Tech Wishes from a Small School
Steve Gibbs Jr
It is that time of the year again! The time for kids to make wishes and ask for Christmas presents. Maybe us tech managers are just little kids at heart as we are always looking for that new shiny product that will stop all the help calls. I thought a bit about what I could have if money, time, or staffing were not in short supply. Here are just a few of my wishes as I support AV at a small, private university:
Better design and plans
A good room design and detailed drawings for what you want to do is very important. This can be harder at times in our case since we don’t have a person dedicated to doing this. It would be nice to be able to invest more time and money into these processes so that documentation can be improved. This would also help others as they support a room.
Your documentation should be so clear that someone who is not familiar with your school but does know AV can understand how things work. This will let them be able to figure out what is going on and how to help if there is an issue. I have found that sometimes manufacturers can assist with details like creating a room design. It is always good to ask what these companies can do to help. It is definitely in their best interest for you to install a system the right way and for your team to have it documented appropriately.
More time for programming
Another piece of the puzzle that we don’t seem to have 
enough time for is to spend effort improving the small things that make a touch panel or other component in your room better. It can seem, to some degree, that we have enough time to get the system to work, and then we have to move on to something else. Larger schools usually have the ability to have one FTE that mainly just works on programming and can focus time on deeper details. This allows that person to really hone in on ways to improve how the panel or system works. If we don’t spend time weekly on these programming-type tasks it takes longer to get back up to speed when a new project is started. The more people that are trained on a system the better so then the team can share the load as needed. This is especially important at a small school.
Purchase direct from manufacturer
This would be a dream come true especially for most projects that we are familiar with. It would save us the hassle and make the product easier to acquire. Integrators are great to work with, but it can slow things down and create an extra wrinkle in the process. I strongly support working with an integrator if it makes sense for them to be part of the install, but if we are only buying the product and then installing it ourselves we should be able to buy straight from the manufacturer. This would also allow us to deepen these relationships with the key partners that we have chosen. Manufacturers could work with schools to establish guidelines for how they decide if the staff are capable of doing the install on their own, but at the same time, this would give us access to resources that we cannot get directly now. Our schools are buying a lot of AV equipment so it seems like we should also have a seat at the table.
Consistent refresh cycle
This is another challenge that can happen for smaller schools. Budgets can be tight and not fixed so it is hard to know what to count on. This makes year-to-year changes more difficult. In order to make things work there have been times when we end up moving equipment around more than we would like to. This is often because it takes longer to get rooms updated to the latest projector/display, touch panel, or system. The other issue this presents is that it becomes harder to streamline the support for these rooms since there tends to be more of a selection of products out there. While some spaces are new, others could have close to 10-year-old equipment in the room. This can be the case especially if you have some rooms that get used a lot more than others. If you have to keep and support old equipment like this, it’s trickier to figure out which rooms need updating first since updating all the rooms yearly isn’t an option.
These are just a few of the items on my list that I would ask the AV Santa for this year. One thing I already have is the support of a great group of AV Tweeps around the country and world and that is crucial to what I do. Higher education really has some great folks that you can learn from so please reach out and ask when you have questions or see something on your wishlist that is already being done at another school. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Steve gibbs jr
author
Stephen Gibbs, Jr. is a Senior Educational Technology Engineer at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, VA. He enjoys spending time with his three young kids and interests outside of AV include disc golf and soccer.