Aaron Conant  0:18

Happy Tuesday everybody. My name is Aaron Conant. I'm the Co-founder and managing director at BWG Connect. We're a network and knowledge sharing group with 1000s of organizations who do exactly that. We network and now share together to stay on top, the newest trends, strategies, pain points, whatever it might be that's shaping this new era that we're living in right now, a lot of that on the digital side, just so happens to be focused there. So a lot of what's going on and a lot of questions being asked when the same questions come up over and over again, in those conversations we're having, we have we host an event like this. And so a couple of things that we want is we want this to be as educational and informational as possible. So at any point in time, if you have a question, you have a comment, drop it in the chat, drop it in the question section there, or you can always email me Aaron, aaron@BWGconnect.com, and we'll address as many as we can. The other thing to remember is, you know, we're starting here, three to four minutes after the hour, we're gonna try and wrap up with at least five minutes to go in the hour as well. So if you're looking at your watch, just know, we're gonna wrap this up, gonna give you the gift of time back and give you plenty of time to get on to your next meeting without being late. And so I want to kick off this conversation. For those of you that heard kind of the few minutes free call chit chat here is the dynamic way that everything has changed, and the way we were changed. And so it's kind of where we got to this title of expert insights for designing an effective communication technology stack. And the new way of work. We do a lot of these conversations around, you know, like maybe an Amazon or Walmart or Alibaba, international, direct consumer, but none of them are as universal as this new way of trying to engage in employee base as a whole. And so anyways, we got some great friends, partners, supporters of the network over a Qumu. You know, we've done a few of these now. And they're just, you know, they're just awesome and incredibly insightful. And so, I also have some other guests here where how to do a round table in show for everybody. And then it's just kind of an open conversation as we go. But, you know, Kieran, I'll kick it over to you first, if you want to jump in, you know, an intro on yourself and Qumu would be awesome. And then we can kind of go Debbie, Craig, and James for intros on them. Yeah,

Kieran Ellerton  2:26

good deal. Can you hear me okay?

Debbie Chong  2:28

Yeah, loud and clear.

Kieran Ellerton  2:29

Good stuff. Well, good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening to everybody watching this wherever you are in the world. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Kieran Ellerton. I'm the Vice President Professional Services here at Qumu. And Qumu. We're an industry leading enterprise video company, empowering businesses with live and video on demand for many, many years. And yet, my pleasure to be a part of this event here today, I think it's going to be a great discussion with a great panel.

Debbie Chong  2:55

Hi, I'm Debbie Chong. I'm the Co-founder and CEO of Lenos Software, we deliver marketing meetings, and events technology, we put a wrapper around Qumu to deliver it in a way that the clients want. We get the video statistics as well as analytics that we have from people accessing the site. And so we've been in the marketing suite for over 20 years. And just like everybody else, we had to augment our virtual capabilities last year. Hi,

Craig Gordon  3:37

I'm Craig Gordon, and I am the Senior Vice President of Worldwide sales for Kollective Technology, Kollective Technology is one of the partners of Qumu. Our sole main purpose in life is to ensure that employees who are consuming this video broadcast around the world and in their organizations don't break the network while they're watching. It also get a very high quality experience when they're viewing the broadcast. So our sole job is to be applying at our job to support events so that a CEO townhall event or just a group regional meeting, whatever it is, wherever the employee is, whether in the office or at home, the consumption of the video is a quality and it gives a good experience to all involved.

James Jameson  4:23

So hi, everyone. I'm James Jameson. I'm the Chief Commercial Officer at CaptionHub. And CaptionHub is an enterprise subtitling platform. So essentially, we work with Qumu to help organizations talk to wider audiences. And that's either hard of hearing audiences for accessibility purposes, or international audiences, which is I think, really pertinent to the conversation today. So that's a little bit about CaptionHub. I'm really looking forward to this conversation with you. So

Aaron Conant  5:00

You know, a reminder for those who are able to dial in you have any questions or comments along the way drop into the chat or drop in the question section or email them to me Aaron, aaron@bwgconnect.com. So I'm going to kick it off with Kieran. You know, a lot of, you know, the communication that have changed it changes that have come require new technology. And so technology in the across the enterprise as a whole is it's changed. You know, overnight. I know, it's been, you know, two years, but essentially, with everything we're dealing with seems to be like, overnight, you know, there's kind of this new normal around the way we work. So, you know, from your standpoint, you know, how is, you know, communicate, you know, communication technology, how those needs changed over the past years? What are the top pain points that people are seeing? What are the key highlights they should be looking for, you know, or maybe challenges they're facing?

