Recently, a package showed up at Encompass containing something that our founder, Dave Jensen, hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years.
A plaque … that he’d actually forgotten existed.
It commemorated the first event produced with HD Vision, a system Dave designed and built in 2008 when Encompass Event Group was still called Live-Online Television. Randy Will, the Technical Director on that event and a longtime mentor of Dave’s, had kept it all these years. While going through some old keepsakes, he decided it belonged back where it started.
Seeing it again brought back a lot more memories than just one show.
It was a reminder of how this company started, why we approach technical production the way we do, and how much of that thinking is still here today.
Before Encompass, There Was Live-Online Television
Live-Online Television grew directly out of Dave’s background in broadcasting.
While building the company, he was also freelancing on network television trucks. Those experiences shaped the way he thought production systems should be designed.
Broadcast trucks are built for flexibility. There are multiple ways to route signals, monitor feeds, process content, switch a show, and respond when something changes. The system shouldn’t dictate what the production can do.
Dave wanted our portable systems to work the same way.
So instead of simply putting equipment into flight cases, he started building complete systems around broadcast principles: extensive routing and I/O, flexible signal processing, professional switching architecture, multi-view monitoring, multiple M/E buses, and plenty of ways to adapt.
The first major system was HD Vision. The name was intentional.
It was one of the first fully HD, lens-to-lens portable production systems in the country, but “Vision” also described how Dave thought a production system should work. When a client asked, “Can we do this?” he wanted the answer to be “Yes.”
That approach became part of the company long before we became Encompass Event Group. It even carried into the naming of the next major system, HD Clarity.
Like the television trucks that inspired them, the names reflected how and why the systems were built, not simply the equipment inside them.
Putting HD Vision to Work
HD Vision’s first event was the 2008 American Association of Orthodontists Annual Meeting, featuring an Opening Ceremony plus a mid-week concert. At the time, it was one of Live-Online Television’s largest productions.
Our client was Audio Visual Management Group, better known as AVMG. They specialized in technical management and contracted production partners like us to provide the systems and people needed to execute complex events.
More importantly … they trusted us.
They gave a relatively young company the opportunity to bring a brand-new system onto one of their marquee events and prove what it could do.
To mark the milestone, Dave created a plaque thanking AVMG for its progressive approach toward the use of new technologies and commemorating the first event produced with the HD Vision System.
But the relationship with AVMG, and especially Randy, went back much further.
AVMG had been one of Dave’s dad’s largest clients, and even before Live-Online Television was founded, Dave considered Randy a mentor. Randy taught him a lot about video production over the years, including something seemingly simple that would influence Dave throughout his career … the ‘art’ of the cutaway shot.
Those lessons followed Dave through his broadcast career, including his ongoing position with the Denver Broncos, the systems he built for Live-Online Television and, ultimately, the way Encompass approaches technical production today.
Decades went by. AVMG became part of the Freeman Company. Live-Online Television grew into Encompass Event Group. We all remained friends through the years.
Somewhere along the way, Dave forgot about the plaque.
Randy didn’t.
Eighteen Years Later
When Randy returned the plaque nearly two decades later, he included a handwritten note reflecting on the work they had done together and the value Live-Online Television had brought to AVMG’s clients over the years.
For Dave, getting it back represented considerably more than one event or one piece of equipment. It was a reminder of a relationship and an influence that predated the company itself.
Randy and AVMG gave him room to learn, build, and take some pretty big swings early in his career. Nearly two decades later, that trust means at least as much as the technology they were using at the time.
As the two reconnected over the plaque, Randy left Dave with a fitting message:
“Keep on innovating and inspiring.”
Almost nothing about HD Vision would look particularly modern today. That’s just the nature of technology.
But the thinking behind it hasn’t changed much.
HD Vision was built for flexibility, giving the team the capability to adapt instead of letting the system dictate what was possible. That broadcast foundation still influences how we design systems, prepare equipment, document details, communicate with our partners, and execute shows today.
The technology has changed. The company has grown. But when a client asks, “Can we do this?” we’re still looking for a path to “yes.”
After 18 years, the plaque is back home … seems like a pretty good place for it!
