Social Circle Pictograph

Some Messing around with ways to promote Social community building. 

 

Version One Below: 

 

 

 

Infocomm 12 - Rock Soup

Pardon the Bold format here folks... The post was written in MS Word when I did not have access to my online tools *sigh* .  For some reason the MS formatting is being read as bold and is STICKY as hell. 

Infocomm has wrapped up and if my facebook feed is to be believed even the largest booths have been packed away in crates and are well on the way home. The pictures of tired but obviously satisfied faces with a drink in hand tell you all you need to know.  This show went without a hitch and 34,268 -up 4%!-  found good food, lodging and business deals.

Now, thousands of products were exhibited on the show floor - .  You can find reports on nearly every one in nauseating detail from great industry news outlets like System Contractor, PLSN and many, many others.  rAVe Pubs also did a fine job video documenting nearly every booth on the floor and have them posted in a handy, searchable site.  

To save you time I am going to boil down the main elements for you in seven points

What was Infocomm 2012 all about?  

1). Simplification

 You have heard of multiplication or perhaps even anticipation (it’s making me waa -a-a-it) but Infocomm this year was all about making things “Simpler”, “Easy”, “little ramp up time to operation” and “With in House staff in mind”. These common catch phrases spun as revelatory exclamations seem to show that manufacturers and developers finally understand that interface matters.

There is a darker side to all this happy ‘we get you’ preoccupation with making set up, controls and configuration as easy as a three fingered salute.  I have to ask at what the root catalyst for this sudden interest in implementing the Wizards cry to Dorothy “Pay no attention to that man behind the screen!”.  Are we giving up on the need for basic understanding of the physics and simple mechanics because they are no longer needed for standard operation or because we can no longer find the  personnel  who can or are willing to dig deep?

Certainly the industry is ch-ch- changing but is it for the right reason?  We have a serious youth deficit in this industry, doubly so for the Event Staging world, is this the way to get them into the fold, by bypassing all the hard knowledge stuff ?

2. iPad

Apps  are still everywhere but no one is hysterically shouting about them from booth rigging. Yes they are a good thing. Yes they make things more flexible and, well let's admit it, sexy. Thankfully they appear to have become standard accessories not above or beyond actual equipment.

3. Speaking of hysterical nonsense

 Thank <enter deity name of choice here, or null> -  that 3D is only a footnoted specification now.  Last year in Orlando attempting to avoid the clamour of 3D from any booth was akin to trying to enter a vegas hotel without having to claw your way through the forest of slot machines, blue smoke one could cut with a bowie knife and over eager cocktail waitresses.  If you read my Twitter rants or listen to the AV NationTV podcasts with any regularity -you know just how enamoured with 3D I am.  Oh Muybridge! Up Yours (with apologies to Polystyrene)

4). HD over Structured Wiring

 AV over “Cat 5” was everywhere - or should I say HDBaseT was ubiquitous under various and sundry names throughout the show floor.  For Installations folks the era of UTP / STP as THE wire for everything is now nearly at hand. Another shake up in the wire biz is due soon as fewer and fewer cable types are used.  I wonder what pseudoscience babble Monster Cable will start using to market theirs.

5). IATSE Booth

Before anyone starts with me, I love the folks involved with IATSE- some of my best friends are IATSE members. Yet the large set aside space with a stage and chairs never seemed to have any activity in it. Perhaps I was on a  different schedule or something happened while I was recording AV Social or the Live Life. I spent a good deal of time in the ‘Lighting and Staging’ section and never saw anything beyond a few folks eating.

The eerie atmosphere reminded me of the a scene in the book  Travels with Charley  by John Steinbeck. The book is part travel journal, part memoir and part  literary extension of   Kerouac’s  On The Road, it is the story of his travels across the United States with his dog Charley. Steinbeck wrote the book while living in Sag Harbor Long Island, (My Home Town!) which is also where he wrote the Winter of Our Discontent - but that is another tale altogether. Early on in the book, while he is traveling through deep Vermont Steinbeck comes upon a fully lit and operating roadside cafe but it is empty of people. After waiting for half an hour he decides to get behind the counter and cook his own breakfast which he eat and cleans up after.  With still no one showing he leaves money for  his meal and moves on.   

I really wanted to have some folks on the Live Life podcast but since I could not find anyone in the “booth” the opportunity was lost.  If anyone from the organization is reading this, we would love to have you on a future show!

6). AV NationTV

Rocked with our first Live broadcasts of  The Daily Rave, AV Week, AV Social and The Live Life.  Our Broadcast table, in the front of the rAVe booth drew crowds of regular listeners and many new ones. We had a fantastic time chatting with integrators, press, Infocomm staff  and lots and lots of exhibitors.  When the recorded versions of the shows post I will update here with links.   

7). Finally

Speaking of AV NationTV, we want you for the AV Nation Army- Join us by suggesting topics, guests or even joining us on air as a panelist. We started the network but it is for and about our industry - it can only grow when we work together.

All in all it was a great show. I am unclear if anything really new came out of this show but I found it informative and a great networking opportunity. In the last hours of the exhibit I kept thinking about the story of Rock soup. It may not have started out as much but it was damn tasty in the end with all the help.   Hope to see you all in Orlando next year!

 

 

… and now a word about my hotel room.

After  a day of looking over the finest audio visual gear our industry can provide all racked and wired to in an immaculate manner, it is even more apparent how poorly wired my hotel room is.

I do not want to sound petty here, the room is paid for by my employer and I am grateful for the opportunity to attend and find grab hands on the products I need – and may not have known I needed-  to solve existing and future projects.   It is a room and a fairly well-appointed one at that.

Yet… why would you have an AC outlet like this in the room?

