*
If you exploring a career in audiovisual technology you may ask yourself whether you really have the qualifications. You may feel that you need to be a technical genius before someone will hire you. This is not true. The vast majority of AV professionals began their life knowing little about presentation technology; they acquired these skills working as a no-nothing, entry-level technician in a hotel or as a driver for a rental company. The most successful technicians are, of course, better-than-average intelligence, but by no means do they reside in the genius category.
My advice is not to worry too much about how you compare with your peers, but to concentrate on going as far as possible with the basic endowments nature has given you. Don’t underestimate yourself. Set yourself a high goal of achievement and exert yourself to advance toward the goal of learning the trade as much as you can.
I would like to stress a particularly necessary element in the makeup of a good audiovisual technician: simple hard work. Many a person of only better-than-average ability has accomplished, just on the basis of work and perseverance, much greater things than some of our so-called AV geniuses. A hard-working individual will succeed where a lazy genius will fail.
This matter of hard work runs counter to the times in which we live with its emphasis on relaxation, shorter work weeks, and more leisure time activities. I cannot feel that the 35-hour work week has much relevance for a creative staging professional. AV technicians are definitely not clock-watchers where the doors of the ballroom are never locked and the stage lights frequently burn late into the night.
Our industry’s destiny lies in the hands of its future audiovisual technicians. I would say that our business has a great and exciting future ahead. Many of the industry’s pioneers have passed away and the second generation of AV technicians (such as myself) are only a decade from retirement. Perhaps you will prepare yourself to lead the industry forward. Someone has to replace us; it might as well be you.
There can be no question as to whether a career in audiovisual and staging production would be interesting—even more than interesting: EXCITING AND PROFITABLE.
In this respect, I would say that AV can be like a career in science. Live event production is an honorable profession, full of discovery. But the discovery of the “new” in live event technology has a thrill and satisfaction unequaled in any other type or kind of business. The AV technician is the first to see new advances in medicine, the first to stage a political rally for an unknown man or woman who will one day be known as POTUS, or to know or see really any new thing. We are ones who enable masses of physicians to see and hear – and thus learn – the latest breakthrough. You will mingle with many celebrities, social elite, and powerful people from all over the world … and they will call you by your first name.
We live in a money-oriented society, but I think that personal success in money matters is often overrated as a standard of values or status. An AV technician must feel that what he is doing is important—there are zest and motivation in his efforts. That said, a career in audiovisual is the highest paid opportunity requiring the least investment in college education. There exist throughout this nation many multi-million dollar AV companies started by former technicians who possess little or no college education. I personally know several audiovisual technicians who never made it out of high school, yet earn over $150,000 a year.
YOU CAN BE PART OF IT.
*
Treffen Saint John 