THE GROUP MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE
The AV User Group was originally formed on an ad hoc basis in the late 1990s and a more formal structure was put in place in 2009.
The group is now managed by a "not for profit" limited company which is chaired by Owen Ellis along with directors Deborah Jones (QEII Conference Centre) and Kevin McLoughlin (Royal Society of Medicine) .
The group is financed by sponsorship from our industry suppliers and all funds are used to deliver our meetings and network events. Any surplus funds are used for member benefits such as tables at industry events like the AV Awards, InAvation Awards and support attendance at AVIXA/InfoComm trade shows.
We maintain strong links with AVIXA, the industry trade body, media organizations who publish in this sector and other end user associations.
OUR TEAM - DIRECTORS PROFILES
Owen Ellis
ChairmanOwen’s career in AV started in 1984 and he has worked in a variety of roles from live events through project delivery at systems integrators that include Metro Group & Electrosonic. He also served for 17 years as a corporate enterprise end user at Morgan Stanley Investment Bank. He transitioned to a full-time role running the AV User Group in December 2017.
Owen became a member of the AV User Group in London in 2004 and was asked to serve as Chairman at the end of 2009. During Owen's time as Chairman he has extended the Groups reach into New York, San Jose (Silicon Valley) and Hong Kong.
Deborah Jones
Deborah Jones MBA CTS is Audio Visual and IT Sales Manager at The Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre (QEIICC), London’s prestigious purpose-built venue in Westminster. The role has responsibility for promoting their technical facilities and she advises the clients on audio-visual design concepts within the Centre’s halls and offers guidance on how to budget for audio visual and IT equipment and labour.
She is also an active member of Avixa International (the association serving the professional AV communications industry) and the AV User Group (a community forum for AV Professionals). Previously, Deborah worked as a project manager for the audio visual team at the Centre, planning and managing the technical requirements across an extensive client portfolio and has spent her working life in the events and meetings industry.
Deborah was attracted to the audio-visual arena as it is the fastest moving and most challenging aspect of event management (it requires a constant skills update). She also enjoys the client liaison aspect of the job as AV staff spend a larger proportion of their time working on site and see tangible results in the events they help produce.
Prior to joining the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, Deborah worked for the commercial arm of a charity organisation, The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, where she established the events unit. She has also worked for the publishers Macmillan, where she was responsible for organising events as part of the promotional strategy for their magazine company. Apart from her Masters in Business Administration (MBA), Deborah also holds the general Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) qualification as part of the AV Continuing Education Programme.
Kevin McLoughlin
Kevin McLoughlin has over a 20 year career in the AV industry as part of the in-house team at the Royal Society of Medicine in central London. The RSM is the largest provider of CPD points through conferences and meetings in the U.K. and in addition to its medical academic programme of meetings it also hires out its meeting spaces and lecture theatres to external clients.
Starting at the RSM as a technician, Kevin has progressed through the ranks to AV Manager, recently leading the team to the prestigious AV Magazine Award for ‘In-house AV team of the year’ and receiving the individual 'AV Professional of the year' award in 2016.
In recent years Kevin has overseen several major AV projects at the RSM which have enjoyed good coverage in industry media. He is an active member of Avixa and the AV Cultural Forum and can be seen regularly commenting in AV social media.
Twitter | @Kev_McLoughlin
Email : [email protected]
London
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
Stuart Mitchell
Team Leader, European Centre for Medium Range Weather ForecastsStuart has worked at the ECMWF for over 25 years in the Computing Department in a number of roles. ECMWF is an International Organisation funded by over 30 member and cooperating state countries providing research and development of numerical weather forecasts. He has worked with AV technology for over 17 years, designing, commissioning, and supporting various corporate AV installations including videowalls, meeting rooms and classroom facilities.
Steering Committee Members
Dave Patten
Head of New Media, Science MuseumDave Patten is Head of New Media at The Science Museum, London, where his role includes managing all aspects of new media and AV, from conceptual design, prototyping and production to project managing external developers and production companies. He has a background in electronics and computer science and has worked at the Science Museum for over 30 years, developing exhibitions and leading development teams.
