Tim was a guest on The Pixilated Podcast, the only podcast dedicated to bringing daily interviews, tips, and technology for event marketing professionals from seasoned event professionals and entrepreneurs.
Podcast Transcript
Patrick Rife (00:07):
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Pixilated podcast. I am your host Patrick Rife, CEO here at Pixilated. Bringing you another episode in our interview series for those of you who have been tuning along this season, you know, that we have been focusing on interviewing tons of amazing people throughout the event, prof diaspora season one Saw us doing a lot of that and then also a lot of other kind of content pieces. But with this season we wanted to really just focus exclusively on connecting with other people building our relationships, and then also like capitalizing on all of this amazing knowledge that people in the events industry have that maybe doesn't make it out to see the light of day as often as it should. So without further ado, I want to welcome Tim from Talon Audio Visual to the call today, Tim, welcome to the Pixilated podcast.
Tim Kerbavaz (00:59):
Hey, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. That event prof diaspora. I like that term, certainly over the last, you know, couple of years, we've definitely seen our industry kind of splitting and dividing and in, in many cases folks leaving. And so I think as you rightly point out, this is the chance to kind of reconvene as an industry and kind of come together and share our lessons learned and growth together.
Patrick Rife (01:27):
Yeah, yeah. And apply all the, we gotta rewrite the rules again for three years in three years. Yeah. Well, so Tim, before we get into, I got a bunch of questions I'm super excited to dig in, but I like to just try and like seed the floor right off the jump because nobody can kind of frame up who you are and what you do better than yourself. So why don't you let everyone know kind of, you know, who you are and a little bit of your, you know, origin story and then we'll get into some questions.
Tim Kerbavaz (01:52):
Yeah. So I'm Tim Kerbavaz. I am the owner of Talon Audio Visual, which is a, you know, production company based in California. Although I say that with some hesitation, because as we talk about kind of evolving landscapes of events and what I do has evolved tremendously in the last few years. You know, I got my start in, in AV as a, you know, child. You know, I remember going to Radio Shack with my grandmother to pick up my, you know, Christmas, present a microphone from Radio Shack. And and that being sort of this thing that I was super excited about and, and literally, you know, it is all downhill from there, you know so much for, you know, being a lawyer or a doctor, I guess, but you know, in terms of that level of kind of delight and excitement has, has stayed with me and I really do love the work that we do as an industry.
Tim Kerbavaz (02:45):
And I think that we do create the light and magic for our customers to what I do specifically and kind of what my work has evolved into. It's been a mix of, you know, I mean, I started out as a, you know, basically a local Retnal and Staging company in Davis, California, and grew over the, the years into sort of a regional provider. And then what I do now has evolved into much less providing equipment and much more providing sort of consulting services and, and production support. So I call myself a technical producer. I work both with my own direct clients and with other production companies and agencies producing events. And one of the things I specialize in particular is event accessibility and localization. So specifically live broadcast captioning and live broadcast translation and localization. And, and so looking at, you know, broadly kind of making events, accessible, making events understandable to your audience is, is something that's super, both interesting to me.
Tim Kerbavaz (03:41):
And, and something that has carried through my career, I've worked you know, in kind of accessibility broadly for, for a number of years. And one of the things that I see as we come into sort of back into ballrooms in person events is that I don't want to leave behind all of the people that we've been able to include with virtual events. And, and I, when I say that virtual events have allowed folks who can't necessarily travel or attend in person for a variety of reasons for, you know, disability for financial reasons, for childcare reasons, for you know, just PAC schedule and can't afford the travel day reasons. There's so many people that are able to be included in virtual events that cannot probably come to our in-person events. And so one of the things I'm interested in as we look at kind of this return to, to events in the ballroom and kind of what does the evolving event landscape look like really is how do we make sure that everything we do is adding to our audience, adding to our inclusivity and not taking things away that we've sort of given people accidentally in some ways.
Patrick Rife (04:45):
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. What a great, what a great summation I wrote down, you like tweaked my brain in a, in a few different ways. And, and one I want to get to back to, but, but poignantly, what you were just mentioning, you know, like this, you know, like the accessibility element, right? The way that it really kind of changed things up. And at first we just, we, we really tended to focus on it a lot through the lens of, you know, like, oh, well, there could be people that are interested in, you know, like for whatever, for a large nonprofit organization that serves, you know, like a very specific kind of cancer, right. That ha that could have a global audience, but it happens to be based in like Des Moines, right? So like the people that are interested or impacted by it, you know, they aren't able to come, but the other side of it is, is accessibility.
