R.A.V.E. - Episode 1 - What is This All About?

Hopefully, this is the first of many episodes of R.A.V.E., the podcast. In this inaugural episode, I introduce myself and give a brief bio, as well as how R.A.V.E. - Real Audio Visual Education came to be and what I hope to build it into - a book and education program to guide newcomers into careers within the world of audiovisual producing live events.

Transcript

RAVE - Ep 1 - Podcast - What Is This All About

[00:00:00] Hello, my name is Steven Verner and I'm the host of the Rave Podcast and the Rave podcast. We are training tomorrow's AV professionals with excellence and integrity today. This is the first episode, and so I just wanted to take a few minutes to talk about why I created this podcast, who it's for, what types of things we're gonna be talking about and just, give.

Hopefully there's an audience for this podcast, some expectations about what we're gonna be talking about. So just first, a little bit about myself. Again, I gave you, my name. I don't need to give it to you again unless you have short term memory loss. And again, my name's Steven Vernor. Nevertheless, I am an audio-visual professional.

I've been working in the field of audio visual for 27 years. Specifically, in live producing live events. I've worked in a number of, I. Areas, most of the time the title I take on is either technical director or production [00:01:00] Manager. But I've worn a lot of hats throughout my career. I started out with a formal education as a music student at Georgia State University.

About 30 years ago saxophone player, singer initially got into all this because I was a songwriter. I wanted to learn how to do my own audio, so I wasn't always beholden to someone else to do it. And then it became a career in and of itself. At first, I thought it was gonna be in the studio and I ended up in live events.

So that's a story for another day. But over the years I've had the opportunity to work in a number of venues. I've worked with lots of different types of artists, lots of different types of leaders producing all kinds of events. Anything from I. Dance to talking head events to just anything you name it.

I've had a hand in it. I guess a few years ago maybe more than a few years ago, I felt like God really gave me. An [00:02:00] idea to take everything that I've learned and culminate it into a book. At first, it was gonna just be a book and there's lots of books out there in this field, and a lot of books really focus on just technical aspects and in, and of that, just like one field, whether it's audio or lighting or video.

But no one had really ever sat down to write a comprehensive book. I felt like there was the stagehands handbook and things like that where they show you how to tie certain knots and things like that. And those books are useful and helpful and I'm not knocking those materials.

They all have their place. But the angle that I felt like I was gonna take was to incorporate all the soft skills that I thought were so important, but. Very rarely talked about in terms of success in the audio visual industry specifically. There's lots of books that are written about soft skills and their importance and how to [00:03:00] develop them, but I felt like there was a gap in the market where nobody was talking about how to take these skills and marry them up with a, very deep and savvy understanding of.

Of tech as it pertains to producing live events specifically, and put all that together in, in one place. So here I am, 27 years into this process, and I've been sitting on this idea for roughly seven of those years, but really I haven't been sitting on it. It's been germinating, it's been growing.

So the book was gonna be the first output of that. Iteration that idea. The more I talked about it, the more I felt like training was important to me because the older I get, the further I get into my career I realized that not everybody is gonna have the opportunity to do what I did, which is go to a university.

Not everybody is gonna have the opportunity to go to an A trade school. [00:04:00] But nevertheless, as I looked in my career, there were a lot of people like myself who were successful and took that path. There were a lot of people who took the trade school type route and they were successful. And then a lot of people just learned this business by rote and they were also successful.

So I was like, wow, there are a lot of different. On ramps to this career. So my goal was to now create this education program. And the education program was gonna consist of, a certificate program where people would first come in, they would learn how to do just general stage craft. Once they had learned the basics, then you had to pick a discipline.

And the four disciplines that I focus in on for the stage are audio lighting. Video or projection and stage rigging, and I feel like those are the four main disciplines that you really need to pick a track and get deep in. You can be okay at [00:05:00] all of them, but you're not really gonna progress in the field.

I. Unless you pick one of those and go deep. So the idea was to create this training program, you get a general focus, then you go deep into one of the specific four disciplines. You go through this training program and hopefully through this training program, you learn the basics of what it's gonna take to be a professional in this industry, and then hopefully through internships and exposure to real world scenarios.

People who came out of this program would be employable. The other aspect to this was hopefully that people were gonna be able to stick with the program. And one of the incentives to sticking with the program was to find supporters who might be able to give, and I was gonna create what I call these graduation packages.

So there's a way to do this as an in-house employee for an employer. And then there's a way to do this as a gig employee working for yourself basically. And so I [00:06:00] said. More and more the tools are becoming more ubiquitous and easier to find, but still it's far outside the price range of most people who are just starting out.

So how can we incentivize people staying in the program is to give them a graduation package of gear. So for audio engineers, we would put together some sort of package for lighting individuals. We put together a package, so on and so forth. So that's the big dream. So before I could get any of this going the book, the education program, I thought what I would do, since I obviously have a gift for gab, if anybody knows me they would say, yeah.

