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Wired In: Kontek Conversations is for leaders who want to get technology right. From universities and healthcare systems to corporate enterprises, each episode delivers practical insights to help you navigate complex projects, avoid costly missteps, and design environments that truly connect people.
Through candid conversations with Kontek executives and industry experts, you’ll discover why projects succeed or fail, how to balance innovation with usability, and how bold ideas become reality. Along the way, we share perspectives on the evolution of AV technology, the impact of employee ownership, and the culture of accountability that drives lasting results.
With almost four decades of expertise, Kontek invites you to think bigger, dream bolder, and imagine what’s possible when technology and vision come together.
Brandon Giella: Today we are
talking about the command and
control center that cannot go dark.
And so this is mission-critical AV.
So Marcus, we've talked a little
bit about different segments that
you guys serve, and each one of
them has their different components.
So whether it's corporate,
medical, universities, they all
have their different components.
And command and control centers like nine
one one dispatch, emergency operation
centers, things like this, they have
their own unique, uh, requirements and the
ways that you guys would set up their AV.
So I wanna talk a bit about that because
it is, um, it's life-saving context.
So it's very important to get the
AV right, and it's very important
to have an expert like you that can
get into the technical components
of it and match the dreams with
reality, like we talk about a lot.
So first, before we start, define
a command and control center.
What is that, and how do you
guys, you know, think about the
different segments within that?
Marques: Yeah, absolutely.
So when we think command and control, we
are thinking, uh, your monitoring stations
and, you know, really high profile,
lots of displays, lots of computer
systems all running at the same time.
So if you think about your television
shows, uh, you have your wall full
of screens and maybe five to 10
folks sitting at various stations.
They all, they're doing
something, who knows?
But, um, you're just monitoring
different systems, uh, live feeds,
camera feeds, and in some cases,
things from all over a building,
all over a town, all over the city.
You know, it could be nationwide in
the event of, you know, catastrophic
storms or anything like that.
So that's, you know, typically what
you think of, um, you know, similar
to a network operating center
where you're monitoring a network.
Same concept.
These are spaces that, you know,
they're typically running 24/7.
Um, they could be fielding calls.
They could be listening to, you know,
walkie-talkie conversations for, uh,
folks in electrical, um, working on
lines, all these things happening at
the exact same time, and you have to
really have, uh, visuals that allow you
to make a quick decision if you need
to about what's happening in a space
Brandon Giella: Okay, so the, the
speed for the folks to operate and
make decisions is really important,
and the constant runtime, 24/7, is a,
an important, uh, component of that.
So what, what do you think is the
most fundamental difference between
that and some of these other contexts
that you serve within the, the kind
of AV installation that you do?
Marques: Yeah.
So in these spaces, you know,
people say twenty-four/seven, they
think casually about it sometimes.
No, they're legit twenty-four/seven.
You know, one crew comes
in, one crew goes out.
This is not the same as your typical
university classroom or a middle
school or high school classroom, or
even a, a corporate, um, huddle space
or, you know, anything like that.
A lot of those spaces, they're not used
twenty-four/seven, first and foremost.
You know, you have working hours,
you have classroom hours, things like
that, typically during the daytime,
so you're operating from 8:00 a.m.
to 5:00 p.m.
So as you think about it, you
don't necessarily need the critical
twenty-four/seven hardware, so that's an
immediate difference right away, right?
We're talking about spaces that are
literally running twenty-four/seven,
three sixty-five versus your typical
spaces that maybe they get eight
hours use a day, and that's a maybe.
Um, sometimes they're even less than that.
So there's that part going on, and
there's so many signals when you
talk about command control, because
typically any workstation at any
point in time needs to be viewed.
When you talk about a typical, uh,
classroom or a bal- uh, executive
space or anything like that, it's
usually one source, maybe two.
Maybe I have a camera.
You know, maybe I have a laptop
where someone's gonna share,
you know, wireless sharing.
Uh, those things are
pretty straightforward.
You know, it's a one-to-many, right?
One source to many displays.
Even if you get into the higher education
segment, when you're doing group-based
learning, um, and you have pods, right?
You're still doing small breakouts,
but again, it's not necessarily
critical decision-making.
Um, you know, it's not critical, and it's
also not the, the time investment of,
"Hey, this still is running at 1:00 a.m."
It's not happening in
those, uh, environments.