Patrick Rife (05:31):
Like doesn't just have to be geographic problems, right. Accessibility is a far broader conversation. And I think it's interesting that you mention that because a previous guest of ours makes stray, she works in sustainability and is based in the UK. And I saw you know, like funnily enough a Twitter thread recently from her talking about the lack of closed captioning being brought into the live event space again, and how, you know, like over the past two years, that gap has been able to be bridged for all of those people who were maybe not thought of previously, because it was convenient to the way that software was working. And maybe we didn't notice it as much before, but now that you have been able to be in that environment and you're back in this live space, and it's not closed, caption, people are raising the flag and saying, wait, you you're missing something that was actually really valuable to us. And, and by the way, it's not negotiable anymore. Like we need you to figure out how that comes in. So I'm curious one, if you saw, I, I think you're probably connected with Meg or at least you're seeing some of her stuff, but I'm curious if you saw that thread or, or have any thoughts about that.
Tim Kerbavaz (06:45):
Yeah. I, unfortunately I missed that thread. I, I am fairly active on Twitter, but in sort of, I think a different circle. And, and so but to that point, I mean, you know, when we talk about accessibility broadly, right, we mean, you know, the ability to access, whatever, right. But there's so many facets to that, particularly in the event space. And as you point out with captioning specifically, which is something that I've been working on for for many years is that, you know, there's all these tools to sort of automate AI based captions for web broadcast. And those tools aren't necessarily as easy to implement in person. Now, I would say I do not really think that AI captions are adequate. I'm actually using them right now in our meeting just to follow along. But I, I do think that you know, if you have an event and audiences that need captions, you really need to pay for human captions and that's captions are generated, live with a human stenographer.
Tim Kerbavaz (07:44):
So like a court reporter, someone who uses like a stenographic cord based keyboard to type, you know, two, 300 words a minute, and, and that works in person just as well as online where you have a stenographer sitting either backstage or remotely, and then their, their texts coming up on typically like screens. And I've done that a lot with either in big, big spaces. You'll do like a ribbon display across the top or bottom of the big projector screens or the, the L led walls for smaller events and, and theaters. I've done like 70, 80 inch TVs just sort of flanking the stage in the orchestra. So, you know, sort of the best seat for captions would be like the orchestra seats. But I do a lot of did in the, in the previous, the, you know, before COVID times a lot of events where we had, you know on onsite screens.
Tim Kerbavaz (08:26):
And I wanna clarify, so when we talk about captions and the UK uses a different terminology here, but in the us when we talk about captions, there's open captions and closed captions, just a little trivia here, closed captions are like on your TV, where you can turn them on and off, there's a button. So whether it's in your YouTube player or on your television, that you can make them go away. Open captions are part of the video, like burned into the video. They're, they're actually just always visible to everyone. And closed captions are metadata. They're not actually part of the video signal. They're, they're basically text data sent along with the video, just a point of trivia there.
Patrick Rife (08:57):
<Laugh> awesome. Awesome. That's a good piece of clarification. I I didn't realize the, the difference between the two, although I definitely am familiar with each one. So that, that, you know, like I think that, I think that that's an interesting, you know, an interesting point and, and you know, what that means, right. Is investing in, in more, an infrastructure and more production to be able to meet that, right. Like that's an additional person, you know, and, and I think that one of the things that we're seeing already, and I think that it's, it's unfortunate, but I'm already seeing lots of clients that are immediately reverting back to live events, and they're just lopping off the virtual, you know, and they're, they're trying to treat it like it's a, you know, an aftertaste that they're ready to, to to dismiss. And I find it to be a bit shocking because, you know, I, if there's one thing that was true is like your audience that was there for your live events in 2019 was not the same audience that you have been directing your, your events to for the last two years, there's a portion of them that are, are there, but every person that migrated had to build a new audience in some regard or another, and what I thought would happen is I really thought that people would glean to this idea of as opposed to producing a live event for this, like set audience, this whole, you know, concept of an ongoing community, right.
Patrick Rife (10:32):
That you're producing content for. And you're making sure that it's available, whether it's in virtual or it's live, or it's, there are hybrid things tying together. And the, but the reality of that is, is now that live events are starting to turn back up these planners. They don't have the resources to be able to do that, and they're having to pick and choose because as you know, very well, you can't take a planner that was responsible for producing event in one arena. And all of a sudden have them be able to produce an event in two arenas that have all different tools and resources. So curious what you're seeing, you know, in regards to that.
