fbpx

Episode 10: Frank Pellkofer on Enterprise Sales and Why AV Is The Crown Jewel Of IT

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.

Episode 9: Steve Greenblatt on Consumerism, Playing The Long Game And Why AV Programmers Need To Keep Learning

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.

Episode 8: Micha Van Der Stoop on The Opportunity In AV, Compression vs. Bandwidth and Moving To The Cloud

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.

Episode 7: Erik Calissendorff On Life As A Mega Yacht ETO, And Outdated Control Systems

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.

Episode 6: Wes Hatchett & Nick Melin on Open Source, User Stories and Rising Above The Box

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.

Episode 5: Colin Birney On Managing AV Projects The Google Way, Biohacking and Contract Manufacturing in AV

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.

Episode 4: Jonathan Mangnall on AV as a Service, Unexpected Competition and The Machete Club

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.

 

Episode 3: Jim Spencer On Keeping Up With Technology And 3D Printing In AV

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.

Episode 2: Justin Kennington On Putting Software First

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.

Episode 1: Tim Albright On Recognizing Opportunity, AV as a Service And Being Competitive

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.