Dave Tyler Email & Phone Number

Brighton And Hove, England, United Kingdom

As the Audio Solutions Specialist Manager, I manage a team of Avid audio product and domain experts covering Europe, Africa, Middle East, India, Asia and Australasia. The Solutions Specialists are responsible for demonstrating Avid's audio products, solutions and workflows to prospective and existing customers. My role entails managing the resource requirements across the different geographies, ensuring that the team has the right blend of skills and expertise and facilitating interaction with other parts of the organisation, such as Marketing and Product Management.

In my role as Application Specialists Manager I oversee a team of five Application Specialists. I ensure that they retain a high standard of technical knowledge about Avid's professional audio prodcuts.I assist with pro audio demos and presentations to Avid's high-profile post-production and broadcast customers in EMEA.

I joined the Avid EMEA Solutions Development team at the start of 2009 as part of the re-organisation and consolidation of Avid into a single company. The Solutions Development group evolved out of Avid’s European Product Management team. Each member of the team is responsible for a subset of Avid’s product lines and works within the EMEA Sales organisation to make sure that the Sales teams have all of the tools that they require in order to be successful. Again, this is primarily a technical sales role and I continue to represent the Pro Tools product line as Professional Audio Solutions Development Manager. My responsibilities include ownership of the Pro Audio price book, providing competitive analyses and workflow documentation for the sales teams and working closely with the US Product and Solutions group, providing EMEA-specific market feedback.

The role of European Sales Specialist entailed being involved in the wider aspects of technical sales, particularly dealing with high-end post production and broadcast customers. My remit was to work with the local Digidesign sales teams within the European organisation to ensure that prospective and existing customers had the information that they needed in order to integrate our products into their workflows. My role entailed being a product expert, able to represent the company at public events, present white papers and present mainstage demonstrations at trade shows.For this role, I also took responsibility for the development of the European Product Specialist team. I held quarterly meetings for all the Product Specialists to make sure that their product knowledge was up-to-date and to give them opportunities to discuss sales issues and blockers in their territories. This information would then be collated by me and passed on to Product Management.

At the end of 2006, I was given the opportunity to move into the Sales organisation as the ICON Sales Specialist. As this was a technical sales role, I spent the majority of my time demonstrating Digidesign’s ICON consoles to prospective customers, showing the features and benefits and working with prospects to remove sales blockers. I also helped customers to integrate ICON consoles into their workflow and provided specific customer feedback back to the Product Management team in the US. I worked mainly with post-production customers, as they formed the majority of the client base for ICON consoles but also continued to work with professionals from the music industry.

Once the Sahara Sound studio build was complete and the studio was up and running I started looking for a new challenge. Having met several Digidesign employees whilst working at Sahara Sound and hearing their endorsement of the company I applied for a role at Digidesign as part of the Training Department.My initial responsibilities involved updating and delivering Digidesign’s comprehensive Reseller Training Program in Europe. I developed training materials to ensure that our resellers were up to date with product information and to make sure that they had the sales tools necessary to be successful. I also conducted internal product training to ensure that our sales staff were kept up-to-date on new product releases. My role expanded over time to encompass workflow demonstrations and white paper presentations.

Whilst I enjoyed my time at the SAE Institute, the work environment was very restrictive and so I started to look for new opportunities. Through a contact at SAE I was approached with a proposal to head up a project to build brand new state-of-the-art recording facility in London. I accepted the challenge because it was an opportunity to develop new management skills and to leverage my knowledge of the recording industry.The project involved rebuilding from scratch on the site of an existing studio. The whole project served as a great opportunity to develop project management skills and to increase my technical knowledge and my business experience. My job entailed working with closely with the studio designers, Harris Grant, and with all of the contractors to ensure that the project was kept on track and that it fulfilled the requirements of the studio owners. I formed many relationships with audio industry professionals that have stood me in good stead.My responsibilities were very varied, from choosing and implementing suppliers for the studio infrastructure to the co-ordinating of marketing efforts for the new facility including launch events and web presence. The studio launch was very successful and in the first few months we attracted high-cailbre artists such as Sugababes, Pet Shop Boys, Stereophonics, Busted, and Bent.

