AV SuperFriends: Off the Rails - We're not changing the conversation to make me look dumb again

Recorded August 21, 2026 OpenAVC is back, and this time creator Aaron Todd joins us to talk about putting the open-source, hardware-agnostic AV control platform into the hands of higher ed teams for real-world testing. We dig into what makes the project interesting, why traditional proprietary control hardware may not always be necessary, how universities can participate in the pilot program, and whether open-source control is a threat to integrators, or simply another tool they should learn to use. Then it's time for the annual higher ed tradition of people returning from summer break and suddenly remembering they need an AV project completed before classes start. We talk last-minute requests, impossible construction schedules, scope creep, protecting your staff from constant heroics, and the dangerous precedent created when you somehow manage to pull off the impossible one too many times. Finally, are ceiling microphone arrays actually the best solution, or have they simply become the solution everyone specifies by default? We get into table mics, ceiling mics, voice lift, room acoustics, user expectations, increasingly complicated microphone deployments, and the inconvenient truth that putting everything in the ceiling doesn't magically make the underlying audio problems disappear. News: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aarontoddcts-d_we-are-looking-for-university-av-teams-willing-share-7492969718262231040-Pm57/   Connect with Aaron: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aarontoddcts-d/ Open AVC: https://www.openavc.com    Alternate show titles: Ten-inch PoE powered A fork… a knife and a spoon They don't want that smoke Open = free Crush their hearts and dreams Aaron, let me tell you something No one cares how the thing turns on and off With the tools available today, we can do better I remove all the GUI Dashboarding and all that crap A cloud side… you don't have to use I'm gonna brag I don't work in support! Whatever process we want to wish-cast on the university They can see our dashboard of projects They've capitulated How many tickets before it becomes a project You can't answer this question but I want to see you try They have a tighter SLA They're just tickled shitless We try to squeeze in as much as you can No, we don't care about that… Construction has been the tyranny of how we're working on campus You can't punch out when people are moving in We've got you guys as our buffer If I'm going that route, I'm NOT happy about it   We stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com   <