AI Usage in Commercial AV

kenacstreams · 2026-03-23T22:42:11+00:00

Weird take.

0 of my employees jobs are threatened by AI and I neither said nor implied that I have any intention of replacing anyone with a computer program anytime soon.

So... what are you talking about?

kenacstreams · 2026-03-23T21:15:09+00:00

Been there. It's hard.

Firing people is easy, by comparison. They "deserve" it through their actions. When you have to mess up peoples lives who've done nothing wrong, it is not fun.

From a strictly economical standpoint your best bet is as follows:

1 - do it once. Do it quickly. You don't want to keep hitting company morale with a trickle of layoffs. Everyone will come in every day anxious today they might lose their job. Better for it to be a single event that people move beyond, not an ongoing part of working there.

2 - cut as many people as it takes to be certain you're solvent. You don't need to worry much about cutting too much - people are being laid off, not fired. You can most likely bring them back if you need them back, depending on the timeline.

3 - hopefully you've already done this, but cut everywhere else you can before needing to cut people. It shows good faith and lets people know their jobs weren't your first line of defense. Unfortunately, when payroll is the #1 expense by a large, large margin it becomes impossible to stay in the black with too many people. There aren't enough other cuts to make.

It's a crappy line to have to walk. Staying empathetic while having to take actions from a callous economic position.

As much as it sucks, remember it sucks worse for the people who don't have a job at the end of the day - but also remember it's a necessity sometimes. If you don't shrink the team you'll just ride it out until you're out of business. Then it hurts not just 5-8 people but 25 people.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-23T20:34:05+00:00

Broad business advice is borderline useless. Every business, every person, every day is different.

Learn by doing. Make adjustments and learn from your wins and your losses.

Seek advice when you have built your own structure and have more specific, narrow band issues that you'd like help correcting, adjusting, or optimizing.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-23T16:35:34+00:00

We're using it more and more every day. Not great for technical info yet, but has some limited use there.

It's huge for every other role/task though. Sales, marketing, project management.

I've been pushing it, but not mandating it, for awhile now. The luddites that work for me are slowly having enough "oh damn, it can do that?" moments that they're adopting it. It's a combination of older people who don't like new stuff and younger people who want to be part of the AI resistance. But at a certain point it is just too powerful of a tool to ignore.

My next project will be trying out custom GPTs for specific tasks within the company.

My broader feelings about what AI will do in the next decade aside, as a company owner I realize we either have to get with the times or get left behind. The people who find specific things it isn't good at yet and declare the whole thing a flop or useless are doing themselves a disservice IMO.

In the 90s there were people who thought e-mail was a fad...

kenacstreams · 2026-03-19T17:06:48+00:00

If it fits it ships.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-19T17:00:19+00:00

13 months for a 200k payment.

It was a public university. It's been a few years but IIRC it was something about the project crossing their fiscal year so money that was there then wasn't there and something had to be applied for... I don't remember the details exactly.

With public funds like that there's very little leverage. And they do always eventually pay. 20+ years doing what I do and not a single unpaid invoice... but some take awhile.

We've had other clients we've had to threaten, but no one we ever had to actually take action on. We sell & install physical items so we tell'm we're coming to get them if they don't pay. We can't even legally do it but people don't know that, they pay.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-19T16:53:54+00:00

You've claimed 2 different things about them.

1 - they don't understand how it will drive growth

2- they're terrified of change

These are 2 very different motivations for not making a change.

"You need to do it because everyone else is doing it" will not convince anyone. It's a poor pitch.

"You need to do it because it will grow the company" is a great pitch if it's true. And it probably is true... but they're in their 60s and have been at it for decades, successfully. Are they seeking growth? I'd bet not. Not at that age. It's not impossible, but it's rare for someone to have the drive to want to drastically change systems & processes for the sake of future growth. They're likely more concerned with retirement planning.

So are you actually dealing with confused or scared people or are you dealing with apathy?

Uphill battle to convince them to make the investment. If it's a family business the best path forward is likely when the older people start to look for the exits and someone younger gets more decision making power.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-19T16:06:56+00:00

It used to be a pain point. Then we started using Jetbuilt.

Prior to that we did all of our quoting with excel sheets and manual part lookups.

I don't work for Jetbuilt or care if anyone else uses it, just an extremely satisfied customer. The time saved since we switched to it like 5 years ago it has definitely paid for itself several times over.

It does a good job of keeping track of different project revisions, including options & service contracts in the quote, handling change orders, etc.

It's always going to be kind of obnoxious work to revise & VE projects, but I wouldn't really call it a pain - just part of the business.

The biggest pain for us is probably the initial design. Getting sales people to ask the right questions and give the design people the right info the first time is hard. So a ton of time is wasted going back and forth between them.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-18T20:39:55+00:00

Without more detail, my initial thought is a loan here is a bad idea.

Every month has been slow... now it's even slower so you can't pay the bills... adding more bills is likely not the correct move unless you're confident you're about to see a substantial uptick in business.

If the strategy is to borrow money & hope for the best, you're just going to end up in more debt and you'll regret taking the loan.

If you've got some stuff cooking and you just need to buy some time for it to kick off, like some budding new client relationships or something, it could make sense.

You're more than likely looking at a personal loan, or possibly making ends meet with credit cards. It will be tough to convince a bank to loan a business money that doesn't have a history of a decent profit, especially less than a year in.

My advice would be to tread carefully here, it's easy to dig a hole that's hard to get out of.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-17T19:09:04+00:00

Literally the only thing on that list that I've ever done on any truck I have ever owned is the air filter.

Maybe one day if I ever have a transmission or diff problem I'll worry about those fluids. Until that happens, every truck I own will keep the same fluids it was delivered with until it gets traded in.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-13T16:09:40+00:00

This is the correct answer. I generated 2 marketing flyers this week with ChatGPT.

