Page 16 - BusinessWest October 12, 2020

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much about the networking, and people miss that. But in this time of pandemic and crisis, they’re viable solutions that allow people to connect and participate.”
Technical Concerns
The first thing people need to learn in this new landscape is the terminology, Zaskey said. “Like, when people started using the phrase ‘socially distant,’ I’ve always thought we say that wrong. We should be socially connected and physically distant. Or connected with technology.”
Likewise, people often mean different things when they say ‘vir- tual event.’ “People started throwing that term around, but it means something different for every person we talk to.”
That’s because, in his world, virtual events have often meant events that occur in a virtual space, like a corporate meeting in which the CEO stands on a virtual stage in front of a greenscreen, backed by a set created electronically, as if standing in a video game or virtual-reality environment. “What most people call a virtual event today, we use the term ‘online event.’ That’s more accurate.”
There are hybrid events, too, which mix in-person and remote elements. “Instead of 500 people in a room, maybe you have 20 smaller rooms with 25 people in each room, physically distanced, and connect those rooms electronically” — a good option even in non-pandemic times for large, national companies that don’t want to fly everyone to one location for an important gathering.
Zasco is also doing some drive-in events, like a recent pancreat- ic-cancer fundraiser in Connecticut that had been postponed from May. “We wanted to keep our audience engaged, so we did a drive- in event and spaced out the cars, with a large screen outdoors, and you could listen through FM radio.”
While short speeches were delivered on stage — again, in a dis- tanced fashion — the biggest donors and benefactors attended live in their cars, with others able to watch through a webstream.
“We’ve done a number of those for nonprofits, schools, and cor- porations,” Zaskey said. “That’s been pretty successful. I’ve been impressed how good people have been about following the rules. People, by and large, are wearing masks and staying in their cars. I’ve been impressed, because people aren’t always known for fol- lowing rules.”
One pressing issue at online and hybrid events, of course, is connec- tivity and having the redundancy and bandwidth to keep connections from going down. “We’ve had to think and engineer our way into ... not neces- sarily new technology, but using it in new ways. It’s always changing and growing.”
Part of the challenge is communi- cating issues to attendees, he added. If a hotel ballroom loses power, all 500 people attending in person expe- rience the same thing and know what’s going on. “If 500 people tune into a stream and lose power to the master control room, those 500 peo- ple have no idea what happened.”
“We’ve done a number of those for nonprofits, schools, and corporations. That’s been pretty successful. I’ve been impressed how good people have been about following the rules. People, by and large, are wearing masks and staying in their cars.”
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Jensen agreed that technical
concerns were paramount. “It was
slightly challenging at the beginning for us tech people,” he said, adding that another challenge has to do with communication — not only with the crew, but with presenters who may be in different locations.
“We’ve done thousands of events over 20 years, and the process is different. We’d have a stage manager go on stage and hand some- one a microphone. Now you have to make sure you have plenty of rehearsals and walk them through the process.”
Technology upgrades are a must as well, both for production companies and their clients. “A standard laptop camera and micro- phone don’t work — certainly it’s not high-enough quality. So we created ‘cases’ and sold a couple dozen to clients, and have some in own inventory. This allows them to have much better image and quality and make their event that much better. We all know a stan- dard iPhone camera or computer camera is not that great.”
Like Zasco, Jx2 found a niche in drive-in events, like graduations. And because the company got into streaming at least 15 years ago, as it went mainstream, it wasn’t too difficult to shift focus to that
16 OCTOBER 12, 2020
TECHNOLOGY BusinessWest