Relationship building

I've been thinking about Infocomm recently, since I'm preparing to go this year after missing last year due to my knee replacement. One of the main reasons for me to go is relationship building. There isn't usually a "must-see" new product (it's been incremental improvements for a long time now), so for me it's the people that matter the most.

There's many different types of relationships that can be strengthened at a show like Infocomm, and they all are useful in their own way. For me, the main thing is meeting up with people I have become friends with over the years. Our roles have changed and evolved, but it remains a good network to have if a question pops up for a job, or I need info on a product I might not have dealt with yet. This happens at parties, running into someone on the show floor, booth tours if they are working for someone who has a booth, or even just grabbing a hot dog in the food court with someone. It is a time for putting a live face to the name and renewing connections that most of the year are completely virtual in nature.

Another type of relationship is with particular vendors. While this may also cross over into the first type, this is more making connections in the companies who's products you're working with every day. This type of relationship works well if you have an issue that needs to be resolved, or a special circumstance that you need advice on how to proceed. Building these relationships is very important to having a successful business all year long.

Something that always tends to happen is you run into competitors or other people from your area. Becoming friends with people in other companies is a great way to find out how others are handling different challenges, and even how different company's corporate environments operate. This is a small industry, no matter how you slice it. Burning bridges with a competitor is almost always a bad idea, because you never know if someday you might be working with or for some of those guys. It's a good idea to have some contacts in other places, should something drastic happen like you get let go the Monday after Infocomm (yes this happened to me...). Contacts on Twitter and ones that I had just been meeting with in real life at the show helped me out during that time, and I was hired by someone else in fairly short order.

So in all this technology that we deal in every day, don't discount the human element. It's the most important thing we do, and the reason our industry exists in the first place.

The road to happiness

I know what you're thinking. "But Harry, you're the AVGrump. What do you know about being happy?" Here's a little secret: the grump part was bestowed upon me and I consider myself more of a realist than anything else. I'm actually a pretty happy guy as a general rule. And I'm going to be sharing some ideas that have helped get me there. Today is all about not living like a slob, and taking some pride in your surroundings.

You've heard it from people before. Clean your room. Pick up after yourself. Were you born in a barn? Something we all should be thinking about is how we present ourselves to others. As I've spent the past year living on my own a few things have become clear. One of the big ones is clutter where you live tends to lead to clutter in your life in general. You need a place of order to retreat to when the world is crazy. Where you live should be calming, not just one more thing to get through until you can sleep.

Speaking of sleep, make your bed! It's a simple thing that takes like 2 minutes, but can set the tone for the day, and makes you feel better at night when you get ready to crawl into it. Think about staying in a hotel, and how nice it is to have a fresh made bed every evening. It's dirt easy to do this on your own and have that feeling every day. And as silly as it sounds, it's an accomplishment that you can achieve first thing in the morning, and sets you on a path to getting more accomplishments done throughout the day.

The same goes for the rest of your living area. I'm not saying you need to have a museum level clean and organize system in place, but you need to keep things tidy. It improves your mental state more than you would think. If you've got a bunch of stuff cluttering up your floors and living spaces, take as serious look at it and determine if you REALLY need it. Have you used it in the past year? The past 5 years? Ever since you bought it? Whatever your cutoff, it may be time to get rid of some things, and let someone else get the use out of them that you aren't. And it frees up space. If you live in an apartment, that's invaluable since space is at a premium. And besides, don't you want to be able to invite someone over to your place sometime and not be embarrassed? Keep it clean, and you won't have to do the 15 minute super clean when someone is coming over, and have that room that no one but you can really go in and survive. A weekly once over of cleaning the bathrooms, vacuuming the floors, running a duster over everything, and general tidying will make the rest of the week that much more enjoyable.

I'll be doing more tips on being happy in your life as these posts go on, so stay tuned and learn what I have learned.

And away we go! (or How I learned to stop worrying and love some of the Internet of Things)

Welcome to the inaugural post of the AVGrump blog. This will be a place for regular thoughts from me on whatever I'm thinking about that day. Not going to limit the blog in scope, so it could be AV related, life related, health related, all kinds of different things. Some people may be interested in all things, but I'm expecting people will be picking and choosing. Let's go on this ride together and see what happens!

Today's topic is about internet security on the home front. Most people will lock their doors and windows when they leave the house for any length of time, just to protect what's inside. But how well is your house locked down electronically? What got me on this topic is just now my robot vacuum sent me an alert that it found a cliff in my flat, one story apartment while cleaning today. Last time it gave me that alert it had just found a backpack and got tied up in the straps. The thing is, I'm not home. I'm about 20 miles away at the office today. So while I'll go home later and find out what happened, it made me think about what electronic windows are being left open at my house?

I've taken at least the most basic levels of security for my home internet. I've password protected both SSID's of the WiFi router, and the admin setup for that router has been changed from the defaults. But when I checked the other day, without my laptop turned on I had 12 devices connected to my router. 12! And the only one I was actively using was the phone!

In order for me to have received that alert from the vacuum this morning, the vacuum would have to be not only connected to the WiFi, but also punching a hole to get to the internet to alert a central server that the unit is stuck so that server can alert my phone. The question is, what comes back through that hole? Is there a way for someone to hitch a ride back through, and then poke around my network? I'm not sure, but it's something I'll be looking at tonight. Another consideration is how is the vacuum company using that information? I run the vacuum twice a week. Does that mean I'm a generally more clean person, so I might like ads for better ways to clean? Are there even deeper ways they can read into my information? I frankly don't know.

The level of security of anything is always a balancing act. Too secure and it's unusable. Too easy to use and it's a paper fence. So there will always be risks, but you need to be aware of the risks and be comfortable with that level of risk. Just using this platform, I'm feeding the Google Information Machine. It's a risk I've evaluated and I'm willing to take. Same thing with Amazon Alexa. By having that set up, I give Amazon the ability to know what I'm putting on lists, and possibly even what I say when I don't use the keyword to wake the unit (even though they deny that). But it's a trade off so I can have voice control lights and remote control of other aspects of my place.

Like anything, internet is a place you need to know the risks and be comfortable with them. More and more people are finding these things out and actively thinking them through. And that makes everyone a little safer in the long run.