REMOTE VS. BROADCAST CONTROL ROOM WORKFLOW

Hello, this is Les Goldberg, and welcome to The Road Ahead. The Road Ahead podcast is dedicated to the future of the live events business, bringing together industry experts. Hello, production world, this is Les Goldberg on The Road Ahead. Today I have three amazing guests. I have Martin Dempsey, who is the owner of Event Stage Productions. I have Jennifer Winegardner, who is an executive producer, and I have Steve Campbell, the executive vice president of ETP BrainHub. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the show. Hello. Hey hey everyone. Today our show is dedicated to this virtual world we're living in, and we're dedicated to the idea of a remote workflow versus a broadcast control room workflow. So we're going to talk about how we do virtual events and how we work and our workflow and which is better and what's different. So I'm going to throw the first question to Steve Campbell. Steve, could you describe the difference between a remote production workflow versus a broadcast control room workflow? Just kind of give everybody like a high level a difference between those two systems and how we do it? Yeah. The remote virtual is really what we pivoted to pretty quickly in, in the pandemic at the time when no one could travel and everyone had to be sort of in their own space and uses all software based switching. Everybody's working from home and on virtual platforms, and it allowed us to continue our workflow in, in a safe way, what the master control room allows us to do, as we're getting sort of back to a place where it's safe to have people together, as long as you follow. Good practice is to put operators back on their traditional hardware based desk and be in the same space with each other, and sort of more back to a normal workflow that allows the team to work a little bit closer together, and producers are a little bit more back in a common ground where the team is together and the producer production staff has the opportunity to either do it or be in the space with their crew and have a little bit more direct contact with how the show is going on, and using tools that are a little bit more familiar and a little bit more robust. You know what, Steve? What's interesting, what you said was you have a crew and everyone can kind of see and talk to each other versus this crew. That's everyone's remote. They're all at home. And and it's a different feeling when you are not able to communicate. It's not like you can walk up to someone. They're kind of working in a remote way. So this question goes to Jennifer. Jennifer, I know you've done shows and kind of both capacities. And I want to know, can you maybe describe have you had a preference as to a better experience doing remote production or with a, you know, a broadcast control room? Which one has have been easier for you to do or more adaptable? Just give us some feedback. Well, of course, as Steve said at the beginning of the pandemic, we had to do all virtual by necessity, so that was a great solution at the time. We needed to keep people safe and we needed to continue to communicate the client's messaging. But I have worked in both. I've never done a full broadcast control room situation. I've always had some virtual components, usually me, my show caller, sometimes a TD. I've always had graphics and prompter and coordinator remote. So I haven't been lucky enough yet to to come back into any kind of a production situation. I would say some of the limitations of the remote situation. The fully remote situation is that we're relying on such a diverse universe of different setups in different locations. So I found a lot of people, when they first started working in this environment, didn't realize exactly how many devices they were going to need to have, how many, how much internet connectivity they were going to need to have. An even power was an issue in some situations. So I feel like that that all virtual world is it's, you know, it's sort of just a patchwork. It was like the Wild West and we were just trying to figure everything out. So for me, it's been a relief to come back into to having some semblance of normalcy where my crew is all together and they can work together to solve problems and see a problem across the room and collaborate together so as it as it as it moves forward. I'm looking forward to actually all of us being together again. But but it is nice that we can safely bring people together, even to some point. Now. I like the way you say the word safely bring people together. Those are like those are like a tweet. So I'm throwing this question to Martin, and Martin, I'm sure you've had both the full virtual experience or this production hub, you know, room experience. Maybe you could share your thoughts on those experiences you've had. Yeah, it's it's been an interesting and let's just bottom line this that we're some of us are still fortunate to be working. So in any case that we speak of this, we we we speak of being fortunate to be able to work remotely. And we also think of those who are still not working yet. So so the ultimate goal is that we will all get back together and work safely. And the remote experience, the completely remote experience is when I've done multiple times now we're literally there. There is no central core team, although in my mind, when I'm on, when I'm on IP based intercom with them, I somehow think that they're all together in one room and I'm the one who's remote. But yet we know that everyone, everyone is actually remote. And and you know, there are some great challenges with that. It's it's a mindset that that I think, again, that I've had to kind of work through on my own to, to kind of understand what people need as far