Rolando Rosas 8:12
So we’re gonna be precise and accurate. If I were to use kind of the German way, we go get better. Yeah, you go up solid, right. Yeah. All right. Gentlemen, I really appreciate you all coming on. You all are coming on just the right time. Because this, we want to jump into how could people really level up the game on on being on a call on Zoom Zooms you ubiquitous now, teams has become ubiquitous. Other platforms that are in the communications and collaboration that are also using video as part of their platform are becoming more ubiquitous, but what isn’t ubiquitous, is really the look and feel or the way you’re coming across? Or even realizing what kind of lasting impression you’re leaving on people when you hop on a video. But before we hop into the video discussion, Dave, I believe you have some words for us.
Dave Kelly 9:12
Speaking of zoom, hey, listen, are your clients or business partners keeping you awake at all hours of the night? And that happens to me sometimes listen, like so many salespeople that we know you know what they’re using their personal cell phone numbers for business they need to stop doing that, you know, what? Did you know that you can easily use Zoom for both your online meetings and also your phone calls? It’s possible. Take Back the Night so that you can sleep better knowing that your phone won’t be ringing and keeping you up all evening long. Listen, Zoom phone allows you to keep zoom phone allows you to keep your personal phone numbers separate so that you can rest more easily and be more efficient during the day with Global Teck Worldwide as your zoom partners setting it up is as easy as 123 Check them out at Teck.global/zoom to get started. All right, Rolando,
Rolando Rosas 10:08
back to you. Awesome, Dave, thank you phone ring at night. It just is a problem. But we there’s this there’s a fix to that. So gent, I want to jump straight away into this with you. There’s a lot going on in the tech world. This is a question to both of you. What are you nerding out on right now from a technology perspective that you can’t get enough of? Let’s open up with Phil. For me,
Philipp Eggebrecht 10:40
it’s a it’s got to be all this AI stuff, specifically, text and chat GPT I keep putting stuff in like, I’m doing these like hour long drives here in the Bay Area. And I’m just thinking of things in the car like, oh, I want to ask it this one, ask it that all with the with the background of kind of can this thing enable or give me capabilities that I couldn’t do before. I’m not a software engineer. I love software, though. And I love kind of I watch coding videos and just all sorts of content around that. I was thinking, can this thing make me sort of an engineer without having actual programming knowledge? And indeed it has, I’ve been able to write, you know, write some programs just using chat GBT. But again, I have no personal experience in that. And that’s kind of my fascination right now is how is this? You know, kind of like how Redbull used to give you wings? What can what can chat GPT do for you?
Rolando Rosas 11:39
What can GPT do for you? And you know, I’d never heard of the term prompt engineering, and how, you know, you basically have to train or coach it to get you better outputs I somebody pointed something out recently to me that I found really interesting. When you look at the announcement that open AI did regarding chat GPT. Four, there was a whole video around that. And during that prompt exercise of what it could do, the last phrase, of what was being said was Do you understand? And then the AI responds either in a way that you’re really looking for, for it to do what you’re asking for no. And then that’s the opportunity for you to be like, No, what I meant was, because it doesn’t always get what you’re trying to say, the first crack, like give me the best marketing plan. Well, it could be for anything, right that marketing plan for, for being on social media or selling a product or whatever. But the more you’re able to feed it and along with that Do you understand allows you to make sure that that refinement that it needs can be produced when you get the results? So you get a much more meaningful results are
Philipp Eggebrecht 13:01
a little bit like a Google search on steroids. Yeah, I still to this day, have this discussion with my mother, she’ll ask me, Hey, how do I do this? How do I do that? And I tell her, well just Google it. And she doesn’t necessarily know what to type in to get the results she’s looking for on Google. And now you take that, and you you know, make it x times more complicated. And that or, I mean, I guess technically, it could be easier. But you know, how do you tell this thing, the right information? How do you give it the right prompt to get the information that you want? It is going to be a skill, it’s something you can I think train up and there are people are going to stand out who can make will be able to make these things. Give them incredible results. So yeah, that’s that’s kind of where, what I’m really trying to get my chat G up my finger. Yeah,
Rolando Rosas 13:48
you know, we’ve given it a name around here, because same chat. GPT is just too hard on the tongue, especially as as often as we’ve used it. So we call him, Eddie. We call Eddie. So anybody in our office, we’re talking about? Did you put that through Eddie? We know what we all know what we’re talking about. Because Chad GPT is just kind of, I don’t know, for me, it’s hard to say that over and over again. But I want to also open it up to new What are you thinking? Are you also geeking out on this AI stuff? Are you somewhere else with I feel?
Neil Fluester 14:21
I feel late to the party with the whole AI thing. It’s quite fun. I mean, I think you put a post up the other day about social media stuff. And I’m just like, No, I got I feel old about this house that I have started embracing GPT. But I asked him stupid questions like, you know, write me a comment to put on the LinkedIn or something like that, because I’m just being lazy. I love it. And it’s tough. But I think the interesting thing, in my world of the whole AI thing is around meeting transcription, speech or text and being able to make meetings more clever and intelligent for us. So Mark’s often zoom we’re putting in stuff now that will then transcribe your meeting. gives you a word cloud. And you can then from a recording point of view, go and look at specific things. So you can take a linear meeting and make it nonlinear and say, Okay, I just want to look at the, or listen to the bit where Neil talked about x or alanda, talks about whatever. And just watch that one piece. These kinds of smart speakers and this transcribing stuff, they’re putting in loving all of that, I think that’s really cool. And then from a content creator side of things of my life, there’s some really cool editing stuff now coming, I used to be Dobby premiere, everyone needs to get premiere. And you kind of that was your tool. But I recently started using cam cut, I think it’s cool. Yeah, I love those free, which is brilliant. So awesome. And there’s another one, which I can’t remember, which takes a script and makes a video out of the scripts. Again, there’s another kind of free I can’t wait for the Nobel Prize want to look for those.
Rolando Rosas 15:50
There’s really, there’s even fsai
Neil Fluester 15:53
I think it’s D script, the end literally edits versus it didn’t take all your answers out. But that looks amazing and awesome to me. So again, the more tools that will simplify and automate my creation process I think is brilliant loving that it’s a cap cut, I think is awesome at the moment for quickly creating social reels.
Dave Kelly 16:14
And those in those are some of the just the free options that are out there.
Neil Fluester 16:18
How do you get a get a get a makeup with that when they charge however much for Creative Suite,
Dave Kelly 16:23
you know, I think about what the licensing costs for Adobe or what it costs for pro tools and things like that. And then here comes these kind of free trial versions, and anyone can do it. huge time savers, we’re huge fans of descript the script, we use that quite often. And just being able to kind of remove those easily remove kind of uncomfortable parts or you know, taking out the eyes and wounds and repetitive words and things like that. The other thing that I heard you mentioned, Neil was the captioning piece. Yeah, so even some of these hardware providers like EA pause, for example, within some of their speakers, the AI is learning whose voices talking so that could be one of the speakers and a table with six people. But that those six people might be six different people every hour, there’s a different meeting, different meeting where you go, and they’re learning people’s voices, okay, learning people’s voices. What you said reviewing meetings, so we’ll back we record everything. And if we have someone that’s in the team that maybe isn’t on that call, but we need their attention, when they go back to listen to the recording, we need their attention. We’ll call out that person’s name. We’ll have the conversation about what what we need from that person. And then when the video is sent to them all they need to do the sitcom because again, to sit through an hour long meeting that you missed now. All they have to do is search for their name, it’ll come up to where it is, and huge timesavers huge,
Neil Fluester 16:23
actually Jabra, I props to Jabra big big credit, Jabra, they introduced it on the panic Rs 50 Now as a software upgrade, so that was going to do transcription as a software update for teams, I think in whatever releases coming out. So if you’ve got a panic asked the we’ll get that transcription thing for free. So love that again. The fact that you know the old days of record players and tapes, they were linear, you press play and you have to listen to the old things, but you can now just go I want to know that bit that awesome. Anyway. So hey,
Dave Kelly 18:27
in this episode, so we’re going to be talking about like home studio setups. I have a question for both of you. When setting up a personal studio or a streaming room, what would you say? What is the biggest misconception that people have when they’re when they’re setting up? Something like this? Hello, y’all take it away?
