>> Chris Dechter: This is AV Superriend off the Rails, an almost regularly scheduled open discussion on audio and video in higher education. We'll sound off about our most brilliant ideas, our dumbest mistakes, and everything in between. And because this conversation will almost certainly go off the rails at some point, we'll end up covering just about everything else. And now the AV Super Friends. >> Jamie Rinehart: 4.
>> Chris Dechter: March 21, 2020 5. It's the best sounding podcast in higher ed. This is the AV Super Friends off the Rails, episode number 106. And now proud to announce we are now fully powered by AI. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Probably completely 100%. >> Chris Dechter: We're not even here. We have completely rendered. We've submitted this to the image and video generation. These are all fake avatars of us.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: The level of GPU that's being used right now to bring this to you is outstanding. >> Chris Dechter: Is all of it. We'using all of it. Uh, let's see. Where'd we go here? I scrolled to my page. Broadcasting live from coast to coast and everywhere in between. Transmitting across time zones faster than crappy Hopeel Wif Fi. And from the back of the rack to the front of the house. I'm Chris deccter and you're tuned in for
another Friday afternoon podcast adventure. Why is this Keep scrolling. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Sure about that? >> Chris Dechter: I don't know the whole things I figured be sorry about that. It's a house of cards here. My uh, clip program crashed too. Right as we started too. That was fun. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Perfecteah. >> Chris Dechter: It's a win win. All right.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Good start all this. That's what it takes to bring you an AI generating thing. It's not quite ready for prime time, as you can see. >> Chris Dechter: We'll get there. But anyway. So let's say hello to today's panel of AV super friends. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Hey. >> Chris Dechter: With uh, this one today I'm joined by a visual communications transformation officer from Kansas City. Say hello to Jamie Reinhardt.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: You only see, you cannot hear. >> Chris Dechter: We're gonn rename him the mute button oper. >> Jamie Rinehart: That's because I'm trying to do visual communication and not audio. >> Marc Cholewczynski: He's trying. >> Chris Dechter: Jamie is actually doing live production stuff in the background on the fly. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Not very successful. Yah. >> Chris Dechter: Also joined by an interactive infrastructure
experience designer from Corvallis, Oregon. Say hello to Mark Kozinski. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Wait till you feel what these structural beams are going to do for you. It is amazing. >> Chris Dechter: Are you an interactive designer or do you design interactive infrastructure? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Just interactive infrastructure. >> Justin Rexing: Okay. >> Chris Dechter: Also joined by a spatial intelligence content orchestrator from Greensboro, North Carolina.
Say hello to Larry Darling. >> Larry Darling: I think these are the Longest job titles we've ever had on this show. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, hold, hold on. Your bud. The next. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Just wait. >> Chris Dechter: Yes, there's one more. And we're joined by our Vice President for spatial experience monetization from Bowling Green, Kentucky, Mr. Justin Rexing. >> Justin Rexing: Space is cool about price.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Square foot here, dude. That's what we're getting into. >> Justin Rexing: You actually created something real again. I think that's two weeks in a row that that's an actual real thing. >> Marc Cholewczynski: These are all real. >> Chris Dechter: I'm pretty sure all of these are. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: Sort of close. >> Marc Cholewczynski: How much does it cost for virtual space right now? Justin, give me
an update on the market we talking about per pixel price. Per pixel. >> Justin Rexing: It's high dollar because it just got tariffs. >> Chris Dechter: No, it's in bitcoin though. Not in. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, yeahah. Don't price it in dollars. I don't care about that. Give me how many sats per pixel? >> Chris Dechter: How many sets per cubic inch of pair? >> Marc Cholewczynski: 7 per pixel. It's pretty cheap then. All right, cool, we're in. Let's go SATs.
>> Justin Rexing: I don't know what a SAT like. >> Chris Dechter: All right, well, anyway, on today'show we're going to discuss getting a seat at the table in large capital projects and and also AV as the metaphorical canary in the coal mine for network issues. But first, not the news, some housekeeping. So if you're listening to this as a recorded to MP3, we do stream live on Fridays at about 3:30 Eastern and 12:30 Pacific or whenever we all get our
act together. Uh, you can join us Live on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Blue sky when they eventually support streaming, which they still don't odly enough. Um, if you can't join us live, we still want you to connect with us on the social. So follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Blue sky and all that fun stuff. Please don't forget to spread the word. Share this podcast with your friends, colleagues, enemies, perfect strangers, anyone who
might enjoy it. If you could tackle people while you're waiting in line at where we are at the grocery store, tackle them, push all their stuff off, uh, the self checkout and start telling them about super friends, that would be fantastic. >> Marc Cholewczynski: If you ever see somebody's phone just on and left there, take it and just subscribe. Just go. Don't just go to the podcast app. Subscribe for us. Appreciate it.
>> Chris Dechter: Next time you go out to dinner with a bunch of friends and everyone puts their phones down on the table, take those phones and subscribe them to AVC Friendss many times. Um, if you Want to support the show, please consider donating your contributions. Help us keep, help us to keep bringing you the honest content you love or love to hate. And you can find the donation links in the show notes or all over the website.
And we do want to hear from you. So if there's a topic you'd like us to cover, or if you want to yell at us about something we said previously, please send us an email or comment on social media. Uh, you can hit us up mailbag at Super Friends, Mailbag, avupfriend, sorry about that. Um, or Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Blues GU, etc. And to that end we got a nice email from a listener the other day, most of which are just sales bites and odd. >> Larry Darling: We did.
>> Chris Dechter: We also, we had a lot of. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Stuff that comes in the mail but every once in a while the gem comes through. And this one was um, and this. >> Chris Dechter: One was following up on our conversation we had three episodes ago. PTP and clocking and timing and all that fun stuff. And this one came in. I did
not confirm whether you can name this person or not. So this was from uh, Chuck who Rodin said um, in the last episode someone mentioned they're looking for a good PTP resource. Uh, here's a link to a Masterclass series on YouTube. So this is free link is in the show notes right below. So gol down right now and you. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Can watch open in a separate window. >> Chris Dechter: Um, so this is, it is a series of videos strictly on ptp, um, coming from
um, uh, some super network nerds. But it's good stuff to know because if you're not dealing with it yet, you will be soon. And most likely your network engineers are not up to speed on this. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So it is capable of being watched and listened to you at 2x speed. The delivery of these is actually really good. It's actually really good. Um, it's laid out really well. So that first one, check it out. It is, it'll give you um, it's
a nice primer, let's put it that way. It's a good primer for the overview. >> Chris Dechter: Of PTP or primer depending on which part of the country you're. So yes. Uh, there's it links in the show notes and it's a three part series on um, u, uh, PTP and all about trying to get PTP wedged through your network appropriately. So, uh, so thanks to our listener there who reached out with that resource. Um, it's a good one and uh, definitely worth, worth your time. Stop what you're Doing
for the next three hours. We'll wait. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You'll be better off. >> Chris Dechter: All right, well let's see. Let me move this back over to this window so I can see what's going on and uh, let's go on to the news. So because you've been waiting for it all week and everyone loves to hear Justin sing along, here goes. Yeah, uh, so this isn't so much a news story as much as it's just a simple product press release. But sometimes like fiction meets reality, it does.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: It's stranger than fiction. >> Chris Dechter: We have been running, let's just call them the fake product commercials for the last couple of years by a made up company called Independent Amalgamated. Wait, hold right over. Can head right over to independent amalgamatd.com and you can um, see all different pages. >> Justin Rexing: I have not received any money, um, spatial monetization or anything.
>> Chris Dechter: That's up to you to monetize that space. >> Justin Rexing: Yes, I haven't. >> Chris Dechter: So this comes from the uh, the folks of Comprehensive who make uh, all sorts of little widgets, chotchkys, adapters, cables, all sorts of stuff over there. They're announcing their new Transformer cable series. >> Jamie Rinehart: Does it come with the noise?
