Bruce Dunfee 0:18

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Bruce Dunfee the Vice President of Retail and Consumer here at BWG. Here at BWG Connect. We're a community of networking and knowledge sharing, we stay on top of the latest trends strategies in the eCommerce media tech spaces. And when the same topic continues to come up repeatedly, we love to do events just like this one today. Our objective is to kind of is to bring like minded peers together to share perspectives, pivots, pain points, and success stories. But before we get started, just a couple housekeeping items. We want this want to be courteous to everyone in terms of their time and schedule. So we will be sure to wrap this a few minutes before the end time on your calendar invite. We also want this to be interactive educational information as possible. So please don't hesitate to drop in questions, we encourage you to drop in questions, either via email into us directly or simply chat them into the conversation. That being said, I want to jump into it. We host about 15 to 2015 to 20. Conversations weekly with brands in multiple different spaces. And as we know, one of the hotter topics is the continued pause or unknowns about the return of the office, or what a hybrid model will actually look look like in the next six to nine months. ensuring a hyper focus is made on the elevation of video engagement is certainly the top of mind of any senior executive at this point. So we asked our friends and good partners at Qumu to jump on the line today to shed some light on this topic and share solutions to take video engagement to the next level. So at this point, I want to like to thank both Nick Ochoa and Andi Mann from Qumu, for making the time today to join us I want to hand it over to you both now for a brief intro and yourself and Qumu and give us the rundown on what you currently are seeing in the space. So Nick, why don't you kick us off. And thank you both again for making the time to join today.

Nick Ochoa 2:16

Sure, thanks, Bruce. Appreciate that. I'm Nick Ochoa. I'm Vice President Product Marketing for Qumu. And I've been in the technology space for the last 20 years doing marketing for different types of businesses and business intelligence, analytics, corporate performance management and the like. So you know, I'm my function, can those really drive our go to market and work with the cross functional teams or sales teams, development teams to get our, our product out in the market and get our message resonating with our customers and align with their voice and their needs? Andi, I'll turn it over to you to talk a little bit about about what you do for the company. Yeah, thank

Andi Mann 2:53

you. Thank you very much, Nick. It's great to be here. Thank you, Bruce, as well. So I joined Qumu just in July. I'm a technologist and leader. I work here as the CTO. So I'm very focused on how is our technology helping our customers really achieve those business goals. A key focus area of mine is specifically driving that business value out of technology. And that's why I am with Qumu today. Excellent.

Bruce Dunfee 3:20

I think you guys are going to kind of bounce into a quick conversation back and forth on the topic and then dive into some content. So I'll leave you to to it. And thank you again for making the time to join us today.

Nick Ochoa 3:33

Absolutely, thanks, Bruce. We appreciate the time the platform today. So Andi, thanks for joining me today, I want to start things off by revisiting some discussions that you and I have had recently, as organizations continue to adapt to the changes that have occurred over the last 18 months. Digital Transformation continues to be a top priority for businesses. There are new drivers in the digital transformation arena, including balancing remote and hybrid working this notion of where the customer is, which is really capitalizing on technologies to align more closely with customers wherever and whenever they want to engage. And then also the need for greater personalization of proof of communication. So as a technology leader that has been entrenched in this digital transformation arena, can you talk a little bit about your perspective, and then what the implications are for video?

Andi Mann 4:25

Yeah, it's absolutely true. I've been involved with digital translation for a long, long time. Although I think back to transforming from all bank statements to online viewing and stuff. But a video is such an important part of this transformation. It really always has been. But the pandemic has accelerated digital transformation in general and video conferencing especially, I think about digital transformation as replacing the physical or traditional forms with new digital and electronic forms. And so we see the rise of things like zoom Teams are WebEx to replace the the in person meeting, for example. But video for business is so much more than that video meeting, right? We've got this absolute, we've got this new hybrid, distributed operating model people everywhere customers everywhere, customers, not necessarily in your showroom, but maybe now in their bedroom. And we see that this has driven many, many different kinds of use cases for video to replace that in person communication to replace written communications to replace documentation. And this is a lot more than just work from home. It's even more than just remote work, right? Yeah, I think you said it really well. It's about working from wherever and working whenever. And the key goal here is, it's still the right thing. So it's better communication. It's better collaboration. It's decision making, it's retaining that human connection while you're doing that. And as a technologist, Nick, I've spent a lot of time looking in areas of divot operations and development work. Your programming is an area called DevOps, which is very much about the engagement between development and operations, and enhancing communication, collaboration, integration between those teams. Now, historically, we've done that with in person activities, and paid programming these sorts of things. Now we'll do a video for this sort of connection, this human connection, but it's so many more use cases. Think of internal comms? Absolutely. So not just meetings, think about town halls, think about employer and to employee communications, thinking about team meetings, departmental communication, but also external comms, right? So how do you communicate with your customer now that there by as I said, not in your bedroom, not on your showroom, they're in their bedroom, but they still want to by your staff? How do you communicate with them? partners, launch events, for example, media, investor communications, think about sales and marketing directly get virtual events to show off your stuff. We're doing a virtual event here, we might have done this in person at a conference. But now we're doing it as a one to many or a three to two mini kind of presentation and interactive discussion. But so internet video is important website video, sharing your products and services on your website to the right people at the right time, through that medium because you can't physically show your products to them now. And crisis communications, things like for COVID communication, infections or breakouts for local emergencies, whether it's a fire, a flood, local things that are happening all over, certainly the US over the world, company emergency shutdown of an office, for example, a problem with your plant, onboarding, and learning, how do you train and onboard new employees, when you can't bring them into your training rooms and have a group training session, you're all of these are brand new kind of digital transformed ways of enhancing communication and collaboration between lots of different people, not just meetings, internal staff, broad communications, external staff, customers, partners, and more.

