It's Not Just for Breakfast Anymore!

Fiber Optics and the coming revolution in Live Events signal distribution.

 

When
you mention the word fiber to most event staging folks it is likely that the
reaction will be a commiserating hand on the shoulder and a comment that their
doctor said the same thing to them followed by an invitation to compare
medications prescribed as well.  
In truth for most of us employed in the collection
of industries I like to call the Live Life any practical experience with fiber
optics is usually limited to having one of those color changing tubes shaped
like a Christmas tree.  Oooooh pretty! There is a good reason the industry
has paid very little mind to the coming revolution in topology- we need to be
confident in the pathways and conduit which we send video and audio down.
 We cannot ask of a do-over when things go amiss, its live People!

Because
of the nature of these live events the staging industry is resistant to and
even 
suspicious of changes to the main backbones infrastructure.  One only
has to take a look at how long it took DMX to truly take hold and the rather
limp implementation of the ACN protocol, which has many called for applications
and improvements yet still is relatively unknown.  One only has to look at
how few shops implement Ethernet control on their devices to understand the
situation. Don’t get me started in how bumpy the early days of wireless mics
were!  Beyond the confidence factor and mantra that you are only as good
as your last show - heck these days you are only as good as your last CUE!-
there is often a good deal of information and skills ramp up required.

I spent
ten years away from the event staging world earning my living in the cushy
upholstered rooms of an AV manufacturer- helping folks get their residential
and corporate boardrooms systems designed and tech supported.  These types
of projects always involved some cutting edge product, technique or interface
but alas, fiber was almost never used - unless it was as a run to the pool
house from the main living area to prevent damage from a lighting strike. When
I reentered the world of live events the first few months were like looking at
the fishbowl from within. So much had remained the same with the switchers,   miles and miles of Copper and DVI connectors!  A DVI connector would have
caused a near riot if spotted being installed to a home or boardroom - how
quaint! But the changes were almost too daunting to consider with full blown
media servers which have built in tools for projection geometry/ image masking,
HD-SD everywhere and Fiber by the reel stacked on tall shelving units with bins
of SC and LC connectors.  I would be lying if I did not feel just a bit
intimidated by it. 

Fiber
is just too much to learn and the terminations are so finicky as to require
special epoxies and clean suits in special rooms like those you see in Intel
commercials, certainly not a field termination system! I mean, really the price
alone is prohibitive enough to restrict its use to esoteric shows or the ‘Big
Boys’ only.  Well Buck-O’ I am here to tell you in the simple words of
Col. Sherman T. Potter - Horse Hockey! Well, mostly. The Truth is that Fiber is
not nearly as delicate anymore and new termination tools make the job easily
mastered by anyone who has terminated BNC connections.  Tactical fiber and
connectors make the topology as rugged if not more than its copper compatriots
- Heck the military uses this stuff in the field nowadays. The issue of cost is
where the ‘Well, mostly” part comes in but it might not be on the scales of differential
you have pictured in your head.



On
Episode Seven of AVNation.TV’s Live Life Podcast we tackle this emerging and
growing use of Fiber on Live Shows.  We dig deep into the topic with
experts Barry Grossman of WorldStage Inc and Bill Brady of Alford Media. We
learn the basics of fiber, pitfalls to avoid and the practical knowledge to begin
your conversion from copper. Fiber has solutions for event companies of all sizes
and we ask- when will your shop be next? Join us for an entertaining and
informative hour of all things fiber - I promise it will wake you up!

I’m a 3D Believer

Thoughts on the DIY revolution of 3D printing and AV Nations DIY show about this.

For those of you who have heard my commentary (okay, lets be honest here - Rants) on AV Week against 3D Television the title of this post may have given you pause. Rest assured my  assessment  of 3D video as a less than worthless are still in tact.  What I am becoming a full frenzied devotee of is the world of object printing .

