How COVID Changed The Industry
A collection of blogs written during COVID lockdown
When the World Stopped, We Kept Writing
In March of 2020, live events stopped cold. Stages went dark, calendars emptied overnight, and an entire industry built on gathering people together suddenly had no room to gather in.
Over the following thirteen months, Tim wrote his way through it. Not with answers, because none of us had those yet, but with real time thinking: what virtual events might become, what the industry could look like on the other side, and how we stayed connected to clients and each other when the room itself disappeared.
What follows is that record. Several posts written between quarantine's first weeks and the early days of hybrid's return, tracking the questions we were asking as we asked them. Some predictions held up. Some didn't. All of them capture what it actually felt like to run an events business through the most disruptive stretch our industry has ever seen.
We're pulling them together here, in order, as a look back at how Talon thought, adapted, and stayed in motion when everything else stood still.
-
Live Events are changing and we’d better keep up
March 30, 2020 - Tim Kerbavaz, Talon Entertainment Audio Visual
(Published under the same title on LinkedIn Pulse)
Watching The iHeart Living Room Concert for America presented by FOX on Sunday evening, I was struck with the overwhelming sense that this is the “new normal.” This is what a live event looks like now, at least in the immediate future.
Clients have been calling me all week, assessing how to put traditionally in-person events like galas and graduations online. As an events professional, my job is to bring the expertise, technology, and teams to execute my client’s vision, whether that’s projection mapping an abandoned cement factory, holding a benefit concert in a downtown intersection, or figuring out how to hold a graduation or a gala fully online. Events bring people together over shared goals and shared connections, teach and share knowledge, reinforce social bonds, and build communities. The challenge now is how to convey to an online audience the messages and emotional impacts we experience live and in-person. This is the problem I hear over and over again among my peers, friends, and even competitors as our whole industry grapples with connecting services to our communities during COVID-19. How do we continue to educate, inspire, and bring joy to our audiences in this time of social distancing?
Virtual Events 2020 - Combining ENG with Cell Phones
The iHeart/Fox “concert” was effectively a telethon, soliciting donations for both Feeding America and the First Responders Children’s Foundation. Combining ENG-style recordings of artists performing in their homes and studios with phone camera cameos and into-the-lens host segments, the program tugged at heartstrings and brought joy and levity into living rooms across America with a relatively low-tech, but very earnest and touching format.
The broadcast was a concert in the sense that it was mostly performances of music, and it was a TV show in that it was video-based and aired on a major network. But it wasn’t pretending to be an in-person concert or a traditional TV broadcast. It was well produced, but didn’t hide the fact that much of the show was essentially home movies recorded on cell phones. It used that raw edge to remind the viewer at home that these famous performers are sheltering in place just as the rest of us are; we’re all in this together.
Event planners and clients need remote events that convey message and emotion, but that don’t mask the unprecedented nature of this current moment - COVID-19 has changed how we interact, and as event professionals we need to honor and acknowledge that.
Key Takeaways
These are some of my key take-aways from Sunday night’s program, which I think are important to taking other high-profile events online:
Engineer your event like a TV news broadcast with remote/satellite contributors.
Pre-record as much as possible to avoid connection issues with remote sites. Ideally cut the whole show Live-to-Tape, or edit offline and roll as a package. The iHeart show was not broadcast truly live, yours doesn’t need to be either.
Showcase segments from contributor’s and host’s homes.
Use broadcast cameras and equipment for key segments (hosts, live performances) whenever possible. Use cell phone videos for short shout-outs and cameos.
Avoid vertical video for longer segments, when possible. For a short shout-out or cameo, your talent will record vertically even if you tell them not to. Roll with it - it provides a level of raw “homemade” intimacy to your broadcast.
For live segments, use broadcast codecs whenever possible. If you must use consumer technologies, use “TV Magic” to make the audience experience better. (See Elton John’s “video call” with Lizzo from the iHeart broadcast.)
Don’t pretend this is a traditional in-person event broadcast; make sure to remind viewers that your talent is also sheltering-in-place.
Encourage live social media engagement, reply to comments and tweets in real time, and showcase live social engagement on the broadcast to encourage social sharing and interaction.
