By Dawn Suiter

The Sound of Success: A Conversation with Penny Nielsen of Mix 96.9

By Dawn Suiter / Photo by By Steve Babin

Sit Down With Success is a feature of the Huntsville Business Journal on entrepreneurs and their keys to success. To read the full story, please visit the Huntsville Business Journal Website.

If you’ve lived here for any amount of time, chances are you’ve heard Mix 96.9 (WRSA-FM). Featuring a variety of music from the 80s-present, it’s been part of the Huntsville-area soundscape since 1965 and remains one of the top-rated stations in the Huntsville radio market.

Founded by Redstone Arsenal chemical engineer Paul Nielsen in his garage because there weren’t any radio stations within range of the base, he chose the callsign WRSA as a nod to Redstone Arsenal. Initially an easy listening station (Beautiful 97), it shifted to soft rock (Lite 96.9) in 2000, then adult contemporary as Mix 96.9 in 2015. One thing remained the same throughout, however: it was, and still is, a family business.

Penny Nielsen joined the station in 1978, first scheduling commercials and later moving into billing and other roles. She and Paul later married, and after he passed away in 2001, Penny took the helm as station owner. Under her guidance, it continues to thrive. She and General Manager Nate Adams Cholevik sat down with me in the control room for a discussion about her experience in the business.

Tell me a little about the history of Mix 96.9.

My husband built it and it went on the air in 1965. It was built in his garage and he used an old transmitter that he bought from, I believe, Redstone Arsenal at one time…he was a chemical engineer, so he had no idea what he was doing (laughs). It’s been in the family since then.

He passed away in 2001, so it just kind of fell in my lap. But I was used to everything everyday.

What’s your favorite thing about being a business owner?

Being able to hire people that are creative and love radio…impacting people’s lives and having fun while we’re doing it. I will say this…we’ve had longevity with people that we hire–they seem to stay. They don’t go away, and that’s good. It’s wonderful when you’ve got salespeople that stay 35 years-plus. Of course, most of them have retired by now. Even the on-air people [have been] here 12-13 years. Nate started when he was just a kid out of college and he’s been here 25 years. That speaks a lot to how we deal with people here. We love having people stay…it’s a family. It’s another extension of my family, I should say.

How do you balance your personal and professional life?

[Laughs] I’m raising two granddaughters, and having a family like this, it’s easy because if somebody is sick, somebody’s not feeling well, we kind of juggle around–everybody pitches in to help each other.

What would you consider to be the greatest challenge of owning a business and how do you manage that?

Just making sure everybody’s happy and making sure everybody’s got what they need…if we’re happy and we’re doing what we need to do, we’re gonna make the client happy. And we’ve done a good job with that. We’ve got a lot of longevity with clients too.

What advice would you give to someone considering starting their own business, radio or otherwise?

Just be willing to put what needs to be done into it. Be aware that it’s not going to be 9-5 or 8-6 or whatever. It’s a 24/7 thing if you own your business…other than that, just be willing to work and be willing to pitch in when needed, and this team here is very much that way. If somebody needs something, somebody else can always help. w

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Are All the Virtual Meetings Grinding You Down? A Look At "Zoom Fatigue"

By Dawn Suiter

If there’s one thing the past couple of years have taught us, it’s that meeting spaces don’t have to be limited to the confines of the traditional office. Practically overnight, meetings switched from conference rooms to Zoom, Teams, Slack, and Google Meet rooms.

Before, employees and managers could simply walk to their colleagues’ cubicles or offices as needed to ask questions or discuss projects. Now, it requires setting an agenda and coordinating meetings or playing phone tag.

While the way meetings took place shifted, the need to come together to collaborate, discuss project progress, and tackle workplace challenges remained unchanged. In fact, the number of meetings actually increased in many cases–a 2021 study from Virtira Consulting found that 63% of remote workers participated in more meetings online than they would have in the office, with 30% spending 2-3 hours a day meeting on camera.

Unfortunately, the virtual environment strips away much of the context necessary in order to gain the full benefit of meetings: the lack of nonverbal cues and eye contact, along with the multiple faces crowding the screen (including your own) can be distracting and even stressful.

The increased concentration and mental processing required of virtual meetings while simultaneously thinking and communicating is fatiguing. Not only that, but the planning involved in setting up and attending meetings adds a new layer of stress. In addition, the job becomes more sedentary when employees are trapped in their seats all day for online meetings.

