Jeannine: So then, this is about the time where I would typically ask what are the greatest misconceptions or the one misconception people have in regards to what it is that you do, but I think you’ve kind of touched on it that, you know, people think that it’s something easy that they can show up to an event and plug their computer into some cord and everything like magic is going to work perfectly, and then there’s the budget that I don’t need one, or a small budget is good enough, and then you know, actually going back to the first one it’s easy that I don’t give myself enough time to actually plan in the audio-visual portion of the event. Would there be any other misconceptions that maybe we haven’t already touched on that you would also point out or, or did we pretty much hit out on the ones that occur within your field?
Rick: There is one that comes up more often than not, especially as we are in a cyber world, from a couple of different aspects, and that is, and this is especially for people who are planning conferences, who are people that are going to need internet access. The misconception is that all internet access ought to be free everywhere, and I know in certain communities and in certain part of the society we are moving very quickly toward a ubiquitous sort of understanding of having the internet everywhere. But having to pay for it and having to negotiate for it and what the rate structures are and who has access to it is really kind of a daunting issue. Especially for seasoned meeting planners, or events planners who might be listening to this broadcast, it’ll especially resonate with them. But for those who are going about this maybe for the first time, it would be very, very important to discuss with the facility what internet access is available – how much bandwidth there is, in other words how many devices or how much access that particular meeting can support. Actually, my existing clients, more often than not, have pulled me in by the neck to get in there and help them negotiate and understand how much bandwidth there is. I have a client who I’ve been with going on for five years, and we are now planning their meeting for this coming fall, and that’s the primary, number one thing in this client’s head, is to make sure that we didn’t have the facility problem that we had a couple of years ago in internet failure – we were actually told one thing and the facility delivered another. So I really want to point out to be very, very careful and very alert and put that high on the property list, because everybody’s going to have multiple devices, you’ve got your iPad, your phone and your tablets, all kinds of multiple devices by single users who are all dependent on getting internet access. So that’s really become a big thing and a misconception that it’s free. You as the organizer may have to certainly pay for it to the facility, but we’re searching quickly through different avenues to try to be able to get that accessible for everybody on an across-the-board basis. That’s one more thing to add to the checklist.
Jeannine: Cool. So, by talking to you Rick I think it’s pretty clear to myself and the listeners that you’re really passionate about what you do, and you greatly care for your clients, so let’s delve into a little bit about you, what actually drew you to this field and why you chose this particular career path?
Rick: Well, I don’t want to say it happened by accident, but I build this whole- this is actually my third career or whatever it is, I’ve lost count. But, starting back, I don’t want to say how long ago, I started a career, my first business career in the music industry. I came out of college radio in UC Santa Barbara, was actually doing the on-campus concerts, because I was tied in with the radio station, and I jumped right in through some people I had met and networked with while I was still on campus, and I came into the music business. I had the good fortune to be able to work with a lot of top-named recording artists from James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Air Supply, Rick Springfield (who actually has a movie out right now), Steve Martin, Andy Kaufman, Earth Wind and Fire, lots of big names. I was on the road with them a lot and worked with them every single day for 25 years. One of the most attractive pieces of that whole job of booking these national tours through the US and Canada, was working with our contract writers and understanding how specific they needed to be with their sound requirements, lighting requirements, staging requirements, and all of that. I really became very good at it. I just had to leave the industry because I was so burned out on it after 25 years, and when I turned around and was in another business altogether – I felt while I was there that there was something missing, that there was something about the creative process about helping clients and customers and seeing the smile and knowing that the goals were reached, of course in the music business it was selling records or being more prominent than the next artist coming up, see who’s trying to get the number one record and be very popular, but when it came to me looking around and saying ‘what was missing?’ A very good friend of mine who I knew from Los Angeles where I spent all my years in the music business pointed me in this direction of audio-visual technology, and when I looked at it, it just looked like all the pieces of the puzzle fit for me. I started off by working for a huge international company for four and a half years, and it was time for me to go at it on my own and open Rick Bloom Audio Visual back in 2004. So that’s what sort of led me to it and I look at it as one continuum, it’s sort of the good stuff never left me or that feeling never left me of staging. And then when I take all those skills and what I learned even way back then into a very small meeting environment that might just be six or ten people or might just be 600 or 1,000 people in a room together, I take that same very intense look at opportunities like that to have these events be the best that they can possibly be, and I give it the same courtesy and the same look as I would anything else.
