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

this is software defined survival where we explore how software defined systems are changing the business of IT and today software defined survival in once I was able to really right object orient my life as opposed to %HESITATION thinking that was one thing in the world which guy are you right because that’s the box integrators get shot we’re not radio box in this is our solution and here’s our front end in the front and sells it writing about the iPhone that’s why that sells it don’t worry about the black boxes that are going to be on the back and that we’re going to and if you’ve got that you’re for and from that you can easily all of those items are easy and now you can get the client really unique user experience that rivals right brown or the reality is no I’m a programmer and it doesn’t have to be out and she could be anything and you’re right most dealers and most integrated are going to take that step a quick word of warning before we get started if you happen to have an Amazon eco or eco dot nearby now would be a good time to go over there and click that mute button because we do mention her name quite a few times in this episode so %HESITATION Alexa stop listening and if you’d like to integrate Alexis with pretty much anything on your network go on over to catch technologies dot com and have a look at catch connect it’s a little piece of software that can run on your windows machine or a raspberry pi and lets you to send commands to pretty much any device through Alexa we take care of all that backs and back end server business and all you do is configure what commands you want to send to what IP addresses and you can learn more about that at catch technologies dot com all right back to the show hi this is Patrick Murray ends today’s guest has held many positions in the Las Vegas ABC from installations sales and programming and since two thousand nine he’s been president and founder of idea box a TV installation design and installation company in Las Vegas please welcome mark day to the podcast mark welcome thanks that you’re glad to be here is there anything about that introduction that you’d like to comment or expand upon no I think you hit the nail on the head %HESITATION the short version is I kind of came up through the industry doing installations kind of as a trade worker when I was twenty in my early twenties twenty two twenty three twenty four caught the programming but my father was a computer programmer psycho watching you it in the can had a natural knack for it from there I started programming for other audio visual company is slowly started graduating to larger and larger systems more complex systems then into commercial work and then decided that most of the problems with our projects weren’t really on the programming side they were on the design side so I thought I could do it better myself and then started idea oxide like early two thousand ten may two thousand nine stuff %HESITATION does a few things there are like about that %HESITATION that you had that influence from your father to be a programmer amber my father taught us a basic course on the weekends at a university and that was kind of my introduction to programming so there’s that influence they are think that a that comes up a lot that that being introduced a program programming as a young child has influenced a lot of people today ends then you talked about how programming isn’t really the problem its design and that’s really I think an interesting thing to because the programming actually easy if the design is right everything just kind of falls into place and you’re told what to do it’s it’s kind of like following a recipe you know you’re exactly right and %HESITATION it really does all star from the design and I think what happens a lot in our industry %HESITATION kind of a common problem is that everything is advertised as being integrated all right so you can see works with nest how are you works with brand axe whatever it is and you know as well as I do that being integrated ball or you know being marketed that way means different things from different manufacturers right so does that mean play pause and stop work or does that mean that I have full access to all the features of the device for example right next is incredible with you can integrate messed with Amazon Alexa but when you go and set it up when you first have set up in the integration was that you got the integration going the first generation of that didn’t allow you to even change modes via your next so you could say you know I like to Alexa set the temperature in the house to seventy five and you do that but if you had to teller to Alexa go to cool mode she wouldn’t be able to do that right so without knowing that your sales guys are gonna go out ingest oh yes nurses integrated well we can we can go ahead and do that %HESITATION when the actual reality situations that it’s not right because you know the API this necklace features open or what not so you really have to understand your data and that’s that’s kind of one of our core design philosophies understand your data and then were able to get that across the customer a really helps us close the sales to %HESITATION you see the same problem with alarm systems you see that you know coming for residential background so you’re right out we hit the nail on the head the design is really were all of the future problems are going to either be squashed or where they’re going to arise from yeah it’s really a great point the messaging of this kind of consumerism in our professional integration space the messaging can be completely wrong at times and %HESITATION that’s something that it’s always kind of a challenge when you’re sitting with the customer to explain what exactly it is what we’re doing without getting too technical I really hard time doing that do you were do you have any go to techniques or tips on on how to have those conversations with maybe nontechnical people you know idea you know what I