folks we simply don’t know what to do with you know a sixteen by sixteen BJ switcher, once they take it out and replaced it with the with a digital equipment.
Pat: Right, so that’s like another bonus of that as a service modelle right, they would take care of that that final tasks. So it sounds like this is all as a service model is more about convenience it’ll cost a little more but you get a ton of convenience it’s like kind of like what Rich does as a white glove service. So what’s the hold up?
Tim: Getting the AV sales people to wrap their head around it.
Pat: Are we, so we are our own worst enemy, kind of.
Tim: Absolutly, it’s just like every industry by way.
Pat: Yeah, okay, sure, but this is like a real opportunity to grow, because you know within a service model, you know how much is coming in every month for the next five years. These are contracts as opposed to the way we do things now, a project comes in, you get it done and then you basically start from zero again.
Tim: I think some of is also cultural, going back to that, but yet it’s cultural as well, because you have a business that has a business plan. And it is in their business plan to sell ex amount in their hiring the salespeople to sell a system.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: I’m not so the contractor and some of that’s it you know some that’s also a cultural shift internally to say okay we’re going to make the shift. I would say that the folks that I know they had gone to the service model alright there are sure to migrate to art are incredibly successful.
Pat: Yeah.
Tim: I am certain that there are failures out there. I have not heard of them, but I’m certain there are values out there, people who for whatever reason whether it’s their market or their client base or whatever.
Just couldn’t get off the ground. Then gone back to to doing you know sales and and a service as a separate item.
Pat: Okay, so to shift to an end as a service model, is obviously a big investment, right. It would it completely changes everything. Is there a pass to do it incrementally?
Tim: That actually is how you almost have to do it, right? You can’t exactly do on mass, you would have to take it , object right so you get an RFP, or you are selling to a client and you know you’re listening to them and you’re hearing their their big pain points. But that’s the other part is this is not for everybody , there are some folks who eaten will never let you monitor their network okay ever let you monitor their system. So unless you can overcome that hurdle, it’s not gonna be a very successful AV as in service installation. So that you use a limited arsenal system.
Pat: That could be handled with staffing no?
Tim: Yes and no. I mean yes, you can put somebody physically on on site, right. And then that’s another cost.
Pat: Right.
Tim: Some cost, but yeah absolutely.
Pat: Okay, interesting stuff. Let’s shift gears back again to….you know that kind of reminds me of, is like you were saying, to start incrementally like I tell programmers just do something small you know find your smallest projects, if you want to learn a new programming language and tried on that something that you know you could go back to your old language and do in just a few minutes. But just just try it on a really small project first. And that’s how you that’s a gain confidence with these things- that’s how you start to that so you go from crawling to walking.
Tim: That’s why the most famous phrase and all the programming is „hello world“.
Pat: Yeah, there you go.
Tim: Seriously, because that right there is you know if you can do „hello world“ in a language then you can go from there.
Pat: Yeah, definitely. So speaking of control, „state of control“, but I’m a big fan of it, obviously.
Tim: I am too.
Pat: It’s actually, you know, hearing everybody, she knows that I respect, talk about the different ways to approach AV control it’s it’s kind of inspired me a bit to follow up on some of my own ideas and develop them and even try out a new product or so on the market. They don’t know it, didn’t always work but.
Tim: Oh they will.
Pat: Do you know of any similar stories on estate control or any other podcasts where somebody’s been inspired to really take action and do something with the information that that you guys are providing?
Tim: There are a lot actually over the years.
Pat: Pick your favorite.
Tim: I’m trying to think, but I will probably will I’ll stick with state control and the good lord this has been, two or three years ago now. I can’t remember. Crestron came out with their diamond level programming. If you’re not familiar with with Crestron sort of by programmers there are, number of years there was sweat three different metals and was bronze silver and gold and then they came out with platinum and then they came out with diamond. And we did a special episode with the first ever diamond programmers. Now two of them were Crestron employees but still there was there was four of them that were that were first ever and out of that Labadie Dave hats started talking about doing diamond and he became a diamond level year later the first ever diamond that I ever knew personally right. I knew the couple of the posters of the question that but I didn’t know them really well the day was the incredible fantastic very talented diamond level programmerer.
