Now that the insanity of grad school is over, I plan to be a far more frequent blogger, both here and over at rAVe [publications].  I will also have time to look at other opportunities and education possibilities.  Do you think “Dawn Meade, CTS, MBA, CVE, PMP” is too much?  *pondering*

Cartoon from Toothpaste for Dinner webcomic, by Drew of Sharing Machine. http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/       http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/092303/my-masters-degree.gif

Well, yes and no, my friends.  True, the down economy of the past decade has made clients more cautious with their spending and more likely to shop around, but did you know the AV industry is one of the few industries to show sustained GROWTH during the recession?  Just check the 2012 Global AV Market Definition and Strategy Study conducted by Acclaro Growth Partners on behalf of InfoComm International.  Our industry showed 11 percent growth over the recessionary period between 2009 and 2012. The study further predicts industry growth at 14 between now and 2015, putting us as a predicted $115 billion global industry by 2015!  Phenomenal numbers but many smaller AV companies are still feeling the pinch.  Why?

One answer can be found in a CompTIA blog from Oct. 5, 2012 by Kate Hunt.  If you don’t even know that CompTIA is the trade association for the IT industry, well, you’re probably part of those AV companies feeling the pain right now.  The blog I’m referencing is titled, “A One-Stop Resource for Building a Successful Audiovisual Practice”  – in short, a how-to for IT companies and professionals to take advantage of our now-post-convergence world and get into AV so they can get a share of that expected $115 billion that is coming.

Now, this blog by Ms. Hunt could be read as yet another alarmist, “They took our jobs!” argument against the great IT invasion.  I, however, look at this as a great opportunity.  Take a few minutes to read Ms. Hunt’s blog ( www.channelpartnersonline.com/blogs/comptia-blog/2012/10/a-one-stop-resource-for-building-a-successful-aud.aspx).  She doesn’t espouse a scorched-earth “us or them” mentality at all.  In fact, her entire post reads as an opportunity for savvy AV integrators.  She recommends working with AV professionals and experts, learning from InfoComm, CES and CEDIA, and generally taking advantage of existing resources for their AV growth.  Existing resources… like us.

Ms. Hunt’s blog refers readers to the CompTIA Quick Start Guide – Audiovisual Integration Opportunities; A Practical Guide for Solution Providers ( http://www.comptia.org/documents/MDOC_STORAGE/Quick_Start_Guide_Audiovisual_Integration_onine_2038-US.pdf).  This downloadable PDF document is eight pages of advice and strategy for AV/IT companies and encourages readers to adhere to InfoComm AV standards, to take our coursework and to get our certifications… or to hire those who have expertise in these areas.  The IT world is openly embracing AV now and, if you are willing to meet them part-way, the opportunity is here for you to expand and grow your integration business by embracing them back.

Read more about Eugene Polley:  http://www.marinij.com/business/ci_20680677/eugene-polley-inventor-tv-remote-dies-at-96

The original post is located at http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/things-that-will-make-you-feel-old and I highly recommend surfing over to check it out. If you are anything like me, you will vacillate wildly between “OMG! I remember THAT/HIM/HER!!” and “OMG… I am soooooo old! *le sigh*”

Still, it’s a great read and I felt #16 was particularly apropos for our industry.  It’s the picture of the techo-happenin’ guy shown with this blog, captioned, “30 years later, you can carry all of this in your pocket.”     Too true, though I would add, “and it’s all one device… smaller than a deck of cards… and holds WAY more movies, music and processing power than the entire picture combined!”   It’s a beautiful thing, in some ways, and it’s really depressing in others because it makes you feel REALLY old.  But maybe that’s just my looming high school reunion talking… and no. I won’t tell you how many years!

Okay, I’ll be honest here. I don’t know much at all about Cabletime and their MediaStar product. Seriously.  Like, I’ve heard of it in passing. It could be the best thing on the planet for that application, or it could be the absolute worst.  But what I do know is that the folks at Cabletime are good people.