Kieran Ellerton  5:50

Yeah, sure. I think that's a great question to kick us off with for sure. I suspect, I was just kind of interested in thinking about those who are consuming the webinar here today, I think that there'll be a vast difference from those watching this, this discussion here today, in terms of how big these changes have been, for them inside their organizations, and how they approach work or new work, the new era of work, whatever we call it, there's a lot of different phrases out there. Perhaps not entirely related to this, but I'm sure it will be a significant factor is where companies were pre pandemic in terms of their digital transformation program, right, those that were a little bit further along that path or a little were more likely to have had key technologies in place to be able to adapt much more quickly. But from what I've seen here, through conversations with our clients, it's been an enormous challenge for everybody, regardless of where you work. They, in many respects, what we're seeing today, and this is just my opinion, but I think this is an acceleration of trends, which have been disrupting the workplace for many, many years pre pandemic, and that actually, the COVID 19 pandemic proved to be an accelerator for changes, which were kind of already underway. And today, organizations are asking exciting questions like, you know, what does the office of the future look like? I'd love to say, I coined that phrase myself, I didn't, I heard that from one of our clients, you know, what does the office of the future look like over the medium and long term for their organizations, and then through that lens, what shakeup is required to enable this new work, hybrid work, remote work, or even a work from anywhere environment, in regard to the communication collaboration and video stack to drive the business forward? And we're seeing clients who've been mandated by C level executives to answer that very question. So super interesting.

Aaron Conant  7:34

I just think, you know, so I, you know, prior to this, you know, corporate America level, so a lot of friends there and talking with, you know, 30 plus people a week, but also even on the small business side, you know, the return to work when you that's what I think about when I think, you know, you kind of said, you know, the office of the future, right? And we went back or like, Hey, we're gonna try to, you know, get people back in the office, because we like the collaboration. That's just the reality is not there. Right? The there's a big resistance. So like, you know, Craig, I'm gonna kick it over to you like, your thoughts on like, return to work, like, what does that look like? I know, my personal experience was, you're not getting everybody back in the office, you know, five days a week? Is your love to hear your thoughts? Yeah,

Craig Gordon  8:21

it's a it's a very good question. And something we've been dealing with it collated from this perspective of, again, looking at how we make sure that we protect the company's network who's in the office, because if everyone's at home, you don't really need to protect the office because they've got their own bandwidth. And while the pandemic was on, that was pretty much the norm. But as we're changing, we're not seeing that one switch, I lightened saying, right, I'm back in the office, everyone back, not having this new way of working, his employees are much more flexible when they are working, which always think of how long they go, therefore, and where they group and do their meetings from. So what we're seeing is, is that you've got to protect and look after that network, depending on who's there. So it's very flexible, very fluid as to where people are working. And that really is the essential thing about making sure that your technology stack that you've got in place protects and also gives the quality however, it's being communicated across, whether it's the internet, internet, Wide Area Networks, or all across the land, or the Wi Fi. So the most important thing here is really just to my perspective, is we're seeing that it's not a dribble. It's a it's a much more flexible workforce who may go in on a Thursday or Friday, this week, and next week, I mean, on Tuesday and Wednesday, but on the other half flexibility given to them advance them by their by their management, and that's the way that people now we're seeing I mean, the office, it's much more flexible.

Aaron Conant  9:52

I see, you know, even just hearing it talking to a lot of people, the amount of video that's consumed right where it used to be On a weekly basis is now literally on a daily basis. Are you seeing like this happening?

Craig Gordon  10:07

Even more a question. So video can attest to this from video communication for a while and trying to get companies on the video train has taken a long time and up until the pandemic, early adopters, some companies and there were some really advanced companies that are happening, but the vast majority hadn't known of a sudden the pandemic happened. And we just look at the stats on on video consumption from our own traffic around customers, it's gone through the roof and the numbers of meetings through the day now it's going to be always our this is solution, we've got to be always working because it's become ad hoc, a person could set up a meeting and run it. Notice send out the invitation and people within the organization and how to watch it. So the communication internally has changed. And people will much more useful use the set of challenges of the number of communications is not just a town hall on a quarterly event anymore. It's everyday senior management, regional management department heads doing the same thing, jumping on the video, pushing a broadcast and, and getting over their day, once that 5, 10, 20 minutes one's going on. That says it has become a core part of a corporate communication strategy now, where it never was before the pandemic. So a couple questions

Aaron Conant  11:35

that come in, I do want to kick it over to James and have like video on demand questions that come in. But how would companies produce townhall C level events with remote panelists making it look professional? So that's that's key. But ensure that it looks professional? And then there's another one from your experience? How comfortable are companies using video communication? You know, so anyways, well, let's tackle the first one. You know how a company's produced townhall C level events with remote panelists making it look professional, you know, any key I'm