always do I use the analogy of a person’s phone so most of our clients were gonna have a high end residential system or they’re gonna have a commercial system most of them are going to have a high end android phone or that happened high and even higher and ice on the right and we’re gonna talk about all the cool technologies that the icon allows them to deal with that order and Hoover or order post mates or or whatever it is managed their contacts but then I dial that conversation back to you wouldn’t it be great if the phone just work every time I used it and then I relate that to the system you can kind of relate that annoyance the great customer gets when they’re trying to make that phone call in for whatever reason their home is where they can’t make a phone call from where their offices where they can’t make a phone call from or this one stretch of road in between is where they can’t make a phone call from if you can relate that your design stops that dead zone from happening and that dead zone translated you stopping that annoyance that really helps me kind of sad explain the system to them and I didn’t get technical there at all right now so I really in the cell phone because people have no problem spending a thousand dollars on their phone %HESITATION did you all these you know great things and and and all of us have that issue all the time where we’re trying to make a phone call and we can’t do that which is the one thing that the phone is supposed to have solve great very similar to the cars combustion engine combustion engine works one hundred percent of the time yet still the phone does not work well I like that a lot can you hear me now right yeah exactly exactly as all marketing campaign on that so I like the way he did that it’s like something people are very familiar with it is a high tech products ends you do look for the annoyance and they’re the thing that still doesn’t work that’s familiar to them that everybody is familiar with basically repeating myself ten times but I like the way you did that so I’m gonna steal that one from you if you don’t mind me you know it really works and and to really help with the sales I always kind of bring our competitor out and explained that there are sales center company most companies out there are very stale centric and we’re much more technology centric so we can go ahead and we will design from the get go out of those flaws we’re gonna design outlines dead zones meanwhile a lot of our competitors are still trying to either fit the latest and greatest marketing idea in or or or you know cheat whatever their dealers for in ways were much more concerned with do these devices have one hundred percent uptime and you these devices half full proof communication yeah arm is a few points there so that kind of reliability is going to translate into a delighted customer in the ads and that’s just good for business ends of course sales are important right you need to make sales to us to have the opportunity to show what you can do but when that messaging like you talked about in the beginning works with nest works with this works with that and now I’ve personally been in some situations where you’re in the trenches trying to make something work and sells guys like we’re having such a hard time I was told this will just work and it doesn’t always go that way so finding that a that common ground between the cells messaging and the technical realities I think is that the challenge of the basic John of what we do you know that’s really our job you’re exactly right I’ve been in so many situations where coming up programming and when I was younger you know I would bang my head against a wall to make peace a integrated with the right and they really weren’t designed to integrate with each other and here I spent twenty thirty forty hours maybe trying to get this item to work when it would have been much more cost effective to just swap out the peace even for the project by the time you pay for my labor you could have swapped out the piece for twenty percent of that cost and we would get off their races and done and even at the end of my forty hours I got the piece to work ninety percent as well as the right piece of work in the first place right yeah in the maybe billing for that time is the solution but it doesn’t always apply well you know that and that’s why I started my own company right so it was that was a real as a real thing that catalyze the starting up my own company was was watching the designs the wrong I got it you know to be honest with you that was one of the major flaws that I noticed most of the companies I work for a grant for west problems started at the design so many issues were created that were a completely unnecessary so talking about that %HESITATION sounds like you had a few projects that didn’t go that great as we all do can you %HESITATION maybe recall a project that really did go well and %HESITATION maybe your most successful projects and what made it rewarding for you you know our most successful I can’t think of a project off the top of my head that I would I would of color most successful project %HESITATION I do know that once we once we refined in this isn’t until year for maybe actually your five or six of idea box that we really refined this process of designing the system one hundred percent correctly you know believe it or not when we started right we started with you know our first job maybe was a two hundred thousand dollars or three hundred thousand dollar job was at full blown automation system and that in a private residence and then every job after that you were kind of running and gunning and learning on the way and you never had time to sit down and really design it out as you said you you decided you wanted to we started up in the first place right and I do you actually remember having conversations with that someone might keep people about really going home what would the perfect system look like for you and I went home and I did the same thing not from a technical integration