AVWeek === Tim Albright: [00:00:00] On this episode of AV week, what happens when your big ginormous scoreboard goes down? Crestron pulls the curtain back on chip shortages. And what is the appetite for AV over IP, all that, and more next on AV week, the network for the AV industry. What are you listening to this? This is AV, this, this, this is AV nation nation nation. This is B. This is AV week episode 5 77 recorded Friday, September 9th, 2022. Transparency is king. Support for AV nation is brought to you by Shure. Sound extraordinary. And by Atlas I E D innovative audio solutions for every business environment and by, Atlona the go to provider for AV signal, distribution and control in [00:01:00] corporate higher education and residential spaces. This is AV with your weekly wrap up of audio, visual news and information. My name is Tim Albright. I am your host with us to discuss. The news and information we have gathered this week, first and foremost, Willie Franklin from Franklin event services. Welcome, sir. Willie Franklin: Thank you. Thank you, Tim. Good to be back. Tim Albright: Good to see you. Good to see you and Mitch James King from U N L V. School of medicine. Welcome, sir. James King: Thank you Tim. For having me. Tim Albright: Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, we are recording this on the 9th of September. I mentioned that because there's a whole lot of stuff happening in September and October. Um, Crestron's got their, uh, their modern work summit in a couple of weeks in, in addition to masters. And then CEDIA comes right after that. So if you're bouncing around in the, uh, in the industry and going to any of these events, make sure that you, uh, Get huddle up with our colleagues, take some pictures and put it out on the, on the socials. That way Chris Netto knows what's happening. So, um, more of a joke. Uh, first story [00:02:00] comes to. From our friends over at AV network. Uh, honestly it could have been, uh, written by a whole number of folks, but Crestron, uh, sat down, uh, Dan Feldstein, the CEO, as well as Dan Brady, uh, the COO and, uh, Mr. Uh, Brad Hensey, um, the vice president of marketing for Crestron all sat down in a handful of town. and addressed, uh, supply chain issues, uh, addressed, uh, some of the things that, um, they're, they're, they're facing, um, in addition to they answered questions and that's one of the things that I, that kind of took me by surprise, certainly understand. Uh, the, the, the presentation certainly understand the, the town hall. But the thing that, um, that really kind of struck me as, as transparent, to be honest about it guys, uh, is that they sat down and they took questions from a number of, of sectors. One of the presentations they did was, uh, focused on the residential market. One of the presentations they did in the town halls, they did was certainly focused on the commercial market and they [00:03:00] actually split that up into, into two different ones. Uh, but I wanna say something here or, or, or repeat something that Mr. Feldstein said, we truly care. We're taking every possible set possible to navigate through this climate from physically redesigning products, to finding new ways to procure components and creating alternative solutions. Even if that means using our competitors' product. Put that pin in that for a second, we're committed to getting through this, that every single order ships and we are committed to getting through this together. Willie, I'm gonna start with you on this. That was to me, not only. Transparent, but it was remarkable for a manufacturer to say, we're, we're even willing to use our competitor's products to make sure that our cl clients and our customers are, are taken care of. Um, not for nothing. Crestron is a hundred percent a, a, a sponsor of AVNation. So are several of, of their competitors. All of them are having issues on some level right now, [00:04:00] but how is Crestron? And, and honestly others, How are they're handling on the supply chain issues? How was that impacting the, the AV users, the, the colleges and the education educators. Willie Franklin: Oh, uh, thanks Tim. I, I first have to say that Crestron's move was very illuminating and, you know, we've all heard the old adage that cash is king, but transparency, and this marketplace is cash equal king. And to have that level of transparency. To own the fact that you're trying to deliver, but you're up against a wall. Um, personally, I, I, I kind of wanted to cheer I'm, I'm too large of a man to be a good cheerleader, but truly I wanted to cheer when I read the article, when I saw that level of, uh, disclosure on the part of CREs run's leadership, there are so many of us who struggle. basically our challenge to meet the needs of our [00:05:00] clients out there, whether it's in the consumer realm, whether it's in the residential commercial realm, particularly in higher ed though, um, when you can't deliver, um, it breaks hearts on both sides, the seller, as well as the client. To be able to have that sit down conversation with your client as CREs run has done really because we're they're clients, right. And concretely share what their plans are, what. Action will be what their deliverables will be and to recognize that they cannot control the marketplace. As we think about the supply chain, uh, more to