HOW HAS THE TECHNICIAN'S WORLD CHANGED?

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 and The Road Ahead. Today I have three amazing guests. I have Rick Wegner, and I have Lauren Burt and I have Oscar Sturup. All three of them are part of the ETP BrainHub technical team, and I'm proud to have them on the show. Guys and gals, welcome to the show today. Thanks for having me, Les. Thanks for having us. Hey. Thank you. So as part of our technical team which make shows happen, you know this topic today, this this whole podcast is dedicated to how the world are, how the technical world has changed as doing shows and what you've had to do. And I'm going to throw the first question to Rick. Rick, how has your life changed in the last 12 months? Maybe you could advise other than I can tell, you have a big burly beard and so but, but but can you maybe give give us the audience some perspective of because I know you work in an engineering capacity and deliver all kinds of shows, so maybe you could share with the audience what what has changed for you and the world you live in. It's been really interesting. When the industry took his downturn, when the pandemic started, the the EIC position essentially almost went away. There was really no opportunities to engineer systems, as it were, and the way we were doing it in live events. So for me, it became an opportunity and kind of a question of how am I going to reinvent myself, be relative in this new virtual environment? And that was that was a it was a hard, steep learning curve to get out of the comfort zone of what I was used to doing week in and week out in a live scenario, and find a way to fit in in this new streaming virtual environment. Got it. Okay. Same question. Lauren. And you're in Las Vegas today. Tell me, Lauren, how has your life changed in the last 12 months? And, Lauren, tell me if I'm correct. You came through our CoiL program, correct? Yes. That's awesome. I came up to CoiL in 2019, got hired on full time at the end of 2019, and then did about three shows on my own as a lighting technician. And then COVID hit. So I second one, Rick said, is once COVID hit, my job literally went away in overnight. There was no lighting whatsoever and I too had to reinvent. So when we were able to come back with the government assistance, I still did training and lighting. But once the virtual studios came up with ETP, I jumped on that full force because there was no position for me anymore. So having to learn a whole new wheelhouse. Yes, I knew a little bit because of my age and growing up in technology, but at the level that's needed for these virtual shows, I had to learn within a month to be able to put myself in position to stay as a full time employee. Got it. So. So Rick speaks from the engineering and the video side. Lauren, you speak from the lighting side and let me throw the question to Oscar, who's on the audio team. Oscar, maybe you could give us some insight, because I know even on virtual events, they have to have audio. Absolutely told. Yeah. It was just, you know, echoing what Lauren and Rick said, it was definitely a big pivot from the show to show. And, you know, we are used to all the texts are used to going from show to show and traveling and looking for their new show and working with crews and stuff. So they it just came to a complete halt and we had to pivot into learning the new workflow because we had to sit down. And I remember, you know, we all came together as a team and said, you know, how are we going to how are we going to fix this? What's the next product that we can that we can send out? So it was definitely a learning experience on how we can have a 100% remote crew with 100% remote presenter and 100% remote audience. And it was it was a lot of work, but I think the team definitely pulled it together. Cool. Well, I know, I know, we've done over 600 virtual events, so we've got a lot of that under our belt. So I'm going to go back to Rick. Rick, what things are better in the in the work you're doing and what things are maybe not as good. How about that? Well, the one thing is in what I've what's gotten better is actually is my marriage. Because I'm, I'm home more than I have ever been since we have been married. Being a tech on the road, this has been a whole new dynamic for us in getting through this and it's been great. So I know I'm good there. So that's that's been really good. It's definitely a learning process. Being married, happy wife, happy life. Absolutely. So so we're solid. And what's been good on the on the virtual side, on the in a professional sense is getting out of your comfort zone. And I think we all got comfortable in the week to week thing doing doing live events. But forcing yourself to to get on the edge and and learn and progress. And we're all going to come out of this a lot stronger than than what we came into it. And and that's a comforting feeling, knowing that when things do come back around, we're just going to be so much better for it. Well, hopefully they'll come back sooner than later. Lauren, same question. What's better in your world and and going from lighting to virtual and what's not so good. Maybe you could share. I'll start with the not so good and end on a good note. So for me personally, since I'm in Las Vegas. Previously on live shows. We were all together in the hotel, in the ballrooms, in the same time zones, but now in the virtual world, a lot of the shows are scheduled in East Coast time and I'm on the West Coast, so when there's a 7 a.m. call on the East Coast, I'm up at 4 a.m.. So there's a lot of transition with that. And then the polar opposite of what? I'm not working a show. I'm back on