Ask the Programmer
Ask The Programmer Episode 257 - Guest Joe Way Discusses True Cloud Control from AV to Smart Campus
15 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
From the world of AV programming and control with James King, I'm Steve Greenblatt, and this is Ask the Programmer. James, how are you today? It's good to be back and looking forward to a great conversation. I'm doing good, Steve. How are you doing? Especially being named AV Professional of the Year. Congrats on that. So yeah, how are you doing?
One, I very much am honored to be that, and I appreciate the recognition, and I also appreciate being in the company of all those who have won before, one of which is with us today. So it's a great tie-in. Um, we get to say hello to a returning guest who we all know very well and, and have talked to a lot, but hasn't been on our podcast in quite a bit of time.
Uh, he was originally with us on episodes 53 and 54. So one of our first, uh, early on guests. And then after that episode one 13, um, He is none other than Joe Way, Executive Director of Digital Spaces at UCLA and also co-founder of HEPMA. Welcome back, Joe. Hi, thank you so much for having me on. I love to see your little post. Like, anyone want to record? I'm like, I'll do it.
I missed the show. You know, it felt like, you know, you are like superstars now, like racking up those episodes. You got to teach me how to do that because I'm really horrible at keeping up with my episodes. So you're all killing it. So I love it. It's an honor to be back. Thanks. I'm glad that we were able to make it this far and have you on again. And I appreciate that praise.
And you, too, were an AV Professional of the Year. So I appreciate being in the club. Congratulations, too. It's a small club, so you got to welcome in. And it's so well-deserved, so well-deserved. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And it's certainly an honor. And one of the reasons why I feel great about that is because of the AV industry. And this is why we do the things that we do.
And one of those things is this podcast and being able to talk to great people and have conversations to help programmers and build communities. So Joe, one of the things that I've heard a lot about and you've taken, it's been a couple of years now, but you've taken a new role at UCLA and you have certainly a very notable impact that you've made at USC.
And the things that you were doing were a little bit outside the box and doing things that were a little different bit a stretch from the traditional in terms of implementing control and programming and doing classroom systems. And at the time, that was something that was considered cloud-based.
And I even remember us having a conversation about clouds on a page and how we were kind of moving away from this like fixed structure. Talk about how you've evolved that, because I know that you've kind of taken the next step at your new role. Yeah, yeah. I think that was a great setup for it. It's interesting to think back kind of across the last couple of years.
It's weird to think I've been at UCLA for two and a half years already, which is crazy. And I was only at USC for just under four. So it's kind of like I'm almost been here, you know, it won't be that long that I've matched it.
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Chapter 2: How has Joe Way's role evolved at UCLA?
We have, you know, we actually have specific requirements we have to do as we upgrade spaces. It works into our control, our locking system, our HVAC systems, all of our building management systems, our live events, digital signage portals. We actually homegrown it into it. So we've got our own system in there. And this is all kind of built off.
And we did use the RFP winner was a product called PlaceOS, which is just a software. But we've been able to partner with them and build this up above that.
Um, so it's great and it can control, do everything for whatever manufacturer, um, even though we do have specific ones we do use for standardization, because I'm sure you've talked about, you know, Stan, you don't want to support 50 different brands, but in theory we could. So we do kind of standardize on, on key brands to, uh, to make that area.
And, um, I don't know if I actually answered your question or said anything. So there we go. You said a lot of good stuff and there's a lot of stuff to key in on. I'll kind of let James weigh in on things here. Again, this sounds very groundbreaking. What are some of your takeaways from it? And you and I have talked about virtual control. We've talked about server-based.
We've talked about creating more standardization and modern programming. This seems like we're creating almost like a new model for how an AV system can be approached. I think, as Joe said, it's more than an AV system. Like he said, it's a smart campus. It's incorporating a lot of Systems together besides just AV, which, you know, is the ultimate goal. So, yeah, it's a great thing.
Now, I will throw my IT hat on my security hat and wonder, cool. Now you're making this system tie into everything. Now we got to worry about security. And I'm sure the UCLA folks have already looked into all this, make sure it's secure. But now you have a system that can branch into all these other systems, the registrar's office, life safety, all that stuff. And then...
Where's the weak point for security on that? And are that being monitored? Is that being monitored? Is that being tested to make sure, you know, There is no bad actors.
But, you know, this is what we will all achieve for like a simple way to incorporate all our equipment, all our systems into one system and actually manage it and control it and, you know, get full life out of everything, which is great. So I see a lot of pros and cons of it. Yeah, you know, and I'll speak to that. Yes, absolutely. We worked with our CISOs office very closely, peers of mine.
So, right, I mean, because again, now that the level I sit at at the university, I have all these departments as direct peers, right? I don't, I sit in meetings with them, you know, all day, every day, which has been great. So, but everything had to go through TPRM, third party, whatever, third party departments. are uh rather than or manage uh uh Everyone knows it, even though I just forgot it.
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Chapter 3: What is 'true' Cloud control in the context of AV?
And so but anyway, every single thing that touches the network has to go through and very stringent with UC policies and security. And, you know, like I said, because we actually have it, we can control it very, very well. We work with our network group very well. And it's funny because I always think like if someone could hack our system, they would probably have no idea what to do with it.
Like it's almost like, you know, there's some really cool stuff. I wish I could screen share, but we're in the process of patenting it. Some cool things that we were able to do, for example, you know, we could take, we go straight from the camera and we've able to snag that signal.
create our own dashboard that our students can now like, you know, basically have a virtual version of a video producer. And that signal by also capturing the content can overlay and it goes directly into Panopto camera, but to Panopto direct.
nothing else in between except our own little web browser that we're hacking that rtsp stream i guess is what it would be um and monitoring that in which is really just crazy stuff um and then along with that if you think okay what are other bonuses because it's now we're using other things it's easy for us to overlay accessibility other softwares on top of it right if they have as long as they have an api of some sort or some type of thing that they can um
However, they work. I think we're trying to do everything at the API level, but not everything. And so, you know, we can bring all those added tools in very, very easily and layer them on as we need, you know, on our own web control system, you know, web monitoring. So it's pretty cool stuff. No, that's... Yeah, definitely cool. The security thing.
Now, I'll throw another question at you then is because I know I ran into this. How challenging was it to get And even if he did work with manufacturers to get them on board with this, because I know I ran into some products where I was like, oh, we could do this. And they're like, no, that won't work. But they can't tell me why.
And I tried to prove to them we will work and they won't even budge. So how do you get them on board with this new way of doing things? Yeah. Well, I'll say our core partner of PlaceOS that really kind of built that backbone, who won the RFP for the software slash control slash monitoring thing, has been great. They're a very small company, new company, new-ish, 10 years out of Australia.
So they're well into this because obviously, you know, develop it with us and you can sell it to thousands of other schools, right? So there's a business side to this. That being said, for example, Crestron did win the hardware RFP portion when we do need specific things like we got to get into Zoom. So, you know, we'll hack a Flex and get it into Zoom or whatever, right? So things like that.
They've been very, very strong. I mean, I think a lot of it because of my... uh, background with SC and saying, you know, we're going to do this, you know, it's like, you know, and we're going to try to, you know, I don't want to say hack your stuff that there's kind of this comes with the street cred that we're going to do that.
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