AVPro Employee Spotlight: Austin Dirks

What is your Name and your roll at AVPro Global Holdings?

 My name is Austin Dirks, and I am a member of our Technical Support team.

Whats you favorite Color?

 Purple!

Whats your favorite food?

 Love me some spaghetti!

What do you like about working at AVPro?

I'm assuming "Everything" is a fairly cheesy answer, even though it's true! I'd say my favorite thing about working at AVPro are my coworkers. Everyone working here are extremely knowledgeable, helpful, and just fun to work with in general!

From your point of view, how is AVPro different from other places you worked?

AVPro is like no other place I have ever been employed at. I mainly worked in the corporate retail/food service industry beforehand, where the upper management was solely focused on increasing the company's profit margins, and nothing else, having a complete disconnect from their employees. AVPro's management genuinely cares about their employees and will work with us the best they can with whatever we could possibly need, or even want!

What has been your best “moment” since working with AVPro?

It's hard to narrow down, but I'd say my overall "Best" moment has been the sheer amount of personal growth I've had over the relatively short time span I've been employed here. When I first started working with AVPro, I'll be honest, I didn't even know what a matrix switch was, let alone everything else that revolves around the AV industry in general. Now, roughly 6 months later, by the time this newsletter gets published, I'll be signed up to take the CTS exam to become a Certified Technology Specialist. Absolutely none of this growth would've been possible without my coworkers helping me get my feet planted on the ground of the AV industry!

AVPro Operates out of South Dakota, what the best and worst part of living in the 605?

Easily the cold, windy winter days. I do not do well with the cold in general, and I'm constantly shivering/under 5 blankets during the winter season!

If you had it your way, what is one thing you would change with the professional audio video world?

The only thing I can think of that would be a beneficial change is to have IR operate under a certain regulation "standard". There are so many different IR connections out there, each operating with their own voltage usage, requires exactly a mono or stereo connection, stereo to stereo, mono to mono, mono to stereo, stereo to mono, etc. It would be amazing if I could just tell someone on the phone to grab any random IR eye/emitter or 3.5mm IR cable and it simply works, with no second thought!

What is your favorite Consumer Electronic?

I'd say my favorite Consumer Electronic right now would be the Nintendo Switch. Not only is it just a great gaming console that you can take wherever you desire, but the very first game console I ever used was a Super Nintendo Entertainment System at my grandparent's house. Being able to play all the old SNES games on the Switch (as well as recent Mario games and other titles) I played before, it takes me back to all the memories that I've made with my grandparents, who have passed on some time ago, and I miss deeply.

Although lately, my Switch at home is now just a dedicated machine for Monster Hunter: Rise at the moment!

Austin, what is something about you that your co-workers would be surprised to hear?

I'm sure there's a lot of things my co-workers would be surprised to hear, as I'm not particularly the "chatty" type of person haha!

Most probably already have heard, but I'm about to become a father for the first time to a little girl in less than a month, potentially right when or close after this article is published, and I absolutely have never been more excited and terrified at the same time!!!

What people probably are unaware of, is that I've had an affinity for offensive security (hacking, essentially) since I was young. I've been out of practice for years now, but while I was still in my senior year of high school, I actually participated and ranked in the top 20 in a national hacking competition, with the National Cyber League, and offensive security is what I enrolled in college for.

My wife also told me that being able to score her as a wife is pretty surprising, so there's that as well!! Little Fun fact, before I was even employed here, we got married at the Sanford Event Barn, which amusingly is just over a block away from the office!

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