MarPro - The Marketing Procurement Podcast

Dean Arrington | Metro Audio Visual Productions

October 19, 2021 Rusty Pepper & Dana Small & Dean Arrington Episode 11
MarPro - The Marketing Procurement Podcast
Dean Arrington | Metro Audio Visual Productions
Show Notes Transcript

This week on MarPro, Dean Arrington from Metro Audio Visual Productions introduces us to HoloPresence Technology for live events that enables busy and high profile keynotes and  presenters who can't be there in person to still participate as live holograms.  

It's an insightful and fun filled 37-minutes that won't disappoint!


Dana:

Hey everybody. This is Dana small, rusty

Rusty:

pepper.

Dana:

Welcome to another edition of Mar pro

Rusty:

the marketing procurement podcast.

Dana:

Awesome rusty. How's it

Rusty:

going today? It's good. We got a great guest today. I'm excited about the show. So you want to give him a little bit of an introduction or preface it a little

Dana:

bit. Yeah, sure. I love new technology. And if people follow my blog, they know I love new technology and being the first thing. So when I had somebody reach out to me, as supplier had worked with in the past and said, Hey, we got this great new technologies. You want to check it out? I was like, hell yeah, I want to check it out. I'd want to see. All about. And so the conversation when, and we had a capabilities presentation from my perspective from procurement, some of the value we provide is bringing in new technologies that not only can be cost effective or efficient, but just can bring in a new flavor and give your company the edge. By doing this and having Dean on our show and explain this great new technology. I think we can get that out to other people so that they can also leverage it for across their industries and in their meetings. But I will, I am not a tech expert, so.

Rusty:

Well, before we get him introduced, let me just ask you a question about that. So I think you bring up a really good point. What you said is I had a vendor reach out and say, Hey, we've got some really kick ass technology though. I think you would really like to see, obviously there had to be some kind of product action attached to that outreach, but how often are you getting. Outreaches like that, where you actually agree versus yeah. Thanks. But no, thanks. What was the trigger point in that outreach that made you say, yeah, I want to have a call.

Dana:

Yeah, the technology itself and the fact that I hadn't heard of it or seen anybody use it before something new and fresh in the space. And I think. You know that, and obviously my past experience with DNS, like my car is a good guy, so you've got a good rapport going on, but definitely the fact that it's new and there's multiple uses for it. So even though it was like, Hey, do you want to meet call to action Kevin meeting? It was like, hell yeah, I want to have a meeting. I want to see what's new in the marketplace because if it can be. My company and advantage. I want to see it. So that kind of explain

Rusty:

it. Yeah, no, I just didn't know if it was promise to savings or efficiencies or, Hey, this is just really innovative technology that can transform the way you're doing it. A certain part of the business. I just didn't know if there was something that really stood out. I said, wow, okay, I'm going to go in and

Dana:

take advantage of this. He said holographic technology. So I figured if he could put me on stage with Tupac. Then I'm sold. So anything that was my basis for all of this, but yeah, no, I think it's really great. And I'll let Dean explain more of the technology piece because that's definitely not something for me to do, but Dean, do you want to give everybody kind of a background about you where you work and then we can start going into the technology and talk a little bit more about that.

DEan:

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the intro and the kind words. My name is Dean Erickson. I'm with Metro audit visual productions. We are a live event production company based in Northern California, and we provide audio visual and production support for numerous clients around the world. Whether it is the typical annual conference for a association. For a SKO or some sort of corporate event, whether it's internal, external B2B, B to C client facing whatever it is we learn about the event design the stage design, the general session branding. And we really focus on the goals of the event and the awareness or whether the scope of work is for the B2C or B2B. We really focus on. Bringing those ideas to life with our creative designs. So when I found this technology, the hologram technology, I was blown away because like you said, Dana, it's so many practical use cases for it. That really just stuck out to me if this is right up our alley, because we're always looking to be. Looking always to bring the new technology to a new client, whether that's a small association, big corporate, whatever it is, we just love the tech. We love to innovate. We love to design new stuff. That's the general census around me.

Rusty:

Obviously we just came out of. Or we're still in with COVID, but that really shut down events industry. That's a big part of your business. What was some of the things that you took from that? And then obviously what are you seeing out for your business?