the point to break it down to a granular level, you know, when we talk about a product that may have 2,500 parts and those 2,500 parts may come from 250, as they cited different suppliers. That's a real world scenario that is easy for people to [00:06:00] recognize and appreciate. So when you start talking delays, when you explain what's behind the delay, I think people get it. , uh, it doesn't mean that they're not gonna pester you every single moment, uh, of the day or every week and ask, Hey, when can I get that? But again, going back to what crest run has done, uh, which is to take a strong leadership position. When we talk about disclosure, when we talk about, uh, really debugging or demystifying, the supply chain, Uh, fiasco and, uh, and being honest and saying, we really don't know how long this will go on, but it is getting better. Uh, so I, I hope that kind of brings it home for a little bit of the conversation in answering that question. Tim Albright: No, I think it does. I really do. Uh, James, same kind of question. Uh, Willie is, is, has recently been, been, uh, has recently left the education space, but you're strike still right in the middle of it, James. So how is this impacting, [00:07:00] uh, how are these, how these companies are, are handling this, the, these shortages? How is that impacting folks on as and universities? It James King: it's impacting us hard. Um, That's the thing is, and this is a conversation I have had with integrators. Multiple times classes start when classes start, we're not a fortune 500 company. We're not a, a bank or even a small, uh, commercial or even REI where, you know, oh, I can't get this gear. Let's push this project back 6, 7, 8 months classes starts when classes start, we need to have partnerships. Companies like Tron and these other manufacturers who can go, all right, well, let's come up with a solution so we can get your classes going. Cause when you have a hundred, 200 students rolling in, you can't go, oh, I'm sorry. We can't teach you. Cuz we have delay in the equipment they're coming in. They're coming to learn and we need to achieve that. I would like to add, I, I agree [00:08:00] with Tim. The transparency here. And it was very nice. And folks who know me, I actually run a backend slack channel. That's private to higher ed folks during the higher ed, um, town hall that Crushon had, that chat was going off a lot of different ways. But what was really nice, what I found refreshing that CRE island did was, as Tim said, they took questions and it was live. Cause we had questions in our back channels. We submitted it and they answered it on air. And I have to say that was great. Tim Albright: Yeah, that, that was a bit of a, of the, the plane without a net that I was, I was surprised about quite frankly. Right. Um, I I've been a part of, of a number of Crestron events over the years. I. I've moderated some I've I've, you know, I've, you know, done some, some fireside chats with them for over the years and, and most of the time, right. They're they're not, not scripted all the time, but [00:09:00] most of the time they're, they are rather scripted have taken questions in the past. But typically from, from the, a live audience, this was more from, you know, a webinar type, basically. Right. Where, where anybody that's kind of logged in, can ask a question. Um, And, and they literally, they, they really did answer. So yeah, absolutely. Um, next actually, let, let's move on this one, cuz I, I do have a couple things I wanna get to here on, on, on this week. Um, this one kind of goes into the, the, the first story about, about Crestron and the chip shortage kind of goes into this one. Um, and, and that's from AB magazine, uh, talking about Nate. Um, Nate has, has, uh, UN. Entire support for Dante enabled video, um, through domain, um, manager, domain manager, the version specifically is, uh, version one, four, that version there, uh, is, uh, giving people the ability to, to really kind of fully embrace the Dante enabled video. I'm gonna start with you James, on this though, when it comes to, to [00:10:00] the AV over IP and some of this. Right. One, one of the products that Crestron's having issues with is in VX, which is their AV over IP. Uh, some Dante chips, uh, aren't aren't being, uh, shipped as well. So they're, they're, they're having issues supplying to their manufacturers. When, when you guys look at the, the AV over IP infrastructure today, the market today, and in the environment of these supply chain issue, is there still a, an appetite for that or, or I guess what is the appetite for that? Um, and, and how are we solving that, you know, both in the corporate, but also, uh, in the higher ed, uh, space, is there an appetite? James King: Yes. How are we solving it? Software? Uh, Dante is doing a good job with that and people know I had been following Dante for a while. Um, I think there really became the staple. Of audio over the network, routing [00:11:00] handling it. And now they're in video, I've been watching their video and I became almost a fanboy at Infocom is when I went over, you know, I wanted to go talk to the AB tweets, you know, Frank Patala and them, uh, Alicia. So I went over to talk to him, but I saw what D audience was doing with Dante video at their. I was anyone I could grab on the floor. I was showing