Duncan Gunn-Russell
Information Services Audio Visual Co-ordinator, Harper Adams UniversityDuncan has been involved with the AV industry for 30 years initially providing and installing systems for the then big 5 accountancy Firms and top 5 UK Banks. In 2012 Duncan became an end user as an AV specialist at Britain’s Leading Land based subject University, Harper Adams. 2 years ago, when IT and AV joined forces Duncan became the Information Services Audio Visual Co-ordinator.
Jason King
Audio Visual Technology specialist at We WorkJason has over 15 years' experience in AV technology and is now the Senior Audio-Visual Specialist at WeWork. The role has responsibility for managing, supporting and delivering AV technology across EMEA, Israel and Australia. Jason also advises WeWork on best practises in audio visual integration, design, and development. His is an active member of AV Cultural forum, Triumph Owners motorcycle club and thebikeshed.cc his interests include Motorcycle lifestyle and culture, photography, Modern Art, Sailing, fundraising and charitable work.
Michael Stanton-Jones
AV Technology specialist contracted to Google via NTTMichael has had a long career spanning IT, CC, AV and VC technologies with two decades of this being with AV and VC. Michael started his career in New Zealand, travelling with his family to the UK in late 2008.
Michael has been involved with the AV User Group since 2009/10 when he was leading Vodafone Groups Global Video Team providing video conferencing, a production studio and web streaming solutions. He also led Vodafone’s first foray into the mobile VC market for Enterprise clients with Vodafone Meet Anywhere.
More recently Michael has been working with Google and NTT delivering Product Management of Google meeting room products that are installed in all Google sites globally.
Michael outside interests include classic cars and he is involved in a number of forums around the early models. Michael is also a member of FCC Charity which brings cricket to all members of the community.
New York
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
John Hoyt
Vice President, UCC, BlackRockJohn has been a member of BlackRock's Global UCC team for the past 10 years. John is responsible for AV infrastructure, design build projects, streaming and digital signage at BlackRock Financial. Combining new and existing technologies to deliver a world-class experience for all audiences regardless of location, medium, or business unit.
John moved into his current role after working as a contractor for Blackrock for two years providing daily operation support to the Multimedia team. Prior to this he worked at Wyckoff Medical center as the head of Multimedia.
Steering Committee Members
Haydn Miller
Senior Director of Broadcast & Audiovisual Experiences at TravelersHaydn Miller serves as the Lead Technology Engineer within the Video Capabilities Team at Travelers with responsibility for strategic visioning of audiovisual collaboration technology solutions. Previously Haydn served as the AV Infrastructure Manager at Harvard Medical School in Boston, MA. Prior to that, Haydn served within the innovation and engineering group at Aetna and as Program Manager for the Aetna/Samsung Stronger Together partnership in Seoul, South Korea. Haydn holds a number of industry certifications including: AVIXA CTS, Crestron Master Programmer, ITIL v4 and Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt. Haydn received his B.S.B.A. with a focus in Business Management from the Barney School of Business at the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
Erich Baker
Assistant Director, Ernst & Young LLPErich is currently an In-Office Meeting Experience Technical Lead for Ernst & Young. He has over 20 years of experience in the AV industry, working extensively in design, engineering, project implementation, on-site operations, event support, and production. Prior to EY, Erich was a VP of Multimedia Implementation at JP Morgan Chase, and prior to that, a VP in Multimedia Engineering and Operations at Goldman Sachs. He originally honed his “AV chops” in the hotel industry, and received a BS in Television-Radio Communications from Ithaca College.
Emil Delgado
Associate Vice President for Information Technology, Grand Valley State UniversityExperienced and with a demonstrated history of successful accomplishments in higher education. Emil has years of experience in Information Technology, Staff Development, Team Leadership, Team Building, and Audio Visual (AV) Systems. An active business development professional who is responsible for leading the standardization of all AV and technology in the classroom and event spaces
John Kaminsky
Audio Visual Supervisor at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer CenterJohn has worked in AV since 2002. He joined the AV department at Hunter College and supported classes, meetings and live events learning as he went along. He also had a few side ‘AV gigs’, focusing on live audio mixing and lighting.
