Graham Burgess
Date & place of birth:
Profession:
What was your first professional job?:
How did you end up where you are now?
Who or what provided your biggest inspiration?
What do you consider are your major achievements?
How would you change the industry?
Do you envisage any major improvements to giant screen technology in the next 12 months?
What are the best and worst aspects of your profession?
What were the last additions to your record/CD collection?
Any hobbies away from the job?
The last live show you attended as a punter?
If you met the teenage Graham Burgess what advice would you give him?
December 11 1960; North Ferriby, a small village in Yorkshire, 10 miles outside Kingston-upon-Hull, UK.
Professional broker of new, used and rental giant video screens.
Technical sales trainee with a firm of builders' and plumbers' merchants.
Out of desperation to get away from builders and plumbers! My first job in pro AV was selling video projectors, initially as part of the Rank organisation, before moving on to Sony and then Lighthouse. I migrated through video production and distribution, getting involved in the early days of JumboTron, then moving on to LED screens as that market emerged and grew exponentially, and now I'm involved in a whole new market - screen brokerage. Why did I choose giant screen video? Because in the 1980s it was unusual, sexy and had mystique... and it impressed the girls. Or at least I hoped it would.
Big Billy Whitehurst. Only life-long Hull City F.C. supporters will appreciate the true significance of this.
The first one was Michael Jackson's Dangerous tour in 1992, when we had to build two portrait format modular JumboTrons in 46 days from the quote to rehearsals at the Munich Olympic Stadium, having never seen a JumboTron in my life before. Secondly, the following year, putting JumboTron screens into Arsenal F.C., the first club in the UK to use proper video displays. These two deals really kicked off the giant video screen business for me.
Give customers a lot more money.
We're on a path that is constantly providing better performance for lower prices and that seems to be going on forever, which is likely to result in casualties along the way.
The best is the access it gives you to the sports and entertainment industries that you'd never experience otherwise, and the travelling to great places, but it's also the worst as it eliminates social and family life.
Dido's Life For Rent, and the purchase of an iPod at Christmas!
I'm still a season ticket holder at Hull City F.C. [who, at the time of this interview, were just about to be promoted from the Third Division in front of 25,000 fans at Huddersfield]. And golf.
Paul McCartney, last year, which had probably the best use of video screens I've ever seen, although I hear Celine Dion's show with Mitsubishi screens in Vegas is equally amazing.
Do exactly the same again.