I joined the SAE Institute in 2000 as part of an initiative to bring lecturers into the college who had real-world experience of the recording industry. It enabled me to move away from the often unpredictable world of freelance recording into a more stable working environment. I quickly found my feet and discovered an aptitude for teaching a subject that I was very passionate about. I found that working with motivated students to be a highly rewarding experience.During this period I was teaching both Diploma and Degree level classes. The curriculum was laid out in very broad terms which meant that I had to research and write my own detailed lecture notes in order to make sure that I covered each subject to the required depth. I increased my own knowledge immensely during this period, supplementing practical experience with a deeper theoretical knowledge of all aspects of audio recording and reproduction.

For three and a half years I worked as a freelance recording engineer, mixing engineer and programmer in and around London. During this time I built up a number of regular clients, both artists and record labels. One of these was a small UK jazz label called Internal Bass. The main artist on their roster was Down To The Bone, who achieved multiple top ten album positions in the US Billboard Jazz charts. I was the recording and mixing engineer on five of their albums. I also worked with The Divine Comedy, recording and mixing the single ‘I Went To A Marvellous Party’ and an EP of Michael Nyman compositions featuring the Nyman string quartet.Having learned my trade in a traditional large recording studio with predominantly analogue equipment, this period of time saw some huge changes in the way that I was working. Developments in recording technology made cost-effective high-quality recording a reality and meant that it was no longer necessary to use an expensive recording studio. During that time, I traded a large-format analogue mixing console, analogue tape and a razor blade for a small-format digital console and a combination of tape-based and hard-disk based digital recorders.

Whilst working at Matrix Studios, I was offered the opportunity to become the staff engineer at a newly-completed private studio in West London. The studio was owned by Gota Yashiki, at the time the drummer with Simply Red. Whilst the studio was ostensibly for Gota's own productions, it was also rented out as a commercial facility.My role at the studio was as House Engineer. However, as a small studio linked to a production company and record lable, I had the opportunity to learn more about the wider music industry. Whilst starting out by assisting freelance engineers at the studio I was soon taking care of most of the recording and mixing duties. During my tenure at the studio I engineered and mixed for artists such as Radiohead, The Divine Comedy, Simply Red, Butthole Surfers and Nellee Hooper. I also had the opportunity to co-produce some records with Stephen Hilton.

Having left University in 1992, I was very fortunate to get an opportunity to pursue a career in the audio industy, starting as a tea boy in a recording studio. Working for the Matrix Studios group, I was initially based at Maison Rouge studios in Fulham but over time I worked in all ten studios including Wessex Studios.Shortly after joining Matrix I was promoted to Assistant Engineer. I started to gain valuable experience working with a wide variety of artists encompassing a wide variety of musical styles including: Blur, Bjork, Heaven 17, David Bowie, Midge Ure and Elaine Page. Being given the chance to learn the art and craft of sound engineering from experienced professionals was invaluable. As an assistant I worked with a wide variety of producers and engineers including Julian Mendelsson, Sasha, Bruce Lampcov, Paul O'Duffy, Desmond Childs, Spike Drake, Mick Karn, Steve Jansen and Jon Jacobs.Working at very traditional recording studio, I was able to learn first-hand the skills required to record a wide variety of musical instruments. Matrix Studios also had a number of dance music and electronic music clients from whom I learned a lot about MIDI sequencers, samplers and emerging digital recording technology.

Ba (Hons), Music

I studied Music at Kingston University. At the time there were very few opportunities in the UK to study music technology, which is what I.

A-Levels, Music, Engilsh Geography

Activities and Societies: At Sixth Form College I was on the Arts Committee. We organised events such as film nights and group tickets.