Pat: But we should also point out that it’s about three weeks of work to do that certification.
Tim: Well, more than that, because then you have to do it, you have to keep it you, have to teach every year.
Pat: So it’s a real investment.
Tim: It’s incredible investment and even with the one thing that I find fascinating, is you have to teach outside of your discipline and what I mean by that is, Dave is a network programmer, he could take you know network control and and and run with all day long he’s a commercial programmer, he has done commercial programming for years, so the first class he did was buy a home.
Pat: Was resi.
Tim: Was residential automation. Fish out of water. As our water and that’s with a duty right. That’s what they do to you. To stretch your arms and to get you kind of on the path of making sure that you are not as a real well rounded, right. I’m obviously Hatz probably has you know, fifteen pro3’s in this house and use fully automated the only service dog food every morning you know outlaw doc brown. But you know it it’s, there is something where it’s you’re getting outside of your comfort zone and outside of what you do on a daily basis.
Pat: So, I’ve had to make his decision myself and I decided for the time being not to make that huge investment in the next level of Crestron programming just because, yeah, does it really make a difference? And you know, from what you’re telling me, this guy was inspired to make this huge investment, from one of your shows. I don’t know, what do you think, does it really? Maybe it’s a country thing, here in Germany maybe they just don’t look at certifications the same way. They all kind of look the same and blur, but is there, yeah.
Tim: This is why it depends: You’re an independent programmer. I have been outside of the spec part of the AV industry for probably too long, so I understand that when I say what I’m gonna say. I have not yet run into a situation, where somebody has put on us back, that they want a diamond level programmer. It doesn’t mean, that they’re not out there. I’m just saying that I have not personally run into or heard about a spec I ate in our P. where somebody has put down but they want a diamond level I am certain that there is at least one or two out there that that they’ve asked for. And the other side of that is there very few situations where it be where it would be warranted.
Pat: Well, that’s the other thing, yeah.
Tim: By and large most course for most programmers I know Crestron AMX external, most of them that are worth their salt and they get they get their certification, can handle a vast majority, of thrown at them. Yes, there are building automation’s where you know what you’re doing. right. And for that I would say a higher level of certification would be needed. And what you should be called out of respect, but if that’s what your business is and that’s what you talk about what you do on a daily basis a personal question then.
Pat: You know, sure sure, got to be decided on a case by case basis
Tim: Yep.
Pat: Alright shifting back TV nation. I remember running into you a few years ago and you quietly whispered to me in my ear that you were I’m gonna go a hundred percent all in with AV Nation. Do you remember that time?
Tim: I do.
Pat: So what was the biggest reason was the biggest thing that that gave me the confidence to make that jump?
Tim: Two things. First one the the support of my wife. Of any ship flight that you have to have the support of your partner, regardless of who that is.
Pat: Absolutely.
Tim: Certainly it was it was a weird combination. So we had just started monetizing aviation and and by what I said just I mean we had this was the first start, we had just started taking on money from other people up at that point it was completely financed by me. I was financing and by doing some outside jobs. We had just completed our first trip ISE, which was a can credibly successful Kickstarter for us. It was very humbling, because up to that point well Infocomm was a trip that almost went to anyway. So we were kinda able to kind of couple together and I could cover whatever nobody else could. But ISE was different, ISE was a big chunk of money. It was ten grand was our budget show and our listeners came through in our supporters came through in a huge winds quickly on more, but also prove something that we could do it and we could do it differently, than other people and that’s kind of what our thing is. We cover the industry in a unique way because we’re all in the industry. And so I wanted to finance it in a different way to kinda keep with with who we are. And so after I see that year was actually I was I is the twenty fifteen twenty fifteen to that I was looking around like, okay what’s what makes sense to me and I’m a big fan of NPR and PBS and BBC in the UK and an image are an arcane and just the way they think their model is which is pretty much be a publicly financed but no undue influence, I guess the best way to put this.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: And so the way that we have our contracts with our underwriting structured is, there’s no real influence. And you know that’s just kind of the the way we we wanted to go. And so we were starting to take on some money, not a whole lot but enough to offset into where I didn’t have to the side projects anymore. And the company that I worked for, was eighty eight, independent programming house. I was the they operate the ops manager for. We got sold to a local integration firm in Saint Louis of folks that I have a lot of respect for. Good friends with. They were one of our biggest clients at at the time. And some sitting in this meeting and not really knowing what to expect from them. They were very gracious, they had all these ideas for me. They wanted to do this and this and this and I’m sitting here in this meeting going „this is a unique place in my life, this is a unique time and I have an opportunity, I can absolutely take this job. I could take this job and I could work this job for a year two years five years whatever. But AN Nation at the time was in a unique spot that I was I it was it was when those moments where you either take it full bore and and and and take it out and spend it and take it out for a test drive and see what it’s capable of. Or you just keep in the garage and it’s something that you can tinker with on the weekend.