>> Chris Dechter: Yes. Uh, and the way they phrase this is very similar to stuff that we've used in the past about some of our just straight up nonsense where it says, um, Larry, use the other link. Actually not that one. That link is terrible and gives me cancer. >> Larry Darling: But that link shows all of the bad cables, not just the one. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: What? No, this link. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Anyway.
>> Larry Darling: Yeah, sorry, we put the other one up there too. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Equal opportunity there you um. >> Chris Dechter: So the way they describe some of these, basically it's a cable that comes with like little adapters on the end so you can use it in multiple ways and multiple formats and that sort of thing. But the way they describe it is a little interesting. For example, transforms a USB 5G USB C to USB C cable or to USB C into a USB C hdmi.
>> Justin Rexing: Correct. >> Chris Dechter: And back again. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes. >> Jamie Rinehart: So it's a, a thing. >> Justin Rexing: It's a USB cable. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Mhm. It reminds me very much of the balance to unbalanced and then back again that we have. >> Chris Dechter: Back again. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, the Independent Amalgamated Audio bridgeg widget.
>> Chris Dechter: So Justin, I will try reading that again. Does it really have a transformerform? It transforms from a USB 5G USB C to USB C into USB C to HDMI and back again. >> Justin Rexing: It does say back again. It actually literally says that. >> Chris Dechter: Shit, think about that. I know what they're trying to say and what they're trying to get across here. But if you're listening to this while you're driving, try wrapping your head around what I just said there.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I'm looking at it. >> Justin Rexing: Why would you design this in your system? Like, what is this? >> Jamie Rinehart: It's aooter. It's, uh, a. Keeping your toolbox. >> Chris Dechter: Uh. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yes. Do not make that your signal flow. If you find yourself in need of having to have this in your core system, let's have conversation. >> Larry Darling: I can reliably extend hdmi. I can't reliably extend usb.
>> Chris Dechter: Wrong. >> Larry Darling: The solution? >> Marc Cholewczynski: No. >> Chris Dechter: What about in the scenario where no. And I know, Mark, you hate cables. >> Marc Cholewczynski: For. >> Chris Dechter: By. >> Marc Cholewczynski: In general, yes. Just overall. >> Chris Dechter: But in scenarios where you have, let's say, a traditional lectern teaching table, whatever it may be, like a
that comes up that has the little adapter on the end. Wouldn't that be a, uh, useful case for this? >> Justin Rexing: No, no, no, it's not. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You're talking about an adapter. Is that what you're trying to get to? >> Chris Dechter: You just. That's what it says. It's an adapter. And then goes back somehow. I'm not sure what the ab back again part means. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So is this a cable or is this an adapter? What's going on here?
>> Chris Dechter: I'm not sure what's happening? >> Justin Rexing: The words are confusing. >> Chris Dechter: What's happening right now? >> Jamie Rinehart: Just stop. >> Justin Rexing: What else is confusing is the pictures. >> Jamie Rinehart: How is this news? >> Chris Dechter: It's because it's. We're trying to figure out what the hell. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We're trying to bring it up. So people, be careful out there.
Things are getting weird. Shit's. >> Justin Rexing: Get in one of these pictures. Is that Am I see? Display, um. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Whatever you want it to be. >> Chris Dechter: What do you want? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Do you want. >> Larry Darling: This is five wire. >> Chris Dechter: If you extract those pins manually, you can make five rec. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Crimpone it. >> Justin Rexing: Can I get my RGB with sync on green?
>> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm sure there's a salesperson that'say yes. >> Chris Dechter: Yes again and back again. That's the important part. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Analog'extend in back again. >> Chris Dechter: Where does that end? Back again happen? Is it where they choose for you? Or is that up to this part? >> Justin Rexing: Make it sure length, which is branded something.
>> Chris Dechter: Sure. >> Justin Rexing: Length indicators on the connector heads make it easy to organize for installations. >> Chris Dechter: It stop. >> Marc Cholewczynski: See, they want you to make it stop. >> Justin Rexing: Put this in your designs. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Make it. >> Larry Darling: Install this. >> Jamie Rinehart: Make it. >> Chris Dechter: All right, so let me give you guys a blast from the past.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Make it. >> Chris Dechter: This is the entire reason we brought this one up. >> Justin Rexing: Features, Pro id, color identification. >> Chris Dechter: Let's roll you back. Let's roll you back to. I don't even know what it is. What is that? >> Justin Rexing: What's pro id? Color ident. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Do you want it to be Justin? That's the whole point. >> Chris Dechter: Let's take a trip back in time to December.
I looked up the file. December 24, 2020. >> Jamie Rinehart: Do we have patent on that? >> Chris Dechter: Probably that that date. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Here we are. Looks oddly the same as past we came from. Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: And we had this thing from almost over four years ago. Are you looking to really improve your AV integration skins on your next project? Why not try independent amalamated challenge cables? That's right,
challenge cables. Why buy a standard cable and an adapter to put on one, two, or all three ends when you can use challenge cables? We've taken the most common connections you use on nearly every av. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's it. >> Justin Rexing: I'm calling our lawyers. >> Chris Dechter: We had this quite a while ago for just nonsense connectors going back and forth. >> Jamie Rinehart: So somebody comprehensive going. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Damn it.
>> Jamie Rinehart: They found it. >> Chris Dechter: No, it's just weird. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. >> Larry Darling: Okay, who wants to order one? Just to test it and see if it actually works. >> Justin Rexing: Don't even know what to test it with. Like, what are you go goingna? >> Larry Darling: I don't either, but I want to see if it works. >> Chris Dechter: I'm sure there's very specific use cases for all of these.
>> Justin Rexing: So you plug in the USB C side to like a laptop and then you just. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm overwhelmed. As soon as I even go to the website, I don't even know where to begin because it's just like everything you want all in one, but nothing you need. I don't know. I can't even read it. >> Chris Dechter: How big is the. Wait. Uh, I have one here. This adapter on the end of it. Theseug this here. Go, Justin.
This is. This is the end. You plug this in, you make it work. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm sure there's somebody out there. Like I'm gon put in my lecterns and that's gonna be my. My magical mystery adapter or. Sure, I'm sure this is gonna be on that. Those big clumsy rings that people like to have with all. Let me try this. >> Chris Dechter: I've got those. I hate them. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, exactly. And then like it's another flavor
of that of some sort. I'm thinking again, I'm not even 100% sure if this is a cable or an adapter or both or some kind of hybrid version and back like, what is this? Does it do over ip? I don't know. >> Larry Darling: Yes. >> Justin Rexing: Watch it become product of the year at Infocom coming up. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Let's try to make it that as. >> Chris Dechter: Soon as that check clears.
All right. Well uh, I think we've to Jamie's point, given him a migraine and we've uh, augured that one right into the ground. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We did it. We got there. >> Chris Dechter: We're gonna take a quick break. Um, Jamie, are you ready for your, your live production test here? >> Jamie Rinehart: Oh no, hold on to your but J's what happens. >> Chris Dechter: It's been trying to fix one of our elements on the fly.