And heck yeah. But. What I want to do is basically to take all that and just start with a podcast. And so the podcast is really the catalyst from which all these other things will grow. And so I mentioned the tagline and it gives, a hint of where I'm going all with all this training.

Tomorrow's AV professionals [00:07:00] with excellence and integrity. That lets you know my audience is basically the up and comers folks who are fairly new into the industry. Maybe not a lot of experience. Maybe you've just dipped your toe in the water. Maybe you've just enrolled in a program at your university.

Maybe you just found a trade school that offers audio engineering, or stage lighting or video production, and you've enrolled in one of those and you're just looking for a little bit more, a little bit more information. The other aspect of this is that I hint within the introduction there is the excellence part.

I really want to focus on producing AV professionals who have a focus on excellence. This is a job where. People say Don't sweat the small stuff. Everything in this industry is about sweating the small stuff. It's about attention to detail and what will turn you into someone or an AV professional who's [00:08:00] mediocre to the upper echelon, is your focus on excellence.

The other part of that is the focus on integrity. And this is something that I'll dive into often, and I feel like throughout the development of my career set me apart. I felt like some of the things that I initially experienced and then. As I got more confident in my competence, and we'll talk about the Jux juxtaposition of those two things, is I just felt like the industry as a whole lacked integrity and I felt my Christian values and my Christian upbringing that was these two things are interplay off one another is this focus on excellence and doing things to the best of your ability in order to serve God and to serve humanity. And this it goes hand in glove is to focus on integrity. And at some point I got deep into this and I started thinking about all the different [00:09:00] traits that I would want to talk about and what I would like to see in the students that, you know, I.

The rave program could put out. And I focused in on the book of second Timothy in the New Testament chapter three. This is a letter that Paul has written, writing as a mentor to Timothy, who's an up and coming evangelist. He goes through in this chapter and he lists out, and I wrote them all out.

I'm not gonna read 'em all out to you. You can go and read this passage out of the Bible, but there are 19 attributes to avoid. And then out of that, and you're hearing the ruffling of my paper. But I. Sat down and really thought about this and prayed about it, and what I want rave to produce what I want.

This whole program, this podcast, this whole venture that I feel like is really just a God thing that he dropped into my brain and it just [00:10:00] keeps coming back to me until I do something with it is that I want rave to produce men and women who do these six things really well. The first one that you're God filled, that you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, and then because of that, you seek truth and that you live the truth.

I think that's so important in today's world where truth seems to be relative, and we're gonna get into some sticky spots about how do you live out your faith? And do this kind of work in entertainment because you will be often challenged and people will be challenged by you. So you need to be prepared for that.

The second thing is that you're God-centered and others focused. I. When I was a young kid and I was in Sunday school class, I can remember probably like first grade or so east Side Baptist Church. Shout out to Riverdale, Georgia, south Side, Clayton County where I grew up, I. [00:11:00] Ms. Monroe Sunday School class, we used an acronym on the word Joy.

And it was basically, this is a way to order your life. And I've never forgotten it. JOY, Jesus, others and you. And I think we flipped that around lately, and we're putting more focus on ourself, some focus on others, but almost no focus on God. And so I feel like with keeping God at the center of everything that you say, think, feel, and do.

Then using your skillset as a servant in the world, not to be worshiped, but to be a servant to other people, so your others focused. So those two things, very important. The third thing that I really would love for men and women who come through this program and listen to this podcast to exhibit, is to be hardworking.

And I know this is a sticky subject because, I've had a lot of conversations with people at various [00:12:00] ages, and hardworking is relative. It's a term that people feel differently about. I know that I have this almost. Ridiculous puritanical work ethic. Sometimes I'll share some of the stories about ways I've gotten myself hurt because I'm impatient or what have you.

But I do think that having a good work ethic, working hard and showing people that you are willing to do what it takes to get the job done and to be committed to doing the job well is very important. And then the fourth set of attributes is this juxtaposition of being humble, coupled with being confident and competent.

There's the, there's that interplay of those two words again, but I think it's very important to be competent in what you do. And the Bible says the study to show thyself approved. And I think that can be applied in many [00:13:00] disciplines and not just in Bible learning. In my field I felt going to school and earning a four year degree and then coming out and earning a master's degree in leadership development all those things were.

Me building my competency. 27 years of being in the industry, working literally thousands of shows and rehearsals and of every single thing you can imagine, making tons of mistakes builds your competency. I. But it also builds your confidence, and I think you have to have confidence. Not swagger, not this Instagram influencer look at me, but really there's a void inside your heart because you're living and dying off how many people click, or like what you say and what you do.

I don't care if one person listens to this podcast or maybe just one person listen to it, but maybe it's the one person that I'm supposed to influence. Before my last breath on this earth. [00:14:00] Anyway, those things are important, but also to balance that with a sense of humility. God has a way of humbling us.

