Chuck Walthall

Most of the fundamental ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in a language comprehensible to everyone. - Albert Einstein Sound is science. And sound is art. And at the heart of good sound is education and knowledge.

Among the many pleasant surprises at the recent NSCA Expo in Orlando, one that stands out in my mind is a conversation with Chuck Walthall, who happened by the ProSoundWeb Cyber Café.

Chuck spent more than 16 years with All Pro Sound of Pensacola, FL, helping build that design/build firm into a market leader, now with more than 50 employees.

He left last year to pursue other interests, among them earning a master's degree in business organization management, a pursuit he's fulfilling on-line via an Internet distance learning program from Capella University.

While he's still got a hand in system design and consulting, his on-line education experience inspired an idea. Why not offer an audio curriculum using the same format?

"My desire is to teach people, especially to train the end user to show them how all of this equipment works," Chuck explained. "The emergence of the Internet as a tool to do this, especially in light of my own positive educational experience, convinced me to pursue this desire in an on-line format."

The result is www.technologycourse.com, up and running for the past eight months and utilized by dozens of users scattered across the U.S. - largely church technical staffers - as an effective method of learning the basics of sound, equipment and system function. The initial course, run over the course of 12 weeks, is based upon Chuck's 1994 book "Sound Made Simple," still available from All Pro Sound. A 1997 translation of the book to interactive CD-ROM format marked the first step toward electronic education now furthered on technologycourse.com.

While the current curriculum is targeted to a less sophisticated system user, Walthall sees expanding the format to accommodate the needs of systems contractors and production personnel. To that end, respected professionals such as Topper Sowden and Ernie Lansford have signed on to teach future audio courses, while Don and Janet Beasley are already offering three production-related courses.

"These are non-paid positions, by the way," Chuck noted. "It's great to get support from others in this profession who also care about the mission of education."

He also sees technologycourse.com as a vehicle to assist manufacturers in training their dealer networks on new products and applications. It could help take the burden for this training off the shoulders of sales reps, at least to some extent, and would also ensure an extra level of consistency and comprehensiveness of the message.