AV SuperFriends

Recorded July 17, 2026

Building an internal AV integration team sounds simple enough: hire a few people, buy some tools, and stop paying an outside integrator to discover that the display was unplugged. In reality, it means navigating staffing models, capital projects, facilities partnerships, student labor, service agreements, institutional funding, and the mysterious process by which everyone agrees an idea is excellent while still refusing to provide an FTE.

Special guest Tim Dickson joins to discuss Clemson's effort to expand its internal AV capabilities while supporting more than 300 classrooms with a very small team. The panel digs into which skills should remain in-house, where outside labor still makes sense, how to justify positions through savings and recurring service work, and how existing staff can grow into programming, design, field supervision, and other specialized roles.

Note that this is Part 1 of 2 because the show is allegedly a 30-minute monthly roundtable, but no one involved appears capable of stopping at 30 minutes, or stopping at all. Part 2 will continue the conversation with no meaningful evidence that anyone learned from the experience.

Connect with Tim: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timdickson0ctsd/

Alternate show titles:

• A design apprentice, so to speak

• Don't bring up your dirty math!

• Support Plus

• I could save them $100,000 a year

• I'm going to tag onto Marc and then change

• I can take care of you and you can take care of me

• The AV consultant doesn't know how we do it on campus

• Just like a consultant would…

• That's not the way levers are pulled

• Which isn't a service we actually offer… but it's a service we offer

• This was actually a good show

• It's not like math…

We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com

▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀

► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends

► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social

► Email: [email protected]

► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rss

Donate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support

Recorded July 24, 2026

How long should classroom AV systems actually last? The panel revisits refresh cycles and quickly discovers that the answer ranges from a carefully planned five or six or seven or eight years to "whenever the last surviving input card finally catches fire." We compare full-room replacements with increasingly modular upgrades, debate which components can remain in service indefinitely, and examine what happens when departments treat technology as a one-time purchase rather than something that must eventually be funded again.

We also check in on Auracast, the perpetually imminent technology of the future, following a real-world deployment at a UK train station. Then, because apparently this is something campuses must now consider, we discuss securing classroom computers against people opening them up and stealing the RAM and GPUs.

Along the way, we encounter abandoned projection screens, emergency spare parts, classrooms held together by obsolete switchers, and the uncomfortable realization that sometimes the only sustainable refresh strategy is moving a still-working component from somewhere nobody will notice.

News story: https://www.avnetwork.com/installations/ampetronic-listen-technologies-auri-installed-at-brighton-station

Alternate show titles:

• Let's talk about the Apple thing real quick

• Are all of you still hot on this?

• This is the technology of the future and it always will be

• I'm not trying to convince you that this isn't going to happen

• Laser stream quantum version

• Micro-pirate radio station

• Everything else is loosey goosey

• Covid 2: The Return

• Some years we ebb, some years we flow

• We just signed on to lease our computers

• I don't get a choice

• Let's go to the other side of this… Justin!

• So we said "Hey" (Hey!)

• Blow through a couple projectors

• Room Classic!

• Cells don't make audio

• Plug this hole with an AV widget

• I keep trying to ignore your hand

• You need to be careful with that word: guarantee

• The first wave of technicians…

We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com

▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀

► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends

► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social

► Email: [email protected]

► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rss

Donate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support

Recorded June 26, 2026

Freshly returned from the show floor at InfoComm 2026, the AV SuperFriends gather for a full-length roundtable on trade show regrets: the booths they missed, the sessions they skipped, the demos they should have recorded, and the party they may never emotionally recover from missing.

This episode wanders through the aftermath of a massive conference week, including arguments over who should really be explaining AI to the AV industry, what happens when AVIXA TV is more networked than expected, why show-floor "hidden gems" are still somehow hidden behind the wrong booth wall, and how even seasoned attendees can come home realizing they saw only a tiny slice of the show. Along the way, the crew revisits booth tour challenges, suspicious conference sandwiches, tote bag logistics, USB-C mysteries, browser-based control, over-caffeinated presentations, and the now-legendary Panasonic dinner brownies.

It's part InfoComm recap, part confessional, and part warning label for anyone who thinks they can actually see everything at a trade show. Alternate show titles:

• It was a wet wrap

• Back door Uber ride

• Cold air blowing on your butt

• The brownies… like popcorn!

• Another Larry-free Friday

• Just a conference center with a bunch of tech

• That little bit of confidence was shattered

• Y'all got chili dogs?

• Just buy the damn meat

We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com

▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀

► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends

► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social

► Email: [email protected]

► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rss

Donate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support

Recorded July 10, 2026

Who owns the classroom, and who pays when the technology inside it breaks, ages out, or needs to be replaced?

This week, the AV SuperFriends compare the very different ways their institutions classify, schedule, fund, refresh, and support academic spaces. What sounds like a simple split between general-purpose and departmental classrooms quickly turns into covered spaces, shared rooms, temporary surge spaces, competing service levels, one-time grants, and departments that may not even want the rooms they have been assigned.