standpoint but from user experience standpoint so some guys would come back with you know I really love you know the vantage like you or I really love the user experience of a kaleidoscope even though it seems like collide skate should be long gone now that you know apple TV’s are out for five years ago out and we can’t took all of that it was only three or four guys that came back and did that and then we chose out of those %HESITATION issues you can have created a chart a hierarchy of what’s the number one most important thing reliability was the number two most important thing integrated building and then user experience on the device so once you took that user experience out of ice and kind of put that in third place I think it really helps because someone says the user experience of a nest thermostat is just so great so that’s what I want to put on the top of the hierarchy well that’s what your sales people are going to sell and that is a problem yeah I would much rather have an ugly you know Crestron or ugly a tiny well thermostat hidden in a room with a temperature sensor because I know it’s gonna work whenever samba time it’s not going to have API call limits so can we rely on wifi it’s not gonna have all these other issues at the end user is not thinking about so once we develop that hierarchy where the boring stuff was more important than that the kind of sex your stuff our systems started going much mood there are labor our numbers went down and the jobs became more profitable so that’s kind of my take away as far as like the perfect job is concerned you know for me as a matter of a thirty thousand dollar job or three hundred thousand dollar job or million dollar you know job used in the commercial world for that matter what matters to me is this can the product coming in can easily set up in shock and once I did we it can I walk away into me that is the mark of a successful project good stuff is there’s a few things I want to unpack there so I really like the way am I like the conclusion of that brainstorming session %HESITATION and I think that might be different depending on what kind of markets urine so you’re in high end residential so reliability usability are the things that came in at the top and data products user interface may not be so important and that might be different in a different niche so but I like the way that you brain storms and you said only with three or four people that’s all you need is a handful of of smart guys too or or people to arm to come up with these ideas and just really take the time to inspect you know what it is that we’re doing because when you start a company you have all these growth in sales pressures and I like the way you took the time and said let’s hit pause and reinvest in design and how we do things and %HESITATION and do that brainstorming and what you came up with really did %HESITATION reap some benefits for you ends at the end you were talking about how that nest or not not the nest we want to pick on them the end you were saying how %HESITATION you want to be able to walk away from a device so you mentioned like a Honeywell thermostat or Crestron thermostat and then if you compare that to a nest thermostat so nest is more like I O. T. where they’re pushing updates all the time to that thing and you don’t really have too much control over it but those Honeywell Crestron ones you are completely in control over what for as the installer over what firmware is running on that so how do you think %HESITATION IOTV affects the devices you select you know I would see is it’s the future %HESITATION and he really has downstream automation you know this for I would argue that this is the first year now two thousand eighteen where anon one percent let’s say customer can have a really functional smart home full bio T. devices that are very that are extremely reliable they are customizable you can’t do a lot of custom stuff but the work I can integrate my my my nest hello doorbell which my Amazon Alexis show %HESITATION and it’s really delightful for customers my garage door application by alarm application all of those items you know they were actually worked really well lot better and that you know two or three years ago first generation stuff but again it’s the integrated believe that that we run into issues where you might be able and that problems getting solved every day by a lot of these large tech companies %HESITATION so you know we’ll see how it goes and we have no problem integrating they can newest sexiest device but it’s got a it’s got a pass that integrate ability test up front before we were really put it in you now so yeah I think IT really is the future I think a lot of these these large companies are going to solve a lot of problems you downstream customers I think that there’s always going to be a space you now in high end in the luxury market college there’s always a space right because it’s more about the psychology of the luxury market and less about the product itself so close your markets always going to want custom right a curse is a person’s a person’s shoes or shoes or shoes matter who you are but you’re luxury customer’s always gonna want to differentiate themselves because they can psychologically and I think they’re always going to want to do that in the high end state so does that mean going back to high end two channel system does that mean %HESITATION giving customers you know different experiences whether it’s BR what or whatever it is the future %HESITATION I don’t know you know we’ll see what the future brings but there’s always a niche in there there’s always a way they always want to differentiate themselves in some fashion stuff I like that downstream customer I mean you see it all the time right what what what is a smart home and it becomes harder to find with all these affordable and easy to get products that can kind of integrate with each other you can use IFTTT so these boxes even talk to each other and you could do some light automation ends for certain segment that’s it’s