He freelanced for MSKCC for a few years prior to being hired full time. During his time there he focused on the client experience and upgraded the Conference Center. Advancing through the ranks he is now the audio-visual supervisor and works with a team that supports all aspects of AV at MSKCC.
Hong Kong
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
Ben Goldsworthy
Assistance Director of Audio Visual, Wynn Palace Cotai, MacauBen has been in this role since August 2015 and was responsible for handling the delivery of the AV systems prior to opening in August 2016. He now manages the operation, maintenance, and improvement of all AV equipment throughout this impressive resort. Ben holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Television Production & Media Communications from the Charles Sturt University of N.S.W. in Australia. He has an extremely broad and diverse technical management background across a number of disciplines, including: commercial cinemas & international film festivals; broadcast television; live corporate events; technical facilities management; and technical services deployment on construction projects. Ben has accumulated this experience working in Australia, in the U.K, Ireland, & mainland Europe, and most recently in Asia.
Steering Committee Members
Yuen Cheuk Wa
Head of Media Design & Technology, School of Theatre and Entertainment Arts, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing ArtsBefore joining the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts (HKAPA) in 2018 as Head of Media Design & Technology, Yuen was the Manager in Technical & Production (Performing Arts) at the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and involved in venue planning and technical development.
He earned a BFA degree (1st Class Honours in Theatre Technical Arts) at the HKAPA; an MFA degree (in sound design) at the California Institute of The Arts, supported by the prestigious Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fund Fellowship; an MS degree in architectural acoustics at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
He is an award-winning sound designer in Hong Kong and was one of the winning theatre designers to represent Hong Kong in Prague Quadrennial 2011.
Yuen has also presented paper at AES Convention, Acoustical Society of America Conference and International Symposium of Practice-as-Research.
Umar Syed Habib
Global Audio Visual Services, Bloomberg
Patrick Stewart-Blacker
Programme Director, AIA Shared Services (HK) LtdPatrick has over 25 years of working in the technology industry, starting in Scotland working on building theatres and performance spaces to consulting and managing award winning projects across the world. Over the last 12 years he has focused multi-discipline technology projects delivering the complete technology systems for projects like Jones Lang LaSalle’s Asia HQ, Standard Chartered Taiwan Headquarters, JP Morgan Victoria Embankment Project in London, and various Smart Building engagements.
This portfolio of delivering technology projects from datacentres through to museums through to high performance workspaces has given him an extremely broad view on the technology market and the solutions that can be deployed to create maximum impact for his clients.
Patrick’s involvement with the AV User Group goes back many years. From delivering presentations as a manufacturer's representative to being a member when imbedded with Deloitte and JP Morgan in the UK.
Scotland
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
David Pammenter
AV and Multimedia Officer, University of EdinburghDavid currently runs the AV design and provision for the University of Edinburgh Business School. David has over 15 years of experience in AV having started as an AV installation engineer and then moved into networks before taking up a position in the University of Edinburgh AV design team. One of David’s passions is working on bespoke projects and coming up with innovative solutions to difficult AV issues. He also likes tinkering with any electronics, and his favourite YouTube channels include Scott Manley’s rocket videos as well as Bigclivedotcom
Steering Committee Members
Gary Aitken
Audio Visual Technology Specialist, Information Services, University of StirlingGary has been involved in Audio Visual technology in Higher Education for over 10 years, initially providing support for learning and teaching spaces and now responsible for the integration of AV in over 80 centrally managed spaces. Notably, Gary has been involved in facilitating a change in approach from contracting out all aspects of AV integration, to bringing AV design and installation management in-house, including responsibility for control system programming.
Martin Todd
Assistant Technical Manager, Dynamic Earth science centre and visitor attraction in EdinburghGraduated from Ravensbourne College in 2013 with a degree in sound design, then worked with Stage Electrics in their live events division and moved to Edinburgh to join Dynamic Earth in 2015.