I know every time my pride got out in front has gotten out in front of me, in my career, in my life. Personal, private, professional, whatever. I messed up. God humbled me. And so having this sense of humility, and I think that dive dives back in wealth with staying others focused. And then the fifth thing is to be self controlled.

I see so many people, myself included, where. We're just outta control. We sit and we watch these what or look like funny videos, but it's really sad to see the way we've just settled in and just. Allowed ourselves to be okay with mistreating each other to call each other terrible names or to get violent with each other.

The proverb says that better to be a quiet man, a man who's in control than a man, a warrior who can take a [00:15:00] whole city. And I think that. I, as somebody who's struggled with controlling my anger and controlling my temper o over my life, I just feel like the times that I've moved forward in life, both personally and professionally, has been when I was self controlled.

And then this kind of goes with that is a respect for authority. I feel like in, especially in Western society, we've just lost all respect for authority. It's okay to say things to people who are in authority, whether it's the police, law enforcement, I. Your boss, to tell people to F off and flip them the middle finger and you were justified because your feelings got hurt.

And I just think that we need to put, we need to have a reality check with I. The role that Respecting Authority has in our life, who wants to promote somebody who can't be self controlled, who's always focused on themselves, is a [00:16:00] hot head, has a terrible work ethic and has no respect for the people that they're working for.

I don't know. To me, it's just a no brainer whether you're a Christian or not. I hope that you look at these things and you go, wow, I could use a little bit more of that in my life. So I think for me, this podcast, this program, this book is gonna be an amalgamation of all of those things. It's gonna be excellence in your profession, knowing your stuff.

You can fake. For a while, but you need to know your stuff. You need to know how to mix audio. You need to know what audio does in the air. You need to know how light moves in the air. You need to know about colors and angles and DMX and programming boards. You need to know physics and how you can hang things safely in the air.

If you're doing rigging, you need to understand projection and lumens and. Angles and aspect ratio [00:17:00] and all these different things. There's a million different things you need to know, but also you need to be a person of integrity. You need to have an attitude of excellence, and you need to exhibit these characteristics.

I feel like in my limited success. That's the way I stood out, was exhibiting these characteristics day in and day out, to the best of my ability, as consistent as I possibly could, and that's what I feel like this podcast is gonna be about. If that interests you, I. And you think you, you could benefit from that.

I hope that you'll stick around. Where we're gonna go is we're gonna dive in and I'm going to use not just myself and as an example, I'm gonna try to bring in other people and interview them. We're gonna do maybe take questions from the audience, what interests you, and then maybe I'll also throw in some chapters from the book that I'm working on.

Things that I think that are important, we're just gonna have fun exploring together. Again, like I'm [00:18:00] trying to not set myself up as the guru of gurus. Yes, I've done this for a good. Minute, but I'm learning every day. My employees, we figure things out together. I am the leader of my group by title, but the knowledge that they have they're knocking on the door.

The only advantage that I have now is that I was born before them. They used to be a great gap between what I knew as a leader and what my employees knew, and now there's such a small gap, but I feel like the angle that I have. The angle that we have, and I'm speaking out to my colleagues who are about, been in this industry as long as I have, I feel like we have a responsibility, an obligation, and a calling to mentor the next generation.

I. I think when you look at every culture of the world, if you wanted to learn how to make a great pair of shoes, you learn from a cobbler. That was great. If you learned to learn how to grow grapes and make wine, [00:19:00] then you watched somebody else do it, and you learned from the master. As Christians, we have the greatest master of all time, Jesus Christ, and he is begging us to come and to sit at his feet and to listen.

And he'll teach us and show us how we're supposed to do life. And if he's given this passion to you, the way he's given me a passion for all of everything audio visual related, then we're gonna be fast friends. And I think we're gonna have a good time exploring all of these components together and how it all interplays together.

A, a call for excellence, a call for integrity. And, competence in your job as a technical professional. And without further ado, I think that's all I really wanted to say with this first episode of Camera Rambled on and on. But I'm gonna keep this podcast around 20 or 30 minutes. So it's something that you can consume and your drive to work or your ride to school.

It's something [00:20:00] you can do while you're running, biking, playing basketball, what have you. And I think the. This is gonna be something that grows. I hope the audience grows for more than just the one person. If I'm the only person that listens to my podcast, I guess it's maybe just for me, but I hope that you'll listen to this.

I. You'll share it with other people that you think if it's not helpful to you, maybe you're like, Hey, there's a young person in my life that wants to learn a little bit about audio visual, and that sounds like a cool job. Maybe recommend this podcast to them and let them check it out and decide from themselves if this is something that they find value in.

Thanks for hanging around. This long. Again, this is Steven Veer. I'm the host of the Rave Podcast. We are training tomorrow's AV professionals with excellence and integrity signing off, and I hope to see you for another episode.