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Episode 25: Mike Adams on Standardized User Experience, Professional USB and Meeting Rooms As A Service

Mike Adams got his start as a Sales and Support Consultant for Apple, and has held several marketing and management positions for AV manufacturers like Polycom and integration companies such as Videonations and Vega Global. He’s also served as a startup mentor and is currently EMEA channel manager at Zoom.

Zoom is a software defined video collaboration solution in use by over 1,000,000 companies and millions of users including myself and this podcast. All of our remote interviews are recorded with Zoom and I also use it to host webinars and collaborate with customers and my development team.

Highlights From This Episode

  • Why USB has a place in professional installations
  • Software Defined Systems create recurring revenue for integrators and have a long (30 year!) refresh cycle
  • A few business model approaches to structuring Meeting Rooms As A Service
  • How to use commodity hardware as a closed appliance
  • Why hardware based system cannot compete with software

Mentioned In This Episode

Zoom, Polycom, Videonations, Vega Global, Crestron, Cisco, Simple MDM

Episode 24: Shane Springer On Human Centered Design And The Mythical Zero Punch List Project

Shane Springer of OneWorkplace got his start in theatre lighting and sound before moving on to be an AV technician, programmer and engineer.

He is also a member of the Leadership Committee for the Association for Quality in AudioVisual (AQAV.org), where he has also served on the organizations’ Steering Committee for several years

If that isn’t enough, he’s also designed and implemented the Quality Assurance practices that led to achieving the first in the world AV Provider Excellence Program or APEX Certification from AVIXA.

Highlights From This Episode

  • Using the Raspberry Pi for asset management and active monitoring
  • Correlating data points to find out what is really going on (Power status alone does not indicate usage)
  • The challenge of addressing scalability without losing the human touch.
  • The importance of process in design and delivering quality
  • Getting user feedback before they hate the system
  • The mythical zero punch list project

Mentioned In This Episode

Raspberry Pi, One Workplace, AVIXA, Paul Zeely (Harman), Don Nelson, Steve Greenblatt, AQAV

Episode 23: Carlos Martinez On Deploying Lots Of Zoom Rooms, Being A Good Listener And Getting The Nerds Involved ASAP

Carlos Martinez has held AV and telecommunications positions at some well known companies like, Juniper Networks, Zynga, Tesla and Uber.
He was responsible for expanding the use of software codecs into quite a large operation environment at Uber.

He is currently Co-founder and Director of Business Operations at Lumibild, a custom AV design and integration company in Silicon Valley that specializes in software codecs.

Highlights From This Episode…

  • The cultural impact of AV systems in organizations
  • The unforeseen drawbacks of a successful collaboration system (usage goes up)
  • How to use data to ask for a million bucks
  • The challenges of integrating professional hardware with consumer technologies

Mentioned In This Episode…

Juniper Networks, Black Rock, Zynga, Tesla, Uber, Richard Leong (VMWare), Tandberg, Polycom, Cisco, Craig’s List, Zoom, RevoLabs, Eric Yuan (Zoom)

Episode 22: Dave Hatz on Next Level Service & Creating Revenue With AV Data Analytics

Dave Hatz guest started his career at Disney World Technical Services where he learned about integrating show control with AMX systems. He’s held several other positions in lighting and sound before zeroing in on AV programming and project engineering at Roscor Corporation and currently AVI Systems.

Highlights

  • Integrators need software to provide the next level of service
  • Visibility into the operation and status separate devices, systems and components is the challenge
  • Out of the box management systems from manufacturers
  • Data helps make informed, justified decisions when planning new systems (instead of assumptions-based decisions)
  • Increasing uptime and system usage changes the integrator relationship from a transactional one to that of a trusted advisor
  • Analysing component performance across many installations lets integrators know how reliable the device is

Mentioned In This Episode

Disney World Technical Systems, Roscor Corporation, AVI, AMX, Crestron, Extron

Episode 21: About Me, Steve Greenblatt Asks Patrick Murray About Staying Relevant In A Changing Industry

Patrick Murray started his career as a freelance service technician. Moving up to serve the industry in various roles, as a systems engineer, a control systems programmer and finally pursuing his entrepreneurial spirit by starting an independent programming company.

He has been in business for over thirteen years and he’s grown to become an educator, a software developer, an inventor, an online marketer and a podcaster. His extensive experience in major control system platforms as well as other mainstream programming languages has proved to be valuable in making his mark on the industry.

He has worked in the USA and Europe and is fluent in English and German.

