40 AT 40: RICK BERRY
Job Title: Director of Educational Services

The people are what sets Bandit Lites apart from the rest of the industry. Once a week, for 40 weeks, Bandit will showcase an employee that has made a substantial contribution to the company, whether it be in an office, on the road or somewhere in between. Bandit would not be celebrating its 40th Anniversary without the hard work and dedication of every one these employees.*

*Employee Spotlights are released in no particular order.

Like many people, Rick Berry started out in this industry as a frustrated musician. He was playing for a local band in Knoxville, TN and they rented some lights. When the lights didn’t all work, Berry had to fix them before they could use them. When he brought the lights back, he said he wasn’t going to pay full price and instead of a discount, Berry was offered a job as a lighting technician. The rest, as they say, is history. Below are a few questions we asked to get to know him a little better.

Q: What is your title? Please describe your primary job responsibilities.
A: I am the Director of Educational Services. I conduct several series of seminars to people in-house here at Bandit to make sure that everybody has a good working knowledge of what industry standards are as well as what Bandit standards are, because they may not be exactly the same. In addition to that, I also am involved in technical design services for things such as power distribution and custom devices. I guess it’s debatable how much time I spend doing what- it really depends on the time of year and what we need.

Q: Earlier in this interview, you mentioned that you started out at Bandit as a lighting technician. How did you get into educational services?
A: That was my idea. I had seen over the years that the industry was becoming much more of a seasoned profession instead of ‘by the seat of your pants pull somebody off on the road’ business that it had started as. I knew that we needed to get people up to speed on what we do, and at least on the basic industry practices. In addition to that, there are an awful lot of people that come out of universities or specialized technical schools that really do have official training in this business and that’s only happened in the last 10-12 years. I knew that would be a much more important thing as time went on, and it has.

Q: In answering the last question, you briefly touched on how the industry has evolved into more of a profession than it had been in the past. Could you please expand on that?
A: It’s becoming more of a profession in the sense that there are standardized practices and there is a large body of knowledge that everybody needs to know. In addition to that, we have what we call the “Bandit Standard.” The “Bandit Standard” doesn’t necessarily deviate for the industry standard but we build on that and we think that we’ve significantly added improvements. A lot of what we do has been developed in the last 12-15 years. The idea is that you can take somebody off one tour and throw them on another tour and because everything is standardized, they can get up to speed within an hour. In addition to that, there is the more fundamental training that everybody has to have. The “Bandit Standard” really is an ethic, a philosophy and a body of knowledge.