Some know me as Ben, some know me as Yogi, but EVERYONE knows me as the LED guy! I'm the Product Manager for LED Video at SmartSource in Las Vegas, where I spend my days making sure LED walls, video content, and the people running them all work together without a hitch. I've been doing some version of this job since 2001, starting behind a soundboard in a 600-seat college theatre in New Orleans and ending up, by way of concert stages, hotel ballrooms, and a global pandemic, as the person companies call when an LED wall needs to actually work on show day.
The Path Here
From soundboards to LED walls
My career didn't start with LED — it started with audio. I ran sound and lighting for live theatre in New Orleans while I was still in school, then spent a couple of years installing home theater and automation systems (a lot of Crestron, AMX, and Lutron) before landing on convention show floors with AVW-TELAV, where I worked up to on-site show lead for up to 30 AV technicians across events ranging from 2,000 to 35,000 attendees.
From there I moved into sales management at AVI-SPL, where I assisted with the running of a high-end AV operation inside a premier Las Vegas hotel property — budgeting, forecasting, staffing, and keeping a growing business efficient as volume increased. (Somewhere in the middle of all this, I also ran my own small business for a few years — a diaper delivery service, of all things — which taught me more about operations, customer service, and staying solvent than I ever expected an AV career to require.)
The real turning point was building the LED video division at Audio Visual One from scratch: sourcing and speccing systems, pixel mapping, content programming, and training our sales and technical teams to execute the new business. That experience carried me to CCR Solutions, where I spent six years as a senior project manager and LED lead producing meetings and events across North America.
Then 2020 happened. When live events stopped, I was part of a small core team asked to figure out what came next — building virtual and hybrid event solutions out of whatever equipment we had on hand, and learning streaming infrastructure, RTMP delivery, and a rotating cast of platforms and CDNs almost overnight. It's one of the things I'm most proud of: turning a forced pause into a durable skill set that's still useful today.
Since 2022, I've been at SmartSource as Product Manager for LED Video — the subject matter expert other departments come to when an LED question needs a real answer, whether that's sales, purchasing, marketing, or a technician standing in front of a wall that isn't lighting up correctly.
What I Actually Do
The day-to-day
- Designing LED solutions for tradeshows and eventsCAD diagrams, rigging plots, content templates, and renderings that let clients see the result before it's ever built.
- Bridging sales and engineeringTranslating what a client wants into what's actually buildable — and back again.
- Building the systems behind the systemsTraining programs, SOPs, QC processes, and packaging/kitting methods that keep field crews consistent under pressure.
- Staying hands-onReal-time technical support for field teams — including the 2am kind, because LED walls don't wait for business hours.
- Partnering with purchasing and manufacturersEvaluating new hardware against sales trends, product lifecycles, and ROI before it ever hits inventory.
Credentials
Certifications
NovaStar NCE Level 2 — 2022, 2025
OSHA 30 Certified
Certified Forklift Operator
Certified Audio Engineer