We're going to run this one, come back and we'll talk about um, uh, getting a seat at the table at large. Uh, uh, commercial or commercial capital projects and all that fun stuff and trying to get, get building there early. Yeah. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Okay, take us. >> Chris Dechter: There's this. The AV Super Friends are sponsored by Computer Comforts Incorporated. CCI has been building tech furniture for the education market since
1987. Instructor lecterns, computer lab tables, collaborative tables and active learning clusters are just a few of the many innovative products made by cci. Speaking of lecterns, Computer Comforts has just released Evolve. If you'looking to future proof your classroom, Evolve is the Swiss army knife of lectern. Seriously, this flexible lectern does it all. Not only is Evolve sit to stand and ADA compliant, its
also packed with tech friendly features. And the best part, it ships fully assembled and ready for action. Check out the 90 second video to see all the options visit computermforts.com evolve Ive been asked by the rest of the team bring up that is a real commercial. That is a real product. You can go order that right now. Um, if you would like to see your product sponsored, reach out mail backag@abcperference.com do we'll figure it out.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Fig it out honestly and fairly. >> Justin Rexing: It's happened as a real company too. >> Chris Dechter: They are real company. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. Check them out. Cool. >> Chris Dechter: And back again. All right. Um, and back.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: So getting a seat at the, the at the table for capital projects, big projects, getting facilities to contact you before they've started putting infrastructure in the walls. Um Mark, I know you guys have had good success with this. Don in particular by physically fighting his way into meetings and tackling people and tickling um, them until they let you.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Speak, you know effectively. The um, when they announce like tickets or something and the lines show up and people are out, out there camp and that's just what we do. We know when their meeting schedule is. We just set up the night before. We're just out there. >> Chris Dechter: Oh, I thought you were gonna say, you know, they're gonna build a new building in that empty field and you guys just start camp. Camp out there. >> Larry Darling: Concert scalper.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Well, pens. What'we talking about? >> Chris Dechter: Two. I got two. I got two. How many need two? I got two. These are up front. These are at the table. I got two at the table. >> Larry Darling: Two boxes at the table. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Um, I think it's little bit of history story how we got there, if we are there ever. I don't know. >> Chris Dechter: How did you got there?
>> Marc Cholewczynski: How did we got there? Um, I think we get it there by first becoming um, reputable in some way. Creating those relationships with folks and being able to one come to table with like this is what it's going to cost because that's how we kind of I think got into it. What's it going toa cost us to do all this stuff? You guys have all these learning space. We don't know what the number is. Can you like tell us what that
is? And then through years and iterative process around that, they're like this is a lot of stuff you guys are doing. It probably requires infrastructure and a well documented thing. >> Chris Dechter: So think we've used to get there. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It probably does. Right. And so. Or we've also had the version of that some other outside firms doing
it. And then it doesn't align with our bill of materials. And so we're in the heat of the moment the day before classes being try to like bring it all in there. So we've all come out of those days. Um, but fundamentally I think it's how do we work well, how do we provide leadership to like all these things and bring our needs to table and be able to have an honest conversation. Um, and we weren't perfect. We had to all the growing pains
and learn process construction process and all that. And so I don't think it's an immediate like here's one silver bolt's gonna get you there. But it is I think about relationships. Right, right. Being honest, um, also being able to be wrong and be at the table and be trusted. I think gaining the trust of your organization to get there. Right. And so that's kind of how we were able to over 10 years become
a trusted partner. Being there at the beginning, um, we have since gone way further and I have worked with our larger facilities groups and network services groups to put together really, um, strong division 27. It's always iterative, it's always growing. But we have kind of supporting documents go along with that. Right. So it's been acknowledged that we are a part of the construction process now, and it
wasn't always that way. So I don't that I'll kind of pause there and let you all kind of say, well, how has your experience been similar? Similar. Okay. >> Justin Rexing: No, it's similar. One variable that you didn't mention that I think is key is that when you're in these meetings and you're at the table with a design team, the quicker that you can solve the problems and more efficiently solving those problems, the more you're
valued. And I think that's where if you're causing problems, it seems like you're saying no a lot. You're gonna get booted from the table. >> Marc Cholewczynski: There's no trophies for finding problems. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah, well, you can find the problem. >> Chris Dechter: But if you do, you should have. >> Marc Cholewczynski: A solution you need to come to. So, yeah. So being acknowledged as a solution provider. Right. And I think that definitely goes along.
>> Justin Rexing: That's because part of my role is basically an inside consultant to wku. And if I can solve problems by creating less cost on projects. Because you're not hiring a consultant and looking out for the client and looking out for the students, which, let's face it, a lot of these meetings that I've been a part of, no one really talks about the student experience. They talk
about what is interested in themselves. If you have faculty or administration at the table, they're worried about lectern. They're worried about the front teaching wall. They're worried about where the bathrooms are. They're worried about all these other things, but no one's there for the student. Y you to the advocate, make sure the bathroom's next to my office. Make sure my office is next to the classroom. I want everything to be on the same level. I don't want to have to be on
the elevator. We've heard all these things and meetings before. >> Chris Dechter: Could we just put your office in the bathroom? Would that help? >> Larry Darling: That's kind of what I was going to lead. >> Justin Rexing: That's where go. >> Chris Dechter: That stall all way down the end is pretty spacious. >> Justin Rexing: And we're going to vent everything right into your office there. >> Marc Cholewczynski: But I think that it's important because I think
maybe m folks don't see that as part of their job. Like, I think we all have different titles and all that. But in that construction process, it is on you to bring the voice of that student and that instructor to that construction meeting. Because usually you look around the table, you don't see the instructors or the students there. Right.
And so you have to be that conduit of experience. Now maybe in like uh, an early on exploratory meeting, but we get into actual process, they're not going to be there, they don't have a voice. And so taking the pile of stuff and all the technology and equating that to an experience and it's not necessarily, it's just this is the what's, it's the why'we're doing these what's to begin with. >> Chris Dechter: Right.
>> Justin Rexing: And so, and explaining why something needs to be done a certain way also helps gain trust over time. Like Mark said, don't just, well, this is how it has to be. Well, if you explain why, then people will have more buy in to what you're saying.
>> Larry Darling: I think that's a key point about going back to the user experience because oftentimes in these meetings you'll have the deans or some instructors in there and they'll talk about the room from their experience. But some of the design choices that are being discussed, uh, from our knowledge and our background, we know we're adding cognitive load to
theent. Like if we have a completely glass room, uh, that seats, you know, 100 people, we're going to have a hard time controlling the acoustics in that space and it's going to make the students experience worse. And so being able to speak up when there are those opportunities. And that's another thing Mark mentioned about
just building trust. You're going to have opportunities when you can make a meaningful impact, whether it's saving the university money, stepping uh, in when something isn an T ADA compliant and you can stop it before it becomes a huge issue. You just have to be prepared for the when those opportunities are there and know that it's going to be a long process to get the seat at the table. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It can be a long process and uh, it can be ugly at times.
Right. >> Justin Rexing: And so it can also be where you're sitting through meetings and you're not really saying anything for three weeks or four weeks because they're talking about roof problem. But you have to have a seat. >> Marc Cholewczynski: At table because you got to be there. And I think early on in the process, if you don't have a mature kind of PM process in your, in your organizations, it may feel like
you're in a lot of meetings you don't need to be a part of. But look at that as an opportunity to understand, learn more and grow on that and like grow from it to be informed of how other decisions are impacting where you may be, you may be in A meeting and say hey, open up a file and look at it. And they're going to change plumbing and it's gonna have a direct impact. You'll see infrastructure moving, like
just become more informed. Um, and kind of going back to the, the trust piece and kind of learning that is. The PMs often are not as fluent in the technology at all. It may sound shocking. They don't know, they don't know to speak. They need you to be that advocate on the what's the, what are they, why are they doing it and bring all that to the table. They don't want to have to go through that with a fine tooth comb. They're hoping that you're going to do that so you will take on more work.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah, most of these meetings aren't about the electronics either. It's about'ing the room and the systems and the plumbing correctly. So the experience is what you're trying to get when you design the electronics. And that's what people care about. >> Jamie Rinehart: And oftentimes it is, let's face it, consultants, integrators, architects, they're not in the business of telling you you can't have it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right.
