Jon Trask

Jon began working in audiovisual and media while still in high school, doing student productions and educational programs for use at his school. While studying at Golden West College he worked on a number of productions for Karl Video Corporation (KVC) in a variety of roles, including doing voice-overs for numerous sales presentation programs and for some of their retail products, including “Exercise Now”, their predecessor production in the new home fitness market that led to their creation of the now legendary, Jane Fonda Workout video.

While still in college, he also began an internship at KEZY/KNWZ in Anaheim, which led to a full-time job writing news, doing field interviews, reporting local sports, weather, surf, traffic, and covering breaking stories.

In the mid 1980s, he moved into the events industry via his first audiovisual job at the Disneyland Hotel working for AVHQ. First working there as a technician, then later as a logistics coordinator at the Orange County regional office before moving into sales. Much of the 1990s was spent at Gold Coast Audio Visual in San Diego covering numerous roles, including office manager, sales manager, project manager and even handling the books for the first few years of the company’s existence. Major clients there included British Airways, a major alcohol importer, Numerous National Associations (including the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy), The San Diego X Games, Pharmaceutical launches and Pharma educational events (as many as 40 per/year for MS and heart drugs), also supporting some off-site events for the RNC during the Republican Convention in 1996. The largest client of the company was Merrill Lynch, for whom we did nearly a dozen large meetings globally each year. Jon’s role on the majority of these events was in a logistics and support role, making all of the proper pieces and personnel were in place.

In the early 2000’s Jon returned to AVHQ, where he was the technical director for groups like Humana Healthcare, Merrill Lynch and Nissan. Later he moved to Video Applications supporting Kubota Tractors, Prada, and Cookie Lee. He also began to produce the American Securitization Forum, which he would do for nine years up until their demise in 2014. That event grew from 1200 attendees to nearly 6000 and involved creating all sets and room designs, handling the technical needs of gear and labor, and working with the client to improve the branding and content of their event to provide value to the attendees.

In 2011, he left the realm of AV providers and began working as a freelance producer for a Bay Area production company. In addition to ASF, he produced events for Wells Fargo (set design, logistics, audience polling), Washington Mutual (logistics), Bausch & Lomb (set design, logistics, content support), Nexivar (logistics), The USO (logistics), Cookie Lee (set design, logistics, creative) and his continued support work with PSI on their Kubota and Memorial Care events. Simultaneously, he worked to create an internet-based audiovisual sourcing platform for the meetings industry.

In 2015 he created Strategic Meeting Tech to add a more personal touch and affordable option to help clients both obtain their technical needs for events as; well as adding creative elements and services not often available from traditional audiovisual vendors.