as information, what we can't just walk across the room and give to them backstage or in front of house and be able to still provide them with as much information as they need to be successful, even though none of us are connected together. So when we've gone back and done some of the broadcast pieces in small studio work and done a bit of that hybrid work where some still may be remote and some are located together in a group, there's still that that need to share information even more widely. And in some, in some ways, I feel like this world is on the pre-production side is creating a vast greater amount of pre-production requirement to make sure that when we go into this environment, everybody does have all that information at their disposal, because we have to move at the speed of light over the internet to execute these events that we're fortunate to still be working on. You know, it's interesting that you said that, you know, this remote world were so dependent upon the internet and this experience that all of the texts are having. And and I you know, I want to throw this question to Steve Campbell. What are the drawbacks, the limitations of working in this remote world? You know, not all texts that I'm aware of have been able to make the transition from working in a live ballroom to working in a remote world. So maybe you could kind of talk to the technical side as well as the technicians as well as the limitations of maybe the hardware? Yeah, I mean, it's well, I mean, the interesting thing is when we made the switch to to all virtual, there was not a long build up period from let's learn how to do this and let's rebuild shows slowly. Everyone pretty quickly try to get back to a level of production that it had taken us. We had spent 30 years developing in our previous workflow. We tried to get back to that in a matter of a few weeks, and as everybody was learning the new set of tools, it was, you know, it was, I guess, a fun experience of everybody learning new skills and new workflow and what worked and what didn't, and how, you know, how things were put together and called. And, you know, I think it just the big drawback is, is not, as we talked about earlier, is just being separated. And if you're in a software based solution. If something isn't working correctly, the troubleshooting becomes much more different. And as the shows have gotten more complex and we're trying to stack several studios together, when you do have an issue, it becomes really difficult to troubleshoot a really time consuming to troubleshoot a, because you have people spread out across the country that are controlling it. And be it, you're working across several computers and platforms to make these complex events work, and not having someone backstage that can just run over and make a little tweak on a piece of hardware or run a new cable is is it's tougher just to troubleshoot and get things back on track in a rapid fashion. So so this question is to Jennifer, Jennifer, in this remote world that we're you're working in, what do you feel like are the limitations? What do you feel like the things that you are, they could be points of frustration or they're just limitations because, you know, you just don't have your crew right next to you. Well, like we've been saying, it is tough to to not be able to just turn to someone and ask them a question or just notice that one of the computers accidentally, somehow is on Wi-Fi suddenly instead of hard wired. So there's that, that, that lack of instant connectivity face to face. And also, you know, something actually, that I'm just thinking of now, less is, you know, there is a lot of room for misinterpretation when you can't see someone's face. So you have to be really careful about how you're communicating with people over the internet or on calm when you when you can't see them, and in some cases don't see their face, the whole experience. And in fact, I try and start off each of my events, if I can, with just a quick WebEx or Zoom or Microsoft Teams or whatever platform we're using based on the client's preference and just say, hi, I'm Jennifer, this is what I do. Who are all of you? Just so that we can have a face in our in our mind as we're talking to people? I think that is an awesome approach because clarity and and you know, you know, there's a term the voice of God. Mike. You know, in one of these virtual events, everyone just seems to have a voice. But to put a face to that voice is so essential. Very interesting. Martin. Question. Have you heard or seen an experienced any of the crew members, you know, people that you've worked with for years that are people that do really well in life, but when they've kind of made the transition to virtual, they're having more challenges with it because it's they don't have that same kind of feedback system. If you're running audio, you can't, you know, audience reaction, you're backstage and you're in video land or enlightening. