And the winner is...

Soon after the "2000 Best of…" awards were handed out, I got an e-mail from a friend of mine: R.P. Higgins. I am sure many of you actually know R.P. from either his days at General Electric (yes, those of you "newbies" in the market probably didn't realize this, but GE was actually a major force in the projector market in the late 1980's and very early 1990's) as a Sales Rep, then sales manager or his days at AMPRO. Now R.P. is with Christie Digital.

R.P.'s e-mail read (shown exactly as written), "I enjoyed your articles on contributors to our industry. Nice write up on Kim Milliken. I could not help but think that all of us in this business owe some debt of gratitude to Jim Taylor for helping to put together the software which we all use for "demoing" video projectors. For several years now the standard industry demo has been the ICIA Shoot-Out disk. Jim has been responsible for [writing the code and] selecting the pool of computer-generated graphics [ICIA/Extron have the final say in the program selection] that enhance every video projector, screen, cable, interface and anything else in between. It would be safe to say that a billion dollars worth of projection products have been sold in every kind of application with the help of these images. They are selected not only because the colorful subject matter is quite pleasing to the eye, but also because of the salient characteristics like colorimetry, uniformity, gray scale, low light detail, black level, resolution, and bandwidth maintenance. Customers can learn what to look for in a projected video/data/graphics image. This, of course, goes beyond the test images, which are standard in any Shoot-Out software. Finally, Jim's career in the industry dates back to Advent (could this now span 4 decades). As a co-worker of his between '87-'92, he was a constant source of cool projection software for all of us at GE. There is no question he has provided equally great material for his co-workers at Hughes-JVC, now JVC. He is a consummate team player."

Well, I couldn't have said it any better myself.

R.P. is right on the money. Although my friendship with Jim sparked from a conversation I had with him in 1987 (while he was with GE and I was with Extron) about the North Carolina Tar Heels (Jim and I are both graduates of UNC), we became really good friends when he started helping me with the Shoot-Out software in 1994. I was the Chairman of the Projection Shoot-Out and I was forever getting asked for a copy of the Shoot-Out images by attendees of the INFOCOMM show and had the idea to make it available to the market. Jim developed the first version and has developed every version for Extron, since.

So, that does deserve some kind of recognition. So, there you have it.

Gary Kayye, CTS is Principal of Kayye Consulting an industry consulting firm specializing in providing marketing, business development and training consulting for ProAV dealers and manufacturers. He, and his partner Jody Thomas,have developed a business plan that is effectively a "Blueprint" Guide to building a Systems Integration company from scratch or by converting a projector reseller to a Systems Integrator. The Blueprint Business Plan is over 100 pages long and even includes sample systems projects. It's expensive, but worth the investment. He may be reached at his web site at www.kayye.com or via e-mail at gkayye@kayye.com.

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