Hybrid Events with John Pollard Show 190

On today’s show we speak with John Pollard from Sonic Foundry about Hybrid Events.

He defines a hybrid event, explains how to do a hybrid event.

Transcripts:

Welcome back to the Meetings Podcast. This is Mike McAllen from Grass Shack Events & Media and today we have John Pollard who is the Event Services Program Director from Sonic Foundry on the show to talk a little bit about hybrid events. Most of the people who listened to the show probably know about Sonic Foundry and probably know about you, John.

Speaker 2: Well, that’s great to hear. Yeah, Sonic Foundry is now around for a little while. Maybe I should tell you a little bit about that just real quick. Sonic Foundry started in 1991 primarily creating tools, personal desktop tools for editing sound and video tools like Sound Forge, Acid, Vegas video and things of that nature and during the tech boom we bought a lot of companies and one of those companies was a company called Media Site and early in 2000 we sold all our other applications to Sony and focused primarily on the Media Site Technology which is a webcasting platform and one of the things that a lot of people probably don’t know in the events world is that we support hundreds well, actually we support thousands of customers but hundreds of educational institutions throughout the world use our technology to capture classroom content that is going on you know tens of thousands of content every semester is being captured using our technology. So what we do in my side of the business is we use that same technology to go to events and help capture content.

Speaker 1: Neat.

Speaker 2: [0:02:06] [Inaudible].

Speaker 1: Is that how they do like the — my wife actually is just looking into right now taking an online course like and is that — I’m assuming that’s how they do it then that wider capturing all these stuff for you know.

Speaker 2: Well, right. There are tons of ways to capture content. We believe that our solution is the easiest and the most reliable and the best supported solution. Obviously that’s what companies say about themselves. But I think with us easy to use and reliable and supported key terms. Yeah, so there’s a strong chance that she’s taking an online course that it is using Media Site.

Speaker 1: Very cool. Very, very cool. And so why don’t you also share who the heck you are and how you got into this business.

Speaker 2: Right. That’s a great question, thanks. It’s what we do, right when we talk back and forth.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: I’ve been in high tech for you know 17 years or 20 years something like that and works for a lot of basically big companies with acronyms, companies like SAP and I’ve worked for large financial institutions and eCommerce and came to Madison to work for a startup and that crashed with all the other startups that crashed in the tech room and after a period in and actually the creative world working with advertising I connected with folks here in Sonic Foundry and I started here actually as a product manager.

So coming to this from understanding requirements, listening to customers, what do they want, what do they need and help drive a lot of what is in today’s product and what we use to leverage on both sides and how it was bought in the education world and the corporate world too in training and eLearning that sort of thing and taking that into the events.

Now I shifted into the events world just within the last actually this year to make sure that we are delivering the types of solutions that our clients are looking for — clients like you Mike or like event planners or production companies and that sort of thing trying to make it easy but also some of the events, the way events people need content, need to use that content is a little bit different from the educational world but the interesting thing about the tie between education and events is that really and actually I was just watching a guy talking about education and he’s talking about learning and you know one of the guys that spoke at Event Camp Europe was talking about the ROI events and talking about a large focus of being really on learning.

[0:05:08]

I mean we all wanna be there together. We want you know network with people and we wanna have those experiences but one of the primary objectives of coming together for an event is typically learning. So the tie between our educational routes and how it’s use in the technology and how it’s been use in events is actually closer than one might think.

Speaker 1: I agree. It is interesting too that you said that because I was thinking about that like I was just actually just watching like this. I was just doing a blog post about the Old Spice commercial and how they did that and how you know the production behind it but they really had goals before that you know and when you’re putting on an event there’s goals that you know part of it is not just to have an event but they’re trying to get some sort of message across, right. So the hybrid event really helps because you’re not just at that event you can carry it on you know –

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: — afterwards. Much like you’re talking about education so this is all being captured. You know you can give it legs, all the stuff. Don’t just have that week of your conference but you know talk about you know having the people another places, getting excited about it also being able to share it later is such a huge, huge thing.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. So let’s just — just for the sake of clarity and in case and not to exclude anyone. Let’s just define what a hybrid event is because I know it’s kind of [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: Wait a minute. That was my first question.