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah, that's a that's a great question. Again, I think that kind of points to what I was saying at the top is that we're we're fortunate to be working because we know so many who aren't. But you also see this, this process to where initially some people, I think in their minds, we're going to almost kind of wait this out, if you will, and was like, you know, the virtual thing. I think I'm going to wait it out, wait till live events come back. And of course, we knew that that timeline just kept getting extended. So it's been an interesting thing to watch as as people develop those skills in this new realm and to and again, there's people we've we've been all working together for decades in the live events world. And you you see, just like we see it in ourselves, how we've had to rebuild our toolset and how we've had to relearn and how everything that we're doing right now is completely bespoke. And and the workflow that we talk about really is completely situational to every single client, every single project. So we're kind of building everything from scratch, and we're seeing everybody coming back into this realm and learning new two tool sets. And it's also been an interesting thing to see people from other disciplines, let's say in the lighting world, who've who've picked up things platforms like VMs and have become operators and have just again learned a whole new toolset already had these great skills in in our live events world, but have now applied them because they see that, you know, again, they've they've had to adapt. They've had to adapt to be able to keep working. So again, I think only even to my own experience, thinking of how I've had to completely rethink my own workflow, my own tool sets and, and have struggled right and have and have learned a whole new set of terminology and a whole new way of doing these events. You know, it's interesting. Jennifer and Martin both said the element of communication is so essential when you talk about a remote crew, and because every word has to have a lot of meaning, there's no there's no facial expressions. Jennifer, your thought. Yeah. Well, I was just thinking, you know, one of the funny things about having a crew in a broadcast control room, but having some of us still remote is kind of, you know, FOMO, as the kids say, sort of fear of missing out. So those of us who are still in our homes all alone, just on calm, and we can tell that they're having fun, or sometimes they're working really hard on something and we're like, hey guys, what's going on? So it's it's that's been an interesting element for me. I had a TV yesterday. I give a great suggestion on this virtual on the master control room. Yeah, it's all great, but we need you to set up a couple of cameras that are just high, wide shots of the crew area because it's, you know, it's the the producers are grateful everybody's together and working, but they need to be able to see them as an entire group so that they have some confidence and understanding of what the team is doing as a, as a whole, because they can only see individual faces. And if teams are running around working on something that's nice, that they can sort of have that wider shot of what's going on. Great idea. Well, we've got a new spy cam. It's going to be called the crew cam. Crew cam tweet for this this podcast. So I'm throwing this back to Steve. So Steve when is the cloud workflow other than the everyone being remote. And we have limitations by lockdowns. When is that the right solution. And what would you say that is the that that solution is best used for. What specific type of show would you say? Let's just do it on the cloud workflow. What are the attributes of that show? I think it's a show that is is a little bit more limited by the number of of remote participants and the speed at which they have to come in and out of the platform and be, you know, is it are we working with 4 or 5 presenters over the course of an hour, or are we trying to have this huge group of people cycling through the system and really quickly, and once we start talking about having to stack multiple studios together to get get all of those people in and out of the platform, I think that's really where we have to start talking about the master control room workflow, because it's it's with the operators back on their familiar tools as we have challenges and those events that that previously in our live events were just the normal things we worked through. It's a lot easier to to make those adjustments and roll with the punches as the events change, because everyone's together and working in that troubleshooting and working in that normal workflow. Whereas in the virtual platform, once you really start getting into, you know, deep levels of complexity, what we have found is, is we can say yes to a lot in the virtual world and the mix sort of workflow and build these really complex and capable systems, but they can they get to a point where they can can be a bit unwieldy, unwieldy. So if if we had our druthers, every show would be a broadcast control room, if that were possible. Is that a fair statement? No, no, I don't think so, because I think as we as we you know, I think, you know, 2021 is going to be like 2020 but in reverse. We're going to start out really remote and in the beginning of the year, and by the end of the year, I think we'll be doing a lot of stuff back together. But it gives the opportunity. You know, once we come out of the pandemic, I still think the remote virtual workflow is a great answer to a lot of questions we were struggling with before the pandemic, with with a greener solution and a more carbon neutral solution, because we were struggling to have really meaningful answers to those questions. Well, with this remote workflow, there are absolutely parts of what we were doing that fit into this workflow. And having a virtual audience that hasn't flown to a site and, you know, have had that that carbon footprint and the crew that is able to work remotely on smaller parts, whether we're doing records or just bringing in individual presenters or broadcasting the event out to an entirely different audience, there is there is such an opportunity in it that, you know, used in conjunction with our normal tools. I think it'll be around for a long time, because it really answers a lot of a lot of questions that we were struggling with before the pandemic. Okay. Question to Martin. Martin. So if you're working remote and you are calling a show remote