Nick Ochoa 8:28

Right. So that's really good perspective. Thanks for sharing all those use cases. So ultimately, like, what's the impact? Have you think about how video is about changing the dynamic in organizations? For those use cases? What's the impact that's ultimately going to have for business? Yeah,

Andi Mann 8:46

look, this is foundational. And it's transformational. Because with video, you're now enabling a very different work mode. Like I said, it's not just where you are, it's how you work. So it's worked from whenever wherever, absolutely, but it's any working style. It's different workflows. You're every organization has its own workflows, its own rhythms, departments and teams have their own workflows and their own rhythms. So regardless now of geography, or even timezone, we can all work at our own rhythm wherever whenever. Video is also allowed businesses to hire differently. Because of this diversity of location and timezone. We can now hire more different kinds of staff, more diverse workforces, more distributed workforces we can deal with our talent management in very different ways. When we don't have to have everyone coming into HQ. We don't have to force everyone to commute an hour or two hours or maybe even more to get on a plane every time you want to go and communicate with a customer or a partner. You're very different modes of engaging your employees and obviously engaging customers differently right on their timeline on their device in their home, maybe on their vacation, because now people are starting to realize that their time is valuable. And when they give that time to a vendor to their employer, then they have now more control or more designer, put that time at the right time in the right place for them. And so all of this is a fundamental change to how we do business internally and externally.

Nick Ochoa 10:32

That's right. Our audiences probably have different stages of their evolution or lifecycle with regard to video, can you give some perspective on how you think they should approach a strategy for video kind of in a holistic way across their enterprise?

Andi Mann 10:47

Yeah, Nick a really good, good way to look at this. Because election delivery today to start with is faster, right? It's contextualized. You can't off the web, you know what you're looking for, you want more information. So it's more engaging, it needs to be it's better retained as well, by the way video, and digital transformation. As I said, it's replacing physical and digital. So video engagement is key to this digital transformation, employing these methods to communicate and collaborate through video to replace the in person and written paradigm. So think of email, for example, right? We still use email, communicate and document things as a replacement for paper. But you see, some of the modern communication platforms are replacing that written communication by enabling these instantaneous responses. Think of chat windows have not just text, right? respond with a link with a photo with an emoji, whether you're a small business or an enterprise wide audience, fundamentally disrupting that communication. And video engagement is transforming that communication and collaboration through video. It provides emotion, right context, inflection nuance on my hand movements, you can't see that in an email, you can't see that in a direct message. These are all your natural and preferred ways of communicating

Nick Ochoa 12:07

better. Great. So talk a little bit more specifically about, like the different principles associated with video engagement.

Andi Mann 12:17

Yeah, look at Qumu we look at video engagement in five key ways, what we call the five principles. These are the foundation of how we believe organizations should be thinking about their video and how they use it as an enterprise asset, not just a fleeting moment, if they're not doing so already. So we see those five principles are everywhere. intentional, fast, scalable, and measured.

Nick Ochoa 12:49

That's great. So let's Why don't we take a look at the first one. Yeah, absolutely.

Andi Mann 12:54

So the first principle here is everywhere. Let's make video a standard language for business. There are three key elements we look at there. So firstly, let's make creation accessible to everyone. So consumerization of it, this idea that that we have in our hands with our mobile devices with our own laptops, even with our TVs and other things as good if not better technology than we've ever had at work has democratized technology. It's democratized video, especially this hybrid distributed operating model. Hybrid workforce work from home work from wherever from whenever town halls and not just for CEOs anymore, right? We need to make it accessible to team leads to managers, even individuals to communicate. Some of our meetings software has really democratized how we communicate in small groups. digital transformation will democratize how we communicate even in large groups, and not just with employees, right. But as I said, with customers partners with the public and your consumers, video is not just an internal medium. There are so many use cases for using video externally from product launches to customer service engagements. You think about product tutorials where people learn how to interact with your product and service crisis comes as I said, and audiences any way will consume content on their schedule. This is a very new thing in this modern world of this distributed and hybrid distributed workforce. And it's a critical element of everywhere that that also because of timezone so it's in any time every time not just about creation, but also consumption. So we're all used to consuming video wherever and whenever we are now whether it's from YouTube or tik tok, or whatever. Now personal life, we need to make that capability, an enterprise capability across all time zones, because everyone's different workflows, the different personal versus business time. So you got to meet them where they are. But also when they are,

