Business

The ‘Soul’ Of AV Integration

In the time of COVID-19, the answers aren’t in the hardware—they’re in the heart.

The world reels from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). I know that because I was just let go from a good company, under good leadership, with the kind of long-term game plan you would want from any company. However, COVID-19 pulled out the rug from under all that. Indeed, it has pulled out the rug from under the whole AV-integration industry. Yet, I have a confession to make: Part of me is glad.

Let me explain it like this: For some time now, commercial AV integration has had no soul. Don’t get me wrong—it’s full of good people, most of whom care about what they do. But as for the industry itself? Maybe it had soul once, but that was a long time ago.

I grew up with AV from the earliest days of integrated systems (and before). I watched my Dad build the audio equipment in our house. I remember the heady smell of solder in his workshop—the same smell as when I would later secretly fumble with the soldering iron on my own, having broken some device of his that I was desperately trying to fix. Mom was a professional opera singer turned teacher. Dad recorded her public recitals as I padded along, hauling his big, analog, tube-filled, 1/4-inch reel-to-reel deck. I helped pull wire through the dark recesses of our old church as we volunteered to help bring the congregation into the 20th century.

All this cemented my love affair with technologies that connect people not in the electronic space, but, rather, in hearts. It was never about the AV. Instead, it was about tools for creating memories. I later fell into commercial AV without having planned to, just in the way that many of us have done. I attended a small state college and studied things like physics, engineering, programming and music. Admittedly, I had no idea where to apply it or how it would pay off; I just needed a job. Eventually, someone asked, “How would you like to try this new thing called ‘integrated systems’?” It seemed natural.

The first half of my career was exhilarating as I pushed my own boundaries. I started freelance programming, and I always had steady work because I took projects that either nobody else wanted or had obviously been designed by drunken elves. A laptop and a soldering iron were my best friends forever (BFFs). Was it lucrative? Not in the least. However, I established a solid reputation and the work did flow. Eventually, I was called to program super-ambitious systems, completely from scratch, to perform functions for which no pre-canned solutions existed on the chosen platform: media retrieval, show control, kiosk room-scheduling systems, etc. You get the picture—creative stuff.

My abilities in that area caught the attention of Scott Walker of Waveguide Consulting, who hired me. One day, he said, “I want to have a booth at InfoComm 2004 and do something that’ll flip people’s lids. I want to show totally interoperable AMX and Crestron systems.” In those days, you didn’t attempt such a thing or even contemplate it, let alone demonstrate it publicly. We did it, though. We created two systems, generically and scalably interoperable, running the same user-configurable interface, controlling the same devices. It even had a video game!

Scott and I created more together, too, like a user-scriptable show-sequencing system that coordinated hardware I/O across five Crestron processors while managing output to a barn-sized multi-layout videowall. And I captained the Waveguide team that wrote the software for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)’s new global headquarters building in Atlanta GA, including the floor-wide command and control for its emergency operations center (EOC). That’s something I think about a lot right now….

Yet, although that bubble in my AV life was certainly exhilarating, the mainstream of commercial AV was depressing. Each year at InfoComm, I noticed that, despite the hoopla, manufacturers understood little about how their boxes integrated with the outside world. And, attendees would often just go back home and spec whatever product got them the best margins. Control companies actively discouraged people from writing software that pushed the boundaries of what a moderately trained programmer could grasp. (I would argue this was done in the interest of shipping more product.) In other words, creativity seemed to be given little value.

I recall conversations with influential people at major manufacturers. I remember hearing things like, “Virtualization? Yeah…we’re not really into that” or “Ethernet security? That’s not our problem. That’s for IT people to worry about.” Looking back, I’d like to pat myself on the back for having seen the future, but I wish I didn’t have to.

So, what are the conclusions? Here are a few:

  1. We didn’t learn the lessons of the past to create a better software-hardware marriage. Twenty years after AV integration and IT made their first acquaintance, integration software still relies on the same brute-force code methods to get even basic things working. A skilled programmer can spend a day trying to coax a display with a horrifically engineered application program interface (API) to power on and off reliably. It’s embarrassing. Make what excuses you will, but I respond with one term: MIDI. Thirty-plus years ago, the music industry created its own common protocol for interoperability that allows even non-technical people to integrate effectively, thus leaving them with time to do what they really want to do: create.
  2. We don’t seem to get that, in the 21st century, software is where 90 percent of the magic happens. (System solutions are conceptual, and hardware is just the last layer they go through to get into the user’s hands.) Thus, we have no common understanding of how to solve reoccurring problems in systems that generally have one common purpose: videoconferencing. Many of us also don’t seem to know how to maintain them. Make what excuses you will, but I will respond with one word: anime. Over the last 20 years, anime software has evolved to the point where a kid can create a full-blown anime or video-game world in a blink. How is that? Mainstream software architecture and libraries have evolved that encapsulate solutions to the most basic software problems; now, you don’t have to worry about what it takes to draw a brick, or even create a full product. Today, kids get to use a well-developed set of tools that frees them to do what they most want to do—that is, create.
  3. It might be an unpopular opinion, but I believe that, today, we propagate systems that have no soul. I’m pining for that spirit of creativity that would make our systems truly remarkable, yet melt into the world of the user…that would make them accountable, yet unique…that would empower programmers to build true magic that reaches the heart of what an end user really wants to do, instead of endlessly configuring myopic, manufacturer-centric solutions. I don’t think we do that. Make what excuses you will, but I will respond with one name: Steve Jobs.

The best AV-production programmers are weary not because we don’t care, but, rather, because we do care. We know that we’ll repeatedly be asked to screw in the same light bulb in the same way. That can be soul crushing. So, yes, in some ways, I’m glad the commercial AV industry is being disrupted. My first thought was this: “I will use this time to educate myself and I’ll escape the bounds of AV integration, as I have dreamed of for some time. Unless maybe…just maybe….”

Last night, while I processed the weight of both my job loss and the lost contact with the people in our neighborhood, where our kids truly love to run and play together, my daughter and I spent two hours playing bingo with family members on a Zoom call. It struck me like a bludgeon—this had soul…real soul. We melted into that call, and we’ll do so again and again. And I thought, “You know, our industries will be so torn apart after this COVID-19 crisis is over. Our awareness of our needs and expectations will be so different. Maybe the incentive to create things with soul can find footing in the next economy.” I’m still training to keep my options open, but I find myself wondering. Maybe I can help transform an industry that desperately needs soul. The answers are not in hardware; the answers are in the heart.

Be safe, everyone. Make a difference where you can.

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