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Speaking at an SBE Session at the 2014 NAB Convention
 

 
Saturday, April 4, 2014: 
Sunrise at Las Vegas, Nevada, with the sun spraying orange color on the mountains just outside town.
 
 
The National Association of Broadcasters' annual convention included a day of live presentation for broadcast engineers.
 
The Society of Broadcast Engineers had speakers give talks. 

This year, the subject was, "Best Practices in Broadcast Engineering."

Well known writer John Bisset co-chaired a session with me about good and bad engineering ideas.

The above photo was taken early in the day. 

It was a full-house of more than 300 with people standing in the isles when John and I talked.

We are both writers for Radio World.

I started out with the story of how smart engineers are.  He explained that there was a radio station in a foreign land where something really terrible was said on the air at a radio station.  The station owner, station manager, and station engineer were all sentenced to die by guillotine.  This must have been a former French colony.  The radio station owner was put in the machine.  The release cord was pulled.  The blade dropped and then stopped less than one inch from the neck of the manager.  It must have been "divine intervention."  He was set free.  The same thing happened to the station manager.  Then it was time to execute the station engineer.  He was examining the machine as it was being made ready.  Just before the executioner pulled the cord, the engineer exclaimed, "Wait...I see the problem!" 

So you see, engineers are very smart people.

The talk went well in spite of this bit of historical humor.

Download the PowerPoint here. (It is a 20 MB .pptx file).  Click the "Read Only" button to view it.  The document may be used elsewhere only if this source is credited.


May 12, 2016 e-mail:
 Mark:  Love your Power Point!  It should be in the SBE curriculum for anyone seeking certification.  Good, common sense stuff!  Bob Simmons, KNDK Radio in Langdon, North Dakota.
 
The stories go on and on.  Stop in again sometime.  I'll leave the soldering iron on for you. 
Mark W. Persons
SBE CPBE, CBNT, AMD  
Ham W0MH

Questions? Email Mark Persons:  teki@mwpersons.com  

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