This Retirement Thing

Even when I was a kid, I knew I wanted to do things with sound and video, and I've managed to turn that interest into a good living while continuing to learn.

I used to think that designing AV systems was about technology: mics and speakers, cameras and screens. Along the way I learned that serving clients was really about designing systems that made it easier or more satisfying for people to do their day to day. Let's call that the first third of the job description. The second: understanding the construction process and how the tools - drawings and specifications and all the rest of the way we communicate intent and adjust to changes during design and construction - work. Technology is the third leg of the stool. You've got to understand tech and where it's heading to create systems that work reliably and economically. But technology is only one part - all three legs are important.

I started in AV by fixing things. No, that's not true - I started by breaking things in the process of taking them apart to see how they worked. Once I had the innards of a clock or radio or drill in my hands, I fiercely wanted to put them back together again. In the process, while learning about that item, I discovered the world of things like it. Equally important, I learned what not to take apart (like windup clocks - watch out for that flying spring - zing!)

If I could fix radios, I learned I could fix messed up electronic musical instruments - a necessity, when messed up is the only kind of musical instrument my family could afford to buy me. I figured if I could fix my own messed up keyboard organ, why not get myself a job at the local instrument repair place fixing other people's busted gear instead of what I had been doing: sweeping floors at a car dealership. With these decisions, I inched my career along.

I got myself a gig at a FM Productions, a company responsible for major touring acts' sound rigs, and I parlayed that into a job as the instrument tech for Dylan and then Santana. I learned one of the best lessons of my career working on stages in front of 20,000 - 100,000 people: fix whatever is broken without delay, drama, excuses, or disruption.

With Dylan and Santana on my resume, it was easy to get jobs with local audiovisual contractors. While designing and installing systems and seeing customers use them, I learned another AV lesson: every engineer thinks the control system menus they create are perfectly intuitive. We're usually wrong. Engineers generally design user interfaces around the way they think, not for non-technical users' understanding.

I took that experience and others from my 15 years as the guy on the ladder and joined the consulting world - a place where I could make a whole new set of mistakes, and oh boy, did I! I single-handedly invented new categories of mistakes, like the time I designed a rear projection system where I had to shoehorn a third projector into a room designed for two, but while I made mistakes, I also absorbed knowledge from the more experienced consultants around me.

The best things about my decade at Shen Milsom & Wilke and my 12 years at TEECOM were the comradery and over time, the ability to mentor younger engineers and interns, and the thrill of creating systems from increasingly capable though complex components. Designing systems from the comfort of my home is OK; the freedom from distraction is a luxury. But being able to bounce ideas off of other smart audiovisual designers with different experience from mine - and acoustical and telecom engineers - was exciting, fun, and super educational.

The transition from being part of a dozen-plus AV group to BrookTrout - initially just me - was jarring. As a senior consultant at the big companies, I delegated design to junior engineers and gave drawing tasks to drafters. With BrookTrout, I again had to do most of those things myself. As BrookTrout has grown, I now have colleagues to collaborate with - other eyes to look at my designs; new collaborators to mentor.

What do I do with all of that experience now? For a while, I'll continue to engineer and consult, though hopefully less of it. But in the not too distant future, when I've finished my smaller projects and handed off the big one, I plan on transitioning from being a jack-of-all-AV to a more consultative role. But I'm not leaving the audiovisual world. I'm having too much fun creating AV solutions to clients' unique challenges.