or whatever the capacity your role is, you're at home and your infrastructure, you know, how important is that internet feed? And what about the backup internet feed, and how do you feel about that? And have you had any issues where, you know, somehow the internet isn't 100% foolproof? What has your experience been? Yeah, I mean, fortunately here I'm, I'm I'm the network engineer of my of my own solution here working from home. So it's it certainly has had a couple of challenges here or there where the internet and the network here has had to be rebooted. That not not not not fortunately no real seriously critical times. But it's it's something that again, I think as you said to earlier, everybody had to come to that conclusion very quickly that that it's interesting in the, in the pre-pandemic world, all we worried was about having massive download speed. And we now know that in this realm, having a really high upload speed is also very critical to and having things like a cellular backup plan that is reliable is absolutely critical as a as a failover point for anyone who is attempting to do this remotely. So whether, you know, especially if you're doing if you're doing records and you're responsible for the record capacity of it as well, that's that's very true. But again, when you are on an IP based intercom and you've got a platform solution or 2 or 3 sometimes that are all open at once that you need to collaborate with. Plus you're also using shared drives like a Dropbox or Fox.com or Google Drive. And you start to look, you know, you're doing a lot of speed testing to make sure that you're still allocating your remote bandwidth in the right place so that you're not compromised in one place or another, either receiving Dropbox updates with massive content files, or you're on a platform, and you want to make sure that you're not seeing any resolution drop there either. Or most importantly, that's your IP based intercom solution. Is is always up and running. And that's that's one of those ones that you, you know, has been a huge, huge learning curve for a lot of us to get get our heads wrapped around around those solutions as well. Do you know, Jennifer, I want to ask you the same question because you're experiencing something like Martin, we're working remotely and you know that that infrastructure is so important. And and feeling helpless of something starts to not work. Have you had any experiences like that? Oh, yes, I have. I was a victim of during a session, the victim of hurricane or tropical storm Isaiah's knocked out everything for me, and it was such a helpless, crazy feeling. And it knocked out me and it knocked out my graphic artist, my show up during the session. So, you know, luckily we did have a partially a broadcast control center where another crew member could quickly jump over and forward the graphics. But it was such a helpless feeling. I mean, I could do nothing, I couldn't text, I didn't have power, I didn't have internet, I had, I had nothing, and there was nothing to be done except go to a Howard Johnson's hold the show. We're going to the Ho Jo's. Luckily, my husband is is very technically savvy, more so than I. So we've we have a project over the holidays are going to replace all our Cat 5 cables with Cat 6. We've jacked up our internet to the highest available speed. We got a generator, you know, and kind of everybody has to think about doing that. And I'm not even really a show position. I'm not essential. The show can go on if I'm not there. But for show callers and graphic ops and promoters and certainly for the for the remote broadcast centers like you have, Les, and I'm sure you have a billion, trillion backups of every kind. We have a generator that will run our, our, our head end for like ten days and all the ups. So it's infrastructure is so important and we're so dependent on the internet. And if the internet were to fail, you know, you have a backup internet and then, you know, you know, the challenges with a solution, a cloud based solutions, they don't allow that instant switchover. Steve, would you make a comment about that as far as the, you know, dropping up to a backup internet? Yeah. Well, if you're on and your internet dies, you can't. It doesn't switch. Yeah. I mean, we we run our facility on redundant ten gig services and there there is an instant switchover. But but they're, you know, there as you drop internet and pick up a new service, even if, you know, if you were sitting in the facility and just surfing the web, you probably wouldn't notice that the internet had dropped. But because of the way we make the connections with the callers and the outbound signals, that packet loss results and and us having to reconnect, all of the presenters reconnect our encoders to their, their, their points in the web that are streaming out to. And so even though, you know, we only lose internet for less than a second, it is a pretty big speed bump in the show as everything is reconnected and get ready to go, go back live. And if it's a fairly simple show with a single, a single instance and just a couple of presenters, it comes back up really quickly in the matter of a minute or two. But if it's a really complex show, it can take a while to get all of those connections remade and the crew all back to the same point and ready to go again. So it's been an interesting learning on how fast we can get recover from an internet outage and and get the show back up with the least amount of disruption to the for the audience as possible. You know, it's interesting when talking to all of us is it sounds like if I could sum up the discussion, it sounds like Martin said we had to learn our new tools, and Jennifer shared with us this sometimes when you're you're