Nick Ochoa 15:01

yeah, I think, you know, the point you were making about, you know, on their schedule, we everybody's been completely immersed in video meetings in some people are on, you know, on zoom WebEx and other technologies every day. But now we're starting to see this transform where people want to get some of that time back. So they're using video in different ways, and putting out recorded video to supplement or even replace the, you know, the daily meeting that they might have over over zoom or some other conferencing tool.

Andi Mann 15:36

Yeah, I love that use case, too, because this goes so far beyond just that meeting, right? And when you start to think about the distributed workforce across different time zones, no, no, I'm gonna turn up for the ADM stand up, right? For some people, that's 3am. That's not gonna work out. And the other thing about that is that your business goes on beyond the meeting, right? You always does. So you need to engage beyond the meeting. Meeting software is designed for that synchronous, direct communication. But have you ever been in a meeting you you wish, I wish so and so could have been in this meeting, they're in a different timezone, and maybe a different country, maybe they just had a conflict. And it's like, I wish I could share this with them. And this, you're having a better platform approach that really deals with everywhere, means that a synchronous video sharing about think about you You watch that meeting that you weren't in, how about replying with your own video content, or you're not going to be able to go to a meeting. So you reply with a pre read based in video that just takes you five minutes to give your perspectives. Please take this into account when you have your meeting. But this is what it means to be asynchronous. And again, yeah, it's a great point. It's a very different workflow.

Nick Ochoa 16:52

Yeah, and I mean, obviously, we're doing it with enqueue every day, but we're, we're seeing our customers do that as well, right? Many more have adopted this philosophy, we get that information out. Even the notion of the monthly Town Hall that's moving to more of an asynchronous mode where executives say I can communicate more timely, frequently with the with my teams, and I can get that information out rather than waiting for, you know, to do something more elaborate on a monthly basis.

Andi Mann 17:21

Yeah, absolutely, for sure. And this is actually a really key point, this idea that everyone needs to turn up to an all hands at one time, how disruptive is that for a global company? So let people watch that in

Nick Ochoa 17:33

their time. That is or do can you talk about his particular customer use for in this context of everywhere from a principals perspective?

Andi Mann 17:46

All Yeah, think about this. So I top healthcare provider we work with, right? So during COVID, obviously a big time for healthcare and healthcare communication became really important. But everyone was so locked away in lock time and all these sorts so they needed a way to deliver effective and really important healthcare information education content securely, till around was a 12 and a half million members. Ah, wow, that's, that's a challenge. So they were looking for a single platform they could host and deliver this asynchronously, wherever and whenever those members were wanting to see that and collect that information. So you know, using self service, video creation, and access, multi language support to support the wherever, of course, they've already queued up, push that content out on social media, so their members could see through that kind of notification, where they are, and many other outlets as well, they were able to meet that need of communicating with those 12 and a half million members, this really important health care information with a synchronous video with a very human engagement and connection.

Nick Ochoa 18:59

Now, that's great. So the next principle that we want to discuss is intentional. Yeah,

Andi Mann 19:07

I, I love this word, right? I use this all the time. You need to be intentional, have a purpose, have an aim. Execute accordingly. There's a time and a place for casual on robbers, video, comms, don't get me wrong. Conversations don't always have to be intentionally scripted to have business value, and they don't have to be formalized to share them with other team members. But you should always have a reason you should always have a point. And for most video, you probably shouldn't just wing it, especially if you're going to a broader audience. So consider these elements right? develop that content with an outcome in mind. Always whether it's a presentation whether it's a communication with customers, with your employees, with all of your employees are just a certain department or a leadership team. And what am I trying to do with this video why now? What am I trying to achieve? Am I information is education is am I trying to drive a decision? Am I trying to inspire some action, you should also expect an outcome, drive that outcome and expect it to happen right? We should target and contextualize for each audience, you don't communicate the same way with internal staff as with customers, for example, you may not communicate the same way with partners as with your senior leadership team. So always work with an audience in mind, different messages, different approaches, different ideas and different ideas of outcomes and actions. timely, informative, highly targeted, but think to inspire that actionable outcome. And you know, always look to do this at the right time, inform instruct, inspire, but align at the right moment. intentionality means you know, when am I doing this for you think about that, think about how, by the way, you might repurpose or reuse that video in its entirety or maybe in segment for other use cases for other audience for other times.