DEan:

Yeah. Good question recipe. So February, March, there was a lot of rumblings about. Uh, pandemic and it was coming from Asia and working its way. And we didn't really think much about it until things actually got real. And you started seeing the desk climate, everything. And when it comes to having large events and airborne pandemic, airborne virus really shuts that down really quick. So we had one events in long beach for about 1500 people at the lake February, and then. One event, I think the second week of March in Seattle, which was a hotspot here in the United States for COVID-19 and that was the last live event we did back in 2020, we had produced several. You can call them virtual events now, but they were more webcast style events for some of our pharmaceutical clients. Coupled with our experience with hybrid events, it was easy for us to pivot into a hundred percent virtual space because we've done it before we have the talent. We have the equipment for it. So maybe companies weren't able to pivot whether it's because of debt or the, they didn't know how to have a virtual event or the right vendors to push them in the right way. Many companies in California past not to mention New York, Chicago, Texas, and bigger markets. We've been producing virtual events since about April actually may or June of 2020. And. They're fun. They're really great. But we prefer live events. Like most people do. There's not a lot of revenue in the virtual events space. When you compared that. The virtual event to the live event. So I know some companies have scaled down almost to 90%, less of a budget. You really have to find the right clients to work with coming out of. COVID obviously we're doing a lot of hybrid events still and really looking to rehumanize the virtual event experience with this new technology. So we're very hopeful. 2021, probably 2022 is still going to be a growing year for our industry, but things are looking up. That's

Rusty:

good apart here. Now, Dana, I want to ask from a marketing procurement standpoint, when you look at budgets for a lot of events, trade shows, conferences, I don't know where all that falls within your purview, but when you look out into 2022, are you seeing that much of company.

Dana:

I really think it depends on the company, ours particularly, really we've had a hard time with product launches. So I don't know that we're going to be hard pressed to go back to live events that said, I think they just had one. So what do I know, actually, with the sales team down and I think Southern California, honestly, When you think about live hybrid events, I think we will still maintain some hybrid just for the pure cost savings portion of it. I do think some budget will come back for conferences and shows, exhibits, booth things of those store that said, I just got an email yesterday saying we're not going back until January it's every day. You're trying to figure out which way the wind's blowing to me. I remember when I engaged with Dean and their are, they really had. Previously where he was able to pivot their business was able to pivot. The other businesses we saw that kind of crash and burn really didn't have that any type of virtual experience. And so it was really hard, I think from the buy side to find suppliers who aren't just pivoting like in a month and have never done anything.

Rusty:

And

Dana:

it was the marketplace was. You know what S show, right? Because you had all these people who were like normally only in-person and Avi and all of these types of providers. And they're like, I got to keep money coming in the door and I don't blame them, but do you really want those people when it's their first time? Going after major events or sales teams meetings and no. And so what really stuck out with Metro UV was the fact that they had experienced and you could tell they were well-versed and they knew what they were talking about. And it wasn't like we pivoted a month ago.

Rusty:

It sounds like it was, yeah. Dean can talk about that side of your business. What was the driving force to originally go away to virtual and hybrid events? Because clearly that was a, a boon for you guys as COVID came in, because it was really second nature compared to a lot of your competitors.

DEan:

Yes, but it wasn't so much as a want rather than a complete absolute necessity. Uh, because like you said, we need money coming in. And so we had, we just did a big group meeting with all of our. Freelancers, all of our technicians, who we kept on, uh, and to said, okay guys, let's just throw it up on the board. Let's see what we can do. How can we make a real virtual event virtual? Because we, like I said, we've done the hybrids all the time in the stream of Facebook. YouTube. That's easy to do, but people want to be engaged. They don't want to be sitting at a zoom call for two, three hours. They need to be engaged. They want to watch a movie, had an idea board what works out, if you will. Well, we could do. And we actually found a new vendor in IBM, which is an amazing partner. They acquired a company 6, 7, 8 years ago to. Bring on more of the media streaming component. And they've been invaluable to us, to be honest with you. And then in that we found another partner that does a lot of single sign-on and our video on demand work for us. So we've actually gained a lot of several new clients, a lot of new vendors, a lot of partners with, with this pandemic. So it's been fun. It's really great. I liked getting really granular with the design and the overlays when it comes to. Executing like Dana was saying, you don't want someone saying, oh shit, we need to figure this out. Now you want people with that experience and most people are virtual events or. 10 20 years old, it's nothing new, but everybody was forced to do it. And that was a big scramble. We were fortunate enough to have the infrastructure, have the talent to PR to produce these events in such a high quality. So we really lucked out because a few companies here in Sacramento even went under and sold just because they didn't have the resources. Yeah. It's been fun. So we're looking forward to. Live events whenever they come, whenever they happen. And then we're saying most, most corporations, 20, 22, maybe Q1, Q2, just depending on. Their comfort level because they don't want to be the first super spreader. So we'll see.

