Broadcast Engineering in times of Emergency

I was raised in a small town supermarket own by my father, which he then turned into a restaurant. All my childhood memories revolve around me working in my family’s businesses. After High School, I started a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications Technology in the Inter American University of Puerto Rico, and also started working in the media industry doing live sound events.

During my stay in the Inter American University Campus, I worked in the A/V department, doing mostly live sound events, but also working as a videographer and editor. After graduation, I started working in WIPR, a PBS station in San Juan, as a web developer. Since I worked with web servers, the company thought that I could help them with a recent purchase they made of a Virtual Set and Augmented Reality System which used servers for their tracking and character generation system. I managed to learn and specialized myself in this system, which helped me worked on other projects within the company, like the deployment of a Digital Asset Management system.

By this time I had already started studying a second Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering with a mayor in Wireless Communications and a minor in DSP and Automatic Controls, from the Polytechnic University of Puerto Rico. I had the advantage to apply my recent theoretical knowledge gain in the classroom, into my current work projects.

In 2014 I was offered a job at WAPA-TV, the biggest commercial TV station in Puerto Rico, but only stayed there for a little over two years. WIPR wanted me back and offered me a job that involved working as the assistant engineer to the vice-president of engineering, and as the director of planning and development. After Hurricane Maria, I was part of the team that asses all the damages to the station, and realized that my professional growth in Puerto Rico had come to a halt.

The industry has not been the same and it will not be the same at least for the next 5 to 10 years, because of the amount of capital that is needed to invest in most of the stations there. I spoke with the president of WIPR and explained to him my situation, and received his full support in my new adventure. Working in other markets is always a great experience to learn and broaden your horizons. This experience is becoming more valuable as time goes by because of the speed in which communications are helping with globalization.  

In the future, I expect to return to my little island and continue to develop its media industry, and serve the millions of Americans that live there.