Speaker 2: Oh, did I just steal your question?

Speaker 1: I don’t get to say anything if I don’t get to ask the questions but yes, I’m just kidding. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: No, I just wanna explain and everybody’s got maybe a slightly different definition but you know a simple way to think of a hybrid event is just that we’re taking a physical meeting at a location where there are onsite attendees and we are adding an online component to that event and I think at the base level and again I mean the base level is making content available from that. There are all sorts of other interactive ways you know chats and discussions and other applications that can be built around but at the basic level when you’re making some of that content available from an onsite location then you can easily create a hybrid event into your point and you can bring people and extend the reach of that event while it’s happening and this is something I’d like to talk more about is okay, then we can talk about taking that and using that throughout the year.

You think of that event as just one touch point in this yearlong strategy of customer contact or community contact. You know you’re reaching out to your people, you’re trying to have reasons to connect with your people, your groups, your prospects, your customers or whatever and the content from these events can be a great starter if you will, a great way to create discussions, continue the conversation as Emilie Barta was doing a lot recently and one of the shows she was virtually emceeing. A great way to continue that conversation and take it on and keep people involved with your brand basically. It’s a very, very much a marketing thing and it’s more of a strategic thing. We just happen to unable some technology that supports them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And it goes back to the goals. You have to have goals you know. I’ve so many worked over the years with people that just have an event to have an event you know and it’s.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: If you don’t have any kind of what’s that action you want those people watching or attending what do you want them to do. When they walked out there you should have a goal like this. What is that you want to be? Do you want them to buy something? Do you want them to sell more stuff? Do you want them to you know it’s really something so basic but people don’t always think about that you know and that’s sad because in my business it’s become a lot of that.

We’re just coming in and putting up stages you know and hooking up cameras and there’s no talk about that but this hybrid event I think really can — it’s an actual great way to start a conversation about all that. For me it’s been and we don’t always get to do any kind of a hybrid portion of it but it’s always kind of brings in that conversation can come up and go okay, well I know you wanna have all your people talk but where are those goals you know that you’re going through.

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely and that’s why I like that ROI discussion from Event Camp Europe where Dr. Elling Hamso is talking about and it kinda blew me away because he says just a matter of fact you know event ROI is actually really easy.

[0:10:10]

I was like okay, you caught my attention there. It’s so easy. Okay, well how easy is it and his thing is like look, if you’ve changed attitudes or changed behaviors then you can measure the ROI and if you have not changed attitudes or behaviors well, then your ROI is gonna be lower. Specifically he’s talking about learning and saying look, if you haven’t changed somebody’s behaviors or attitudes then they didn’t learn anything and hence your event was not very valuable so.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. He was very good. He was really good. I have to get him on the podcast.

Speaker 2: I bet that would be interesting. He might be more interested in me I don’t know. He’s a doctor.

Speaker 1: He is a doctor.

Speaker 2: Oh, you aren’t?

Speaker 1: Stage name like doctor or something. Play it on TV.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 1: So what goes into a hybrid event because we’ve kinda talked about that also?

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s another great question, Mike and I’m glad you asked. Basically, from our standpoint again there are different levels of hybrid event but let’s just talk about what’s the simplest way to like get started with a hybrid event. It would be to take some of that content. Let’s say you’re really nervous about this and you’re maybe overwhelmed by the concept.

You know one way to get started would be just to take maybe some of your general sessions and make those available or maybe take one room that’s happening at your event and make that content available. You could do that live or capture it and turn it around quickly. You know what we like to do and part of our technology enables is, is for people to get that content even if they’re not doing it live but to get it up really quickly so that they can keep that online audience actively involved in what’s going on at around the same time that it’s happening.