Rusty:

It's um, I've got my fingers crossed that we get to have a fence back because it's, it was really a shame of 2020 when south by Southwest coast seemed like as soon as that conference canceled, all the dominoes just fell and wow. You talk about just, uh, it was just rough. All right. So let's now talk about this new technology.

DEan:

So I actually found this technology. One of the good highlights of 2020 is a app called clubhouse. It's a social audio drop an app. If you haven't downloaded it, download it. It's amazing. Uh, love it met a lot of good people on there. A lot of your friends. Found this technology in one of the rooms I was moderating with and the gentleman, I forget his name said a lot of big corporations and pharma is using it and that perked my ear up. Cause we have a lot of work in the pharma pharmaceutical industry. I said, I'll take a demo with the help. So did the demo totally amazed. I said, we got to, I told our president was like, we need to do this ASAP. So we signed contract. I think two, three weeks ago, press releases came out and the technology is called hollow presence. We've partnered with a company called art media. They are the driving force and the IP holders of this technology. So essentially what the technology can do is when busy high-profile presenters, you know, speakers, if they can't be added. We can put them at any event in the world and they can give their presentation. They can give their address. After that they can then engage with the audience in a full form hologram image like Dana was saying, it looked like Tupac to her. It does look a little bit like Tupac. The technology is a little bit more advanced than the Pepper's ghost. That Tupac was a part of at Coachella several years ago, but when the person gives their. They are in full form ditto and full-scale lifelike form. The large ROI with this technology is we can actually multiply this person anywhere in the world. So I always give the example of bill gates. He's a busy guy doing a lot of positive work for the world. If he needs to be in. London and Germany and Singapore, that's going to be a lot of carbon in the air. It's going to take a lot of time out of his day. What we're able to do is build a capture studio for them, put them in front of a green screen, put in front of a camera or to give them really good lighting. Really good audio, take his image and beam it to those three locations. All of it is simultaneous. There is no latency and everything is in HD video. So the use cases for this is really whatever you want it to be. So with COVID spill a surging and some part of the, some parts of the world, we're able to take out the hassle of travel of time per diems hotel rooms and keep people where they need to be. Put them in a capture studio and beam them to wherever they need to be. There's been different use cases where large pharmaceutical companies have beamed doctors into multiple ad board meetings at the same time, saving thousands of dollars on travel costs. And. There's been times where I think NATO has been using it 18 and T the NBA, a lot of high-profile and entities have been using this technology to not just be the first to do it, but to gain advantage of their competitor because this technology is fairly new to the United States. A lot of our clients in Europe, when I brought, when I brought this topic up to them, I was surprised because they said, oh, you have something like this. The unseen stuff like this before our client in China has seen this before. Our friend in Australia is seeing this before. It takes a very long time, unfortunately, for this technology to get to the United States. So for the people who. I don't like to travel and want something new, the latest and greatest, then I would love to talk to them about it. I love talking to Dean about it and knew about it. It's just amazing technology that is essentially reef humanizing, the digital communication experience.

Rusty:

What I've been presenting lot of, or would I be prerecorded? And then it would be broadcast. Whereas I guess we could do it.

DEan:

You can do it both ways. So we can capture your 15 minutes address beam it live to say three locations, wherever it may be, then you, your company can take that content marketing on social media, market it, and use it as an asset for future. I think

Dana:

the cool part about this is it really addresses the issue of zoom fatigue, right? Everybody is so sick of zoom calls. And if you think about it, like if we can do something different, this is a solution for it that you can have, whatever it is chef go into. 10 classes across the U S at the same time versus paying that chef to travel all along, and then you have him. And when it is live, which is cool, you have him there. He can see you and interact with you just as much as you can see him and interact with him, which I think is the cool part. So it's takes away. Yes, it's similar to live meetings, but it takes away that zoom fatigue and adds a little bit more to it. A little bit more, the humanity that we miss in like conferences and things that.