So that's the really the big
drivers of what we see to
differentiate between those spaces.
Brandon Giella: How do you, I
mean, I imagine because of that
24/7 operation, you gotta have
really good redundancies in place.
Like anytime you've got something that's
just on constantly, if that goes dark,
something else has gotta pick back up,
like at a hospital with a generator.
How do you guys think about
that when you're designing and
implementing s- spaces like these?
Marques: Funny enough, we actually
recommend a similar backup
system for everything we put in.
So before we go, you know, off on
just command and control, at the
end of the day, AV is a collection
of purpose-built PCs, right?
That's one of the ways I encourage
people to think about this.
If you have a desktop in your house,
are you just gonna go unplug it
at any point in time, or are you
gonna try to safely shut it down?
Most folks, I know there's some out
there, you know, I live with one.
She doesn't care about
unplugging you know, a PC.
She's not losing any sleep over that.
But Typically you don't wanna do
a hard power outage on a computer.
Should it
restore itself?
Sure.
Could it not come back?
It could not come back.
So typically, our baseline is to say,
"Hey, we should have a UPS on everything,"
uh, uninterruptible power supply, right?
Because you don't want a box to
have a failure and not come back.
Not only does it not come back
but it does not come back in
the correct order, sometimes the
order of restoration does matter.
So once we get into the command and
control side, we treat it as mandatory,
um, you know, because we'll say, "Hey,
every single system we have on this
UPS it's not going to run forever."
But in those milliseconds between maybe
the generator kicking in and, you know,
having a power event, this way we can make
sure that that equipment is being supplied
at the proper voltage, there's no spikes.
you don't want, you know, a box to fail
in this environment, where all of a
sudden you need an immediate replacement.
It's one o'clock in the morning, you
may not be able to get our support team
unless you have a special contract.
Um, and then do we make sure
we have those replacements?
So when we start talking about,
you know, just power backups,
that's the starting point.
And then from there, we keep
a couple of displays on hand.
If something should happen to a display
that fails, maybe it got cracked,
anything happens, we make sure we
have what we call hot swappable,
you know, spares for everything.
So maybe we have to replace a
display or maybe we, you know,
replace an encoder or decoder or
some other component of that system.
So those are the big things.
I mean, you can't have something go
down and then just say, "Oh, well,
it's gonna be down for about a week
while we wait for the replacement."
So in those environments, we
typically will stock, you know, the
backup parts and pieces to make sure
that space is still up and running
Brandon Giella: That's the--
It's a lot of the hardware side.
Is there similar kind of
redundancies and ways that you
think about on the software side?
You know, any kind of, uh, I don't
know, operating systems or how you
guys think through that kind of thing?
Marques: Typically, everything we
do for command c-control is gonna be
hardware-based versus software-based.
So there is, uh, software running, right?
There's in a, a DSP, a digital signal
processor, so it's audio component.
There's a file that runs.
We back up everything.
So we have copies of every single file.
A lot of these places, there's only so
much you can do as far as, um, cloud-based
backups, because in sensitive locations,
you're not getting on the internet.
You're not getting access
to the outside world.
A lot of these systems need to
be standalone and completely
segregated from anything else.
We have several sites we operate, and
that's how they function, especially
when you get into military sites.
There are hard restrictions about,
uh, how you can communicate and what
is allowed to touch any network.
So what we end up doing is for
every site like this, every piece
of code, uh, that drives any system,
we automatically have a backup.
If we had to deploy, we
automatically take it with us.
So we have a great system in place
that allows us to really keep track of
versioning, um, updates that are changing.
You know, we have all that
in real time, firmware.
And you don't really store it on-site.
Um, there's some new devices coming
out that will allow you to store
the firmware right there in the
box, and we're investigating those.
But typically, our number one rule is, as
soon as we make a modification or we push
code, we have it stored in our repository.
So once we get to site, we'll have our
own wireless access point, so we can
get back to our own systems and make
sure we can grab copies and downloads.
But we also share that with the owner.
So we say, "Hey, we'll have
a copy, and you have a copy."
So there's redundancy in
where it's being stored
Brandon Giella: And who knew that
America's critical infrastructure is
backed up by people like Marcus and his
team at Contech, just backing up files
and code and the firmware and all that?
That's, that's, um, okay.
I ne- I never thought, I don't know.
I never thought about it.
