Industry Issues
Push out the Cowboys. Why we need ACCREDITATION
Our lead news story in December CX shows at least one government events department thinks we should work for nothing. They didn’t just decide to cut their sound and lighting budget by 75%. Someone is prepared to do the work. My solution is to accredit legitimate operators, using an industry scheme. It would be simple…
Read MorePaying for Contractor Compliance
A reader contacted me at deadline with this cracker tale. It seems some venues are now outsourcing compliance. Enter the new era, with Smartek. This is fully owned by Barrington Group Australia (Barringtons) and has its roots in a standalone computer system going back to the mid 1990s. One of the first major instances of…
Read MoreHills restore SVL call-centre
Today Hills SVL dealers received a most welcome email, after a solid slew of gripes about the decentralised call centre approach they adopted when harmonizing SVL with other formerly separate Hills divisions. Typical of the complaints here at CXMAGBLOG was this: “I called Hills today and asked for Sales. They had NO IDEA what…
Read MoreCrestron in Australia
Crestron’s news release puzzled us here in the CX newsroom. Our weekly staff lunch at the Willoughby Pub was abandoned as we went into deep analysis. A weeks reflection, and some inquiries failed to lift the fog of confusion about this. Let’s review it line-by-line. We’ve italicized the words from the release. This year Crestron…
Read MoreHills acquires APG
Contractor audio has a new number one Hills have acquired Audio Products Group (APG), an Australian and New Zealand supplier of professional audio products, for A$15 million. APG will now join the roster of Hills audio brands in one greatly expanded distribution firm known simply as Hills. Hills and APG both operated heavily in the…
Read MoreWhat Woodie Wanted
Talking about male cancer issues is REALLY freaking boring. I know, I track what you click. If I write about a punk who runs a crap festival and rips off crew, you click 28 x more than if it is about men stuff. Especially THIS man stuff, cancer of the gland that helps you ejaculate.…
Read MoreLighting Suicides – horrifying trend
Main picture: Jeffrey Merryweather, above left. Why do good people do the worst thing? “As a mother to receive a phone call at 3am to tell you that your beloved son has committed suicide is the most horrendous thing that can happen. I am the mother of Jeffrey Merryweather and he was very special.” Before…
Read MoreBiz Talk: Mad Crazy Money
It was back to the future at CX Roadshow when I did an encore performance of my Crazy Money seminars from 2012. They were very popular then, and again this summer, pitched at small businesses that are the backbone of entertainment. Almost every freelancer is a small business, and we had plenty from all walks…
Read MorePassion and Money: the lo$$e$ I don’t regret
You’re looking at an Australian Monitor AM 1600 mosfet power amplifier, made by my firm and designed by Stuart McLean. Greg Hicks was the foreman at the factory we set up behind Graftons Sound and Lighting in Campbell street east Sydney in 1986. Hundreds of these still solider on, testimony to the brutal engineering.…
Read MoreKnockoff Gear: Melbourne Company Named
6 MARCH 2014 (Updated 7 March 2014 at end) When Steve Devine started a Facebook Group against Knock Off Equipment, he had no idea whether anyone was interested. They sure were, and now the Group (now administered by CX) has identified a Melbourne based importer offering fake Martin Audio loudspeaker and amplifier products, under the…
Read MoreWoeful Lightshow for The Radiators
It was a night off, a trip down that lane called memory with another memory, Karen my former wife. We share a like for retro rock and beer, so we headed to Asquith Leagues Club which is confusingly located in Sydney’s north at Waitara. The other werid aspect to all this is that we don’t…
Read More1,500 Event ‘Professionals’ tested on tech knowledge…..
The Event Leadership Institute in the USA tested 1,500 Event Planners for technical knowledge with an online test and found an average score of 48 out of 100. This shouldn’t surprise any AV tech working on the nervous coalface of corporate AV, but it needs improvement, since this was a survey of PROFESSIONAL planners who…
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