Philipp Eggebrecht 18:48
Oh, you will be okay, I’ll go first I got the other one first year. Okay, first.
Neil Fluester 18:53
So for me, it’s not what go it’s not the camera in the mic, but it’s the actual environment. So when I set this room up, I wanted to have the lighting behind me and just some stuff on the shelf to give some depth of field. But then it’s also the lighting and the acoustics which many people don’t, don’t worry don’t look at. I also have you know blinds to block out the light in days I don’t want the light to go up and down and change during the day. So I want a controlled environment is really important to me that I’ve got my lights set up I’ve got the acoustic towels set up in the room to them whatever camera and mic I then choose to use I’m gonna get the most out of it, I’m gonna get the best out of it because they are you know, great tools but without a good you know, environment and good room. You know, those those tools are going to be hampered by that. So for me, getting your actual environment and space right and thinking about your background, you don’t want like a really busy background to take away from you. You’re the One person or the content, so you know, having something that’s, that’s nice and pleasing on the eye, I think and then again, obviously, then get some great audio and video tech to add to it.
Philipp Eggebrecht 20:12
But also the setup that you’re in, I mean, it’s it shows kind of, right, it’s a representation of you and kind of your personality, the things you’re into, right? I mean, like Neil, behind you, I see a lot of tech. You know, who, you know, I can see, what does that like, I think a keyboard or is that right?
Rolando Rosas 20:37
He’s a company, man, he’s got to represent
Philipp Eggebrecht 20:40
exactly doing a better job than I am at that I’ve just got a bunch of blu rays than a map of the Lord of the Rings, Canvas.
Rolando Rosas 20:47
Good, interesting, interesting, where’s your favorite place on that map? Right?
Philipp Eggebrecht 20:53
That’s I asked myself every time before I go to sleep, because I’m looking kind of directly at it. And I don’t know, it’s just cool overall, to have this big canvas print. But it just adds to a little bit, you know, everyone’s different, everyone has different things that they enjoy. And previously, kind of, I would say, even before the pandemic, I don’t think people put as much thought into what was kind of behind the most just grab your laptop, grab a camera, grab whatever. And I mean, the chance that you’re doing a meeting from home is already pretty slim. And then you would just kind of take whatever. Whereas now, you know, folks are spending a lot more time thinking about not just the audio and the video, but also just generally, you know, what’s going on, you know, in the entire picture, basically, right? Because, in the end, we’re all putting out a presentation all the time.
Neil Fluester 21:39
No, I hate I hate the blurred background. So when people I mean, it was a great feature that they brought out the whole kind of, you know, blurred backgrounds. But it’s, I find it very distracting because you get this kind of halo around the person because unless you got a you know, super great camera and great lighting, the rest of it doesn’t cut perfectly. And I always want to think What are you hiding? What are you what’s why you blurring out what’s going on behind you. So I like the fact that again, you have this depth of field, I call it Bokor. Phil’s got it on his I’ve got it on mine, too. It’s not in focus, you can’t quite make out what’s behind us. But it’s there. And it gives that that depth to it. And again, it’s sort of nice and soft. But if you do it virtually, I always hate that old people that have these. The other thing is they’ve all got the same background, you’re like, hang on you share in the flat with the first time in the same place, or,
Rolando Rosas 22:31
you know, and I think Neil, that zoom and some of the other platform providers probably came out with that as a reaction to exactly what we were just talking about, you know, things thrown in the background distractions, right going on behind you, less than flattering things to look at, right? Because what you were saying, Phil, it was an afterthought. So this is better than looking at all this mess, right? But we’re way beyond that now, right? And the technology and the devices, and the in the cost on some of these things are within the reach for a lot of people as well as a lot of companies that distribute this equipment to their employees. And that’s where we want to go next. I want you both to react. I’m also queuing up our producer here to bring up a clip that we have that I want you both to look at. They’re very short on both sides. And then we’ll have a discussion around both of these video clips and see what your thoughts are on that. And oh, yeah, and so the so what I will suggest, though, that you have an in mind, when you’re looking at this, what if your boss looked and sounded like what you’re about to see.
Guest Speaker 23:42
Morale is a little low. I want everybody at the office tomorrow, and I want you to bring your pet. care what kind of dog cat bring your pet maksimal wants you to do, make sure they have clothes on. Alright, clothes.
Rolando Rosas 24:02
All right. So that’s, that’s video number one, or jump into video number two, again, think about what if your boss looked and sounded like this? Go ahead. Video number two.
Guest Speaker 24:12
Where’s Patrick? Ben? That’s that’s what you’re asking yourself. Like, I’ve been on LinkedIn every day and Youtube every day. I keep watching for videos that Patrick is going to produce and he’s produced nothing in the last couple of weeks. And you’re absolutely right. I have not. I haven’t produced anything publicly in the last two weeks for you to view on LinkedIn, because I’ve been doing other stuff. I was not hired at zoom to create video posts that that is not why I was hired. I was hired as a distinguished architect to really help with pre sales motions for the revenue and engineering team. And I continue to do that. I continue to do that every day. The video thing just kind of evolved organically. I know that feeling you get
Rolando Rosas 25:02
Got it. Listen, look at this. This is Patrick Kelly that we’re looking at an awesome, awesome guy from zoom. He’s super technical, and he’s really become very comfortable in his skin. You know, Patrick, you want to come on the show love to have you talk a little bit more about this. I love this kind of mix between Little John, and slash. Right. I love this combo. And you know, it’s, it’s really interesting. But But what we were talking about earlier, you know, on the first video, I don’t want to put any words in my mouth. I want to let you guys speak. And so this So, Neil, you kicked off the last question, Phil, go ahead. What are you? What are your thoughts? If one of these two gentlemen, were your boss, and you’re hearing and listening to this video? Well, that’s kind of the question
Philipp Eggebrecht 25:56
of my first reaction right away is also is that even real? I mean, oh, my gosh, the whole the whole setup of the entire thing is, like, really, really, that that actually happened? But uh, hey, I guess it did. Oh, man, I mean, where to begin? Right? It’s just wherever you want to begin, if I were sitting in a meeting, or you know, even if it’s just a one on one or something, and that’s the that’s the presentation I’m getting from the other side. That’s rough. I mean, it’s hard to see, it’s hard to hear. It’s not eye catching. It’s not, you know, pleasing to the eye. I’m just I’m, I would be completely tuned out and zoned out. Right. I mean, that’s just not.
Rolando Rosas 26:39
And it’s far too common. Right now, Phil still in today, as we film this in 2023, that first video, I would still say is the default, rather than the other way around? Would you say? Would you agree or disagree with that?