Kieran Ellerton  12:09

happy to take that first one if you like. We, I what I would say is one of the great things about my role I feel incredibly fortunate about this is that, you know, having a professional services, I spend all of my days working with clients. And so we get to see this cross section across the enterprise of how organizations are solving very challenge. You know, many of these organizations, certainly the large ones, had studios built in their campus locations and would deliver highly produced highly professional, and they had, you know, a suite of AV teams that would do all of that stuff, you know, camera operators, and directors and producers and talkback and, and so the good news is, is that those technologies and tools exist, and that you can still leverage those things to deliver a super professional broadcast with a multi speaker, multi, multi location setup, and we've seen them and there's different ways to piece this together, I certainly will plug what we do at Qumu. For sure, you know, we're partnered with, with social life. And we use that setup in conjunction with integration we have with Qumu to deliver that. But we also see in many, many organizations, you know, every organization has a web conferencing platform, whether you like to use Zoom, or it's WebEx or you know, one of the many others in that space, you can also use those as a front end for your live stream, to to run through a streaming platform. And you essentially would connect in a zoom space or a WebEx space and then pump that video output stream to give you multi speaker multilocation through your streaming platform, and to your audience, and so many different ways to solve it. One of the things I've loved to see, personally, during the pandemic is just how creative we all get as human beings when backs are against the wall a little bit. And we have to think outside the box, think of different ways to solve challenges. And we've been in our comfort zones of doing these things day in day out. But yeah, we've seen a whole plethora of things. And that's a couple of examples. Yeah,

Aaron Conant  14:02

I want to just kick it over to Debbie a question because I wrote this down on your intro and you're talking about stuff was around, you know, being able to get insights, what does measurement look like? Right, is that some of the stuff that you said you're providing statistics on the background on the backend? And, you know, I've had a couple people email in around that is you do this C level event? How do you know who's watching? Right? And, I mean, maybe there's multiple, you'd want to jump in and address that. But knowing that it was shown who it was shown to how long they watch the all these different things where if you're doing an event like that, it wants to be high quality, you want to make sure it was it was meaningful and impactful as well.

Debbie Chong  14:40

I think that with the metrics that we get from Qumu and, and like companies is that they want to know for example, if it's a client related event, or even internal, you know, say their series of videos, they want to know how many of them they watched when they dropped off. They want to know, if they read the content or downloaded a PDF. I mean, you can't see the whites of their eyes anymore. So the only metric you have is basically tracking their their behavior across the website. You know, if there are multiple pages and seeing how they're viewing the video, you can put a poll up or q&a up. They're much more engaged if they ask a question, or if they answer a poll. So those are small things that people look at. Awesome.

Aaron Conant  15:35

So the next question that comes in here, from your experience, how comfortable are companies using video communication?

Debbie Chong  15:44

I think they're really comfortable with it, they really like VOD, especially when they're spread across the globe. And it's not feasible to have people watched live. I think that the VOD is a huge component. And the tech sector, for example, they've always delivered a live event, but they also had portions that were VOD or broadcast to people not there. So I think it's more common now, whether its internal or external. And I think the hard part is breaking it into sort of bite sized pieces, because people do, you know, drop off after, you know, 15 minutes to half an hour, you know, their attention span. And I think it's really hard to get the content besides the production. I mean, if you had a live event, there are a lot of things you can sort of do if something goes wrong, but when you're doing a broadcast, there's no our clients say, there's no gift, you know, it's got to go, it's got to be 100% effective. And I think that people Qumu hear that from their clients, just like, there's no room for error.

Aaron Conant  16:55

I want to kick this over to James, because you'd mentioned, you know, video on demand. You know, any, any thoughts there? James, I know, you guys do a lot in this space, but also from, you know, I'm thinking to localization standpoint, because a lot of times, you know, it's we're talking global companies. And, you know, Debbie was saying was, you know, you can have that go anywhere, any point in time, you don't have to have a live event it, you know, you know, what is it 1120 At night, in Australia right now, but then also leading down into what is the tech stack look like for the whole thing? Because that's kind of getting out of hand. And, you know, you don't want to hear a lot of issues right now, with IT departments, right being overburdened across the board. So anyways, I kinda want to hear your thoughts there on the increase in VOD. Yeah, I

James Jameson  17:47

mean, there's a that's sort of a huge, huge spectrum. And it's, it's fascinating, and everybody on the call has pointed a range of different different, I guess, risks, but also opportunities that we've been seeing in the last that have come out as a byproduct of the last two years. But this sort of acceleration to what is what is available to me, I think one of the I'll try and address your point, your your question directly in a second. And that's one of Craig's earlier points was this sort of, you know, previously, we were looking, you know, perhaps, or 12 months ago, or even six months ago, organizations, were really looking in a binary way of, you know, is this a, is this going to be a remote, all remote? Or is it going to be a you know, all in the office, and look what the last four weeks are showing us, this isn't going away. And actually, what organizations have to really do now is be very adaptable to the different the teams, the different countries that our international clients have. And so that's from a technology stack that's really interesting, when it comes to the opportunity, which is, you know, from aspects of what we're seeing is that you can now bring in events, you know, into live video, which was would have previously been done on site. I mean, there are the obvious savings to the environment there you not having you know, 5000 people jump on a plane for a four four day event. But also, you know, you're, you're you're into the territory where you are able to bring people along in a really interactive way. And I think there's a load of opportunity there in terms of how different technology stacks can come together. Our approach is quite simple. What we're trying to do is help organisations to Debbie's point. There is no gift, you know, when it comes to live broadcast events, and that's absolutely the case of subtitling and accessibility or localization of that subtitling. So if we're talking to, you know, let's say 5% of my audience internationally for a town hall events, hard of hearing, or I'm talking to six different teams in six different countries in six different languages, you know, it's not going to be accepted, accepted. Although I've got 97 98% accuracy in those subtitles, that basically means I'm talking at the moment at about 180 words per minute. Right? So that means if I'm at about 98 and accurate, which sounds okay, that means sort of four to 10 words per minute, are going to be wrong. Now, none of us on this call would accept a Word document going out with that level of errors. So for us, it's about providing, you know, the accuracy in subtitling as well and reaching people in their own language. So I think that's that's one point is how we start to scale. No processes previously, that were, we're probably not, I wouldn't say, put in a corner. And but we're less of a priority. And those processes now are much more of a priority. So I think Kieran probably experiences this every day. But certainly our clients are having to deal with a whole range of different technologies and processes that they're trying to get to grips with today. And that's a lot because there are lots of technologies out there, there are lots of existing, traditional, deeply ingrained enterprise technologies at the core of the enterprise stack, like human like Kollective. And then there are new technologies coming into play, that have got crazy valuations, so hoppin social life, and I think these can all play with the sort of core technology. So we're seeing today that have been ingredient in enterprises, you know, over the last 1015 years. So there's lots of opportunity here, but it's, you know, our job, I think, is to help our clients really navigate that space, because it's very unique, at least from my, you know, in my opinion, in each client's ecosystem, there's a huge level of uniqueness. Yeah,