Pacific Coast time. So dealing with that personal schedule and that show schedule has been a feat in itself, on top of learning everything, because I'm now an inbound tech, so I'm the face to the remote presenters. So at 4:00 Am, I got to be bright eyed and bushy tailed on camera. So I'm waking up at 230 3:00 to get that way. Well, wait a second. Las Vegas is a 24 hour city, okay? No one. I've been told before you don't have to sleep in Las Vegas. This is just some commentary. You. If you go there, you don't have to sleep. Every restaurant, you know, every big hotel, they have 24 hour, you know, food. That was prior to COVID. Now that you actually have hours and closed down. Oh my goodness oh my goodness. Well that's interesting. Okay Oscar, maybe you could share with us what things are better and what things are worth. And I, I will tell you what's not better is we're not sending out lots of lots of line arrays, I know, of which we have a many of them. But I know that's coming back soon, and I know we've got scheduled events. But maybe from your perspective, what's better and what's not so good? Yeah, I think the not so good part. I like Lauren's approach of starting with a bad ending with good and a personal note. I think everybody can relate to the uncertainty that it brought when, I mean, the event industry was the first one that was hit because large gatherings were not happening. So when that happened, we kind of realized, wow, we're not going to be going out. And that was the first thing to go. We're not going to be going out on show site for for a minute, for a little while. So just knowing when that would come back, and it's always been on the back of our minds, all of us as a company and as a as a team. Just when are we going to go back and, you know, put our feet on the ballroom carpet again? As far as like the work, you know, I was I'm what is better is it's the we were challenged on on doing new things. I've never we've never done virtual shows. I mean, we've we've always had the opportunity to doing virtual shows, but now we are we are so much better at doing virtual shows that I think, you know, we'll we'll always have that portion of it and we'll, we'll do it really well. And personal life I agree. Totally agree with Rick on on the family time, the weekends at home. That is definitely a big plus that we were able to enjoy the during the pandemic. You know, it's interesting. We normally would have shows every weekend. We'd have a whole set of shows going, coming in or going out and, you know, weekends, virtual usually not so much. On weekends. They seem to take weekends off. Yeah. And and it's more like banker's hours and, and we go back to live. We'll probably go back to a little more craziness and, and a different variety of hours. But it is interesting, as Lauren brought up, the fact that when you have a remote crew and people working there working in all different time zones, and especially with cloud studios and having them located in the time zone, you can be in Australia or you can be in in our London offices doing the same thing. And, you know, kind of time is just an hour of the day. It's not necessarily day or night anymore. It doesn't matter. It's it's interesting. Okay. We're moving on this questions back to Rick. What is really different. Like if you could name 2 or 3 things about you're in a ballroom and that that ballroom experience and maybe you're doing a virtual experience, whether it's a master control room or set up or a cloud based. Can you give me 2 or 3 things that are like really fundamentally different? For me? The number one thing is we can't control the end to end product. And that's the one of the most frustrating things is, you know, you do everything right and you get everything straight in your studio and you put your source out and then your the internet gods, they take over from there. So not being able to produce that end to end quality and have control of it is probably the most frustrating thing for me. Got it. You know, and Lauren, your thoughts, what is really different about putting up a big lighting rig and then and then and doing a virtual show? Well, I'm definitely not lifting 5,200 pound lights every day anymore. Probably the biggest difference, at least for me, is in the lighting world. I was in the front of house behind my board, setting things up, and no one talked to me outside of the stage manager of what lights they wanted to look like, except for when the presenters like. Can you dim the lights down on stage a little bit? No I can't. But in the virtual world and my position specifically is like I'm interacting with the clients, with the producers so much more than when I was in the lighting. So and with the our account executives and everything, I'm on the phone with them daily, interacting with them on a Zoom call every single show, getting this rapport with them that I would never have had as a lighting technician in the ballroom. So. So you can't really be an introvert to do this job. You kind of have to be a good communicator, and you have to be comfortable talking to people and interacting with them at every different level, especially the presenters, especially if you're in the position of the on board, what we call the onboard streaming tech or inbound of getting them from these Zoom calls to our actual recording studio, you're literally have to walk them through, step by step of how to get everything set up for all different technology literate, illiterate people and then make it feel easy for them. I want everything to be easy in a COVID world, Oscar. What's the difference? Give me some fundamental difference between working in a ballroom, putting