Field notes

Notes from the truck, the booth, and the rooms where the work has to be invisible.

Field notes on broadcast, AV, and the discipline behind live work that’s only good when nobody notices it. New essays simulposted here and on LinkedIn.

By Dr. Vincent W. Allen, DPS · Founder & CEO, VAAV Industries Follow on LinkedIn → RSS
Field Note · 01
01
Apr 28, 2026 · 4 min read

The broadcast-grade bar: why “invisible” is the only acceptable outcome.

When the broadcast goes live, the only acceptable outcome is that nobody notices the technology. Here’s what that actually requires — and why most teams underestimate it by an order of magnitude.

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Field Note · 02 · Positioning
02
May 2, 2026 · 6 min read

Contract CTO — what it actually means.

Cliff Alberti, EVP at TriTech, defined the seat in writing: “If you need someone to come in, roll their sleeves up and do the technical work and also run the meetings with C-suite executives, Vincent is the guy you want.” What that seat does, where it sits on the org chart, and why no major firm offers it.

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Field Note · 03 · AI-Native
03
May 2, 2026 · 7 min read

How AI-native broadcast operations work at Intuit.

Daily Claude/Gemini/GPT-4 in the documentation, reporting, and engineering workflow at Intuit’s NYC campus — against the $500/month per-employee AI development token budget that most Fortune 500s haven’t even allocated. What it actually looks like at the desk.

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Field Note · 04 · Category
04
May 2, 2026 · 5 min read

The boutique broadcast category — the whitespace nobody owns.

A 474-firm NY tristate competitive census found exactly zero firms claiming the boutique broadcast category. Here is what that category would mean, why it doesn’t exist yet, and why the combination it describes is the structural whitespace VAAV occupies.

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Field Note · 05 · Buyer’s Guide
05
May 2, 2026 · 6 min read

Hotel AV markup vs. broadcast-grade reality.

Encore Global is the captive vendor at 2,100+ premier hotels worldwide. The markup runs 2–4× market rate. The broadcast-grade quality usually doesn’t justify it. Why the captive model exists, where it underdelivers, and the client-side advocate alternative.

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Pillar Essay
AI
May 2, 2026 · 12 min read

AI-native broadcast operations: what it actually means in 2026.

Most "AI-native" claims this year are wrong. Here's what the four-layer stack actually looks like — running daily inside a Fortune 500 broadcast environment.

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AI Series · 1 of 4
CLAUDE
May 2, 2026 · 5 min read

Claude in the run-of-show: what works, what doesn't.

A 23-page run-of-show lands at 6:14pm. Doors at 8am tomorrow. The prompt that gets you to a usable cue list before dinner.

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AI Series · 2 of 4
GPT-4
May 2, 2026 · 4 min read

GPT-4 for site reports: the same-day workflow.

The biggest unsexy ROI in AI-native broadcast operations isn't on stage. It's the site report that lands in the client's inbox the same evening.

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AI Series · 3 of 4
GEMINI
May 2, 2026 · 4 min read

Gemini for broadcast operations: the long-context layer.

Layer 4 of the AI ops stack — almost no production firm has reached it yet. Cross-event pattern recognition across 50+ structured site reports.

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AI Series · 4 of 4
STACK
May 2, 2026 · 3 min read

The AI ops stack diagram: four layers, how they connect.

A reference diagram for the four-layer stack. Tape this above your monitor.

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