AI, AV, and the Evolving Role of the Integrator

Dave Hatz, VP of Machine Intelligence at CTI, a major AV integrator and events company, shares his journey from AV programming into AI leadership.

• How AI is reshaping the AV integrator’s role, from hardware-centric deployments to software-driven, experience-focused solutions
• The shift from complex, bespoke AV setups to scalable, software-upgradable Microsoft Teams Rooms and how this enables sustainability and innovation
• The growing importance of AI features like intelligent cameras, transcription, and meeting recap, and how AV professionals can support these capabilities
• From personal productivity tools to organisational workflows, Dave discusses how CTI helps clients integrate AI

Thanks to Neat for sponsoring this podcast episode and for their ongoing support. 

Transcript

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Dave Hatz: It's awesome to see from that standpoint, we can gain on initiatives like that purely because the software centric nature of, of our entire world allows us to keep innovating with the hardware we have with the investment we have, so we can prolong it.

Tom Arbuthnot: Hi, and welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. This week we have Dave Hatz, who is VP of Machine Intelligence at CTI. CTI are a large AV integrator and events company, and Dave takes us through his personal journey in the AV world and how he came to be working on Microsoft Teams Rooms and in the Microsoft world, how our paths crossed, and also how AI is now impacting the AV world and where the AV integrator can add value in the AI conversation in Microsoft Teams Rooms and beyond.

Great conversation with Dave. Many thanks for him jumping on the pod and also many thanks to Neat who are the sponsor of this podcast. Really [00:01:00] appreciate all their support of everything we're doing at Empowering.Cloud On with the show, everybody. Welcome back to the Teams Insider Podcast. Been looking forward to this one for a while.

Uh, Dave and I kind of, uh, brewed up the idea at one of the events. Was it Commsverse I can't remember. It might have been Comms vNext coms of Comms vNext. That was it. Yeah. In the States. Yeah. Yeah, so you, you may know Dave from, uh, such fame as prompted the week on the, uh, selling Microsoft Teams show. Uh, I'm sure you've possibly seen around the community as well.

But Dave, thanks for coming on the show. No, I'm excited to be here at, uh, looking forward to 

Dave Hatz: this chat as 

Tom Arbuthnot: well. Awesome. So for people who don't know you, can you give us a little bit of, uh, who you are, your current role, and then I'd love to dive into the, the history of how you and I ended up together in the same spot from different side points.

Yeah, totally. 

Dave Hatz: So my name's Dave Hatz. Um, I'm based outta Chicago area in the us. Um, work for CTI, so large system integrator, um, you know, heavy focus in the US but it does a lot of business internationally. And, and my role is to lead our AI practice. I. So my, my official title is VP of Machine Intelligence, and so I [00:02:00] lead a team of software developers and business analysts that are, are focused on software development, on incorporating AI, on building AI skills within our organizations, and then talking with AI about AI to our customers and helping them on their journeys.

Tom Arbuthnot: And it's like a really progressive role, isn't it? Where we are today and, and bang on where things seem to be going. But let, let's take it back where, yeah. Where do you come from? 'cause you are AV background, aren't you? 

Dave Hatz: I really am. Um, I mean, I, I came into the AV world right outta college. Um, I had a traditional electrical engineering degree and the one thing I knew, um, for certain is that I didn't wanna be a true engineer.

I, I was good at math, good at science, but didn't wanna sit in a cube, you know, doing math formulas for my life. I was hands-on and so I, I had a passion for live production, lights and sound and theater and that did an internship with Disney doing just that. Um, all these things early on, and so I fell into an audio video integrator in the Chicago area.[00:03:00] 

And came into a role doing, doing AV programming, sort of combining skills I had and, you know, sort of a hunger thirst for knowledge and, and really came in as the only person doing this role. I didn't know what I was getting into at all. Um, but you know, a few years down the road I was, you know, growing my skill.

I was getting into AV design, so, you know, because it, you know, early two thousands. The programmer was really sort of at a glue spot of a lot of the complex systems that an integrator would put out there. Um, because, you know, the, the word integration really was, was true because you were bringing disparate systems together, trying to, you know, to make them work together.

And so the programmer really got to see all those pieces. Yeah, it's 

Tom Arbuthnot: funny, I've never really thought of the history of that word. I've always just taken it to mean what I current understand it to be. But that makes so much sense. 

Dave Hatz: And, and so, so my role grew, like I naturally grew as I was just thrown the biggest challenge of the day.