Highlights…

  • The importance of process in AV projects and software development
  • The impact of the iPhone on AV programming
  • What sales has to do with change
  • How finding a niche can help AV professionals stay relevant
  • It’s to just about technology, the space where business meets technology is what determines the future

Mentioned in this episode…

iPhone, Dennis Flood, The Systems Group, Harry Joseph & Associates, AMX, Ryan Howard, Crestron, Global Cache, Colin Birney, David Bianchiardi, Google, TensorFlow, Amazon, Skynet, Dave Silberstein, Control Envy, Mark Day, Infocomm, Alexa, IFTTT

 

Episode 20: David Bianciardi on The Risk Of Innovation, Programmable Content & Virtual Reality

David Bianciardi founded AV&C in 1999 where he leads a team of designers, developers, and engineers that deliver software-driven installations to enhance storytelling, placemaking, connectivity and responsiveness.

Highlights From This Episode

  • Conversational engagement resonates more with guests than Power Point slides and how technology can be used to spark those conversations (and still show slides too).
  • Experience design should consider the experience of system operators as well as guests.
  • Technology is being viewed by architects less as FF&E (furnishings, fixture and equipment) and more as a raw building material.
  • David explains the concept of Evergreen Media and how assets like print, podcasts, video and blog posts can be integrated into a storytelling environment in a dynamic way (instead of a static looping playlist).
  • He also talks about mixing assets with data to create dynamic content that reduces production costs.
  • Adding metadata to content makes it “programmable”.
  • Consider the different budgetary concerns of the stakeholders. An operations manager views content and delivery as a capital expense, while marketing will see it as an operating expense.
  • He talks about some software tools AV&C has developed. Conductor is their event manager and Sensor Fusion uses sensor data to understand how people are using a space. Examples include if people are moving into or out of a space, what direction they are facing and skeletal modelling that can indicate the movement of arms and fingers.
  • An innovation desire means there is a responsibility to manage risk.
  • David explains how AV&C uses gaming engines and virtual reality to create a Digital Twin of a project. This reduces technology risk by creating a virtual environment where the physical space, sensitivity to occupants and generation of media can be previewed. Software can also be tested against the virtual model.

Mentioned In This Episode

Ryan Howard, Bob Greenberg, RGA, Victoria’s Secret, Cadillac, Cadillac House Hudson Street, Gensler, MongoDB, SQL

Episode 19: Jason Jaworski On Vulnerabilities In AV & How To Succeed With Government Projects

Jason Jaworski is a veteran of the US Marine Corp and has over 20 years experience working in Government and Military Systems for multi level classification video conferencing, command, control and operation centers.

He is currently VP of Federal Practice at Unassailable Solutions.

Highlights from this episode

  • Jason pointed out that software defined AV is nothing new and told me about a solution that has been around for twenty years.
  • We discussed designing operation centres for situational awareness and why desktops are just as important as the video wall.
  • He explains how to deal with signal isolation practices that differ between organisations.
  • Any government installation begins with Information Assurance, System Security & Risk Management Frameworks.
  • Why manufacturers need to harden their products, provide a secure configuration implementation guide and have a team member dedicated to security.
  • What integrators need to know before entering the government space. And why he carries a notepad and tape measure everywhere he goes.

Mentioned in this episode

US Marine Corps, Actiview, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, H.264, SDVoE, Think Logical, Crestron, Matrox, Utelogy, Shane Meyers, Frank Pellkoffer

Episode 18: Ryan Howard On Storytelling, Content As Software and Finding Real Value

I first met Ryan Howard while working on a rather complicated AV project at Goldman Sachs in New York City where he was playing the role of superhero programmer for AMX’s Professional Services.

Since then he has held been a design engineer and consultants and most recently circling back to GS as VP technology.
He recently founded Storied Systems that designs systems strategies and environments for storytelling at a human scale.

Episode 17: Mark Day on Decentralised Control and Designing an Object Oriented Life

Mark Day has held many positions in the Las Vegas AV scene including installation, sales and programming. He is currently
President of Idea Box, a design and installation company he founded in 2009.

Episode 16: Dave Silberstein on IoT in AV, Plastic Surgery and Tornado Warnings

Dave Silberstein has a long history working with AV manufacturers like Audio Video Corporation and Crestron Electronics where he worked as a Director for almost 20 years. I remember the first Crestron courses I attended in NJ around the year 2000, he was a big part of getting to know what that company was all about and how their technology worked.

He is currently VP of Technology at Wyrestorm, a manufacturer of pro AV signal distribution and control solutions and I am really excited to speak with someone with such experience in AV manufacturing and hear their view on the changing role of software in AV.