So look, let’s face it. People can’t always get to the event. It’s not that they don’t wanna be there it’s just like hey, either the resources they don’t have the budget or they just don’t have the time scheduling or what have you it just doesn’t work out. So what you’re doing is like I said before allowing that event to extend its reach, include these people that really would be there if they could be there but they can’t be there.

So help them be a part of it anyway by making some of those sessions available. Once you’ve experimented with that and you’ve had some success with maybe capturing one room or just some general sessions then you can look at you know capturing everything and then what goes into that is basically in the room where the event is happening in the case if you’re working with Sonic Foundry Events Services what happens is we just slide in next to your existing AV so what we do is we have a recorder that we designed and developed and actually we do all those [0:13:09] [Inaudible].

So we bring that in, slide in next to existing AV company that you’re working with or what have you. We just take feeds from them so we take the house audio feed, we take a video feed, now we take a feed from the VGA that’s coming out in the back typically of a laptop and then the recorder does all the work basically in terms of synchronizing presentation content and video content and makes that web ready so that it can be streamed to your online audience.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it is a really easy, easy solution which is a huge thing because I’ve done you know satellite trucks and stuff in the past and you know to get some kind of a feed going out I mean in the past of course I’m not doing that these days very often but.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: It is really simple. It’s just literally is a box hooked in and then you get an operator from you guys or you know I guess there’s freelance people out there that do this, that they can get. Either way, anyway. It’s really a simple solution. And there are other ways to do it. I mean I’m not gonna tell you that you can’t do it other ways. There are other approaches that involve putting software on our presenter’s laptop or they’re involved other combinations of technology. I’m just saying the way it works with us is we come in there with the recorder, we slide the next DAV, we plug it in and go basically. You know I wouldn’t lie to you and say we’re the only way to do it.

Speaker 2: No. No. There’s gazillion ways to do it but it is in my experience you guys have been very easy and I’ve worked I think a couple of times now and it’s been just really simple experience and simple medium. It worked really well and it was easy and it wasn’t something that I had to worry about which is for everybody who plans events, knows those are the things you look for. Things that work that you know you don’t have to worry about so.

[0:15:12]

Speaker 2: Right, and maybe really quick to just insert and if I’m an event planner or I’m an event whatever I’m overseeing the event and I am in charge of determining whether we’re gonna do hybrid. Maybe some of the questions you wanna ask about whatever technology you use is you know is there any impact on the presenter, are they gonna have to do anything. I’m just saving with us, we don’t change the way the presenter presents.

So there’s [0:15:39] Inaudible]. They’re not uploading presentations but you know again, there are different approaches but that’s something to consider you might ask about turnaround time, how quickly can we get that content available if it’s not live. If you want it live then that’s another thing to ask if you want it live or if they do live. So those are some questions we can consider and that’s interesting too because the hybrid portion of it I mean you’re capturing it that’s one thing you could just capture. You don’t have to live stream it.

Speaker 2: No.

Speaker 1: Not at all but I mean that’s a great addition to have. I mean much like these pods you know that we have done at these Event Camps. I mean we’ve been doing that forever. There wasn’t a name for them but you know you stream it out into a different room at the event maybe an overflow room or something that’s the same thing.

Speaker 2: Certainly something you can do, yup.

Speaker 1: Yeah, there’s an overflow of throw. An overflow room you know when you have too many people you might be brining it out it’ just you’re brining it out anywhere. So it could be anywhere in the world really that you have an internet connection.

Speaker 2: Yes, sir.

Speaker 1: Interesting. Interesting. It is something that’s very accessible that I think people should think about more to grow audiences also. Our company does mostly internal events for companies like we don’t do a lot of you know conferences. I mean we’ve done a few. We have a couple conference clients that do big association kind of stuff but I am always kind of pushing it saying you know they’re always complaining about like the budgets and they can’t bring people in and like the whole pod thing is really a great option because you don’t have to fly everybody in. You fly in you know I mean of course you want everybody there because there is that face-to-face interaction that you can’t really get over the internet regardless but you can do the pod thing where you have teams in different areas and they can be involved.

