CTI's New Hero - Brian Redford: From Submarines To Top Of The AV Industry

ST. LOUIS, March 14, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite all the progress in the AV world, sometimes things go awry. Equipment malfunctions, somebody hits the wrong switch … everyone has stories, and Brian Redford has his.

He was working for a global payment technology solutions company in the Midwest that had a cafeteria that doubled as an auditorium. "We essentially built a conference room inside the cafeteria with its own production studio to handle employee meetings and broadcasts," he explains.

The centerpiece of this system was a big projector hidden in the ceiling that could be lowered for presentations and servicing.

"It was about an hour before this one big meeting was supposed to start, and somebody inadvertently hit the override switch, and the projector came all the way down to the floor," Redford recalls. "I was on the phone with my boss' boss, letting him know what had happened, when the president of the entire company walked in. 'What's going on?' he asked. I told him that somehow the projector that was supposed to be up there had ended up down here. But I assured him that it would all be taken care of by meeting time."

Now Redford, who was relatively new to AV at the time, wasn't 100 percent certain he could actually do that and was busy formulating a Plan B just in case. But, eventually, facilities arrived with a ladder, and after some tinkering he was able to get the projector back up to where it was supposed to be.

"The meeting started on schedule," he says. "Afterward, my colleagues asked me, 'How did you not just go haywire?' And I told them there was really no reason to do that. In this business, if you stay calm, you can usually fix any situation."

Conference Technologies, Inc.® (CTI), a leading custom audio-visual systems integration solutions specialist, announced today that it is recognizing Redford as part of a "Heroes" campaign that honors outstanding people in the AV industry.

Redford does have some unique training when it comes to staying calm and collected in tense situations. He was in the US Navy for four years, serving as a torpedoman third class on two submarines, one out of Pearl Harbor and the other out of Groton, Conn. "You certainly learn patience in the military," he adds, "along with attention to detail, being on time, and how to remain cool under fire."

Like many people in the AV industry, Redford is pretty much self-taught. After being honorably discharged from the Navy in 1997, he started working for Production Castings, Inc. in Fenton, Mo. as its lead quality engineer. While working there he took advantage of the G.I. Bill to enroll at St. Louis Community College and begin studying computer systems networking and telecommunications. (He eventually earned an associates degree and later a BS in business administration from Webster University.)

Redford's big break in the AV industry came in 2001. He'd become friends with an employee at Mastercard, and they occasionally golfed with the president of the company their wives worked for. "He contacted me one day and said 'I have a job for you,'" Redford recounts. "When he told me the company was moving to a new campus and that he needed an onsite AV specialist, I told him honestly, 'I don't have any clue about that.' But he said, 'I'm not hiring you for your acumen in this area. I'm hiring you as a person.'"

So Redford and two other employees began outfitting the new building with the latest video-conferencing capabilities. In the 14 years that Redford spent at Mastercard (eventually becoming their senior audio visual & video conference engineer), he was instrumental in evolving the company from an exclusively analog system to an entirely digital one.

Redford left Mastercard in 2015 because he was a dad with two active youngsters, and his daily 80-mile round-trip commute often kept him from participating in their evening activities. He took an AV job closer to home with a healthcare solutions provider (Centene Corporation) in Clayton, Mo., and then joined his current employer (SSM Health) a year later. Redford is now the technical lead there, responsible for operating and upgrading the hospital's video-conferencing infrastructure.

The 47-year-old Redford has this advice for young people just starting out in the AV field: When a glitch does occur, don't take it personally. "Remember that it's all just equipment," he says. "It's an equipment failure, not a personal failure. Determine what happened, learn from it, and move on."

About Conference Technologies Inc.

Conference Technologies, Inc.® (CTI) (www.conferencetech.com) is a leading custom audio-visual systems integration solutions specialist. The St. Louis-based company, founded in 1988, has more than 20 offices across the country and offers a wide variety of services to customers in various industries around the world.

SOURCE Conference Technologies, Inc.® (CTI)