Why would you allow the flat panel monitor feed to mounted like this?
And what is with the Knotted Ethernet cable – That just has to hurt. 

Or leave proof of a mistaken mounting 

 

 

Even my ironing board looks like a second stringer.

 

Now before folks think I am actually staying at the local by the hour dive in the naked city know that the Westin Folks are very accommodating and friendly.   I also really like that this hotel has the single smallest casino floor in Las Vegas – it actually may be smaller than the ones in Punta Cana resorts.   No having to run the gauntlet of slot machines, blue smoke of cigarettes and over eager cocktail waitresses.  It is soothingly quaint and un- Vegas like.   

 

 

 

 Although my much ballyhoooed "City View" upgrade looks much  better at night when the dazziling lights in the background obscure the foreground. 

Another positive is that the monorail station is right across the street -  love the monorail ( a great deal for getting around the main strip and to and from the convention center). Still,  I just feel like I am staying in a local AV installer’s spare room where all of the unfinished project are stored.

 

Update:  June 20, 2012

A few days ago the Westin sent me a survey to complete.  I dutifully filled out the agree, disagree, strongly disagree radio button selections and when asked filled out the text boxes to explain in more detail I let it all hang out and even provided a link to this post for clearer explanation and photographic evidence.   To reiterate - the hotel was nice and the staff super helpful, I just took issue with the half done appearance of the room. 

I am happy to report that I received an email in response- yes an actual email not a form letter. 

Dear Mr. Tucker,

Thank you for choosing the Westin Las Vegas Hotel, Casino & Spa for your recent visit to Las Vegas. We received your opinions on our Satisfaction Survey regarding your latest experience with us. Your recent feedback certainly assists us with our continuous efforts as our team strives to offer exceptional service and amenities to our guests.

I have reviewed the comments you posted, along with the photos. They have been forwarded on to my General Manager and Director of Engineering. I am pleased to announce the Hotel is currently undergoing a much needed, major renovation project, where our rooms and the amenities offered around the property are being upgraded and refreshed. We are also having the entire property updated with the latest in wireless technology. Please rest assured your concerns have been addressed and will not be reoccurring incidents in the future.

In spite of our best efforts we do occasionally make mistakes and for this we truly apologize. We hope that you will allow us an opportunity in the future to change your outlook of our property by visiting us during your future trips to Las Vegas. Please feel free to contact me directly should you have any further thoughts or concerns.

Evolve and Inspire,

Amanda Rodriguez
Guest Experience Team Leader

Working in Social as I do this was a great response!  It is also good to know that the Westin does not see itself as just a Motel 6 gussied up in a ball gown for the evening. Thank you for letting me (and my readers) know that you listen and do care.  Would I recommend the hotel to others?  Perhaps, it does have one thing the other mega monstrosities do not - a lobby casino that does not assault you with a cacophony of ringing, dinging, bleeping slot machines. This is a major plus in my book any day. 

 

Salvation From My Own Stupidity

And on the second day of the show new discoveries were made.   Indeed yesterday was a day of finds at Infocomm 12  -Here are just a few:

• My Android calendar does not seem willing to update my appointments to local time, although the reminder notifications do.  I found this out the hard way by getting my sorry sleep deprived buttocks out of bed and down to the show floor at 7:30 am to attend a booth tour that was actually scheduled for 10:30am, with the WorldStage crew.  This led me to discovery number 2


• Infocomm 12 has a North Hall.   Yeah, shocking right? I, of course knew that the show was spread over two halls – at least somewhere in my hazy head the information was there but dammed if my little grey cells were going to give this tidbit of knowledge without a fight at 7:15am.  I wandered around the central hall for about 10 min in what I presumed to be the ‘projection ‘ area  until my ID finally came on line and demanded to know what the actual booth number I should be making my way to
  
   
  

Unlike the rest of the manufactures Projection exhibitors are NOT grouped into one area of the show floor.  In point of fact a great many of them are completely across the main lobby – so any inclination of just following your nose whilst walking the floor should be thrown right out the door

 

The Infocomm show app is the best product of the entire show, hands down.  I downloaded the app a few days prior to arriving in Lost Wages but had not made much time to investigate its features.  It is a god send, literally the  Deus ex machina  that makes the entire show truly accessible.  The response I had to finally opening it was nearly the same epiphany that occurred when I switched from Twitter’s web based client to Tweet Dyck – FINALLY it made sense and became infinitely more useful.    The App lets you search for manufactures booth gives updates on events and news as well as a My Location feature that shows you how to get from point A to point B.  Brilliant!

 

 

 

 

Of Personal Seizures and Mispronunciations

 

The Live Life show went broadcast its very first live stream yesterday afternoon and it was a hoot.  I am still new to the webcasting, hosting thing and have begun to feel a bit more comfortable with recoding the show over Skype from my room, alone.  I thought that I had really overcome my butterfly moments with ‘talking in public but goin’ live is a whole other beast. 

Normally the podcast has a very specific theme or topic – media servers, rigging, etc- and I usually have days if not a week to come up to speed on a topic. Or at least to know enough to ask the dumb questions but the theme of Infocomm is, well Infocomm.  We had decided early on to make the theme of the show the exhibitors and specifically those who relate to the event staging industry.   While we reached out to a number of folks who had previously been on episodes of ‘The Live Life’ we also wanted to find other booths which related to the industry but may not get the press of adjoining 300Lb gorillas.  This required some serious foot work and scheduling and to make it even more fun the way the show is set up limits just who and what is defined as ‘staging related’  and contained within the grey rugs.  Some like Chvet Lighting  were there as to be expected but Speaker Arrays and professional audio desks are over in the red carpet and projection and media servers  require hiking boots and some water bottles to get to. 