Tim Kerbavaz (11:11):
Yeah. You know, I definitely see that where folks are kind of just reverting back to sort of the way things were or the way they sort of used to do things. And, and I understand why, right, as you point out it's, it's resources, it's budget, it's bandwidth as the, you know, event professionals just can't necessarily manage effectively two events at once. And, and so, you know, I think from a, an event professional perspective, I understand why people are doing that from a client perspective. It's super frustrating because I understand that these things cost extra, but I think there's, there really is so much ROI to be had for, you know, adding, you know, maintaining virtual options, maintaining virtual presence, as you said, maintaining online community that keeps that conversation about your company and your product going. And, and I think it's kind of a communication issue of, you know, are we as an industry adequately defining and communicating that real ROI to our clients so that they come up with more money because obviously, right, I can't expect an event planner or a producer to, you know, just magically, you know, make resources appear.
Tim Kerbavaz (12:20):
You know, but I think, you know, part of the challenge, not necessarily as an individual, but as an industry is kind of making that case to our clients about, you know, why you know, maintaining virtual options matters why accessibility matters, why, you know, having captions in your theater or ballroom matters. And, you know, these are all things that are not free, but, you know, I think that there's real reasons that, you know, these things matter both to audiences and to clients. And, and so part of it is gonna be really defining for whom on the client side, each of these various opportunities has the best ROI and then really making that case to them about, you know, for you, why this is the case. And I can say that, you know, the big tech companies are not rushing back to in person events, you know, they're having in person, no, and to some degree, but you know, the big tech launches, I mean, apple is doing all their keynotes, you know, remotely, or, and, and frankly they're, you know, they're you know, just, you know, basically TV show, right.
Tim Kerbavaz (13:24):
And, and I think that I've heard from audiences that, you know, they think the apple keynotes are better now than they have ever been, but it's because they're producing it like a TV show, not like a conference, it's not a press conference anymore. It's, you know, it's, it's a, it's a movie. Right. And so I think one of the things that changes in terms of the way you approach online events versus the way you approach a ballroom event is you don't have a captive audience right now. And I think that in person events often get away with being boring or, or really not engaging because your audience is physically stuck in the ballroom with you and they can't leave. And so it doesn't actually mean they're necessarily paying attention. It just means you they're physically with you, whereas online you're audience, so many other competing, you know, interests right.
Tim Kerbavaz (14:17):
Or competing meaning for their attention that you really are forced to really be compelling. And, and I think when we look at what is a model of a compelling broadcast first event that happens seven days a week, it's your local TV affiliates, nightly news, right? Where they've got a show that has a formula that they have honed over decades to make work, you know, to capture attention. They have you know you know, a host segment that introduces the show. They have remote guests who are reporting from the scene. They have prerecorded video segments, buffering, live segments. They have, you know interstitial segments. They have the weather, right? All these various components that keep the show engaging in dynamic. And I think as a virtual event, that's your model of what a virtual event should look like. It's, it's the news.
Tim Kerbavaz (15:09):
It's not, you know, what your conference used to look like in person. So the challenge is, as we look at, how do you translate that to an event that is both in person and online is how do you maintain the compelling, you know driven, you know, driving timeline of the virtual event while also like giving your in-person events, attendees, a lunch break, right. You know and letting them stop for coffee. And so I, I think, you know, when you're looking at it, it really is kind of two different formulas, but I also think that in-person events could by and large afford to be much more engaging. And I, I, I think that a lot of virtual events have been, or sorry, a lot of in-person event rather have been coasting on the fact that they have a captive audience. And, and I think, you know, a lot of in-person events could, could stand for some shake up too.
Patrick Rife (15:55):
Yeah. Yeah. Couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more well. So, you know, one of the other things that you said in your intro that I that I would be remiss not to go back to is, is radio shack. You know, like I, I think that that there are certain P people of a certain age will understand what that reference means. You know, like radio shack used to be the place where you could go and get transistors and they had, you know, like little bins of bots and bobs and like all of those things. And, and it was also like, you know, you go look, look at a Tandy computer, like floppy discs, like all of those, you know, like there's a lot of, you know, it's like black light posters and a Spencer as well to a degree, but there's also that thing, you know, it's kind of like the same way that sunny surplus used to be.