enough and it’s probably hard to make a business out of that as an integrator and %HESITATION and then it would make sense if you’re in residential to concentrate on the luxury and service aspects of that what term if you had a crystal ball what do you expect I mean you mentioned the aren’t things like that is there anything in this direction that customers are already asking for do you have any ideas of how to differentiate yourself in this kind of a downstream pressured market and stay relevant in the in the higher end systems that’s a good question I think that on the downstream stuff %HESITATION you know we’re looking at homes here in Las Vegas where let’s say customers got a five hundred thousand six hundred thousand seven hundred thousand dollar home normally that wouldn’t have been an idea box customer %HESITATION normally idea box has some are you’re looking more at a residential customer anyway a one point five two million kind of dollar home to where you could take ten percent let’s say in the value of the home and and put that into an automation system being you know like me eight tracks cure all of your kind of distributed audio distribute video access control on the stuff that that that degenerate falls into that smart home automation bubble gum any you know recently in the last year what’s changed is we are getting phone calls and talking to more customers in that six seven hundred thousand dollar home range five hundred thousand are home range because for forty or fifty grand you can put a pretty slick system together but you still need that integrator if if you try if the customer tries to DIY that they just have a horrible experience you know it can be even gone into the Amazon Alexa act for example in you you you don’t quite know the differences between the different kinds of skills how does that relate to the smart home section of the act how do you know when that the products are talking to one another what can the products do you still don’t really know and in the future I’ll tell you right now is is you know Amazon Alexa sending their installers with your local third party guys your house to help you set all that up so that the I. why I just don’t know if that’s ever really gonna catch on for at least for what we do it well art market it’ll be interesting to see you know we love camp setting those systems out but again you’re right there’s no margin so we’re doing as a company is we’re currently trying to it into %HESITATION creating %HESITATION detachment from the tennis front end user experience that customers happy and the back in black boxes are so whether you’re you’ve been using savant or control for or you know Amazon for that that matter or Crestron you’ve always been tied completely into the ecosystem and what’s interesting is those companies were good right at integrating with everything else that that wasn’t really integrating right have Sir real poor on an hour and I are poor and so they allowed you to control those devices yeah one unified kind of controls center right are in it that’s changing now you know this is the first couple of years where even we have started looking at the collar Crestron devices or or semi devices or or or have you as the individual boxes themselves and less of a complete solution which race how those companies really want to market to dealers that were the complete solution yeah but that’s a question for example you have a crush on line system yep restaurant sees that you have and if you buy all of this perched on this restaurants that you can have this great system and that’s not necessarily the case anymore you can really kind of decouple the user experience from from from the back end product and say you know I really like restaurants and the X. stuff let me put that into a system let me put a bandage lights into a system let me something sheets into a system and if you’ve got a couple of your friends from that you can easily all of those items are are easily integrated ball and now you can give the client a really unique user experience that rivals right brass or or needed back on their iOS device still controls on those kind of back and boxes and now the conversation isn’t all and Chris are my last house and nothing but problems are a little I have submitted my house or this guy wants to sell me control for arm which guy are you right because that’s the box integrators get shoved into which are you some minor greater or are you a question integrate are you an annex whatever and not and now we’re trying to do is %HESITATION we don’t we’re not any of those where idea box in this is our solution and here’s our front end in the front and sells it writing without the iPhone and you’ve got this beautiful you why that sells it don’t worry about the black boxes that are going to be on the back and that we’re going to control excellent mark this is really kind of what this podcast is about so you get me all revved up here I think the answer to that question is is %HESITATION where design company right we’re not dealer X. dealer why we are design company and we deliver a great experience and I think that’s where everybody wants to be and this idea you said several times detached user experience I kind of view it on a more technical level as decentralized control %HESITATION and you’re even decoupling the U. X. from the control part as well right there’s logic that happens in the back ends without user interaction and then there are you know things that happened from the user and all that comes together in the space to create a user experience can you get a little more techie and tell us about how your decoupling everything and not creating that experience for users sure sure so in our more traditional systems we would run let’s take a crash from control process for example we would run all the code on a proprietary processor and usually utilizing proprietary software %HESITATION and it would all kind of live in that box and so if you wanted to have a kind of touch them experience or user phone experience