[Spink]

I am after some advise and would appreciate any help you could offer :-)

Basically I am starting up an A.V. CI/Advisory Co. I have had a few clients so far, with varying budgets and demands, I have really enjoyed doing this as I have been a full time dad for the last few years and its time for me to do something different.
I have varied working experience including lighting and sound engineering and also have worked in a variety of offices dealing with very high profile people so that side of things isn't an issue for me (sorry for waffling I will get to my point in a mo!!) my query is I am looking to do a course so I can better understand what I am doing and to gain some for of qualifications. I have been looking at Cedia and think its probably the right way to go, but was reading the posts from a few years ago and got a little concerned, is Cedia the way to go or are there others you could suggest?

Again sorry for the length I am just a little nervous and excited and just want to make sure i get it right :-)

All the best and thanks in advance

Spink

[Member 254261]

hi there,

cedia is a six of one and half a dozen of another situation, they want however much they do a year for membership, have absolutely no authority or desire to govern the industry like they want, charge a pretty outrageous amount for courses which don't offer a massive amount of further development compared to manufacturer training, and third party education which can be achieved with lower financial investment/risk.

in my very humble opinion (and it is just my opinion - not fact!)

lets say this client you have has a budget of £30k for multi-room AV and a 'cinema' system.

You use nuvo/crestron/opus for the multi-room audio
kramer/audio authority/etc for the video distribution
amx/crestron/control4 for your automation

and we assume you have your ltd company and insurances etc.

sort out a nuvo account, go and do the training
sort out an opus account, go and do the training
sort out a crestron/amx/control4 account, do the training.

again, my humble opinion is get someone to do the training with you - a colleague of yours, its no fun working on your own when you cant do something, its 10pm, friday night and your on customer site commissioning ... and you can't talk to anyone, but need it sorting for monday (as an example)

you'll need to do a bit more than the above and i'm assuming you know all the other stuff such as programming basics, electronics, signal processing, what goes where etc etc...

its a sh*t load more work than you can imagine, tie it all in with project management, accounts, marketing - sales and being responsible for everything...

good luck,
dave

[DJMALLZ]

Originally Posted by Member 254261

hi there,

cedia is a six of one and half a dozen of another situation, they want however much they do a year for membership, have absolutely no authority or desire to govern the industry like they want, charge a pretty outrageous amount for courses which don't offer a massive amount of further development compared to manufacturer training, and third party education which can be achieved with lower financial investment/risk.
dave

totally agree with this.. i have been training myself for the past 6-9 months within the av. im taking one thing at a time and now into the programming pronto bit. i have to be honest, i think is best to do a search on specific brands, find which one are more reliable and open an account with them and they will conduct training. from experience i think hands on experience is the more important. once you get a project and maybe open an account with nuvo/opus for multiroom, they will assist/support you during your project which isn't something you would get from cedia. true you get a certificate etc but then you're on your own. as the member mentioned it's always good to train with a friend or collegue.

good luck with everything. wish you the best

[Spink]

Thank you both very much for your reply, I have decided to contact CEDIA and ask more information about the technical foundation course, though I think there will be a lot there I already know I think it might be of some benefit for me as I have been quite fragmented with my learning.

I do have a good sound knowledge of TCIP and DHCP protocols, my main failing really is physically putting things on walls, due to lack of experience in this area. I also have a grasp on basic design and implementation of products and an idea of how most of them work, so with that I will go to several product sites and create accounts and go on their courses, my main issue with that is though, there are a lot of product out there but I presume a fair amount of them offer similar services and should be fairly straight forward transferring one product knowledge to another, or I am I being naive on that? I am coming at this from a more IT point of view, or would it be like comparing a mac to a PC? essentially the same thing but would need to retrain in order to get both to work (I really hope this is making sense, distracted by little one being ill and have peppa pig in background bare with me!!)

Regarding having a friend or colleague joining me, unfortunately all my friends are already in full time professional jobs which they really enjoy so won't be able to get them to join in the fun :-( colleagues include my 3 year old:-( on the plus side though I do actually enjoy working on my own, it sounds weird but I feel i get a lot more accomplished, I have done all the jobs so far on me tod (barring wall mounting) sometimes spent up to 9 hours fiddling with a network that just wouldnt work, was a great sense of satisfaction when I got it going though, even after friend (chief networking fella at on of Brighton's biggest Co's with years of experience couldn't help, was well chuffed!!)

again sorry for length on this just wanting to make sure I get everything right!

Thank you both again for your advice it has helped

All the best

Spink

PS I am only wanting to start small really and build up from there the more time the little one spends at school the more I can do :-) calibration is something I will be interested in in the future :-)

Right I am done talking now! thank again :-D

[101music]

Nice one mate, good luck to you.

[Beebok]

Hi Spink,

I'm looking in to doing the CEDIA Technical Foundation Course. I'm thinking that it will be a good footing for a newcomer like myself. I can then make the decision to use CEDIA for any more training afterwards.

Have you had any further thoughts about this course?

Beebok.