You see, for every registered visitor to booth SU10519 at NAB this week, Cabletime will donate a dollar to the Wounded Warrior Project. All you have to do is stop in at booth SU10519 and let them scan your badge. Yes, you’ll probably then get marketing mail from Cabletime for a while, but you’ll also be helping combat-disabled service men and women readjust to civilian life and the new challenges they face in overcoming their injuries.

Wounded Warrior Project is a cause dear to my heart, and if I were in Vegas this week, I’d be dragging folks over to booth SU10519 personally!  Since I’m not, however, I figure a shout-out here will have to do.  Go swipe your badge at SU10519 and help a Wounded Warrior who sacrificed his or her health defending our country.  And if it turns out that Cabletime’s MediaStar distribution over IP and CAT-5/UTP products live up to their hype, you’ve found a great product as well as helping our Wounded Warriors.

To learn more about Wounded Warrior Project and its projects on behalf of our veterans, visit www.woundedwarriorproject.org

To learn more about Cabletime and MediaStar, GO TO BOOTH SU10519 and swipe your NAB badge!  (Or go to www.cabletime.com if, like me, you aren’t at NAB.)

As the daughter of a WWII vet, daughter-in-law of a Vietnam vet and sister/cousin/niece/aunt of veterans from every branch of US Military Service, AVDawn hopes you too will support your local Wounded Warriors and veterans. <3

Still, I adore Helen Mirren (Can I *be* her when I grow up?) and figured it was worth a watch on a boring afternoon.  I’m so glad I watched it, if for no other reason, for the following scene:

As a Pro-AV Systems Integrator for the majority of my professional career, I shall attempt to answer Arthur’s rhetorical questions, at least as they apply to our industry:

Systems Integration Professional… Would anyone do it as an amateur?

Sadly, Arthur, yes. We see this everyday in our industry. Sometimes it’s a trunk slammer or industry newb who just hasn’t (or won’t) dedicate the time and energy to getting much-needed training and certifications to become a Professional.  Sometimes it’s the DIY master – the guy who is somewhat handy, has hooked up his home TV or stereo and figures he can do anything. And sometimes it’s a related trade who has some of our skill-set and a big ego, assuming that there is NOTHING we do that they can’t.  Suffice to say, yes, there are amateur Systems Integrators and they do take work from Systems Integration Professionals at times. On the bright side, they also CREATE work for us other times, because once they screw something up or get it semi-functional, they have to call in the Systems Integration Professionals to fix it or finish it.

Would anyone approach Systems Integration as a hobby, for fun on a Saturday afternoon, instead of flying a kite?

Absolutely – though very often these Systems Integration hobbyists are also Systems Integration Professionals.  I mean, c’mon… you *know* you’ve got your own rack, or control system, or tricked-out, cobbled together home theatre at home! I know for certain that Mr. AVDawn is always tinkering. We have a touch panel control system running our house, cobbled together from salvage parts, eBay acquisitions and sheer stubbornness. Whenever we find some particularly brilliant new bit of tech, it’s only a matter of time until some aspect of that makes its way into our house.  Our friends in the industry tend to have similar stories.  Granted, these home-hobby systems are generally ugly.  Our home rack is ATROCIOUS, but that’s the shoemaker’s shoeless kids theory… We save the good work for AT work and just fiddle about at home. Even still, few Systems Integration Professionals manage to resist bringing at least SOME of their work home, for personal use, on a Saturday afternoon, instead of flying a kite!

Who is integrating systems for their own amusement?

Asked and answered, my good fellow!  Pretty much everyone in the AV Systems Integration field also integrates for fun at home… as well as many at home DIY guys, IT professionals and electricians, and almost any guy between the ages of, say 15 and death… And yes, that’s pretty intentionally sexist right there.  After all, guys have some genetic component or primal instinct to tinker – be it with car engines, AV or electrical systems, household plumbing and so on.  Yes, there are a growing number of us ladies in the industry, but on the main, we aren’t the tinkerers, putterers and hobby-geeks. Still, some of us geek out just as badly as the fellas do… and it is amusing.