The panel explores how those ownership models affect classroom standards, support response times, project planning, and long-term refresh cycles. Depending on the institution, technology may be centrally funded and maintained, or left to individual colleges and departments until something finally dies. That creates uneven classroom experiences, endless arguments over responsibility, and the recurring question of whether a problem is a support ticket, a project, or someone else's headache.

Then, the conversation turns to the lowly document camera. Are faculty still using them, are they quietly collecting dust, or have schools simply stopped replacing them to see whether anyone notices? Along the way, the group praises SynAudCon training, proposes an unauthorized CTS study guide, debates whether the math really matters, and takes the usual scenic route through commissioning, punch lists, bad terminations, and dramatic lectern advertising.

News article:

https://www.avinteractive.com/news/training-news/avixa-offers-members-pro-audio-training-from-synaudcon-02-07-2026/

Alternate show titles:

• It's like watching an old movie

• That's a feature, not a bug

• There is math, but it doesn't really matter

• What's going on at your school?

• …and nobody has time for that

• I wish I was y'all

• Is this a pyramid scheme?

• That's where I get a little cloudy

• We only upgrade when things die

• A DMPS with leather

• Good colleges who operate in an intelligent manner

• That's a seminar room!

• We're not allowed to ask about the budget

• How do you design around that?

• Everything's going to die and you're going to be hosed

• We had parts and we had whole rooms

• Just take 'em out

We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com

▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀

► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends

► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social

► Email: [email protected]

► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rss

Donate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support

Jamie visits the Vanco booth at InfoComm 2026 to learn about the EVO-IP AV-over-IP lineup, from full-featured systems with Dante, USB, control, video walls, and digital signage to simpler plug-and-play options. The conversation also gets into Vanco's Dante adapters, including USB-C and ARC tools that solve some very specific, very annoying higher-ed audio problems.

https://www.vanco1.com

In this Perspectives episode, Jamie stops by the Telycam booth to check out the new Explorer PTZ camera family, including larger Sony 4/3 sensors, better low-light performance, brushless motors, 12G-SDI, HDMI, NDI, and onboard recording. They also dig into the Mix One, Telycam's all-in-one PTZ controller, switcher, and streaming device that might be doing just enough to make Jamie's camera hunt finally end.

https://telycam.com

In this Perspectives episode, we stop by the Inogeni booth at InfoComm 2026 to dig into the IP2USB and its ability to turn IP video streams, USB cameras, and Dante audio into a clean USB conferencing source. We also get a look at CamTrack, a tiny box doing big-room camera automation tricks without forcing everyone into a whole new camera ecosystem.

https://inogeni.com

In this short Perspectives episode, we stop by AVPro at InfoComm 2026 to learn about the ConferX AC-CX42 Pro, a compact conferencing switcher with dual USB-C DisplayPort alt mode inputs, KVM switching, bidirectional USB data, and power delivery. It's a quick look at a device that may solve some very real classroom and conference room headaches, especially for higher ed spaces juggling resident PCs, BYOD laptops, USB peripherals, and "why doesn't this just work?" workflows.

https://www.avproglobal.com

Recorded June 12, 2026

In this Fourth of July–flavored episode of On Topic, the panel celebrates America's birthday the only way they know how: by declaring independence from the worst habits in higher ed AV.

This month's grievances include single-vendor ecosystem lock-in, consultant-led designs that ignore campus standards, isolated "AV network islands," overcomplicated touch panels, mystery DSP files, proprietary cables, terrible display home screens, and every "professional" product that somehow requires a cloud account just to configure the thing.

Along the way, the panel debates automation versus user control, whether classrooms really need touch panels at all, and why interoperability always seems to mean "mostly works, as long as you bought everything from us."

It's patriotic, petty, and painfully familiar: a fireworks show of AV complaints aimed directly at the systems, specs, and design habits we should have dumped into the harbor years ago.

Alternate show titles:

• We might be making headway

• The future of buildings

• No new islands!

• At least a ferry service

• Press to start

• Blank and Freeze

• I want to agree with you, but…

• Sometimes people plug in things they don't want to see

• No middle ground

We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com

▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀

► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com

► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends

► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends

► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends

► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social

► Email: [email protected]

► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rss

Donate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support

In this Perspectives episode from InfoComm 2026, we sit down with Aaron Todd of OpenAVC for a conversation that goes well beyond a simple product demo. OpenAVC is an open, platform-agnostic AV control platform aimed at breaking the industry's long-standing dependence on locked-down hardware ecosystems and expensive proprietary boxes just to run simple room controls.

Aaron walks through the philosophy behind the project, how it can run on everything from Windows and Linux to Raspberry Pi and even Android tablets, and why AV control should increasingly be treated as a software problem rather than a hardware purchase. We also get into GitHub, community contributions, driver support, AI-assisted development, and why open tools like this could be especially meaningful for higher ed teams trying to stretch budgets, extend the life of existing systems, and build the workflows they actually need.

This one leans into the bigger story: open control, cost savings, higher-ed relevance, and the "why are we still doing it this way?" disruption angle.

https://www.linkedin.com/company/openavc