Aaron Conant  21:51

no, I agree. You know, they want to kick something back to you around, what do you see? On the side of like, the demand for this the demand for self service? I mean, there's a lot of unique opportunities here, right? Even from a response level of instead of writing something up, right, communicating to a group via video, are you seeing an increase in the demand for self service? And then, you know, trying to balance, you know, what is, you know, the point of use for it, how easy is it to use? How easy is it to learn? What is the learning curve around it, I have a couple questions that come in around that I want to kind of streamline a lot of these together. The next thing that comes into mind, and, you know, we can kick this around the horn, as well as the budgeting standpoint of it, right, and timeline for rollout. So a bunch there, that'd be all wrapped up into one.

Debbie Chong  22:45

I think that clients are demanding self service, because they want to be able to make changes or pretty something at the last minute. You know, I had a call yesterday with a partner. And the comment was, if you had to launch a tech conference, virtual, how long would it take you I said, three days, that's assuming we get all the material, you know, it's not weeks, people are last minute, because of budget, they all are very cognizant of what it costs to produce, most of them feel that in person event is less expensive than a virtual event right now, because of touch points that they don't have control over in terms of production. But I think that was some self service. And he tools that they can use to to help themselves there, that would reduce the cost. I think that there's incredible demand. The question is, you know, what's the cost associated to it? You know, what's the impact? You know, I see that every day because they, they look at it, as, you know, what, if it's internal, you know, then you measure differently than was external. And so the costs are different. But they still have the engagement requirements, whether its internal or external, you know, you want to re to be excited of the town halls, and, you know, we have several clients that are running annual, like, what series like one a month for their employees. There are different levels, they focus on different things. And, you know, it the hard part is, I think for them is finding the content to engage people. I think that the delivery systems like Qumu and the captioning and that, that that's all taken for granted at this point that that's going to work. The hard part is made getting people after the first time they have the series to come back the next 11 and and you know, what is the cost for producing this, you know, you know, especially if you plan on having 6000 people and you're finding that 3000 are not showing up.

Aaron Conant  25:06

Yeah, I haven't. So a question that comes in, and I don't want to go too far down a rabbit hole, but it does kind of lead into a tech stack question that I have. So, we use Qumu Pathfinder edges to alleviate it to alleviate internet egress from our data centers. Would Kollective agents help distribute video via peer to peer eliminating the need for caching servers? So I'll kick that, that over to you. And then it's going to leave me at Craig? I'm guessing you're the best answer on Kollective and then that leads me to the next question around, you know, the tech stack, because we've talked a lot about that. So a few more questions on that front.

Craig Gordon  25:45

Yeah, Kieran, very close with like, jump straight into it and how it works.

Kieran Ellerton  25:50

Yeah, well, I'm happy to take it first, I'll kick straight over to you, I guess the question is, is, it requires a bit more of a conversation to answer that just carte blanche off the bat, what I would say is, is through our relationship with Kollective, we have a suite of Best in Class ECM tools, whether it's Pathfinder edge, whether it's the Kollective peering solution, or whether it's a mix of both. And I think that's a really positive way to look at this as you look at your holistic requirements at corporate ECDN perspective, because there will always be niche sites, niche locations that might be different for other reasons. And I think what we offer in through our partnership with Kollective and what we have in the stack with our own IP, is that really well rounded solution that can ensure high quality video delivery for everybody in any location on any device. And so yeah, with that said, Craig, I'll kick it over to you.