Philipp Eggebrecht 26:55
I would certainly agree. We see this even on, you know, news broadcasts, you have CNN pulls on a guest they’ll have, you know, terrible over processed audio, because they’re probably sitting in, you know, some large room with background noise, or, you know, they’re just in an environment that isn’t ideal. And I’m thinking you’re going on like national television. And you know, this isn’t even something internal that are coming to go on national television, this is how you present yourself. Yeah, that is that is incredible. And over the past couple of years, and you know, I think I think we’ll probably get here. But over the past couple of years, we’ve had many instances where, where executives and leaders and kind of leadership teams are coming to us and asking, you know, what is the gear that you have? And what can you recommend? And how can you, you know, set something up so that our executives and our and our leaders can look really good, you know, sound really good and come across better? And that really just started with the pandemic, right? I mean, before that, it wasn’t really a discussion topic at all. And here we are today. So
Rolando Rosas 27:57
no doubt. And I think that when you’re talking about being the default, I think, today, you can be very intentional about the image that you’re putting on, you know, if there was a, I don’t know, if you’ve heard of Chris Voss, he’s a very famous former FBI negotiator, get some real, it’s a really interesting take on this, that your eyes and ears aren’t deceiving you. And it’s a first impression is still important. But the lasting impression is the last impression. The last impression is the lasting impression. And as a high FBI negotiator. That’s what he’s trying to work in the mind of somebody. And I, although we are not doing hostage negotiation, we’re doing business negotiation, we’re convincing, we’re trying to influence. You’re trying to leave that lasting impression. And so upping the game, where, like you said, it’s hard to really, you know, stay engaged in an online meeting, when the sound sounds like you’re over there in that corner, right. And the video is maybe less than flattering. So it almost takes away from the focus of what you’re trying to accomplish in a meeting, whether you’re pitching and negotiating, or you’re doing some kind of internal meeting. Would you say that’s about right, Phil, or no?
Philipp Eggebrecht 29:21
Yeah, definitely. It goes, it’s, it just takes what we’ve been doing before more. So in an office, right, you might have a group meeting, you prepare a nice PowerPoint, you get everyone in a room, everyone sits around, you know, everyone closes their laptop, or at least they used to nowadays, that seems to also not be a thing so much anymore, everyone, you know, close to their laptop, or it doesn’t even bring one in. And then a person gets up in front and, you know, presents to a whole group. And, you know, within that there was thought about how they’re gonna present, you know, the material that they’re presenting. So why should that be any different when we’re doing it online? Right. And in that first example, it felt a little bit like the actual presentation itself. You know, the information is the same but everything else was an afterthought. Right? The audio the video, how it comes across was just maybe it was an afterthought. Maybe they just couldn’t get the tech or the gear in time, maybe there was the know how it was missing, right? All of that. But really, it just, there was no preparation done. So what does that tell you, if a leader in your team or at your company as well presenting themselves that way, and, you know, coming unprepared when they should ideally be the most prepared.
Rolando Rosas 30:26
And that particular footage was shot on a laptop on your standard Lenovo laptop? That’s so that’s the footage. And for those folks that are watching this on video, you’ll you’ll get those dynamics between the two videos that we just shot. So mele use got to see those two video clips. What are your impressions on what you saw? And what would you think if your boss was on one of those two videos,
Neil Fluester 30:53
but it’s funny because it wasn’t expressing your test. So panicking when you got a test for you. So at that point, and then you played the first video, and I’m sitting there thinking, Oh, my God, what what are they saying? So I was concentrating so hard to try and listen, because the audio was terrible. And that’s the first thing is is I was really having to concentrate way more than I would normally in a conversation to try and understand what what they were saying. And I think if you were listening to that for more than 30 seconds or a minute, the word that will come up will be fatigue. If you had to sit through that for any period of time, you’d be knackered beautiful English term, by the end of the end of the meeting NEC is ready. Yeah, you’d be worn out. It’s, it’s hard work to your brain to just concentrate. So what’s he saying? And then,
Rolando Rosas 31:42
visually, Neil, cuz I had an idea where you said nekkid Did you think that that is probably one of the reasons that so many people experience zoom fatigue? Early on, as you know, everybody or more people are logged in on Zoom and teams. And we’re just basically that’s all they did all day long. Because you’re knackered at looking at some less life value, video.
Neil Fluester 32:07
Yeah, and again, I don’t think it’s necessarily the video that was been the video I’ll come to in a second, but the audio, you would have huge fatigue, having to listen and concentrate to that, or you would switch off and start doing something or if you’re watching that remotely, and you had dual screen, you would absolutely be on Amazon or on somewhere else or on the one tech or Elgato website shopping for stuff and not concentrating on your your boss’s pitch. The interesting thing about the video is a obviously it’s around engagement. I wasn’t engaged in the video, particularly but I think the the one thing about the video is is and again, Phil mentioned it about you know, giving a presentation, what we really need to think about more is not giving a presentation, but it’s storytelling. You know, when we create content, when we create presentation, you know, you can go and do a 50 slide presentation with a load of bullets in it. Or you can tell a story. And if you tell a story, that’s what’s engaging and again, are you going back to your your anecdote about the FBI guy, that is what people will remember the story of the presentation, the pitch, the whatever it was. And again, it’s the same for a good book and a terrible book, if you get a good book that’s engaging and will you know is written well and presented well, you will be way more captivated and engaged into that, that book or video or audio, whatever it might be. So audio fatigue, video, the lack of storytelling and engagement. Patrick stuff I love the thing I love about Patrick, he’s got the dual camera setup like we did in the green room earlier. I can’t do that because this bid looks perfect. This terrible is carnage. But I love the fact that he again, he’s switching over it was using stream deck or whatever to do a BK switch on it or whatever. But I love that and it’s just, I do find his background quite busy and distracting. But again, from a from a storytelling point of view from a video and from an audio point of view. You could listen to that all day long. I mean, and you can watch that all day long. It’s compelling. And he’s a great, he’s a great storyteller. If you watch his content is
Rolando Rosas 34:07
he is really good at getting your attention. And I pointed that that clip out I mean, he’s got more. Yeah, it was hard to pick out but this was the attention grabbing nature of him. Kind of looking like slash. He didn’t have the hair coming out of the top hat. But the cane with the dollar signs. I just think Snoop Dogg or Little John sang. Yeah, I was just waiting for him to say something around that. But he did.