Patrick Rife (16:44):
I don't know if you guys have the middle on the east coast, we had a store called sunny surplus and it was like legitimate army surplus, like canteens. And it was like all a buck and 70 cents. Cause it was just all this like war gear <laugh> that was like, we gotta get rid of it, sell it to the public, it like, you know, pennies on, on the dollar. But there were, you know, those kind of stores, right. That open up access to those bits and bobs that allow a curious kid to come in and, you know, like all of a sudden run his RA, his radio and a microphone into one place and then have a single output and be able to like, you know, produce your own broadcast. I was very much that person as well. So I just, you know, talk a little bit about that. Talk about, you know, like your, that, that, you know, that hook in your mouth that kind of just came along. Yeah.
Tim Kerbavaz (17:31):
So, I mean, I think as you say, I mean, radio shack was this as much as it was, you know, sort of, and at the end, particularly kind of this seemed sort of corporate store it brought into almost community access to electronics and access to electronics, you know, when it started and, and its heyday at a time when there was not necessarily a lot of consumer access to technology to electronics, right. There were dedicated electronic stores where there was like an old dude behind the counter and you walked up and you're like, I wanna, whatever. And he layers at you as he finds it in the back, you know, the radio shack model that you could walk into a store and just Rumage through bins. And there was all sorts of, you know, cool computer and electronic and stereo gear on the shelves.
Tim Kerbavaz (18:23):
And, you know, and, and you, I mean, ham radios for that matter, right. The CB radios and, and, and having just access to that level of technology in the shopping mall, in, you know, the, the corner of the main street, you know was definitely, you know, a, a huge part of my childhood, like going to radio track was like an event, right. As a, you know, as a kid. And, you know, I mean, whether it was for, you know, some, a little resistor baggy for some project or whether it was just to kind of OAL at the, you know, the, the stereo systems, it was you know, kind of this window into the world of electronics in kind of local accessible way. And, and I, this is a, a west coast thing, but Fry's electronics is, is, is similar in the sort of big box store model.
Tim Kerbavaz (19:11):
Okay. Which unfortunately just went outta business. But you know, Fry's had that kind of, you could walk in and anything with electricity in, it was in this one store and that kind of sort of heyday of consumer electronics in some ways you know really, I think inspired me and I think other people in terms of, you know, being interested in and being able to kind of visualize what, you know, the world of electronics looked like, and for me, that, that went into kind of the world of production. And I could say, you know, and I always, whether it was at a science museum or at a theater or movie, or, or play, or, you know, at the amusement park, I was always peering around corners and up in the ceiling. And, you know, I still, I cannot go to a play without staring at the lights, you know, and, and it just, you know, that I've always been captivated by the machinations of production. And so, you know, it's certainly a, a tremendous privilege for me to be able to make my living doing something that I literally dreamt about as a, you know, 10 year old. Yeah. And so to say now, you know as an adult that I, I own a successful production company is, is definitely making, you know, 10 year old, 10 world proud.
Patrick Rife (20:33):
Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about Talon. You know, like, so it looks like it, you know, like it, it's clearly, it's been around for a long time and, and evolved to, to, to grow and become what it is. But, but, you know, tell us a little bit about, about its origin and now a word from our sponsors.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
The patent for the first automated photography machine was filed in 1888 by William Pope and Edward pool of Baltimore, Maryland. Over a hundred years later in that very same town, two guys have created a new picture taking machine that is taking the photo booth concept to a whole new level. Pixelated is the only photo booth company that provides a simple DIY photo booth kit with everything you need anywhere you need it. The future has arrived, say goodbye to time consuming, expensive clunky photo booth rentals, our affordable, sleek, and simple turnkey photo booth kits work right out of the box. Our DIY kits are shipped right from our hometown of Baltimore directly to your door, no matter where you are rent by the day, not the hour, starting at only two hundred ninety nine dollars. Book today and save fifteen percent at pixelated.com with discount code podcast. That's P I X I L A T E D.com discount code podcast.
Tim Kerbavaz (21:56):
Yeah, so I started Talon in a college bedroom, so my friend Aaron Cooper, and I were just like, you know, I don't know, geeking out about something. Aaron was a DJ at the time. And also like a music producer and then worked briefly for like the campus AV department doing like classroom maintenance, stuff like that as a, as a student. And then, you know, was just a, a huge music geek. He was just like, you know, tremendously interested in in music, particularly hip hop. And he and I were talking about kind of things we could do together. And I had like, just bought a set of like QSC K 10 speakers, you know, that was when, when those were new. And we were, you know, chatting and kind of decided to go in together to start like a DJ company.
