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Cynthia Wisehart on Growth In the AV World

As we go to press today, I had to take a meeting I didn’t think I had time to take. But it was an important colleague and I’d already rescheduled twice. As a result of that call, I’m going to veer off technology. Certainly we did talk about technology. But we talked about some other things too that are now more in my mind as we head to InfoComm.

This individual has a long tenure in the industry, but he can also see what’s happening now with new eyes. (He has young adult children). Peppered in among his discussion of video distribution, color space, and VLC was a recurring theme about ease and how today’s young workers are not willing to be owned and enslaved by their jobs. I’m not going to get into a generational debate about the pros and cons of that; there are always pros and cons. But there is also this reality: the people who use your systems will increasingly expect to do their jobs in a reasonable amount of time, take their vacations, and work from wherever they have to.

That may be unrealistic. But it is also unrealistic to cling to the good soldier model that many of us in AV grew up with. I have nothing against staying up all night on a site—it can be a blast. I love hard work, and so do you or you wouldn’t be in this business. I’m just noticing—as I watch my own daughter reach her teens—hard work has to have a point. It’s not a merit badge in and of itself (like we were taught).

Why am I saying this? Because I want to go to InfoComm with new eyes. On the technical side, I want to look for ease of use and smart, modern engineering directed at new generations of users. And, on the personal side, I want to remember that we are all people doing work for our own reasons and in support of our lives and values. If we’re going to stay relevant to ourselves and our peers and customers we can’t forget to be people first.

My colleague remarked today that he’s heard customers say they’re hoping to squeak out a few more years and retire. I’ve heard it too, and if you’re one of those people I definitely get it. Power to you. But for those of us who haven’t earned that position just yet, we’ll need to trade a little bit of diligence for curiosity and self-determination. It’s funny how a meeting about video distribution could touch that off. His Power Point did end on a Darwin quote—something about survivors being neither the strongest nor the most intelligent but the most adaptable to change. That should have been a clue.

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