Craig Gordon  26:40

Yeah, that's pretty well said anything, the answer to it from that perspective, they sit alongside exactly that is, with regard to delivering the content is really where the question is coming from, and apart, find yourself in the Qumu design, which is pretty much caching service. But arguably, you can't afford to, perhaps you've got 20,000 10,000 brights, plus a caching server, where you have to be understanding where the right places to do that and isn't better to just to the other end of the delivery stack, which is just browser based peering where we have an agent we can deploy, but you get so much out of it by purely just a browser based offering, which is perhaps, where it becomes easier to get it right to the edge of the network, where you've got very few people in office, you know, the content is just really going to be getting there and more nimble or cost effective and quick to deploy away. And that's a key thing, by browser base pairing to be involved really is no setup, there's no agent, it just works seamlessly through that browser doesn't work for VOD, because you've got to be on with the browser, so they can only pay while you're connected to the browser. That's where you need the agent. And that's when you need pathfinding or caching systems once you get into the VOD part of things, but a blend of it all based on any company's network is really the answer. And it's really, you're quite right here. And with all our customers, our joint customers, three human factors, patented technology, the right, the right build of the stack, if you like, from a delivery perspective, we're going to use browser based query, where should I have some caching machines? Where do I deploy some agents, all agents are all browser all caching. And that's something we work on quite well here and team accrue to understand and then deploy it in a very quick way. It's not a particularly lengthy process, but it will get the right result depending on every company's different network setups.

Aaron Conant  28:37

So, you know, Kieran, I'll kick this back to you, you know, a lot of stuff coming in around the tech stack, right, a lot of these questions around it. So how is the the technology stack evolved? Right to support this new way of work?

Kieran Ellerton  28:53

That is a good question. Just double checking. I wasn't on mute there, which has got to be one of the phrases of 2020, hasn't it? You know, you're on mute. I think fundamentally, modern communication, collaboration, video tools have been available for some time. I mean, that's that's a fairly obvious statement. I know. But I think what's changed most in, in my experience has been a few key things. First of all, of course, this is something we've seen for some time pre pandemic, but there has been the shift in the enterprise, to anything as a service. Now, that's something that we've been seeing that transition over time, you know, as opposed to enterprise organizations necessarily owning technology assets. And so the reason I call ours because it's important that we think about the overarching IT and technology landscape. One of the great things about software as a service tools is the time to value is incredibly short, ie the time it takes to to to purchase and implement and get value from these tools is exceptionally quick. And so just given if we cast our mind back 18 months and how quickly the global pandemic swept across the world, that's been a key factor. So as well to help accelerate that trend, but typically large enterprise organizations aren't able to introduce new tools and technologies quickly. And I smile a little bit because we've all probably worked in corporate America, I think you said earlier, where you're implementing new technologies and rolling them out at scale is difficult. It's slow. It's it takes time. But what I've seen during the in the pandemic is, you know, in some cases, there are large global enterprise organizations with over 100,000 employees who can move quickly when they need to, you know, one of our clients introduced a new collaboration platform, which was, I believe it was teams in this particular case, but they rolled that out to over 100,000 employees in just four weeks. And that's incredible that, you know, we all know, if you ever bought software before, what's involved there, there's a huge amount of moving parts. And you think about vendor assessment, vendor selection, you think about procurement and contracts, implementation, rolling it out, getting people to use it, you know, adoption. And so these organizations can move quickly when they have to. And I think the third leg of that stool, I guess, is this prolific, prolific use of video in the enterprise. I think it was Craig, that touched on it before a moment ago. But I think that the pandemic has made video a must have tool for collaboration and content for remote work and education and a whole other range of use cases. And so for enterprises to be truly digital, they have to create modern experiences. And so to do that video is a must have component in this tech stack.

Aaron Conant  31:39

Yeah, I just think I want to kick this over to Debbie talk about, you know, engagement a little bit as a whole. But you know, as these, this journey that we've gone on, it took us from Digital 1.0 to 2.0. On the commerce side, right on things were selling online, and marketing and advertising. But internally, we've shifted to digital 2.0, in this whole, you know, push into video, right as a whole, whether it's just a meeting like this on a go to or a zoom or teams or whatever it might be to training. Right? We just gone beyond just, you know, email, right, and, you know, other things, you know, like a DocuSign just simple digital ways of doing business, that now we've been pushed into digital 2.0 Just under normal, you know, business interaction side. Yeah. It's, it's interesting how fast that took place. It's grabbing companies and just thrusting them forward is something you have to address the best in class companies are doing it. Anyway, super interesting.

Kieran Ellerton  32:42

But I couldn't agree more, I think like this, this whole changing landscape of, you know, if we go back, I mean, 10 years ago, you know, enterprise organizations adopting new technologies, like a zoom or a Slack, or it was unheard of, right, they bought their technologies from Microsoft, and IBM and from wherever else. And we've just seen, you know, some other industry trends, which have coincided with a pandemic also coincided, which is something we haven't touched on here, it's probably part of another one of the sessions that you do. But you know, this, this, this, the, the, the amount of millennials in the workplace, and other Gen generations post millennials, and how they're used to modern tools and technologies as part of their day to day, we know enterprise technology trends, follow social trends. And so I think a lot of what we're seeing is a combination of factors. And when you put that into the melting pot, and give it a stir, during a global pandemic, we were seeing things just really accelerate. And it's just, I don't know, it's very interesting time, I think, in some years to come, we'll look back at this period and call it I don't know, digital transformation, or there'll be it will be called something that we'll all look back on in time and refer back to I think you have any