This became the overriding theme of the show as it turns out.  Midori Connely of Pulse Staging is on the cusp of being elected to head the committee on the Lighting and Staging portion of the show and discussed some initiatives she would like to implement immediately. 

In keeping with the desire to get some unsung but essential voices on the show we had the good fortune to have about 15 exhibitors spend some time with us, discuss their offerings and chat about the larger effect their services and products have in the everyday success of shows.

This is also where my penchant for massacring names amused and confused my co-hosts and panelist alike.  *sigh* I am terrible with names and unless I have time to spell them out phonetically it can be a truly horrific, and funny , car wreck to witness.   It also appears that in my attempt to wave over people and say hello to associates, former co-workers and friends while not interrupting the show flow made some of the panelist think I was experiencing small seizures.  I am thinking that we can make this a show at  the Westin Las Vegas – maybe we can open for the Red Skelton homage  that plays there now.  

 

 

Moses and Hannibal walk into a Bar

“I love it when a plan comes together” -  John  “Hannibal” Smith, A-Team.

You know how it is, despite your best efforts to pour over the show floor maps and make your tradeshow travels as efficient as possible, Day one always forces a change in plans and to paths less traveled. 

Yesterday was indeed the social show and thankfully I am not a germaphobe  or I would still be scrubbing my hands with brillo pads as I felt my walk about the show floor was one long hockey handshake.  Everyone – from attendees to exhibitors wanted to chat but not necessarily about the products.  Indeed there was the eventual emergence of the sales personality from deep within the tormented psyche of the booth staff but this was a gradual process, no Jekyll and Hyde here.

Could this be a macro influence of social media?  One would like to think that all of the talking head chatter about engagement,  outreach and natural voices has finally changed  the perception of what it means to ‘act professional’

Part of this may be due in some small part to the methods and reporting of the rAVe Pubs folks whose diligent efforts cover and record every single booth at the show. Part of the pressure is off, PR folks can use videos as reference and focus on delivering the message, not creating every part of it.  Booth staff can focus on building relationships with clients, not hammer us over the head like simple customers.

Within this happy din AV Social broadcast a live stream of the show  (Episode 6! Whoa)  out in the middle of the main lobby on Wednesday –( a recording of the show will be posted to the rAVe AV Nation site shortly) – this was social as social does.  The experience was both invigorating and daunting all at the same moment.  Normally we record the AV Nation shows from the comfort of our respective offices or homes via a Skype connection.   While our regular shows have a feeling of comfort and coziness – this was a whole new ballgame.   The cast was up on a small dais as attendees passed by or stopped to listen for a bit or ask a question.  Nearly all of us, cast and guest panelists alike constantly caught the eye of associates, co-workers, friends and a few family members.  We were finally not just talking to you but with you.  Freaking  awesome.

The Women in AV hosted a very fun Tweetup at the Los Vegas Hilton with a great turnout of folks some old friends but especially nice were all the newcomers.   To be honest I was all ready to end the evening there, head off to some room service, gentle tea and much needed sleep.  Yeah, thank Hannibal.

A few hours later I found myself, quite lucidly – no really, wandering the long freakish avenues of the Bellagio in search of food with a gang of six.  I would like to say that we rolled the wide paths of gold and faux Italian marble like hipsters on the prowl but the heavy bags of computers and show tags kyboshed any hope of that.  I was personally carrying an SLR, a great swag bag from Panasonic (pictures to be added later) , my rAVe bloggers thank you package and of course the albatross of Polyphemus  (my Dell XPS 17” laptop) around my neck.  It started out with such hope, like Moses leading his people out of Egypt, I also felt like we traveled through the desert.  The turns and twists and going up to go down had me so turned around that if not for the hysterical banter of my companions I would have sat down to bake some unleavened bread.   

Finally back at home base of my Hotel room I did take some tea and curl up under the covers with the air conditioner on full blast, the window shades open to a city scape and mountains framing it all in the background.

Oh, the gear?   Yeah, we looked at a bit of that too, we will be recording a Live stream of the Live Life today – check to hear some of the exhibitors describe this year’s offerings and some insight from our panelists.  

 

 

 

#Infocomm12, How do I love thee?

So here I find myself in the most unlikely of places - The City of Lost Wages NV.  I am here to celebrate the Audio Visual industry and to kick off AV NationTV’s coming out party.   Like my associate Matt Scott I love trade shows.  I love the dynamics, the press of bodies, equipment and the hands-on handshake experience.  

Truly this is how I view my beloved AV industry – A living breathing, evolving organism, a life that is alive! 

                     

In short I Love you AV industry,  It is a love that I never dared to seek but you found me and because of this you have become an inseperable part of me. I cannot conceive of a life, myself without you.

 

                     

How much do I love thee?  I only need to count one way – you have managed to get me to travel to Las Vegas to celebrate you.  This town, so full of fear and loathing that the air itself is dense with the machinations of greed and gluttony that it creates the impulse in me to barricade the door, drawn the blinds  and become a Howard Hughes shut in and wait out the end of times – or at least the show.  It is a city of snake oil salesmen who settled down with cement shoes.

I love thee AV Industry, so much so that I will bite my tongue and enjoy this time together much like watching “The Housewives of…” shows with my wife – it is not where we are but that we are doing it together.

 

 

 

 

BBQ as unfettered patriotism

It is Memorial Day once again - Which means that we are to be berated by editorialists and talking heads for not treating the day and this country's veterans with enough deference. The technicolor yawn of store sales, car dealership blowouts and focus on BBQ’s and beer diminish our appreciation of the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives to protect our freedoms they will shriek from every antenna tower.

