Certifiable? Certified!

One valuable service provided by Infocomm, the trade organization for the audiovisual industry, is a system of certifications for audiovisual professionals. Last week I passed a career milestone in earning my CTS-D (Certified Technical Specialist - Designer) certification. So what are these certifications, why do they matter and, most importantly, what do I do next? Infocomm has two levels of certification. There's the basic CTS (certified technical...

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Feminism, Writing, AV Design, and other Modern Sports

This will be a wide-ranging post containing writing, politics, and hint at writing. If you've come here looking for AV and nothing else, you might want to skip to the last paragraph; this isn't a political blog or a feminist blog, but there are times I touch on both. This is one of them.There's been some spirited discussion about Anita Sarkeesian's return to producing her Feminist Frequency videos, with an ongoing series on sexism in video games. As a writer I find this branch of feminism interesting because it dissects the role stories play in...

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AV Systems, Integration Angst, and what I did last Thursday

UCLA-based Greg Brown has been giving us something of a customer's-eye-view of the AV industry in his blog over on the Infocomm site (for those not in the know, Infocomm is the professional organization for the AV industry). He recently had a pointed two-part series on some of the challenges he's faced with AV integrators in general and in the higher-education vertical in particular. Specifically, in subsequent posts he identified two very different issues: poor design and poor workmanship. I'll leave the latter for another day, although there...

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Some new products: dispatch from the Mitsubishi Roadshow (and more!)

This afternoon I had the opportunity to drop by Mitsubishi's Consultants' Roadshow here in New York. It was a nice opportunity to see what Mitsubishi and some other vendors are up to in terms of new AV products and all-too-briefly chat about the present and future of the industry. Throw in another stop for Delta Display's new short-throw front-projection videowall unit and a visit by the good folks from Biamp and today was quite the day for AV products,...

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Book Review - The Magicians, by Lev Grossman

I picked this one up on a very enthusiastic recommendation from a friend. We all have books we like, books we love, and book about whic we become downright evangelical. For him, this bordered on the latter. I'm not evangelical about it by any stretch, and am not even quite sure that I love it, but did like it very much and am glad to have given Grossman a measure of my time.The Magicians follows three well-worn fantasy tropes: the wizard school,...

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