you have to then use and I’m then use Crestron right now because they are great company there just probably the biggest a range of solutions %HESITATION and it’s really been the forefront in this industry for thirty year maybe it’s forty years now I’m not sure anything really make great products and that they gave they gave dealers that work as technical and the ability to just really rather customer sire I would really love their product on and we license for years and but you were kind of honed in on strictly using that part right what you bought in that was it you were utilizing their products for a Crestron system to control a lutra lighting system yes you know ten years ago you were doing it but now they don’t even support the transcribers right now it’s it’s it’s it’s a nightmare and the harder they made that the easier it was to just say forget it let’s use across online system even though maybe the keypads are as beautiful or you know so again going back to our our kind of our our our mantra that we can’t you know I was six years ago we would always choose the integrated Melanie over the user kind of experience or that that the the beauty of the product right so in a company like Christian would make it really easy for us to do that so by decoupling the why you start you will you start taking away you start using less and less code it that’s going to run on the processor so it does make the whole system much more complicated to understand from a technical standpoint you’re gonna need to have guys on staff who are proficient in more than one specific companies %HESITATION in programming environment right so you might need Java script guys or you need you know questions world see sharp guys %HESITATION you need front end you why designers you need HTML five HTML CSS and Java script again guys and you can start taking that code that you were running on the but secretary processor and you can start school leading that up in just taking all of the user interface stuff so all the stuff you normally run on that touch panel or through the question after my phone show and you can run all of that on utilizing native technologies are technologies that exist for web development or iOS development or you know enjoyed developments where you’re gonna find a plethora of people who are proficient as technologies right that’s would be learning computer science any kind of our outside of that scene box right so so what happens is we take a lot of the code that was running on our proprietary stuff and now we’re bringing that code and were running at multiple please write so we’ve got that and in the state server running on a cloud with Amazon web services we have code running they’re gonna database running there we’ve got cold running inside of our you why logic so now that’s the couples and running on the user’s device we’ve got event listeners on the user’s web event listener something’s star updating without refreshing a web page and you’ve still got code running on let’s say across local Crestron or whatever processor speaking to the local video switcher or audio switcher so it is more complicated to understand a decentralized kind of codebase but if you can do it really opens up your %HESITATION your toolbox and allows you to create user experiences now that are relying on strictly what the manufacturer gives you wanted to compare that to to the question experience kind of full circle you know it when you open that Crestron act it almost feels like on your iOS device that question ma’am is it there because it has to be there because people are gonna have no expectation utilize it on their own but everything from the resolution of the apple logo that pops up the load time of the act already seems kind of archaic and turning into her down in our system over to our customer and giving that their iOS experience when your post made after you download it for free and have a much more beautiful quicker loading animation friendly Micromax chance friendly you why is their expectation and and you’re not able to deliver that so if you want to deliver that you have to be couple it in now also gives you access to everything right you can you can speak to nest now you can speak to %HESITATION just a bunch of third party I O. T. devices because a lot of them have very robust eighty eyes you can integrate with Amazon Alexa directly and you’re not relying on that that can be integration company software as you know when you’re running C. sharpen your writing code in in in C. sharp do you really need stuff with %HESITATION with that with Russia products you’re running visual studio two thousand and eight you know I just tried to upgrade that the other day and Microsoft sunset it in April of this year yeah so just think about that for a moment right the latest technology I can utilize on that with arguably the best integration platform company out there is running on two thousand eight software so it really hamstrings you it really it really ties you can tie you up in and there’s always that played between the dealer manufacturer in and you want to be beholden to as few people as possible you wanna wanna run your own business right you don’t wanna you are to rely on a certain products so much that you you are in control yeah he really %HESITATION summed it all up kind of where the industry is that as far as I’m concerned and %HESITATION that last point was flexibility and agility you really want to be able to use the technologies that makes the most sense for you and it’s like you’re saying idea box is a design focused company and to create that experienced people are used to using more while apps store %HESITATION progressive weather apps on a on a web page and responsive design there just a customs to these very modern interfaces and experiences and to really deliver that you need to make a very specific thing you need to kind of have control over the entire experience and when using something third party that may not always be the case but in the beginning you did mention I mean how our