That's amazing
Marques: it's all about speed, right?
Because you don't want it to
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Marques: but you have
Brandon Giella: Yeah
Marques: prepare for it to fail.
And so in the planning stages,
you're always planning, okay,
if this fails, what do we do?
You know, what is gonna be the first step?
How do you restore it as fast as possible?
Um, because again, you can't, you
can't just be down casually for
a week in some of these places
Brandon Giella: Okay, shifting gears
a bit, how do you think about, uh, you
know, so we talked about the hardware
and the software, uh, and redundancy
and things like that, but h-how do you
think about where the actual, like,
people are sitting in the room and the
screens that they have or the lighting?
You know, their, their kind of
call it operator performance.
How do you make sure that their
performance so that they can
actually make the decisions
based on their AV technology?
Marques: So this is will be a throwback
back to our standards episode, but
standards are critical, and they
matter, and they need to be talked
about in the beginning of the project.
So if you ever watch, you know,
television shows like your NCIS shows
or, you know, all of them, they're
all in their monitoring stations, and
they have the wall full of displays.
I would say think about it
logically, but a lot of times AV
is not logical to most people.
So I'd say if you think about
it with a critical eye for
AV, all right, I have a wall.
This wall is 30 feet long.
Okay, well, if I'm sitting and
I'm positioned to the far left,
can I see what's on the far right?
Probably not.
So this is when you really have to lean
in on, okay, what size display do we need?
How much brightness?
You know, if it's a dark room,
you know, you don't wanna burn out
retinas or give people fatigue or
anything like that, so you don't need
a thousand nits of brightness coming
off a display in a room that's dark.
Now, maybe if you have a lot of windows,
a lot of ambient lighting, right,
then you would do something like that.
Um, but it's critical to understand
where are people sitting, where are
they looking, what displays do they
need access to, and then also how do
they interact with this control system?
Is it, you know, all controlled from
a manager s- or a director station?
We have lots of setups that do that.
One manager controls the layout,
they'll grab feeds from each
individual workstation, put them up.
We have other users where they say,
"Hey, we want each individual user,
in the event they need to, to have
the ability to throw it from their
own computer to the displays."
Okay.
And so those are actually different
things as far as the layouts and how
we run it and how we control it, but
all of that has to be talked about.
How, how do we deal with sound?
What are we listening to?
Is the sound coming through speakers
and everyone hears the same thing?
Do we need isolated sound?
Am I lis-listening through headphones?
Um, and then we've got some
more even advanced spaces where
they want conferencing also
built into the monitoring.
Well, that goes into a lot of work
with, you know, echo cancellation,
and how do you localize this?
Where are the cameras placed, right?
How does a camera see the
correct person speaking?
So there's really a lot that goes into
it, but it starts with understanding how
does the center actually function, right?
How do they function?
How do you work?
What is the floor plan?
Where are they sitting?
simple things, right?
How are we getting cables from A to B?
Is it a raised floor?
Are there floor boxes?
Like, what is happening in this
space from a construction standpoint?
So all of that is what you really think
about, again, before you really draw the
first, you know, system flow, is really,
all right, what does this look like?
What are the physical
limitations of the space?
You know, I see so many spaces where if AV
is not thought of in the very beginning,
I see rooms that may be eight feet tall.
Like, hey, I hate to be
the bearer of bad news.
We're not gonna be able to do
much with display height in a
room that's only eight feet tall.
This is not a good room
for the application.
make something work?
Sure, but now you're trying to make
accommodations or you're trading,
you're making all these trade-offs
from the very beginning of the project.
So a lot of what has to be focused
on is really the physical aspects of
the room, understanding the seating
plan, the layout, and then also
understanding the workflow, and then
you start, you know, working through
iterations of technology and ideas
Brandon Giella: There's this term that
people use, uh, called cognitive load,
and I imagine people in this kind of
setting having to make these decisions
as fast as they're having to make
decisions, whether it's weather-related
or medical or whatever it might be.
Um, uh, i-is-- does that factor into
your design and the kind of things
that you recommend is the, the
sense of like we're trying to reduce
their cognitive load so they can see
everything that they need to see and
make the decisions they need to make
as fast and as, as easily as possible?
Is that something that
you, you guys think about?
Marques: Absolutely.
This is a case where you absolutely
need the system to be, I hate to
say simple because that, that kind
of what happens because there's
some complexity to this, right?