Rusty:

Do you have to be at the conference in order to see the hologram or if I will, if I'm logging in online, am I going to say,

DEan:

so we actually have two offerings. One is the hall of presence, which is the live component and we have a virtual option. And what we call a virtual global stage before I get into the VGs virtual global stage, the bandwidth is actually quite reasonable. It's 10 up and 10 down for the whole presence or for the VGs. If the presenter has a. PowerPoint or keynote, we want 10 down and 20 up just for enough bandwidth to get to the end user. So it's nothing, there's no bandwidth extreme uses or anything. It's still in the realm of, oh, that's reasonable. So with the virtual global stage, the cool thing is the one-to-one transmission, right? Bill gates to London, we can do that all day. Bill gates to 10 of his offices around the world. We can do that as well. The cool part is same as true in reverse. We can grow. One to four people from different parts of the world and put them on to either the hall of presence stage or the virtual global stage as well. So you can get a bioengineer in New York. You can get a Harvard professor, you can get someone in Spain, you can get a designer in Japan, put them all together. In one stage, and now you have this amazing content, both live or virtual that you can either watch it in person. You can watch on your computer screen tablet, whatever it is, but it's so engaging. Like Dana was saying zoom fatigue. It's still engaging because you have these poor people that you would never get to see on the same stage at one time, especially during this pandemic and you're learning about them. So not only does engagement goes up, but the net promoter score goes up and then the content retention goes up because people are seeing this for the first time. So it's really a win-win and not to mention saving the environment. And the process know

Dana:

sustainability is nice. Nowadays, everybody's looking for good green sustainable products and reducing carbon footprint and everything else. But I think it's really interesting because right now, all we see is talking. And it's completely different when you see somebody. So it's different when you see somebody standing up in full form and they're talking to somebody else, even if it's holographic, it's a different feeling or vibe, I think. And the fact that this technology can do it, I think is, could break the zoom fatigue for a lot of us and really change the way we do things. If we embrace it right. If we embrace the technology and bring it

Rusty:

through, let's talk about some of the results that you've gotten from it, the feedback. Where do you see the biggest use cases? And what's been the reception so far.

DEan:

So everything has been extremely positive from the presenter's standpoint. A lot of people are a little nervous, right? I still get it's where I still get stage fright. When I have to go into a room with 20 people. I don't know, not to mention speaking in front of an audience of 200 plus people. So when people go into the capture studio, it's a very clean, stale environment with the green screen, a lot of equipment. And. They go in, they rehearsed for a little bit, come back the next day, give their address. And then they go about their day. And the feedback we get from the presenters is, wow. That was easier than I thought. And they get to spend time with their family. They don't have to pack and go on a plane or anything. They're there. They're in their hometown from the attending side. Depending on who is being the subject of the hologram. There's a lot of obviously social media and hashtag exposure that we get from the wow factor if you will. But most of the people in the audience are just wowed by it. And some of our clients have promoted it as this. Person's going to be a hologram or special guests stay tuned so you can really play it however you wish, but everything's been really positive from the virtual component. Like Dana was saying was in fatigue. People want something new and sure. You can be an avatar on a virtual event, or you can be some sort and you can be in some sort of immersive environment, but this takes away that not cheesiness as great tech, but it's when you, if you don't need to do it, we're big proponents of if you don't need to do. Don't do it, or why are you doing it right? There needs to be a reason why you want to do this just because you can have an avatar. It doesn't mean it's right for your brand or for your stakeholders, attendees, whatever it is. So this removes all the BS and puts people where they need to be in full form. And with this technology, like I said, you can grab from anywhere in the world, put them on a different, put them in a different category. And put everybody's lives. So it's really revolutionizing how we interact and actually just read an article in the wall street journal that most corporations are looking for new hologram technology. Like they want this to be part of everyday life, right? They want to be part of the Jetsons. They want that new tech because it's gonna, it's going to be here. So we feel privileged to be the exclusive provider of this on the west coast and even south America. So. It's just really exciting to be on the ground floor of this state.

