Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch’s last lecture still resonates. The traditional—and untraditional–last lecture is one professors routinely deliver at the podium. Pausch’s was untraditional because it would truly be his last to the academic community. He died of pancreatic cancer on July 25, 2008. Piped in on YouTube and other media outlets, his talk was just nine months before he died. I tuned in at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo.
He was exuberant and engaging moving quickly about the stage while cracking jokes. “Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted,” he said. Or, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.”
How apropos given the state of the economy. We certainly weren’t bucking for an economic downturn or depression level unemployment. We got it anyway. And now we will gain the experience, hopefully positive, to live through it. SD&I magazine knows it’s tough…that the dollar and wages are stretched to the max. We have the resources in these pages to help security integrators progress to the next level—to become the full systems solutions service providers and the VARS many know they already are. This year 2009 is going to be our most exciting ever, because we will continue to give you the ‘tools’ to move from a hardware business to one where integrated systems, service and information technology intelligence reigns. Speaking of reins, Carol Enman has joined as publisher and has the IT and IP and security installing expertise to achieve the goal of making SD&I more indispensable than ever. (Read about Carol on page 14 in news).
Check out the Monitoring and the Central Station feature on page 44 and our exciting roundtable—“Transformation to VAR,” page 46, which echoes our developing philosophy on how integrators need to do business today. Don’t miss the story on growing power demands in integrated systems on page 55, or the product focus on PoE, cabling and UTP, page 59. Be sure to review the table of contents to see more you’ll want to read about.
“Remember, the brick walls are there for a reason,” Pausch continued. “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough.”
Security integrators are resourceful and innovative and we know they want success as badly as SD&I wants to help them attain it. Let’s all be partners in achieving that goal.
Deborah O’Mara, editor
SECURITY Dealer & Integrator magazine
[email protected]
Editorial Advisory Board Members:
George P. Gunning, USA Alarm Systems Inc.
Michael Horgan, H&S Protection Systems Inc.
Alan Kruglak, Genesis Security Systems LLC
Mickey Lavery, I2C Technologies
Richard A. Penney, VISCOM Systems
Adam C. Thermos LL.B., MA, Ph.D., Strategic Technology Group