And in that moment I just kind of decided well this is this is my time to figure out whether or not this is something real or not. Without this is something that people can really honestly sustain or not.
And I told them that and I remember the owner, who’s become a very good friend of mine and one of my business mentors, says „well it sounds like you’re quitting, before you ever start“ and I said, „well I kind of am“ and so I left that meeting oddly on cloud nine. Not having a job. I was unemployed, thoroughly. And it has been the scariest and craziest two and a half years of my life and I would not do it differently.
Pat: Excellent. I like how you mentioned you had to recognize the opportunity, that was happening.
It was the it was a special opportunity that came you had the Kickstarter you had maybe a few underwriters so you kind of proven that there was a need for it that it could become something and then the company getting sold was kind of a catalyst to to kind of snap your into reality and say „wait a minute, I can either do this or that“ and then you chose this road. So what was what was really your biggest concern at the time what what were you worried about?
Tim: Paying my bills.
Pat: Yeah obviously.
Tim: I mean so it’s interesting, that when I tell people my story, they’re the ones that one of the more common questions is „you have your wife“ and yet „you have kids right like „yeah yeah that I’ve a mortgage I have to to pay for in Ohio.
Pat: Are you mentally stable?
Tim: No, no I’m not. You know, but now that’s that’s the biggest concern every month you know and and you know there are months that are better than others. And well I have a really good friend, I have known Michael for over twenty years he has recently in the last year and a half he has gone out on his own is does he does IT consulting. And he will be on me the powerful, for advice and I’m you know is is one thing we were I’ll tell him is like looking out there there are going to be days and they’re gonna be months that are horrible, right where you are going to question your own sanity in question your own your own brains. But we’ve gotten to the point where we are are stable and we are solid. And I’m I’m happy with on or the underwriters that we have them happy with the group that we’ve got and so out of that stability you okay so what were stable now it’s taken us two and a half years to get stable but were stable so okay so what does any good entrepreneur wants wants a stable, you try to grow right.
And so we’re in the process of doing some things that were were assessing some things and going okay you know what can we do to be a silly bigger for her sake but what can we do better? Right? What what can we do better how can we do things are even more differently and how can we reach more people and how can we do it more efficiently and how can we make our underwriters lives easier and how can we connect with more integrators and and what are we not just covering and were we not doing and you know we we started doing adjustments expo last year twenty seventeen. For the first time and we are doing it again this year, because our integrators are telling us that deals digital signage as a particle is important to them, so okay so you spend two days in Vegas right honestly Patrick it’s the cheapest show that I do , from a from a cost standpoint, so it is the least expensive show that we cover and it’s you know I’m in Saint Louis so I tell people, I’m spoiled as far as he is whites it takes me I get any place in the country in three hours you know at the most and Vegas is among those and you know southwest being southwest you can get in a fight pretty cheaply and you know hotels in Vegas Sir you depends on where you stay obviously but you know those little relatively inexpensiveunless you go during CIS, which I’ve heard really horror stories about that, but that’s a whole nother issue: But you know it’s it to you you grow from a stability standpoint and a you stretch and you see what’s possible and you know we’re not perfect by any stretch the imagination we have our own issues and and we’re still learning how to be a website as opposed to in in addition to being a podcast company and that comes with that with its own challenges, because it’s something that we never had to worry about you know was a website traffic because our our podcasting traffic is is what it does. And so that comes with is its own set of challenges and trying to shore that up and and learn because as a business owner I have to make I have to make intelligent decisions so the way that I make decisions, I want to learn everything about right I’ll be an expert but I had to have I have to know enough to make an informed decision, so you know learning about you know things like you mentioned SEO and learning about things like making sure things are in proper categories and making sure that your , you’re promoting so proper and all this other „hoo hah“ that I never had to worry about you know five years ago. So that’s a learning. It’s a way that we can we’re able to become better and and serve our clients in in our our listeners better is okay, we’re good you know we’re or stable now now let’s start stretching.