>> Jamie Rinehart: And so some of these, especially in the discovery meetings, those are the ones I really wish I got invited to more because the discovery is usually some secret back room we might maybe not meeting that is hard to find. And during those phases you'll have the, well let's, we're going to have this room and it's got 400 people and let's do active
learning. And a lot of times whoever you're the representative for building technology who's there, it is not in their best look, they're like oh, okay, well we could do that. Well we can do that too. And that's when you get in those flexible rooms that are really difficult to maintain, you know, from your own experiences. Even if you don't have uh, an integration, an in house integration, maybe you're just support and somebody else puts it in for you, but you have
to support this thing long term. And you can come in and say look, when you have a room that can rotate and has a screen on every wall and a camera on every wall, it sounds like a great idea. But you guys have never liked it. And usually somebody in that room that's from your institution will say oh mhm, yep, okay, okay, you know what, that makes a lot of sense. And now you've actually saved money. You've become so you haven't said no, but you've also Reminded them why they
hate it. Hey, you remember when we had this and Business School 101? Yeah, that sucked. Yeah. Do we want to do that again? >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right. >> Jamie Rinehart: Um, but really, it's really. We found it really difficult to get that initial invite. It was always, um, oh, substantially complete. Why don't you come in and put in the av. Whoa, hold on. Time out. What do you mean?
And we start getting invited earlier and earlier. Sometimes you don't get invited and you have to be mean. >> Marc Cholewczynski: But not all organizations are going toa be mature enough to even be able to do that. Right. And so maybe you're not gonna have the bandwidth to go and be a part of every meeting, but, uh, it's something that
we should all stretch and kind of become more involved. And if you definitely reach out to your capital projects team and try to find out what the upcoming schedules are, if nothing else, just to introduce yourself, say, I'm doing this. I'm trying to make sure that our needs are being met and just start there. If you don't have an active rapport at this point. >> Larry Darling: Yeah. And I've lookucked out that I am in the construction meetings and the planning meetings and those.
The part of the process I wish I was more involved in, and probably the same meetings Jamie's talking about is when you meet with the instructors and develop the narratives about what the rooms are going to be used for. Because I get the. Yeah, that programming meeting, but even before that, like just finding out what, what their vision for the department is for the colleges, like, uh, to get to that level to find out. Those
are the meeting things. I'm still trying to figure out when that those happen and how I can get involved in those. >> Justin Rexing: Usually. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. >> Justin Rexing: So, um. Correct, Larry. Usually when you walk into a building and you look around, you're like, how the hell did that happen? That usually started in programming. And that's where you can catch those stupid mistakes.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Right. Oftentimes early on, you're going to show up in a room and somebody's going to pretend that they already have your job. >> Larry Darling: Yeah. >> Marc Cholewczynski: They've already been paid as part of the project. And they are here. They're the integrator, they're the consultant, all this stuff, and they're already part of that package and let it be. That's fine. You're not going to solve that contract problem in
this, um, immediate piece. Right. It's not going to happen. You're not going to change the signing of whatever that contract was, but you can begin. Right. And let there Be healthy conflict, that's okay. Like do the whole thing. Um, but understand that ALTI agencies looking for a different thing, they're profit motivated. It's a different animal state run schools. Things that are reasoning for being there is not necessarily profit motivated. Right.
And technically our jobs are not just to like buy stuff and put things in. We're there for that experience and the support of that experience. It's a different version and a different kind of glass to be viewing this through. Um, and that's where you're the advocate. It's not about just buying and putting things in. It's a how do we do it sustainably and in a responsible way. That kind of ITSM standard. Don't do something once you're not willing to do a million times.
Making sure our best interest is carried as part of the project for this one and hopefully the next one and we can get better and better and better at it. >> Justin Rexing: And realize most of the time the design team does not think about ongoing support. And that's true for not only AV but for all IT systems and facilities. Because facilities has the same issues that we do is like no, we're not going to work on that light at uh, 30ft in the air. That's $10,000.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: You can import these rare European wacky doo LED lights with like I got. >> Justin Rexing: Toa put my lift on marble. I can't get it up. Not happening. Right. So there's problems. So that there should be some engagement there with those stakeholders in the design process. Um, and if you're not being engaged then that's processes probably broken. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, it, it's a process just like you said Justin. And it's not
perfect at times. Uh, but the more you can do for you and your imiate organization to be involved and don't go it alone. Hm. Bring back up and friends when you can never go to these meetings because. >> Justin Rexing: If you say one thing it's going to get construed. There's no one there to back you up. They could corner you. There's weird things that could happen. >> Jamie Rinehart: Absolutely. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Bring if you can bring other with folks in when you
can. Um, because maybe you'll hear something one way and they'll hear a different way. Being able to provide that in those different perspectives is important. Especially as you're doing your needs analysis and you're taking your notes and you're putting that piece together. Having more eyes and ears in that is worth it every time. Um, I'll miss things and other people will miss things as well. So it's about like doing our best we can to gain that
trust. Right? So then once we've kind of built that trust, you'll see that your project management, your teams will then become more committed and we'll build on that and they'll kind of keep you in mind and bring you in the process earlier and earlier to the point where you maybe find, find yourself writing actual construction documents. And I think that's um. It just takes a while and I think it takes a level to like mature through that.
And we don't have a perfect. I don't know if anybody has it absolutely perfect. But it's, it's all about relationships. Chris, how wrong are we about so somebod. You have it all purpose. Let's go. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, it's great. As somebody who started this from zero at, you know, at a new institution where there was, there was very, very, very little. Zero's not fair. One maybe, um, there was very little engagement with it. Stakeholders
on capital projects in particular, they would get. There would be those initial meetings, hey, we're going to do a new building. Oh yeah, we want your feedback, blah, blah. But um, a few minutes ago we talked about facilities has the same issues. I was talking with our el lead electrician on campus and he likes to point out where somebody specced in the little 3 inch halogen fixtures 25ft off the ground in Sheetrock with no access that the entire service model is to go take
the thing out and try to reach your hand in there. It's ridiculous. So um, so it's not just us. It happens to everybody. But as somebody. I started this process at Wyoming from scratch. There was very little engagement on that. And what engagement was there I think was probably half hearted at best or just straight up ignored. Um, because you're. I'll be brutally honest and you guys correct me if it's different in your institutions, but we're every place I have worked, which is all of them.
Um, it is never considered to be a true stakeholder in a capital project. It is there to just, just make the thing go, get out of here, go away. You know, it's not your building. You are not responsible for it. You are not even. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We are furniture that's brought in after the fact.
>> Justin Rexing: And I would correct and kind of more to Mark's point, I think we are considered a stakeholder not to, you know, go against what Chris said but like mirroring what Chris said at the very end when they realize they need something to work and then we're told that we have to make it work. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, but you're there'the technology janitor. >> Justin Rexing: Exly so that's not reallyue. >> Chris Dechter: I'm saying a true stakeholder ask.
>> Justin Rexing: Ask for as a stakehold. Correct. >> Chris Dechter: They will ask for your input for a building that's going. It can be done in three years. Oh, the. Thanks, Justin. Who knows what they do with that? They throw it away and you d never hear from them again. >> Justin Rexing: And they call you'like hey, we need, we need help. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, this building's opening in 30 days. Can you come install the
technology anyway? It takes multiple years to kind of build those. Those that trust in your campus architect, in your facilities team, in your design team. U. Um, it's not something that will happen overnight. It will take a long, long time to get there. Um, um, I don't. It doesn't matter how many IT directors you have sitting in meetings. They're ignoring everything you say because
it's not your building, you are not the state. They want to talk to the history department or the physics department or those folks and then move on from there. And then invariably it ends up boiling down to the one or two people from that group who is kind of like the voice of the customer. And as, as evidence on our smaller projects, when we're working with directly with departments, oftentimes they don't know what they want. They kind of have a vision or they have some sort of concept
in mind or something they've seen elsewhere or whatever. And it's up to us to kind of interpret that well. Now imagine someone else is doing that on your behalf who's most often and correct me on this, guys'not even physically there. They're on the frickaking phone somewhere. Um, so how much are they actually paying attention? You know, it's just's, it's, it's a challenge all the way through. That said, you can by working and doing well on
small projects, helping them out on things. Mark, you mentioned being a solution provider and not solutions in the IT sense that we're bringing the solution, but fixing issues that come up knowing what you are talking about, having your standards and things identified, being able to speak their language. They love when the fact that you rattle off, you know where things are you I need this at 48 AFF. I need this, you know,
60 inches AFF on center. I need, you know, inch and a quarter or EMT if you're able to speak that language that says immediately, oh, this is a campus resource I can leverage. And it will start small and they will ask you things late in a project and then earlier and then earlier and now you're walking job sites for projects and empty fields for the things that haven't yet been created. But that will take you two or three or four or
five years to get there. Uh, m. But once. And here's the other thing. This is just a free advice. Never ever, ever turn down a meeting request for one of these meetings. If they invite you, don't ever not show up. And if you can't be there, you send two people on your behalf from your team. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Have a presence minute. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah. The minute you're not there, they drop you off that email list and now you're missing the rest of them.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Do any of your, um, universities, schools have a monthly standing like capital projects meeting? >> Chris Dechter: Yep. All. Yeah, the all construction. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Are you a part of that as well? When you can be. >> Chris Dechter: No, that's the next one. I get to fight my way'sorry. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And that kind of gives you a really broad overview of all the kind of work that's happening on campus.
