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This week’s interview is with Juan Garza.

Jessica Barton: What is your job title?
Juan Garza: Telescope Assembly Technician.

JB: What does your work at LCOGT involve?
JG: That’s kind of a trick question! In a normal environment an assembly technician would just be assembling, here we all have to wear multiple hats. I spend most of my time assembling but there is also a lot of prototyping and assisting our engineers with research and development as a technician.

JB: Could you tell us a little bit about yourself - your education, interests, past work experiences.
JG: My dad was a radio broadcast engineer and I grew up in that environment. Later studying fine arts and communications in college but fell back on electronics as a vocation. I worked in the music business for many years as an audio technician and recording engineer in the studio, later went out on the road as a production manager for live shows. The combination of art and technology that the work provided was a good fit for me.

JB: What led you to the career/job you are doing now?
JG: My passion has always been for communications. I worked in theaters, movie sets, sound stages, television shows and concerts - all kinds of places with many different artists - always involved with the audio production. The studio I was working for closed down and I went on the road doing production management for touring bands. After touring for several years, I wanted to get more background in computer network engineering because of its growing utility in the music business, in preparation to get back in the studio, I went back to school in Santa Barbara where I lived.
I got involved with LCOGT while I was in school because it combines a lot of my interests.
It’s different than the music industry but it is still really about communication, technology and robotics, all things I’m interested in. I’ve always preferred project oriented jobs and this was perfect.

JB: What is a typical day at work like?
JG: I come in in the morning and start tinkering, do assembly on telescopes, mechanical and electrical projects and wiring. That’s what I do all day long. I’ve worked on both the 0.4 meter telescopes and and the 1.0 meter telescopes, but right now the 1.0 m’s are the higher priority. We just got five of them deployed and now we are working on five more in the shop.

JB: What advice would you offer people wanting to go into the type of work you do?
JG: You have to be willing to wear lots of hats. This is not a typical manufacturing environment where you just assemble the same thing over and over. You have to be flexible and know about computers, electronics, machining, and manufacturing. In the same manner as in the music business, you have to wear many hats.

JB: What motivates you?
JG: I really think of engineering and electronics as tools, my real passion is communications. Helping those that have something to say via cultural diffusion using these tools in science, art and technology motivates me the most. Hopefully this is making our lives a little bit better now and in the future.

JB: Thanks Juan!