By embracing the raw, intimate nature of phone video and video chat, and adding just enough broadcast polish to make it easy to watch, iHeart and Fox have established a formula for a virtual event that really works. This is a formula that I expect to see replicated more and more as event planners everywhere grapple with how to take an event online. I know my clients were all watching tonight, and I look forward to the many phone calls scheduled for this week as I help my clients build on this model to make the rest of this events season happen.
A friend of mine always says that the adage “The show must go on” is a misnomer. Audiences continue to crave interaction, education and entertainment, and we continue to provide it. The show WILL go on, and we’re just keeping up.
To all my friends in production, stay strong. We’ll see the other side of this, and while our industry will be different, the show will go on. Until then, stay home, and keep streaming.
View
-
April 20, 2020 - Written by Tim Kerbavaz
“The prospect of mass gatherings is negligible at best until we get to herd immunity and we get to a vaccine.” -Governor Newsom of California, April 14, 2020
"Large gatherings such as concerts and sporting events may not be approved in the city for at least 1 year... It's difficult to imagine us getting together in the thousands anytime soon, so I think we should be prepared for that this year," -Mayor Garcetti of Los Angeles, April 15, 2020
This is about what I was expecting, but for those of us who make our living in events, it means we’re likely out of work until mid 2021 or beyond.
I’ve honestly been expecting that timeline for a while now, so while it’s devastating news, it’s at least somewhat validating to have more official certainty on that point.
Our industry is extremely adaptable, extremely flexible, and extremely nimble. Show business will still exist now and in the future - there are too many of us addicted to the craft for it to disappear. Online productions will fill the gaps, creative technologies and solutions will be more and more common, and communication, education, and entertainment will continue.
But the kind of events we have had for the past few years in what was a growing and booming events market aren’t coming back for a long time. Many of our friends and colleagues will not be able to hold out for a year or more for events to come back, and will move on to other industries. I expect the integration market to boom as companies enhance telecommunications solutions, and I expect the broadcast sector to grow as more and more goes online. And I think many of our colleagues will leave production entirely for other different fields.
I am not optimistic about the viability of the live event production industry over the next few years. I think we have a lot working against us and I believe many production companies, big and small will be casualties of this pandemic.
I am however extremely optimistic about the futures of the people in this industry - my friends, my colleagues and myself because I know that we are as adaptable, innovative, and gritty as any industry out there. I am optimistic many of us will find opportunities in new production and AV market segments, and that those folks who move to greener pastures in other industries will flourish, bringing the skills they honed on the show site to new sectors.
I love event production and I want nothing more than to see the curtain rise again. I love the work and the stress and the exhilaration of that first “g-o”. I love the final cue and the curtain drop and that last slam of the last truck and the feeling of exhaustion and satisfaction of watching the show roll away. I love my colleagues and friends and brothers and sisters on the crew, who work tirelessly from load in to load out to make possible the closest thing I know to magic. And someday soon we’ll all have that again.
Until then, to all my production friends, I love you and miss you - please reach out. We’re all lonely and confused and need each other more than ever. Share with me - I want to hear your celebrations and your pains and the skills you want to learn and how you are celebrating your little successes in this time. Let’s share opportunities for work and jobs in and out of production that we can use to keep afloat or re build our careers. If folks leave the industry let’s leave room for then to re join us when we’re back in action and for those building opportunities elsewhere let’s build bridges to bring our production colleagues along with us.
Events are as close to magic as anything I have ever experienced, and that magic isn’t going away. The show will go on, and we’ll be there to make it possible. Until then, let’s please remember our community and build each other up. We all need a hand.
-
April 25, 2020 - Written by Tim Kerbavaz
Many of us (myself included, twice) have written about what the next 12-18 months look like for the events industry. It’s going to be rough, there will be a lot of video conferences, and we’ll figure out what “virtual event” really means. I think we’ll see some interesting innovation, and some people and companies will be able to make a decent, if less than typical, living. Others won’t be so lucky, and I expect some production companies won’t be in a good position, and some technicians will leave the industry. I am confident, however, that our industry will come out of this and thrive. I’ve read lots of thoughts about the short term, but I haven’t read much about what our industry will look like after the events industry bounces back. What happens in the next 24 months, and beyond?
Whenever live events come back, I expect our whole world will look a little different, and that the AV and Events industries will reflect that.
