PRODUCTION FUTURES
AUDIOVERSITY Considered the industry’s largest free training resource, NEXO and Yamaha Professional Audio join forces to provide access to pro audio education and training activities, accredited by the AVIXA Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) programme. TPi’s Jacob Waite finds out what AUDIOVERSITY offers the next generation of live events professionals…
distributors and dealers to sound engineers, technicians and consultants, among others. As a former sound engineer, Deffarges, along with Poitrenaud, who still operates as a sound engineer, utilised their collective in-the-field expertise and experience operating in universities across France to create a pragmatic training programme. “AUDIOVERSITY is built on our strong experience as teachers. I believe that you cannot teach if you don’t have experience operating in the field as well as the academic structure of education – it is a symbiotic relationship,” Deffarges theorised. “Plenty of the skills we impart to the attendees are applicable to operating on site.” ‘INSPIRING THE NEXT GENERATION OF PROFESSIONALS’ When COVID-19 enforced the ban on mass gatherings in mid-March last year, NEXO reacted swiftly by rolling out a series of webinars, held on Zoom over the course of two weeks, which were subsequently broadcast across the firm’s social channels. “We had 50 sessions in total with 5,000 attendees, which were rebroadcast in the US and Asia on Facebook live,” Deffarges remarked. “Initially, it was a difficult transition for us to shift our processes from on-site education to the online realm. However, it was a worthy pursuit in the long term.” Like many manufacturers, NEXO ramped up its online training during the height of the pandemic. Poitrenaud cited the ease and preparation of “elite-level” education institutes and universities, which immediately acclimatised to online teaching, as a benchmark for AUDIOVERSITY which, at that stage, was in its digital infancy. “It is a different experience to connect with attendees through a screen as opposed to the human connection,” he commented. “We counteract this by interacting with them, ensuring their camera is on and engaging in Q&As. It is an increased workload for us as tutors, however, the rewards are tenfold.” By June last year, the team came to the sudden realisation that the sector was experiencing information overload. Having masterminded the shift to digital, Poitrenaud now faced the initiative’s greatest challenge. “People were fed up with manufacturer webinars. We saw the attendance drop significantly, because the webinar market for the industry was so saturated at that time,” he conceded, explaining that the team’s next challenge was to step up the format and run intimate and casual online sessions at the turn of the year, accredited by the AVIXA Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) programme, and run by Yamaha. “It’s a new challenge to network and educate the sector in limited numbers,” Deffarges stated. “I believe that audio and video interaction cannot replace physical interaction, however, this is the closest thing to networking and inspiring the next generation of professionals at this difficult time.” AUDIOVERSITY’s online training sessions allow professionals, installers and students to learn about general acoustic principles and access specific pro audio system training, covering everything from system design
Uniting under the banner of AUDIOVERSITY, NEXO and Yamaha Professional Audio have been proactive in developing and maintaining their education and training offerings amid the COVID-19 crisis. Considered the industry’s largest free training resource, unlike most manufacturer-led incentives, AUDIOVERSITY is accredited by the AVIXA Certified Technology Specialist (CTS) programme, providing attendees the skills and knowledge of universal professional audio products and systems that engineers and technicians are likely to find on the job – something which the organisers describe as ‘agnostic training’. AUDIOVERSITY Head of Training, Nicholas Poitrenaud has been involved in curating NEXO’s education programme since 2015. He and NEXO Director of Engineering Support Division, François Deffarges, sat down with TPi over Microsoft Teams to share their philosophy of disseminating information and know-how to the next generation of live events professionals. “François and I, along with the NEXO Engineering Support Team, organise AUDIOVERSITY’s training and educational content, sharing the workload to make the training as effective as possible for attendees across the globe,” commented Poitrenaud, who last appeared in TPi in November 2020, as he dusted off his roadie uniform to embark on a unique broadcast project which saw Lebanese jazz trumpeter and pianist Ibrahim Maalouf deliver an innovative live performance, with NEXO sound systems providing an immersive soundfield. NEXO’s Engineering Support Department was created six years ago to support the network of the audio community in the broader sense – from
48
