This week is the week of my first ever presentation to my placement supervisor for choosing my phase 2 departments. People who read the previous article should already know which departments I have ended up, that’s right! I will be going through Pre-Sales, PE (Project Engineering) and Managed On-site each for a month and start to get some real experience out of them before the end of this year. Apart from shadowing people and just looking at others’ work, what I did in my spare time was going through all kinds of software training! Just like not a lot of people know that AV industry is big, I assume that you don’t know that working in AV as an engineer needs to be qualified. Until now I have already gone through the online training course for Dante, Q-SYS and Crestron etc. and trying to obtain more certifications in the future! I will introduce the software and the training course I have done in this article, if you are still interested please carry on reading!
Before going into those fancy, complex software training, there is one of the most important certificates that an AV engineer should get, which is CTS. CTS stands for Certified Technology Specialist, it performs general technology solution tasks by: Creating, operating, and servicing AV solutions. I would say it is a master guide for a beginner to know everything about basic AV, which is just perfect to me as a complete rookie. The CTS master book covers the basic knowledge about audio and visual solutions including display and acoustics to the detailed design considerations and tips when starting a project. By the time that I was still shadowing around the departments, I am also building my technical background in my spare time. Which I found out it is very useful since you don’t want to just stay behind someone knowing nothing but having a relatively depth of knowledge to ask questions and provide own opinions.
I would say the first ten chapters in the book are pretty much like the revision of what I learnt in my first two years in university, which definitely worth to recap and go back to review yourself in terms of the technical prospects you still have in your brain. When it comes to the second part of the book, it will then get to the design stage that covers in all sorts of different aspects. To become a CTS certificated AV engineer, you will have to pass through a master exam! I am currently on the 70% of the book while practicing with some exam questions on AVIXA website. Seems like I have still got a while to go to get my certification but hopefully I will get it in the beginning of next year!
Apart from the general AV knowledge-wise CTS exam which is the main training that I am going through, of course there are always some software training that is happening all the time. Most of the software that I have been trained on are either a control user interface, networking or audio programming, which includes Q-SYS for QSC, Toolbox and DegitalMedia for Crestron and Dante. Having these related techniques and skills on how to design and configure them is very important otherwise you wouldn’t know how the devices and connection are talking to each other. At the same time, by doing these training also got me qualifies in software and getting a deeper understanding on how a system works. In the training course, you will not just be watching some boring tutorials but getting a chance to set up a design in order to pass the exam which is always the best way to understand a system.
Don’t think it will benefit you guys too much to getting deeper into how each software works, hence I will just leave it for now. What I really want to emphasis and share is that even if you are just an intern and you don’t have enough knowledge in certain professional areas, but you can always enhance yourself by going through training and some online courses. It is never to late or to much to get ready and get prepared in all time! I will definitely keep on going through the training I have had now and getting more real-life experience from work.
As I said from the beginning, AV industry is a fast-paced developing industry products and techniques will keep renewing and improving. In that case, I believe that I will be going into more demo presentation and products training in the future. I will come up again and share my experience again if I do have the chances. I will see you guys in my next article then, bye!
Mandy xx
