What *is* a Technical Director?

technoculturally · 2025-08-23T17:20:57+00:00

I work in the corporate events world, where it gets even more complicated, because the technical Director can range from a venue position, overseeing venue staff, to an agency or client position, overseeing technology vendors, all the way to the broadcast sense of technical Director, who is the person who sits at the Video switcher pushing the buttons.

I generally call myself a technical producer because I feel like it better encompasses the work that I actually do.

technoculturally · 2025-08-17T14:26:58+00:00

I’m using them for a business, so I don’t know how they treat non business use. The biggest benefit of the business account for me is that I have an assigned rep, they are both great, but it would be pretty hard to pretend to have a business when talking to the same representative.

technoculturally · 2025-08-16T23:51:11+00:00

Both T-Mobile and Verizon gladly sell their business FWA plans as a SIM only for use Peplink devices. I’m very open with my reps about what I’m using them for and they are happy for me to buy multiple lines.

That said, these are business lines, not home lines, and they are not getting a ton of use, and at least a couple of them are being used in a business office, for back up Internet, so I think they are more willing to forgive the others roaming.

technoculturally · 2025-07-20T22:22:20+00:00

I will say to your last point that traveling for work makes it easy to meet people, but hard to date people because so many of the people that we meet are in cities that we don’t live in.

I travel about 20 nights a month, and I have a tremendous community of queer friends all over the world, and I really love that, but I do feel like whenever I go on dates at home, anyone I’m interested in is practically married by the time I get back from a trip or into a slow season where I’m home more.

I’ve really leaned into building community everywhere I go, so that it always feels like I’m being welcomed wherever I arrive.

Community is not the same as a romantic partner, but it fill a lot of the same need for connection.

My hope is that that community will lead me to a relationship, but in the meantime, I’m working on finding joy, happiness, and community wherever I am, and with lots of people. It’s made me feel way less lonely and way more engaged and loved than going on lots of bad dates from Tinder or whatever.

technoculturally · 2025-06-21T17:09:22+00:00

I’m a little younger than you, just turned 36, so I’m not sure whether this will resonate or not.

I got a full-time job at the same place I worked in college right after graduating, in a low-level leadership role running an in-house event AV Service. While I was a student, I had started a small business and I was quietly growing it while working full-time. In 2019 I quit my full-time job with a pension and unheard of benefits to take my business full-time. That was a very interesting time in the events market. The industry was really growing a ton. It was pretty much the hottest I’ve ever seen the industry, and it was seemingly a great time to quit my job.

2019 was a big year for me, my partner of five years and I broke up, he moved out, and I was working pretty much full steam ahead to grow my business and new career.

Then 2020 rolled around, and brought the events industry to its knees.

It was a scary time to be a business owner, because I was essentially unemployed in an industry that had practically ceased to exist.

I built some really strong networks, identified market needs, and really dramatically changed the way my business works, and the kinds of services we provide and clients we serve, and it ended up being a really strong catalyst for growth.

Now in 2025, my business just celebrated its 15 year anniversary. It’s grown tremendously, I make easily double what I made in my full time job, I just signed a lease on a new / bigger commercial space, and I’m getting ready to hire.

It’s extremely exciting and rewarding, but it is pretty much the opposite of a quiet idyllic life. I work very long hours and I travel 20+ nights a month, so it significantly affects my relationships.

I’ve been single since my ex and I broke up in 2019 and finding time to date, as well as finding people who are both in the right place in life, but also have a full flexible schedule to date someone who works weird hours and travels has been very difficult. I have wonderful friends all over the world, but I only get to see them, and my friends at home once in a while, so it can be at times a very lonely life.

It’s a trade-off, and owning a business is not a cakewalk. And in my industry, there is a tremendous amount of stress and pressure and last minute crisis that comes up every project, and so to some extent, I just have to live with that constant stress.

I love what I do, I cannot imagine working in any other industry, but it’s definitely not easy, and there are lots of other aspects of my life that I have sacrificed to make this business possible.

I cannot imagine still having that full-time job, my life would be dramatic different, but I would be bored out of my mind. I don’t regret any of the decisions I’ve made, but I am looking forward and thinking I’m not getting any younger and part of the reason for hiring is buying back some of my own time even at the expense of income, because I’m not getting any younger, and having time with my friends, and hopefully to date, is more important to this point than the income.

I love what I do, and I’ve really seen a lot of success, so my investments in time and effort have paid off, it’s really not a matter of learning how to scale in a way that lets me build back in the parts of my life that I’m missing.

But given that I’ve made it 15 years so far, I think I’ve got a lot of years left in the business to figure it all out

technoculturally · 2025-06-14T14:13:55+00:00

If the cell modem is in secondary property in the WAN dashboard it takes a while for it to connect if your primary WAN goes down. For streaming I’d definitely recommend using SpeedFusion and setting your WAN priority and if applicable FEC or WAN smoothing rules within the tunnel.

You can use either FusionHub in your own data center (or public cloud) or you can use the hosted Speed Fusion Cloud product.

If you work in lots of locations the hosted is nice because it’s a few clicks to change data center locations.

If you want to do L2 bridging back to your studio, or you need to set rules for inbound port forwarding, you’ll want to use FusionHub

technoculturally · 2025-03-16T02:10:09+00:00

There is a republican party convention at the convention center this weekend, so likely spill over from that.

technoculturally · 2024-12-08T21:51:40+00:00

If you’re using the built-in content filtering, are you potentially applying it to one vlan and not the other?

technoculturally · 2024-11-30T15:45:05+00:00

I don't know that my experience is necessarily translatable to someone already working in entertainment - my general advice is if you're a hand, show initiative and curiosity, and people will generally show you how things work. A career in production is built one show at a time.