Aaron Conant  33:51

thinking just because from the millennial mindset, and even younger than the oldest millennial is probably 38, 39 now. And so what you think about, like, the most popular entertainment platform right now is TikTok, it's all video, right? It's you aren't reading as much on Facebook anymore. It is literally flipped to video. It's just hitting me as we're not surprising. That might be a more effective communication tool. You know,

Kieran Ellerton  34:19

it's funny you say to Aaron, because I was thinking exactly that. And so Debbie and James both touched on something similar. I think joining the dots is what you're saying is short form video messaging. I think last year, there was you know, this, this rise of zoom, and I forget the numbers of the crazy amounts of daily active users on those platforms. But I think what we've seen this year, you know, after it was well documented things like zoom fatigue, and what have you, is this resurgence of video on demand, you know, meeting people, on their time on their location, don't need to come together necessarily in a zoom session, and that video on demand has had a resurgence in 2021 this year.

Aaron Conant  35:00

Yeah, Tom drops in a really cool comment, the pandemic for sure is help, you know, with a mindset mindset shift into the way we can collaborate and work productively. Right. I think there's that initial onset. Well, if everybody's at home, productivity will go down. Well, no, no, right? Even if it's the right tool set, right, if you can get the right tools that communication tools in place, and coordinate it, right, I mean, the perpetual Zoom meeting that you know, back to back to back to back to back to back to back is a tough one to handle.

James Jameson  35:34

But it's to to Kieran’s currents earlier point, you know, when we're thrown into, you know, a global pandemic, and people have to collaborate and have to communicate, then people will will find a way very quickly to do that. And particularly with that sort of millennial Gen Zia workforce who are already very tall, friendly, and have the tools in place, whether it's WhatsApp or tik, Tok, or hoppin, or whatever those tools might be no way, it's suddenly the organizations in the largest scale organization, as a workforce that's going to the best and most immediate tools available to do the job. And so to a large degree, in those circumstances, you're gonna start seeing trends of you know, rather than this sort of top down, dictated everybody use teams, actually, these sort of micro setups, and that could, you know, grow trends within organizations. And just to sort of self reference a little bit about CaptionHub. Prior to COVID, we were a distributed organization. And now we've fully remote. So this is something we've been thinking about a lot about our sort of own internal collaboration. We're a software company, so we have to collaborate a lot. There's lots of whiteboarding. There's lots of post it notes, sessions. And there's lots of water cooler moments that turn into, you know, product design. And so all of this is done online. So there's, there's sort of, there's two points. One is how do you keep that sort of water cooler moment going? And so, you know, one is how do you keep general culture in check this, you know, not talking about shop or not talking shop all the time. And so one of the things that we've implemented a caption of is a bi weekly fika, which is a, which is a Nordic thing, and trend, where you we essentially, you know, sit down online, we can drop into a room, an online room, and we can chat about whatever it happens to be football, politics, the weather. And but as long as we're not talking Shut up, but then on the flip side of that is, you know, actual working processes are collaboration processes, how we've had to develop and evolve those, many of those have been, have just, you know, continue to use the existing tech stacks that we had like Slack for collaboration, but we've just had to become much more disciplined and mindful of how we use those platforms. So whereas previously, I'll give you an example, we would there be a lot of direct messaging in our company, we would have direct messages between know one on one, so between me and the CEO, between me and CTO, CTO, and a developer and so on. And if that replaces without, without being to mind, for that process, if you replace the in office, you know, set up with that, you lose a huge amount of collaboration and shared intelligence, where you might be listening to a conversation at your desk, and you're able to contribute. So one of the things that we've introduced very recently is we've essentially forced 99% of the communications into share Slack channels. So the the and the driving principle is no, no direct messages ever. And that really, what that really means is that sort of 99.5% of all of our messages are in shared channels, so that everything is searchable that people can really listen in, but also that people have got the, you know, the ability, and, you know, they feel that they've got the rights and the capability to contribute into conversations and that, that in the last few weeks, that one policy change using our existing tech stacks, and has been has been a real shift in our company mindset in terms of how we collaborate and how we talk to each other as a company. So it's not all about bringing in new technologies and the latest greatest and plugging those in some of it's about changing the policies and the processes. I'd love to hear others you know, views on this on the existing tech stacks that we're already using.

Aaron Conant  39:46

Yeah, we can keep that around like what is the the modern tech stack look like? And then I also want to, you know, talk about either somebody that you thought about, you know, that we think about there was these water cooler moments. Right. But then it's also small meetings, it's company events. It's, you know, the town hall meetings, you know, pulling those together. A Howard, how are you seeing those events evolving, right in this new dispersed workforce as a whole? Their best in class examples? What is it? How should people be thinking about the traditional town hall meeting where everybody showed up? And everybody could ask questions in, you know, in person, to what does it look like now, or maybe a third are showing up. Maybe they're hybrid events, we'd love to hear, you know, thoughts on that side as well.

