Popular Articles

Sweet marketing music

Tanner Montague came to town from Seattle having never owned his own music venue before. He’s a musician himself, so he has a pretty good sense of good music, but he also wandered into a crowded music scene filled with concert venues large and small.But the owner of Green Room thinks he found a void in the market. It’s lacking, he says, in places serving between 200 and 500 people, a sweet spot he thinks could be a draw for both some national acts not quite big enough yet for arena gigs and local acts looking for a launching pad.“I felt that size would do well in the city to offer more options,” he says. “My goal was to A, bring another option for national acts but then, B, have a great spot for local bands to start.”Right or wrong, something seems to be working, he says. He’s got a full calendar of concerts booked out several months. How did he, as a newcomer to the market in an industry filled with competition, get the attention of the local concertgoer?

read more
by Beth Ewen
October-November 2013

Related Article

All a-twitter: Responding to crisis

Read more

UPSIZE PRIMER: A/V Technology ANYWHERE / VIVIDLY

AUDIO/VISUAL  has come  a long way since high school, now allowing high-definition connections wherever people are. We asked local experts to describe the latest tools for small and mid-sized businesses, how best to use them, and what it all costs. The answers are attractive to many more than those A/V Club nerds we all recall.

 by beth ewen

Starting small,  then building

 JOE BAER, AVI SYSTEMS, ABOUT STARTING SMALL: We have a lot of clients that are small companies, that start with one or two systems, or start with mobile devices, and all of a sudden it starts mushrooming as they use it.

It’s a great business tool. It’s a fantastic way to cut down on travel, but it’s not just airplane travel; it’s cutting down on travel from Eden Prairie to Brooklyn Center. It’s picking up your iPhone or iPad and being connected with someone in another suburb or another state. The amount of meetings and time you can save, the ROI on it is so huge.

We had a client in Eden Prairie, with another office in Brooklyn Park, and they did a 30-day test. They followed a couple of people in their office who would have to go to both offices for meetings. They figured out a 30-minute meeting in Brooklyn Park, it took people three hours for the whole thing. They bought two systems, fairly inexpensive, and they put one in each office and they told us it paid for itself in six months.

ABOUT DETERMINING NEEDS: Discovery is a big thing in our business. A lot of it is asking questions, because we obviously have a society that is prone to technology. They hear so many things, like how great Skype is, and why don’t I just do it on Skype.

We try to ask the questions: Do you need encryption for your video conferencing? Is it OK to be over the public internet or does it need to be more secure? What size room is the meeting going to be in? If you want to do a video conference with three people, obviously I don’t need a 90-inch monitor for that. But if you want to put 30 people in that room, and I’m going to send an Excel spreadsheet that everyone needs to see, you have to have a monitor big enough.

Joe Baer is regional vice president of AVI Systems in Eden Prairie: 952.949.6034;  joe.baer@avisystems.com;  www.avisystems.com

Enough for the `nerd at heart’

WAYNE LUSTHOFF, MARCO, ABOUT EXPECTATIONS: The biggest thing now is the expectation of video. For younger folks, face to face communication has become a big part of their lives. So I see a lot of integration with social media video services, like Skype, etc., and employees want to use those in the workplace. We know how they help increase business, increase morale—that’s the driver I’ve seen.

As you know, social networks, consumer grade, are not secure. So we have a few partners that are able to integrate the business-secure technology with the consumer -based technology, so there’s one big secure happy family.

One thing that’s brand new is CloudAXIS from Polycom. You can send an instant message to a private network, such as a Facebook or Google account. They get the instant message from the cloud access service. They click on that and they can be joined via web browser into a secure conference. It’s really the next generation of video conferencing technology in my opinion.

ABOUT THE POWER OF VIDEO. I had a customer over here, and one of their folks who’s in another state, she joined in via video, she’s never used video before, and one of the first comments was, Wow, that’s what she looks like. They had never seen her before. In communication, I’ve seen research say it’s anywhere from 55 percent to 80 percent that’s non-verbal. So if you can see if someone’s confused, serious, whatever, you can make sure people get the point you’re trying to make.

Wayne Lusthoff is video sales engineer at Marco in St. Cloud: 763.226.1798;  wayne.lusthoff@marconet.com;  www.marconet.com

The low price of looking good

SCOTT JOHNSON, ALPHA VIDEO AND AUDIO, ABOUT USES: Collaboration is a really big one, where both parties to the conference are able to collaborate on a document. I’m starting to see that, especially with engineering places that may be spread out across the country. There’s a variety of solutions—you have more and more vendors.

The trend we’re seeing is small to medium-sized businesses are using the Webex, the Go-to-Meeting, the Google solutions that allow for video conferencing, sharing the documents and markup. As technology is improving—think of the optics that were available even seven years ago; it’s so much sharper—that technology is making its way down to more affordable solutions.

Especially in the manufacturing vertical, a company in the United States will come up with a design for a product and will have that built overseas. It’s not necessarily economical for that owner to be flying over to Asia or Europe to review drawings, so the technology allows them to collaborate on these designs.

ABOUT PRICING: Microsoft with their Skype acquisition, even some of the technologies that vendors bring in, are really driving down the cost of videoconferencing, to the point where it’s becoming a commodity like a land line phone service. You kind of expect to have that these days. Now that it’s easier to share content and collaborate, it even makes more of a compelling business case. 