Photo Courtesy of Bennett Harris/ HarrisEducational

If you are unsure of what 3D and object printing have to do with one another you are missing a movement that very well may change how we do nearly everything. What I have just written is a bold statement and one fraught with the dangers of over extended presumptions ala Steve Jobs euphoric babblings prior to the unveiling of the Segway.  Even so it can be said with fair confidence that 3D object printers will change how my kids interact with products. It may be that someday soon it will seem as imperative to business success to have a 3D printer version of an offering as it is to have a social media outlet today

There are a number of methods but essentially the printers produce an object by progressively adding substrate in a precise manner to create the item.  Depending on the process and materials used this could take hours or days and vary in quality but the end result is an actual item (key fob, drawer handle, gear or anything really).  This is the ultimate cyber-geek dream - coding to generate a physical item. It is all the code with the satisfaction of ‘hand crafting’. (Although in my experience most heavy users of 3D printers are heavy Techshop people).

To say that is is the coolest thing since Shopbot would be an understatement, if only slightly. The design to concept timeline can be cut down dramatically and can be done from the comfort of ones own bedroom - if so desired. Forget made in America, made in China - this is made in your home. People are making full scale models with working parts, scale models for Architecture and image mapping pre-production as well as one-of-a-kind customized design hardware.   

Photo Courtesy of Bennett Harris/ HarrisEducational

Beyond the gee-whiz factor of the above this process has huge potential and my futurist self sees an end to manufacturing as we know it.  It will be disruptive like nothing else we can image, it may cause revolutions and riots worldwide, (yeah, really deep reality distortion field event horizon now), economies will change.  

Right now the technology is still  nascent but I see a none too distant time (25 years?!) where my kids will be “downloading” the things they want to buy rather than going to a store (so horse and carriage!) or waiting for a delivery to arrive. With the advance in circuit boards that can be etched with the components as part of the board rather than added later and soldered - almost any device can be printed in parts then assembled.  Granted this excludes large ticket items like cars and appliances but in the increasingly miniaturized electronics world I would be surprised if someone has not already done this in a proof of concept.   

Are you ready to take control ? It is (almost) yours for the making.
Manufacturers and retailers  will not take this lying down of course, not to mention the angst it will cause the labor force who rely on the jobs these sectors provide, and a serious fight is ahead. I fear that we will see attempts to put DRM restrictions on the proliferation of object codes and organizations like the Electronic Freedom Foundation (EFF) sprout up to defend those who  pioneer the delivery and ‘receipt’ of such devices. It would be wise to review how the music industry did (good grief, still does) resist online proliferation and how it is an unstoppable channel when people decide just how they want products delivered. heck, look how hard publishers fought Amazon until it was clear that their clients demanded to get all titles via the online clearing house.  

 

This grand future and nail biting  is a bit off  into the future (but not by much!) and right now the projects are fun and provide a way to keep ‘the little grey cells active’ as Hercule Poirot would say. On Episode 11  of the DIY Show with great guests Robert Gusek, Michael Kohler, Anthony Zoit and Jonathan danforth  we explore 3D printing, the tools, the techniques, how to get started,  what can and cannot be done and where it is all going.   

I invite you to take a listen then tell us about your object printing experience, desires, concerns or straight out questions.

Magical Thinking

Is a business model outside of the apple eco-system (or similar) simply wishful thinking or is there something to the reality distortion field becoming the norm? 

My oldest son lost a tooth yesterday and called me with all the eagerness that a seven year old could muster about the event.  Rooster, my name for him - no not his given name, was excited as this is a milestone, to him, toward teenage hood that others in his class were experiencing  with more regularity.  He was revved up like a rockabilly front-man in new town about getting a golden dollar from the tooth fairy.  Gonzo, my youngest at five, expressed concern about the fact that an unknown and nocturnal creature would be in their shared room while he was asleep and unaware.

“How does the tooth fairy get into the house and put the money under the pillow” - Gonzo asked.