Speaker 2: I think you’re right.

Speaker 1: And then if you’re capturing I mean there you go again they can go back later and go hey, I want you know everybody watch this kind of a thing or you know. It’s just a really great way to keep content go in and it is really affordable when you look at it as an event option.

Speaker 2: And I like what you’re saying about the pods and I think the pods are gonna become more interesting as we go and I think that will be a fun one to explore and another one of these maybe not separate podcast because there is so much that you can do then. With that concept it’s just that it does I think involved to your point about goals and planning. You know you gotta think a little bit more to make that an interesting experience but at the basic level people have in information. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1: And would we call that podcast a podcast.

Speaker 2: Well, that’s interesting Mike.

Speaker 1: I really wanna do that now. [Cross-talk].

Speaker 2: They’ll be no confusion or anything, right.

Speaker 1: That’s fantastic. We have to do that right away. You should trademark that name.

Speaker 1: Okay, so what else do we talk about? It’s funny because for this stuff I love talking to you or Erica, the lovely Erica about [0:19:01] [Inaudible]. People are so fantastic. And I’m not kissing your ass at all because there aren’t like you guys.

Speaker 2: Wow.

Speaker 1: But there’s so much that goes into this that we can’t chat about. So what do you think what else — I think we should.

Speaker 2: Well, how I can leverage that strategic portion, right. I was just thinking that let’s talk maybe a little bit about how could use this technology before an event, during an event and then after the event.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: If it would make sense. So let’s say you are you know you’re getting ready you have this event coming up and of course everybody is trying to drive interest in the event, get people to register, get people to attend. Well, one of the things that we’ve had pretty good success with in some of our own company events is actually creating little trailers for the sessions.

[0:20:10]

So the presenters have put together little one, two minute clip that sort of gives a highlight, just a video that they shoot and then they send that over and upload that to the backend you know part of our webcasting platform and then they can embed that on their event site and make it available to the attendees before they even get there so the same platform that you can use to stream the content during the event. You can actually use in advance as sort of backend content management system to get out all their content to that audience to use to market if you will.

So beforehand I think that’s a cool way to do it. It would be to have some little trailers if you will that would help people understand where they’re getting into, where they signing up for?, and maybe that would even you know if somebody were on the fence like oh, should I go and I’m not really sure if I know anything about this event. Maybe I’ve never been to that event. I don’t know. Even that might be even not enough to say oh, that looks really cool. I’m going you know. Other people that you know maybe our new Mike maybe I’m gonna test the waters this year just by checking it out. Then again there are all those people that we’ve already talked about. We just can’t get there.

So then during the event you can obviously take that content and you can have that embedded in any number of web applications or you know just to have simple pages that are displayed the content. You know you could try that with Twitter for other discussions, chat forms that sort of thing. During the event too you can also use platforms like ours to ask questions that they can be sending to the speaker or the moderator of that room that can be asking those questions but the idea here is you know and I think one of the things that some of the Event Camps have done really well is experimented and trying to pull in that online audience and keep them actively engaged with the event as it’s going because you know if I can’t get there but I’m interested in the topic I’ll watch that and I wanna be tweeting and I’m following the tweets and I’m seeing what people are saying and it gives me a sense of real participation in the event even though I’m not there.

Then after the event obviously now I’ve got well, I could have tons of content depending on the size of my event but now I’ve got this rich, hopefully rich content that you had all these experts there, you got it captured and now you can start sort of trickling that out throughout the year reminding people that it’s there. Maybe you’re embedding that content into a community site that you have or maybe you’re embedding it into blogs or discussion forums where you’re trying to get people to continue thinking about that or discussing it or changing their behavior based on what they’ve learned you know taking it the next step if you will after the content and then when it gets to be closer to next year’s event you can use some of that content or take little snippets of that content. You know just take in our solution we have a really simple editor that would allow you to sort of create new presentations just from little short pieces of the presentation so that you have like highlights from last year and say hey, this is what happened last year, get excited of what’s coming up this year and something that would make people feel like yeah, we wanna be there.