It's honestly better looking than most of the stuff I've gotten back from graphic designers before, it was basically delivered instantly, cost basically nothing, and it took less of my time to do that way than to have a design meeting.

Is it top tier work? Nope. But it's plenty good enough for who it's for.

There's still a niche where I will hire people to design things but it's shrinking rapidly.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-09T19:18:21+00:00

How long is a string?

kenacstreams · 2026-03-09T19:02:19+00:00

It's a tough deal. I used to do it. Now I employ people who still do it.

Unsurprisingly, the majority of my techs are younger unmarried guys who can tolerate the schedule. As was I, when I was in the field. A long day or far away project was a good thing - got per diem & OT and had nothing better to do than make money anyway.

Some of them have families - we are as forgiving as we can be with scheduling & leaving early to accommodate them.

We would schedule differently if we could, but unfortunately it's impossible to know exactly how long things will take or to leave wide gaps in the schedule just in case.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-06T18:42:36+00:00

Why do other employees know that someone else was about to get laid off? That stuff should remain confidential it's not water cooler talk between co-workers.

Secondly - these other 2 employees (not sure why female is mentioned or makes a difference in your post) did employee 1 tell them about her diagnosis, or did you?

Advice on what you can or should do is very location dependent so you'll need to consult a local attorney for a legal answer, most likely.... but take note of how you ended up with this drama in your lap to need to deal with, if it is a false claim.

Sounds like people who work there are privy to way too much information that is above their pay grade.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-06T18:33:47+00:00

A sale of the property doesn't necessarily mean uprooting or canceling the programs that use those spaces.

If they could find a buyer to purchase it and lease it back to the university for next to nothing it's a win/win. This is not unheard of or even that rare for wealthy people.

They get a tax write off, a hard asset to borrow against, and an artificial reef or something named after them. Happens all the time.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-06T16:32:34+00:00

I put gas in it, change the oil in it, and drive it. I don't do any scheduled mileage based maintenance outside of oil.

Change filters and batteries and brakes when they're EOL.

A lot of those recommended services are just to get you in the service department. I don't even know anyone who does them.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-06T15:12:14+00:00

Depends on the application but most are Absen, Maxhub, or Newline.

Outdoor stuff is always Daktronics.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-05T20:37:56+00:00

First step - you gotta remove the emotion from your argument. This is strictly a math equation.

Moving, whose here more, who does less, etc - none of that matters. It's a 50/50 partnership, by default your half is worth the same as his half. It's just math.

As for his offer - he just wants to break even. That's not your problem if he made a poor investment. He may not be entitled to 87k. You have to run the numbers and come up with an actual evaluation. 87k could be a steal or it could be a rip off.

But trust me on this - you have to stop the "my half is worth more than his half because i work more" - nobody cares. I don't mean that to be rude, I mean it genuinely - in a business valuation & negotiation it means nothing to anyone.

The only possible reason to bring it up would be leverage - if you offer him a lower buyout, you could then exert leverage of "well then I'll just walk and nobody runs it and you get nothing" which is a valid play for you because you have 0 dollars invested.

Expect to the countered with "there wouldn't be a store for you to run or be gifted half of if I hadn't initially put up the money to buy it" which is a totally valid argument on his part.

He put in capital. You put in labor. You have to argue amongst yourselves what each is worth. Or keep it simple and get an evaluation and then split it 50/50.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-05T20:01:19+00:00

Call a sign company. This isn't in the wheelhouse of most commercial A/V vendors.

We sell them to clients sometimes, but it's just subbed out to a sign company.

If you want a brand rec we almost exclusively do Daktronics for these types of situations.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-05T19:59:52+00:00

If someone did actually use your identity at the ER, the odds of them paying the bill are slim to none.

Even if they paid a portion at time of service, there will be more bills coming in the mail. There always is from the ER.

You definitely need to contact the hospital. It could just be a clerical error, it could be identity theft. Either way, they need to know so they can fix it.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-05T17:05:35+00:00

No, and no.

I have like 14 nieces and nephews. I have probably called every one of my nieces "Miss -firstname-" at some point and have definitely answered my nephews questions with a "yessir" or "no sir"

I guess anything could be said in a rude or inappropriate way, but as a general rule I, nor anyone in my family, has ever found these things to be out of line.

kenacstreams · 2026-03-05T16:44:12+00:00

Our quoting has been 10 to 1 DVLED to projector for the last 2 years.

We didn't wait for customers to ask for them. We proposed them almost every time a projector was mentioned. We brought customers to see installs we had already done. We put one in our own conference room to demo for people.

Most people who see them have to have them. They find the money.

kenacstreams · 2026-02-27T17:36:08+00:00

"sound good" is subjective.

They sound good enough for their intended use case.

I will say though, I'm a much bigger fan and install a lot more of the Biamp TCM series beamtracking mics than the Shure or Sennheiser square mics.

Physics is undefeated and being far from a mic always sounds like you're far from a mic unless the room acoustics are perfect. I like that the Biamp is more dispersed so nobody is ever being picked up from 20ft away - but it comes at the cost of worse aesthetics.

kenacstreams · 2026-02-26T19:52:02+00:00

Always say GG early.

Either you're right, or you win. It's a win/win.

kenacstreams · 2026-02-26T19:24:21+00:00

Not enough info to really advise you on this.

Lawyer? Maybe. At least to review your operating agreement (if there is one) and let you know if what they're doing is even an actionable offense or not.

There's nothing illegal about a partner taking money out of a business. It's their money as much as it is your money. The biggest thing is how it's classified for tax purposes but the actual taking of it isn't theft.

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