73: It Only 3/4s of the Way Plays Nice Together

Recorded June 12, 2026In this Fourth of July–flavored episode of On Topic, the panel celebrates America’s birthday the only way they know how: by declaring independence from the worst habits in higher ed AV.This month’s grievances include single-vendor ecosystem lock-in, consultant-led designs that ignore campus standards, isolated “AV network islands,” overcomplicated touch panels, mystery DSP files, proprietary cables, terrible display home screens, and every “professional” product that somehow requires a cloud account just to configure the thing.Along the way, the panel debates automation versus user control, whether classrooms really need touch panels at all, and why interoperability always seems to mean “mostly works, as long as you bought everything from us.”It’s patriotic, petty, and painfully familiar: a fireworks show of AV complaints aimed directly at the systems, specs, and design habits we should have dumped into the harbor years ago.Alternate show titles:We might be making headwayThe future of buildingsNo new islands!At least a ferry servicePress to startBlank and FreezeI want to agree with you, but…Sometimes people plug in things they don’t want to seeNo middle groundWe stream live every Friday at about 315p Eastern/1215p Pacific and you can listen to everything we record over at AVSuperFriends.com▀▄▀▄▀ CONTACT LINKS ▀▄▀▄▀► Website: https://www.avsuperfriends.com► Twitter: https://twitter.com/avsuperfriends► LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/avsuperfriends► YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@avsuperfriends► Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/avsuperfriends.bsky.social► Email: [email protected]► RSS: https://avsuperfriends.libsyn.com/rssDonate to AVSF: https://www.avsuperfriends.com/support