Speaker 1: Very cool. Yeah.

Speaker 2: I mean that’s just you know obviously there are tons of ways that if you have great content and you’re thinking strategically and you’re marketing and you have all these initiatives at your organization and especially as event planners and event professionals I think it would be who to help our clients be more strategic about these things and offer them some solid thinking about you know we provide technology. That’s’ what we do but you guys as the people that are working with those clients you can add a lot of value by helping them think differently about these events and how they can broaden the reach, the scope and how that fits into their overall marketing plan for the year.

Speaker 1: You know it’s great to have because like you said there is gazillion stuff you can do like gazillion amount of things you could do around hybrid events but what you’ve just explained before, during and after is a good little kind of road map for people to think about, to get started too. I mean there’s some things that they can do and it’s very simple and giving your event legs after the event is just an awesome thing. They build it up for the next one.

Speaker 2: I agree. I think that yeah, that’s a great way.

[0:25:00]

Speaker 1: But it’s so simple. I mean it’s really simple. It’s really a simple solution too that would really market your event like crazy. An easy way to get a lot of content to market like crazy or plus if you want I mean that’s to increase attendance but of course if you wanna keep your content going for your sales people or your whatever, whoever, whatever they’re doing your widget makers.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: This is all the stuff that can be — you just refuse in so many different ways.

Speaker 2: Oh, yeah and I think if I’m an event professional if I’m going into that client you know you could almost have a little workshop with these people and do something very simple like that. You know get your light poured out and put people, during, after and talk about, brainstorm a little bit about how are we gonna touch these people, how are you gonna involved these people. What can we handle? What you know not biting off more than we can you know physically handle in terms of people who are gonna be able to monitor this. You know I think sometimes you feel like you need to go, get really crazy but there’s just a lot of value in starting off simple too and just –

Speaker 1: Oh, I agree.

Speaker 2: — experimenting, getting that because there’s nothing that sells the concept more than just having some basic successes. So hey, if you have a long term relationship with these clients or you wanna have a long term relationship you can’t look at this like I just wanna get this one and that. You gotta be thinking and look, I wanna build, I wanna do all their events. I wanna be doing, I wanna work with these people so I wanna help them think a little bit you know more than just transactional on this one event.

Speaker 1: Right. Right. Right. Right. No, that’s great. It’s a nice I was just — my mind is whirling now about [mom]. I need to present that’s better with clients, it’s a great way of the smart, before, after should be I mean that should be done just regardless for your event not even talking hybrid.

Speaker 2: I mean I’m not yeah, I’m not [Cross-talk]. You know from my standpoint it seems that I would mix some.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. Alright John, so how can people get a hold of you if they wanted to talk to you more about this?

Speaker 2: Mike, again that’s another fabulous question. Thank you.

Speaker 1: That is so insincere. Go ahead.

Speaker 2: I have to give you a hard time. Its well, you can reach me on you know email is johnp as in johnp@sonicfoundry.com. I’m on Twitter occasionally @johnp_sofo. johnp_sofo.

Speaker 1: Sonic foundry that’s what it is right.

Speaker 2: Yeah, [0:27:49] [Inaudible] if you’re interested in buying stuff, please do and you can find us on the Nasdq@sofo as well.

Speaker 1: Very cool.

Speaker 2: That’s at sonicfoundry.com. I’m happy to you there.

Speaker 1: Alright.

Speaker 2: I’m happy to see you at the next event.

Speaker 1: Yes, Yes. Alright, John, so I look forward to talking to you again. I think we should do our podcast.

Speaker 2: Yeah. [Cross-talk].

Speaker 1: So people look out for that and I will talk to you soon, John.

Speaker 2: Thanks Mike.

Speaker 1: Okay.