It's, there's gonna be a level of
complexity to these types of systems just
because of how many inputs and outputs and
routing and windowing and all the things.
at the core of it, you need people
to be able to see the information.
And the example I'll give is during a
hurricane, if you're in a monitoring
system, there are multiple feeds that
are gonna be monitored every single time.
How do we get that screen
as fast as possible?
I don't wanna have to hit four
buttons to get this on screen.
I need to be able to just grab the
content, send it, everyone can see it,
everyone can hear it, and, you know,
max, you know, maybe two to three
button presses max to make that happen.
'Cause again, I don't want someone
having to fumble with, okay, I
have to hit here, and then I swipe
here, and then I scroll here.
Okay, now I'm ready.
If it's a critical situation, you don't
have time for that kind of, you know, s-
it's wasted energy on decision-making.
Every single decision you have to
make is just pulling from your energy
Brandon Giella: We, we've talked about
before how simplicity is elegant, of
course, but to achieve that elegance
is actually a ton of hard work.
It's way easier to make it more complex
and finagle it with a bunch of buttons
and all that, but to make the thing
that you need as quickly as possible,
one button, one move, that's, uh,
that's actually really hard to do.
That's the hardest part.
Marques: It is, yeah.
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Marques: love to, we
love to call it presets.
It's like, okay, how many presets
Brandon Giella: Yeah
Marques: And I mean presets for every-
it'll control the audio level, the
displays, what content is being shown.
It's like, okay, emergency preset,
you hit it and everything just goes
for you, so there's nothing else to do
Brandon Giella: So when you're thinking
about designing this, uh, you know,
at the very beginning we always talk
about, you know, call us early, let's
talk about this dream way before
you're, you're gonna be, uh, you know,
starting to design and implement it.
Um, who are the kind of people
that need to be in that room,
the room where it happens?
I just watched Hamilton Live, it
was really great, but the, the
song In the Room Where It Happens.
Who, who are those people
that need to be there?
What kind of people are you talking
to, the stakeholders, you know, trying
to get everybody together to make the
decisions and make that come reality?
Who is that?
Marques: Yeah.
first and foremost, IT, We gotta
know the rules, we gotta know
the connections, we have to know
what's allowed and what's possible.
So IT has to be there.
Um, most importantly, I'd say also your
manager and a few of your operators.
Whoever is the, the dispatch operator
or manager, whoever controls that room,
if they're gonna be doing routing,
they need to be in the discussion.
We've gotta know what are
you looking at, what are your
feeds, what are your sources?
You know, how do you
need to manipulate them?
What do you need to hear?
So they're the only folks typically that
can tell you how they actually work every
day and what they need to have happen.
Um, say the, the money people are
important, but sometimes they may
get in the way of the functionality.
to have them there because, you
know, they may say, "Hey, you
only have this much budget."
well then we have to figure out can we
compromise on the functionality or not?
Um, those are the, the
key folks to be involved.
And then after that, you know, facilities,
anyone related to construction, if
you're doing something brand new, you
know, they have to be in the play.
But I'd say the core of a
system like this, have to
talk to the operators, right?
You have to talk to the operators
that are at each workstation.
You have to talk to whoever
has the manager station.
Um, and then also, like I
said, facilities and IT.
Everyone's gotta be working hand
in hand to make sure we capture
all of the needs and that we can
get this functionality to work.
Plus, if there are any restrictions
or anything that are off limits,
you know, that's when IT can tell
us, like, "No, you can't do this.
You can't touch this part of the network."
Um, or, "No, we have to have it on the
network because we need to monitor every
single thing they're doing at all times,
um, you know, for security purposes."
It can go either way, so they have
to be in the conversation early on
versus trying to come in late and
now make a lot of changes or networks
or reassign IP addresses, and it's
just wasted effort at that point
Brandon Giella: And I imagine on the,
you know, the preset discussion, making
decisions simple, uh, uh, the, the actual
operator's thinking like, okay, how do
you actually use your keyboard or your
displays or the things that are coming in?
Like, I imagine like literally
getting nitty-gritty Monday through
Friday, what are you actually doing?
That's a really important part.
Marques: Yeah, it is.
And it's, it's one of those things
where, you know, this will get into
the weeds of our decision-making.
We always talk about hardware-based
versus software-based, but,
uh, I have a joke with folks.