>> Chris Dechter: And it will surprise you too. You're like, whoa, I had no idea they were doing that. I've got a bunch of stuff in. >> Marc Cholewczynski: There that's kind of will give you general movement of the storm. Right. It's not going to give you the exact zip codes. It's going to be falling up. But you can see all the different trades and you'll get to know these people. Right.
And I think it is going back to mentioned point. You will know the people, you'll learn the language, you'll be more actively involved and you'll become a conduit and a carrier of kind of the culture and your standards and the things. But you can't go in these meetings guns blazing. You guys messed it up this time. In Robert, you'll quickly. >> Justin Rexing: That's a problem. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And then you wonder why a lot of the trades peoplele are
always upset. They're not getting what they want because they're overly focused on what the thing is that's wrong. And they're not coming to the table on what it would mean to make it correct. How would you like this to have been? And they're not articulating that. Right. They're not using the clean language to get themselves there. They're just overly focused. The fixtures, Wrong. The fixture, wrong. Okay. It's the wrong fixture. Well, what would it have meant to make it the right fixture? It's
not just buying the thing. It's all that corresponding infrastructure. Being able to articulate that and do it in a way that makes sense and it's not overly heated because it's about making friends here and being able to kind of gain influence is really. >> Chris Dechter: This comes down to what's the saying? You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar. I mean, it raises question as why we're trying to catch flies, but. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right.
>> Chris Dechter: Mark, you raised an excellent point. I am, uh, as guilty of that as anybody of going in their guns blazing with challenges I've had. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So you gott and it s challenge your leadership like skills. You have to kind of s wash that down and say, okay, if you find a problem, let's not just like blow up here. Let's take a moment and what does it mean to say, okay, here's something I noticed and may be
wrong. Here's how I would correct it to get to that solution in the end and then, you know, get it out there, get it on record. And even if you don't have a solution right away. Likekay, I'd like to follow up on that. Who is my point of contact to follow up on? You're not going to change the entire direction of the ship in 15 minutes. It's not going to happen.
>> Larry Darling: Now I was goingna say finding out who to follow up with in those meetings is a much better approach than just blowing up in those meetings. Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: Well, and Larry, to the point about finding who to follow up with, it's putting faces to names too. Because on especially some of these large projects, there's 10, 12, 15, 25, 30 people on the email chain. Um, uh, you don't know who half of them are. Some
of them have campus addresses, some of them don't. You know, who are these people? But being able to make that connection is helpful. Oh, that's the it people over there. We can go ask them about this X, Y and Z problem we're having. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'll be a bit blasphemous here. You have integrators and consultants that are in there. They're going to show up, they're going to be there, learn to work with them. And because there's gonna be a time where you may need them and inform
them of how the standards are done. I know this is where it's gonna sound weird. You can't be everywhere all at once and you can't control everything. They may already have a contract signed. What's coming, your next project, it's there. >> Chris Dechter: That's the point there. >> Justin Rexing: I kind of pause when you that when you might need that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: The bottom Line is they may already be contractually obligated to a project different.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Be most of the time they're there deal with them. Um, versus I might need them most of the time. Time is money. Right. They've signed a contract for 16 hours of work on this particular project. And if you become an idea and a partner with them, they can offload some of that time to you to give you more time on the other end. If they don't have to come up with one lines because you're gonna do it or you already have
a standard kit now they don't have to come up with it. So that's an hour of work that they're not using. But you will run into this thing and you have to understand the contracts and how some of them are written. You can't just demand a meeting because time is money and they may have already eaten all of their time. And it's not that they don't want to is they're not getting paid change order. And so you just kind of have to understand some of how their side
works. I have found uh, that most of the time it is a design team. The architects and the consultants. Whether it's the MEP or the AV or the technology. And recently the network itself is so ingrained in the everyday operation of everything in that building. And Mark said it earlier, the Division 27, uh, and
that's a whole nother topic on its own. But if you can somehow get yourself into that and you are on the network also you also get to help drive where things go because H vacs on the network, lighting is on the network. Right. So there's all these things that we are now even a more stakeholder than we used to be. So get in there. But uh, it is a
design team. You'll hear that a lot. The design team made this decisions and sometimes you get a hard headed person, a hard headed architect, a hard headed consultant and then just cut your losses. Right. Move on. Justin has great stories on this but. >> Justin Rexing: You'Ve all heard them. >> Jamie Rinehart: But a lot of times if it's a repetitive today still gonna support that bill. It's a repetitive contract dinner. Usually the consultants hired on all of the
projects. So if you can get a nice relationship. There you go. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. I've had follow up after projects where consultants say hey, we realized that we had some problems with this. You know, what would this look like if we kind of did it this way or that way? Like we want to get. >> Chris Dechter: If we listen. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. Again sometimes the ship has already
sailed. There's just no way around it. Right. And it's already contractually going to happen and you'll see more of that early on as you're kind of gaining and building these muscles and going through. But, um, we've had a lot of firms come back and say, oh, we now know that these are your standard things. And like they know what that means and then they take that and you'll notice the quality of those initial designs will improve. Like you. Because you've, you've gone out of your way,
you've. You've given those standards, you've articulated it. And I'll be honest, like we. The 27 is always a work in progress. I don't have every little nut bolt path, everything called out exactly as it needs to be. And sometimes there's an interpretation that has to happen. Right. And it's projects are living, breathing things. Like they're go going toa have changes and it's okay. Allow those changes to happen, learn from them, move forward, make friends and be better off.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yeah. I think one of the key parts here, sometimes it's just the fact, oh, we didn't know you existed. >> Chris Dechter: M hmm. >> Larry Darling: Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: That is a very fair point, Jamie. >> Jamie Rinehart: We didn't know you existed. >> Justin Rexing: You have an internal team. What. >> Jamie Rinehart: And so. >> Chris Dechter: Or they'll be hand. They'll be handed one of yourop. One of your, uh, standards
documents from seven or eight years ago. They'like yeah, we have your standards here. >> Larry Darling: Ye listing out. >> Justin Rexing: Theres 100 on it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's just equipment. You're like. And like, that's the nothing else. Take away nothing else from this. It's not about the stuff. No, it's not. Nothing you're doing in these initial meetings or have anything to do with your stuff. Focus on infrastructure. Focus
on that stuff. Um, the bill of materials for the endpoints is irrelevant. >> Chris Dechter: Well, because most likely, especially in a at that large capital project, it's so reing. Yeah. Early on you can't specify the thing you're going to install anyway because it's three years not going to exist yet. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, exactly. So we've had folks show up like, hey, we know your standards this. And then they'll rattle off a bunch
of equipment. It's like, yeah, I guess have. Yes, we've used some of that stuff, but that's not speaking to our infrastructure standards. Can we please focus this time today on making sure our infrastructure is right? Because that's the thing. We have a very limited time to get. Right. Uh, I can change rack configuration endpoints till I'm blue in the face. I can't change the piping in the wall. I have very limited time to get there. So let's focus there.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Holes in concrete are a lot harder to deal with than moving a WRC screw. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yep, exactly. So understand not if you cross thread it. >> Chris Dechter: If you cross thread that rax that. >> Jamie Rinehart: Is just put the impact drill on high. It'll go right through it. Don't worry about it. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And you know, cutting your losses. Jim, you laugh, but no'worth fighting
for. Know what's worth fighting for and what's not worth fighting for? >> Larry Darling: Yeah, takes it impose. >> Justin Rexing: Sometime you have to let it break and let the consultant do its own thing. And then you don't support the building. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And then it you progress. >> Jamie Rinehart: There's principle in some places. Like I told you, that was was a dumb idea. >> Larry Darling: It's in this email and documentation. So.
