The Business of People
This last month I had the honor of being invited to represent higher ed and HETMA at CAVLO Conference in Las Vegas, a one-day trade show for the AV industry. While it was a pleasure to speak on our behalf, the true joy came in giving hugs, swapping fist bumps, bro/sister hugs, and doing hands-on equipment demos with real live people. I needed that. I missed that. We all need that. We all have missed that.
The COVID pandemic taught us how to be effective in a virtual world. But, as Aristotle noted, humans are social animals. We need people. We need connection. We need one another.
We are in the business of people. While we spend a majority of our days focusing on installations and trouble tickets, our purpose is connecting people with people. Content delivery is not about pushing PowerPoint slides down cables to projector screens, but empowering one human to impact another. This is why we exist. As AV technologists, we have a duty to enable communication that has the potential to change lives. We need one another in order to be successful at it.
It was common pre-COVID for us to say that we do not go to trade shows and conferences to see new gear–while indeed that is a bonus–but rather to build relationships through likeminded camaraderie. Now, let’s show we meant it. As we enter the new era of AV trade shows, I encourage us to remember the why. Let us remember what we’ve missed, and cherish it.
Thankfully, global pandemics are once in a lifetime occurrences, but the lessons learned should not be. The lesson I have learned is there is nothing of higher value–and therefore worth investing in–than human connection. People matter. Relationships matter. The feeling of loneliness is real. Sharing hope with one another is a blessing we cannot afford to forget.
Now that we have earned a seat at the table, let’s show why. In response to a need, we enabled education to continue. Now, let’s show that we can enable effective teaching and learning through these relationships we built on our campuses over the last eighteen months. The worst thing that can happen as we return to normal is that we actually go back to normal. Investing in our people will continue to pay dividends for years to come. We are in the business of people.
About the Column
The higher ed AV vertical is over a five-billion-dollar sector of the commercial AV integrations industry. Add in the live events, and higher ed accounts for over ten-billion-dollars annually. That’s significant, and why tech managers in our vertical must treat our departments like big business. Every month, Joe Way, PhD, CTS, explores important aspects of business operations, sales, negotiation, finance, and strategy based on over 25 years’ experience in business development, founding and managing several multimillion-dollar companies in the entertainment industry.
