One of the challenges facing the AV industry is not convincing young people that technology is interesting. They already live with it every day.
The challenge is helping them realize there is an industry behind those experiences and that there could be a career waiting for them there.
That was a recurring theme when ScreenBeam’s Nancy Blanchard and Daryn Rank talked with Ryan Gray at the HETMA Golf Classic. For Blanchard, creating the next generation of AV and IT professionals starts by giving people opportunities to experience the industry.
“We’ve talked about this for years, and it really is difficult to get in,” Blanchard said.
Internships are one way to change that. Even an entry-level opportunity in inside sales or another part of the business can introduce someone to AV, surround them with mentors, and expose them to career possibilities they may not have known existed.
“Allow them to be able to experience it,” Blanchard said, “and maybe this is an industry that they want to be in.”
Campuses Already Have an Opportunity
Higher education has another potential entry point sitting right on campus: student employees.
Blanchard specifically pointed to the value of student workers within college and university technology organizations. A student may start by checking classrooms, helping faculty, or troubleshooting basic technology, but that experience can quickly expose them to networking, audio, video, control, programming, and the increasingly blurry line between AV and IT.
It can also show them what supporting technology professionally actually looks like.
For some students, that campus job will simply be employment while they finish their degree. For others, it may be their introduction to an industry they never considered joining.
Rank, ScreenBeam’s Director of Business Development, sees another advantage for this generation. Today’s students have grown up with much of this technology.
Sharing content, video calling, gaming online, and collaborating through technology are already normal parts of their lives. They do not necessarily need to be convinced those experiences are valuable. Instead, there is an opportunity to show them what happens behind the scenes to make those experiences possible.
From Using Technology to Understanding It
That connection is particularly relevant for ScreenBeam.
The company’s education solutions are centered around wireless presentation and collaboration, allowing users to share content from the devices they already carry. ScreenBeam has also expanded its platform into areas including digital signage, campus messaging, and emergency alerting.
To a student walking into a classroom, wireless sharing may seem simple. They already know they should be able to put something from their device onto a larger display.
As Rank put it, “They already know they can share the screen. Do you have the tech that can do it?”
Behind that simple expectation is an entire world of AV and IT: networking, security, device management, system design, support, user experience, and infrastructure that needs to work reliably across a campus.
Helping students see what is happening behind that experience can be another way to spark interest in the profession.
Blanchard has seen a similar opportunity with digital signage. In some schools, students are given responsibility for creating signage content that is then distributed throughout classrooms or other spaces.
Suddenly, they are not simply consuming technology. They are helping use and manage it for a real purpose.
More Than One Way In
That exposure matters because there is no single type of person who belongs in AV.
Rank pointed to the range of opportunities available across the industry. Someone who loves technology may find a technical path. Someone who excels at communication may find another. Sales, engineering, programming, design, training, support, project management, and relationship building all need different skills.
Sometimes the hardest part is simply discovering those careers exist.
That is where programs such as the PRISM Scholarship can make a difference. ScreenBeam’s support of the HETMA Golf Classic helps support a scholarship designed to create opportunities for people who might otherwise have a harder time finding their way into the higher education AV community.
ScreenBeam also has a broader relationship with that community. The company became a HETMA sponsor in 2025, describing the partnership as an opportunity to engage more closely with higher education AV professionals and bring practitioner feedback into its product development.
That community piece matters to Rank.
Higher education AV brings together people from large universities, small institutions, community colleges, manufacturers, integrators, and many other corners of the industry. Once someone finds their way into that community, there are opportunities to learn from people who took very different paths to get there.
The first step is giving them a way in.
Internships can do that. Student employment can do it. Mentoring and scholarships can do it. Even giving a student responsibility for technology on their own campus can provide the spark.
For an industry thinking seriously about who comes next, Blanchard’s advice may be the simplest place to start: give people the chance to experience AV.
Then let them discover where they can take it.