The Virtira study found that 49% of professionals working remotely reported a high degree of exhaustion as a direct result of numerous daily video calls. Employers’ attempts to raise morale by hosting online happy hours, pizza parties, and so on increased the amount of “Zoom time” even more outside of meetings.

An early 2022 report from Pew Research noted that 56% of workers who say their jobs can be done mainly from home report frequently using online platforms to connect with coworkers. While most of these workers reported that they are fine with the amount of time they spend on video calls, about one in four said they are worn out by it.

Herein lies the problem–while management may see video calls as a means of increasing team engagement, employees don’t necessarily agree. The Virtira study found that over a quarter of remote workers felt pressured to keep their cameras on even if not required. In addition, 58% of self-identified introverts and 40% of extroverts reported on-camera exhaustion.

There’s good news though: researchers have been busy searching for ways to fight virtual meeting fatigue. A 2021 study released by communication professor Jeremy Bailenson, founder of the Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab, listed four solutions to common issues: • Are you tired of seeing a bunch of faces close-up? Take Zoom out of the full-screen option and reduce the size of the

Zoom window relative to the monitor to minimize face size.

Using an external keyboard also allows an increase in the personal space bubble between oneself and the grid. • Do you have the unsettling feeling that you’re looking in a mirror? Select the “hide selfview” button, which you can access by right-clicking your own photo, after you make sure your face is framed properly on screen. • Trapped at your desk for hours and hours? Think about the background of the room you’re videoconferencing in, taking into consideration the placement of the camera and whether an external keyboard can help create distance or flexibility. An external camera farther from the screen will allow you to pace around the room and doodle in virtual meetings like you might in real ones. Turning one’s video off periodically during meetings can be a good ground rule to set for groups as well. A good pair of Bluetooth headphones can also provide a little more room to roam. • Is the cognitive load too much during long stretches of meetings? Give yourself an “audio only” break. Bailenson recommends that you not only turn off your camera, but also turn your body away from the screen for a few minutes in order to give yourself a break from constantly trying to interpret fellow virtual attendees’ nonverbal cues.

Suggestions offered by other experts include avoiding multitasking, building in breaks, and switching to phone calls and email as needed.

Virtual meetings don’t have to be all business either–teams can increase engagement with icebreakers at the beginning of virtual meetings such as “Meet the Pets,” “Show and Tell,” and light discussions about anything from the latest weird news stories people have seen to mustwatch movies and TV shows.

Another way to break up the monotony of meetings and to keep team members engaged is by incorporating polling as a means of checking for understanding or soliciting opinions. Information on creating Zoom polls can be found at https://support.zoom.us/hc/ en-us/articles/213756303-Pollingfor-meetings.

The use of reactions during discussions can also liven up meetings. Instead of voicing responses, symbols such as thumbs up, a surprised face, hand clapping, and so on can signal your responses without having to say a word.

A University of Colorado blog post suggests an additional creative idea for breaking up the monotony of virtual meetings: leaving the camera off and taking the meeting outside. Instead of a deskbased meeting, try a virtual walking meeting using headphones and cell phones.

With video conferencing likely becoming a permanent fixture in the business world, it’s important to focus on the mental and physical needs of all team members in order to create a more pleasant, stress-free workplace whether it’s in-person or remote. The workplace may never be the same again, after all–adaptation is the key to success. w

AMIIC Helping Local Businesses Compete, Training Next Generation Workforce

By Dawn Suiter / Photo by Dawn Suiter

Located at 5021 Technology Drive, Suite E in Cummings Research Park, the nonprofit 501(c)3 Advanced Manufacturing Innovation and Integration Center (AMIIC) opened its doors just six months ago, but it’s already making a big difference with local industry.

As a wholly-owned subsidiary of the National Center for Defense Manufacturing and Machining (NCDMM), AMIIC strives to boost North Alabama’s and the nation’s industry through the acceleration of adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies and the further development of a highlyskilled workforce.

Among its many offerings is a Training Hub offering a wide variety of hands-on and virtual training opportunities for its government, industry, technology, and academic partners.

In addition to courses in subjects such as Army Policy for Advanced Manufacturing, Introduction to Model-Based Systems Engineering, Basics of Optical Measurement, and Introduction to Additive Manufacturing Workflow, AMIIC offers over 75 online courses and can tailor any curriculum by leveraging academic partners and a national network of technologists.

According to AMIIC Executive Director John Schmitt, the nonprofit has worked with around a dozen companies so far since its opening in February and has contracts in the works with a number of federal organizations.

