Name: Kev Talbot
Title: Head of Technical Sales
Company: Involve Visual Collaboration
Twitter: @KevTalbot
Location: Warrington, UK
Overtime: Talbot spends his free time with his wife Kerry, his children, and his dog Molly. He enjoys pointing out AV systems in public, and for that, his kids tell him to “get a life.”
Why You Need To Know Him: As an industry, we spend a lot of time talking AV and IT. Kev Talbot, age 34, lived it. “I’d always wanted to work in IT, but after three years of desktop and network support, I hated it and needed to change—so when AV came about, I jumped in,” Talbot recalled. “I love how different everything can be. The kit can get a bit samey, but delivering on someone else’s vision and seeing that end product just makes you smile.”
Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner: Talbot was looking to get out of the IT world when his colleague and now-mentor Jason Ward took him for lunch at KFC and offered him a job as an AV installation engineer.
The rest, as they say, is history. Ten years later, Talbot has been involved in a variety of roles at the company including presales engineer, solutions architect, and now head of technical sales. My title is “a posh way of saying presales,” Talbot joked.
Predominantly he is responsible for systems design, but he also works with a wider team to decide on and deliver processes. “This can sometimes take me away from design, but I’ve got a team of solutions architects with me who are brilliant and cover me when needed,” said Talbot.
A Rare Combo: When asked about moving from IT to AV, Talbot said, “Honestly [it was] not that scary—I reckon it would be worse going the other way. I’d gained a decent base during my time in IT, but that’s a pretty closed shop when you’re only working with your own network, and it’s nothing compared to dealing with the multitude of differences with customers’ networks. I feel my IT skills got a lot more refined in AV, and all the training I’ve had helped.”
With his combination of AV and IT skills, Talbot is a very technical person, but he’s also a people person—a combination that can be hard to find. After spending the last nine years focused solely on his job, AV products, and AV education, Talbot finally extended his attention to the world of #AVTweeps on social media. Now that he’s active there—Talbot has become an avid Twitter user and co-hosts the AV Jam podcast—he has branched out and made many new connections. “To now be a part of it [the AV social media scene] properly makes me love it even more and makes the prospect of my first InfoComm even better.”