While there is something to be said about the over commercialization of and the outright marketing of a date once called ‘Decoration Day’, I feel that the these uber critics may have it all wrong. If point of fact I feel that these distractions are the ultimate form of respect and praise to the service of veterans. Now before some of you get your panites in a bunch understand that I am not calling for complete disregard of the ceremonies and parades and laying of wreaths. All of those who have served should be honored - and I have proclaimed as much previously, especially when it comes to appreciating some of the overlooked hereos. ( see my post " station x...)

Yet, there is something to be said for hard won complacency of celebrating such a day with great orchestrations of distractions.  This was hit home for me while listening to a segment on NPR's Weekend Edition. In the piece a solider recounts spending a memorial day on the Afganistan / Pakistan border with an inpromptu barbecue.  The soilder descibes getting together the fixings, spices and of feeding thirty people non stop - creating a feeling of normalcy, a distance from the war and more like being home. 

In the end is this not what we truly do hope for, to find a time when we do not have to think of such things? We do strive toward a future that sees war as a distant act of antiquity.

So celebrate with bowls of pasta salad,  hamburgers and coolers full of beer ,(please make it a decent beer, none of this Coors or Budwiser nonsense, thanks), with only a passing thought of our troops.  it is what they fought for.

Image source = The Krafteredge

Alexander the Great is Pissed (Again)

Originally posted to rAVe Pubs on March 14, 2012

We humans produce a lot of information - great gobs of it.  So much information, in fact, that we have deforested large swaths of the earth to record and propagate it. We built great institutions called libraries to make these ideas available to anyone and everyone... 

Or, at least we used to.  

Forget the four horsemen of the the apocalypse, Alexander the Great is pissed and is most likely now assembling an army to retake the largest continents once again. The goal? To reestablish the most basic forms of sharing and documenting human endeavors.  

Alexander the Great, or AG to his friends, was more than a military genius, brutal warrior and the handsomest (*cough*) emperor of the known world- he also built the greatest library in human history. You may think the Library of Congress has a lot of books but they are just peanuts compared to what was stored in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.  

If you are of a certain age group, or just a science junkie you will recall walking through the great library of Alexandria as guided by Carl Sagan via the TV show ‘Cosmos’. This collection of knowledge, Sagan told us, was the greatest repository of human thought in the ancient world, and if the stories are true, is almost unmatched in our modern era. Special envoys were sent out  to any newly conquered lands to seek out all writings, screeds or documents to be brought back to the library where they were copied.  The originals were categorized and filed while the copy was sent back to continue enriching the people who created it.  With such a collection, scholars in 300 B.C. could  directly reference the original text of Elements  or the  complete writings of Homer.  Human philosophy and science flourished until, allegedly, Julius Cesar destroyed it, inadvertently, during a siege of the city. We even lost the knowledge of the ‘flush’ commodes for thousands of years.

Fast forward a handful of millennia and we can now access the Library of Alexandria times ten.  We live in a time when information on anything can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. We even have our own personal Bibliotheca’s to archive our beloved material. Yet so much of our knowledge and history are missing from the this networked repository.  

Yeah, I am looking at you technology manufactures. Just why is it so difficult to find information on products you sold only five years ago?! (Don’t even start to look for something ten years old.) Recently I was tasked with the job of putting some of our pre-owned gear up for sale on our own site. The process of collecting and organizing the gear included trying to find verifiable manufactures' specifications on the units. (Yeah, I know somewhat of an oxymoron there). 

Astonishingly I could not find this information on a good number of the manufactures' sites - not even a support documents link -  (you know, where a lot of companies just pile up scanned documents with product names buried in gobbledygook of ampersands, percentage signs and random letters - nice work unpaid intern!). This seemed to be especially true on professional/theatrical lighting sites. What gives, folks? Is it a question of not wanting the riffraff out there getting information on your products?  Fear that used gear will flood the market and dent your coming year sales?  If not - what then?  

I was forced to find information and documents on used gear sites and suspect forum threads. Not to question these forums' belief that the information is true, but it would be nice to use actual science tenets and have a way to verify the information. In addition to wasting my day, the process has me questioning the trust I can put in these companies - what else are you hiding from me? I know this sounds crazy but next thing you know you’ll start proactively start removing documents from my storage accounts.That could never happen right?

There are extremely important cultural artifacts still missing from the collective cloud from one of a kind academic thesis and pop culture philosophy to early recorded history of American music. It  is not to be suggested that the documentation of one product from a single manufacture should take precedent over the aforementioned, yet how do we know that a product - your product - will not wind up on a future remake of the BBC’s ‘The History of the World in a Hundred Objects

I have an associate who has long scanned and saved documents of any product he purchases onto the company's drives - something I smirked at with a confused bemusement. Now I know just how smart he has been and now view my past expectations with chagrin. Heck, even those in Ptolemy’s era knew that denial is not just a river in Egypt.  

And yes, I DO have that cut sheet and manual circa 1995 scanned and stored.  I will be happy to provide you with a copy, but first a question - how much cash to you have on you right now? 

 

Convenience vs Consistency In Marconi’s Magical Ether

Convenience vs Consistency In Marconi’s Magical Ether

Marconi, the fantastical genius (second in renowned and sheer infamy only to Tesla, despite Yahoo Serious's portrayal ) who brought us the ability to transmit information from one location to another without the need for miles of wire would be amazed but quite comfortable with our wireless world. After all  the first wireless phone/mediadelivery system was in use by 1922.  The tools and interfaces would no doubt astound him, yet the process and application would be as natural as reading the newspaper.  The modern 'Golden Age of Wireless'  is mother's milk to most of us - we are as afraid of its presence, with a few odd exceptions, as we are of indoor running water. So why does it so often befoul and frustrate us?