Counting on video conferencing
At the lower end of the market, Zoom, Webex, and other desktop Video Conferencing platforms are commoditizing and democratizing VC. With the news that Verizon is buying BlueJeans, we can expect more and more consumer and self-service commercial VC to be the norm. Our clients and audiences have embraced desktop VC, often entirely without AV professionals.
One rental and staging executive I talked to was worried about how to keep providing value at the lower end of the market when there are so many DIY technologies. I too often worry what value I provide when supporting Zoom or other VC calls - what is the value proposition when the end users can do it themselves. “It’s so easy” I say to myself. To this point a friend reminded me that of course it’s easy for us, this is our livelihood, but for our customers it’s a business need and worth hiring help to remove pain points. My friend offered the analogy “think about how your accountant feels doing your taxes” - it’s old hat for them, but I gladly pay for the service. While the technology is more and more consumer friendly, I think we can continue to provide value in white glove VC and remote event services, in both the short- and long-term.
The small stuff will come back first
Even before conventions and sports games and concerts can happen, I expect to see smaller events happening in smaller venues, bars, and restaurants. Audiences are starved for socializing, so I expect that companies will have small meetings, small bars will have live music, and hotels will see bookings trickle in. Humans are social creatures, and I suspect we’ll gather in small groups as soon as it’s allowed and reasonably safe to leave the house. These events will have strict in-person attendance caps, and many attendees still won’t be comfortable going out. While they won’t necessarily have much production budget, many of these smaller events will have a live-streamed or video conference component. Once the service sector returns to operation, we’ll start to see bookings for these small gigs, and a niche market for value-engineered turnkey small event VC and streaming packages.
Once a vaccine is available and wider restrictions are lifted and, we will see the return of larger events. At this higher end of the market, I expect to see changes in the way events operate, and perhaps even growth in some areas.
An evolving office means evolving events
As companies have transitioned employees to remote work for the duration of this quarantine, I have heard from business executives, tech support staff, and space planning teams that many companies, across industries, are reconsidering their office layout. The open office may no longer be trendy, and frequent or permanent remote work may become the norm at many companies across industries. Businesses that are equipped for a partially or fully remote workforce will be able to get back to work before a vaccine is ready, and will be able to quickly adapt to future challenges because the infrastructure for telework will already be in place.
““I think you could see a doubling down on the (big in-person events) where they create a ‘narnia’ in real life because everyone has been living behind a device””
— Kyle Santen - PixelForge
The big challenge for both management and remote workers is that they see less of their colleagues in person, so connection, shared vision, and team bonding can be a challenge. All-Hands meetings and team retreats will be increasingly important to building cohesive teams and to business success. With limited time for team bonding and internal networking, the ability to gather in one room for a meeting becomes critical.
With fewer desks and less expensive real estate to pay for, operating budgets may have more room for bigger, more elaborate productions, both internally and for client- or public-facing events. An added incentive - with everyone, coworkers and clients included, working from home on a laptop, the chance to go out to an event is a great change of environment. Thus event production, scenic, and lighting can be positioned to provide a welcome sense of escapism from the home office.
“I think you could see a doubling down on the (big in-person events) where they create a ‘narnia’ in real life because everyone has been living behind a device” posited Kyle Santen of PixelForge. “More money will get poured into physical events to make up for the lack of physical connection outside of the events” because everyone has been working remotely from home.
An increased interest in escapism, wow-factor, and atmosphere makes a ripe market for Media Server makers like Disguise, GreenHippo, Watchout, and Resolume. New demands for immersive experiences, polish, and effects could lead to new opportunities for augmented reality, mixed reality, and virtual reality, both in person and online.
Even in-person events are likely to have an increased focus on the online viewer; broadcast will be less of an afterthought and more of an equal (or potentially primary) audience. With larger online audiences, and more demand to stand out with eye- catching video, more of the event may be focused on the camera, which leads to more opportunities for new video technologies, 3D graphics, and mixed reality environments.