I say, "Hey, software-based is cool."
They're like, "Oh, I can do anything."
Yes, but do you need to do anything?
What are the things you need
to do in this system, you know?
We see so many times where people
make decisions and everyone wasn't
consulted or they didn't really
understand what they were getting.
You know, we know of a solution
right now that's in place.
It's being replaced after 18 months,
and some of the feedback we got
was it never worked correctly.
There was always an issue.
think I
Brandon Giella: Yikes
Marques: and one of the displays
wasn't working, and I was like, they
are monitoring things all the time.
How frustrating would that be that every
single week there's some random issue?
And it's, it's one of those cases where
I also tell folks, a technology company.
We're in the technology sector.
It's changing all the time.
You wanna be innovative.
You wanna be, you know, cutting
edge and understanding what's
coming, but that has its place.
And in these rooms where it's mission
critical and it has to work all the
time, that's not necessarily where
you w- where you wanna be on the
bleeding edge of technology, right?
You want something that is robust,
it's technologically sound,
and it's gotta be bulletproof.
You've gotta know that when
you're putting it together, it is
going to work every single day.
You may have a random failure,
and again, they're computers.
It's gonna happen.
But you don't want to get, you
know, calls every day because
something crashed, something's
offline, and we can't bring it back.
you're, you're damaging their
ability to do the job correctly,
and that's why I tell folks, you
know, yes, we, we love new toys.
Everyone does.
Who doesn't love new toys?
But at the same time, you know,
there's a, there's a time and a place,
and when it's mission critical, that
is neither the time nor the place
Brandon Giella: Is, this may not make
sense to you, but w- as you're talking,
what I'm thinking about is the debate,
uh, with Teslas and, uh, your, um, uh,
your kinda standard car, if I could
call it that, where it's got buttons
and dials and all that kinda stuff,
but then a Tesla's just a big screen.
And there's a big debate about, like, you
know, I actually like just reaching over
and turning a dial for my temperature
'cause I'm, I'm adjusting it so much.
I don't wanna click a bunch of
buttons and go to different screens
and do all this kinda stuff.
Is it kind of like that, where it's like
I want the tactical, I want the buttons, I
want the thing to work, I just need it to,
I just need it to, like, move, you know?
I don't want the, all the
screens, all the fancy stuff
Marques: Yeah, it's, it's similar
because again, we're, we're building
a room that's nothing but screens.
So it-- But the concept
Brandon Giella: Well, yeah, of course.
Yeah, yeah, yeah
Marques: can push them.
Yeah, I can push this really quickly, and
slight tangent, I'm a button guy, right?
Don't give me much touch
screens in the car.
I want a touch screen in my office.
I don't want a touch screen in my car.
Not really.
I
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Okay.
Marques: knobs.
fine.
I can-- I know where they
Brandon Giella: I'm a knob guy.
What can I say?
Marques: on the road.
Yeah, I can keep my eyes
on the road that way.
The mission is to get from A to
B, so I keep my eyes on the road.
But, um, it's very, very similar, right?
You know, it's-- You don't wanna
overcomplicate these systems
because again, at the core, I'm
just-- I'm displaying information.
I need it to happen immediately.
I need to be able to switch quickly,
and I need to have a-- make sure
users have a level of comfort in
what they're doing, so that once they
see it, you know, is it intuitive?
Does it just make sense to them?
If I have to read a five-page
manual to operate the system, I'm,
I'm already losing that battle.
Like I've already lost.
This was a bad design.
This is not gonna work.
So we wanna make sure that
it should feel intuitive.
With more power and more control, there
will come a need for a little bit more,
uh, advanced training or a little bit
more that we hide in pages, right?
Oftentimes, we, we have technician pages.
That's what we call them.
And it's a hidden page within a
operating system, a touch panel, so
that the really advanced folks can now
get in here and make, you know, really
slight changes or more advanced changes
versus your day-to-day operators.
I just need these things
on screen really quickly.
So that's the things you kinda plan for
and you expect, but yeah, you don't wanna
overcomplicate those systems at all.
You don't want too many widgets on
your touch panel and all this crazy
stuff that a person can't find what
they need to get something on screen.
Brandon Giella: Related to that, how,
what are, what are some other maybe
common mistakes or, or things that you
see in this industry regarding their
AV that, you know, if they could just
mitigate these three things, or maybe
if, if I knew this, you know, 10 years
ago in this space, I, I would have
avoided this, this, this, and this, or
my experience, I've seen this happen.