Nick Ochoa 21:09

One of the use cases that comes to mind is product launch. Like you know, that's something that I engage in and that almost a daily basis now that we we've kind of moved to a more agile way of doing business. But can you talk about customer use in that context?

Andi Mann 21:24

Oh, yeah, we, we, you know, we work with a lot of manufacturers and a large Japanese automotive manufacturer, you might drive their car tomorrow. They have traditionally done product launches in person, right? You bring all your dealers in, maybe come to the test track, they go for a spin, take them over the bumpy, wobbly bit to show them their suspension. Can't do that with COVID, right, where you got lockdowns and shutdowns and all this sort of stuff, but you still need to launch and sell product. So to do that, they had a live stream to their internal and distributor audiences, they were able to virtualize that event and show all sorts of video by the way, including things like 360 degree video, so I can look around at the interior of the vehicle, right. And virtualize that experience without sacrificing the impact of showing this off for the first time. Super cost effective By the way, they may end up doing this again, just because of the incredible cost saving the incredible communication and engagement they were able to get. But in this case, we're educate their dealers with knowledge and experience of this new product. So much more than a document. glossy brochure, they're able to get the experience of what it's like to walk around the car to sit in the car, you know, they did this so they could make their revenue goals real business impact.

Nick Ochoa 22:50

Yeah, I think that the cost savings to have an event like that is is tremendous. And also shows that they can actually achieve it. So repeating it and doing it again for other types of events, not just for launches is something I'm sure they're going to pursue. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's talk about fast. Obviously, we all want to move quicker in business. But in the context of video talk about the the implications for that with regard to strategy. Yeah, look,

Andi Mann 23:23

you absolutely right now we do all want to be fast, right? agile in my world, and technology will agile development, rapid iteration, cloud computing lets us get to markets quickly. That's all awesome. It also that level of digital transformation transfers directly to this idea of producing and delivering video, when you want to be fast. Do this talk in real time as a human being right? typing, I don't care how fast you can type you can't type quite as fast as I can talk. I'm slowing down for everyone today. Let me tell you now you know, you can consider the the value of that video conference, right? You got a meeting, and then an ends. So you want to be able to communicate that like I said, I was so and so was able to he was here to hear what I just said, Do I now type up the minutes of the meeting to send it out? Or do I take a quick three minutes just to go I Nick, I was in this meeting today you really should have been there. Here's what we discussed key point people and key points. Can let's have a conversation next week about that and how we make money, right? Video communication is absorbed so much faster than written forms. It's created faster now as well because we have the tools to do that. 93% of communication is nonverbal, look at my game, look at my hands go right to a two thirds of employees according to the research that we've got. Our carry out tasks are better when that task is communicated to them visually versus non visually right. Think about reading an instruction manual versus watching a tutorial type. How do you do that function. And analysts research shows us that employees are 75% more likely to watch a video than to read a document, email or web article. So they're not only can you create that communication faster, but people will consume it and absorb it faster.

Nick Ochoa 25:19

And, and the return is much higher as well. And the retention is much higher as well. Right? So all that's absolutely

Andi Mann 25:24

true to give people a, because we're human beings, you're the first of communications in cave paintings, we're not a written treatise, there were pictures, right, we absorbed that information so much faster. And, you know, with mobile devices, we can do it, we can create faster as well, and consume faster, because mobile is ubiquitous, talk about consumerization of it. And 20 years ago, mobile phone was around $404,000. Today, it's almost disposable. You don't need a Digital Studio to be a creator, pick up a phone, you're a creator, right? And so consider that for consumption as well. the right content on the right network, and the right operating system, so that you can really engage with people. So you need to consider a lot of technology there. By the way, what operating system they're using, what video style type can they watch, what bit rates Do I need to transcode? When we think about global audience, do I need to translate? All of this sort of stuff, helps you keep these large audiences informed in a timely and consistent manner, right? disseminate that important information? One recording can educate 100,000 employees or more, right? Right. So it's wonder if you wonder many wonder the whole company or even wonder the whole world, creating a single consistent message with the nuance the body language, the engagement of a real human connection, you can do that with videos so much faster than anything else.

Bruce Dunfee 27:03

Just to give you guys a quick stroll, 30. Now we have a lot of good questions coming in. So just wanted to just hop in and give you a quick time check.

Nick Ochoa 27:12

I appreciate that. We have a couple more topics in our in our principals to discuss. But before we move from from fast, can you share with us a company who's moving faster because of video augi.

Andi Mann 27:27

video creation and content becomes really important in crisis moments, right? Fast communication, when something's happening, that you need to communicate quickly. So one example that I've seen working with our customers in thinking in terms of the crisis communications around Brexit, you know, when when the UK left the European Union, all of a sudden, all sorts of things changed, especially for banks and financial institutions. So they needed to rapidly communicate information to their clients about the impact of Brexit. And so one of the leading UK banks that we work with, they published over a dozen videos ahead of the Brexit timeline. So the morning that breaks up again, they had this communication engine already available, they were able to communicate rapidly with analysts communicate their thoughts, gather thoughts from them, publish key insights for clients who are able to consume that rapidly, as soon as that Brexit process started to bite. So in just minutes count, they were able to get that message out faster than competitors to make a difference.

