Amplifying Education: While in Quarantine, Pro Audio Companies Give Professionals New Learning Opportunities

A glimpse at a webinar from Martin Audio

You could call mid-March the days during which the live music industry went dark. Across the country, those fateful weeks saw a major chain reaction – Broadway going dark, LiveNation calling off all scheduled arena shows, and the smaller venues quickly following suit. Almost overnight, performers, roadies, and sound and lighting engineers lost their livelihood for the foreseeable future.

Even most bars and churches have shuttered for the time being, leaving livestreams from isolation as the one remaining option for musicians to work for tips and air their creativity. For all the audio professionals in quarantine, though, that’s not even an option.

While many of these workers are furloughed at home, major pro audio companies are stepping up to help them make the most of their time in isolation. Almost as soon as venues closed, free webinars and other accessible educational resources from the likes of Martin Audio, Shure, Ashly Audio, ChamSys, and many others began to fill a void.

In early April, ChamSys unveiled daily online webinar training sessions at their online ChamSys Training Academy, as well as new courses, tutorials, and appointment opportunities for audio professionals stuck at home. Free MagicQ and QuickQ online training sessions are also available. Right from the jump, ChamSys reported over 1400 bookings in early April alone.

“With the majority of our users unable to work due to the restrictions in place on live events worldwide, we want to provide a resource to help them return to work stronger, with more resources and knowledge,” says Phil Watson, director of ChamSys USA. “We have a strong existing training team worldwide, so it was only a matter of redirecting more of our attention to online training. For live daily seminar training, we were up online within a day. We already had a suite of free weekly online webinars and live meetings. We have increased these to multiple events a day, in four languages: English, German, Spanish and Italian. We expect to add French in the near future. We also increased our one-to-one live meetings. These are now available in multiple languages, across many time zones.”

For Martin Audio, who’s currently hosting weekly webinars, their expanded offerings aim not only to educate, but to offer people in quarantine a means of connecting with other people. “With so many people trying to fill their days, it was opportune to offer educational webinars as a way of helping technicians stay up to date with the latest technology during this unprecedented time for the industry,” James King, director of marketing for Martin Audio, tells MMR. “We hoped that through some live online training we can help people to interact with their friends and colleagues while also learning something new. In these challenging times, we all need to be supporting the AV industry and the thousands of hard working people that help make it great and that will continue to make it so, long after this difficult period comes to an end.”

The employees of Martin were able to launch their series of webinars in only a week’s time, building on educational and presentation ideas that the company had started to develop prior to the COVID-19 crisis. Using GoToMeeting as the platform for the weekly webinars, Martin has shared that their webinar attendance has surged considerably since the start of the U.S. quarantine.

“We couldn’t be more pleased: we had over 1,000 registrations for the first webinar session, which is around 10 times the average registration for one of our webinars,” King adds. “In fact, we had to upgrade our software package to accommodate everyone. Added to this, the training area of our website is now the most visited page after our homepage, and that has never happened before. On average, we continue to get well over 500 registrants each week. The sessions themselves have been well-received with many of the participants asking questions at the end of the live sessions and sending in further questions as a follow up to our technical team during the week. It’s helped them fill an hour in their day, it’s taught them something new, and it helps them feel part of a community at a time when everyone needs that the most.”

Similarly, the Shure Audio Institute also has seen an incredible increase in their number of attendees, as they offer webinars on everything from using IEMS on tour, to networking wireless gear for stages. In early April, Shure expanded its monthly education programming to make it weekly. Also available are “legacy webinars” about Shure products, and Integrated Systems Certification for level 1 and 2 (eligible for CTS credits).

“Shure has always provided webinars and training for free to the general public. However, we felt it was important to provide more frequent content to end-users during this time, which is why the Shure Audio Institute is delivering weekly training sessions,” explains Dave Klein, director of Shure Audio Institute. “Demand for the sessions have been higher than normal, with three times the audience tuning in for recent training sessions versus previous webinars. Feedback from attendees have been positive and we are trying to keep the topics timely and of interest to the target audience.”

For the powers that be at Ashly Audio, rolling out free education opportunities was part of the grand plan for 2020 anyways, prior to the development of the pandemic. The company already had a handful of webinars ready to go, allowing them to launch Ashly University via WebEx in early April.

“When things changed drastically for our industry, we knew we needed to accelerate the time frame,” explains Noel Larson, vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Ashly. “Providing training right now allows our partners to continue some level of activity during these tough times. And it is our goal to continue to offer that as long as we see demand for it.”

Audio professionals can sign up for one-hour sessions via the Ashly website, where they can peruse the week’s topics pertaining to Ashly fixtures and installations.

“Because we had planned some of this in the previous few months, our team was impressively swift with getting things up and running,” Larson adds. “We had a few webinars ready — as mentioned, it was our plan to introduce these regardless — but the Ashly team has quickly come up with new topics and new ideas to keep things fresh for folks. That combination of creativity and pre-planning had us ready to go within weeks.”

As with other companies, the response from audio professionals has been overwhelming and positive for Ashly University, resulting in added sessions to keep up with the demand.

“The reception has been far beyond our expectations,” Larson says. “We’ve added additional classes because of how much demand there’s been. Multiple sessions have been full.”

While state orders continue to lengthen the duration of quarantine and keep musicians and audio workers away from live music opportunities, companies like Ashley Audio, ChamSys, Shure, and Martin Audio simply keep the educational content coming. Other major players in the audio world have stepped up to the plate in recent months, too; Sennheiser launched a #DontStopTheEducation webinar series, DPA Microphones has a wealth of creative online resources for audio professionals on their website, and Audio-Technica has uploaded a series of recording techniques to YouTube, all catered to at-home learning. As the weeks pass and the future seems uncertain, at least one thing is clear: the pro audio community is in this together for the long haul.

“The feedback we’re hearing is that this is helping our partners stay informed, educated, and prepared for when things return to normal,” Larson affirms. “We will continue to support them for as long as they continue to ask for this type of professional development.”