AVIXA has named Mike Weems, CTS, MCP, a retired consultant liaison with Harman, the winner of the 2018 Mackey Barron Distinguished Achievement Award. Weems and the other AVIXA winners will be celebrated on InfoComm 2018’s Center Stage at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Wednesday, June 6, at 4 p.m.
Each year the trade association representing the commercial AV industry worldwide recognizes outstanding AV professionals for their contributions, leadership and commitment to excellence. The Mackey Barron Distinguished Achievement Award is the highest honor bestowed upon an industry member by AVIXA for a lifetime in pro AV.
As the professional AV industry began to take its current form, Weems, whose career included positions at Sony, InFocus, NetStreams, Sanyo, and Harman, understood that without training, certification, and standardization, the industry couldn’t grow and reach its potential. Starting almost from scratch, Weems and a team of industry volunteers created the framework that still exists today and helped advance the careers of thousands of AV professionals.
The Mackey Barron Distinguished Achievement Award overall purpose is to call out an individual recognized by association members and the industry as worthy of a lifetime achievement award. Two major criteria are applied–the career accomplishments and the individual's contribution to the AV industry through AVIXA.
“Starting off right out of college as an end user, directing the Media Center at Utica Junior College, gave me my first appreciation of the AV industry,” said Weems. From there I moved to a senior university as the media director, then to my first commercial gig with TransVideo Limited.
“Then came that fateful day when a manufacturer came calling (you know the feeling). Sony moved the family from Louisiana to Texas, and away we went. Three weeks into the job they shipped me to Bloomington, IN to work my first IPD for ICIA. By the second trip back to Bloomington, I had converted our overhead transparencies to electronic graphics using the first SMC computer from Sony. Luke Rawls and I believe it was the first use of ‘electronic presentation’ ever. The rest is fairly recent history. Tours with other manufacturers followed—InFocus, Advanced Media Design, NetStreams, Sanyo, ending with Harman/AM, from which I retired last year.”
Weems took on many projects and received many honors along the way: edited (twice) the Wadsworth book, created the CTS certification, served on the InfoComm Board for six years, and taught at 37 IPDs (from which lots and lots of people learned video).
And don't forget about Educator of the Year from InfoComm in 1999, and the Fred Dixon Award in 2006. Congratulations, Mike Weems!