Nick Ochoa 28:36

And I remember this use case as well, because I think they adopted Qumu, specifically to migrate away from a text based communication for with their their analysts, right. And video, the retention and the ability to get that information out and and communicated better, was just so much higher. And so that was the impetus, I think, for them to move to Qumu. So they were able to leverage that for the Brexit communications as well. Yeah, for sure. So there you go next

Andi Mann 29:06

to the next one. I want to be mindful of time. So let's talk about the scalability. You know, when we're talking about individual meeting rooms and 12 people, then no, scalability doesn't really matters as much. But if we're talking about one to 1000, if we're talking about product launch to LA distributors scalable is absolutely critical when you've got this hyper distributed audience. So you need to start with the idea of capacity and flexibility. So if you want to reach every person where they are when they are, you need this capacity, storage capacity, network security, the technology stuff, you need to be able to deal with the flexibility of delivery to Windows Mac, iPhone, Android, virtual desktop, kiosks, static screens over VPNs more, is going to be flawless, especially for live content. Now for asynchronous might have a chance to re record it. But live content, you certainly got to get it right first time every time. So taking a risk on an unproven platform can be a real risk. Yeah, for a town hall, you might get 20,000 100,000 staff turning up all at once, for product launch, maybe a million customers, rock solid performance is critical. And so whether you're talking about capturing, managing, delivering video at anytime, anywhere, but every authorized employees, they want video now, you know, we know about this consumerized demand for right now communication. So that means always this hyper distributed workforce is also everywhere in anywhere. So you need to accommodate all of the flexibility and scalability of high bandwidth, low bandwidth in the Americas, Asia, Europe at 4am, or 2pm, you always need to provide that super high level of quality, because you know, when people drop out, they might just drop out entirely. Maybe they can catch up on a sink, but maybe you've lost the moment. So make sure you've got the scale ability to be able to deal with this large scale video.

Nick Ochoa 31:13

So we think about that the next thing is, how do we track that? How do we know how we're performing? So let's talk about that.

Andi Mann 31:23

Yeah, what measurement right, it's got to be measured, I want something I really love to think about is management consultant. By then Peter Drucker thought about a whole lot of interesting ideas. I really like a lot of them. And he said, what gets measured gets managed, right. And the crawler is also true, if you don't measure it, it doesn't matter. So you got to track what you're doing here. So tracking consumption. But network delivery is really important. I know that as a technology leader, it starts especially right need to know, things like bandwidth, lag, latency, consistency, bit rate, so they can manage the end user experience, adjust. By the way, make sure your high value audience gets a high value stream, maybe you're streaming a product launch to a million customers. But maybe you've got 100 high value dealers that you need to prioritize. So traffic shaping becomes really important. But it's not just about the network stuff. It's about the human stuff. So analyzing usage patterns to make sure the experience is good. What are people watching? How much are they watching? When do they consume? How much are the video doing? Stick around for what's the optimal tiny, there's a major differentiator when we talk about the effectiveness of communication engagement. And then think about how you measure that engagement and use that to drive new content decisions, what content is working? What do you need to change? What isn't working? And why? These are really important questions, you need to be able to measure what you're doing with video to be able to answer these and continuously improve what you're doing to become more effective. communicator and engagement next time.

Nick Ochoa 33:07

Fine. That's great. I think about that in the context of how we do video here at Qumu. Right? Then we look at who's whose videos being watched the most, right? So there's learning that can be done, and certain presenters present better than others. So it's also the style thing, if it's content-based, it's its relevancy as well. So it's the contents relevant, it's going to be watched more.

Andi Mann 33:30

Yeah, absolutely. You know, everyone wants to watch the SEO, but not maybe not everyone wants to watch their departmental leader. So track that Learn, learn what makes the difference, right. And this measurement is so critical to getting better and continually improving what

Nick Ochoa 33:47

you do. Okay, thanks. For Andi, thank you for that. I think, you know, if we bring it all together, it's, it's really developing a strategy and a process around effectively best practices for your organization, right. And these principles effectively provide a foundation for doing that. Obviously, every organization, industry company, they're going to have their own nuances based on what they need to communicate within their organization and beyond their firewall. So thank you for that. This has been this has been engaging for me, and I appreciate spending the time with you today.

Andi Mann 34:24

Yeah. Nice. Thank you, Nick. I really appreciate the conversation.

Nick Ochoa 34:29

That's great. So Bruce, do we have we have some we have some questions then.