Neil Fluester 34:39
But I think just the attention is you had the guy that does Gary Vee stuff and Gary Vee always talks about, you need a customer’s attention. You need your staffs attention without their attention. You can’t give the presentation. You can’t sell the product. You can’t you know, you can make a million videos, PowerPoints, emails or whatever if you don’t have their attention Your message is not going to land. And that’s what we’re trading on all the time is people’s attention. And the first video is certainly not going to get my attention to right. And
Dave Kelly 35:09
now we have this technology, we need to take advantage of it, you know, it used to be, I’m giving my presentation today, I have the people there, and I’m wearing my wearing my million dollar suit, I’m gonna look like a million bucks. And so now I’m gonna go out there. So you have what you have. But now we have, you have your million dollar suit. But you also have everything else, you know, your million dollar camera, your million dollar background, you have all these ways that you can grab someone’s attention. Take advantage of it. And I think a lot of us don’t? And I don’t know, you know, at what point do you tell someone to step up their game? At what point would you tell that person, the person in the first clip, that listen, there’s no color can’t hear you, um, you’re too far away, you know, when is it appropriate to have higher expectations from people? Today, that is,
Philipp Eggebrecht 36:10
I would say just the expectation, I mean, it really is, you know, us sitting here and using the gear that we have, is pretty, I mean, within the reach of pretty much any company out there, right? If they’re providing that which they should to their employees, I mean, if you want to talk about effective work, you know, if you’re, if you’re doing sales pitches, or you know, even if you’re just leading, like big group meetings and engineering or something like that, you’ve got to come across, you know, well, and it’s really not that big of a of an ask to just get a get a dedicated microphone, get a dedicated camera, don’t use what’s built in, it’s kind of, you know, the standard issue used to be when you join a company that you’ll get a laptop, and maybe, you know, maybe a hat, maybe a t shirt will add to that, you know, a microphone, a camera, maybe a light, you know, maybe something else, maybe like a stream deck Mini, here, or there is you know, give a little control. But that should really be be a part of it. And it’s interesting, because that’s what we started seeing quite early on as well, you know, Google was doing that. So Google added, they would, you know, they send this massive package of gear to someone who joins the company. And, you know, it would be a laptop, and then you know, the the hat with a little spinny thing on top right, you’re a Googler. But then they also started adding one of our Elgato key light errs to that, right, and so immediately, if you were then using your laptop, still not the best, but at least they then had a dedicated light that they could use, I’m not sure if a microphone was also part of the package. But for sure, a key light era was, you know, and that’s kind of that first step into that, and it shouldn’t be on you, as the employee to also, you know, provide this stuff. I mean, really, a company should do it, at least in you know, in my
Rolando Rosas 37:59
social because you’re representing a company, right? Especially if you’re, you’re dealing with patients, clients, outside the outside the company, or you are representing the company, I mean, I prior to doing this, you know, I was a in an area manager, and you’re representing that company, when you step into a client’s office, the way you look, the way you present, the way you talk, the material that you come with, right, all that as part of a package. And being online doing it virtually. Like you said, Phil, I don’t think it’s different. And so it in bringing forward a package that allows that employee, that manager to represent the organization and having a really good lasting impression. I think it’s important for companies to start evaluating that more now that so many millions, hundreds of millions of people are doing business online. And in a lot of places, it’s you know, it’s what you do now, it’s part of the part of your work life is on meetings, right? I don’t think we’re going away from that. If anything, you know, like you said, We’ve got to try to find a way to enhance it. So, in what I want to do is tap into some of what you were starting to hit on both of you, which is what are some of the secrets that we see that you all see. And before we get there, already, go ahead and roll the intro to the top secrets.
AI 39:32
Well kept secrets Well, secrets, gotta keep them safe. And sound. Well, let’s see for secrets, just like Dima.
Rolando Rosas 39:49
Okay, all righty. So one of the things that that we like to talk about here is the fun fact about the AI on that that was written in part by an AI machine that helped compose that, as well as some of the some of the score on that. So AI, thank you Edie for helping write some of that, as well as I can’t remember the other programs in the program we used for AI. So fun fact about AI. For for work purposes. So, Phil, Neil, we were just talking here earlier before we went on to say hit the record button, about some of the things that would be useful for folks that are getting their personal studio or home studio or huddle room going and they want to upgrade. One of the things that you said to us, Phil, was that a stream deck is not only for streaming, what do you mean by that? Yes, that’s
Philipp Eggebrecht 40:47
something. It’s a stream deck. You know, the name, what
Neil Fluester 40:53
is the stream deck of the people might just be decades? Yeah, probably just just rewind on that. Go for it.
Philipp Eggebrecht 40:59
Definitely. Yeah, I wish actually had one to kind of hold up, I unfortunately, don’t know,
Rolando Rosas 41:03
Vanna White, they’re gonna go Vanna White.
Philipp Eggebrecht 41:08
So the stream deck is, is essentially a controller board that has buttons on it, which those buttons are LCD keys. They’re essentially if you think about it, they’re little displays. They’re not, you know, big TV, like they’re very small, they have a, they have a much smaller resolution, but they can have anything on them and their buttons, so you can tap on it, you can press it, and then it’ll do some sort of function. Stream deck is something that we came up with back in 2017, I think is when we launched the first one. Because we were taking, you know, at Elgato, we’re all about, you know, content creators and making their lives easier. And we were looking at, what are the biggest pain points that creators have today? And well, you know, back in 2017, and what we realized is that, if you’re a creator, you are your entire staff, right? You are the tech director, you’re the producer, you’re the On Air talent, you’re also the it part, right? You’re everything, you’re the graphics designer, right? You you handle the entire show. And there wasn’t really a tool that allowed you to manage all of that in a quick and efficient way, while still putting on an engaging presentation. Being able to do up graphics, you know, trigger sound effects, which scenes do all the things that you would see at a more professional broadcast, or, you know, even if you had one of the person controlling it, something like that. And so that’s where extreme mechanic came from. But we wanted to also take it a step further and not just do something where, okay, you have to print out little stickers, and then put it on, right, that sort of thing. We, what, what could be what could be even better. And so we develop the stream deck with these LCD keys that can have anything on them. So maybe I have one key set of four microphone mute. And if I tap it, it actually turns that icon red to indicate or it has like a red slash through to indicate that the microphone is off which, well, that’s something again, you can’t really do on other devices that don’t have these LCD keys if you print something out, or maybe they’re just color coded, right, they have an LED underneath or something like that. But again, we want it to actually show a status on there. And so it’s really awesome as kind of a secondary display device and control device. In front of me actually, I’ve one that’s just showing showing my network thing. That’s a key that’s actually constantly pinging, I think it’s like 1.1 dot 1.1, and just shows it on the key with a little green, light green background, if everything’s good by pinging ever goes up because either I’m uploading something or a TNT is having issues than it turns orange. And if there’s no network connection, it turns red. So I immediately know during my broadcast or even you know, on our on our show here, if my network is going to be all good or not. And
Rolando Rosas 43:49
let’s have some fun. And that’s good to know, because you don’t have any doubt whether your image is coming through choppy or not. And I think that the longer that you are online, the the the more times you’ll experience more often than not, the network can go down or degraded. Because you know, a bunch of people are in your area, and they’re putting a strain on the bandwidth, right? And now you will know, okay, I may have some problems with my video or whatever streaming thing that you’re doing at the moment versus not knowing at all, and then you’re thinking everything’s just fine.
Philipp Eggebrecht 44:25
Hmm. And that has technically nothing to do with streaming, right, that’s just a really nice kind of second screen utility function of the stream deck. I also just have it set up to open a bunch of folders. I don’t know how many screenshots you guys take, but I take quite a lot of screenshots and I save them all into folders. And I always well, in the past, I would always have to navigate through, you know my file directory and find all the screenshots. Now I have a single key on the stream deck that I press, it just opens that folder and I immediately have access to all my recent screenshots, so I kind of took what normally would be kind of annoying or, you know, take multiple clicks and reduce that down to one key press, or even like opening websites, basically all the things that are kind of mundane, but that you do a lot that are super repetitive. You can just map those all on two keys, you know, you press a key, boom, it just opens the website, it opens your programs for you, right? It opens zoom teams, whatever you’re using.
Rolando Rosas 45:20
I love it, Phil, let me just tell you, I have I have, I haven’t even maxed out all the keys on mine. But it is a work enhancer for productivity. Because yes, it will make the creative process easier. I can launch a bunch of things, sound effects, videos can play list. But from a from a workers perspective, I can create shortcuts like to mute on Zoom, I can create shortcuts that will get to that folder for screenshots, I can create three steps of something that would have been three or four clicks into that with one button. And all of a sudden that thing is in my face, or it launches the thing that I wanted to do.