up a big sound rig, and doing a virtual show. Yeah, it's it's huge. And I mean, back to what Rick was saying about the equipment. That's definitely something. I definitely miss the energy in the ballroom when when you've rehearsed for a week and you've put all this beautiful equipment up, and then the doors open and the attendees come in like, that is just something that you can't you don't feel. On a virtual world, you know, the the attendees are just watching and you may get a number, hey, there's 200 people watching or, you know, 1000 or 3000, but you don't see them. So I miss the energy of of the ballroom for sure. And, you know, we're all control freaks. We want to know what's going into our system and what's coming out of our system at all times. Make sure everything is tidy and secured. So pushing things into the internet is is, you know, it's just a trust thing. It's hard. It's not tidy and secure. No, definitely. Really. Creating some form of control is a huge change for all of us. I want to I want you to know, Oscar, you said beautiful equipment. And only an audio engineer can really appreciate the beauty of those speakers and those arrays and. And all the buttons and the lights. Okay, we're moving on. We're moving on. So this question is very centric as to workflow. And it goes to Rick. Rick, what are your thoughts about the difference between a cloud like a cloud workflow or any of the cloud workflows, versus working with a master control room setup, which is a traditional backstage physical equipment that you can see and plug in. What are your thoughts about the differences in the workflow and what you prefer? My preference is is the master control for sure. And I love I'm hands on. I am a complete hands on person. Always have been and and always will be. It's been quite an adjustment for me to be able to, to learn how to, to live in a virtual world. Just because I was so used to being hands on for so long, and I'm looking forward to being hands on again. But as as time goes on, getting better and better in the virtual sense, that's for sure. Got it. Okay. All right. Lauren, you know, obviously from the lighting side, you know, it's a little bit different. But master control room where you have lights and maybe a less we'll call it one of our studios or virtual inbound tech. What's your preference? Well, definitely, because I went to school and I'm trained in lighting. I'm definitely going to say lighting master control. There's just some sense of being able to create something and bring someone's vision to life in all aspects with LED and audio and seeing it all come together. One thing in the virtual studio is even though we're all still working as a team, it's very mental and it's only certain amount of people are seeing what's going out or the final product, and it's it's just different. Yeah, yeah, it is absolutely different for sure. Oscar. Master control room environment. Cloud environment. I mean, definitely the depending on the project, you know, the client will pick. But my personal pick obviously be master control. That just gets you one step closer to the ballroom that we all miss. And I think with the master control room you have a lot more scalability. You're actually using, you know, broadcast level gear now that the cloud students are anything but, I think there's a little bit of a limitation on a cloud studio, you know, when compared to to a room full of gear that can handle a lot more processing and stuff. But but yeah, I need my my buttons. You need your buttons. Okay. All right. So this next question goes to Rick. And how is it different to work with a remote audience or remote presenters versus live audience and live presenters because they're not in the same room with, you know, they're not. And you like going back to what Oscar says, you feel the energy and you you feed off of that. And there's a flow to to what, what you do in a live environment that you can't you just you can't feel that flow in a virtual sense. And in that essence, it really changes how you do things. And your timing is different. And it's it's really it's really a different feel all the way around. Do you get applause in a virtual world? Rick. In my head. Okay. All right. No no no. Same question to Lauren. You know, remote audiences, you're dealing with remote presenters every day and versus live audiences and live presenters. I will say on the presenter side, since I interact with them a lot more, they're a lot more nervous doing this virtual world than walking up on a stage in front of the same amount of people. And speaking of the applause, I just did a record show yesterday where the presenters were talking about, man, this audience is quiet today. Come on, let's get some claps going. And they clapped on the recording. So it's fun to see how they're getting into this virtual world. But there's still that levels of nerves that you have to kind of talk them down off of is different. Obviously, since I don't talk to presenters on the main stage, I just give them lights. It's it's interesting seeing them as people than just presenters. Well, you know, there's a certain experience that people get and if you are presenter and you have to speak in public, then there's an expectation. I think presenting to large audiences or even small audiences as a virtual presenter, people really just don't know how to because they don't get that audience feedback. Kind of like what Rick and Oscar were talking about, the energy. If you're not going to get audience feedback, it's more difficult. And sometimes you'll get like a wall of Microsoft Teams or go to meetings or Zoom calls behind you where it feels like you're getting some