Bruce Dunfee 34:34

Yeah, we have some questions coming in. So I'll bounce the first one off for you guys. We have several so we have plenty of time though. Here to move through. First one is you talked about 360 video photos. Have you used 360 software and if so, which one do you recommend? This is something that we are looking into for our company. Yeah, look,

Andi Mann 34:55

we've definitely we work with a lot of different 360 and capture is an area Working, I don't know that we can recommend a specific capture program Nick certainly, you know this as much as I do. Is there specific vendors that come to mind? Or are we just sort of ubiquitous across the industry here?

Nick Ochoa 35:13

Now there's, I mean, there's tons of different 360 video, we can absorb any of that video, right? So we have the ability to absorb 360 video, in addition to just regular two dimensional video. So I don't think that we have a specific recommendation. I think it might be something we could we could take offline, we might have some folks within the organization that might at least appoint somebody in a direction that they might be thinking about. But there's, there's a lot of different solutions out there. Awesome.

Bruce Dunfee 35:43

Thank you for that. How about the next one. It's information when you want it and how you want it, I'll be interested in knowing what percentage of video communication is consumed asynchronously. I think it's more than 70%. As of late, I don't know if you guys have any data to share on that just based on your platform

Nick Ochoa 36:01

interaction. for corporate entities, I don't know that we have anything specifically offhand with with that notion, but it's definitely increasing. You know, we speak with the industry analysts all the time. In fact, Andi and I are we spoke with one yesterday. And he's definitely said asynchronous video is that is the future for corporate entities. Obviously, we see it with YouTube and Vimeo and other platforms that are business to consumer or consumer to consumer, right. That's the way that people absorb it. They look at the video on their own time. Even the news now, people don't necessarily watch news. Why? Because they don't have the time to, but they can take breaks in their game. They can watch it on their own time. So I think that's going to be the progression moving forward in, in business.

Andi Mann 36:44

Yeah, and I again, I look towards the consumerization of it as a roadmap for how video will progress. And we've seen already that in consumer world, I would posit, and certainly writers most video is consumed asynchronously. We don't watch live television that much anymore. Maybe a football game. But yeah, for years and years, being able to record video and watch our on our timeline has been a normal part of the consumer experience. I believe very deeply. This is rapidly becoming a normal part of the business experience as well.

Bruce Dunfee 37:21

Yeah, 100%. And even alive experiences change. I mean, watch my eight year old watch NFL redzone now instead of watching a game because he just wants the highlights, right. So I'll give you a couple more that have come in this one is we use zoom and Microsoft stream does Qumu integrate with either one of these and how?

Andi Mann 37:42

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it's really important that the the meeting the video meeting, as I said, the action, the engagement should go beyond that. So you know, you're in a zoom audio stream, just click record. And now send that video to Qumu. Right, now you've got an asynchronous video. Now you've got analytics on the video. Now you've got secure storage, and redistribution, reuse, repurpose. But there's so much really good integration that we do in these meetings, software is great for a meeting. But we'll think about a year. Now you can key off that, hey, you can be intentional in the way that you use that video. for other purposes, you can use that video everywhere. So not just for the 12 people who turned up for the meeting, but maybe it's 20 people he couldn't get to that meeting, so many different ways to reuse, repurpose, and get more value out of that individual meeting beyond the meeting. 100%

Bruce Dunfee 38:43

How about this one? And this will tell you this is a live feed. So I'll be fully transparent. How can we how can we help people understand that shitty video does not does not work? And that audio is the most important part of video. Producing video is one thing but producing quality videos another. What are your thoughts on that, that comment that

Andi Mann 39:06

I'll let Oh, let Nick get into this in a second. But I just want to say as a technologist, wow, I couldn't agree more, you've got to pay attention to the quality of the stream, and especially the audio strength and you can watch someone talking and not hear their video and not get anything, I won't point out that you can hear their video and if they don't have the nuance of that you can actually miss a lot of really important meaning there as well. But this is where you need to do measurement. And you need to have access to that scale ability in your video platform to be able to understand Okay, for this user, they're all low bandwidth connection. Let's serve them up a low bitrate video and full quality audio. This person over here on a different platform maybe in a different timezone is all a high quality network. Let's give them the full experience the full HD experience on audio and video. This is why you need more than Just a file distribution system, you need a video platform that understand different people are gonna have different requirements. And you've got to prioritize that quality user experience. And that means using the technology or measurement around scalability, because you're delivering video intentionally everywhere, you need to have that technology. And from a business perspective, I'm sure there's many more ways to think about that, too.

Nick Ochoa 40:30

I think you know, from our customers, you know, we work with them very closely to make sure that when we put Qumu or environment that we are optimizing their network for the video that they want to produce. And we have several customers that are, you know, they consider us to be a mission critical application, because we have such high reliability and predictability and how we do video in a live stream at scale. And that's really important. So it's, it's, it's more than just the software, it's making sure that your software, your network, your hardware is working together.