It will be a long while before we can gather in person and events can return to some semblance of normal. We’re looking at a timeline of 12-18 months to start moving back to large gatherings, and in the meantime client needs and expectations are changing. When we’re back on production, we should be ready for an evolved events market that includes more online and video-heavy productions, both big and small, and be able to provide an increasingly immersive and exciting in-person experience. We have a lot of down time, so now is a great time to re-imagine our recurring events to make them ready for a Post-COVID world. There are lots of training opportunities, and now would be a great time to share skills you have with your friends and peers in the industry. Even if we won’t see the curtain rise on a big show for a while, we can make sure now that our shows on the 24 month horizon are ready for a revamped production environment. -
August 8, 2020 - Written by Tim Kerbavaz
Let’s take this online
In mid May, the staff at Veloz, a nonprofit organization focused on electrifying transportation in California, came to me with a challenge. Their July member meeting, scheduled to be an in-person round table in Downtown Los Angeles, was going to be impacted by COVID-19 travel restrictions. Like most event planners, they wondered how to take the meeting online. The conference involved 50 members around a table discussing state policy, industry marketing, and increasing member investment. How would we move it to an online format while maintaining the networking, conversation and attendee engagement of the in-person meeting? How could we make members feel valued and invested in the organization without being with them in person?
Author and Technical Director Tim Kerbavaz takes a selfie during a session break while managing the webinar from the client’s office.
They were familiar with Zoom, and already had a Webinar license, but weren’t sure how to ensure good audio and video quality as their Executive Director hosted the meeting. They also wanted to provide an extra level of engagement for their members as they participated in the meeting.
In order to ensure that all the member organizations were able to participate in the discussions, each member was asked to designate one delegate to have a seat at the virtual Zoom Webinar table. These appointed delegates were invited to the webinar as panelists, so that they could participate in the round-table discussion. Any other member representatives, or attendees from non-member organizations, were enrolled as listen-only attendees to streamline the conversation in the meeting.
In addition to pre-production planning, Talon provided onsite AV support at the Veloz office. We turned a conference room into a studio with camera, lighting, and audio equipment, allowing the Director to host the meeting on camera with high-quality video. Talon staff remotely controlled the production from down the hall in an office suite to preserve social distance and prevent noise or distraction on camera.
Make your guests feel at home, at home
Custom Camping-Style Coffee Mugs were sent out along with freshly roasted coffee beans from a local roaster.
To ensure members felt valued, and to ensure they were alert and attentive for the meeting, each member delegate was sent a Veloz-branded coffee mug and a bag of locally-roasted coffee. We partnered with Sacramento, CA -based Seasons Coffee Roasters. Seasons offers a retail mail-order coffee service, as well as wholesale beans for retail and foodservice, so they were a natural fit to enlist for both coffee and fulfilment of the gift packages. Boxes were shipped to arrive at attendees homes the weekend before the event, to allow plenty of time to enjoy the coffee and be ready for the meeting.
What’s that sound?
Screenshot from the webinar of DJ Jon VonRonk spinning records for the conference audience.
To set the tone of the meeting, attendees were greeted by Sacramento local vinyl DJ Jon VonRonk from Kicksville Vinyl & Vintage spinning records on the webinar, joining us live from his home studio. Because the audio from the DJ’s studio was music, not speech, Zoom’s standard audio processing would have interfered with the quality of playback. To prevent this, we adjusted some key audio settings within Zoom to disable the noise and echo cancellation processing, ensuring the highest possible music fidelity in the webinar environment. While the music played, attendees were presented with some light-hearted polling questions designed to spark conversations and encourage creative thinking before the discussions began in earnest.
Feel-Good Impact
Many members made a point to have their coffee mug in the frame for the call, even a few who admitted it was filled with water because they preferred tea or cocoa to coffee. Throughout the conference, and in a subsequent meeting of the same group, members exclaimed how exciting it was to have a DJ open and close the meeting. “I’ve never been to a webinar with a live DJ before” said several attendees. Some guests lamented that they don’t have music to greet them at all their conferences.
Overall guests responded with great excitement to the “virtual coffee break” and it provided a great example of combining creative attendee engagement tools to keep virtual event attendees interested and connected to the meeting and message.
-
April 1, 2021 - Written by Tim Kerbavaz
The end of the first quarter of 2021 marks a full year of the events industry in a Covid world. I think this is a good time to look back at the year past, and to look forward to my view of what's next for our industry.
I previously wrote about virtual events early in the pandemic - in March, and in April, Twice.
Take a look back and see how many of my predictions came true and how many rang hollow.