“Magic silly”  answered Rooster.

“But magic isn’t real” retorted Gonzo

“If magic is not real then the tooth fairy can’t be real, mommy?... is the Easter bunny magical?” asked Gonzo.

 

 Photo Credit David Sifry via EveryStockPhoto   

Now here is the quandary. While some would simply gloss over the question with a ‘yes dear’ they use good magic’; I have never been fond of what I call magical thinking, of retelling the tales and lying to my kids about what I know is a fallacy that will either lend them to believe anything can be true or reject everything. To be honest, my sons would not allow such a glib off putting.   Once my oldest came into an understanding of Christmas I wanted to de-stress telling him that Santa Claus was the deliverer of gifts, as you can expect I lost this ‘discussion’ with my wife as soon as she stated “don’t you dare”.  If you are married you understand.  I realize that this makes me sound like the kind of person who reads Charles Bukowski while Joy Division plays in the background but  the reality is  quite kinder than that. Still I do refer to ‘the Santa Character’ when I speak of him, but I do not overtly correct my kids.  So it came as no surprise that my youngest would try to rationalize his fear by deconstructing what was causing him concern and that my oldest would try to accept it, despite himself, because there was the immediacy of money to be had if it were true.    

This episode started me thinking.  Is the AV industry  facing a challenge to its fundamental way of creating installations and some of us are ignoring the fact that the bubble has burst because we still see money in the myth? We know the playing field is changing but by how much and are we truly on the cusp of the great change? Apple has taken the ecosystem model and made it both box store consumer friendly and powerful enough to satisfy all but the most finicky media-philes.  Are we currently only mopping up the last of the ‘legacy’ installs while deluding ourselves that the tooth fairy will provide?

It has been suggested that we are currently in a hybrid moment which will shake out the industry into a more streamlined and unified methodology - just look at how every manufacturer MUST have an iPad app or be relegated to the out-lands.  If we are indeed seeing this happen I feel that historians will note it as the Brundlefly period. Change is afoot but a hardwired and dedicated  (and yes , proprietary) system has a place in the market, a shrinking market to be sure but one whose rock bottom is not zero.  There is value in the model, with some modifications. Installations who need guaranteed reliability, durability and consistent operation require the standard model to insure it will not be filled with service calls and un-billable revisions.

Joseph Campbell - the great writer on myth and meaning-  made a strong argument that myth may have been elbowed out of our day to day conscience by science but its value is strongest when we are facing the ultimate mysteries to stir a sense of awe, humility and respect for what we do not yet know.

The morning after the great tooth fairy debate,  I  had the following conversation with my boys while driving to school:

Gonzo - “Dadu,is magic real? “
Me- “ No,not the way you are asking”
Rooster-” Does that mean the tooth fairy is not real?”
Me - “What do you think?”
Gonzo - “Will I get a dollar when I lose a tooth”
Me - “Yes”
Rooster- “I’m not sure I want to know the answer today”



Update: November 28th. 

Mark Coxon has a great retort to my post on his fantastic blog AV Phenom-  Read it here

Pump Up the Community

We talk a good deal about community these days, in building connections, social graphs and connecting via social media. The Politicos talk about rebuilding the economy by communities coming together but the actuality is a rare sight indeed.

One of the places that actual communities come together is via a remarkable radio station – WLNG of Sag Harbor Long Island. The place is almost an anachronism in the radio
business at 5,300 watts the station should only be a footnote yet its reach and influence is that of stations with 10 times the power. The Station is a marvel that honors the years of relentless promotion and guidance by the remarkable Paul Sidney. When Mr. Sidney died it brought forth an epiphany on just how much the station has meant to me and the town I grew up in – you can see my ‘eulogy’ here.

