367: Grace upon Grace with Calvin Thorbourne III

After a run of roadshows, live recordings, InfoComm episodes, and special series, the Higher Ed AV Podcast gets back to its roots with a great one-on-one conversation. Joe is joined by Calvin Thorbourne III, AV Specialist at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, for a conversation that moves naturally between higher education AV, live production, house of worship, career transitions, and the relationships that hold all of it together. Calvin shares his journey from the music industry and Universal Music Group into church production and eventually higher education, showing how staying open to opportunities can lead somewhere you never expected.

Calvin and Joe dig into the unique intersection of classroom technology and live production. Supporting a classroom may mean helping a faculty member navigate a system moments before class begins, while supporting a chapel service means solving problems immediately because the event is already happening. Through both, Calvin has developed a philosophy centered on preparation, excellence, and service. The technology may be important, but the real job is helping the person standing on the other side of the problem. As Joe puts it during the conversation, sometimes you have not really solved the problem until you have solved the person.

The conversation also gets wonderfully technical as two former live-production guys compare old-school signal flow with modern networked AV. XLR snakes, digital consoles, Crestron, Q-SYS, control systems, cloud platforms, and the sometimes uncomfortable transition from physically tracing a cable to following signals across a network all make an appearance. Calvin also talks about the impact HETMA and the Prism Scholarship have had on his professional development, giving him access to mentors, peers, education, and a community where asking questions is encouraged. That willingness to admit what you do not know, learn from people around you, and keep developing becomes another major theme of the episode.

Then Calvin delivers one of the most memorable rapid-round monologues yet. His message is simple: give people grace, and give yourself some too. We rarely know everything happening in someone else’s life, and assuming the worst only adds stress that does not need to exist. The same applies inwardly. Strive for excellence, prepare well, learn from mistakes, and keep moving forward, but recognize that perfection was never the standard. From AV troubleshooting to career changes to