Andi Mann 41:03

Yeah. And I'll just throw in, by the way, strong partnerships as well. Right? So partnerships for creation partnerships for management, storage partnerships for distribution, think about CD ends, ie CD ends, how do you maximize the capability for distribution using the right technology, so you're not over saturating your network, either. It's not just a case of everyone watching the you're saying YouTube at one time, that literally doesn't work? So absolutely, you're right, Nick, I managing that technology and having great ecosystem that really is focused on that high volume capacity, enterprise delivery.

Nick Ochoa 41:38

Yeah. And I think also, if you think about it from an asynchronous perspective, it becomes more about, you know, I'm storing my content, but what's my ability to serve it and deliver it right? That also becomes very important. So we think mostly about quality only being on the live side, but also asynchronously, and you have to have the right you have to have the right content management system to do it. If you're looking at some of your file management systems out there. And you know, there's been some recent partnerships, announced by some of the video conferencing players that they're working with content management systems are not built for video. And you really need to have a a video based content management system. Yeah,

Bruce Dunfee 42:19

that's a great call out. There's another comment that came in and says, verticals where video was make it or break it during COVID? I can think of healthcare and education do you feel? Do you feel like make it or break it is one thing and those examples, but then it's just going to become a staple corporately, not just from a flexibility and time value standpoint, but also just from the sheer fact that, you know, op x and t and e is not going to ever go back to where it was before based on efficiencies that COVID proves. So do you feel like those verticals that may be needed to lean harder on it are just going to be the beginning of what the future is?

Andi Mann 42:55

Yeah, I certainly believe that, you know, it's why I'm at Qumu. I really believe this is a foundational transformation we're all going through, and we've already seen it with the meeting. But think about conferences and events do you want to travel every time there's an event, to maybe there's one or two sessions that are really appealing? Do you want to go for two three days session, including travel time, maybe not. So this is an option. Now you can watch the a sync video for a lot of case use cases, if I'm doing a product launch, I want to be engaged, I want to have the view of maybe that car that I was talking about before. But not everyone can turn up in person anymore, and a lot of people just won't want it. Because we know we have different options now. And that's one thing that certainly paired the pandemic, but just generally the arc of digital transformation is towards that more digital experience.

Nick Ochoa 43:46

Yeah, I agree. I think from an in person event perspective, most people that come to them, they don't generally don't stay for the entire event, and they have a specific need that they want to attend the event for. So they can do it virtually. That's much better. Right? So I think in the context of, of healthcare, I think you're gonna see just videos just gonna explode more and more, obviously, within communication within the healthcare systems, but also with the end consumer, right? If you can get that information out to them to them timely, and you can push it to them, then they're able to get that information become much more informed, you know, about, you know, different drugs, you know, their own health, etc. Yeah,

Bruce Dunfee 44:29

I mean, I think you've been in my own in my own corporate setting. I mean, I think one of the best use cases is some of the email examples I've seen from your team to us just with video as usage. And I think of you know, anyone on the line can think of endless meeting recaps that were you know, scribed out that no one ever really leaves through at any level of detail that you could quickly do a video say here are the five key takeaways here are the big five follow up items and the efficiency and the tracking of that engaged Is is really just a great usage tool in my opinion about can you It says this question here says we are getting asked to produce more video without the help of the production group, I need to be able to track my videos as a user. Is this something Qumu? can do.

Andi Mann 45:16

Look, absolutely analytics is built in, right? And it has to be, and not just analytics around the quality aspects, not just around bandwidth and lag and latency and stuff, but analytics around how video is used when it's being used. What parts of a video are people watching? How long are they watching for? Where are they dropping off? What videos are being watched repeatedly by the same people? So yeah, quality is one part but also the the impact that you're having measuring that is absolutely critical.

Bruce Dunfee 45:51

How about another one? It says you during your presentation, you mentioned employees, customers and partners? How do you secure video outside of the firewall?

Andi Mann 46:03

Well, you use an enterprise video platform that understands that there are people inside and out of the firewall, different roles, you know, look for a platform that has things like role based access controls. Look for a platform that integrates with your own existing security and authorization. Authentication systems. Look for a platform that has secured storage so that people can just randomly go and get shared access to a binary large object or blob. This is how these videos are often stored in cloud storage platforms. There's a lot of different aspects to security and compliance. Who can watch when can they watch which videos are allowed in different regions? For example, there's a lot of things you need to be careful of just from a compliance perspective from a privacy perspective. But just from a corporate authentication and access control perspective, you need to have that enterprise video platform that is built with that enterprise access internal external partners, customers, staff, all built for those use cases. For sure,

Bruce Dunfee 47:10

how about I have it in front of me with your five principles. Another question that came in is how did how did Qumu come up with these principles?