Rusty:

So one big problems with holographic technology. At least when I was looking at it originally for campaigns was the fact that you have to have. Do you ever see this particular technology moving to a standpoint where you could actually have desktop type readers where that can actually be like streaming it through your phone and then projecting up through the actual reader where it would actually have projected. Do you see that being something that you are going to be able to morph into?

DEan:

So actually that's funny you say that because. Potential client of ours in Texas. I showed her this technology. We've been chatting on slack and I said, she's really innovative. She owns her own agency. So I really have to show this to her, to you. And she thought it was that same exact thing to put your phone on a table and something can project like your Tony stark or something like that from your phone. They, when I showed her this, I wasn't expecting this. I was expecting hologram on your phone or a tablet. So that technology actually does exist, but to bring it to a. Usable level. It's still many years away because the technology, they had to put some sort of film or some sort of guide or element or something like that on their phone. And the image was only three to six inches high. She said, so it was a lot of money to do this. And it was actually at south by Southwest a couple of years ago. So that technology exists. Obviously companies are still trying to imitate that to try to get it to real life with our technology. COVID still happening. We've actually been approached. Could we do this in a tent? In the daytime? Yes, absolutely. However, we would need to bring in an led wall, which would drive the cost up a little bit. And then the magic goes away because the, they call it the parallax effect. You're driving a car and you see a telephone pole coming towards you. You start to see the depth and the scale of it when it gets close to. Using an led wall. The magic goes away a little bit, but when it comes to projection, not to get too technical, but we can do front or rear projection. And the screen is anywhere from five to 30 feet wide. So depending on the. Scope of work and the environment. We have a lot of variables to play with when it comes to what we're able to do with technology. So, um, I guess to answer your question, it depends on the use case, right? Is it an outdoor event? Is it for a boutique event and a ballroom somewhere? So it's not just this. We have to do this one way. There's many ways to do it.

Rusty:

It sounds really innovative. Dana, what would, yeah.

Dana:

Yeah. So there's this cool feature. So there's kind of two ways to think about it because I'm a visual person. It's hard to really understand what it looks like without seeing it, but since I've seen it over. Helped create it. One is a fully transparent screen, right? You could stick up on the conference statement. Another is the fact that you can see full people on like a conference online, but yet they're, holographs the other cool thing is the hell upon which I think Dean could probably talk better about or more about, but it's this stationary kind of thing. And for me thinking about like conferences and meetings and things you can do and having patients and trying to save on travel, it's something that you can actually buy and say, we want to do. CFO at multiple places, we could put these hotspots in multiple builds throughout the world. And then you could see not just a talking head, not just the CFOs talking, you could see him full form. They can see you, you can enter it. I think it's an interesting. Kind of difference versus just a conference setting where you had this huge screen and you can see somebody up there and, oh, it's a cool thing. I think there's more daily interactions. It could definitely be used for it's just the investment in the technology, or to be able to buy these. How is it, how a pod is? Am I saying it correctly?

DEan:

Hello, pods. So the whole thought is the newest skew, the hall of presence and the virtual global stage are temporary solutions. The hollow pod is a permanent installation. It's fixed in place. It's a large think of a old school telephone box. On steroids, right? It's probably seven by seven, the ceiling items, maybe eight feet. There's a projector. There's speakers. There's cameras. They're very high techs, a high-tech box and that's been used, or they see that being used in war rooms, business rooms, lecture halls, or anywhere there is hound hall setting for a large corporation. So that has been used only in a few locations just because it's so new, it's their newest. But even activations like Dana was saying, we could probably put this in our exhibit booth. Whoever could be in the capture studio. It can change outright, could be the CEO, COO it could be SME. It would be anybody that they want to put in the booth. So if the client has questions, it's not this two D experience on zoom. It could be, I have a question. Let me bring in my sales engineer. And depending on the event, you could have four or five people just rotating through. And that could be your one-on-one experience rather than you setting up a zoom call on a typical virtual event. So like Dana was saying it's, there's so many use cases. You just have to think about what you want to use this for.

Rusty:

What, uh, what type of costs are you looking at to have you see, you have to create a studio for what equipment stated, what type of investments or companies.