>> Jamie Rinehart: So I'll come back and help fix it. I will. But I want you to acknowledge that I told you so. And sometimes you just got to get to that point. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You can't get everything y if you. >> Justin Rexing: Document well that when problems are brought up like, yeah, that was in my 5,000 word document about all the problems that I wrote. That's too many words ago. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's too many words.
>> Chris Dechter: No one's reading that. I'm not reading that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: I'm want bullet points, but no more than I characters. The goal is not to be nitpicky and point out every mistake. Again, that's not the goal here. >> Chris Dechter: That gets you uninvited. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's not how you get se to the table. It's are you providing solutions? Are you providing them timely? Are you providing
cost effective? Are you carrying your standards of support forward into the project? It has to be yes to all those. Because that's what your goal is, right? Your goal is not just there to stop your feet because you're getting the wrong lighting fix. That's not what you want to be doing. >> Chris Dechter: One thing that came up a few minutes ago, I can't remember who said it, so I'm gonna say it was that guy Larry. Jamie. It was Ringo. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Was Chuck.
>> Chris Dechter: Um, Chuck did it. You need to get friendly with the consultants, with the integrators, with you. Because the universities, once they hire an architect, an architect hires a consultant and then there's a bid process for integrators and they usually don't involve you, which is always fun, um, because it's not really run by them. But universities find their favorite architects just like us. If they have a Outside contractor, in their case an architect that they
liked working with. They will hire them again and go back to them time and time again for future projects. Those same architects have consulting firms that they like working with and go back to time and time again. So the more you get to know these people or at least maintain some level of, you know, friendly rapport with and they get to recognize you as a potential resource, um, that will only build positive experiences on future large capital.
>> Jamie Rinehart: I've been included in more of these meetings because of the consultant or the architect that I have because of our. >> Chris Dechter: Yeah, where's that Jamie guy? Why isn't he on this call? I'm sending an email real quick. >> Jamie Rinehart: Exactly. All of a sudden be like, hey, I got the thing coming up. Were you invited? Nope. You are now. And so I think that relationship. >> Chris Dechter: And don't skip those meetings.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: That economy is scale though too. And this is what I said, Justin, you said needing them in kind of that who pie. And then you kind of brought it up. Um, it may not be everybody's job here to provide 400 hours of CAD work for that project. Right. It may not be your actual job to do that. And it'd be nice to know that the consultant who's been brought in with their design team and that's what they're being paid for, that are doing it in a way they meet your standard
and uh, let them scale. That's their rep pay. And there's going to be times when you need that work to be done. And it's gonna be nice to know that they have your best interest in mind as they're doing it. >> Chris Dechter: Pretty sure Justin's doing cad. >> Marc Cholewczynski: He's doing right now. >> Larry Darling: He'hours he's always doing cad. >> Justin Rexing: I'm actually literally trying to finish this shit.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: I know it's all you'doing that. That's your job. And so it just amus me. >> Chris Dechter: Mark's talking about ca'looking slightly off camera. >> Justin Rexing: Um, no, it's planning the infrastructure for all of it for every capital construction. >> Chris Dechter: And you're a visual person so you plan it visually in cad. I get that is cad. >> Justin Rexing: My job is not my tool.
>> Chris Dechter: Right, Your job is. You are the vice president for spatial experience monetization, which means prety close satoshis. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Per pixel to get it right. That's the success moving forward. >> Chris Dechter: I'm many cubic pixels per square inch.
>> Justin Rexing: But this process I value because if I can get buy in to what this document is with the people actually doing the work on site, everybody gets what they want in it and that's kind of critical to get all this correct organization. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Even that turn had recognized you as bringing that value to the table. So they call on you do that. >> Chris Dechter: I was gonna say. But even that internally. Yeah.
Within just the IT organization there at wku, that took you several years to build that buy in from just your internal team. >> Justin Rexing: Yeah. Because we would do it in AV and everybody else would do their separate documents and the. The contractor'are like, why are we getting four or five documents from IT with like access points here and speakers here? Like why can't you all just give us one document? And that's kind of where sometimes those requests come from the
outside in. You don't really have to push upward to get things done. They just naturally happen. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Stand on my shoulders. Oay. >> Justin Rexing: Don't push up. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So it's a process. Right. And it can be a bumpy road. But enjoy it. Learn. >> Justin Rexing: And it's never perfect. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Meet people. No, it's not going to per. You will never be perfect. That's okay.
Like don't. Don't need it to be perfect. I know that sounds hard. Just it's part of your job to roll with the punches, be flexible. And honestly, sometimes a mistake leads to an opportunity to think about something differently. Right. You may find um, a new solution or a different way to think about something or you may be exposed to a new product line you've never seen before and wow, this thing does that. So, um, be open minded.
>> Chris Dechter: Unless they've got one. If you're like 10 year old docks and they're just specking stuff off. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, not about that stuff. >> Chris Dechter: Then give them a raft. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Unless it has a cable with a bunch of adapters and back again. Yes. >> Larry Darling: Or a 21 by 9 screen. >> Jamie Rinehart: I'll tell. Just buy the bridge of in which it you're good to go. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's right.
>> Chris Dechter: I can run that one too. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's weird. >> Justin Rexing: Cables. Are we talking about those again? >> Chris Dechter: Nope. >> Justin Rexing: We'll go back to the the adapter cables. >> Chris Dechter: All right, well, we're gonna take a quick break, come back. Talk about AV acting as the canary in the coal mine. By which we mean like the first indicator of potential issues on
the network even before the networking team might know about it. O. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's thatangerous. >> Jamie Rinehart: We were talking about suffocating. >> Chris Dechter: Jamie has a different podcast for that. So you'all want to go listen to uh, Canary in the Jamie's bird whacking. All right, we'll be right back. >> Justin Rexing: Get ready to plug in and rock. >> Chris Dechter: Out at widget Feest the ultimate celebration of audiovisual innovation.
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>> Marc Cholewczynski: Celebration of adapters and witches coming soon. >> Justin Rexing: To a thing you near you. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That is intensity int cities it's wild. >> Chris Dechter: Gotta tell you, if you Widget fest last year was interesting. I did have to camp out for good seats. So get there early. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Big show. It's only so much you can take.
>> Chris Dechter: In the day and due to the. My understanding is due to the uh, the pending lawsuits they can't bring back the world's second largest play peen ball pit. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So yeah, there, that's a point of contention. >> Justin Rexing: Missed something. >> Chris Dechter: Problem. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You missed everything, my friend. >> Chris Dechter: Everything missed it was the case.
All right, so um, uh, we just talked about it as part of our general discussion there of capital projects that everything's on the frickin network. Seems every, every. Every little thing is on your network. Um, even your H vac systems. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Wait, what? >> Justin Rexing: Projector screens? >> Chris Dechter: Yes. Uh, actually you can put those on the. But you can'tir. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Why? >> Chris Dechter: But why?
