Behind every event you’ve ever attended, there’s a team of talented professionals (usually wearing headsets) who design spaces, rig lighting, point cameras, schlep equipment, run cables, and run the whole show. They are the unsung heroes behind the magic of how we meet. 

At the Silicon Valley Video Summit (Sept 23, 2023), we sojourned to the heart of the tech valley to work with Martin Porter and his team at SVG to gather the technical folks and put them in the room where it happens. We had nearly 700 attendees trade notes about the complexity and challenges of producing events, especially in a post-pandemic world, where in-person, virtual, and all sorts of combinations add to the choice and complexity. 

You’ll be able to watch all of these events on our YouTube channel momentarily, so keep checking back. 

The Video Singularity 

Summing up the day was Andrew Cross, Amazon Web Services, who discussed our reliance on video as the preferred language for a new generation. He calls it the video singularity. Full motion imagery is quickly replacing the word as the dominant means of communication, he says. And now anyone with a mobile phone can create astounding videos. 

The Role of AI

If butts in seats tell a story, the story was all about AI at the Summit. Every track that explored AI and video production was filled. Gregg Katano moderated a panel titled Transforming Live Production with AI that included Karina Anglada (Adobe), Mo Goyal (Evertz), Pinar Demirdag (Cuebric), and Rebecca Xu (Opus Clip). You’ll always need human video editors, said the panelists. You’ll just need fewer of them. AI is good at taking a first pass at everything video-related. At Adobe, where Anglada says AI has long been part of the suite, tools such as Firefly put the power of AI into the hands of many. Storied video production companies like Evertz have incorporated AI into their creative processes. Cuberic has a tool that lets filmmakers generate near 3-D quality fully-rendered backgrounds at the touch of a button, and those of you who read this newsletter regularly know that I’m an Opus Clip fan. We routinely use it to automatically create short video clips from our lengthy programs.

Zoom Still Delivers Happiness

In a post-pandemic world, many never want to sit through a Zoom meeting again, but it’s thrilling to experience the joy and intimacy that cleverly designed Zoom events can bring. Thanks to John Ittelson, California State University, Monterey Bay, Brandon Caskey, PORTs Program Coordinator for the California State Parks, and Caskey’s team of tree-hugging park rangers, we got to experience the flora and fauna of Monterey Bay, San Luis Obispo, and Anza-Borrego State Park. The program combined the best features of Zoom, Starlink connectivity, gimbals, laptops, and park rangers who are as comfortable using tech gear as they are sleeping outdoors. 

Curation and Theater

How do technical event directors and producers from some of the biggest events do it? They fret about everything from camera angles and lighting to managing the dynamics of the in-person crowd and the online audience. And in their souls they are story-tellers.

On the Silicon Valley Video stage, veterans from TED, SXSW, Intel, and EA Sports joined us. In a panel moderated by Sherry Huss (Freeman), Mina Sabet (TED) stressed curation and commitment to thinking of TED as theater. Stephen Light (SXSW) recognized his mission to curate what gets broadcast and what does not, keeping in mind that SXSW is very much an in-person festival. Joseph Lynch (EA Sports) described his complicated job of producing live e-sports events for one group of attendees but making sure that remote watchers and Twitchers are fully engaged. Victor Torregroza (Intel) described using tech to bring joy and emotion to live events. 

Cloud Rules

Good friend Lori Schwartz ends her emails with the words “Sent from the cloud. It’s fluffy.” It’s fluffy, yes, but mastering it for video storage, management, distribution, and analytics is a great hedge against job obsolescence. Live streaming content to multiple viewers, in multiple locations, on multiple devices, is just a part of the challenge. Moderated by Claudia Souza (Advanced Systems Group), the “Global Live Event Production in the Cloud” panel made it abundantly clear that large events are complex and global. Those who can manage them in the cloud can see both additional revenue and cost efficiency.

Accessibility and Inclusion

As the Studios Production Lead at Microsoft, Alexandra Georgescu thinks about accessibility a lot. To cater to divergent people, you need to consider captioning, color schemes, fonts, room lighting, and more. On her panel, Zane Beatty of Charcoalblue talked about designing physical and virtual spaces that take into account everything from the acoustics in a space to where visual obstructions lie. He uses lighting to create memorable theatrical experiences. Adi Margolin’s product, Verbit, is a perfect example of the power of AI-infused closed captioning and transcription services. The captioning can be delivered to your phone or the presentation screen. Equally as important, the AI can handle multiple language translations, search through the transcript to identify important moments, deliver analytics, and more. (Fact: At the Summit, Verbit produced 3,185 lines of accurate captions and captioned more than 23,000 words at an average of more than 170 words per minute.)

Who’s Watching Your Videos?

Trick question: For the pros, everyone’s watching from everywhere all at once. Barry Watts, CEO of Repertoire, a Silicon Valley-based production firm that works with a who’s who list of tech companies, talks about inbound and outbound video. If you’re streaming live, and to multiple devices, who interacts with whom? To tackle questions as wide-ranging as their favorite new technologies and their most terrifying production moments, Watts spoke with Kyle Healy (The Global Leadership Network), Jack Kelly (Freeman), Mark Mallchok (Brella Productions), Colin Murray (Slack), and Joshua Willmann (Meta). They are all video veterans with years of production experience. That includes the elephant that took a dump on a green screen. They are prepared for everything that gets thrown their way from power outages to bat infestations. They carry a lot of cables. And they’re funny. You should listen to the full conversation on our YouTube channel.

New Types of Studios

What does it look like when the traditional production studio gets a makeover? It’s powered by graphics-intensive AI chips from Nvidia which eliminate a lot of physical rendering of scenes. It’s got interactive screens everywhere to make each attendee feel like they’re in the front row. And you control the entire show from an iPad. We got to glimpse that future as David Adler moderated a session with Thomas True (NVIDIA), Thomas Soetens (Immersive Designs Studio), and Gentry Humphrey, who was brave enough to launch Code by Gentry, his sneaker line, in a hybrid studio powered by NVIDIA and Immersive Designs. They talked about scaling intimacy in new production environments. As David Adler says, “We’re not in the events business anymore. We’re in the goosebumps business.”

Virtual Events Group is partnering with Jim Louderback (Inside the Creator Economy) and the NAB Show to build the Creator Lab.

Want to create with us? Contact Gigi for more information.