The Training Hub’s newest course offering is the Introduction to Digital Engineering class, taught by industry experts from the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), which runs the Digital Engineering Design Center at AMIIC. During its inaugural session, SAIC Innovation Factory employees made meaningful connections with AMIIC experts as they learned how to use advanced technologies to streamline the engineering process.

“What we’re excited about with SAIC doing this is they want to be a leader in digital engineering…we know it’s going to take some of those early adopters to create the competitive pressure that gets everybody upskilled. That’s our goal,” Schmitt said.

Schmitt observed that because this is a new technological revolution, there’s no workforce to execute it–one goal, therefore, is to also provide middle management with the tools and understanding needed to encourage employees to adopt the necessary skill sets to move forward in the digital engineering enterprise.

“Our whole goal is to lower the barrier to entry and educate as many people as we possibly can in digital engineering practices,” Schmitt said. “It’s a whole philosophical shift. And the reality is, those who do not fully embrace it will simply be left behind.”

When asked what drew UTEP to this program, Schmitt explained that in 2012 the National Defense Authorization Act established eight advanced manufacturing institutes, the first of which was in additive manufacturing. “That one was called America Makes,” he said.

UTEP’s W.M. Keck Center for 3D Innovation is a satellite of America Makes, “so [it has a] very highly technical, incredible amount of academic and functional expertise in additive manufacturing, which augments our regional partnerships” Schmitt said. “They also have an aerospace center, which is where this comes into play.”

Schmitt cited a 2019 Deloitte study that outlined a 500,000-person skilled workforce gap by 2025. “We need to access traditionally underrepresented communities and provide them [with] exposure, opportunity, education, and employment.”

“Rather than reinvent the wheel, we reached out to the University of Texas-El Paso, who is the largest minority-serving institution in the country,” Schmitt said, explaining that the aerospace center has a program that takes students who may come from under-resourced schools and underrepresented communities and offers them opportunities to work on “NASA projects or industry projects on missiles, hypersonics, aerospace-related projects.”

“These kids who otherwise may not have that opportunity end up Masters, PhDs, but more importantly, end up in industry very quickly… it just changes the trajectory of their entire family. So we’re doing the same thing here,” he continued.

According to Schmitt, there are now three Digital Engineering centers: one at UTEP, one in Huntsville, and one in Youngstown, OH with an additional one being established at Johnson Space Flight Center in

AMIIC Executive Director John Schmitt

Houston, TX. “The projects that these students are working on are everything from lunar landers to hypersonic waveriders to whatever–very high end exposure but also delivering product and research.”

“Because Dr. Choudhuri and his [UTEP] faculty have become thought leaders in digital engineering nationally, we wanted to expand that relationship and that partnership to make sure that we meet DoD’s requirements for one of their digital engineering priorities–culture in workforce,” Schmitt said, adding that a lot of the challenges aren’t technological so much as cultural. “It’s about upskilling a workforce that has never done it like this. Interconnectedness between everything from business practices to logistics all the way through the design cycle. That’s where digital engineering comes into play. Because of the commodities built here on Redstone–hypersonics, longrange fires, directed energy, counter UAS, Future Vertical Lift–we can’t afford to be behind anymore with this workforce.”

According to Schmitt, the growth of digital engineering will help the U.S. compete more effectively against China, which he said is producing systems five times as fast as the U.S. and spending about 5% dollar-fordollar on providing capability to the field. “They’re whooping us in manufacturing in cost and scale,” he said.

“The way that we get back into the competitive field that we need to be in is to adopt digital engineering, which reduces that developmental cycle time” Schmitt continued. “Instead of building something physically, you build it digitally, test it, integrate it all digitally before you ever build it.”

While the Training Hub courses focus primarily on early and mid-career level professionals, the Digital Engineering Design Center focuses on college students, who Schmitt said came from schools such as Tuskegee, Alabama A&M, and UTEP. Schmitt expects around 20 by the end of the semester.

Students at the Digital Engineering Design Center are paid a stipend so they can focus on their studies. “To do digital engineering, it’s so interdisciplinary–you have to have these project-based exercises to really become successful practitioners, and that’s what we’re trying to give these students,” Schmitt said.

AMIIC also has plans to work with students from the Alabama School of Cyber Technology and Engineering. “It is absolutely our intent,” Schmitt said.

“ASCTE is not just about cyber–people think cybersecurity, but it’s about engineering lifecycle with cyber in mind. So it’s really important for us to help build some of this curriculum that will bridge the gap from high school skills into this interdisciplinary digital engineering environment. It’s a lot more complex than a lot of engineering’s been in the past.”

For more information, visit amiic.us w