It would come to Dave and it didn't matter if it was an engineering challenge [00:04:00] or an actual software development challenge or configuring the equipment. I really got my hands in on a lot of cool things, you know, really early on. Um, and so, so quickly grew my skills. And then, you know, got to the point where all of a sudden there wasn't enough Dave to go around.

So we hired some people and I became a manager just sort of through attrition in that and, you know, and, and really grew the first, you know, 10, even 15 years of my career, just sort of, you know, rinse and repeat, grow and get a little, a new challenge and find a way to do it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And then how did MTR come into your world and then you end up in the, in the Microsoft world 

Dave Hatz: as well.

Well, so, so I, I go back to a, a single project I had probably around 2010 or so, and it was a large Fortune 100 corporation and they were very progressive. I. They were using at the time, Cisco Telepresence and some Cisco video endpoints to literally produce these corporate meetings. So, you know, so by that they would have their [00:05:00] CFO in France, they'd have their CEO in the US.

Um, they might have another C-level executive in Asia PAC and they would literally call three or four video endpoints into that call. So that they could pull independent feeds of each participant. Yep. They put one participant full screen on each one, bring 'em into a broadcast system and record it. Put titles up and graphics and produce it.

And so I was thrown the challenge of how can we automate this because we don't have, we wanna do more of these events. Every day. Um, but we wanna keep it simple for the operators. And so, you know, over a course of over a year, I worked through the engineering design, the configuration, the software automation on it to bring to life this ability for, you know, really a producer level talent to truly be a technical director in broadcast terms of these global con video conferences.

Yeah. And so it really, you know, yes I had, you know, put the remote buttons for a [00:06:00] Polycom endpoint at the time, or a Cisco endpoint on a touch panel. But that's really what thrust me into really understanding the UC technology. And then right on the heels of that was when Lync became, you know, we started having Lync room systems turned into Skype room systems.

Yeah. Turned into Teams room systems. And so again, it just sort of. Built upon that, you know, sort of thrown into the trenches, grassroots. And you know, from that point on, it's just, it's been a part of what I've done. Um, whether it's from the deployment side, the design side, or a little more recently, the management and software configuration side with Teams, Admin Center, pro portal, and all that.

Tom Arbuthnot: So That's so cool. And like you are, you are clearly very like, uh. Do bring it on. World's changing. Like I feel like that, like if I dare say, it's not characteristic of everybody in IT or av, how did you see that? How was the impact of that kind of. Computer based Codex and MTR into, I think a world where there was a lot of, uh, emphasis, as you said [00:07:00] on the, the integrating, the coding, the proprietary.

Well, from your point of view in the AV space, how did that look over the, kind of the last 5, 6, 7 years? 

Dave Hatz: Yeah. Well, I, I mean, initially obviously there was reluctance. There was this idea, you know, why is Microsoft trying to say all you need is this really simple solution when. For the last 20 years I've been doing really complex solutions and that's why a profession is built upon.

Yeah. And you know, I hang my hat on that. And so of course there's a natural reluctance there. And you know, though the shift, you know, that you've seen is it started with the end users. The end users started to say, yeah. But that story that, that Ilya is talking about that resonates with me. A AV integrator saying, yeah, no, that's not gonna cut it.

Yeah. But excuses of why not. But the end user saying, that story has resonance. And where, where I think I found sort of my sweet spot is coming in and saying, let's not discount that. Let's not [00:08:00] discount that. The complex path. Yeah. And let's really talk about what you're trying to achieve. And for a lot of spaces, the simple MTR room is the perfect solution, and especially that's evolved over the last two or three years here as we have, you know, really there's a form factor between Android and Windows.

Between all the OEM devices that are now certified, there's a form factor for an. Awful lot of solutions. Yeah. What 

Tom Arbuthnot: you can do now is a, is a hell of a lot, a lot more than where we started with all these. Exactly. And so extensibility that and the DSPs and the ceiling tiles, like you can go a long way now, particularly on the Windows, but increasingly on the Android as 

Dave Hatz: well.

Exactly. And so it's one I, I've never gotten too hung up on, we can't do it today when you can see the vision of, you know, there will be an OEM that comes along that can do this. And so, you know, where I've always been is I want to try to balance. I don't wanna build the machine that's gonna come real quick and replace this because that just becomes wasted effort and, you know, sort of sunk costs that you'll [00:09:00] never get back.

But at the same time, I don't want to be flatfooted and say, we're just gonna wait. And so again, having those conversations with, with our customers as an integrator, um, you know, around, you know, what are you trying to achieve? What is the, you know, what's the real important functions of, of this room, not from a.