Andi Mann 47:19

Look, this is that's actually a really good question. I think about this, sometimes the the amount of experience we have in this organization for this transformation on foundational technology is absolutely or inspiring to me sometimes. And I've joined Qumu reasonably recently as a technologist. But I know people like Nick, for example, have been working with this for years, and we've got hundreds of people in our business that have this long term experience. It's Yeah, I mean, if you're a big part of coming up with this body of knowledge, the experience we have at Qumu, it's just it just I am so in awe all the time.

Nick Ochoa 47:57

Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is experience that we learn through our customers. So this is really, this is really the result of what our customers are doing with the Qumu product, and what they're showing us in their use cases. And so the development of this is really largely based on that way to come up with what is something that that people can take away and use as the basis for constructing a strategy for video.

Bruce Dunfee 48:23

Thank you for that. How about two more quick ones? Can you you can you give a specific example of a hyper distributed company or industry?

Andi Mann 48:32

That Qumu? Seriously, I let's start with Qumu. I've there's 1000s and 1000s. Right? So I'll let me tell you about my personal experience, right? I have development team in India, I have development team in the UK, I have some operations and DevOps people in Eastern Europe. I have developers here in the US, not just in our headquarters in Minnesota, but also in San Francisco, and also a couple of remote workers all over and, in fact, all of our workforces foundationally remote now as well. That's pretty hyper distributed. We have all time zones, we have geographies, languages, these sorts of things. But yeah, we're not even that big a company think about some of our customers, huge banks, insurance companies think about government, no World Government, let alone local government. Hybrid distributed now means everywhere, not just in my local area, but also enabling you to hire from different regions, different states, different countries, across time zones, and so any multinational business is now a hybrid distributed workforce. There's no doubt about it. And we're not forcing very many people to come into the office yet. I feel like that's gonna be a bit of a losing strategy anyway, all businesses are going to be hyper distributed going forward.

Nick Ochoa 49:53

Even for those that are going to do some return to work, you've seen some companies maybe do a third of their organization, come back The Office maybe half. But still, it's, you're still going to have a distributed workforce?

Bruce Dunfee 50:06

Yeah, for sure. And I don't disagree that the pressure test on it is going to be interesting to watch. First door in the next six to nine months, how about the final question that came in? It says we use box for our documents storage, it sounds like we shouldn't use it for video. Is that a fair call out?

Andi Mann 50:22

Yeah, I would say absolutely. That's a fair call, you know, I'm a big fan of cloud based storage. I'm a, I'm a cloud person, right? I love using the cloud for all sorts of use cases. And storage is one of the foundational use cases of cloud, access your documents from anywhere at any time, right? The promise is great, but video is different. It's large. So I talked earlier about the idea of storing a binary large object or blob with no insight into what it contains, with little, you can't say meant it, you can't just jump into a segment of that video without understanding the content of the video. A video is not just another document, again, you need to be able to do things like transcode. If you just store a video object in an online cloud storage system, then there are lots of platforms which literally will not even be able to use it. You can't necessarily download a free gig video all in one hit over a low bandwidth network using your iPhone, right? You've got to have that that ability to stream video, we're using the right bandwidth using the right encoding the right bit rates, right. All of this is unique into video that doesn't apply to the sort of content that these large scale cloud storage systems were designed for. They weren't designed for something fundamentally different. With a video platform, you get a lot more capability that is video specific.

Nick Ochoa 51:52

And the transcoding piece is a huge one that those systems those file management systems just don't have. Yeah,

Bruce Dunfee 51:59

100%. Thank you both for all the context and the perspective and insight answering those questions that came in very engaged audience. So I know, just looking at time, we're getting close to wrapping here. But before I hand it back over to Nick and Andi, just for any final takeaways, I just want to thank everyone who dialed in certainly thank the people that were engaging on the chat with sending questions. And if you're looking for more information on this 100% encourages set a time with Nick Andi and the Qumu. team. They certainly come highly recommended from our industry network here at BWG, and certainly seems like a very good value proposition and worth setting aside some time to discuss. I'll kick it back over to you, Nick and Andi, if you want to do any final takeaways, or send offs here, but I certainly thank both of you for the time and, and all the insight today.

Nick Ochoa 52:50

And look, I really I appreciate

Andi Mann 52:53

that, Nick, I'm just I just really want people to understand that the video is now ubiquitous, it is the preferred communication method for so many people. It's not just millennials and Gen Z. It's everyone's not just the CEO, it's everyone. It's not just internal, its external. It's everyone everywhere, anywhere, any time. So use it that way. Let's get the best communication and engagement we can. And I fundamentally believe that video is that transformational capability.

Nick Ochoa 53:22

Well said, so I say you know if you have a need and want to talk with us about your strategy and what you're doing within your organization, just just reach out to us and we'll talk with you about

Bruce Dunfee 53:36

awesome thank you both again for for all this insight. today. Certainly great conversation. And again, thank you to everyone who dialed in from our network. We certainly appreciate the time and hope everyone has a great rest of your afternoon. Take care.