So anything like that that comes to
mind that you wish people would just
know more about this kind of work?
Marques: Yeah, I'd say, um,
mission-critical as far as getting things
right, don't go in with a budget, right?
And I know dollars matter.
We stress this all the time.
Dollars do matter.
if someone just throws out a
random budget, you're almost
guaranteed to have a problem, right?
I don't care if it's a high number or low
number, you know, whatever's going on,
it's mission-critical to actually listen
to the needs, perform an analysis, put
together these thoughts and ideas, and
let that drive the budget conversation.
Because then if you have to pull
back, fine, but at least you know
you started at the right point
and you've captured everything.
Because it's terrible when you're
trying to Band-Aid a system and
trying to bolt things onto it, and the
functionality's never quite right or
it's not quite as stable as it should be.
Um, I'd say that's, you
know, first and foremost.
Uh, I tell users, you know,
bring an expert with you.
If you're gonna have a demo from
someone, um, demos are great.
Don't get me wrong.
I like demos.
But at the same time, some users get
caught up in the bells and whistles
of the demo versus the actual
functionality and the stability of it.
We've seen, I just mentioned, systems
that they've only been running for like
18 months, but they had to consistently
reboot and things are happening, and then
when we go in to see them, we're like,
"Oh, this is completely software-based."
Like, I saw a system, it's
being run by like 20 Nooks.
Like, well, it works somewhere,
but I don't know that this
is the right place for that.
Um, and they consistently have problems.
So we're big fans of making sure we
understand what is the technology you're
trying to buy into and why, right?
Because it's not just about the
technology for technology's sake,
it's about what is the function the
technology's going to provide for you,
and is that in alignment with how you
do your work or how you need to do
your work or where your work is going.
If it's not there, then why
are you spending money on that?
So a lot of caution as far as
understanding bells and whistles,
then it's just construction.
You know, if you're building a new
space, let's make sure we talk about
and understand, you know, how are
cables getting from point A to point B?
really simple.
I can't tell you how many
projects we look at it and we're
like, "Hey, where's the conduit?
How are we, how are we
supposed to run cabling?
Like, I've gotta go 50 feet to the right.
How am I gonna get there?"
So I can't tell you how many
times, you know, the infrastructure
isn't caught early enough.
Um, and nobody wants to go back and
core drill or rip out a wall or open
up a ceiling or any of those things.
But mission-critical to really
understand, again, how are we working?
Where are we working from?
Where are the spaces?
What is the furniture layout like?
How does this room look?
Now let's go ahead and talk
about infrastructure, because it
should always be captured early.
So those are the, those are the biggest
ones I think I would go with as far as,
you know, getting it right the first time
Brandon Giella: Interesting.
I wanna go back to the, the budget point.
That's a really interesting point.
I mean, obviously it's easy to say,
like, "Don't come in with a budget."
It, you know, it-- like all bets are
off, and you say like, "No, of course
budgets are extremely important."
But s-so like g-go more there 'cause
like obviously before anybody builds
any kind of building or des- you know,
designs a space, there's obviously
gonna be like some number in mind.
You know, they put it on the spreadsheet,
the financial model to make it work.
Uh, how do you, how do you
have that conversation?
Who do you talk to?
And at what, what stage are
you talking to that person?
Because like I can imagine a CFO or, or
a, you know, private equity firm that's
building something and you, you say,
"Don't worry about the budget right now."
I, I'm, I'm fascinated like
how that conversation happens.
Like tell me more about that.
Marques: I really say
it just like that too.
But, uh, honestly, what a lot of
this is, there's a process, right?
And we work with architects
on this all the time.
Feasibility studies.
Normally you'll see it for
a really large project.
The concept can be applied to
any project because what you
wanna do is, can this work?
Will the things we want to
accomplish work in the space?
You know, whether it's a retrofit, a
renovation, or a brand-new construction
site, you know, those are discussions
you wanna have because once you do
that and you bring that team together
to do the study, they can start to
do, you know, early stage budgets.
They'll be rough, right?
They're just meant to get you in
the ballpark, but they give you a
real idea of what the project costs.
see that some new buildings going
up sometimes, um, around various
places, might be $150 million.
one just threw that number out there.