them and taking them over there. Cuz I saw it was a very, uh, cutting edge. Uh, well, I wouldn't say cutting edge, but very refreshing what they were saying doing, and this is something I've been watching and monitoring and waiting for for a while. So I think that's really what's coming at the issue is. With, especially in the higher ed is making sure that the price comes to where we are. It's feasible. I mean, right now it's cheaper for, in the black boxes into our [00:12:00] classrooms than to do AVO or IP, but I don't think that's gonna be that way for long. Tim Albright: Well, same question here is, is, is where is that appetite headed? Uh, especially in this environment of, of supply chain. Willie Franklin: um, Tim, I think the appetite is just growing. You, you know, I'm just a little bit beyond 30 days of leaving the higher ed, uh, framework and working in that arena. And now more the private sector, uh, as an operator of a DJ in the event services business. But I can honestly say the clients that I've worked with thus far and have been working with, certainly have an appetite for. Video over IP. Um, right now I have two clients that we're looking to live stream a couple of events and thank goodness we have all the hardware currently in place. But what I see happening is we've kind of become used to being able to grab a cell phone and live stream something from one location to another, and allow a ton of people to join. And that [00:13:00] seems to hop right into the next framework of thought. So now you're in the corporate environment. And if your cousin could stream that video of the little kid's birthday party and 15 relatives from all over the us were able to join. Why can't I, as a doctor in this corporate environment, have this discussion with my team and that discussion is delivered all. To uh, partner medical facilities that are part of this conglomerate network, if you will. Or we look at the entertainment industry and by entertainment, I, I think about a recent event, uh, that I hosted at a local casino. You have all of those various rooms, um, who would like to take part. Central event, that main event. Um, so it becomes a real hunger to be able to push video and audio real time, very little latency to all of those locations, essentially all of those clients or all of those audiences [00:14:00] within that building environment. So I truly see, uh, that whole AV over IP industry industry, uh, growing. And certainly as we think about. What we've been kind of pushed into thinking how we responded to COVID from an AV management staging AV integration standpoint. Um, that really became a must for business continuity to continue to be able to connect. Right. And, and, uh, deliver that content to audiences wherever you're at. Um, the, I guess the short answer is we've become so accustomed. As consumers of technology that I think part of the hunger is what's next. Why can't it be easier? Why can't I have it now? Uh, it's almost become a fast food item, uh, and, and maybe that's underselling it or overselling it, but, um, [00:15:00] I don't know, user expectations no longer see the big hurdles of bringing technology to them anytime, anywhere. Um, they won it and they won it. Tim Albright: So James, and then, and then Willie, either of you jump in on this, you know, something that Willie just said there is, is the, the barrier entry is perceived as X, right? The, the barrier of entry is perceived to be lower. And I, I, a hundred years ago, right. When I, when I was still programming pretty badly, but still programming. Um, you know, I remember a story of a, of a CEO coming in and. you know, being able to, this is, again, this is 10, 12 years ago, guys. So don't, don't, don't at me. This is before the barcode click share, but they, they could take their iPhone. Actually their, their kid is, is how they put it. Their kid could take their iPhone and they could throw a video up on their screen in their TV. Why can't I do that in my boardroom? Right. And at the time there wasn't a [00:16:00] mechanism unless you went and you got an, a, an apple, uh, TV, right? And you put it on the network, which cause other issues with the net admins. Right. And the security folks. But when the CEO says it there, you know, there's it darn near, better get done. Right. And then you went into other issues like, you know, well, whose account is it and all that jazz. But we were finding consumer ways to do it because the consumer industry is who was doing it before the commercial right before the security, the secure part of it and all this jazz. So. Is is there is the bar bar really lower? Is the bar barrier to entry really lower or is that just the perception of the people using James King: it? It's, it's definitely a perception. Um, I've heard that. My 14 years in higher ed is I can do this at home. Why can't I do it here? And you don't, the consumer stuff is made to be [00:17:00] simple and to work, but it, it doesn't have the security. It doesn't have the functionality, the enterprise, the scalability that we all need in our environment to be able to support this remote manager, going back to William's example of. Streaming your kid's birthday party. Yeah, that's great. But you know, if it, you have a hiccup and granny can't watch the she's gonna accept that risk, but a CEO is giving a, uh, keynote