Pat: Excellent, sounds great. Any plans for the future you’d care to share with us?
Tim: Take over the world.
Pat: Really? With a podcast?
Tim: Absolutly. Here’s the thing- we I see online media, as not just the future of media in general, but I see it as as kind of where we’re going as a society and I do mean it is a global society. I still believe in print, I think print is a is a fantastic medium, I think the journalists that worked at The New York Times SEM are fantastic people. Right? I think they do an incredible job of what they do, but I also look at what time magazine is doing on time magazine, if you’ve never heard of them is little magazine right, but they start out being being a print magazine. If you go to Times website you’re going to see as much video as you are written conduct and you take the flip side of that company that started out as being just as video on that CNN, CNN start out being just video right. It was the cables news network, well with the the onset of of the of the internet are there is much written as they are video on their website now so you’ve got you’ve got to be as a media company you have to be everything are you have to provide folks written content as well as video and I would argue also as well as audio all you have to give your audience what they want in the format that they wanted an you regardless of whether you’re covering audio visual or you’re covering politics you have to give folks what you what they want in the way that they want it. And it took us a long time to realize that it really really dead because I thought blocks right I thought blogs I thought press releases I fought you know written content I’ll let them right on the folks that help me run AV Nation will tell you that but I finally realize that you know what yet not everybody likes listening to me talk right not everybody likes looking and looking and then when watching some people just simply like to read , okay so you gonna go down that road as well. But no I mean I am I am fully ensconced in my business owners share. !I wanna take over the world, I want to be the number one you know audio visual media platform, I want to be the number one audio visual media company out there I would be number one and I I say that very humbly and but very honestly you know I am also a competitor, as well as a broadcaster and so how you do that you listen to your people you listen to you you listen to people who give you feedback , you make adjustments and you say okay to that just don’t work and if it didn’t well then you go back to the drawing board okay what what what’s next.
Pat: Excellent, excellent. Well, you’re doing a great job you’re definitely on the path. You know I’m a big fan. I remember the first time you called me for a programming job, that’s the first time we met.
Tim: Yep.
Pat: And I was like holy crap, it’s Tim, I heard your voice on the other side of a phone and not coming through my car speakers, so yeah there’s a there’s a lot about the power of you know audio and voice and things like that but but the other know die that you were mentioning it sounds a lot like the way people learn too. Like some people learn better with text, others with video and I guess the news is a form of of learning too. The next big change could be right, you’re saying that there’s this move to video. What happens when everybody has a pair of googles?
Tim: No, not everybody will have a pair of googles.
Pat: No, no, because then you’re there, like it doesn’t get more real.
Tim: Well, the reason I say that is because I am, objects are right I am that you know that that lost generation between the damn boomers in the damn memorials and yeah so we’re we’re you know we’re that we are the forgotten generation at and you know there there is you know our our kids are kids may very well have goggles the more likely than not our grandkids or great grand grand kids may very well have the goggles but in the meantime it is the augmented reality of the cell phone right and you know it it’s the reason I say that we we probably don’t have goggles is is does he goes back you go back to 3D. one of the main reasons the three D. never really took off to the people who were in the glasses if they don’t have to wear glasses.
Pat: Sure.