kind of feedback, or you say something and everybody starts to clap. But if you don't get that feedback, it's kind of a different world. Also, presenters on stage are a lot more personable. They move around a lot, but in the virtual world, they're in this small frame on a computer, usually smaller than what the camera is showing back to them, and there's so many times we have to stop and say, no, your head's halfway out of the frame. Well, at least you are willing to stop. I know a lot of texts that were too bashful at the beginning of this that wouldn't raise their hand to say, we need to redo this or start over, especially on the prerecorded different for live Oscar different question how is health and safety affected your job? Well, I mean now it's on the on the back of our minds a lot more. I think safety has always been extremely important for us. You want to make sure that accidents don't happen and there's lots of toxin, you know, manuals that we read and safety protocols that we follow. But now we have to think about germs and viruses. And that's that's something new. And like hand sanitation and cleaning our, our gear. So when we go back to show site, we're going to have to take all that into consideration. And I think we've created new protocols of like sending sanitation kits or sensation kits on with gear. So the person that uses is a technician that uses it and to cleaning the gear before and after, you know they use it. So it's big. I think another big thing that I've seen with text is when it first started, they when the lockdown was loosening up a little bit, people were really evaluating the risk to reward ratio of taking a gig. If it's like, hey, you have to, would you? There's a gig for one day outside of your house, you have to be in person. Some people may not take it, you know, but work was also scarce at that point. So if it was like a ten day gig, they may be a little more willing to do it. So people were really evaluating if they were going to leave home or not, and if it was worth it for them. So I think, you know, that's a big way that it affected our jobs. Well, I will tell you, if you would have turned on the news in April, May, June, there weren't there wasn't a lot of good news at that time. Right. And, you know, and before there were what we call established safe protocols, which the CDC has done, that ultimately gave people some sanity or some confidence that they can go out and do and perform shows and do it in a relative safe way. And now we have vaccines, so we're all moving in the right direction. Rick. Same question. Anything about health and safety that crosses your mind when you come to a gig? Absolutely. We my first traveling gig when all of this started was back in June. And I've got to tell you, it was quite an experience being in an airport the very first time after this all started, and and being around people and sitting on an airplane and, you know, relative distance to other people and, you know, you're super conscious of it. And and just because at that point, nobody really knew, you know, if, if you were with an arm's length, are you going to catch it, you know, or not. And so and as time has gone on, as months have gone on and, and I've been on planes more and more through the fall, it's really just become a thing where, you know, you just be safe and know that you got you have your mask and you wash your hands and you sanitize and you're okay. And that's it's become a lot more comfortable to be able to, to go out and do the jobs. Got it. Okay, Lauren. Different question. We're going to go to a hybrid world. So the prediction from the opinion of the great intelligent human beings, they have decided that we're going to do virtual and live together. What do you think it will be the biggest challenge in working in a hybrid world? Well, we've already started, in a sense, a hybrid world in the virtual world, with some people in a studio coming into the recording process. I think the biggest thing would continue to be communication. There's a lot that goes on in a live environment, and a lot of variables that people in the virtual world might not be aware of. So being able to keep up that communication and get what needs to be done for both to look the best it could be. Got it. Well, there's there's definitely intersection points between what will happen in the live world and the virtual world, but there are different worlds. Oscar, your thoughts on the hybrid show? We've got the audio that goes to a live audience. We've got the audio that goes to the virtual audience. Tell me, and we may have questions from virtual questions and live questions. We have to mix them and mix minus them. That's right. And I think another really important part of audio is, is the intercom. And, you know, having a crew around the world, you have to have them all connected. So that's we've definitely improved on those areas. I would say that a hybrid will will have its challenges, but we've learned so much this past year by doing virtual that now I feel like we're really good at doing virtual stuff before we could definitely stream, you know, you know, put the the program out of the switcher with the audio into the internet and people can watch it. But now we can probably I feel like we're ready to bring different presenters in from different parts of the world and, you know, intercom, the whole system, you know, around the world again. And, and I think I feel ready, I feel ready to, to do hybrid shows. Okay. And the same question to Rick. Rick, I think it's more like watching a broadcast news program where we have feeds from around the world. And, and that that might be more of what the hybrid show