Stations like the Uber local WLNG have been the subject of ridicule and praise since their inception and, to be honest, the station has been worthy of both. It is one part the radio show in ‘One Crazy Summer’ and one Part “Pump Up The Volume’ providing oddball shows like Swap and Shop while catering to the tourists expectations of a “Beach Community” broadcaster. Which makes the actions of the WLNG staff during hurricane Sandy all the more remarkable – or should I say commendable for I could not imagine them NOT being so dedicated.

The Stations broadcast facilities are not in some high-rise building or even in the main town but sits precariously on the edge of a bay. The location is part of the charm but it h
as its dangers as Sandy’s fury demonstrated. During the height of the storm the station kept broadcasting even as the water began to creep steadily toward the building eventually breaching the floor and walls. Still the staff kept broadcasting. Doning fisherman’s boots (which hopefully prevented them from grounding) they continued even as the water rose to ankle high depth. Only when it became evident that things were about to get a lot worse did the staff (I believe) reluctantly leave their posts and suspended their outreach. As soon as the waters began to hint at receding , WLNG was back on air.
What is even more remarkable is that this is in line with a long-standing tradition at the station – to ride out the storms and provide a comforting and familiar voice in times of natural disaster. It is remarkable not for WLNG as their entire existence has been to serve the community, to bring it together.

Many are already mourning the death of radio but long after the Clear Channel cookie cutter stations have long been forgotten WLNG will still be transmitting and serving with a purpose.
Are you as dedicated to your clientele?

This post was orignally published on AV.Shout.com 

From Grass to Gauss

I orginally posted this as a comment on Lee Distad's Blog about how some of our best and most endeared equipment were obtained for free or little more.  You can see his original post here. 

 I have a few items which I obtained for little or nothing by being the one who took up the call to “Clean the #$%* inventory closet !” - it is one of the benefits and occupational hazards of the industry.

Still my most precious (sooo precious ) find was the Teac R1000 reel to reel tape deck. I worked as a groundskeeper and all around assistant fix it guy at a condominium complex in Southampton Long Island. I was only fifteen at the time and almost rejected it when the elderly gentleman offered it to me. The unit came with spare reels, classical music tapes and the amazingly five blank tapes (never used!). This was the beginning of my entry into AV of any sort. It took me hours to figure out to connect to my Realistic record player and amp. It took another few days for me to become familiar with all the features and how to record from a source.

None of the above would have set me on my path to a career in AV - it spurred an interest in better audio gear for sure but it took something more to grow an ember into a fire. If you are old enough you will recall that there was a time when people thought that backward masking was a subliminal tool that wrecked havoc on young minds, especially those who listened to the heavy metal genre.

AnYwAy! I wanted to figure out just what Prince was saying at the end of a song on the Purple Rain album -(yeah, I know Prince is not heavy metal and no, I cannot recall which song (Darling Nicki maybe?) ) - and I had a tool to do it. I had seen a segment on the local news about backward masking and the potential dangers (it must have been sweeps week) but I could not remember exactly what they did to make the words evident. I knew it had something to do with reversing the tape but the concept was new to me and took some conceptual thinking I had not used prior. When I finally got it right I was overjoyed, ecstatic actually. I wanted to know more and Radio Shack became a frequent stop for me, which lead to a tech school, college and a career.

What was the message from Prince? “Drink your Olvatin..” no, no that is the wrong secret message. Actually it was some prophecy nonsense that mixed the heeled one’s amorous topics and revelations. Come to think if it - it was about Ovaltine ....

 

The Last Temptation of Distractions

I wrote the following as a response to a friends article in Residental Systems magzine blog.  The article entitled "Sandy the AV Disaster"  asked , after several days of no power,  "How did people survive before technology?!"  The below is my extended answer. I encourage you to read the post here. 

 

It is an interesting question you, Unknowingly(?), ask Anthony.  Just how reliant are we on a constant stream of distractions.  If you ask a recent business study- much too much. 

Setting aside the dystopian fear that we will soon leave no written evidence  of post 2k civilization for future archeologist to study; one has to ask-just how meth-headed have we become?  