Craig Gordon  40:36

So I sort of started out with that, compensating a bit earlier and talking about how many more events are happening. And it really, I think the tech stack really has to have the flip type of events, we're talking about whether the big town hall event where they're meant to be talked about, we've dealt with the production, that's going to be required by the CEO, because he will wanting to have a lot more revenue, put aside budgets put aside to spend on cameras and TV and maybe a studio. But those ones down to our regional manager with with 50. Staff, they just wants to do a quick 10 minute snapshot. So the technology stack that's needed for both those on the product, just on the frontline think we talked about zoom, we talked about teams. There's many others that we talked about as well on that Fontanka much more to do with the big production in the ad exchange. So I think either blended them all to do to address the different needs, and how much do you spend on the production again, depends on all that but set all the requirements that that particular audience is going to do so whether it's external, is 1000s of people, or is it just 50 people you have, you have to balance that off, because otherwise, you don't even need an event like this doesn't need a great production. And we're all remotes for all over the world. The quality is great from where I'm at, anyway. Okay, that's brilliant for this size. But would it be as good when it got it enemies, stupid SEO with lots of people with lots of other things involved of importing videos into the into the conversation and having people watch it as as a more of a presentation, a longer period of time, you've got to keep people engaged. So there is no more text. And we we've seen things from companies that touch cast, which is bringing avatars that are involved in you in and welcome you to the event. So the technology that's going to still evolving right now for those bigger and more powerful events that you don't want to be that for everything is going to make sure that you address with the right technology. And then making sure you have the right portals in place for the long term afters of the VOD cat capturing a bit afterwards, those going to be in place. So how do you make sure that people couldn't make it can easily get to watch it, use all the tools of VOD portable platform to make sure they watch the right bits and move around it. So from that perspective, I think he said the tech stack is varied. It's not one one size fits all certainly teams is good for certain many, many of these events, perhaps, and zoom for that matter. We see at the higher end, people take a lot more quality to their webcasting provider front end.

Kieran Ellerton  43:19

Hey, can I just jump on the back of that? Is that okay? Yeah, I was just thinking about something that Craig just said there that kind of just struck a chord with me. And I think you're right, I think the high end production side of this has its time has its place. But I'd love to share insight with you. Because it's a bit like I think, you know, just sharing what we do at Google a little bit in the same way that James just did about Slack. So executive messaging does not have to be highly produced. And we're gonna put it out there, it does not. And I think a lot of this authentic, you know, short form, video content is super important. And it's powerful, because it's authentic, you know, a guru as CEO, TJ Kennedy, he records a video every week for the entire company. And it's usually three minutes or less, probably two minutes or less, in most cases, to share just updates with the business, he records it, no production, hell, nobody supporting they'll be recording it, nobody publishing it. And I believe he does exactly the same with the board as well to provide the board with a weekly update as well. And so when I guess, other than just sharing that, I guess what I'm really saying is, there's a role for leadership to play in this too. You know, you can introduce all of the tools and technologies you like. But a lot of this comes back to corporate DNA culture, and the role of leadership of setting the example in terms of using these tools, you know, really enabling and empowering people with tools but also, you know, giving people the confidence to pick up the phone, whether it's your you know, your phone or your going live from your webcam, to record videos and, you know, live or On Demand with their peers and colleagues, and really ensuring that people feel confident and empowered to do that

Debbie Chong  44:52

too. I think it depends on the message that you know, whether its internal or external how large the audience is. Like James mentioning, you sort of have this sort of swing for fact where but he dives in and shows up. And I found that frankly, our team internally likes more smaller meetings, they feel they are much more engaged because they have a, you know, more of a chance to talk and share ideas. We do have the swimming pool type of I called swimming pool type of meeting once a week to discuss products. But I think that it just varies on what the message is, what are you trying to deliver and how you want to deliver it. And that will determine what the tech stack is, to a certain extent, in if I let them broadcast. Globally, I need Qumu, if I'm going to do more one on one and smaller meetings, I need a zoom or teams. So it just varies I would say for internal external events, clients will do the general broadcast with a Qumu. For the breakouts, though use Zoom, we track both of them. So you know, we do get metrics from them. So that it's very finite in terms of ama wanting to review them after the event. One thing is people sort of speed, speed. And one thing that we weren't concerned with when we were mostly doing live events is people would log in before an event, if their receipt, check their schedule at sessions. And they switch to their mobile app, and they'd be off to the races. When we were virtual often clients are saying we need a login report. Because people are my sales team is asking me who's there is their client there? Or my CEO wants to know if so and so attendance is right here right now. So it's just different. You know, I need to say something I'm not a fan of TikTok. You know, I think I'm, I'm not always on top of the curve for technology for over 30 plus years. I'm sort of a woman geek. So I have every single gadget under the sun. I have three gaming systems, which I don't play very often because they take too much time. But I think that content is you know, it's really important. I know, you know, it's interesting, because I was talking to a neighbor, who is a moderator now. She's an influencer for Facebook. And so she said that they were looking at a tick tock type of product, because oh my God, there's so much unbelievable trash on tick tock. And I think YouTube went through that until they start curating more, especially for children. Because I remember watching our grandchild watch YouTube. And it's like, every ad, everything was an ad for a toy. And it was like, Is there no content. So I, I just think contents really crucial. But delivery is important. And people are learning that they're much more discerning this year about how they deliver, you know, they understand, they have to pay for, you know, a Qumu, they have to pay for the close captioning. It just can't be something that they got off of Google for free, you know, it just doesn't do it. And if they want to, you know, people to come back, are feel excited while they're there. So it's a balance, you know, between the tech stack the content, and how it's delivered. And I do see more requests for closed captioning, and that it'd be done properly.