Neil Fluester 46:04
Yeah, it’s not always in the foreground is that that’s the thing you could be you’re in a team’s cool, but then you’re maybe looking at a PowerPoint presentation presenting or you’ve got a web page up, you’re not to then go and minimize that go to teams or zoom, find the mute button pressing mute, but you can just go bang, it’s there. Or like the reactions. Now in teams and zoom, you can have the you know, clapping, smiling and all that, again, without having to go to thing, find the menu, drop it down to the date, you just go, happy, sad, clap,
Philipp Eggebrecht 46:29
whatever pillar of the stream deck is that those integrations that you mentioned, like pulling up the you know, the reactions or opening zoom or muting a microphone, those aren’t just hotkey based, you know, hotkey solutions have existed for a long time, you know, you can just use your keyboard for that right f1 through FL if you really wanted to. But hotkeys can be unreliable data might not trigger if the app isn’t in the foreground. And so the one thing that we really, really push for was stream deck is that if you are a if you are building a plugin for it, if you’re integrating your tool with the stream deck, make that a real API integration, you know, have it that where if I press the mute key on stream deck, that sends that mute command, to teams, teams will respond and say, yep, I’m now muted. And then stream deck knows that and so that way, also, if I go into teams, and I unmute using my mouse, it’ll show up right on the stream deck, right. And so that creates also that, that,
Rolando Rosas 47:22
that feedback, status indicator, almost,
Philipp Eggebrecht 47:25
exactly. And also just the knowledge that what you’re doing is happening, there’s nothing worse than pressing a key and kind of nothing happens in a year, maybe at a critical moment, like oh, my gosh, you know, I needed to mute because I’m about to cough, and then that doesn’t react,
Rolando Rosas 47:39
you’re on mute, and that’s a panic, panic, a panic on your immune, because you’re looking for the mouse, and then you gotta look for on the screen where the mute is. And I love that you can just unmute and mute with a button on the stream.
Philipp Eggebrecht 47:53
And so in that sense, it’s really not just for streaming, and it kind of it was pretty slow initially, on the uptake. You know, before the pandemic, we also just didn’t, you know, we didn’t push it in that direction, it’s still called stream deck, we’re going to continue calling a stream deck, because that’s kind of productivity. Yeah, work deck, a work deck, yeah, there’s, there’s lots of things, it’s actually kind of become its own thing. Now, we do have, like imitators that are calling there’s also like the XO deck, kind of basing it off of that. But yeah, during the pandemic, you know, folks, but found the stream deck and found these use cases that have nothing to do with, you know, gaming, nothing to do with content creation, but just, it’s a device that enhances your workflow, you know, makes, sometimes menial tasks just easier, quicker, and also more fun, frankly, it’s cool and futuristic to tap on a thing that is, you know, displaying information that you, you know, goes a little bit in the in the direction of like, you know, like a, like a Star Trek style, you know, mission control panel in front of you exactly, like
Rolando Rosas 48:59
a liquid you’re saying, because we have a button around here, or give him a little taste of what we do with pro tips. It’s grabbing full of prompting. So, I’ve got a bunch of these are built into the stream deck to do all of this kind of stuff. And it has made the content creation much enriching and fun to be able to have those just at your fingertips boom, whether it’s launching something like that, or are some other things that you know, again, like you’re saying repetitive thing, or an efficiency thing. It’s it is it really is made like I when I think about it, and I’m not just saying this because you’re here, Phil, when I think about it, it makes the experience a little more fun. For the workday that can be just very boring. Sometimes you just work can be boring, just that’s just flat out, right. Creating content is time consuming and sometimes there’s a lot Got a boring things happening. But this just gives that that extra panache that extra added touch when you when you have all these little creative things at your fingertips. So that’s what leads into the next thing. So you are moving along you’ve got these, you know this tool like that. One of the things that you mentioned to us as well, Neil was right before we got on air. One of the secrets to doing this is just hitting record. What do you mean by that? Yeah, it’s
Neil Fluester 50:31
I’ve watched loads of YouTube I watch way too much YouTube and not enough real TV probably but I follow like Casey Neistat and sync media and those things and people want to create content. I think there’s a lot of people who wants to create video but are scared to create video and they’ll always come up with blockers and reasons why they haven’t created video. So you know, my cameras, no good, my microphones, no good. I, you know, my lighting is terrible. And you know, what you need to do is to hone the skill, hone your storytelling getting comfortable in front of the camera, rather than coming up with excuses about you know, I don’t have the best camera. I don’t have the best gear in case he did a great thing. It’s not about gear. It’s about just pressing record. And again, anecdotally, I said, you know, before we started, I joked I created a video on how to spatchcock a chicken now put that link on YouTube, you can go and watch it if you want. And someone said to me, why do you record everything you do. And it’s like, my first video that I did on YouTube, however, many years ago, it was it was terrible, and you know, you’re gonna look back at it. But honing that skill, and being able to be like I do now at a trade show. I’ll switch the camera on and can instantly switch persona and go, Hey, everyone, welcome. We’re here, ISC 2023. And we’re on the Crestron booth, and you can switch and be way comfortable. And just roll with it. That’s the most important thing. I love your content and you’re doing it,
Rolando Rosas 51:58
especially when you’re on both ends. Yeah, especially when you’re on site, because you don’t see a lot of it. So it makes it very unique. And I love the approach and freshness you bring to it. And it’s like, yeah, I’m there with you, when you’re bringing your experience through. And then let’s see the post on Tuesday on LinkedIn. Gosh, now I know I like I will comment on your stuff and be like, Yeah, I love it. But I’m glad you’re here. So I can tell you right? In this camera when I’m looking at you, I love it, keep doing it. And you know,
Neil Fluester 52:32
terrible was the first one. The first ones I did word were terrible. And you know, I had a terrible camera and a terrible camera setup and audio setup and all the rest of it. But I just kept doing it. And you know, again, Gary will say one is greater than zero, you know, you got one view on that video and you think, you know, any one person’s watch it, but that one person could be the CEO or whatever. And again, we create this content, you know, to help and inform and educate in most cases. And that’s why we’re doing it where it’s The Thank You Economy, you know that again, Gary talks about The Thank You Economy, the fact that we’re giving free information that people will go you know, thank you for that I will come and buy stuff from you or talk to you or you know, engage with you. That’s that’s what we’re trying to do. And again, by by pressing record and creating content, just getting on with it, it’s gonna be terrible. But after you’ve done 1020 3050 100 of them will be much better. And then you can buy some good gear from Elgato and mckeeva.
Rolando Rosas 53:27
Yes, yes. And you know what Mr. B says these have seen some of his interviews. He says, Don’t worry about the first 100 He says 100 the first 100 are garbage, just know that they’re going to be garbage. The first 100 is and then he’s talked to me after the 100th video, then we can talk about all these other finer points that you’re saying. But yeah, getting some muscle memory of round, just looking into a solid, inanimate object. Oh, looks like a camera soulless camera. And you’re like, is there somebody real on the other side? You know, I don’t have the reaction. But But doing that the first second third by the time you just sitting down talking, because it does take some time to just be like you said, I love that word soulless. You’re talking to a soulless thing as if it were a real piece of Syverson. Right. As if it laughed back at you at your jokes or your moments, right? It doesn’t do any. But it does, it takes some getting used to that thing looking at you the entire time and you kind of talking to it like if it was a puppet or something or somebody’s actually there
Dave Kelly 54:43
and you’re not going to you’re not going to learn just by analyzing and preparing you need to jump out and hit record and do it Neil one of the one of the pieces of content that I love that you did probably about three or four months ago. You were doing On The Bus interviews, posts trade show. Yeah, I did about that. And you told me you said you went on there and you told the people your camera’s going on and like two seconds, then come around, asked you some questions, and people didn’t really have a chance to prepare, which really gave you no true honest feedback. And I really liked that piece that you did.