speak and there's a hiccup. No, one's gonna accept that as a okay. Failure. So the, the perceived barrier is there. The support barrier we know is not there and it's much higher and we need to. Educate our users to show 'em that the consumer gear is not to the standard as a, um, commercial gear because of security, because of [00:18:00] reliability cause of scalability, um, that they come accustomed to from the sport that we give them. Uh, but agree. We, when the CEO asked for it, you make it work, but that's the thing. We are very good at making Willie Franklin: it work. James, I could not agree more. You said it very well. Uh, kudos. And you know, for me, I try to use, I don't know, uh, very common analogies to explain very complicated technology, uh, that barrier to entry and support is chaotic because your home end user definitely wants to do in the office. What they're doing at home. Um, I can tell you concretely of turning on my television one day and seeing my neighbor's church service on my TV, because he connected to my TV with his laptop instead of his own, we just happen to have identical models. You can't do that in a corporate environment, right? If, if you're that CEO and you're [00:19:00] giving that presentation in a medical facility, And all of a sudden adjacent bus businesses are picking up your feed. You've got FERPA issues, you've got HIPAA issues. It gets nasty. You get into risk management very, very quickly. It becomes very costly. Uh, I think the simplest way I, I try to. Frame things for people to understand. As I used the example of electricity, you know, you walk into your room, you reach around, you flip your light on your light, comes on, you know, in your mind, it's easy. It's just a light switch. And the light comes on for those in the industry. They've gotta figure out load capacity. They've gotta figure out distance of transmission line. They've gotta figure out. Whether it's gonna be hydroelectric, whether it's gonna be wind solar nuclear beyond that. Even if they have enough money to, to buy enough transmission lines, they've gotta get from point a to point B, how many jurisdiction and municipalities do they now need to get approval? How many, uh, Easements [00:20:00] must they cross to get electricity to your home. It becomes extremely complicated and it takes years to make it happen. But at the end of the day, you come home, you flip the switch and it's just on. So our role is to understand at the granular level, what it takes to get it done. And it's complicated because with all of that technology, we then have to boil it down to just a common convers. Without the technical jargon, um, that makes sense, you know, without insulting a person's intelligence, right. And, and it is not an easy role. Uh, but apparently we do it darn well because the expectations are there every single day and they continue to grow. Tim Albright: See if you guys would just slack off a bit, your, the expectation would, would be lower. Do not take advice from me. Kids do not take advice from Tim. All right, here we go. Last story, uh, comes to us from a nation, uh, and, and our parent company CTI, um, a couple weeks ago [00:21:00] at SoFi stadium, the, um, the Cowboys and chargers were playing. And let's just say they. Issue, uh, from the official Twitter, from SoFi statement, we exper experience an outage with our internal broadcast system. We are resetting and expect all systems to be up and running shortly. Quote unquote. So if you don't know what we're talking about, it is the big ginormous, uh, Samsung display that is in the middle of SoFi stadium, which is the home of the Rams and the chargers ginormous gorgeous scoreboard. Well, it was blank for three quarters. Uh we're we're recording this on the ninth of, of September, the weekend of opening kickoff for the NFL season. And just so I've said this out loud, The Rams lost last night, that could not come more times just in general, as someone from St. Louis, uh, and go bears. Uh, so, uh, we, we interviewed a bunch of, of [00:22:00] really smart folks and said, okay, how do you prevent that? What happens if, if this happens again, right. Uh, so make a plan, right? Have spares on hand when it comes to that, protecting your system from anomalies, all sorts of really good stuff. Really we'll start with you on this. This is a facilities and quite frankly, an integrators and a, and a user's worst nightmare, right? It, it it's, you're, you're getting ready to go into a game, a facility, whatever. And your system, your big marquee system goes down. What do you do then? Willie Franklin: Well, you don't panic and scream. Oh my God, what's happening. You know, I'm a strong believer. That two is one and one is none. So having spares is critical, but realistically, uh, no one's gonna have a spare Jambo run or a spare video wall. In my case, I had a major video wall go down during an event or our university president was speaking. So the spares for me means that I have add. Adapters on hand converters [00:23:00] processors. Um, just a lot of the granular hardware that powers that big infrastructure seldom have I found that the, that major piece has gone down itself. Uh, it may be something as simple as a power supply. Those can be relatively inexpensive to have in quantity on hand as backup, uh, having an uninterruptable power