DEan:

So a typical one-to-one. Transmission. So bill gates from New York to London, that's going to be about 25 to 30,000, depending on the event. And if Metro Navy is part of the event, if we are looking at a virtual world, the state. It can be anywhere from 15,000 to 200,000, depending on how many days the event is, how many speakers there are the level of production that we need to raise editing costs. So that's the largest one second, the largest cost. And then the whole applaud is anywhere between 225 and$250,000 with that is an all encompass everything's included in that cost. Not that there's price points for every market, but there really is. Anywhere from figure 15, 250,000, depending on your event with what I get really excited about is the one to many scenarios, right? So I need to put bill gates in 20 locations where like Dana was saying the chef, instead of flying the chef to 10 different cities over two months, do at one time spreading your ROI, capture all that content, create a large media campaign, any campaign for that matter and really. Change how you do things on a positive level. It's net positive. Sure. It's going to cost a lot of money, a lot of money, but you're probably going to save a lot of money because a lot of these corporations that are doing this, or when they get these larger budgets, they're spending half a million dollars on an event. But with us, sometimes it's maybe 250,000 or $300,000. So it really depends on the scope of work that you're trying to obtain into goals.

Rusty:

So one of the values though, of having speakers there live is they get depressed and flesh spend time with the folks you're actually your bigger sponsors. There's a big plug in with them as well. So they get to spend time with them, have dinner with them, whatever it may be, that there's part of it. What is a pushback you're seeing with that? Because that's a pretty important part of reason why. Go to these events because they can actually see somebody live versus Paul graphic. Dana,

DEan:

which would be cool. Yeah. So I was talking to a buddy in Atlanta and he just got a new event, manner event planning job for great company. And he's got all the autonomy in the world. He's planning everything, how he wants to plan it. And he said, Dean, why would I want to use this reason? No BS, why would I want to use this other than cooler wow. Factor? And I said, wow. Okay, let's cut the BS. So. Other than the cool wow factor. Other than a lot of people want to be first, I pitched several sports agencies in the basketball area and they all want to be right the first to do it because they want that edge. They want the bragging rights people still don't like to try. I'm still nervous about traveling. My parents were old, my mother-in-law father-in-law they're old. How can I say this? You want to do it because it's the, not that it's the right thing to do, but it helps people be comfortable with what they're doing. So if I don't like to travel, I would want somebody to come to my home, messed up on social distance, all that fun stuff. But if I don't have to travel and I have the money to do this Elon Musk of the world with 30 K to probably nothing. Um, the wow factor obviously is. With, oh my God, it's a hologram, but I wish Elon Musk was here in person. People just don't like to travel. So that's the biggest incentive.

Rusty:

You're saying that the speakers there's a speaker solves a problem of some of the speakers, which is fine. I just wanted to see, having been part of sponsorships before in the past with these events, a big part of it is the keynotes and spending time with that. Oh

Dana:

wait though. As a speaker, I've done keynotes and I've done a ton of events. I've been on panels to me. I would rather be in a studio by myself with lights. Then, and then sitting up on stage, like I don't have stage fright, but I still like that. I get a little nervous. You're sitting in front of 500 people and you'd have to present, or you can be in front of a screen. Give me the screen. Everybody's used to zoom. Everybody's used to that. Not everybody likes to get up in front of a lot of people. I know a lot of people who just won't do it. And to me, it provides an alternate for people. I don't want to be standing in front of a lot of people and maybe have that stage. I think it also provides the opportunity. And when you think about, okay, you're at an event and you would swap out different people. Hey, you want to talk to our word farmer, right? So you want to talk to a clinical specialist on a trial. Okay. He can come in the hollow presence and he can talk to you. Those people interact at the booth. Oh, Hey, you want to talk to RCFL? Okay. Let's bring our CFO and then you can talk to him. So it allows for that. I feel like transparency and flexibility that you'd even be able to bring different people in without having paid the ton of TNE costs to have. You're not in, you're not going to want to have all those people in a booth. You typically. A couple of sales reps, but there's so many use cases for me. I at least think in the farm industry. And maybe that's why we've adopted it. Um, especially when you have like doctors who have crazy schedules and things of that sort, it just gives you a little bit more flexibility, I think, than it would K we need this doctor to speak on this topic and the Amsterdam and he's in Germany, but we could do this and still have him speak. So. A ton of cool ideas that you could probably