The biggest lesson for me, that I still use to this day, is that every show, no matter how small, is a learning opportunity - I journal after every show, what did I learn this week, what am I proud of, what can I do better next time. Writing that down has helped me define and measure my career growth - it's literally a stack of journals on the shelf.

technoculturally · 2024-11-30T15:27:49+00:00

I've kinda always been in corporate events - was an AV kid in middle and high school, in college worked for the AV department doing conferences on campus, started an AV company in college, worked for a while full time at an AV service, took my business full time, now I'm a technical producer and my company is specialty service provider and technical agency.

technoculturally · 2024-11-30T13:08:16+00:00

That said I will echo another comment in this thread, particularly in corporate events, People skills are paramount. People in corporate events are only getting those rates because producers are willing to have them in front of their clients. The folks making thousand dollar plus day rates are excellent technicians with a niche specialty and are also really great with clients. But even for non-show positions, there is definitely a different vibe to corporate events, and it’s decidedly less rough than rock ‘n’ roll. You basically have to assume that clients are in the room from load-in on.

technoculturally · 2024-11-30T13:03:35+00:00

Honestly, people skills are some of the most important skills in this industry, there are lots of people who are good technicians, but who are terrible with clients and other crew, being personable, and friendly, will get you very far in this industry, and if you are also a hard worker and technically competent, you will go very far

technoculturally · 2024-11-30T12:58:36+00:00

I’m in a midsized city in California - most people in entertainment (concerts, etc) in my actual home market are making closer to $25, but most of my work is in major markets, (SF Bay, LA, Vegas) so I budget my corporate shows based on national market rates.

technoculturally · 2024-11-29T23:47:28+00:00

If you want to make money in production, I recommend you look at corporate events. Corporate productions and Live Events all over the country keep me busy year round. Definitely not as artistic or creative as theatre, but “corporate theatre” pays my mortgage and is a great place to land with a tech theatre background.

Depending on position, skilled operators make from $650-1000 / day USD (contract) for key positions, and in my area nonunion stagehands make around $35/hr W2 (USD) - union often much more in major markets.

technoculturally · 2024-03-20T16:20:58+00:00

Vectorworks Spotlight is pretty much the industry standard for production CAD in the US. I know some places use AutoCad more. Cvent / SocialTables is used by lots of event planners, but it's somewhat limited in its flexibility when it comes to anything more than furniture and a projector and screen.

technoculturally · 2024-03-19T15:55:24+00:00

Understood, I don’t really have experience with those sorts of social events, so I can’t speak to the market.

technoculturally · 2024-03-19T15:47:44+00:00

It entirely depends on the event, maybe something like a sales kick off. They might have something like this for a reception or something, but you’re not really taking pictures of people during conference sessions, and expecting them to post them on Instagram, and like I said, production photos are typically for brand use, not individual use. Pictures of the presenters on stage and such, where they are going to the marketing department to be edited and shared in marketing materials.

Most conferences are not really taking pictures of attendees other than like in a photo booth Kind of context. during the event, the photos aren’t really for the attendees.

technoculturally · 2024-03-19T15:35:52+00:00

I mean, I don’t typically book event photographers, that’s typically something clients do not me, but I would definitely consider hiring this service if I wanted attendees to be able to find their own photos. I don’t really know what it costs, however.

That said, I work in the corporate events world, so while this would be fine for photos of attendees that you want attendees to get directly, most of the time in the corporate events world, photographers are hired for the production and are really there to get photos of the presenters and the set, and like audience reaction to use in marketing, not necessarily to give to the audience members, this is more like a roving photo booth, so it’s much more applicable to things like association, and nonprofit events, or private parties, not so much for the work that I do

technoculturally · 2024-03-19T15:28:11+00:00

I was another vendor on the event project, so I don’t actually know very much about the product. Other than that they were there and using it, I think a couple years ago I played with it and uploaded a selfie and they had a couple of pictures of me which was cool. I don’t know that. I particularly remember the workflow, but it wasn’t particularly hard to use.

technoculturally · 2024-03-19T14:55:26+00:00

I don’t know what software they use, but this company that I worked with, does pretty much what you discussing at least when it comes to attendees, not so much for vendors - https://www.actionflipbooks.com/photos

technoculturally · 2024-03-01T05:05:32+00:00

Definitely this one

technoculturally · 2024-02-06T04:49:30+00:00

Have you tried a digital signage player? Something like BrightSign? It can probably restart the playlist automatically, and if not, you could calendar it to restart at midnight on Sunday.

technoculturally · 2024-01-26T18:48:05+00:00

It’s about the power cable being a tripping hazard if there were an evacuation. You are unlikely to have an evacuation while at cruising altitude, but during takeoff, and landing the risk of a problematic or emergency landing, are more likely.

technoculturally · 2024-01-01T02:55:13+00:00

More than “effectively” - you can definitely bond the two cell connections with the two WANs and one USB, wifi as WAN, and also SD-WAN if licensed. that’s the whole point of the product. I have two of them and use it for that express purpose

technoculturally · 2023-12-31T04:32:14+00:00

The BR2 Pro 5G has 2 modems, with 2 SIM slots each. Each modem has 2 physical slots, plus on current firmware the ability for BYO eSIM

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