Field Notes

Written from the chairs around the spec

The integrator writing the proposal, the producer holding the run of show, the communications manager at a rural cooperative, and the attendee who has stopped asking for a receiver. Each piece is written in an assumed voice and is a constructed composite — not a customer account, and not a description of any real firm, venue or event.

1. Integration · regional AV firm

   The second path

   Why an integrator would rather sell a capability that touches nothing in the design they already commissioned.

2. Production · corporate general session

   Four thousand in a ballroom

   Overflow rooms, an airwall that leaks, and the line in the AV bid that stopped being necessary.

3. Communications · rural electric cooperative

   The annual meeting in a metal building

   Nine hundred members, a quorum requirement, a metal-roofed equipment barn, and three languages in the room.

4. Attendee · the receiver desk

   I stopped going to the desk

   What it is actually like to ask a stranger at registration for a listening device in front of your colleagues.