Aaron Conant  48:35

I go around the horn here really quick. And see we just have a few minutes left. Right, I guess these are topics that come up routinely. I'll jump to you for a little bit on reliability. James, accessibility. And then you know, some of that came to mind when you're talking Debbie is security. So I'll kick that over to Kieran for security. Craig, you want to kick us off with reliability for just a couple of highlights on that? Yeah,

Craig Gordon  49:01

I mean, reliability is essential. I mean, when you think about what technology you're looking for, to do with the reliability of the solution, what does that actually mean? It means that you need something that's gonna work, whether it is the line event for the big broadcast, for small, small audience doesn't matter. It still has to be reliable. You don't want the buffering it out, white dropping out. So you've got to make sure that those things are placed and work and work consistently. So you got to make sure that that's in place. And then also the the reliability of it being able to move into a VOD perspective so that it can be viewed on the back end in the same way that reliability is essential. So, again, it's we talked about live events and it cannot go wrong. Yeah, it's his life and it's as much as anything else. And so, from that perspective, the way Katie can assist in this is the management of the relevant industry and getting to where it needs to go Go. And that's essentially what we provide is plumbing to produce the plumbing that makes everything work in house, as far as the content flow is concerned, without any leaks, make sure that it gets there and it gets there properly and on time. So that's in a nutshell, really, essentially the reliability that we can bring to this stack along with humor, and anything else is involved in distributing video.

Aaron Conant  50:29

Awesome, James, just a couple of comments on accessibility, and then we can kind of kick it to Kieran to wrap us up with with key takeaways here.

James Jameson  50:37

Yeah, I'm aware of time, so I'll keep it brief, like accessibility has always been key. But Canada, you know, is now more key than ever, there are more regulations, you know, ensuring that you have to make your content particularly or digital, online content accessible. And the opportunity is there for all organizations to do that now. And you know, there's no reason to not not do that, and not just make it accessible as a box checking exercise. And with, you know, automated captions, but actually communicating with that particular audience segment, whether that's 567 percent, you know, that's that's your audience, you know, engaging those people treating them with respect with accurate communications. And whether that's in English or Canadian, you know, that's, that's, that's ultimately very much required. Now, by law in many countries. One very quick point, aside from accessibility, but related to it around engagement are under the sort of the title of engagement. Interactivity is just going to be super, super key in the video space. You know, we're right at the cusp, I think, as Kieran alluded to earlier in this evolution. And so how organisations can deliver events appropriately, but keeping people engaged when I'm sitting here, as we all are in our home offices or in you know, probably in a work office, that how do I remain undistracted on that call when I've got 1000 people watching me to interactivity is going to be a key topic. And I'd love to, you know, chat with all of you another point about this, but I'll leave my commentary there. And I'll pass it over to Kieran.

Aaron Conant  52:12

Yeah, Kieran like 30 seconds, the key takeaways and we can

Kieran Ellerton  52:15

Yeah, Joe, so many I know you asked about security aren't I won't even go there, other than to say security and governance of corporate video assets is of paramount importance in the enterprise, the cost of getting that wrong, can impact the business in so many, many ways, not just money, of course, reputational damage, and so but that we could probably spend an hour there. And I know we're short time, the only one thing I did want to talk about was something that James alluded to, and perhaps we there's another session that we could look at here. But there's a whole bunch of new remote and hybrid work type apps popping up all over the place to do things like what James talked about, recreate those water cooler moments and things like that. And so, you know, encourage everybody watching this, go check out some some of those types of things. There's a huge amount of things popping up there. And I think that space is incredibly exciting. Aaron Back to you. I know you want to wrap. Yeah, no,

Aaron Conant  53:04

Perfect timing here. Again, you know, Thanks, Debbie, Craig, James, Kieran, great friends, partner support as a network, you know, encourage anybody have a file conversation with them. They're doing some really cool things in this space. They come highly recommended through a ton of organizations throughout the network. So with that, we're going to wrap up here right on time. I hope everybody has a fantastic Tuesday. Have a great rest of the week. Everybody. Take care, stay safe and look forward to having you at a future event. Look for file email from us. put you in touch with everybody that was here today. With that we're wrapping up here. Alright, everybody. Thanks so much. All right. We'll see you back already. All right. Thank you.