Tim Kerbavaz (22:52):
And so, so talent, I mean, sort of embarrassed to say now, but started doing weddings. So Aaron and I, you know, did, did weddings, you know, for a couple years. And then basically Aaron had the probably very wise idea to go become a computer programmer instead of a DJ. And went off to work for a software company and I kept the company, but the name Talon is actually Tim and Aaron smashed together. That's how the, that's where the name came from. And we just thought Talon was, you know, the closest word and also sounded cool its closet of a bird. So I liked it. And then I kept Talon going. I was doing kind of small projects sort of community events in Davis. At the time I, I actually worked full time for UC Davis after I graduated from, from college.
Tim Kerbavaz (23:38):
I, I was the, I was running the event AV department or like AV service for the university. I worked there for like a decade. But I was keeping this business in, you know, as a sort of side hustle, like from college through, through, through this job. And I thought about change the name. Cause people like, always think it's like talent instead of talent. Like it, it gets confusing. So in a case I was consider the name and then Aaron died. He, he died a few years ago and, and so I felt like it was important for me to keep the name because it was his name. So what I did in, in in 2019 I quit my full-time job with the university with a pension and all that to take my business full time.
Tim Kerbavaz (24:27):
Evolved a lot in like Q4 of 2019 Q1 of 2020. Kind of just, you know, grew really fast, took on a bunch of new clients, bunch of new work and then got to, to March of 2020 and things really as everyone listened to this, we'll understand changed dramatically. But what happened in the summer of 2020 was while I was twiddling my thumbs, you know, sitting on the couch very enough in the space being like, what, what do I do now that I own an events business? I'm self-employed in the events world when there are no events. And it gave me a chance to really sit with my thoughts and because there was nothing to do, but think I really started musing about what does mean to be in events. What does, what the work that I do distill down to and what does it mean to do events in a time when there aren't events?
Tim Kerbavaz (25:27):
And you know, what are my skills and what are the things that I get joy from doing? And so coming into 2021, as things sort of thought out a bit as I had a bunch of new virtual event work, as I was sort of starting to get back into events and then into this year where we're, you know, a pretty broad mix of in person and, and online events I've really decided that I'm not uniquely good at, you know, warehousing and QC speakers. And so in, in 2020, I closed my warehouse because there just couldn't afford to keep it. And there was no sense in having that and actually downsized got rid of a lot of my gear, like, you know, just got fire sale or a lot of garbage. A lot of it just went into the dumpster. And so, you know, just had to get out like it was like, you know, <laugh> July 30th, close the warehouse.
Tim Kerbavaz (26:21):
So you know, getting rid of gear, downsizing, and then really evaluating what I want to be doing made me realize that I, you know, I'm not necessarily uniquely good or uniquely, you know there's no, no unique sort of business model in, in renting equipment, in the local regional market that I was in. But I had clients that I was doing big, you know, sort of national events for on a, you know, production level. And so really focusing on that work, focusing on building the accessibility work, which was something that really grew a ton in 20, 20, 20, 21, when people were going online and suddenly said, Hey, I need to figure out this captioning thing. And I was getting phone calls about that. And so, you know, one of the things I've really done for this year really is to admit to myself that I'm not, you know, an AV rental company anymore.
Tim Kerbavaz (27:23):
That's really not what I do, but that, you know, producing events and then helping clients, both end clients, production companies and agencies really understand the hybrid event model, you know, broadcast, overlays you know, kind of really the bridge between in person and online, and then particularly focusing on accessibility and localization, helping, you know, my production company, clients and friends really understand how to make captions work, how to make localization work was a really much better business model, frankly, for me than, you know, trying to have a warehouse full of gear that,
Patrick Rife (28:10):
Yeah, I mean, that resonates like, like, you know, like crazy. I mean, that's exactly what our, I mean, I just, I I'm still, you know, I I'm, I'm here amongst all of like all of that gear that we like ha have yet to, I mean, you know, on a shelf above me, I must have 40 Pelican cases that, you know, I gotta figure out how to sell somewhere at a fire, you know, but also who has the time to like, invest in that when what we wanna do is invest in moving forward. So like, I get that and, and, and even, you know, like recognizing your business model as, as, you know, not being unique and wanting to figure out what, you know, what you're uniquely good at and what aligns with where you want to go. Like that resonates a ton. You know, like I think I think it will be really interesting to see, and, and you're kind of like setting yourself up, you know, perfectly for the, for these following questions, but, you know, I feel like so much of the dialogue over the last two years has been, you know, like the events industry, like in light of COVID, you know, like what, how's it gonna change?