Technology feature standpoint. Mm-hmm. But what are you doing? Are you coming in here and doing financial reviews? Are you actually doing sales presentations? Are you, you know, demonstrating your products? Because if you're demonstrating a products, the color of this, you know, I hold this up and this camera's reflecting this as almost black.

Well, no, it's like a slight gray. And so that really matters. And so, okay, well that can dictate then how we actually solve the problem rather than starting with here's a pile of, you know, here's a kit. Yeah. And. Does this meet your needs or not? Well, that's a way to sell, but uh, you know, we've been much more productive of, you know, having value conversations with our customer, meeting them where they are.

And in doing [00:10:00] so, it's helped, you know, me and the firms I've worked with, you know, re reduce our reluctance to this being a tool in the toolkit, but also not being, you know, saying it's the only tool in the toolkit. 

Tom Arbuthnot: And 

Dave Hatz: how's 

Tom Arbuthnot: it been like. Uh, I mean, obviously a big part of this, and not just Microsoft, but like Cisco and, and Zoom, like it, it's all kind of like getting simpler and then getting more pluggable.

Playable. Yeah. That av integrator conversation is, is it, as you said now, is it more about advising the customer and like picking from the portfolio and, and, and the right use case for the right kit? 

Dave Hatz: So I find a lot of our discussions with customers, and this doesn't have to be huge organizations, it's much more around helping them get to the right standard.

It's, you know, because we're talking about UC in more spaces, you know, it's, I mean, this is partly the BYOD discussion and why that that discussion is so valuable regardless whether BYOD is the actual solution we settle on or not. It's that idea of. [00:11:00] You know, you know, both cost coming down, complexity coming down and need from the user base coming up, it's okay as a, what's the organization's strategy around uc?

And in that, as an integrator, we still bring value and you know, and I think we prove it every day. It's not a foregone conclusion, it's not something you can take for granted, I believe. But, but, but I think there's a real, there's a lot around that. It is around the strategy of. AI and how do we enable workplaces to take advantage of the right AI tools for their workforce?

Um, the tools that their, their workforce expects and that they have at the desktop, that's becoming increasingly part of the discussion. And so, you know, I look at the role, you know, you know, Avixa as an organization in the AV space has, you know, rebranded itself. To the audio video experience, you know, you know, integrated experience organization a few years back, and I almost look at it as we're finally starting to step into that role of talking about [00:12:00] real experience.

Yeah. Not just experience touching buttons on a touch panel on the table. Um, and I think that's really important. That's really good. I'm glad we're getting there. Um, you know, I think there's a lot of room to go and there's a lot more considerations. You know, when we talk about experience in there, um, that as an industry, the AV industry has an opportunity to really show value in, um, whether it's acoustics or just, you know, you know, you think about, you walk into a, the, the glass, you know, fishbowl room.

How drained do you feel after a six hour meeting in there? Because the acoustics are boun. You know, sound is bouncing around so many hard spaces, it takes a toll on you. And so, you know, from a human standpoint, there's opportunity for us to come in and talk about the value of, you know, treating your, your wall surfaces.

And that gets into uncomfortable space for a lot of people who have traditional AV backgrounds like myself even. But again, back to your thing earlier about sort of continually pushing yourself to, to new endeavors, new opportunities, um, [00:13:00] I think there's a lot of opportunity for those in the AV space.

That, that choose to embrace that too. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Uh, with the AI thing, I mean, I'm seeing even Microsoft, like IT focused partners, not quite getting their head around where they, what that role is inside of their org and where do they bring value to customers. So what are you doing day to day with customers in the AI conversation?

Is it AI as in like. AI in the MTR, AI in cameras, AI in the workplace. How's that come together? 

Dave Hatz: Well, I think the first bit is a lot of discussions on that exact bit right there. Uh, because if you break it down, there's, there's device level AI and, and frankly, I look at those as more feature enablement. I don't get hung up on the word AI in those too much because it's, it almost comes across as a marketing buzz sometimes.

Um, where I, I just wanna slap AI and I've got the new version of my product. Well, we've been doing AI in uc for 30 years. Echo canceling is effectively, I. A version of machine learning, AI, however you wanna [00:14:00] classify there. Yeah. Um, and so AI is not new. Where, so where, where, you know, I really look at it is on the, you know, from an organizational level, there's the personal skilling and the personal tools and the personal side of leveraging AI in my role to be more effective, to do, do more, to do it at a higher quality.