might look like, but with some type of live audience. What are your thoughts? Absolutely. We're I'm expecting to have to. We'll be combining virtual and live, and that'll just be another element of a live live show in the future, especially as we ramp up getting back into it. I don't believe people are just going to go 100% and travel all their people. I think there's going to be it's there'll be portions of it, and we're what we've learned over this past year is just going to help us make that, you know, make that bridge that much easier. And I don't I don't see any issues in that at all. Well, well, I will tell you this. There's going to be two type of events, events that people feel they have to go to and people that people want to go to. And I think there's there's a conundrum between the people that are planning events and they say, if you feel comfortable, come and then if you don't, we'll send you the virtual stream. And I think where companies may have some challenges is where they try to mandate people travel and whether they're either in the a certain part of the world, the health and safety, whether they're vaccinated. I think once the bulk of people get vaccinated, our world kind of changes to this new normal. But international travel is so dominant, and because of the different countries and the different roles, I think that is the last thing to come back in the equation. So. So let me ask this final question and I'm just going to start with you, Lauren. What is the one thing you're looking forward to when we get back to our new normal. Just tell me something you're looking forward to. And and don't tell me it's the flat meat on the food trays backstage, because I won't be impressed with that answer. So. But but maybe you could give me a better answer. Well, Craft Services is definitely missed. I have to make a lot more meals. Being at home, I think the main thing for me is just getting back to traveling again. I'm a gypsy at heart. I love exploring and live events in this industry allowed me to do that without having to pay for it. But now I'm at home and I'm ready to get out of my house for more than just two hours. Hey, you know what? The Vegas office is open. You're welcome to come anytime. I'm often. That's great internet. I've got. I've done studio work, I worked on it. Eats so cool. Cool. It's all good. Surely? Yes, Oscar, your thoughts on what is the one thing you're looking forward to? Getting back to the new normal. And I know it's probably taking a big old stack of K2 and K1 and hooking it up to some motors, flying it out and making some noise, because then that would all the other guys do. They make noise? Yeah, exactly. I think we're very proud of that. We can that everybody can feel our product. You know, just like when we push that bumble bee the rumble. Yeah, exactly. We can make a right fielder product. I definitely I'm looking forward to seeing everybody in the cruise again and our clients. But I was thinking about this last night, and the main thing that I want to see is, is just that first go that you hear from the stage manager on a ballroom and things just like the magic just happens and all the crew is like, well, we put this whole thing together now look what it's doing. And having extend the experience to the audience, I'm really, really looking forward to that. Just that first go, the first go. You know, it's interesting. In some previous podcasts we've had on touring, the one way we can get the audience to scream immediately is to turn out the lights and, and that that initiation of the engagement of the audience, they know something's coming and that I think what you're describing is something similar. But on a corporate event, they generally don't scream as much. They're waiting for that little ha. The beginning moment of the show is going to start. Rick, bring us to the last answer. Tell us what you're looking forward to the most. I am looking forward to catching up with all the people that I have built relationships with. Over 20 plus years of traveling and doing these shows, I, the extended family that we work with week in and week out, they have all been missed dearly because you look forward to seeing these people and and I miss him dearly. Just really can't wait to see them all again. Well, you know, it's interesting because I was a tech when I started my business many, many moons ago and I put in at least 5000 tech days. I'm 100% sure of that. But I believe you have your or your real family and your road family. Correct. And your real family might be blood relatives, but your road family you might spend more time with depending upon your schedule. But at the end of the day, you know the relationships you have with people. And the one thing that I am looking forward to getting back to life, other than is to see the trucks getting loaded and the and the churning and the energy that happens not only in the shop but on site. Is that the idea that what we do has a certain kind of magic about it? You know, when the lights go on and the show starts, there's a certain amount of, you know, pixie dust that that hits the stage and everyone kind of begin to enjoy. And we and we don't we didn't realize how good we had it until this pandemic came. And then I would say the vast majority of people in our industry greatly miss it, and me included. And I so look forward to getting back to our new normal. And I want to thank you, Rick, Oscar and Lauren, all part of BrainHub, a super talented team. Thank you all again. I look forward to seeing you all in the ballroom and sometime in the near future. This is Les Goldberg and The Road Ahead. Everybody. Good job. Thank you. Thank you so much.