In the meantime, I’ve spent the last year producing virtual events - ranging from 1 hour webinars to 5-day flagship conferences - and my calendar is rapidly filling for the rest of 2021 with virtual and hybrid events. I know everyone in the event industry is itching to get back to “normal” - I am also excited to be in a ballroom again, but I don’t think we’re quite going to just jump back into where we left off when the industry froze in Q1 2020, and I don’t think we should want to.Businesses large and small, and their target audiences, have discovered the power of virtual events - events without travel and catering budgets, events that span the globe, with presenters and attendees that would never have been able to come in person. Virtual productions provide increased accessibility of events to parents who can’t leave their kids at home, increased accessibility of events to people with disabilities that make attending face-to-face events difficult, and provide increased accessibility of events to independent professionals, small business owners, and students who may not have the time or resources to travel to an in-person event. Bigger events with broader audiences, or multiple smaller events for hyper targeted audiences, whichever makes more sense. Instantly evergreen content you can re-share, re-edit, and combine with other content to re-sell. With tremendous ROI of virtual, why would we want it to stop?
Enter Hybrid. I know that “hybrid events” is a buzzword of the moment, but really it’s not a new concept. Our industry has been producing hybrid events for years, we just didn’t describe them that way.
I’ve streamed millions of viewer-hours of live event video from in-person events. I remember first producing events that brought in individual speakers via teleconference almost a decade ago. TV news bridges an in-person studio with remote presenters 7 nights a week. The idea of serving both an in-person and remote audience simultaneously is really not unusual, but in the events world prior to 2020 it hadn’t been the default. The tools and techniques have existed for a while - what I think will change is the expectation and “normalcy” of virtual components in almost any event
Just like every event for the past several years has needed to be ready to play audio and video someone’s slide presentation, even if it’s not in the “spec”, I think every event going forward needs to be ready to add a presenter via Zoom or Teams or Meet. I think teleconference in and stream out is a default assumption for any in-person event going forward. Any event from a flagship conference to a PTA meeting will need the ability to add a call-in option at the last minute, with no fuss.
Another change I expect to stick is the shifted and elongated event cycle. As we think about the event ecosystem, and as event dates have been shaken up due to COVID, something has shifted - events are now year-round. We have less defined “event seasons” with bookend or flagship events, and more ongoing events as part of broader outreach and marketing efforts.
There is less waiting for the big tradeshow to announce products, and more year round marketing drip. Even one-off events are part of a broader marketing ecosystem, and clients need all events to align with their broader communication goals, online or off.
As in-person events return, and as clients evaluate their goals and event needs, I expect to see more roadshows, smaller regional events, and overlapping regional events that are connected via video technology to bridge in-person speakers and audiences across multiple venues and locations.
As high profile clients focus on adding pizzaz to their events, we move into an area where hybrid gets interesting and we get beyond the basic stream or Zoom call. Under the hybrid-event umbrella, there are some newer technologies and techniques that have really gained traction over the past year. I expect to see more events using consumer-facing VR and AR technology and studio side xR tech, 3D virtual sets, and volumetric stages along with Unreal Engine, disguise, and other media server environments to make the experience for the online audience more immersive than your average zoom call.
Another tech innovation I expect to see more of is the Pepper's Ghost “hologram” on stage. It was used to much fanfare to “resurrect” beloved performers at music festivals over the last few years, and I expect it to be used to “beam” CEOs and keynote speakers into multi-site conferences to allow “embodied” presentations to remote audiences when executives can’t travel or events overlap.
There are many more technologies, techniques, and event formats on the horizon. As you plan online, in-person and hybrid events, think about the specific takeaway you want the audience to have before you pick a format or technology. Keep in mind audiences you might have missed in the past, and how you can bring your event and message to a more diverse audience who might experience your event differently than other attendees. Consider ways to make your event more accessible to people with a variety of different personal, ability, and travel needs. Think about the experience you want each person in your audience to have and define the goals for takeaway and experience first, then pick the platform, format, or venue that best fits those needs. For some events an online-first approach may still offer the best ROI. Where in-person components fit the bill, remember that there are a myriad of options to bridge an in-person and online experience to maximize impact.
Advice for Independent AV Technicians - Sound Design Live Interview
August 13, 2020
I was recently a guest on the Nathan Lively’s podcast Sound Design Live discussing ways that independent AV technicians can adapt in the face of Covid-19. It’s designed for AV industry professionals, but it’s got some general advice that might be useful to other folks in the event space. This video also has some background on me, which clients may find interesting.