supply. All of those devices is critical, cuz we never know when brown out conditions, voltage drops or spikes are going to occur and those could be minor, but they can cause major trigger, triggering device or triggering incidents such as system reboots, right. Or system hangup. You know, uh, if that data gate doesn't open, everything goes dead and it just freezes cuz it doesn't know what to do. Uh, again, it's very simple. The end result is very problematic. It's not good for one's nerves. I'll put it that way. Uh, so two is one, one is none [00:24:00] always having backup, um, with the exception of large pieces of infrastructure like that. Yes, certainly we can only hope that warranty is good and by good. I mean, real good. Tim Albright: Yeah. And so, so the story come out, let me, lemme just say this too, the, the, that system and, and, and talked with a couple of folks that were involved. it, it is one of the most, if not the most complicated systems, even talking about the Samsung of display, right. We're talking about the back end, right? The, the, the, the nuts and bolts, the pipes that feed that thing. 10%, top 10% of, of complicated systems in the, in, in the world. When it comes to, to broadcasting and game day experiences in a big that one could go down all y'alls can go down, right? It's Friday afternoon, I'm getting ready to go to head to my, my kid's high school football game this afternoon, this evening. That one could go down if, if sofa could go down, right. So I'm not saying anybody that anybody did anything wrong, it was a freak accident and it, it, it just happened, which is kind of leading us to, to this conversation is what do you do when, when that does, [00:25:00] uh, James, same kind of question. Uh, what, what sort of, of backups of backups and, and like Willie says, you know, one is none in this, in this. I James King: Willie covered great about having the spare gear. I think the most important thing I took from that article, which is the number one is have a plan, make a plan. And what's key to that is not only do you make a plan, but you work the plan. I, I kind of sum this up as a story. My mom told me my mom's a retired teacher and we all know that great schools. And even, uh, higher some higher ed, they run fire drills, you know, but the administration knows when fire drills are, they plan them well, in my mom's school years ago, there was an axle fire teachers saw it, pulled the fire alarm. They, by every student, every kid walked out as. [00:26:00] Administration ran around like chickens with their heads cut off. Cuz they didn't know. They're like, this is our fire drill. What do we do? Because it wasn't planned. They didn't have a plan and they didn't, well, they had a plan, but they didn't practice. They didn't follow their plan. They, the moment happened and they freaked out. So having a plan and being able to go, okay, this is my next step. A drops out and B drops out. I, I hear it all the time on formula one racing. You'll hear it be like, all right, we're gonna plan C or oh, plan. C's not working. We're going plan E we don't know what those plans are, but the team does, you know, you got 26 letters in alphabet. You can have 26 plans or you can go hex decimal and then expand it and expand it even more. So definitely have multiple plans and have multiple ways of doing things in recovering. Willie Franklin: I'm gonna hang on to the hexadecimal piece. Uh, I, [00:27:00] I love that reference, you know, when, when it really gets bad and you go hexadecimal, uh, to expand your options, man, I love that. Great deal. There Tim Albright: you go. Just for the record. If I ever hear James say a hexadecimal, I'm running the opposite direction. Okay. Just so you all understand that's where I'm going to be. All right. Thank you all so much. Willie Franklin, uh, from Franklin, uh, DJ and event services. Thank you, sir. How do people connect with you? Willie Franklin: They can reach me at Franklin DJ services@gmail.com. Tim Albright: All right, very good. And Mr. King, thank you, sir. How do people connect? James King: Uh, you Google me on internet. I'm everywhere. Anything with HETMA higher ed? Um, co-host a bass programmer again. You Google me. You'll find me. Tim Albright: All right. Very good. Uh, for me, for Tim Albright, do not follow me on the Twitters because as I mentioned before, I am an unabashed on a baed bears fan. So I will be complaining, uh, for the next three or four months. It is what we do, uh, although they did reveal a very nice stadium concept. [00:28:00] We'll see where that goes. Uh, hopefully they'll, they'll get, you know, um, they'll get some cool stuff, uh, but go by the website. If you would please, AVNation.tv, that's AVNation,tv . You will find this program and a host of others, a couple things to, to point about, uh, the, the, the podcast, uh, Taylor Moore has a brand new, uh, asked the, uh, or, um, AV profession. And we are sort of secretly not so secretly working on reboots of a couple different programs, uh, including a, uh, higher ed program by the name of ed tech. Uh, it has been on the shelf for a minute and I am quite excited to, uh, to, uh, see where that goes. So check all that out and more at AVNation.tv. That's AVNation.tv. Thanks so much for listening. Thank you so much for watching that's all the time we have for AV week.