The Power of Social Media – A true story.

Yesterday, I got a very vivid illustration of just how powerful Social Media can be.

I grew up in a very small town in Western PA.  Very small.  Like, 200 houses maximum, small.  The town was settled in the early 1800s by about 25 families, who lingered and intermarried until today when pretty much everyone is related to everyone else somehow… and folks are still known as “that new family” if they’ve only lived in town since the 1970s or so.

Now, this li’l speck on the map doesn’t have its own government – it is, in fact, an unincorporated area that straddles two townships – but it does have a church and a fire department.  The fire department is an all-volunteer service, founded by the town fathers (including my grandfather) in 1942.  And, like many volunteer fire departments in Western PA, Paintertown Volunteer Fire Department holds an annual Fish Fry supper every Friday during Lent.  This town social event serves as a fundraiser for the upkeep of the fire trucks. The volunteer fire fighters, the junior fire fighters and the members of the Ladies’ Auxiliary all work together to cook and serve a variety of delicious dinner options, and everyone who buys a meal also gets a complimentary dessert – homemade cake or pie made and donated by the town mothers (including my mother).  It’s one of those great small town traditions that makes us all long for Grover’s Corners, Bedford Falls and Mayberry.

So what on earth does this have to do with Social Media?  Well, I’ll tell you.  Because the tradition of the Fish Fry fundraiser is so popular in Western Pennsylvania, Y108 (Pittsburgh’s Country) radio has an annual remote broadcast event called Monty’s Fish Fry Tour.  Throughout “Fish Fry season,” fire departments and churches who have Fish Fry fundraisers can submit their names to the radio station.  A number of them are listed on the radio station web site for a week and people are encouraged to vote for their favorite from that group.  Each week’s winner gets to host DJ Monty and the Y108 crew for a live broadcast from their Fish Fry that Friday.  Yesterday (March 30, 2012), Monty and the Y108 gang broadcast live from Paintertown VFD, who won the week’s online vote overwhelmingly, thanks in large part to Social Media.

How do I know it was Social Media that won the broadcast for Paintertown?  Because the tiny little town I described at the beginning of this article got MORE THAN 64,000 VOTES in the 5 days voting was open!  That’s right, a town of less than 200 houses in the sub-sub-suburbs of Pittsburgh got 64,000 votes in less than a week. In short, members of the fire department got on Facebook and Twitter and put word out to vote for P-town on the Y108 site.  Even though I now live in the Baltimore/DC area, I put word out to my followers on both FB and Twitter to ask for votes too.  (Hey, my grandfather was the department’s first Captain. My great-uncle Frank was the first Fire Chief, and my late father was a life member and officer of the department until he passed!)  My Facebook friends around the US and even Canada & the UK went to the site and voted.  My Tweeps from all over did the same… as did the FB friends and Tweeps of many of my relatives back in P-town.  And, in the end, this organized effort of a few small town residents on just a couple of social outlets earned major returns with the contest win and a lot of free publicity for this small fundraiser.

Now, if a few average citizens from a small town can get THAT much result in 5 days, just imagine how much publicity, how much brand awareness, and how much potential business YOUR organization can earn with a planned, concerted effort on social media activities!  There are resources out there to teach you how – including the AVNation AVSocial podcast – so what’s your excuse?  Put the power of social media to work for you today!

If you Google “corporate Stockholm Syndrome,” many bloggers and authors have tried to redefine the psychological phenomenon of hostages identifying with their captors for the corporate and business world. One of the best attempts comes from a programming company, C2, which describes the term as “the phenomenon wherein employees of a business start to identify with, and are exceedingly loyal to, an employer who is manifestly hostile to their own self-interest.”  For my purposes, however, this definition can be expanded.

I’ve discovered, since starting work at a new integrator, that I have a set and fixed idea in my head what “being an integrator” is – that I have a fairly narrow definition of that idea, developed through my experiences in a few rather small slices of our industry and that my own understanding of “being an integrator” is being challenged, evolving and growing through my new endeavor.  I’m learning that there is more than one way to skin a cat as the old trope goes, so not only must I learn the ways my new company performs its day-to-day integration operations, I also must learn to adjust my own expectations of the daily and long-term work, and perform accordingly.