Douglas McLeod CTS
Learning Spaces Product Engineer, University of DundeeDoug has over 30 years of experience in the AV Industry, in a variety of roles. His previous position was to manage the AV Support Team in the University and following a re-structure of the IT Department in 2015 moved into his current role.
Doug has responsibility for providing designs, standards and developing all our Learning and Teaching Spaces within the University. This includes Huddle Spaces, Meeting Rooms, Seminar Rooms, Teaching Rooms, Lecture Theatres, Collaboration Spaces, Labs and IT Suites. They have around 100 Centrally Managed Spaces and about another 250 which are School Managed. Any AV upgrades within the University are carried out using standards that Doug facilitates.
Jim Blyth
Infrastructure Analyst, University of the West of ScotlandSan Jose
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
Cindy (Kuhns) Todd
Communication Services Engineer, Intuit IncCindy (Kuhns) Todd has worked in AV for 12 years. She began her career in Video Conferencing with Wireone and British Telecom prior to joining Intuit. Her team provides AV support for day to day operations as well as production support for large events. Cindy’s role also includes system procurement, new room builds, vendor management and conference room utilization. Her focus is on “the Voice of the Customer” and making sure their needs are being met.
Steering Committee Members
Joshua Willmann
Deployment engineer, Facebook
Sean Kennedy
Director, Audio Visual Design & Engineering, Stanford UniversitySean is the Director of AV Design & Engineering at Stanford University primarily responsible for design and project management. Prior to this he worked at Santa Clara University and also worked as a PM for ETI, a boutique AV firm, and managed AV for San Manuel Casino. Along with his CTS, he holds numerous certifications from various manufacturers. His background is in recording classical music, which he still gets to do occasionally.
Chris Catlow
Americas AV Operations Manager, GoogleChris has worked in the AV industry for over 20 years and an active member of the AV User Group in the UK for around 8 years.
Starting out with British Telecom in the UK, Chris managed a VC helpdesk in the early days of corporate video conferencing, helping customers navigate issues with ISDN on PictureTel units for those of you old enough to remember those! From there he worked for a number of UK financial institutes in London delivering AV projects in their global offices.
In 2016 Chris moved from the finance industry to the tech industry joining Google in London to manage their AV Operations team deploying solutions for Google offices across EMEA. In late 2017 Chris moved to the Google head office in Silicon Valley where he currently manages the Americas AV Operations team.
Sydney
Non Executive Directors & Steering Committee Leads
Lex Strauss
APAC Office Project Consultant | Enterprise Workplace Technology Ernst & YoungLex Strauss has been part of the audio visual industry for the past 28 years, starting in live event production, then system designs, sales & management for numerous AV integration companies. He then jumped to the client facing side where he was responsible of AV & IT Project Management for office & factory relocations throughout Oceania for British American Tobacco and has since completed numerous contracts in the IT PM space for corporate & government clients, Lex is now the Internal In Office Experience Consultant for Ernst & Young, responsible for AV & UC across all EY offices throughout APAC.
Steering Committee Members
Bojan Vizintin
Independent end user consultantBojan started with AV in 1995 when he installed and commissioned the second operating videoconferencing endpoint in Australia and has since then delivered numerous AV projects throughout all major industries. Most recently Bojan designed, commissioned and was responsible for every audio visual space and the videoconferencing network Asia Pacific wide, in Optus, a subsidiary of Singtel group.
WANT TO JOIN OUR USER GROUP?
Membership of the group is free to qualifying end users.
The current membership includes technology managers from the financial services community, government and the public sector, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, telecoms, professional services (including legal services, accounting and management consultancy), higher education, retail, business services and manufacturing.
WOULD YOU LIKE TO SPONSOR US?
There are many benefits to becoming an AV User Group Sponsor.
Whether you wish to become a ‘Platinum’ or ‘Presentation Sponsor’ and take advantage of the presentation opportunities this affords or simply sponsor our informal networking events as a ‘Drinks Sponsor’ follow the link below to see all the benefits and learn how to apply.
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