Rusty:

do. I think down the road, when you look at how the technology is going to continue to evolve, people are going to be blown away by all the different, cool things out there. But at some point, though, it still has to stick. You got to get people, give them the past. The fact that quite honestly, I've never really had anybody say that they didn't want to be, do a speaking engagement because they were afraid to travel or say. Didn't want it. They were afraid to get up there in front of a bunch of people. I think I actually almost be better to speak in front a bunch of people versus a screen, because at least you get the feedback. Hey, if I'm sucking, I'm going to know first you get that instinct. Like, boom, get off. I better change it

Dana:

to get

Rusty:

that feedback though. But what are your foot? Have a bunch of people when you're sneaking you get me off that,

Dana:

but you still can see them right. Without being, if

DEan:

it's

Rusty:

live. Yeah. Yeah.

DEan:

So one of the thing that Dan alluded to is you can get premier access to the who's, who of the keynote circuit, if you will, Deepak Chopra is in New York, but your event is in Brussels. You really want them to speak a year, a scientific event, but he can't travel, put them in the hall of residence. We can beam them to your event. And actually some people, this is a shocking, but some high profile speakers will actually be your guest as a keynote for less money. By using this hologram technology. So if they're speaking to these a hundred thousand dollars, they might do it for six years 70 because they know the travel cost isn't there. They can go in the capture studio, keep a quick hour or two hour lecture and then go about their day. That's where I see a

Rusty:

huge benefit. You can do more engagement. You can actually double dip on the same day. If you had to, you know, it's not for everybody, but it also serves purposes when there are conflicts that you must have them, or I can schedule it two events on the same day. That's beautiful. I didn't really think about that. Why not. So how could people learn more about this product and in your, in your.

DEan:

So they can go to our website and Metro audio, visual.com uh, go to our team page and send me an email. We can book a demo right there on our website, or you can send me email. I can send you our deck, and then we can just start from there because there's, uh, there's so many, every time I speak to somebody new, this is really exciting. Every time I speak to somebody like Dana who's in global procurement, or I speak to VP production for a basketball team, they always give me new ideas. About what this could be used for. It leads me down to different areas. So I love talking to people, especially about technology, especially about this technology. So Metro audio, visual ducks. Good to our team page. Uh, you can book a meeting with me or you can just send me an email. We can chat. We can, I can show you our deck as well, but yeah, that's probably the easiest where you can go to social media. We're on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram email, exactly usual stuff.

Dana:

So the reason I really liked Dean and he's genuine, but also he's not going to give you the hard sell. It's not a lot of times. I think in procurement, we get these people selling and pushing. I don't want to sit through that all day, every day. You really just want somebody to explain what's going on in with your interests. And you're going to tell them you're like with digging, I'm like, okay. Yes, let's do this. I'm setting up capabilities, presentations. I'm doing all those things, but it's nice to have somebody who's not trying to shove something down your throat and sell it to you. And that hard sale to me is typically one of the things that kind of makes me. Veer away from certain people or is there any suppliers? So the fact that you don't have to have somebody cyberstalking you or calling your cell phone and you don't know how they got their phone number and still trying to figure that one out. So things like that. I think it's nice. When you think about the interactions that you have with specific people and suppliers. Yeah.

DEan:

Great air. I think, I guess from my grandfather, but yeah, the, like I told Dana, this technology sells itself, so I don't have to be pushy. And if you, if people get it, they get, if they don't, I know it's like getting it on sunlight before there's sunlight. Right. I know there's going to be use case. I know people are going to say that, you know, base price of 30 K is the little pricey for us. Okay. Not a problem. If you get a good sponsor, maybe we can do some B roll or highlight footage to lower the costs, a small discount or something like that. But. I know people are going to use it. So it's just getting in front of the right people to, to see the technology and understand it because it's an hour out of my day or two hours out of my day to speak to somebody I'll spend all the time in the world with them to explain the.

Rusty:

I appreciate you coming on more pro has been really interesting conversation. Congrats on all the success and look forward to staying in touch.

DEan:

Thanks Dana. Thanks rusty.