Craig Underwood
Director of AV Engineering, Moravian University
- Xchange Members
- United States of America
Company Type
Department
Language
Influencer Of
Experts Like Craig Underwood
Recent Comments
Hi Patrik, thanks for sharing your story.
I currently serve as President of the Avixa Foundation, the non-profit arm of Avixa focused on acquiring, developing and maintaining workforces for our industry.
I must say that your challenge is shared worldwide, on different scales, companies from all over the world have been trying to find a solution.
Furthermore, we have seen research indicating the growth of the AV market, however this will only be possible if we address the problem of training new people.
Through the Avixa foundation, we sought to understand the challenges of each region, seeking to indicate good practices or a path forward.
From our observations and interviews around the world, we realized that the AV company has become the “AV university”. New employees, whether young or experienced, coming from parallel industries, need to learn within the company. This creates a huge challenge, as schedules, commitments and cultures imply different speeds and qualities of learning.
I'm glad to see how you solved your challenge, but as you realized, it's not enough to solve the market gap. Unfortunately I don't have the exact answer, but we can help you.
The Avixa Foundation is developing a Apprentice program (a pathway), summarizing the best global practices, seeking to create some scale of training at a global level, helping companies in the market to replicate this design and train more people. It's a start, but we still need to advance further in this challenge.
I will be present at IC24 in Vegas, and if you are present, I would like to meet you and talk more about these challenges.
Keep up the excellent work, together we will get there.
AVIXA has been a tremendous resource as we've worked to infuse AV curriculum into traditional audio recording/production programs at two schools I work with. We try to start as early as possible to make them aware that this entire industry even exists. They're always excited to learn that there are so many more career options than they ever thought.