The first step, so it is said, begins with acceptance.  Alright then - We are Junkies.  This being said we have two questions.  1. What do we do to minimize the uncontrolled craving? 2. What can we do to reduce the effect of another massive outage.  While I am really concerning myself with item one it will have a lot to say about item 2.

In all honesty my family was pretty darn lucky and came out mostly  unscathed  from Sandy. We were more than prepared for the worst though - both in finding a place to stay and to entertain/ inform ourselves.  As an tech aficionado and worse, as an industry insider I have been morbidly fascinated with just how folks cope when technology goes awry or away.  To be clear, I LOVE my tech - so much so that I my social profiles include the description of ‘...one part technorotic.  Yeah, I feel it right there baby.  Yet, to be completely honest I actually consume  very little media.  I know, I know, this is akin to a vegan cooking at the meat station of a restaurant so a little background may be necessary.

In my late twenties (all too long ago) I had just been divorced from by my first wife and had begun to live truly on my own for the very first time - meaning  no roommates or “long term” guests. I was an odd environment for me for I went from my Mothers home to dorm mates to roommates to my wife’s apartment.  I left for my new place carrying only my clothes, a broken down radio and my CD’s setting up shop in an 800 sq foot studio facing out onto 90th street and the Yorkville towers (or Jump Central as we came to call them - but that is another tale). While temptations were plentiful with offers from friends of second hand loaners  and even my parents offering to purchase me a then new to market flat panel, I decided to try living without a television.  My decision was not a holier-than-thou crusade from the screeds of the intelligista but one based on a need to keep myself from becoming a recluse and wallowing in my pain.

The five years  without this magic box of distractions being at my beck and call was illuminating. I wish that I could say that this made me more productive but that simply is not true.  What I did do was get out a lot more,(sometimes too much and too often at the neighborhood bar), and as I was suddenly on the prowl for a mate (however temporary) I did find ways to occupy my time.  This was not to say I completely disconnected myself, heck no.  That time in the bars? - often it was to watch a game or special event. In fact it lead to meeting my true love -(it is a long story, best told over a good number of drinks, but the one minute version is: boy goes to bar a few blocks away from normal to be ‘alone’ and watch the game, girl is there to meet blind date, girl mistakes boy for date, boy responds ‘I am not him but I really wish I was’ - Love and marriage, horse and carriage... you get the rest). Regardless, with no cable tv I was also without any form of broadband, or as we called it back then -’Always On’, internet.   

The solution to getting my media was in the preparation.  Not wanting to waste my time accepting anything that came via the glowing phosphor screen I researched what was to be on of interest and planned accordingly.  I downloaded content, movies, blog text and articles via my works super T1 connection and set aside specific time to gorge myself.  

The simple statement is that since I no longer had the media available to me as a distraction it eventually became less important. Of interest to be sure, but far less of my life than before. So to answer your question of “ How did people survive before” (all this) “technology?!" It was quite simple, we planned ahead and we were, quite frankly, a bit more finicky about it.

I try to live by Thoreau's words of “...all things in moderation and excess in none”, it keeps me sane in a paradigm shifting world.

A Community By Any Other Hashtag

Originally posted on AV Shout  http://avshout.com/tucker-redband-1/

A Community By Any Other Hashtag

What makes a community?

“What’s in a name that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet”
Romeo and Juliet – The Bard

If you recall your Shakespeare the quote above is spoken by Juliet upon finding that her true love is from the Montague’s, the one family she as a Capulet  is sworn to destroy. The full scene is a meditation on the uselessness of judging by labels – love is where you find it.

Is our community by any other name the same but different?  In the past few days there has been a call to move a good deal of industry-centric Twitter posts from the grouping #avtweeps to #proav by a few industry publications.  I found this intriguing, the call for an additional industry hashtag is a good sign of growing involvement on the social platform.  What piqued my interest more was the request to use the new #ProAV in  place of and excluding the existing #avtweeps.  I was further moved into beard stroking ponderance when several folks Direct Messaged me on Twitter curious if I knew who the catalysts were and why they seemed to be so disparaging of the group.

