Bradford Benn

Bradford has been involved in the audio, video, lighting, and control industries for 30 years and counting. He quite often shares his opinions in multiple forums including such sites as pro.harman.com/insights Note: Bradford is employed by Harman and wants to indicate that clearly. Harman is also an underwriter of AVNation. He does recuse himself from discussions to avoid any conflict or confusion when appropriate. He will represent Harman on occasion such as interviews at trade shows. This column is his own opinion and does not intend or attempt to speak on behalf of Harman.

Bradford’s Brain Balloon #0022 – New Year, New Processes

As many of you know, I was laid off from Harman Professional on December 21, 2017. This column is about what I have been doing since then. If you are looking for a post talking bad about Harman or spouting all sorts of venom, keep looking. This article is not the article you are looking for. This article is about what I have been doing within AVNation.

Bradford’s Brain Balloon #0021 – Never to early for the end of the year

Before we move on to 2018, I recommend looking at this year first. Have you thought about how you are going to manage the projects and other items you finished this past year? Do you have a retention plan? What are you going to save? What format are you going to store the data in? How long are you going to store things? How are you going to store files? Is Google Drive really what you want to use?

Bradford’s Brain Balloons #0020: Harassment Sucks

I try to keep my blogs fairly light and as positive as possible. However, this post is not going to be that. This post is about harassment, specifically sexual harassment. This needs to stop in all industries and locations. This problem is a global problem. It is not limited to just one industry. I have seen it first hand in the AV Industry.

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0019 – Change is Constant

My upcoming change in employment is a little unsettling of course. A few proactive items have made the process easier I think. Admittedly being laid off is different from other separations from work. Being prepared though will still make the impact easier to handle no matter the reason.

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0018 – Business Beliefs

Every so often things happen behind the scenes at AVNation HQ that Tim and I believe are worth sharing with our audience. During the week of August 25th there were some challenges with connecting to the AVNation servers. Our hosting company, Dreamhost, was under a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack. The attack resulted in … Read more

Collection of Tweets between EFF showing how the information is not clear

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0017 – Privacy changes Ownership

During the week of August 24, 2017 a discussion about how privacy impacts ownership garnered new attention after a Sonos update. The Boston Globe reported about a lawsuit that was based on a ZDnet article. There are many facets to this specific situation that can be debated, however the basic concept of a company changing … Read more

Logo for Bradford's Brain Balloons stating Time to Clean Up The Site, with a thought bubble of "Who left this data laying around?"

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0016 – Which file is it?

Revision control is a very important thing. All to often we forget about keeping track of our electronic files and which one is the most current. If not the most recent one, the one that should be running in the system. I believe that we have all seen filenames like this: Final Version – Tim’s … Read more

A picture of two computers, one jas the thought bubble that says "I am a problem solver!"

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0015 – What is the actual cost?

A frequent topic for me is reacting to challenges. The reason for discussing these topics is that from my experience, things going wrong is what impacts projects and people the most. These issues cause extra costs and possibly impact project deadlines. Obviously, problems will happen, the key concept is to understand the cost of a … Read more

Bradford's Brain Balloon #0014 - Troubleshooting Never Ends. A black square with the thought bubble of "Okay, what did you touch?"

Bradford’s Brain Balloons Column #0014 – Troubleshooting never changes

I get to work with some large and complex systems as part of my role at Harman Professional Systems. Sometimes the systems don’t work as intended. As I joke, “the best way to make a system crash, demonstrate it to customers.” The problem quickly turns into a stressful time for everyone involved. There are lots … Read more