Like many people in their late teens, Ryan Sabo hadn’t decided how he would make a living.
The next thing he knew, he was climbing an audio-visual and IT career path and rapidly earning more and more responsibility. Unlike many of our ICONS, Ryan’s spent his entire career at a single employer, Loyola University, Now a Senior Technologist at Loyola’s Health Sciences Campus in Maywood, Ill, he’s been with the university for nearly 20 years.
Seize the opportunity
Like many people in AV, Ryan’s introduction to the field came purely by chance. “I was a young kid really not knowing what to do with my life,” says Sabo. “A family friend at Loyola reached out to a relative of mine, who thought I would be a good fit as someone who could learn different aspects of AV.”
“It began part-time with basic stuff. I didn’t know anything about AV, but over time, I learned by working in the field and started picking up more and more about the technology, and I asked vendors questions. Eventually, I found myself in a full-time position with more responsibilities. I dove deeper into self-teaching, learning as much as I could and looking for anything I could read that had anything to do with AV and IT, and I started taking classes.”
He adds that his hunger for knowledge in the field never rests.
Rolling with the pandemic punches
The fallout from COVID forced Sabo and his team to quickly come up with solutions for a host of challenges, some more unique than others.
“It was an extreme challenge trying to figure out how we could continue educational services, put classes online, and make it work,” Sabo says. “Some teachers had never taught an online class, and we had sessions teaching them how to use the technology for their classes.”
“For example, with our anatomy professors and the dissection of cadavers, we had to figure out how to show specimens to students via Zoom. We had to design and implement a camera-streaming solution and have it wired into Zoom for all the new medical students.”
“For math classes, with all the computations and equations that were usually done on a whiteboard in the classroom, what was the best way we could do that via Zoom? We had to come up with solutions such as surface tablets, where professors could annotate and share their screens. It was a learning curve for everybody, but everybody got through.”
CTI, the global AV integration company, nominated Sabo as an AVNation ICON after their shared passion for solving problems and “thinking outside the box” reached new heights during Loyola’s pandemic efforts.
A passion for embracing change
Sabo finds common ground at work and while practicing his favorite hobby. “Like mixed martial arts, tech and AV are all about adapting and growing,” Sabo says. “You’re constantly learning new moves and techniques in MMA, trying to refine and perfect them, and it’s the same in AV and IT when you’re building a system, trying to find the best way for it to operate.”
Technology has evolved constantly in the 20 years Sabo has been on the job at Loyola, but two significant events stand out for him. First, he says, helping program robotic mannequins so students could practice different medical scenarios. Second, as AV began moving away from analog, upgrading buildings with new wiring and larger screens.
“Many technological services and requests were thrown at me, and I just had to adapt,” Sabo says. “Technology is just constantly changing; it’s like a microorganism – it grows so rapidly, and you have to keep up. Being a 19-year-old kid as I was starting out, I knew very little, but over time, growing skills and taking on new responsibilities, it changed my world.”
Education never ends
In 2017, Sabo decided that while his experience and certifications were solid, he felt incomplete without a college degree and began studying IT at Loyola. He graduated in 2020 with a 4.0 GPA. Next up came graduate school for a master’s in IT.
“I’ve been doing some soul-searching about whether I want to go into more of a management background or more into IT,” Sabo says.
“One of the benefits of going into an IT path degree plan is there’s been such a major convergence with AV and IT in recent years. The IT aspects of what I’ve been learning in school have been supplementing my AV knowledge. While obtaining further knowledge in AV and IT drives me, my main motivator is to build up my career to better support my family. Our son was born a year and a half ago and I know that my career accomplishments today will shape his future.”
That’s serious motivation for this AV ICON!