And then there's the organizational level. Um, of how does organizations incorporate it, whether it's enabling people without, without needing to know how to prompt engineer as an example, but still get the value from it. And so like, we're literally, I'm working right now on, you know, drafting things like a statement of work based on everything we know about a customer's engagement well.

Tee up a first draft of the statement of work with the touch of a button, instead of needing to teach all of our design engineers and design consultants how to use prompt engineering effectively and consistently. Yeah, so like as an organization, 

Tom Arbuthnot: workflow type scenarios, like this is exactly, exactly.

Previous proposals for the customer. 

Dave Hatz: This is 

Tom Arbuthnot: our 

Dave Hatz: format, [00:15:00] this is the project. Exactly. Those repeatable things that you can, you can build an agent around. And so, you know, when we're talking with our customers, a lot of our discussions are okay from a personal level. What is the expectation of your user today?

And what do we collectively see as a vision of the future? And that's different for every organization. Um, you know, some organizations are still a very risk adverse and they're approaching AI adoption from default. No default deny, and let's build exceptions into it. The more progressive organizations are really opening up and saying, let's be open to thinking new ways.

Let's be, you know, be open to, um, to dreaming bigger, but then still play, you know, focus on compliance, focus on risk mitigation and data security at a heavy level before we roll to production. But how do we pilot? And then, you know, so there's that personal side and then there's the organization side of, okay, well what systems are important to you?

What, you know, if we're talking, you know, even just in the Teams space meeting transcription. [00:16:00] Well, if we unlock meeting transcription for a certain set of your user base, how does that help your organization move forward? And once they buy in on that, there's that value. Okay. How do we now help enable your workspace?

To support that vision. And again, as an integrator, I look at it, we're doing the same thing. We're just integrating with the software layer much more than we are at the hardware level. Um, we're not worried about does, you know, converting this cable to that connector we're talking about how do we get data from, from my voice into a microphone, into the platform that they need.

Back out through speakers, back out to the room and doing it effectively so that everyone in a room can be heard, everyone can be picked up. The camera can actually recognize everyone so that it can do, then do the, the comp, the face recognition comparison and attribute it that Dave's speaking versus Tom's speaking.

Yeah. Um, you know, so we have a lot of conversations around that. And then we have some con customers where. They're [00:17:00] going on a journey of building out a chatbot for their employees and they want to add AV expertise into that. Um, we're going into on the content creation side, customers who are looking to leverage AI to help them bring to life the technical solutions that, that we've sold them over the years.

And they're looking at how do I. Get more creative or, you know, you know, quicker to, to having content for my digital signage. Um, less, you know, less technical skill required to get content for digital signage, things like that. And so, you know, there's a lot of strategy discussions we're having too with the customers that are ready to dream bigger, but again, don't know how to get from here to there.

That's the value an integrator has always brought. And, and, and those are, you know, some of the areas that we're talking about, you know, on a regular basis with our customers. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome to get that perspective. I, I, I've been saying kind of, it's nice to hear some of this, like, because it feels like AV have got such a big opportunity to widen the conversation beyond how many rooms, how many bars, how many screens, what format [00:18:00] into like your organization is on this AI journey.

Let us talk to you about it and because. Teams is so prevalent, and I'm sure the other UC platforms are doing AI things as well. Like I, I see meeting, transcription, recap, co-piloting meetings being the number one first workload because everyone has the problem with too many meetings. Everybody wants a summary.

And once you're there, if Teams is at the center of the AI conversation, naturally that room conversation is, oh, well, how are you gonna have the same type, as you said, the, the personal identification, the transcription in the room, and I think we're just on the cusp of. It a little bit longer and it'll be like, well, that's an expectation.

Like obviously, yeah, when I go into a meeting, it knows who I am and it takes the transcription. 

Dave Hatz: And I, and I totally expect that, and then it will become, okay, now how do I have an agent go the next step? How do I have an agent actually listen in on the meeting and beyond just taking notes beyond recording action items, how do I have an a, a, an, you know, an agent I.

I don't know. Report attendance. Yeah. [00:19:00] And, you know, report back to those who weren't in there with something different. And, you know, I think organizations are gonna look at, some of that's gonna be a build. Some of that's gonna be a, encourage the platforms to incorporate it in their solution. But, but to me that's where, you know, I'm, I'm really excited for the next, you know.

I won't even go 12 months. Hell, you know, you know, the next few months the pace is going. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah. 

Dave Hatz: At this pace is so crazy. But it's awesome too, um, that, you know, there's something new every day and it's, it's just I love it. I love it. I guess it's 

Tom Arbuthnot: interesting timing, isn't it? Because the premise of kind of computer based, be it Android or, uh, windows based rooms, is that you can.