This dichotomy was brought to my attention when, in the process of teaching a class on Ethernet and Wireless essentials this past week,  I opened my #inSSIDer tool to show what our local Wi-Fi looked like.  The plan was to use the live readings as a simple example of just how interference comes about.  Well I was, admittedly, just as stunned as the class.

 

Whoa! This is what the 2.4GHz frequency range looks like in the Secaucus, NJ warehouse where I spend a good deal of my working day - a somewhat isolated space. How could the IT manager let this happen, someone wondered aloud.

I have experienced similar reactions when teaching high school students about Ethernet, specifically Wi-Fi and RF principles. I have found that even many of these Millennials were unclear on just what is going on beyond the very basic setup.  

Why would this be?

Wireless Internet Access is ubiquitous, so much so that it has become an appliance and as such is nearly invisible to most folks - until it ‘stops working’.  In other words, it is like using a telephone, you may need to know whether to dial 9 to get an outside line and the number you are calling but other than that - it just works.  Off the shelf manufactures sell us the instant gratification of ‘pushing the Little Red Button’ to set up and connect - no need to worry about what is going on behind the curtains and in fact, these boxes intimate,  it may just be dangerous to look dear Icarus.

Our own industry, one which prides itself on being the most informed on the multitude of distinct technological disciplines, is still is coming to grips with the world of Wi-Fi.  Six years ago as the install industry was still  making the hard change to Ethernet many manufactures started to introduce Wi-Fi based products. As a technical support manager  I witnessed first hand the confusion from lack of knowledge in the field and in the support room.  The initial thought and assumption was that the technology was fairly common and therefore would be in the general knowledge meme of the installers. We could not have been more wrong.  It turns out that a great majority of our clients had very little experience with wireless Internet setup, let alone Ethernet in general.  This is not a dig at the companies and individuals involved - my discussions with other offices and support personnel at other manufacturers (yes many of us chat in private forums, even with competitors -  we are professional and know where the lines are, get over it) confirmed an industry wide problem.  

As a result of this miscalculation it became common to work hour long support calls-walking an installer step by step through the basics of setting up the Wi-Fi router/ access point.  In my company a great effort was made to teach the client on the other end of the phone line just what we were doing and what each process was for - ‘...teach a man to fish...’. While this total support helped the individual, it did nothing to stem the tsunami.   The recognition that our incorrect presumptions had a detrimental effect on call times pushed us to develop an extensive training and certification program for staff and dealers. The process took about a year to show a decline in calls and service time on the basic concepts but reduce it did. Now we could deal with issues stemming from new technologies like WDS  and general RF interference which, once recognized caused apoplectic fits.   

RF and EMF interference are funny things, if you are unaware or just limited in knowledge it can be a very vexing problem. The question is just where  can you learn the essential techniques and troubleshooting without having to digest electrical engineering text books or RF circuit design manuals?  My personal path started with having the responsibility of testing wireless microphones become part of my job description. 

Unlike wireless data networks which have data detection and correction techniques built into the transmission / reception process,  audio cannot send a request for the vocals to be resent live. This means that the concepts can be learned without getting into the minutia of error checking and checksums.   Many RF mic manufactures publish pamphlets on the basics of best practices. As we gathered more and more material books and tear-sheets   I studiously and obsessively  hand copied the main points, sometimes the whole booklet, into a small sketch book. Remember this was just pre-world wide web days and portable devices were barely smaller than a breadbox. 

I have always found that just as many audio concepts can be more easily taught by first starting with real world applications of Standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone) lines so can many RF basics be explained using wireless microphones.  This may not be the exact connection you may need but it is a start. I would suggest the following primers: 

Crestron Best Practices for Installation and Setup of Crestron RF Products  (shhh, don’t tell anyone I helped write and edit this) 

Wireless Microphones and the Audio Professional

Texas Instruments has a great overview ‘deck’ entitled RF Basics, RF for Non-Engineers

Shure has some interesting documents that discuss some of the tertiary issues 

You could just trust that is will all work but then it is a question of  program or be programmed - which brings us back to the maligned IT manager we 

mentioned above. Looking at the spectrum analysis it might strike you that it  is amazing that any of the connections work at all.  The Truth is that the network administrator, like you and me, can only contain not control  the unwieldy beast of unlicensed RF. 

 

Convenience vs Consistency In Marconi’s Magical Ether

Convenience vs Consistency In Marconi’s Magical Ether

Marconi, the fantastical genius (second in renowned and sheer infamy only to Tesla, despite Yahoo Serious's portrayal ) who brought us the ability to transmit information from one location to another without the need for miles of wire would be amazed but quite comfortable with our wireless world. After all  the first wireless phone/mediadelivery system was in use by 1922.  The tools and interfaces would no doubt astound him, yet the process and application would be as natural as reading the newspaper.  The modern 'Golden Age of Wireless'  is mother's milk to most of us - we are as afraid of its presence, with a few odd exceptions, as we are of indoor running water. So why does it so often befoul and frustrate us?

This dichotomy was brought to my attention when, in the process of teaching a class on Ethernet and Wireless essentials this past week,  I opened my #inSSIDer tool to show what our local Wi-Fi looked like.  The plan was to use the live readings as a simple example of just how interference comes about.  Well I was, admittedly, just as stunned as the class.

 

Whoa! This is what the 2.4GHz frequency range looks like in the Secaucus, NJ warehouse where I spend a good deal of my working day - a somewhat isolated space. How could the IT manager let this happen, someone wondered aloud.

I have experienced similar reactions when teaching high school students about Ethernet, specifically Wi-Fi and RF principles. I have found that even many of these Millennials were unclear on just what is going on beyond the very basic setup.  

Why would this be?