Now, on the bright side, I’ve already learned – to my utter joy – that my own philosophies, innovative impulses and creative vibes are far more in line with those of the new company than they’ve been with any other company I’ve been involved with. That bodes very well for our shared future and mutual success.  So, while I’ve got to “deprogram” myself as we go, I’m sure bright things lie ahead for AVDawn.

What about you?  Have you ever had an experience with Corporate Stockholm Syndrome?  Of getting sucked into a business environment where you lose perspective of the bigger picture (be it personally, of the industry big-picture, or of the world at large)? Have you ever started a new position and constantly had to pinch yourself that, no, this is really how things work here (on the good side, or the bad side)?  Let me know in the comments below!

Comic, titled “Stockholm Syndrome for Animators” by My Medicated Cartoon Life – http://mymedicatedlife.blogspot.com/2010/04/stockholm-syndrome-for-animators.html

I will not bore you with endless lists and recaps of 2011, nor will I take this time to play perfect prognosticator and attempt to predict the possibilities post-midnight in 2012.  (Nice alliteration, eh? ^_^)

Rather, I wanted to share a few happy bits of media with you that are appropriate for this festive time of calendar changing.  First, a look back at the movies of 2011, remixed for YouTube by hatinhand.  This video montage includes 166 films, 6 songs, over a month of uploading and editing and 40 untitled sequences in Avid.  Plus, it’s really cool.

Next, we have AVDawn’s favorite year-end tradition (right up there with Rockin’ New Years Eve and a rousing chorus of Auld Lang Syne at midnight).  You see, I’m a fan of many different music genres, but I particularly enjoy the mash-up.  For the uninitiated, a mash-up is a new or unique piece of music created by remixing two or more songs.  Mash-ups are most often found in dance clubs and online.

Well, since 2007, a genius fellow named DJ Earworm (www.djearworm.com) has paid homage to the end of the year by creating a mash-up of the year’s top songs.  The very first was titled “The United State of Pop” with subsequent versions spinning off from that name.  The 2011 edition, just released on December 26, is “The United State of Pop 2011: World Go Boom.”  Enjoy it… and talk to you next year!  Here’s to 2012!

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Twas the night before Christmas and all through the house,
All the family was scurrying like an A.D.D mouse.
The lights and the tinsel were strewn about with flair,
For in just a few hours, a great party’d be there.

The children were scrambling with chores to be done,
In anticipation for much Christmassy fun.
With Mom in the kitchen, and I as her aid,
Lots of cookies and holiday treats, we got made.

When 1 o’clock came and a pause came o’er all.
It’s an NFL Saturday! Time for football!
Away to the TV, ran young and old.
Time to cheer on our own Black & Gold!

Our Steelers are winning and prezzies are wrapped.
Dinner is cooking and the dogs are well-napped.
When who, to the house, should suddenly appear,
But cousins and brothers, all bearing cases of beer

For the party that night (though one now is okay!)
Touchdown! Thank you, Mendenhall, Batch and John Clay!
The family is happy and the mood, oh-so-Merry
Even if Mom still demands we all clean, tote and carry.

“Now, Dawn, sort the cookies! Now, Helena?” “Yes, ma’am!”
“Help Uncle Harry lift the turkey and huge Christmas ham!
To the tables, bring dinner and treats for us all,
We must eat in a hurry, there’s no time to stall!”

We have dinner at 3, and then church service at 8.
Then, back to the house, where we party til late!
With our cousins, our neighbors, and friends through the years,
We share fun and fellowship, and quite a few cheers.

In the morning, comes breakfast and presents galore
With immediate family (and sometimes a few more).
Its the way we all answer the seasonal call -
Happy birthday to Jesus and Merry Christmas to all!

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Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone, from AVDawn & MrAVDawn, the AV pups and all the extended AVDawn family in Pittsburgh!