industry is kind of changing and %HESITATION it’s always that integration versus one solution you know in these companies like restaurant a name extorted all they made was touch panels and processors ends up kind of converters so you can turn things on and off that’s where we came from so they did integrate with everything and now the movie is towards being that everything delivering that everything and even closing think something’s off like you mentioned that we tried integration which %HESITATION yet because the thought of a interest because it it kind of goes against that old paradigm of we integrate with everything one interesting point is that you mentions that a company like Crestron provided the tools where maybe not so technical people could create a really amazing experience and I think that’s important to note but at some point that ends at some point if you want to get really deep into a design and have full control over the experience they’re all our there’s a whole world of software out there there is a whole tribe of software developers are just gonna freelancer dot com and you’ll find all the developers you need and %HESITATION I don’t think there are many companies doing what you’re doing that have that kind of attitude but I think it’s important if you want to differentiate yourself like we were talking about before in this changing market where everything’s getting commoditized all we really have left is an experience to deliver so taking all that minds are you working on anything different working on anything in the future that you’d care to share with us you know we are glad you asked we have a %HESITATION you know it’s funny how your experiences in life %HESITATION can everything builds on everything else opportunities come up people ask you how do you do that you know we never had that idea or or or you see people and you wonder how they had a certain idea and I think the trick really is sure an express something can you really understand something then you can see the problems in what you know and cheer person it’s not the field they’re not even going to know to look for the problem the opportunity is not going to arise because they don’t even realize that it’s a problem right so on one hand I think to myself you know should started this or that or or or worked on something earlier on the other hand I didn’t I wasn’t equipped with the knowledge and and so by eight by really decoupling of technology like we were talking about earlier and in movies teaching myself other technologies write a Java script get example %HESITATION getting in touch with the community of the designers right we would always designs that Faneuil and try to mimic whatever maybe apple is doing or whatever Microsoft is doing more or whomever inch in the version we always turned out was a version that was a couple shades worse ray a couple levels worse than now then we guys are doing natively which makes sense right because work we’re working with limited tools and that we don’t know what we don’t know so really the idea is expanding your knowledge and so once we we really sat down me and and a couple of my guys and and started learning some new technologies these doors started opening you started looking at at issues a different way and and some problems in a different fashion and then a new opportunities arise right so you realize that once you become an expert lets it out a mission you learn the systems you find her programs just and you really get yourself through that leads right like I’m an automation right and the reality is no I’m a programmer and that he doesn’t have to be out of me she could be anything and you’re right most dealers and most integrated are going to take that step because very technical staff it’s very hard to teach it to get off your your **** and unions to generally be be interested in doing it what started kind of are out with some of the new stuff we’re working on is is learning that %HESITATION learning new technologies and then realizing wants to learn the new technologies we realized album really candy couple this experience and now the lights third party where are their pain points in the industry so as you mentioned yeah I’m from Las Vegas and the main driver of our industry here is the hospitality industry and it used to be that you walk into a hotel room and they’ll tell room right was like the height of technology height of technology right order movie is I’m talking probably likely each year early nineties your movies you can order room service like it was amazing that you just pick up on anything rights %HESITATION now when you walk into a hotel room of Sally could be the most beautiful I’ll tell you know that the aria or lies year or mean hotel in the technology is archaic what do you mean I can’t stream from my device and watch the newest episode of game of thrones on my on my TV we need a change ordered my food and stuff that take up the phone and talk to you concierge you know as much as I hate the way can’t technology is doing to our society at a social level and I think there’s going to be a kind of a a push against that hopefully %HESITATION it really is creating a generation of people who have a hard time interacting with other people in the want to be able to have the interaction technology and if I go to a hotel the point is to relieve the client of their money as easily as possible the least amount of barriers right that’s what Amazon does one click purchasing I can’t do that in a hotel two thousand eighteen so that’s kind of a problem that that we noticed and we set about building some software to solve that problem and that’s that’s one of our new ventures would work on for two or three months and there’s a lot of again I’m able to were able to utilize our what work experts at right were all our our mid thirties late thirties forties where we expect that were experts at integration that’s worked with that what is a hotel it’s a bunch of systems that need integrated whether that’s back of house with a that’s the property