It's really from studying,
working through, programming,
what's happening, right?
So I'd say that should be the first
phase is whoever it is, if it's a CIO,
CFO, whoever's coming together to say,
"Hey, usually the CEO has this vision.
Okay, let's bring a team
together and let's figure out,
you know, what is the cost.
Let's make sure we capture all of it,
all of the vision, so that way we can
get a true idea of the cost, and then
let's start there with the budget."
If I just come in and, "Hey, Tom
down the street said he did a project
like this and it was $100,000."
Okay, great.
That really doesn't mean anything
because we haven't heard what
is the vision for the space.
We don't know what it is.
Maybe what you're doing is
gonna be $75,000, maybe it's
gonna be a million dollars.
But start there, right?
And then let that drive your
budget, and then you can decide
what's the most important thing.
What are the critical things versus the,
you know, the needs versus the wants.
And that's typically how
I have the discussion.
Like, "Hey," or if someone just tells
me, "Well, we have this budget."
"Well, how'd you come up with that?"
That's usually my first question,
"Oh, how'd you get that budget?"
If you did a study, okay, I'm all there.
If you
Brandon Giella: Okay
Marques: kinda guessed at it,"
like, "Hey, let me prepare you right
now that that may be incorrect."
Let's just go ahead and get it out
of the way, um, so you won't have
sticker shock once I've heard what
you have to say about the space.
Because
Brandon Giella: Yeah
Marques: there is a disconnect
between reality and, you know,
what someone hopes something costs.
And it's not always, I don't wanna pin it
on the end user because in our industry,
and in the world, you know, at any point
in time, global supply chains can be
impacted by something happening, um,
various things can happen with suppliers.
Next thing you know, your costs
are going up and up and up.
And, you know, since-- I'd say
since COVID, it seems like prices
have increased almost every year.
There's been something.
If you look at around right now,
there's a memory shortage, right?
There's, there's stress for and strain for
hard drives and memory modules, and people
think, "Oh, computer prices are high."
No, everything is high because
everything's a computer now.
So all of that trickles down
into what you're paying for.
So it's just important to help folks
understand how budgeting should work.
Um, get in there early.
You know, like I said, if you do
a full feasibility study, great.
But even if not, someone work on a
rough order of magnitude budget for you.
If all I'm doing is upgrading my AV
system, partner should be able to look at
what you're doing, listen to you and say,
"Hey, you're gonna need to spend about
this much, um, to get what you want."
Brandon Giella: Y-you
mentioned memory chip shortage.
Uh, the, the demand, of course, driving
a lot from, you know, AI models and
data centers and so on and so on.
Uh, uh, this may be a silly question,
but do you think Claude or ChatGPT can
help you create a good budget for a good
AV space if you give it some good specs?
Like, what's your take on that?
Marques: Maybe.
Uh, we're experimenting
Brandon Giella: Okay
Marques: it.
It's, it's really a bunch of prompting.
Like, can you get the right prompts?
Can you train, and can
you train it enough?
Because, know, a lot of folks lose sight
of the fact that no, LLMs, AI, whatever
you wanna go by, they're not all-knowing.
It only
Brandon Giella: Yes
Marques: it's been trained on.
A lot of AI that we've seen hasn't really
been trained on our particular industry.
Now, it's getting there.
We see more and more companies working
on it, and we're s- there's some really
cool things happening right now with
programming and things like that.
But it's hit or miss.
Um, it's close sometimes, but really
on the back end, can you feed it
enough information to train it?
And then it may be able to drive a
budget, but where it gets tricky is
can it link your needs exactly, and
can you, can you prompt it correctly
with your needs to actually get the
correct number you're looking for?
Because we've seen a few examples
where it's wildly inaccurate.
But it goes back to, okay, did
I feed it the right information?
Did I know enough about the system that
I could actually prompt it correctly to
then get that output that made sense?
Brandon Giella: That's
what we've always said.
It's, it's the expertise going into
the model with not-- It's almost like
I don't need the answer, you need the
right question, and that takes expertise.
That takes, you know, you guys
been doing this for 30 years.
That-- Well, that is the only way
you could get the right answer out
of some kind of AI model, probably.
Yeah, I like that.
Marques: Yeah, absolutely.
It's, you take everything you learn
and then let it enhance your workflow.