Neil Fluester 55:20
Excellent. And it’s funny we people are again, lots of companies will spend 1000s 10s, hundreds of 1000s of pounds on these massively produced pieces of video stock footage and camera crew and all the rest of it. But in many cases, the real is still not the Instagram real, but the real life, the real moments that aren’t scripted, and, you know, produced me on a bus nearly dying, going down a highway in Madrid was fun, brilliant, and people watched it and loved it. So yeah, it was very fun. So yeah, thank you. But yeah, those are the great ones I love. I love doing that kind of Yeah, you never
Rolando Rosas 55:57
know when you’re going to have a really good piece of content. I gotta tell you, one of our most watched videos was one, I think episode one, we took a snippet from it, we put it on YouTube. Right now, it’s our most watched snippet online. And the camera was terrible. The the audio wasn’t great, but it was better than I had to. I had a headset on. So it was better than just the webcam audio. But compared to today, boy, it looks like boy, I was in grade school trying to shoot a video versus today. But that comes from, like you said, hitting records go trying, keep going trying some new things, pick up a thing here there along the way. And you know, you improve, which leads to the let the next thing. Phil, you said, I think maybe both of you said this list. Third one, when we’re talking, it’s all in the audio. Phil, you want to take that one?
Philipp Eggebrecht 56:59
Yeah, we touched on that a little bit earlier, right around, you know, Zoom fatigue, or this online meeting fatigue. And one of the catalysts for that is just bad audio. I mean, I’m sure everyone listening and we’ve all here been in a been in a call or been in a chat where most people sound okay. And then there’s that one person who’s in a car, or who has a fan on the background or who you know, is typing on their keyboard while talking and you just, it’s it’s, uh, you know, our brain is essentially a decoder, right? Like, we take in information, we have to decode it. And if we have to spend all this time taking in all this, like, extraneous information, just to have to decode that and then filter, you know, the actual words from everything else. That takes more brainpower that, you know, it’s literally harder for us to do so, you know, if someone has all that other noise coming in, and you have to work around that, just to listen to what they’re actually saying, Yeah, you will get tired, if you’re doing that, you know, eight hours,
Rolando Rosas 57:59
once, once, who wants to, I know, I don’t want to sit through that. That challenging audio. You know, some sometimes things happen where you know, you got dogs in the background, sometimes they just jump in and out. But if you can control that, and give the audience something, they’re going to be really pleasantly surprised. It’s going to be able to really up the engagement, I was recently on a kind of like an online experience for him as a magician that actually sent the home. So you do this ahead of time, they sent to the house, like an experience box, and it had some things in it. And along with the presentation, this bin, you could tell this was done probably in somebody’s room. But everything was set up in a way where it engaged your senses, the video, the lighting, the audio, and the sequencing of of what happened, that you don’t you almost forget, like you almost forget what you were you were at. And I gotta say, it was really an experience. And I was like, I bet this is going to be the way of the future because there are a lot of people right now as we’re talking about this, that can’t really they’re not very mobile for whatever reason, they’re sick, they’re disabled, they have limited mobility. Those people are left out of the game, you know, when when you’re talking about moving about. But now those people are, are are people that can participate, especially if you’re putting content out they can consume that they can see the experience. They’re not limited by going to a theater or somewhere where they couldn’t go because of you know, their their access issues or because they’re not able to. So I think you’re onto something here, Phil and I think that having a way to bring up the experience DNS changes the game. And I know for me having in the the having been online trying this online magician experience, I love magic. By the way, it was really awesome to see how far you can take the experience versus, you know, the standard webcam, audio and video. Neil, was there something you wanted to add on this to
Neil Fluester 1:00:22
audio is audios huge again, you could you could actually close your eyes and listen to this podcast or video podcast without seeing our beautiful faces. And you would still get the message because the message is, firstly, in the audio, there’s a couple of dynamics that maybe you guys don’t know so much. But suddenly we in Europe have where maybe English isn’t your first language, maybe it’s your second language. And again, if you’re listening to someone like talk quite fast, and again, my friend of Germany was was saying, should you talk so fast, you need to slow down, you know, I used to do stuff in, in other countries where again, English isn’t their first language. And again, having good rich, high quality audio makes their life so much easier. We used to have a thing at Poly where we would test competitors products and we would use different words like hold cold, sold, told and bold. And could you define the difference between hold cold sold told and bold on these different competitors microphones at different distances away from these speaker phones, that was the kind of test that we used to do. And you know, you get the competitors ones at three meters, and you can no no definition between, you know, hold call total. Well, those were the things that we defined. And again, without good audio, those are really difficult for, again, native English speakers or native local language speakers, but also people who are, again, maybe there’s an English meeting, and there’s a couple of French people, a couple of German people, a couple of Eastern Europeans, that their English isn’t so good. And they’re struggling to get and they’ve got to compute that through their brain and translate it through one ear through the brain and not the other, that that can be really, really hard for them. The other interesting thing is, you know, listening between am and FM radio, you know, who wants to listen to am radio these days, you know, it’s all horrible. They’re having nice, rich. And again, there’s different stages of all of this that we’ve been talking about. There’s stage zero, which is built in laptop, which is terrible and horrible. There’s then stage two, which is you know, get yourself a headset, that’s kind of better. But then all of us have kind of leveled up to a more of a pro studio XLR mic, wherever it’s, again, an Elgato, or the shore or whatever. And again, going through a proper audio processor processor will give you that really rich tonal audio. This just nice to listen to that kind of radio broadcaster audio, again, rather than a headset or speakerphone, or a built in that. And I think that’s as you’re leveling up your game, you need to kind of work out which level you want to get to, again, laptop, no, ignore it, do you want to go to you want to go to a speakerphone? Do you want to go to then a headset mic, or then again, go the full hog and go full broadcast studio production, like we’re all doing, which is just the whole nother level to the to the production.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:03:11
It’s also it’s also if you think about where your content is going to be delivered, you know, I think I was saying before the show, you know, I work out in the gym, I don’t have a video screen, you know, that I’m looking at but if I wanted to still listen to this podcast to the show, and you know, receive all the information or if I’m driving in my car, maybe to work since you know return to Office is happening, it’s in some locations, then people can still consume your content, if your audio is bad, but you have really high quality aka 60 video or something. Well, the person that car they even might just not tune in because well they can’t really understand it or whatever. And so that’s why I believe that you know, when it comes down to it, and I’m not saying it’s like a two to one ratio or something, but if you just if you kind of prioritize them just a little bit, it’s like audio is just that little bit higher than video because it’ll just know kind of no matter where you deliver or kind of who you’re who’s going to be listening to that it will make a bigger impact.
Rolando Rosas 1:04:12
No doubt. I agree. I agree wholeheartedly. I I go back and listen to myself from the early days and I cannot believe how much a difference of podcasts micro microphone can make on the audio but it’s it’s enormous. It is night and day.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:04:30
Sounds fantastic.
Rolando Rosas 1:04:32
Thank you. I want to ask you something before we we have something I want to jump into. Where do you see? Where’s the Fiona? Oh gatos. God is on the forefront of devices and technology for content creators. What’s the future look like? If I were to if you were to had a crystal ball, where’s that? What does that look like? Where are we going in the next year or two with With video at home or video in the workplace? I think what?
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:05:06
That’s a really good question. And I could talk for hours about this. I think where are we?