Wireless Internet Access is ubiquitous, so much so that it has become an appliance and as such is nearly invisible to most folks - until it ‘stops working’.  In other words, it is like using a telephone, you may need to know whether to dial 9 to get an outside line and the number you are calling but other than that - it just works.  Off the shelf manufactures sell us the instant gratification of ‘pushing the Little Red Button’ to set up and connect - no need to worry about what is going on behind the curtains and in fact, these boxes intimate,  it may just be dangerous to look dear Icarus.

Our own industry, one which prides itself on being the most informed on the multitude of distinct technological disciplines, is still is coming to grips with the world of Wi-Fi.  Six years ago as the install industry was still  making the hard change to Ethernet many manufactures started to introduce Wi-Fi based products. As a technical support manager  I witnessed first hand the confusion from lack of knowledge in the field and in the support room.  The initial thought and assumption was that the technology was fairly common and therefore would be in the general knowledge meme of the installers. We could not have been more wrong.  It turns out that a great majority of our clients had very little experience with wireless Internet setup, let alone Ethernet in general.  This is not a dig at the companies and individuals involved - my discussions with other offices and support personnel at other manufacturers (yes many of us chat in private forums, even with competitors -  we are professional and know where the lines are, get over it) confirmed an industry wide problem.  

As a result of this miscalculation it became common to work hour long support calls-walking an installer step by step through the basics of setting up the Wi-Fi router/ access point.  In my company a great effort was made to teach the client on the other end of the phone line just what we were doing and what each process was for - ‘...teach a man to fish...’. While this total support helped the individual, it did nothing to stem the tsunami.   The recognition that our incorrect presumptions had a detrimental effect on call times pushed us to develop an extensive training and certification program for staff and dealers. The process took about a year to show a decline in calls and service time on the basic concepts but reduce it did. Now we could deal with issues stemming from new technologies like WDS  and general RF interference which, once recognized caused apoplectic fits.   

RF and EMF interference are funny things, if you are unaware or just limited in knowledge it can be a very vexing problem. The question is just where  can you learn the essential techniques and troubleshooting without having to digest electrical engineering text books or RF circuit design manuals?  My personal path started with having the responsibility of testing wireless microphones become part of my job description. 

Unlike wireless data networks which have data detection and correction techniques built into the transmission / reception process,  audio cannot send a request for the vocals to be resent live. This means that the concepts can be learned without getting into the minutia of error checking and checksums.   Many RF mic manufactures publish pamphlets on the basics of best practices. As we gathered more and more material books and tear-sheets   I studiously and obsessively  hand copied the main points, sometimes the whole booklet, into a small sketch book. Remember this was just pre-world wide web days and portable devices were barely smaller than a breadbox. 

I have always found that just as many audio concepts can be more easily taught by first starting with real world applications of Standard POTS (Plain Old Telephone) lines so can many RF basics be explained using wireless microphones.  This may not be the exact connection you may need but it is a start. I would suggest the following primers: 

Crestron Best Practices for Installation and Setup of Crestron RF Products  (shhh, don’t tell anyone I helped write and edit this) 

Wireless Microphones and the Audio Professional

Texas Instruments has a great overview ‘deck’ entitled RF Basics, RF for Non-Engineers

Shure has some interesting documents that discuss some of the tertiary issues 

You could just trust that is will all work but then it is a question of  program or be programmed - which brings us back to the maligned IT manager we 

mentioned above. Looking at the spectrum analysis it might strike you that it  is amazing that any of the connections work at all.  The Truth is that the network administrator, like you and me, can only contain not control  the unwieldy beast of unlicensed RF. 

 

 

Alexander the Great is Pissed (Again)

Originally posted to rAVe Pubs on March 14, 2012

We humans produce a lot of information - great gobs of it.  So much information, in fact, that we have deforested large swaths of the earth to record and propagate it. We built great institutions called libraries to make these ideas available to anyone and everyone... 

Or, at least we used to.  

Forget the four horsemen of the the apocalypse, Alexander the Great is pissed and is most likely now assembling an army to retake the largest continents once again. The goal? To reestablish the most basic forms of sharing and documenting human endeavors.  

Alexander the Great, or AG to his friends, was more than a military genius, brutal warrior and the handsomest (*cough*) emperor of the known world- he also built the greatest library in human history. You may think the Library of Congress has a lot of books but they are just peanuts compared to what was stored in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina.  

If you are of a certain age group, or just a science junkie you will recall walking through the great library of Alexandria as guided by Carl Sagan via the TV show ‘Cosmos’. This collection of knowledge, Sagan told us, was the greatest repository of human thought in the ancient world, and if the stories are true, is almost unmatched in our modern era. Special envoys were sent out  to any newly conquered lands to seek out all writings, screeds or documents to be brought back to the library where they were copied.  The originals were categorized and filed while the copy was sent back to continue enriching the people who created it.  With such a collection, scholars in 300 B.C. could  directly reference the original text of Elements  or the  complete writings of Homer.  Human philosophy and science flourished until, allegedly, Julius Cesar destroyed it, inadvertently, during a siege of the city. We even lost the knowledge of the ‘flush’ commodes for thousands of years.

Fast forward a handful of millennia and we can now access the Library of Alexandria times ten.  We live in a time when information on anything can be accessed from anywhere at anytime. We even have our own personal Bibliotheca’s to archive our beloved material. Yet so much of our knowledge and history are missing from the this networked repository.  

Yeah, I am looking at you technology manufactures. Just why is it so difficult to find information on products you sold only five years ago?! (Don’t even start to look for something ten years old.) Recently I was tasked with the job of putting some of our pre-owned gear up for sale on our own site. The process of collecting and organizing the gear included trying to find verifiable manufactures' specifications on the units. (Yeah, I know somewhat of an oxymoron there). 