Software, update them and innovate. Obviously at the start of that journey, no one knew the AI thing was gonna come as quick or as fast, but now it has. It's like all this kit you invested in, suddenly it can do this, uh, you know, intelligent, uh, meeting transcription. It can do these new camera smarts. It can do all these things because they're updateable through their lifecycle.

Dave Hatz: Well, and that's, you [00:20:00] know, if you, I've seen, you know, our end users changing the way that they look at refresh cycles on technology, because it used to be you pick, are you on a, you know, a three year, a five year, a seven year refresh cycle? And at the end of that period you would come in and take everything out and dispose of it and you'd bring all new equipment in purely to upgrade the features.

Yeah. And you know, yes, you'd get a little crisper picture or a brighter display or some better sound, but it was really because. The technology had advanced and the chips on the box couldn't be changed to your point. Now there's MTRs out there that are, you know, you know, 3, 4, 5 years old that have AI capabilities.

Long before we were talking ai and that, that to me is awesome. I think, you know, from a, you know, just from a pure sustainability standpoint, you know, it's one of those things that most people value it, but they're not willing to, you know, it's not the the key decision maker, you know, their decision point, in my opinion.

But it's, it's, it's, I. Awesome to see. From that standpoint, [00:21:00] we can gain on initiatives like that purely because the software centric nature of, of our entire world allows us to keep innovating with the hardware we have, with the investment we have, so we can prolong it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: Yeah, it is super interesting as well.

I wouldn't have thought of things like. You, you going in and advising on using AI for content creation because of the, the media elements or the content creation with digital sign, but it makes perfect sense like you are in that conversation. Yeah. And again, it's a great way to come in and add some value in a different, a different conversation to be like, you invested it all this digital signage, like who is the, sometimes it's, you know, there's two comms people internally who are turning the content for that.

So you've got all the capability, but how do you keep that at a high bar? AI is a perfect thing for that. 

Dave Hatz: I mean, everyone sees the bro, the, the, you know, the glossy sales brochure that shows really professionally created content on digital signage. And then how many times do you walk around a corporate space and it's this white screen Yeah.

PowerPoint with text that [00:22:00] says, welcome Tom. Yeah. Or it's a PowerPoint or it's an Excel and it's like, that's nothing wrong with that. It get, it functionally, it gets you there. But the AI enables the, you know, the, the novice user. To do so much more there. And so, you know, again, it is things like that that, you know, AI's a, it's that superpower mentality.

It's not replacing anyone, but it, it really is giving superpowers, um, you know, to those and giving new opportunities to those who you never would've dreamed having it. 

Tom Arbuthnot: That's awesome. Oh, Dave, thanks so much for jumping on the pod and thanks for all the, the prompt of the week. It's definitely a regular watch for me and you've got quite a, quite an archive now of, uh, of different prompts.

I feel, I feel like I used to do like a, uh, a mega mix at some point of the top ones. 

Dave Hatz: Seriously. Well, I was thinking, you know, you know, there, there's, there's some things like the prompt, I, I've almost been tempted to not do prompts and start talking about like, here's the top three, you know, ways to approach this idea or something.

So yeah, you kicking around to idea, a use case of the week 

Tom Arbuthnot: maybe. Yeah. A use case. Exactly. Yeah, 

Dave Hatz: exactly. But [00:23:00] it is, it's, but it's fun. And we were talking, you know, you know, before about, you know, it keeps me on my toes, um, because there's always new things. You know, the prompt of the week is pretty much focused on Copilot, but.

That doesn't mean I'm not following every other AI tool because each one pushes the other. Yeah. And you know, it does, it's not always the most, you know, the most flashy or biggest thing that is actually the most use. And so, you know, making sure that we all just, you know, continually 1% better ourselves, you know, is really important to me.

Um, I focus on it with my team and with, with the CTI team. But, but again, as a community, you know, I really view it as, you know. You know, the rising tide, you know, rises all ships and you know, we've all, we're all on this learning journey together. None of us are experts. And so, you know, I look at it as an opportunity to give back to, to spread the knowledge and, you know, I, I learn from others as I'm just researching what's the next prompt I'm gonna talk about.

So it, it's, it, it's fun all around. [00:24:00] 

Tom Arbuthnot: Nice. Awesome. Well thanks for jumping on the pod and uh, we'll catch up at the next event. So you no doubt. 

Dave Hatz: Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Tom.