>> Justin Rexing: Because you can. >> Chris Dechter: I control my projection screens exclusively through WIF fi. Cause that's fantastic. Anyway, but as part of that as we have more devices on the network, as we have more robust uh, internal monitoring tools, often we will know there are potential issues on the network before your networking team knows about
them. Because let's be honest, they're looking at umpteen thousands of endpoints, nodes and ports all over campus and your're one little thing that keeps potentially dropping or having bandwidth issues internally. It's not super high on their list because it hasn't crossed that threshold of being brokenited. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Uh-huh.
>> Chris Dechter: So when you start to see that stuff though, you can coordinate with your network team to try to like do some deeper troubleshooting and all of that. >> Justin Rexing: Really Coordination or is it. >> Chris Dechter: It's begrudging cooperation. How about that? >> Larry Darling: It should be coordination. >> Marc Cholewczynski: This is a microcosm. We just talked about what this is.
>> Justin Rexing: We call Justin coming in hot and like hey, we're starting to see some stuff. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Mhm. >> Justin Rexing: No you're not. Yes we are. >> Marc Cholewczynski: That's the first challenge, right? That's the first conflict point. >> Justin Rexing: You have to get them to believe you so that's the first hurdle is how do you get a networking team to believe. Cause they have all these monitoring tools they spend
millions of dollars on or whatever. It'like uh, everything's automatic and they get all the reports and whatever. And you're sitting there with your rikyinkt codec. You're like, yeah, your network's about to crash. No it ain't. >> Jamie Rinehart: Mhm. Watch this. >> Justin Rexing: Now we don't have a lot of this now. We used to have this more when we were running actual codecs like The. >> Jamie Rinehart: Cisco, the Tamrah 302.3 codecx would really screw things.
>> Justin Rexing: That would really be where we had that problem. But nowadays it's not so much. Cause we love creating islands here. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Don know, except I have one big island. Everything's on it. It's called. But. >> Justin Rexing: But we're gonna do this soon somehow. Either this way or this way or that way or some which way. And converge. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Interesting. >> Justin Rexing: And we're gonna reduce and make one big island.
So I'm assuming these problembs are gonna. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Come pumping out the water. You're fill it all with sand. Go. >> Justin Rexing: We're gonna bring the sand in like China. Start dredging M bridging islands with our fake islands Network dredging is what we're doing here. Yeah. And then, and then it's gonna come back and be like, hey, your network's about to uh. No it's not. What is it? >> Marc Cholewczynski: It's an interesting like conundrum. Right. When you
know like something's weird. Right. Something's not right. Either your stuff's not online or something's falling off. And you do have to take those very intentional steps because you better show up with receipts. If you're gonna go knock, better have the receipts to say this is why it is. Because uh, they all believe it's not the network. Let's just understand that right out of the gate it is not the network. Right. Because if they have to drop everything, they're going toa do every time
somebody said the network's messed up, they'd never get anything done. And so be mindful and empathetic to that. That. Okay, what are the magic words you have to say? So there's a glossary. You can't just show address. Yeah. You can't say the Internet's not working. Right. You can't. That's not a valid thing. Like um, so there is a little bit
of like contention that happens. Right. And so it just like we talked about before, building those relationships, like double check, make sure it is not your stuff first like everything in your domain. Make sure it's rock solid. >> Justin Rexing: Because if you don't burningning equity the first time time you do that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So you got. You got to rebuild that relationship. And so um, be willing to be wrong when you do reach out. Say hey, we've looked at all our
stuff. There's still a chance maybe here or there. But we wanted to let you know we we're seeing xyz. Right. Make sure you give yourself an out and because they will find it. They will find it if it is one of your problems. >> Justin Rexing: Use words like I think maybe, possibly, perhaps. >> Marc Cholewczynski: No, no, that but clearly articulate what you're seeing and show them how you're seeing it. And this is what it is. Right.
>> Justin Rexing: And so don't come off definitive. >> Chris Dechter: Maybe. >> Jamie Rinehart: I think this needs an. >> Marc Cholewczynski: You have facts but want an example? I'll give you an example. So um, Jamie, you chime in because you have similar ish architectures at time. So um, we constrain our multicast with on within our. Our racks and our stacks and our switches.
Right. We have worked with our core team to provide a scripting element per jack on the switch so that if there is a leaking of this multicast we don't just see that proliferat across the building and kind of bring down things. Right. We'd be
spanning tree things like of that nature. There has been times when that scripting which we do not control they do have not been put in place and it will have an impact and we will see that um, on buildings and blades happen as soon as we start to experience that we'll unplug our thing right away just to make and if it's still is proliferating we
know it's not us. But we will then reach out because we've experienced this before, you know, you know, rapid sparing, tree, multicast, storm, all that stuff. Um. Understand that to the point we're in our project process now. It is a very clearly spelled out piece as we meet in locations to verify infrastructure. It is to make sure the scripting and all the security stuff outside of our switch domain is in place. Right. It's not perfect. It's
not. It's rather new actually. Um, but those elements, when you're talking about that kind of stuff, where your managed switch is going to link up your island connects to theirs over the causeway and actually goes there that point. >> Justin Rexing: That D mark are we doing. We're doing island stuff. >> Larry Darling: I was just doing the island thing because I'm in private island. If I'm having a network issue, I wouldn't know unless I was in the room.
>> Justin Rexing: Yeah, how do I put me in an island? >> Marc Cholewczynski: And maybe not everyboy, maybe not everybody is will be the canary. But I think as you move to have more of a centrally managed core, you're gonna do what's called over IP on enterprise. I think you will see the opportunity to engage with these conversations with your core team to provide them more real time insight into what's going on. >> Justin Rexing: So I got an err. It says yeah, this
feature is going to take a little bit more computing power than you got. You might as well not do that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We suggest otherwise. >> Jamie Rinehart: We've also. >> Justin Rexing: My computer is complete shit. >> Jamie Rinehart: We've also just um, accidentally found um, our devices work just enough differently than the typical Internet stream or any whatever. >> Chris Dechter: And as a bonus Jamie, they're fully documented.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Yes O within detail. And like one of the things that recently popped up for us is that um, our devices that accept POE and wa wantna power on sometimes they want what's the second check? The it's like two factor check plus. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Plus yeah, multif factor. >> Jamie Rinehart: It'll turn on and then it asks so it'll turn on with 7 watts of poe and then it want the second and I know the term but it's not coming to me.
But even though the switch is supposedly set up to provide 30, 60 watts, whatever it is, sometimes it just won't. >> Marc Cholewczynski: And because they to't negotiate that when it turned on. >> Jamie Rinehart: Yes. That second negotiation level doesn't happen. So now your POE device is in that weird half ass state. Like it's there but it's not doing anything, waiting when you call, almost aw and you say hey look, I'm having this POE issue. And they well I see you have power.
No, hold on. But I'm not getting all the power. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right. >> Jamie Rinehart: And now they've realized oh our, in our system we don't have this triggered in that particular switch or that particular building or that particular stack, whatever it is. And it's something they just overlooked because up until that point nobody ever needed more than seven and a half watts.
