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NEWSLETTER 150
 
VIRTUAL EVENTS GROUP
 

Sphere opened in Vegas with U2 taking the stage. The wraparound LED canvas contains 268 million video pixels. Bono said it best: “This whole place feels like a distortion pedal for the mind."

 
 
 
 
 
 
IMEX | OCTOBER 17-19
BOOTH C5036 | MANDALAY BAY, LAS VEGAS
 
IMEX 2023
 
Countdown to IMEX, the leading show for destinations and events. We’ll be podcasting live from the show with a full agenda of some of the most thoughtful leaders in the events world. And we’ll be teaming up with the mah-ve-lous DAHLIA+Agency to bring you event insights and some relaxation too. Meet us at Booth C5036 in Mandalay Bay.
 
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OCTOBER 26 | 3PM EST | ZOOM
 
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There’s no doubt that travel has become harder and more expensive. And that leaves plenty of room for armchair traveling — checking out what you’ll be seeing before you get there. Our conversation with Susan Black from Wowzitude looks at virtual travel and also looks at how Black started her new company, despite being a “woman of a certain age.

 
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Synthetic Humans
 

Frederic Werner told me a great story of how the ITU’s AI for Good neural network began using a virtual human as the receptionist for all of its online conferences. “It seemed like a waste of time to have a human dress up in office clothes just to tell attendees the same instructions on how to navigate the site, over and over again. With 150 webinars a year, and 3 hours of a human’s time for each one, it made sense to automate routine functions like directions for navigating the site.” 


Werner was early to the game. Products like Synthesia, D-ID and Hour One are being widely used for everything from internal communications, training videos, promos, explainer videos, and more. 


Synthesia
is ridiculously simple to use. You can create video presentations with no humans required. Synthesia lets you choose from 140 avatars, select their clothes, control their style of speech. Then you write a simple text script, and Synthesia puts it all together. The results look pretty stilted, no mistaking them for humans, but you definitely get a usable video. Here’s my sample.

 
 
Choose your avatar, their language and role. Then start talking or typing. You’re video featuring a digital human will be created. Image credit: Synthesia
 
D-ID is a little slicker. In addition to doing what Synthesia does, D-ID incorporates AI so that you can ask it to generate a character from your imagination — Barbie, or a pumpkin — and have that character recite a typed-in script or a script you record with your own voice. We created a D-ID-powered tour of our website with a woman made of VEG-tables, our trademark.
 
 
Choose your avatar, their language and role. Then start talking or typing. Your video featuring a digital human will be created. Image credit: D-ID
 
 
Hour One may be the most AI driven of the lot. Its built-in AI will generate a script for you, choose images for your video, and let you choose an avatar. You can create multiple scenes for your video. Here is my 3-minute creation.
 
 
 

HourOne mixes AI-driven script generation with avatars and templates to create a pretty compelling video in minutes. Image credit: HourOne


As you experiment with these tools, remember that people often react negatively to video avatars. They don’t breathe or use their hands; they don’t show human emotions. So use them judiciously.

 
 
Zoomtopia 2023
 
This year’s Zoomtopia, the annual Zoom fest where CEO Eric Yuan and his team reveal all things new, seemed a bit more somber and business-like than previously. Instead of the “delivering happiness” mantra of the pandemic days, this Zoomtopia was all about getting sh**t done with Zoom. As a matter of fact, it seems the grand plan is to replicate Google Workspace.


Start with Zoom Docs. It’s a flexible collaborative document space on the Zoom platform that can build wikis (is this still a thing?) and manage workflows. It’s got its own Generative AI built-in to do everything from compose emails to document meetings and summarize threads.The company also added a slew of features to make remote meetings richer while using Zoom Meetings, Zoom Spaces, and Zoom Huddles. Paying customers will soon have attendee management, name tags, dynamic layouts for rooms, wayfinding to help you find your meeting, and other new features.


Our take? As Zoom transitions from the “happy-folks” that kept us sane during the pandemic to an enterprise platform for remote and hybrid work, they’ve got a tough road to hoe. Zoom has a goldmine of features and over 2,500 app integrations with 3rd party apps. Still, small businesses like VEG are going to have one heck of a time navigating the Zoom world, while many large enterprises have decided stick with MS Teams, but perhaps not because they love it. Zoom faces stiff competition from Microsoft, Google and even players like RingCentral. It’s a crowded cloud communications sandbox. That said, it’s a big sandbox. According to a Gartner Research Report on Effective Meetings for a Hybrid Workforce, by 2024 in-person meetings will drop from 60% of enterprise meetings to 25%, driven by remote work and changing workforce demographics.

 
 
ZoomDocs lets you collaboratively write and manage group projects. Image credit: Zoom
 
 
 
WEEKLY
 
Scuttlebutt
 
 
 

VEG Events Review?
Many of our regular readers are events junkies of one sort or another. That got me thinking. Is there interest in having more reviews of events in our newsletters? Would you read a review of a major event? The reviews would look behind the scenes to figure out how the magic happened or not. We’d look at vendors, venues, budgets, and event tech.

 

Think of it as community journalism. If you’re game to be an events reviewer, we’d love to deputize you. Write us and tell us the event you’d like to cover. Send us your review. Twenty-five dollar Starbucks gift certificates for every entry. 

 


Is Anyone Listening? 

There might be fewer podcasts than you think. Although there are over 5 million podcasts registered on Spotify, only 300,000 of those uploaded an episode over the past month. According to ListenNotes there are currently around 3 to 4 million podcasts out there, and according to Amplifi and Podnews, 44% of the podcasts have fewer than 3 episodes and only 720,000 podcasts have more than 10 episodes. 


Friends Don’t Let Friends Use Zoom Virtual Backgrounds
At least that’s how VEG Tech Editor Alfred Poor feels. He says there are many causes of the problems with virtual backgrounds (not just Zoom, but with video meeting platforms in general). Basically, it boils down to the software not being able to reliably distinguish between figure and ground. Image editors (Photoshop, Affinity Photo, etc.) are now able to do a remarkable job of isolating an object, but that is for a static image, not for video updating at 30 frames per second. Too often, objects appear and disappear at random – such as long hair or chair backs – and this is an unprofessional and unnecessary distraction. Alfred says that his own virtual backgrounds work well because he’s got a decent desktop system with an NVIDIA GPU and OBS Studio and a green screen and careful lighting. He notes that even a crummy real background can be better than a bad virtual background. (Just be sure to take the liquor off of the shelves behind you.) 

 
 
 
SHORTS VIDEO
 
We’re in the Goosebumps Business
 
David Adler nails it when he describes how the events business has matured. Watch here.
 
 
 
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Robin Raskin | Founder
917.215.3160 | robin@virtualeventsgroup.org

Gigi Raskin | Sales/Marketing

917.608.7542 | gigi@virtualeventsgroup.org