Rolando Rosas 1:05:14
Yeah, we’ll have India.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:05:19
I think what helps first is to kind of define or say that we are all content creators, in a sense, right? Even if you are using our products in a work environment, you’re still creating content, that content isn’t going out to a public audience. It’s going maybe to an internal private audience, right? And maybe it’s just a one on one or maybe it’s a group or something. But it’s still a Neil, I think you mentioned earlier, it’s still storytelling, right, you’re still presenting to an audience, it just again, might not be a public town square. And so it’s incredibly important to come across high quality, high video, good audio, good video, all of that. And it’s a little bit analogous to and this is how we internally at Elgato, and are kind of looking at this, and maybe this should have been the same interval secret for earlier. Or the pro tip, I guess.
Rolando Rosas 1:06:17
All right, hold on a second, or hit us with a pro tip metallosis. Here comes a pro tip. Lay it on us, Phil, what’s that? Oh, tip numero dos.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:06:33
So yeah, though, the way you present yourself is analogous to Dave mentioned earlier, but a suit, right? In the past, you would go get a really nice suit. And you would go into an office feeling like a million bucks. Today, you want to hop on a call, you know, you want to do a digital meeting, you still want to feel like a million bucks. Which if you’re wearing a suit, yeah, you know, that’s nice. But if you don’t come across, you know, if you can’t present that, then kind of what’s the point and so, you know, we all gotta see ourselves as the outfitter of your digital suit, your digital suit being all the tools that you use to present yourself online. That’s audio, video, stream deck, you know, lighting, kind of setup customization, right? All the pieces that you would normally have in a real suit now in kind of the digital form, and we’re not saying like, like avatars or anything like that? No, it’s simply what are the tools? And what are the pieces that you need to put yourself? Put yourself out there in a way where others are going to go? Wow, okay, you know, Hey, how did how did he or she do that? You know, or man, I wish I sounded that good? Or, you know, I wish my camera was that great. That same, again, the same way as like, Oh, is that a Gucci or an Armani suit or something like that? Right? Right. And that’s, you know, that’s what we’re trying to do is we want to give you the tools, we want to give you all the accessories to your digital suits that way, others can, in a way, look at you and go, Okay, that person really invested in spent some time and thought about how they come across online.
Rolando Rosas 1:08:15
Oh, that’s terrific.
Dave Kelly 1:08:16
And the confidence that it inspires when you’re dressed up, you look good, you feel good, when you look good, and you feel good, then you sound good. And you come across that you know what you’re talking about. And when you had mentioned that digital suit, something I can certainly relate to, because again, just just put it for me just putting on a suit coat with a tie. I feel I feel like I could rule the world. But carrying this into the digital world makes a lot of sense.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:08:44
And it’s now multiple pieces instead of just you know the suit jacket and pants or wearing a you know a button down shirt with a tie we see it as well okay, it’s your microphone and your camera but then it’s also your lights and also maybe a microphone arm, you know, we’ve we’ve people have told us that when they get our get our microphone arm, they put their mic on there, and then they’re moving it around and stuff and they’re just like, I feel professional now, like I feel that I’m doing this right. And then you will come across differently, right? People can tell where we are, you know, we work off of sight and sound and it’ll come across in your voice it’ll come across in your, your posture and your in your movement. And, you know, that’s what we want to enable. So that’s kind of where the products that we make are moving in that direction. And there’s one kind of niche thing which well it’s not niche we’re experiencing it actually right now here and we’ve started teasing it a little bit but I’ll I can’t reveal too many details but essentially come
Rolando Rosas 1:09:48
on right here exclusive youth during the FBI thing he’s he’s leaving us with a teaser.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:09:57
But you’ll notice that you know during this whole thing I’ve mostly been looking off camera, right. And you know, we’re all looking at like the Video Preview because it’s unnatural for me to just stare at the camera, right the soloist thing that we talked about earlier. Because I also want to see your faces, I want to look at your beautiful faces and see your reactions. And so we’re having that conversation. But to everyone who’s might who might be watching this, it’ll come across as a little bit weird, because no one’s looking at the camera, everyone’s looking kind of off at their screen, right. And so we’ve been thinking long and hard about how to solve this. And in the traditional sense, teleprompters, have solved this right on. Again, if you’re on a national broadcast, right, they’ve got these big screens, you know, you’ve got all your text on there, your prompt and everything. But this hasn’t really been solved in an elegant way, in kind of the personal space in your home setup. All right, prompters do exist, but they they need maybe a tablet or an iPhone sitting in front of them. So that takes your device, they’re generally pretty flimsy, and not well designed, you know, if you then how do you? What do you put on this tablet to, you know, have your text on there, and even just pull a video? And so we thought, long and hard about what could a improve? You know, what, what could the Elgato prompter experience be like? And we started teasing it a little bit at TwitchCon Europe where we were just add, and we’ll have more information soon. But know that we think the next evolution is making making these meetings and these calls and just how you put yourself online just even more personal?
Rolando Rosas 1:11:28
Well, I can’t wait to see that you know, somebody that would concur with your sentiment around having the information to be able to use it very easily. There’s a content creator, his name is Ed Lawrence. He’s right in the UK actually, company’s film booth. And key, before the pandemic, he did production stuff. So video for companies. And he had these people come in and they would do Steve would try to read the script or whatever. And he found that the moment they could go to more of a teleprompter scripted thing, the video itself came off way better. Whereas before he thought, There’s no way no way we can improve it by other teleprompter or something like a cue card. And he said the video value and how things came across, improved dramatically. So I think you’re going leaning into that direction. And I can’t wait to see that because we do some things where we script as well. And it’d be nice to have something very easy to use either in or around the camera that would have some of the information on it, rather than, you know, looking over here, which is kind of what I do from time to time.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:12:37
And also most most prompters out there today are they’re still focused on just DSLR cameras, right, they kind of assume that you’re going to connect this up to some sort of lens when that’s not the reality for most folks at home right? I myself am using a webcam Of course one of our facecam pros, which you know, still has that kind of webcam form factor but most prompters aren’t built with that in mind. And so again, we thought well what’s the what is the reality of someone at home? And you know, how do they also want to control it? Is there software component to it, right, it’s the Elgato story of great hardware and great software coming together. So I’m really excited to well once we once we announced this thing will
Rolando Rosas 1:13:26
come back on here with the device in hand and you know, we can absolutely show it and probably do some demos with it. So I teasing it up making me go back in and go look for the press release on your on your website to see if you have like a waiting list or something for it.
