25th Anniversary Q+A: Jeff Overbo

Ivan Gwynn of Serenity Studios sat down with Jeff Overbo to discuss his experience before and during his 22 years (and counting!) at Delta, as well as changes in the industry and what excites him about the future.

Getting Started in the Industry & Joining Delta AV

Ivan: What inspired you to pursue a career in the AV industry?

Jeff: Like a lot of AV guys I was doing music and I enjoyed the equipment. I started as a sound guy and set up sound systems and worked my way through college being one of the AV geeks for the University of Minnesota. I earned a broadcast degree, but getting into AV seemed like a logical thing since the thing I loved the most about broadcast was working in the studios. I’ve always been kind of a gear head.

Ivan: How long have you been with Delta AV now?

Jeff: 22 years, I started in December of 1998.

Ivan: In that 22 years, what are some of your biggest accomplishments, what are you most proud of?

Jeff: I think a lot of the larger projects; the stadiums, the Knight cancer research, or even going back to the convention center. Just being on teams that did the larger projects, all those larger jobs are usually the fun ones.

Ivan: What was it like before you took on some of those larger projects?

Jeff: I came to Delta from Los Angeles and that was kind of my thing, the bigger projects. I was primarily doing the surveillance systems for LAX. Entire swaths of the airport would be getting remodeled at one point in time, so I’d be project manager for the AV systems on those projects. So I kind of came up here already rolling. Not long after I got here, we started working out at Intel and doing some stadium work. Then we got a huge project for us at the time, about $2 million. It was Amgen up in Seattle, then Autzen, and it just kind of kept going.

Ivan: Looking back on 22 years at Delta, do you have any memories come up that make you laugh?

Jeff: My interview was fun, I flew up and interviewed with them. It was Bob, Mark, and Steve, a previous owner. They picked me up and I knew I was in the right place because almost immediately they started having a conversation about music, production, different musicians and things like that. I totally connected with them and felt like we could relate to each other. All four of us we’re musicians, so immediately we had a common language and a common ability to communicate. We had a really nice time. I called my wife and told her, ‘I think I could do this, I could work with these guys.’

Great People, Great Motivation

Ivan: What gets you to work and what gets you excited about the work that you’re doing at Delta?

Jeff: It’s funny because I was talking about gear and all that but mostly it’s the people. The clients I’m working with, the coworkers, they’re all enjoyable to work with. For example, when I worked on the Knight Cancer Research Building, everyone I was working with from the OHSU side was absolutely brilliant. The coordinator of AV technology had a PhD. Everybody was really dedicated and really smart, and it was just great to be in the same room with them. You just could feel their energy, you felt like you were part of a team that wanted to do something really positive. So it’s actually the people, and then the equipment and technology.

Ivan: So not only motivation coming from the client side, but the team at Delta as well?

Jeff: All of them are really great to work with and really sharp. I always feel confident that no matter what sort of situation I get in, I’m going to be able to figure it out because I’ve got all these associates that have all these different skills that I can tap into. So I feel like no matter what happens, you know, that the team can solve this issue.

Ivan: How do you measure success at Delta AV?

Jeff: You know, I think a lot of that is the finished product. Going out at the very end and seeing how well things worked and asking, “is the client happy?” Almost all of the customers I deal with are people I’ve dealt with before. I’ve been dealing with them for 15 to 20 years. So I feel that’s a real positive, it’s kind of proof that you must be doing something right if they’re coming back.

Ivan: Totally, it sounds like there’s a lot of trust there.

Jeff: Having enough empathy to understand things from their position so that they trust, with usually what’s a lot of money, and they’re counting on you to make good decisions on their behalf. So that trust is very important.

Ivan: Was there a moment at Delta when you felt like you overcame a hurdle and grew as a result?

Jeff: I think anytime we break into a different market it’s always interesting because you have to learn a new language. Getting the Multnomah County Courthouse downtown was big for us because we’d never done a project that size before. The size of the project was almost equal to our total annual sales. It turned out really well. We had a great team and I think it showed us how we can scale up to these larger projects.

Changes in the Industry and Technology

Ivan: Did you imagine Delta AV would become what it is today? Has anything surprised you?

Jeff: I’ve never stayed at a job this long and I’ve never lived in a city this long before Los Angeles. I like the Portland area and Delta has always been really good to me. I knew that Delta could easily be what it is today. Watching technology change is fun because you can’t predict what’s gonna be the next big thing. Watching all the video go digital, and now the audio is all distributed over the network, it’s fun watching as it all rolls through. It’s entirely different in terms of that technology, but the people are still the same now.

Ivan: From your perspective, how do you think the industry has changed over 25 years?

Jeff: It’s gotten a lot bigger. When I was in college, the whole college had one video projector and it was a huge campus. It’s exploded over the last 25 years, and I think it will continue to go that direction. It’ll change the land. It’s going to change a lot, but being able to assist people in the technical processes, and also being able to translate technical needs into construction is always going to be a thing. So it’s going to be fun to watch it in the next ten or fifteen years as well.

Looking Ahead to the Future

Ivan: Where do you see the AV industry headed and what excites you most about the future?

Jeff: I think increasing the ease of use for technology is going to be fun. We’re talking over a Zoom call now, and even five years ago this would have been either impossible or really clunky. I’ve been doing video conferencing systems for almost 20 years and really only in the last five or six years have they gotten so they weren’t awful.

About ten years ago there was a project we did for a medical school and they had these really expensive and super-fast broadcast encoders and decoders on each end. It looked great, it sounded great, it was really amazing. But fast forward to now and the Zoom call replaced about probably $50,000 or $60,000 worth of equipment.

Ivan: Are there any memories or stories that maybe we missed that you want to make sure you get in there?

Jeff: Just a lot of good people along the way that I’ve been lucky enough to work with. When I started there was just Bob, Mark, Steve, Jen, Ben, and of course Sam was there. The company was just getting going. They’d only been going maybe a couple of years when I started, but I liked what they were doing and I trusted them and I stuck around. We’ll see what happens in the next 50 years! (laughs)