I’m Douglas Hoag, Principal Consultant and owner of DCH Technology Consulting, based in Chicago, IL. With more than 15 years in the audiovisual industry, I specialize in consulting, design, and owner’s representative services for complex built environments. My work spans courtrooms, council chambers, emergency operations centers, police stations, and corporate experience spaces, where technology must seamlessly support both in-person and hybrid collaboration. At DCH Technology Consulting, I take a human-centered design approach—balancing AVIXA, SMPTE, AES, ANSI, and AIA best practices with real-world workflows. My background includes global technology standardization efforts with Fortune 500 clients as well as civic projects requiring coordination between state and county stakeholders. I focus on creating cohesive, intuitive systems that support transparency, equitable conferencing, and future-ready infrastructure through solutions like AVoverIP, broadcast integration, and smart workflow design. I’m passionate about helping architects, owners, and technology teams bring their vision to life with audiovisual systems that feel intentional, intuitive, and built to last.

I've been in the AV industry for 20 or so years, a consultant for 5, and recently launched my new company, AV MSP. AV MSP is a kind managed service provider focused on AV technology, bringing ITSM standard service management to AV customers. We partner with integrators to improve service departments and directly with customers to act as their outsourced AV department. 

Ben currently serves as the Head of Pro AV and the Sr. Director of Publishing for MarketScale, a B2B publisher and strategic marketing firm. He has over a decade of award winning experience in media publishing for large scale events, OTT & live streaming platforms, marketing, network television, and podcasting. Ben decided on his career path at the age of 7, and to date has led some of the most influential brands in the world including Intel, Nokia, Samsung and Segway, to billions of content interactions. A huge hockey fan (Go Stars!), and former contestant and current fan of Family Feud, Thomas resides in Dallas, Texas.