Legrand Legend Moving On

Joe Cornwall is retiring from Legrand | AV after a rewarding and influential career in the industry. His rise from selling AV electronics at a regional department store to being the Technology Evangelist for Legrand is worth noting for the impact he’s had on helping people learn about new technologies.  

Early days 

Fresh out of the military with a wife and baby son, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to start selling the hot new technology in 1985 – stereo VHS. His interest in audio visual technology bloomed, and the desire to share the knowledge he picked up with everyone was evident. He wasn’t selling a VCR, he was providing an education to guide customers to making a good decision.  

He became a representative for Sony for the next few years, travelling on the road and joining business calls by driving his car up to gas station phone booths, a far cry from today’s videoconferencing experience. 

“Joe is a dynamo. Or a perpetual motion machine. Or both,” said Zachary Fisher, Instructional Design Director at AVIXA. “The dude brims energy, passion, and excitement. He’s all in for AV and it shows in almost every interaction.”  

Road to Legrand 

He landed at Cables to Go (now C2G) as a business development manager to help facilitate their entry into the AV market. While there, he created the position of an AV Technology Evangelist, based on the role Guy Kawasaki played for Apple.  

“I saw my job as taking complex opportunities and breaking them down to simpler explanations for the internal company to explore and apply. The whole idea was how do we open new doors,” Cornwall said. “It’s a lot of effort and it can wear you out. You have to be able to recognize emerging technology that has promise.”  

That ability to feel the way the winds were blowing in technology helped C2G expand into HDMI, MHL, display port and USB-C. C2G started with cable harnesses for inside a computer tower. As C2G became associated with Middle Atlantic, Cornwall saw the advantages of the brands combining connectivity within an AV rack structure. A few years later, Da-Lite, Vaddio, Luxul, and Chief joined Legrand.  

“Joe is responsible for the positioning of Legrand in the AV market,” said Jose Mozota, President of Freman Solutions Inc. “His prestige in the industry and his depth of knowledge coupled with being a great communicator are unparalleled and irreplaceable.” 

The biggest change Cornwall has witnessed in his time at Legrand is the proliferation of mobile devices.  

“When I started, you were cool if you had a Blackberry and a Palm Pilot. Look at where we’ve come since then,” Cornwall said. “We’ve seen every product that we sold when I first started with the company is now end of life and we have a whole new kind of connectivity. That feels like going to work on a horse and heading home in a Mustang.” 

Cornwall is an avid dog lover and fosters dozens a year.

AVIXA Impacts 

What Cornwall is perhaps most well-known for in the industry is his work in education through AVIXA and Legrand’s AV University. He was the 2014 InfoComm Educator of the Year and has certifications including AVIXA CTS, CTS-D, CTS-I, Imaging Science Foundation ISF-C, ETA Fiber Optic Installer FOI, LEED Green Associate and DSCE certification. He’s created dozens of training programs, nearly all of which have been certified by AVIXA, BICSI, NSCA and AIA for continuing education credits. It’s taken a lot of dedication to reach that level.  

“I was first asked to work with one of the committees,” he said. “I was gobsmacked by these guys. I felt like the dumbest guy in the room with some of these conversations.”  

By the time he volunteered with AVIXA around 2010, he’d gained a lot of experience teaching technical subjects. He also saw the deep value that manufacturers can provide with their areas of expertise.  

“If a company commits to investing in educating the customer base, they cease to see people as a customer, but as a partner,” he said. “I love this technology. The AV industry allows our culture to evolve. We give communication a path, an amplification, a residency, and a format that everyone can access.” 

When new standards for Display Image Size for 2D Content in Audio Visual Systems (DISCAS) was first being discussed to better define the optimal systems approach for image clarity, Cornwall sent the committee a white paper he’d written on the topic that had been downloaded several hundred thousand times. Cornwall helped Fisher shape the education on DISCAS. He wrote the first training to introduce DISCAS to the world. “But I think his crowning achievement is the development of his AV Transport and Signal Distribution Masterclass,” Fisher said. “That class is the most detailed class on transport that is out there today.”  

Today he’s on AVIXA’s Content and Learning Committee, still looking at trends and figuring out which new subjects on which the industry will need training. He will continue his work as a volunteer instructor, but the rest of his day to day will be shifting from sitting in front of a computer training people all over the country to his other loves.  

“Joe is a great guy. I used to travel with him multiple times a year for many years,” said Joseph Steinberg, National Accounts Manager at ADI Global. “He made difficult topics seem easy. Good luck to my old friend. Catch up on grandkids and fishing!” 

Off Time 

Cornwall is an avid dog lover, and when family circumstances allowed, they began fostering dogs that needed temporary homes. The local Humane Society can’t house puppies, for example. Last year, they fostered 52 dogs.  

He also has a deep love of fly fishing. For years he ran an online magazine about the topic and had a book published in 2005. The west coast of Florida, where he’s now living, is a major fly fishing destination. He’ll be paddling his kayak through the mangrove flats.  

Luckily, you can still benefit from Cornwall’s expertise at AV University, Legrand | AV’s online free training platform for learning from the experts themselves about a wide range of AV topics. Many courses come with AVIXA RUs. All are free and on your own time.