Patrick Rife (29:21):
What's going on? Yada, yada yada. My, my new question is, you know, like, like what is going on now that we are in post COVID? Because I think one of the things that a lot of people in our, a lot of our colleagues, a lot of our peers anticipated was that the warm back would be a much gentler arc than it ended up being. And that there would be time to not only move the development of the technology to lend itself to more hybrid experiences, but like the marketing language, like all of those things that you had to like your FAQs, like your landing pages and what messaging it was saying right off the jump, you know, like, I think we all expected it to be gradual. And instead, you know, like the, the CDC changed the guidelines and like, you know, like the train hit the emergency stop button, like paused for like 36 hours, and then they released the break and it was rolling in the opposite direction again, and everything was kind of thrown back into tumult.
Patrick Rife (30:25):
So you know Mike, I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. And, and the B to that question that I also want you to kind of speak to is just, there's so much technology that has been written in the last two years that now, I mean, like it's bloody, right? So like, there's gonna be a ton of, I anticipate a lot of M and a right. There's only so many people, right. We there's, there's a virtual event platform for every company in the world to have their own at this point. So like, clearly, like we're gonna start to see that, but, but what do you think, man, now that we are in this like, weird, like post COVID place what do you think is gonna change?
Tim Kerbavaz (31:06):
Yeah. As you say, I mean, they're kind of this roller coaster of up, up, down, up down, you know, and, you know, just like hitting that last, you know, slope and not really having everyone's plans in order. I mean, I, I, I totally hear that. And I see that as well with clients who are, you know, I think in many ways, the reason books are rushing back to, as we said earlier, kind of the way things were the way they did things in 2019 is because there's a formula, right. They have notes and reference and, you know, it's easy to replicate something you've done before. And, and so I think, you know, one of the challenges for a lot of clients, a lot of the books I'm working with are, you know, redefining the vision of what does an event mean? What does it, what, what is an event?
Tim Kerbavaz (31:57):
Why do we have events you know, who is our audience and, and what can we do for that audience for a specific events audience to maximize their benefits? You know, people go to events to learn something, to experience something, to meet people. And, and for all the reasons that people go to events, I think there's, you know, ways to make virtual and hybrid events work. But I think that you really have to think about what is it that your audience is coming to or event for and who is that audience, and then design the event around that. So it's, I think, you know, it's really tempting to have the cookie cutter, you know, we're gonna do this event in a box. And I think that, you know, that only works if, if the box you've picked your event out of is the box that works best for your audience.
Tim Kerbavaz (32:44):
A and so one of the things that I've been doing a lot of is this kind of just consulting and having conversations with clients about, like, what does it mean to have a, an agriculture conference for a global audience in, you know, 20, 22? Like what, what do you mean when you say you want to have a hybrid agriculture conference versus what do you mean when you say you wanna have a hybrid technology or, you know, you know, tech conference, right. So like, I, I've done a lot of events with, with Google, right. And, and their audience you know, they've had events in person in the bay area, right. A lot. But the reality is that they're targeting for these like developer events, what they call their NBU, the next billion users. And that next billion users is not in the Silicon valley in California.
Tim Kerbavaz (33:30):
There is not a single person in the Silicon valley in California who does not know what Google does or doesn't know their product suite already. Right. and so there's not really new business for them there. So the in-person event is really like a rah, right? It's like getting people all together to kind of celebrate the, the products and the, and the community, but the actual money to be made for Google is their audiences in Africa and India in China. And, and that's where they're going to actually find new developers who are actually gonna adopt these new products and tools. And, and that's how they grow. So for, for Google, the goal, the hybrid event is critical right to their business success. And frankly, they've been doing hybrid events for, you know, five, 10 years because I've been doing their developer events for at least five years, and they've all been live streamed to the world, you know, including China.