on an island and you know, you're you're at home and there's a storm coming and brewing, and if you lose your internet, it can be quite a lonely place to be. And so many of the crew members that are working on remotes are truly essential. And alternatively, the idea of having these broadcast control rooms, these production hubs where people can gather, we seem to have a better experience. So we're going to have to add crew cam to our new list of requirements. So all the remote people can feel part of the crew without, you know, maybe they can't all be there, but at some point in 2021, we're going to all get back together. We're going to go back to the ballroom, because that's just where we've been for so long. You can't keep me out of the ballroom that long, okay? It's just not possible. We we had show starting to cancel, which started that that process in COVID was about the beginning of March. And, you know, a lot more outdoor events. I know concert tours want to get back. So it's just about what the future looks like. And then there's this vaccine and and the mindset of people feeling safe to travel. And it's all coming back. It's just a matter of when. So I'm going to go through this question to Jennifer. First. This is my final question for this podcast. Jennifer, when are we going back to the ballroom? Would you use your crystal ball and share? I've decided to end every podcast with people predicting the future, and I'd like to know when I'll be in a ballroom with you or any ballroom anywhere. I'm not talking about meeting size. We have 200 people. That's a show. So could you go time so everyone knows that we can tell six months from now whether you are a genius and you hit the mark or you were off the mark. Well, I have been listening back to some of your episodes less, and I see that you've kind of started a Over Under contest, almost. So I'm just wondering what the prize is going to be. The prize is going to be we're going to be so happy. The happiness that will be transmitted to all human beings that are in our industry, because people want to they want to meet, they want to get together, they want to greet. This is this inherent need to gather in groups, to share, to reward, to recognize all of those attributes are associated with that. So those are the intangible ones. But I'll just tell you, Martin, Les, and Steve will all have very happy smiley faces. If we are unloading a truck in a ballroom, there's there will be no happier feeling than that. But please share. What is your what is your time horizon for us? Well, I will certainly take that prize. That's all I want to. That's all I want. You know, I'm kind of feeling. Autumn 2021 is when we're back in the ballroom. So if I'm listening to this in May from, you know, the Venetian lower level, hopefully I'll be laughing at how wrong I am. But I'm going to say October 2021 is what I'm feeling. Okay, October 2021. Okay, I just want you to know it's December, so that means you're approximately a ten month away. That's your ten month away from ballrooms. So I can count that in days. It's about 300 days just to throw out some numbers. Martin, would you opine to this wisdom question that we need you to dig deep into your into the auspices of your crystal ball and share with us when will we. And it could be a 200 person meeting. I don't need to have 20,000. I'm willing to go 250, 300 people gathering socially distance. I'm going to say June, actually. And I think that from what I've seen on LinkedIn, I've already seen, again, if size of the gathering is no account, we've already seen some small things coming together and again, hopefully safely, because that's most important for us to all get back. But I'm going to I'm going to hopefully think that by June again, on some scale, that will actually start to see some small gatherings in a very hybrid live event with the majority audience most likely not actually being with us. Okay. Mr. Steve Campbell, would you bring us home and tell us your crystal ball? When will we be doing meetings again in ballrooms? Steve, share. I think I'm going to have to agree with Martin. I think June is when we start seeing a trickle of events with people starting to get together, that that will build over the summer and take us into an end of the year, that that I think we're going to kind of go from pandemic to pandemonium as we get into the very end of next year, with the amount of events that are trying to happen toward the end of the year. That is another tweet. Martin had the damn you get pandemic to pandemonium. That's that's that's the quote of the show was right there. Hey, if Steve and I win, do we have to split the prize or do we each get the prize? I think we each get the prize. We all get the prize. We all go get prize, right? Let's let's hope we all get the prize. You know, a nice old ballroom at a very early morning unload at the dock, I think would be just awesome. I do believe that when it comes back and people feel comfortable, the amount of demand for doing live will be off the chart. And for those companies that have survived and have have fought through this, there will be so much demand and the supply will not be able to support the amount of people trying to get back in the business. And a lot of people in our industry have left the industry for other industries where there are jobs. But anyway, I want to thank all of you. You're all amazing in your own ways, and I'm glad you've all opined. So you're officially on the record so we can reflect back at this and June of 2021 or Autumn or October. And so thank you to Jennifer, to Martin and to Steve Campbell. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Good job everybody. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Awesome.