Starting out as an On-Site Audio-Visual Installation Engineer, then a Support Engineer, before progressing into Project Management and lastly into Sales, Wayne spent many years travelling the globe, deploying video conferencing systems at a time when the industry was in its infancy and the solutions were of a size and scale very different from today. From boardrooms in major cities to remote locations around the world, his work took him to places many only dream of visiting. Along the way, Wayne collected not only a wealth of technical expertise but also a lifetime of memorable experiences, adventures, and stories from his travels.
What follows here are Wayne’s very own reflections on some of the places he visited, the people he met and the unique experiences he enjoyed during his years on the road. These first-hand accounts offer a fascinating glimpse into a bygone era of video conferencing and the extraordinary career journey that accompanied it. Please enjoy.
USA
“In my installation days, because Internet Videocommunications has always been at the cutting edge, I got to travel the world and, in my free time off-site, explore some amazing places. It was only because there was no-one else anywhere that could do what we were doing.
“The USA was great. I did a job in California, and I was staying right on Sunset Strip next to the Comedy Store. It was around the time of the Oscars and it was all buzzy and there was a lot going on. So, we’re staying at the Hyatt and I could look down and I could see people going into the Comedy Store, Jim Carrey and the stars of the day pulling up in limos. I also got to San Francisco and then LA. I remember going down to Venice Beach and down on the strip. I paid for a hire car for myself from a place called ‘Shushani’s Cars for the Stars’. I thought there was no way that I’d be able to afford anything in there, so I asked if there was anything that nobody liked driving like an old little banger or something. Luckily because no-one really drives manual over there, they found me a stick shift, that no one ever touched, for $6 dollars a day and I spent my evenings cruising down the strip in it.
Europe
“Monaco was something else. When you see the F1, that is Monaco. It’s not on a different track somewhere. that is the town centre that they’re going through. So the taxi driver actually took me the racetrack way and through the tunnel to get to the hotel that I was staying at, which was quite surreal.
“There was another job with a customer wanting a system in Monaco and one in Geneva. So I went to Geneva to survey and to check out the place. I didn’t do the install, but later on, about 6 months later, it was in the paper that he was a billionaire banker and he had a penthouse floor and his bodyguard had set fire to it with the assumption he could put it out to make him appear a hero. However, it got out of hand and the whole place went up. It’s now been made into a Netflix documentary, which was surreal watching.
“But out of everywhere, I’d say I love Denmark the most. Denmark in the summer. Because the people are just party animals. If you ever go to Denmark, it doesn’t matter what time of year there will be a festival going on of something. They just love life.
“They weren’t all amazing tourist hotspots, obviously. I did a job in Poland and Poland’s a nice place, but the hotel there, at the time, looked like a live crime scene. But even there, I got to experience something different, for a hotel anyway. Everybody was saying to me at breakfast make sure you go to floor 10. So, I finished the job and went up and there’s this gambling section and a strip club. And that’s where they all used to go in the hotel.
But one I was really happy I was not on was installing systems on an oil rig. We got a name for being able to do some of the impossible things and you had to be able to be dropped from a helicopter. You had to have that training. One of our guys who’d done a bit of army training got that gig luckily.
Africa
“South Africa. After the install there, one of the clients said that they were going wine tasting in Stellenbosch, which is a famous wine region and I love my wine. And so we all went up there and we had a great day. So now, even in Aldi, if I see Stellenbosch wine I’ll have to get it.
Asia
“Everybody will laugh about this one. It’s Thailand. Mike [our Draughtsman, at the time] and I went over to survey. We saw the room and it wasn’t a raised floor. It was like single piece. It had plywood all over and we had to get cables in under the floor. And obviously in the survey, you can’t pick up their carpets and see what the floor layout is. So, we asked the guy and he said, oh yes, there’s a floor void underneath for taking cables. He didn’t say it was covered by a single piece of plywood. So when we went back over to do the job, my goodness, we had the mindset that we’re going to go in and smash this out quickly and then have a few days spare to look around. But I tell you what, it was the hardest job. We had to cut apertures in the plywood to try to drill down [mounting] poles to put our screens up. There were no cable paths, so I had to make my own out of trunking. It took us ages. And when we drilled down into the floor, we must have disturbed ants or some sort of fire ants. And we got bitten under the table while we were working. Oh, it was, not what it was cracked up to be. So, we worked really, really late and we thought, oh, well, it’s Thailand, we’ve still got to go out. So even though we were tired – we were working each day until about 8pm – and covered in bites, we’d get changed and then go out to eat and have a few drinks, we’d go back late, have a few hours rest, and then we’d go back in again. Well, one of the funniest moments was me walking down the street and I felt this rough thing, just brush past me and I jumped a mile because it was an elephant!! Turns out they walked their elephants down there, just little baby elephants. that went past. And the school kids are on the side, they don’t bat an eyelid and they are absolutely wetting themselves at me.
“Looking back, those years on the road were about far more than installations and technology; they were about the people, places and unexpected moments that turned a job into a lifetime of stories.”