Brandon Giella: Yeah
Marques: idea about AV and you
just say, "Hey, I need AV in my
conference room," I mean, good luck.
You get all kinds of wild answers,
but what I have seen is sometimes it's
a great tool to find companies that
do what you're looking for, right?
They can do that really well.
Can search do that?
Sure.
But I think AI may be able to give
deeper dives and tell you more about
companies that it's learning, via
the web or however, to get you more
information or better information.
But right now, like I said, if a user just
guesses at it, it's like, good luck, man.
I don't, I don't know that it
has enough knowledge accumulated
to give you a correct answer
Brandon Giella: Well, any other finalâ¦
Marques: working on it
Brandon Giella: You never know.
Any other final summaries, advice,
recommendations on folks that are, uh,
you know, kind of either thinking about
building a new command control center
or revamping the one that they have?
Maybe these, these folks are 18 months
in putting in a new replacement.
Any kind of recommendations you would
have for them other than what you said?
Marques: Yeah, this is
where it's mission critical.
When you say mission critical,
then you should link that in
your mind to commercial, right?
Not light commercial, light
duty, absolutely not consumer.
And my favorite conversations are
always, "Well, I can go to the
store down the street and I can
get that same display for $1,500."
And I'm always a quick, "No, you cannot."
it's not the same.
It looks the same.
It looks the exact same,
not the same internals.
And when you're talking about command
and control, that's not the time.
If it's really critical, right, and only
the user can tell you if it's critical
or not, it's the time to try to cut
down to the cheapest, you know, lowest
common denominator for the pricing.
Because at the end of the day, especially
in our space, you'll get what you pay for.
You know, if you try to get the $500
computers and $200 monitors, you shouldn't
be surprised when you're running them
for 15, 18, 24 hours a day that they
burn out, you know, sooner or they fail
sooner 'cause they're not meant for
that, and they're not rated for that.
So if it's really critical, then
your budget needs to reflect that,
and your mindset of how you think
about the equipment should also
reflect that if it's critical.
If it's not, you know, you have
other options available to you.
But that's, again, that's my biggest
takeaway probably for anyone in
that space, you know, which is
also the importance of don't go
in with a, a make-believe budget.
Make sure you spend some time, do some
research, bring in a trusted professional,
and actually price this thing correctly
so you know what you're getting into.
Brandon Giella: I gotta say,
you have changed my mind.
The other day, I was at the airport, and
I w- I needed to buy a cable 'cause my
little c-cord was fraying or something.
And so I went up to one of those
stores in the airport, and I'm looking
at this cable, and it's the Apple
one, and it's $35, which is crazy to
me 'cause it's just a little cord.
But I'll, uhâ¦
You were in the back of my
head of like, "No, no, no.
Get the good cable because it'll save
you so many headaches in the future."
And I bought it.
I spent $35 on this little one-meter
charging cable when the other one
was $10, uh, because of, of you.
And I, I have-- I'm even making these
recommendations now to folks that are, you
know, um, doing kind of video work like
this of just like, "Yes, go to the Apple
store and pay $80 for the Thunderbolt
5 cable or whatever because it's gonna
save you headaches in the future."
So you are, you are changing
minds one conversation at a
time, and I really appreciate it.
Marques: Well, good.
And well, and I also live it, right?
I don't just throw it
out there in the world.
I have USB-C cables, some I've had for
a few years now, and they were expensive
when I got them, but I w- the whole
thought was, "Hey, I want this to last.
I want to make sure I canâ¦"
Because specs change
sometimes and things get
Brandon Giella: Yeah.
Marques: and with Thunderbolt
5 coming and all these things.
But literally, my cables, I still
can use most of them because I
invested in them from the get-go.
So I don't just say it, I live it.
It's, it's how I go about my own
cable purchasing and anything
like that for my own setups
Brandon Giella: Amen.
Well, Marcus, thank you for changing
all of our lives one cable at a
time, one conversation at a time.
Marques: at a time
Brandon Giella: That's right.
Uh, if, uh, anybody listening or
watching is, uh, interested in more
resources like this, we have tons and,
tons more resources on kontek.com.
That's K-O-N-T-E-K.com.
And I encourage you to get in touch
with Marcus and the team, and they will
help you buy the best cable possible
to help your mission critical AV needs.
Marcus, thank you so much.
Uh, enjoy the conversation as always.
We will see you on the next episode