Tim: I’m thirty three years old and I don’t have to wear glasses knock on wood right so do you think Zak like you know my dad was forty when he started wearing his readers and I’m forty three and I still don’t have to so I and I will fight it tooth and nail but I I’m legitimately I’m not I’m not fighting and there’s a there’s a box over there with the small print I can still read it now you know once I get to that point with wearing glasses you know I I don’t know that I’ll feel differently but I would say that if you don’t have to wear glasses you’re probably not really apt to even if it’s going to give you some weird experiences however okay if you are already looking at yourself or let’s be very Frank about it we all are right arm then you you kind of lean towards that and there’s there’s where some of the the I a are going to come from in our years honestly there’s some games out there and there’s some programs out there with that I’ll let you you know see stuff on your desk if you know if you look at it through the through your lands and I’ll give you an augmented reality experience.
Pat: It’s gonna be interesting however plays out. So given your background in the AV press do you have any ideas on for somebody if they’re coming out with a new software based solution or even if it’s hardware based something new and different approach to solving something in AV? Do you have any ideas or advice on how to raise awareness for something like?
Tim: Two things. First of all get yourself a couple integrators to buy into it, because here’s the thing so regardless of what the press release says this is the this is the latest greatest thing in the history the world and it will change how everybody does business in a brief period in the sentence right, I just wrote somebody’s press release with, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have somebody to sell it to and to give the people in the press, a use case because with very few exceptions, the vast majority of audiovisual press have never been in the back of Iraq pulling cable.
Pat: Okay.
Tim: And as much respect as I have for them and I have a lot of respect for for everybody that that I work alongside in the process of the AB industry that is one thing that that they don’t have as they do they’ve never worked anywhere right so that you’re gonna tell them its latest greatest thing I don’t care what the display with its control program over to switcher. They’re gonna look at the specs and their comparison up to an old the on the previous model and they’re gonna say you know this does X. amount more or this does this and the other and number one the kind of had to take your word for it unless you’re there physically going to get a hold a bit and I have the testing equipment to test your hypothesis in in your your marketing speak or they’re gonna talk to any writers that they trust that they’ve developed relationships with. They all do you know they’re out there they all do their job right they did they have any brothers that they trust that they can bring to other they can bring a product to and say what do you think about this and why. And then no cultivate you know I’ll use their their opinions is as part of their of their coverage because these are the folks are using on a daily and weekly basis, so I would advise you to obviously connect with the press but also connect yourself with some integrators and that you can point the press two and say look here is Susie’s AV emporium who’s been using this product for six months and this is what they think.
Pat: All right. Great stuff, thanks for that. Tim, I think we can go on for a long time here, we’re gonna have to do a part two some time
Tim: Ok, whatever. You’re in Germany so you can stay up as late as you will.
Pat: Exactly, I think the kids will be knocking on the door here and running the podcast any minute so…
Tim: It wouldn’t be the first time.
Pat: Exactly thank you so much for being on the show.
Tim: Absolutely.
Even with that shift in my head and and shipped in my philosophy, I sat there for probably, five minutes, yeah I’m wearing and blundering and just putting off quitting pressing record, before it will before we did our first show, once I pressed record and I started, it was down hill, but it was the active physically pressing record and saying what I had been trained to say which is three to one before ever start recording, it was that act that I was I was putting off right, I was it was that for whatever reason that pressing that record button was so difficult and in the moment. You know I had talked around I’d never met him before I had Linda from this who was a long time AV industry journalist, out her husband works for, okay booking audio and then I had my buddy Michael physically next to me right we’re sitting in my college radio station that I top production and at the time and you know I’ve got things kind of Jerry rigged between two different computers and and a recording system and it’s on the other, but it was until I hit record that it actually started doing anything in my head
Pat: Yeah, have you heard about the war of art?
Tim: No.
Pat: He talks about exactly that it calls it the resistance he gives it a name he calls it resistance and he goes into this whole book is explaining how the resistance is out to get you and prevent me from doing everything you’re meant to do it’s it’s a great book, are the war of art tour of art and, it’s a good one to read for ten minutes in the morning to then she did to fix your head right.