Welcome to the new SPARS column, where we will inform you of what we are doing to move the industry forward. Last month we spotlighted our new Board of Directors, including five newly elected pros representing Los Angeles, the Pacific Northwest and the Midwest. The geographic diversity is important, as one of the primary initiatives of SPARS in the coming years will be to bring national focus on each and every recording community.
We call this our Local Connect initiative. There have been a couple of local pro audio groups mentioned in the press recently. Regional groups such as EARS (Engineering and Audio Recording Society) in Chicago, PRC (Philadelphia Recording Community) and BARMMAP (Bay Area Mixing Mastering and Production) host meetings and events in their respective areas. There are many other groups that get together informally or through Web conferencing sites such as Meetup.com. With the growing user base of audio pros—whether at home or in commercial facilities, studio or live, educational or house of worship—this makes perfect sense. SPARS is in the process of reaching out to all of them to link regions and foster more exchanges of ideas and practices. We are finding that we share many common concerns, and the associations and relationships are leading to joint initiatives and collaborative projects. I refer to this as the “SPARS national patchbay.” As a first step in bringing groups closer to each other, news items from regional groups are posted on our Website and in our newsletter, SoundBytes.
There are a number of other initiatives getting started, including a student-mentoring program that is in the alpha-testing phase, a white paper that addresses parents’ questions regarding their child’s career in pro audio, and post-production work on rare video interviews with SPARS founders and key members.
One of the founding principles of SPARS was to build a community of audio pros to preserve and further the craft of recording, foster excellence in the business of recording and provide access to SPARS’ wealth of knowledge and resources to nurture the next generation of talent. If you are driven to push the envelope of recording quality and the business of recording, or if you want to help mentor a young audio professional, then join us.