Astonishingly I could not find this information on a good number of the manufactures' sites - not even a support documents link -  (you know, where a lot of companies just pile up scanned documents with product names buried in gobbledygook of ampersands, percentage signs and random letters - nice work unpaid intern!). This seemed to be especially true on professional/theatrical lighting sites. What gives, folks? Is it a question of not wanting the riffraff out there getting information on your products?  Fear that used gear will flood the market and dent your coming year sales?  If not - what then?  

I was forced to find information and documents on used gear sites and suspect forum threads. Not to question these forums' belief that the information is true, but it would be nice to use actual science tenets and have a way to verify the information. In addition to wasting my day, the process has me questioning the trust I can put in these companies - what else are you hiding from me? I know this sounds crazy but next thing you know you’ll start proactively start removing documents from my storage accounts.That could never happen right?

There are extremely important cultural artifacts still missing from the collective cloud from one of a kind academic thesis and pop culture philosophy to early recorded history of American music. It  is not to be suggested that the documentation of one product from a single manufacture should take precedent over the aforementioned, yet how do we know that a product - your product - will not wind up on a future remake of the BBC’s ‘The History of the World in a Hundred Objects

I have an associate who has long scanned and saved documents of any product he purchases onto the company's drives - something I smirked at with a confused bemusement. Now I know just how smart he has been and now view my past expectations with chagrin. Heck, even those in Ptolemy’s era knew that denial is not just a river in Egypt.  

And yes, I DO have that cut sheet and manual circa 1995 scanned and stored.  I will be happy to provide you with a copy, but first a question - how much cash to you have on you right now? 

 

 

The hAloha Brothers Live!

The hAloha Brother Live - Special performance of Highway to Hell 

  

KoRn Lighting Guy - What He Can Teach Us

I came across this video -Thanks to Stagehand World's Google Plus page -  of the lighting tech for Korn really feeling his job.   Some have made fun of just how involved his is in the performance, but are we not just a little jealous at how much he loves his job and that the  passion is so evident? 

If you are unfamiliar with Korn they are a rock band who are part of the nu metal genre which blends  influences from 80' metal, Hardcore punk, classic rock and New Yorks No Wave movement.  

The influence extends beyond cord structure and double bass drums to the inclusion of the crew,and often the fans, as part of the band.  The lines delineating between the three is thin and often fluctuates.   In many ways they whole operation is similar to the Grateful Dead where the  band is seemingly on tour without end complete with fans who travel to multiple shows across the globe.  The band keeps a constant contact with fans through direct response via social media and appearances in smaller of the beaten track events.

In short they have  a community not just a business relationship.

Which do you see in your own work? 

 

 

Presumptions are Dangerous Boomerangs

It would appear that the editor of Daily  DOOH  has taken umbrage at rAVe [Publications] methodology of show coverage.  I posted this to my Google Plus account but after looking around on the DOOH site I found even more sniping on the part of Mr. Adrian J Cotterill, this time about the apparent age and gender of rAVe's journalists.   Really AC?  

While this will not endear me to Mr. Cotterill I posted the below on the rAVe blog post:

An interesting bit of vitriol Mr. Cotterill spits out. I say interesting in that midway through reading his screed I kept thinking his real message is 'Get Off My Lawn You Whippersnappers!"

In my view, this is a classic example of new media vs old.  Industry professionals like myself gravitate to news sources such as Rave because of the timing and format it is presented in.  

Balanced is a funny word, what exactly do you mean by it sir? Balanced in that you decide which exhibitors I get to hear about or is there some preordained hierarchy of who gets coverage or what I should be interested in if I were but a learned AV professional such as yourself? 

I have had the opportunity to work professionally with the American rAVe staff as a manufacturers marketing person and as associates (rAVe publishes my blog and hosts the AV Nation podcasts I am producer for). I have found the individuals Gary hires to be professional, accurate and remarkably interested in the AV industry from all angles no matter how small or large.  The intensity they show translates into interest from the readers - What could possibly be wrong with that?!

I do not write for rAVe nor agreed as one of AV Nations advisory board members to partner with them just for business reason, I admire the sense of community and engagement they foster.  The online community of AV folks gather around them for the same reasons. 

As I read through the article and comments I was reminded of the infamous Bill Gundy episode on Thames Television circa 1976. Whatever happened to good times Bill anyway?

If you are unfamiliar with Bill Gundy you can see the moment he killed his own career ( and the staff at the Thames Television technical staff)  on YouTube.  *Warning the content is not for those who find expletives disturbing *   

 

 Bill Gundy typhooned his career because he engaged in Character Assassination with a group who were more fearless and smarter -(on the whole and despite appearances) then the learned and esteemed journalist.   The video shows an interview with the group 'The Sex Pistols' where the right honorable Bill Gundy proceeds to goad the band with devastating results.  Love him or hate him John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten, is a horribly intelligent person  who channels the prolific anger of the situationist  into an artful confrontation.   Even in this interview you can see his eyes alight with the ghost of Guy Debord.  

Mr. Gundy did not know what hit him - presumptions are dangerous boomerangs 

Hoist Meet Petard.

Train Master to My Heart

The Power of a Simple Story Can Bring You to Your Knees

When does a bad movie become a monumental message? If you are like me, you may have spent many Saturday mornings watching MST3K on Comedy Central, ripping bad movies with Tom Servo, Crow T. Robot, and the gang. While most films deserve these royal send-ups, we tend to forget that someone put their heart and soul into a vision, perhaps emptying themselves into a gasp of creativity. In the past, these films may have been relegated to the trash heap only to be viewed by an archivist or lone aficionados. Ah, but the 'New' Media revolution has forever changed this.

