To continue on the path of growth of the audiovisual industry in Latin America, the union of entrepreneurs and academia must be achieved to have increasingly trained professionals.
By Juan Tamayo
When I started in the world of audiovisual systems, I was a recent graduate of Electronic Engineering and did not have much knowledge of audiovisual networks. Ten years ago there was no deanship in my hometown in which I could consult technological advances, achievements or design criteria. Simply, in Colombia, audiovisual design was a dark cloud based on the experience of colleagues and friends who knew about some topics, but did not have standardized criteria.
I visited the warehouses where they sold audio and video equipment, they always offered me the best product but no seller gave me features that told me why I was the best. I started a search for documents on the internet in which I could learn about audiovisual design, a very difficult search since I did not know where to start.
In 2009 I attended my first InfoComm seminar, it was Course in Principles of Audiovisual Design – Level 2, supported by the company where I worked, many thanks to them who believed in my project, I had already known some guide documents of the Association but I had never had the opportunity to have a face-to-face course on the subject. For me, I was starting a stage of knowing mathematical standards and rules of design, it changed my whole landscape in knowledge.
These studies, because I completed all the levels, helped me to train as an audiovisual engineer. Today I try to make the designs I present standard, with clear rules and that any company or solution can meet the needs described in the solution.
During the last ten years I have been able to observe a positive change in the academic levels on our branch of work, but I think we still have too much to achieve the evolution in standards and criteria that other fields have such as electricians, data networks, among others.
How to achieve the expected evolution? It's the question we usually ask. I think the answer lies in the mix of academia and entrepreneurs. Latin America urgently needs programs that include the development of audiovisual projects from the technical point of view and not only artistic.
In the vast majority of technical and professional programs, people leave with great musical or artistic knowledge but when it comes to evaluating the technique, they end up making the same mistakes that we professionals made ten years ago. It also requires entrepreneurs to train their employees, teach them design techniques, business strategies based on audiovisual technique and not based on price reduction.
It is necessary for entrepreneurs to join in local associations with the support of the academy, where they can offer technically approved solutions, so that the client is calm in making decisions, reading a plan or a list of elements of a tender is technically understandable and not as it has been happening, a mixture of elements and technologies that may not be compatible.
We require that the contracts be executed by professionals who know the subject, at the time of making the decisions they are always the best and not that the projects become testing laboratories, which generate cost overruns when liquidating and possibly economic losses.
We need students to be encouraged to take design courses, young people to want to learn. But this is only achieved if entrepreneurs motivate, generate jobs, open calls for work on audiovisual issues, I speak from the experience in Colombia. In construction there is a special chapter for the design of television networks in furniture projects, why not work to achieve a document of rules based on international standards for audio visual design?
In conclusion, it must be achieved in the near future that entrepreneurs and academia come together so that they can create clear rules for the design of audiovisual systems, in order to technically improve all AV projects that are executed in our continent.
*Juan Tamayo is an electronic engineer, specializing in audiovisual design. You can contact me at [email protected]