Tim Kerbavaz (34:28):
And so, you know, it's, it's, it's not really new for them to have a hybrid event with like online audience interaction. They've done like live Q and a with web and stuff like that. So it's funny to me when we talk about hybrid events as this sort of new thing. And obviously there are a lot of new tools and a lot of new products, but the basic underlying methodology is not new. So I told you, I worked for UC Davis running their event service, and, you know, academic conferences are, are often global conferences because you have researchers who are collaborating across continents, on research projects and presenting that research together. And obviously, hopefully right. O often they can travel together and, and present in person. But academic conferences have had what we used to call teleconferences, right. You know, teleconference presentations and, and participation and live streams, you know, for, for a decade or more because they've had a, a business need, right.
Tim Kerbavaz (35:31):
That, you know, the researcher in you know Paris or, or Beijing, couldn't travel to the conference in person for whatever reason. So they're gonna give their presentation remotely, you know, or I've done, you know, conferences about immigration where literally the immigration lawyers who are presenting couldn't get visas to come in. Right. You know, things like sort of the irony there, but, you know, lots of reasons that you know, folks are you know, have needed this model for years. And, and so I think it's, as we look at, you know, what does the model of a virtual Harvard event look like? For me, I see that pebble because I've been doing it for a long time, but I, I think for a lot of clients and, and particularly for event planners, who, as we discussed are stretched, thin are overwhelmed, are being asked to plan things faster and faster and faster with less and less warning and less and less availability of spaces and crew and all that that it's hard necessarily to visualize, right. What hypothetical models are when you're being asked to put together an event in three weeks. Right. So I, I think the challenge becomes kind of building these heuristics for the industry, so that folks, you know, when you get that phone call that, Hey, my biggest client wants to put on a hybrid event in a month. You know, that, you know, you actually have a, a box to pull it out of, instead of trying to reinvent the wheel while also trying to find a room block in 30 days. <Laugh>
Patrick Rife (37:01):
Yeah. You know? Yeah, yeah. Getting, getting, getting all the, the tools and processes in order. Right. So that way it's not starting over mm-hmm <affirmative> every single time. Yeah. Well, Tim, we are getting we're getting to the end of our time here. I love before we button up to, to ask some fun questions. Right, right. Quickly. So if you'll humor me through sure. So through these, so where is home based for you now?
Tim Kerbavaz (37:27):
I am in Sacramento, California.
Patrick Rife (37:29):
So if if one of our listeners is passing through Sacramento, California what's one thing that they should absolutely make sure that they make time for.
Tim Kerbavaz (37:40):
So it's super silly. And it's not necessarily even like the best restaurant. It's just like one of my favorite restaurants is a place called pancake circus. They're only open in the mornings. They're a pancake restaurant, they're like a diner. But they have like the weirdest decorations, which I love. They're like sort of creepy, not quite trademark infringing Winnie the Poo characters basically, but they're like, you know, just off enough that it's not trademarking. And I love it. And it's like, you know, sort of this, like, you know, grizzled, hostess seats, you, and, you know, slings coffee at you. And then you expect the waitress to pull a pencil out from behind her ear, but then she whips out an iPad. <Laugh> it just, this is really fun. I really like it, the the pankakes are also excellent, but you know, it it's, there is so much fine dining in Sacramento that I feel silly mentioning that, but it's that's one of my like, fun, fun Sacramento places if you're like coming through to Tahoe in the morning, stop for S pancakes.
Patrick Rife (38:34):
That's awesome. I love that. Okay. And, and fun question too. A recommendation, a book piece of music, you know, newspaper article, something that's been getting you stoked.
Tim Kerbavaz (38:48):
So and I feel bad cuz I don't remember the title of this book, but I was recently reading an ethnography and I will have to get it and send it to you for the, for the description. But it was this ethnography about sort of what's the right word, sort of boutique careers. I forgot how they described it, but it was like, it was about like basically barbers, bartenders, craft, distillers, and talking about these sort of traditionally sort of working class jobs that had sort of waned. Right. having a resurgence in urban environments becoming kind of arage of taste, right. Where you, you, you look to the craft bartender to really tell you what is hot in cocktails right now, where you go to your yeah.