management system %HESITATION housekeeping room service ballet %HESITATION shows I mean there’s just so much stuff they need integrated right players cards customer management and instead of looking at integrating looking at our us as being only able to integrate with audio switchers video switchers what is the difference between switching on audio switching an input on a video switcher from you know input two output for what’s different then requesting from a property management system user name length of stay time %HESITATION %HESITATION phone number there there is no difference it’s all in integrating its all asking a question getting a response storing data in doing something with it and once I was able to really right object orient my life as opposed to I’m thinking I was pigeonholed one thing the world kind of open up and now all of a sudden we second we might deal to create solutions for a mere yeah problems and in our Los Vegas hospitality seem to be kind of a natural one to tackle we didn’t CO a real winner in that space that was doing a very good job arm I know there are there are there are companies that are are are doing can different versions and you think we think we have a solution that is is is really is really unique and and the bills on the expertise we saw the problem and now were were we’re trying to solve it and who knows you know some of that might be integrating with black boxes from third party manufactured for sure it’s going to be ones were familiar with in ones were not so familiar with at the scene of the time at the same time learning these two technologies gave us the confidence to do that if we would have never learned they’ve never had the confidence we had never seen the problem so anyway so that’s one of the that’s what we will see a lot of time on it right now I love that attitude mark %HESITATION if it’s really true once you get to a certain skill level once you start brainstorming and looking at things a little different way you realize that everything with an API is integrate a ball and you become a kid in the candy store and just see opportunities anywhere I like the way you’re focusing on one space that hospitality industry in Las Vegas and I’ve seen some of those touch panels you showed me some of them it’s definitely right for destruction so I wish you all the best with that and I think we should follow up maybe in a year or so and see how things worked out and if anybody would like to get in touch with you how they go about doing that try the best way is you can email me at mark at idea box dot C. O. ID HBO XRCO or mark axle host came O. H. O. S. U. dot I. L. and it’s more with the K. right got it all right thanks a lot for being on the show mark yeah no problem a strategy if you or anyone on your staff ever considered themselves just in AV programmer join the club that’s how I used to feel I was just an AMX programmer or just Crestron program or whatever language of your choice is whatever it may be there’s generally this feeling in AV that we’re not capable of using modern programming languages and it simply isn’t true sure there’s a learning curve but once you get through it all other languages become easier to learn and it just expands the amount of options you have when designing a system it’s not an either or decision you don’t say I won’t be using these manufacture tools anymore it’s just you have a broader palate to choose from ends here’s what market day founder of idea box had to say about his experience with the online courses at learn eighty programming dot com you know Patrick it’s funny how the smallest things can sometimes be the star of really big ideas %HESITATION before I took the learn ATV programming dot com courses I was in that Terry I’m only a control system programmer kind of mindset ray %HESITATION when it came to new technologies or current technologies like Java script error or things like that for some reason I thought that was different from what I’m doing and what taking your courses flipped for me was not so much what I learned technically taking the courses it was the mindset of well wait a second I’m already doing ninety nine percent of what some of these most of modern programmers are dealing I just have to learn %HESITATION you know the other one percent and that’s really what I did so it’s really been kind of a big change after taking the course %HESITATION and I would really recommend this course to any integrator not only will obviously help their skill set but more importantly it might change their whole mindset %HESITATION which is more important and and and really show them new opportunities open the door so they kind of see problems through a different lens I gotta tell you one of the biggest changes for me was as soon as I become myself HTML CSS javascript and solve the you guys that I can make with those technologies I just couldn’t sell a %HESITATION Crestron touch him again mark is a great example of somebody who takes new information and really applies it I know that mark still sells a lot of Crestron equipment but for him for his company for his customers for his business he needed a better you why he needed another option for user interface and modern programming allowed him to do that so the question is how can you use modern programming to improve your business please go to learn a few programming dot com and wherever you see a sign up button go ahead and sign up and you’ll get some free information to get a feel of my learning style and what kind of information is available and of course it would be an honor to have you in role in one of our courses and help you upgrade your skills and take this industry to the next level thanks for listening software defined survival I hope you found it useful and maybe it inspires you to try out something new this week if you have any questions does software defined survival dot com and click the appropriate I’d love to answer questions on the air and if you’d like to help spread the word please subscribe comment and share it with your