What is in a name?
The group AVTweeps, a derivation of the slang Peeps for friends and a playful nod to the twitter lingo of Tweet for a message, was established by AV integrators looking for a way to group their conversations in and about the industry in one common place about four years ago. It has grown to be the single largest collective of AV related folks on Twitter.  The group did debate other hastag names such as #hometheater, #avpros  #AVcontrol and the like but it was decided that the names were too limiting and did not express the wide scope of work we do.  We also investigated using #AV and #AVPro but these were already in use by the Adult Video folks- otherwise known as the *Porn* industry.   While we know full well that many of the systems we install are used for viewing such or are installed in the producers of such material -the association seemed a bit too much by half.

I like the #ProAV hastag but like stated above I have avoided it as it seemed a bit too exclusive. In way of demonstrating what I mean by this let me describe how I define Pro AV.  I have been lucky enough to have had careers in Recording Engineering, (back when it was a studio not a high end ‘project studio’), Broadcast and Live Event Staging.  Nearly all of these folks, from the camera operators, lighting techs/ designers, FOH audio and associated crew would not view what integrators install as Pro gear or a Pro Audio industry.  No question integrators are considered professionals in a related Audio Visual industry but the definition of pro is of a different order.  I have -to be clear- met few, if any really, Pro AV folks who disparage the integrator market beyond the use of the moniker.

Exclusivity
Being Exclusive does has its benefits in some cases -I agree. When one wants to reach a narrow audience on specific topics like #tonys or #altmusic avoiding a broader audience provides a very focused conversation.  Speaking of the Alt designator, some you older set reading this will recall that early Usnet Newsgroups used the alt prefix to narrow down topic specificity. Usnets were a pre World Wide Web internet discussion system and were the precursor to chat boards and forums. The Alt(dot) hierarchy though less organized was helpful as the main groups could become unwieldy when searching for say, a specific play. Rather than go to the humanities.plays one could subscribe to the Alt.Plays.shakespeare. Very handy indeed. Today this methodology is still very useful for Brands looking to reach potential clients; rather than cast a wide net they use carefully selected keywords to show up in searches and twitter communities.

This is what I thought was going on with the desire to separate from the larger group of AV professionals into one that focused on the Live Event and Broadcast industry.   Yet, this does not seem to be the case.  In fact many of the leading posts are from publications which are not technically in the Pro AV market (at least by the definition I gave previously).

So I ask here
I posed this question to the folks who voiced the desire to separate into their own state why such a move would be warranted.  Was it that the uninitiated had a hard time finding the group? A single day following a manufacturer would  have exposed them to the tag.

Was saving three letters really that urgent a need?

I am sure there is a good answer and being a devotee of all things AV and Social I was curious why the sociological rift.   As you are reading this here I am sure you know the response I received – Crickets.

So I ask here:  Why the desire to create a chasm?  Is there an untoward association #avtweeps has or is it a desire to distinguish a presence in a different space.

All the above are legitimate reasons and I curry no favor other than I have ‘lived’ in the tweeps column on my tweetdeck since its inception.  Heck I think the #proav hastag has some great potential, but I do not go rushing toward new shiny baubles just because they are reflecting the sunlight particularly nicely at a specific hour.  If I did I would be living in a Park Avenue apartment because of the way the light looks on Manhattanhenge, (still a valid reason to do so, as long as one is aware of what the other 362 days look like).

Why this post is here
This is why I have posted this on Chris Neto’s AV Shout platform, to speak from a neutral territory.  Here no one need be concerned about driving traffic to a ‘competitors’ site by commenting.

So tell me I am screwy for laboring over this, Tell my to *expletive deleted* off and mind my own business but tell me how a name does not smell as sweet.

- Tucker