14
May
AV Craftsmanship
After building some cabinets this weekend (and subsequently getting dust on a nearby rack I had staged), I started thinking about why the word “craftsmanship” seams to conjure up images of my grandfather in overalls sanding a wooden railing, or a mason methodically laying bricks. When I started my career in technology I fancied myself a craftsman, honing the skills necessary to bring systems to life though the use of arcane skills that had been taught to me by other technicians, books, and good old on the job experience. Why shouldn’t AV installation be a craft? The way a technician persuades eight tiny conductors into a CAT5 connector, being sure to crimp the jacket in place. The way you can tell a connector is just tight enough, the way a system programmer lays out his program file so it reads like a novel of digital signal flow.
This job is incredibly difficult and requires years to master. I have no problem calling my team craftsmen. They work hard and we all learn from each other, working to make the systems we build just a little better every time. You know when you’re looking at a system that has the this-guy-knew-what-he-was-doing feel to it. The way the wires all cascade cleanly into place or the attention to detail it took to be sure not a millimeter of copper is poking out of a connector. It’s those things that we strive for, and if your AV company isn’t, then maybe they’re just a bunch of techs, but here we’re craftsmen…minus the overalls.
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