A Child's Obsession, A Remarkable Find

A kid's movie recently reinforced the value of these individual voices. One rainy day on Netflix, when our house was feeling low ebb and feverish throughout, little did I know that a shared movie would break me into pieces.

My four-year-old is a train nut; from the moment he could express an interest in things, trains were always at the top of the list. He would crawl over to my older son's wooden train sets and spend hours

rolling the trains over the tracks. 

We bought him the entire 'I Love Toy Trains' DVD collection and spent countless hours watching them, singing the songs, and discussing what trains he would like to get and set up. He pours over Lionel's catalogs and asks me to read them to him like story books. Yeah, he likes trains. (Do not get me started on how many times we have watched the 'Lionelville' animated video that came with his Scout set. Hey Lionel - Why, six years after it was produced, is there no conclusion to the story?!)

On this rainy and sickly kind of day, my son asked if he could watch a film about trains on the Wii. My search turned up the film "Train Master."

A Simple Story, Unexpected Depth

The film is about a Train Master- a person who is the top railroad engineer who lives and breathes all things railroad-related, who loses his job when an ambitious and morally questionable investor purchases a local freight line. As it would happen, the investor's son, Justin, and the Train Master's grandkid, Thomas, go to the same lower elementary school. When the former learns that Thomas knows how to drive a train, he holds Thomas's favorite dinosaur ransom. Thomas and three other children board an old engine in for repairs and accidentally turn it into a runaway engine, causing a chain reaction of events.

I sat and watched the first 10 minutes of the film to make sure it was what I expected and did not hide an inappropriate theme. The film is awkward, with a storyline that feels like the extemporaneous tales young kids tell excitedly to their friends and parents. It is the kind of story whose point is to talk about trains but where a coherent plot is secondary to the fantastical first person. To be blunt, the film is clearly amateurish, with jerky story transitions and acting that can only be kindly called wooden.

My kid immediately connected with scenes that shift from a model train set to real trains. Over the day, my four-year-old watched this movie four times with me by his side for parts here and there -(he would fill me in as to what I 'missed'). Suffice it to say I was able to see a large part of the movie over the four showings. While I was fascinated with my son's enraptured attention to the movie, what came at the end took my knees away, like being 'surprised by a left hook.'

A Father's Love, A Parents Fear

Just as the film ends (happily, of course), a picture of a child who looks a bit like the actors in the movie, complete with a childish mop top hair, but is clearly not one of them, fades up with a dedication and a set of dates. The last name is the same as the Writer / Director of the film.

As the credits rolled, home movies of the kid on trains, with model trains and rail yards, played in the background. Looking at my son, who was still fixed to his spot, watching with rapt attention, my mental math finally kicked in. 

Seven years old. Seven. The film results from a shared story between a father and son who never made it past seven. I looked over at my four-year-old, and the connection with the filmmaker's despair and dedication rolled over me. The emotions came on so hard, so fast, I had to excuse myself and turn to find a quiet spot.

As I turned the corner into our home office, I found my wife sitting at the computer - in her arms, I promptly lost it. I cried; I cried hard at the thought of losing my own son, the comparison to the seven-year-old on screen so clear, and the silent fear all parents grapple with. Simultaneously laughing at myself, I was almost aghast at a depth of my emotional reaction to a silly kids' film, yet the tears and sobs came in waves as I clutched my wife, releasing the anguish and trying to find a center and gaining control. 

The power of communication and connection can come in the most surprising places. 

I played a long game of trains with my son that day.

42 days/ 1008 hours

Weather Geeks know the year 1816 as ‘The year without a summer’ which most likely was caused by the  eruption of Mount Tambora in Sumbawa, Indonesia  on April 10th 1815.  The resulting volcanic plume which spewed into the atmosphere would make the Mount St. Helen’s eruptions look like a squid ink squirt in comparison and its effect was felt worldwide for years.

If you are old enough to recall the Mount St. Helen’s eruption in 1980 one side effect for  photographers around the world was  the dramatic almost pastel colored sunsets the residual dust in the sky caused. This eruption also showed some affect on climate albeit only on a very regional scale not, the entire planet as Mount Tambora is fairly well determined  to have caused.

The 1816 volcano did indeed cause a year with out summer with average temperatures dropping five to ten degrees below normal.   This may not seem like a great deal of difference but the small drop had economic, progressive, cultural and agricultural consequences.  For example Discovery.com lists some of the following as directly attributable to the eruption and subsequent residual suspend particulates in the air:

• Famine in large parts of northern Europe


• Crop shortages due to shortened growing season worldwide


• Mary Shelly writing ‘Frankenstein’ due, in part, to the miserable weather while on summer retreat at Lord Byron’s estate.


• An increase in seeking out innovations to reduce reliance on draft animals to transport food and goods - in response to skyrocketing grain feed costs. (read steam and combustion engines)

It is almost as prophetic as the movie Americathon!

Setting aside the ‘debate’ as to if what we are experiencing is a natural earth weather cycle or something at least in part exacerbated by human production of CO2’s  it is pretty obvious that  the cycles in weather do seem to be more dramatic just in my lifetime.

This year could reasonably - at least from the mid-west to east coast of America- be deemed the ‘Year Without Winter’.   Last year with all the snow and wet, wet, wet spring my neighborhood had fewer cookouts and picnics over the summer as it was  one of the buggiest ever.  Nothing seemed to work short of bringing in tanker trucks full of DOW chemicals to saturate the area - plus after awhile the smell of insect repellent hanging in the air from night to morning does not really make a burger appetizing.  Any more summers like the last and we will become shut ins who only get to swim at indoor pools and BBQ at McDonalds.

Did Mary Shelly and John Polidori warn us of more than just mans attempt to be a god?   

Six Weeks more winter, or maybe not.