Scott Johnson is a pre-sales engineer at Alpha Video and Audio in Edina: 952.841.3361; scott.johnson@alphavideo.com; www.alphavideo.com

A year’s worth of rapid change

MIKE WERCH, VIDEO GUIDANCE, ABOUT INNOVATION: We’ve seen, for 20 years, continual changes in the videoconferencing business. I’ve seen more changes in the past 12 months than in the prior 12 years. It’s all good. It’s good for the large enterprise, but it’s also good for the small and mid-sized business.

Videoconferencing was always seen as a technology tool that was put in a boardroom or conference room. It was relatively expensive, but if done right, it worked, and it provided a lifelike experience. That’s great, but it’s been our mission to video-enable everyone, not just the C-levels in the organization.

We’re seeing “bring your own device” as a concept. People have their own pads and phones and they’re video-enabled. And as they use these devices at home, like Facebook and Skype, to communicate with kids and grandparents, these younger people are coming into the workforce to say, We need these tools everywhere.

ABOUT ADVANCES IN THE TECHNOLOGY: One of our biggest challenges is overcoming failed video, or the perception of failure, leftover from the past, around video. For five years now the video quality over interactive videoconferencing is the same as you get at home from your cable providers. It’s high-definition, beautiful video. So that’s no longer the issue, as long as it’s architected properly.

Another big change, and it’s one we predicted for over a decade: in 2002 we started offering video as a service, and we were in the cloud before there was a cloud. Finally we’ve seen that concept resonating with all size companies. So instead of buying all the gear that makes video work, and there’s multiple boxes that you need to invest in, it makes sense to use video as a service. It’s the largest-growing segment of our business.

The small to mid-sized business can have the same things as the General Mills, and pay for it as they go. It changes as the industry changes, which is such a great selling point.

ABOUT OVERCOMING FEARS: People still are fearful of the technology, because it’s so different. We hand-hold, and we do a nice job of getting people competent with the technology. We hear it weekly, people come in and say, I’m having a bad hair day, and they don’t want to do video. You have to laugh because they are out in public, already.  It’s older folks, more so. The young kids could care less.

ABOUT HIS BEGINNINGS:  I worked for Sprint Communications back in 1990. And my first day they were walking me around, and they had a videoconference room, and they had a session going on. Back in 1990, it was a big ordeal. The engine was the size of a refrigerator. But something ticked that day, and I said this is the future. I loved it since I saw it that day.

Mike Werch is president of Video Guidance in Bloomington: 952.400.2555; mwerch@videoguidance.com; www.videoguidance.com

`The sky’s the limit’

DOUG BROWN, GRAYBOW, ABOUT BIGGER DISPLAYS: A couple of things we’re seeing most is the increase in the size of available flat panel displays. A few years ago we couldn’t install a big enough flat panel display because they were so expensive. In the last couple of years 70-, 80- or 90-inch LCD displays have become more affordable. We’re putting more of those in conference rooms, with people sitting 20 feet away, and those are preferable to projection systems.

Consumer grade 70-inch LCD monitors can be had for a $3,000 price point; a 90-inch flat panel, under $10,000. And that’s a huge decrease. Just a year ago we would have had to go with a Panasonic plasma display for $35,000. It’s driven by the home theater market. People wanted one at home, so there’s a lot if production of these and the price has come down.

Users don’t have to compromise on the room aesthetics as much. You don’t have to have a panel coming down, or a projection system. You can have any lighting you want. You don’t have to invest in motorized shades to darken the room. So getting away from lighting restrictions, away from room restrictions, are the advantages.

ABOUT THE ‘BRING YOUR OWN DEVICE’ TREND: We have the ubiquitous iPad, and our customers would like to use them for a presentation tool and as a system control option. We’re building systems that allow users to come into a room with an iPad and wander around wirelessly and present their material on the system.

The concept is called BYOD, or bring your own device, and we’re trying to design more systems now so whatever I bring into a room I can use that. It makes presentation a little less formal. While before we had to spend time to work up our Powerpoint presentation, now if folks can bring their own device and in the middle of a conversation say they have information, it makes for a more dynamic and spontaneous presentation. There’s also a lot of collaboration as well, where you can both use an iPad and annotate things on the screen.

ABOUT AN EXAMPLE: We recently did a divisible training room for a pharmaceutical company to train their internal salespeople. The better the training is the better the salespeople are, and the better the salespeople are the more money they make. They wanted to use more cutting-edge tools, to shake up the way they had traditionally done training and do it better.

ABOUT TRAINING: It’s generally true that younger people are more accustomed to new technology. We’ve seen tremendous changes in the last few years that some older generations may have ignored: social media, portable devices. If you want to in life you can avoid that, but young people embrace it. Interactive whiteboards are common in education today, so kids that come out of college are used to it. Some folks are more stuck in their ways, and they’re a little bit harder to tip over and accept the new technology.

A lot of time in our corporate environment it’s a cost-benefit analysis that makes them come on board. They realize if they spend some time and money on the new technology it will pay benefits. There’s a payback for that.

ABOUT COSTS: We can put in a capable presentation system in a reasonably sized space, for a couple thousand dollars now. Folks can get into a capable presentation system on the cheap these days. That said, the sky’s the limit in terms of what you can do.  If we need that comprehensive touchscreen control system, we can easily get over six figures. It’s not difficult to spend a couple hundred thousand dollars.

Doug Brown is director of design and integration at Graybow Communications in Golden Valley: 952.543.7171; dbrown@graybow.com; www.graybow.com