Now they do. And it also sometimes they even come back to like oh well that's going to help us because we're about to redo the VoIP phones in there and they all require 15 or 20 or whatever it is. And this is just that symptom of the canary in the coal mine. Like is there an issue here? I'm pretty sure that it's not me, but is it and I think there're just small
examples that we run into. Especially if you're starting to put things on the enterprise network and you have, uh, you're working with your networking core and they'll start to trust you after a while and be like. And then you, they do, they start to realize, hey, remember when we had this here? It's acting like that again. They're be like, oh yeah, oh yeah. Okay, let's do this thing. Um, so I do feel as though, because multicast and a lot of our thing is precision
time, right? We don't get to have an overflow buffer. We don't get to have a spinning wheel. We don't get that. It's just, it's gone. It just doesn't work. And a lot of the way most m of our devices work, there's that allocation what that 80% success is 100% success. You got 80% so you're good to go. But we need 99.9%. And they're not used to that. And sometimes find the little gaps. We find that maybe the termination on that one particular patch point that was done five years ago is
not good. But nobody else found it because they don't need it. But we found it. >> Justin Rexing: So one, uh, example of that is, and this is not in higher ed, but on the integrator side of things, we are doing a big AVO over IP deployment for a golf course over here, actually right next door. And the IT company we're working with is a really good IT company. We really trust them, um, blah, blah, blah. And we've never really had a problem with them. They never had a problem with
us. And we were seeing some major issues on our AV over ip and we knew it wasn't network configuration. Uh, it had to do with power. And so, uh, come to find out after three or four days of troubleshooting these cables in the wall, like, guys like, how are you troubleshooting the cables? Well, we're troubleshooting from here. Are you including the patch cables? They got a whole bag of patch cables that were bad. They found out after testing from patch to patch instead of infrastructure to
infrastructure. So that helped us gain some trust. And it could be, maybe not network configuration, it could be hardware related that the network engineers don't know about because network engineers aren't talking to the cabling crew. >> Chris Dechter: Right. >> Marc Cholewczynski: So'we uh, find we are highly cutting that whole layer one stuff needs to be rock solid. Right. And we work a lot with our contractors who provide that and building those
Relationships, um, has been awesome. But understanding that how do you go about diagnosing problems? I try to use of that OSI model for us. Like we will start at that bottom and work our way up. >> Justin Rexing: Mhm. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Instead of just going to the most complicated thing at the top of that f application is broken. >> Justin Rexing: Do the easiest thing for do the.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Easies stffbleoot and troubleshoot your way up there. Because in having that type of methodology when you speak to your core team goes a long way. And again you're getting the seat at that table. Right. I think that's equally as important. >> Justin Rexing: Kind of what Mark said. Explain all those steps that you've done to troubleshoot on your side. When you approach them with a problem, you'll get more buy in that way instead of just coming with a
problem. This is, I'm experiencing this. This is what I've done. What do you think? >> Jamie Rinehart: I cameeck m some things I came to the harsh reality during this kind of discussion with them is that we feel like all of our documentation, all of our training manuals and things say well, Qs or this or that. And then. But when you start getting on at the enterprise level, some of that crap don't matters. But they know, uh, and when you start saying no, I swear to God, it's
QoS. They're like dude, we don't even do that. And they explain now you have to ask the next question like, okay, but you know what I'm trying to say, so how do you do that thing here? And they, they'll explain it to you. But I know, uh, the first few times we tried to do this, it was like, my God, Dante says you have to do it this way. And they're like, yeah, on a home router, jackass. And so you kind of have to swallow it a little bit and be like, okay, I'm off my Netgear 4250 now. I am now on
an enterprise level network. They're the professionals here, use those terms to learn what they are doing and it will help you understand and get some respect in that thing is that I respect that you know everything. Um, you sometimes, um. But you know a lot more about enterprise networking than I do. So help me out. Because sometimes our documentation that we get from manufacturers or from Netgear, it doesn't apply.
And understand that and go to the table with the verbiage but be ready to change that and ask for them to help clarify it. That's what's kind of smoothed over a lot of my problems is That I quit insisting that Netgear is right. Cu. I'll tell you what. If you're a Cisco house and you go in and you say, well, Netgear said, they're gonna laugh you right out the door. >> Larry Darling: That is one thing I have found is to go in with the problem and not, um, the solution.
So, like, if I'm having an issue, I don't say, this is what. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Here's what I'm experiencing. Right? Don't. Don't come in and say, hey, you're this or that is wrong. Yeah, here's what we are experiencing and clearly articulate it. And then also share the steps you've taken to remedy that and where you're not having success. Take that to them and engage in that conversation and let them come to the table with a solution.
>> Jamie Rinehart: Y. >> Chris Dechter: So one thing we're trying, um, with some limited spaces, it's kind of a sandbox, is landing some of my devices, my network endpoints into the networking team. Network. The networking teams, um, monitoring system. They use SolarWinds, and I'm giving them information they need to start land because they have
never experienced or they have never worked with that. And if you talk with them about how they do monitoring, they can see all sorts of stuff. But they had to kind of build that based on their experiences because every network is slightly different. And, you know, they have to, oh, when this happens. So they can set thresholds and monitoring, but they've never worked with any of your gears, so they don't
know how your gear behaves. And most of it is, let's be honest, pretty poorly documented as far as its network behavior and what it does or it's. To Jamie's point, it doesn't do what they think it's doing or it doesn't behave the same way. Other things. Correct. It's not an endpoint. It's not something they're familiar with. So, uh, I've been working on that process of, like, here's two rooms that are very different in some ways, but very similar in others to kind of help eliminate some of
those variables. Let's land this into your monitoring system and see how it behaves. So you can start. But getting to know how it behaves on the network, getting to know what sort of traffic it's producing. So when you see spurious stuff, it's not immediately, oh, it's some weird stuff the AV guys have put in. Maybe that's how it behaves. And we need to just turn that particular monitoring circuit off so it's not constantly barking at it. So this is a new
process for us. We're working through this, but it is bearing some fruit from the standpoint of then we're leveraging the same tools that they are, and we can start looking at some of our own things as yet another, uh, what tool in our toolbox for troubleshooting. Hey, we're seeing strange things here. Let me look at what they're. Oh, yeah, is this. So when you do talk to them, you're kind of on the same page there.
So there's some give and take, but, you know, you do kind of have to kind of go hat in hand. >> Marc Cholewczynski: A bit and understand that it's not a theirs versus ours game. And that oftentimes we may be the most informed person to be boots on the ground and eyes in the room to inform them and give them that information. You don't see them out just patrolling all the IDFs and MDFs everywhere, making sure things are working, inspecting bits and bytes.
We're out there. We are super users often. And so building out relationships, it goes a long way. And I think being able to be trusted in that conversation, it's really important. And then you are actually out there making sure that your university's entire ecosystem is functioning well. Um, try not to have those divisions and say, hey, your thing is broken. My thing isn't working. It's our stuff. We have to figure out how to make work together. And so look at it from that perspective.
>> Chris Dechter: Similar to the last conversation about working with architects, consultants, facilities, engineers. It will take time, and we're all not perfect at it. I'm terrible at that. >> Marc Cholewczynski: We're all human. It's hard being human. >> Chris Dechter: Who, uh. It's easy being human. I'm a canary in a coal mine. Apparent chur. >> Justin Rexing: You identify as a canary and a coal mine.
>> Jamie Rinehart: You know what? I want to make my life a little more interesting. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Right. >> Chris Dechter: Well, okay. Enjoy digging for cold. >> Jamie Rinehart: I don't have to dig. I just got toa sit there and try to breathe. >> Chris Dechter: You just sit there in a cage and see if you die. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Just trying to bring 's beautiful, beautiful clean coal for everybody. So, anyway. >> Chris Dechter: Yeghty.
Well, um, I think we've made a mess of it here. We're gonna close it out because I forgot. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Why not? >> Chris Dechter: Next. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah, we'll see what happens. Justin, get that done. Yeah. >> Chris Dechter: Justin still working on cad. >> Larry Darling: He probably finish. >> Justin Rexing: He's not. >> Chris Dechter: No. >> Marc Cholewczynski: All right, all right. Join us.
>> Chris Dechter: Contribution. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Yeah. Um, thanks, everybody. >> Chris Dechter: Thanks, y'all. Well, we've managed to ruin yet another episode of AV Super Friends off the rails. You can contact us with questions, topic ideas or general complaints at maobag atavuperfriends.com. if you complain loud enough, we might just invite you on the show. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Nice work everyone. >> Chris Dechter: Sharp broadcast.
>> Marc Cholewczynski: Really good. >> Chris Dechter: Everyone on the floor as well. Really a lot of hustle. I liked it. The opinions expressed by the AV Superfriend are solely those of the individuals and do not represent their respective institutions, organizations, companies or clients. >> Marc Cholewczynski: Mhm.