A.V. is NOT I.T. and I.T. is NOT A.V.
Greetings from Ireland, where we are feeling a little more positive knowing that lockdown level 5 is soon to feel like level 4. It’s been a tough 5 months. Now in a few days not only can I travel across Dublin but from the 10th of May, I’ll be allowed to travel across the country. In the US your vaccination rollout has been a lot quicker than in Ireland, but we’re getting there, albeit slowly, with our Irish Prime Minister hoping students will be back on campus for the next academic term. In my view, a little ambitious but we’ll watch this space.
Since my last article, I’ve moved from working for one Dublin University to another all virtually due to the COVID-19 restrictions. How weird that felt to be saying my goodbyes to staff,
friends, and colleagues in a Zoom call and the next morning enter my home office again logging into a new zoom call, under a different university account and staring at the same PC screen and webcam. Surreal, thankfully I have been able to get onto my new campus to see my new office and the technology I’ll be supporting in the future.
It’s been a busy start to the new role and thanks to all who have networked with me virtually on social media and LinkedIn. Your messages of support have meant a lot to me.
On the evening of my first payday with the new role, I decided to take a break from the PC and my other personal projects and studies. I was halfway through a sunset walk with my ice cream before I remembered I was overdue with this article for May’s edition! (Sorry Jimmie!)
Typically in a month where I’ve been flat out busy, the team chooses a topic that I could write and debate for hours. The little nugget of AV/IT. I know how many people I will frustrate when I say AV is NOT IT and IT is NOT AV.
If I had a cent for every time in my AV career I’ve been called the IT guy I wouldn’t have to write this article. I’d be a very rich man. For many AV professionals, they may agree that IT has had its hold on AV for some time and AV has been swallowed up by the IT department. Working in Higher Ed I would agree that most departments in Universities have the Audio Visual support teams as part of the IT support department. Does that make them IT specialists? No! Do I claim to know networking? No! Should a network engineer know what an XLR cable is? No! Should an IT support agent know how to balance a mixing desk? NO!
To those that don’t agree with me, they are probably shouting that paper does not refuse ink in which case I’ll try to justify my reasoning in less than 1000 words. I must remind readers that my background is in TV and Radio production, then IT, then AV which ties in nicely with my media background. 2005, over 15 years ago I started internet broadcasting. Which admittedly is using the
power of IT to broadcast audio to the world.
My University days were spent using mini disks (Editorial note: I’ve lost half my readers!) or a blended recording approach of taking a mini-disk recording, playing it in real-time into Cool Edit Pro before Adobe bought them, and editing the file. MP3 players and recorders were in their infancy. My first MP3 player and recorder I purchased was a brick called an iRiver H340 which I used for outdoor reports. It still works despite the ridiculously slow interface! While I was reporting outdoors another member of the team could be taking photos on a low megapixel digital camera which was state-of-the-art at the time.
Fast forward 16 years and a digital transformation in which children are more advanced than adults in the novelty of telling an AI device to play their favourite song, TV show, or even call their grandparents. In the space of a year, with a global pandemic every man, woman, and child knows what video conferencing is.
Do we even send emails anymore?
With demand, comes change at rapid speeds, and I mean very rapid speeds with costs reducing drastically for technology we could have only dreamt about 2 to 5 years ago. Let me give you an example. 5 years ago would you believe that we could be doing high definition video calls with hundreds if not thousands of users from every corner of the globe and the annual cost would be as ridiculously cheap as one person’s airfare?
People will shout at me “Justin that’s all thanks to IT” and I will shout back “That’s all thanks to digital transformation!”
Audio Visual and Information Technology are not the same thing. Both areas will always require the fundamentals to make a solution operational.
With audio, you must understand sound, how it is transmitted, and how it is received. Visual has similar requirements. Let’s take an AV over IP solution for example. Just plug in the XLR connection into this box and let this software interface do the rest AKA talk to the IT network team. Does that make AV now IT? In my views, no it doesn’t, and vice versa.
A lot of my time in my new role will be creating interactive videos for students using technology such as H5P and similar software.
For this, however, I still need to know my skills in video recording and audio and how this is mapped out and transferred. I need to set the scene, I need to know how to use a video camera and how to adjust the microphones and sound levels to create a professional video which I then can edit and add the interactive layers.
I’ve discussed, in-depth, on several All Things TechIE podcasts with guests who agree or disagree with the AV/IT convergence. If I was conducting a live event, with a digital mixer, or using Dante or similar, and the network in the room collapses. What is your backup? An analogue mixer and a PA system. Will an IT guy understand how to tune an analogue mixing desk? Will the AV guy know how to fix the IT network?
It’s not an AV/IT merger. It’s a digital transformation, it’s a technology allegiance working closer and closer together for a common good. This relationship, It’s a happy marriage most of the time!
Meet the Author
Justin Dawson CTS® is an Award Winning AV Professional employed in Higher Education in Ireland. He produces the All Things TechIE podcast available at www.AllThingsTech.IE . You can contact Justin on LinkedIn, Twitter and his official website.