Patrick Rife (39:41):
You know, like the record store employee,
Tim Kerbavaz (39:42):
Exactly. The record store. So that, that, there's these kind of, whether it's a record store employee, whether it's your, your barber, your bartender, your, you know, there's all these folks who are working these jobs that are not sort of glitzy tech jobs, but who, so many people in the, in a community look to as, as taste makers. Right. Yeah. And so just really thinking about that kind of ways that we code careers, but also the ways that we kind of code taste making is, is really, to
Patrick Rife (40:12):
Me. Yeah. That's cool. That's, you know, like it what you say makes me think of two things. It makes me think of I don't know if you've been to Italy before but in Italy being, you know, like being a waiter as a career, you know, like the waiters in the fanciest restaurants are, you know, like 50, 67 year old men that are, you know, it's like a whole thing, like it's, and they've done it, they've done it for decades and decades on end. And you know, like I think what you're talking about is like, they're like, these people are the secret keepers, right? Like they're keeping all of this information alive. And you know yeah. Whether it's somebody that can talk about like a, you know, like a, a, a extremely obscure scotch or it's somebody that can recommend the best like Stooges record or, or whatever the case may be, or, or if you like the Stooges, something even more obscure that you may not have known.
Patrick Rife (40:59):
And it makes me think about I dunno if you've ever read Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 4 51. But you know, like it's all about like, just right, like organized destruction of knowledge to keep people in a place and, you know, like the book ends and, and there, like there's a community of outsiders on the edge of town and each one's responsible from, for remembering memorizing one entire book. So that way it's all there in documentation. And, you know, like not all things can be codified in ones and zeros. There, there is all that nuance that's there. So,
Tim Kerbavaz (41:31):
And I think to kind of take this a little, but I think, you know certainly not that I would ever call myself an arbiter of taste, but, but I do think that as event professionals, we are creating a space. Right. And one of the things that I, I really think about is as, as an event professional, we use, whether it's, you know, the tools of the internet or whether it's light and fabric and color and sound, and those tools of stagecraft, right. To create a space in almost all cases in ephemeral space, a space that goes away after we're done with it that is designed for storytelling, right. We are creating the campfire around which our clients tell their story. A and so, so much of our industry is about placemaking and about yes. Creating the environment to tell a story. And, and so, as we talk about, you know, what does it mean to you know, give recommendations? What does it mean to create, to create knowledge or memorize knowledge, you know, convey knowledge, you know, our job is not necessarily, it's not necessarily our story to be told. Right. But we are creating the environment in which the best stories can be told to our
Patrick Rife (42:46):
Audiences. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. What a great way to end Tim tell everybody that's listening let 'em know where to follow you, where to get in touch, you know, anything else that you want to share, please do.
Tim Kerbavaz (42:58):
My company is Talon Audio Visual, and that's T A L O N Audio Visual Dot Com. You can find me on Twitter @tkerbavaz that's (at) T K E R B as in baker, A, V as in Victor, A, Z as in zebra. That's my last name. You can also check out my podcast, which is Tim and Tim Talk with my colleague, Tim kay from another company in the bay area. And we talk about event technology and the ways that you know, kind of virtual and hybrid events are evolving. And we also give some case studies. And so our episodes that are just about to come out are literally like a four part case study of a big tech conference that we produced in a virtual world couple years ago. And I guess last year and you know, so that's Tim and Tim, sorry, Tim and Tim talk. You can find us at timandtimtalk.com.
Patrick Rife (43:51):
Love it. Awesome. Well, Tim on behalf of all of our listeners out there, I just want to thank you so much for taking time outta your today. Sharing your story, giving such thoughtful answers to our questions. I know that everyone listening is going to just get a ton out of it. So hopefully you will you will hear the responses, hit your inbox. Amazing.
Tim Kerbavaz (44:12):
Amazing. Yeah. Love, thank you so much for having me. It's great. Great conversation. And I look forward to continuing this conversation with you and with your listeners offline.
Patrick Rife (44:20):
Yeah, absolutely. All right, guys. So that's it. That brings us to another final episode of the pixelated podcast. Hope you all enjoyed our chat with Tim again. All of the things that we talked about, we will link up to in the show notes. So whether you are watching this video on YouTube or, or Facebook, or if you are subscribing through your favorite podcast player hit the show notes, find some links, get in touch with Tim. I would also implore you to please, if you enjoyed this podcast take a few moments, leave us a five star review, your reviews, help other people find our podcast. And our goal is to spread this information far and wide. So we'll really appreciate that. And last but not least, if you haven't yet hit the subscribe button, make sure you do so that ensures that you're notified each time we publish a new episode. So without further ado until next time I and Patrick with Pixilated - Peace guys!