Dave Kelly 1:13:45
Yeah, that’s gonna be a game changer. You know, they worked something into we’re talking about AI and we were talking about the script earlier, but the script as an editing software. I haven’t tried it yet. They just announced it but basically, you can record you can read your screen and the AI is bringing the eyeballs up intact with
Neil Fluester 1:14:10
Nvidia well, but didn’t know they announced that as like a Betta thing that you
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:14:13
did and my angle Yeah, we also integrated that into our camera hub software which controls our you know, our cameras and we haven’t released that that update yet but it is somewhat creepy, you know, because it’s you can’t get over that uncanny valley follows you around the room. Yeah, it’s just there’s something about it because it implemented you like blinking it’ll actually if I blink it’ll it’ll blink your eyes and it’ll also do every now and then it’ll like gaze away to make it seem like I’m you know, kind of naturally looking away. But it’s just so Something about it just doesn’t feel right. And you can again we’re visual, you know, we’re visual people humans are visual we see we can tell these very subtle differences between like realize In these kinds of superimposed eyes, and while it’s a great solution, and it’s obviously incredible technology, right? You like taking a video frame and finding where the eyes are and kind of repositioning it and all of that. It’s not quite there yet. And so we we want to provide the, you know, the kind of the real solution for that the real version of that. Well, I
Rolando Rosas 1:15:22
can’t wait to see when you guys take what you just said. And take what folks over I like metaphysics AI are doing, which is full on deep fake. So you can you’ve seen the deep fake Tom Cruise, the Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Which is full on. hyper realistic, I think is the term that’s being used. And it the guy, the actor who plays that role, the fake Tom Cruise is so convincing. It’s not just the fact that the technology exists, but the role and the character he’s playing when he’s doing that, it just takes that to the next level. So I’m, I’m really fascinated with this part of AI, because it’s gonna allow folks that couldn’t create content, or maybe were afraid to be on camera, allow you to create a one entire video without ever stepping foot in a studio.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:16:18
Now, the implications are huge, right. But again, it kind of starts even with these AI, you need the input, right? You need the input, and that can be text, it can be video can be something but it needs the input into that. And that part is always going to be critical. That’s the same way how, you know, there’s the there’s somewhat of a scare around AI are going to take jobs. Yeah, but you still need the people making them, right, making the AI and all of the data generation everything. So there’s still a need for high quality input like audio, right? If you want to do some sort of, I think it was voice mod who is doing these, you know, celebrity kind of fake voice now, you need your own voice to come across clearly in that writer for these deep fake videos, you say, to start with high resolution, high quality video for that to come across well, so hardware and software are still going to play and specifically high quality hardware still going to play a huge, huge role in that.
Rolando Rosas 1:17:17
No doubt, no doubt. And I can’t wait to I mean, six months from now, I’m sure we’ll be talking about something new that that came out or was refined to make it even better. So that’s so that’s what where I want to go with you guys here. Rapid fire, I’m gonna let your your AI human brain weigh in on something. And I’m going to leave, I’m gonna let you both participate here. So I’m going to give you an eye an idea or phrase, and I want you to just tell me what comes to your brain? What emotion what testing
Neil Fluester 1:17:47
us again, we get worried that the tests coming up,
Rolando Rosas 1:17:51
you’re gonna pass don’t worry about it Neil your pass. So I’ll hit up the first one for both of you. And then Dave, and I will alternate here. So I’m gonna get here it goes. First one, teams vs. Zoom. Go ahead. And yeah, I’ll let you go first.
Neil Fluester 1:18:07
This could be career limiting, because they’re both amazing. Partners with restaurants. So so I have to play Switzerland on this.
Rolando Rosas 1:18:15
I think, look, it’s your right. It’s your ideas, whatever, you there’s no right or wrong.
Neil Fluester 1:18:22
To cover that up. No, I think I think to me, I say teams has got a great I mean, it’s like the IBM you know, no one’s gonna get five putting in IBM or Cisco or whatever. It might be a Dell, Dell, Dell make great stuff. So it is the end people have a Microsoft global corporate agreement. So it’s, again, that word ubiquitous used it earlier. I think what what for me what zoom can do and what maybe zoom, Eric, if you’re listening, his top tip here, they do some really good niche stuff. So let Microsoft do the kind of meeting rooms that you know, a to b meeting room. So if you’ve ever played with the Zoom studio stuff, I got the NDI stuff in there. And I think there’s some really cool vertical apps, that that Zoom could really pull some punches on, you know, like, you know, video interviewing, medical, where you’ve got those specific use cases where the it’s not just a meeting room calling another meeting room, there are some specific on a CV on the screen yet, there’s, there’s, I think zoom, we’ve got some great application based stuff. That’s quite cool. So you know, there’s some departments within an organization that would really get a lot of value out of zoom. versus you know, again, teams is just this amazing ubiquitous tool that you can use to you know, have meeting rooms, meeting more people at home to the office. So I think again, Zoom has got some great niches that studio piece again as a content guy, awesome, amazing. To
Rolando Rosas 1:19:49
the site on that that piece. There’s a there’s a new kind of partnership with Zoom and EPA fan on allowing zoom The zoom and client to capture the video. And to manage it within a professional, essentially professional studio editing kind of software so that you can use Zoom in the boardroom. You can use Zoom as an endpoint, have in the middle, a professional studio kind of software, and then content delivery around that to various platforms out simultaneously live or recorded, which is kind of fascinating that that’s happening. I believe they also have a team’s version of that, as well. I’m
Neil Fluester 1:20:35
sure and Crestron runs both teams in zoom and thinks that they’re both equally as brilliant as each other.
Rolando Rosas 1:20:40
Yeah, up there you go to restaurant on that. Absolutely.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:20:45
I want to put zoom on the spot though. So we have a Microsoft Teams plug in for stream deck, which is fantastic. And if Andy over at zoom is listening, where’s the Zoom stream deck bug? We’re waiting.
Neil Fluester 1:21:00
This is this is for what we want.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:21:05
Yeah. So that’s my thought on both of them. Very cool. So yeah.
Dave Kelly 1:21:09
So we kind of touched on this, but I’ll ask it anyways. All right. So for someone that’s starting out with creating content or starting to do some video meetings, they want to step their game up. What would you upgrade first? Your microphone, or your webcam?
Neil Fluester 1:21:26
I think we already did that one earlier. Yeah, yeah.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:21:30
I would say the first thing would be audio. And then the second thing. And Neil, you touched on that before the show is or no sorry, was Dave, you were saying how you were putting stacks of like books and boxes on to get the camera angle better. It’s the Up the nose, laptop camera angle. Get that microphone in the good position. You sound great. And then just lift the microphone or sorry, the webcam up a little bit. No one wants to see that kind of you know, the the notion look like that. Yeah. Hey, I
Dave Kelly 1:22:01
gotta just do a quick shout out to DeLaine Clifford, the communication ace. She had a post. She had a post that was about the different types of zoom users. And the one that I saw she kind of impersonated the different types of camera angles and things. But the one that I liked the most was the the Up the nose or the
Neil Fluester 1:22:22
Do you remember the old tambor e 20? It was like a desktop video, the Tandberg? Yes. Yeah, that was a classic Up the nose shot because the camera was literally bang straight up your nose. I think the other thing is composition. I was the amazing guy at Poly Steven Shaffer still there. And he talks about he’s a videographer. And so he looks at stuff from film and cinematography. And he talks about video composition. And he talks about the rule of thirds. So again, you see people where they’re like this, or they’re, you know, you’ve got loads of loads of ceiling above their head, or like, it’s the rule of thirds, you get the eyes in that. So most cameras, professional cameras can give you the grid line, compose the shot properly, as a videographer. That’s that again, again, that goes to moving your camera as well and get it framed and shot perfectly. Right as well. That makes a huge difference. No ceiling or related torso.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:23:17
That’s free, right? You generally don’t need anything extra just for some good framing. There’s different ways in which you can take what you already have today and just use that right get started with that and then figure out maybe in the future okay, what could an upgrade look like?
Rolando Rosas 1:23:33
All right, I lost my connection temporarily. That’s why I don’t know what Dave did you take any additional ones?
Dave Kelly 1:23:40
We’re on Route three,
Rolando Rosas 1:23:41
rapid fire you’re okay. Okay, number three. Virtual background versus physical background.
Neil Fluester 1:23:49
I’ve already put my finger on this. I don’t Yeah, I hate them. I don’t like them. I think the although on saying that. So I have a mic. I so I have two cameras set up. I’ve got this as my main camera which is a mirrorless camera goes through a cam link Elgato cam link into my PC via HDMI love that gives me really sharp quality. But when I do my presentations, I actually use OBS to present I don’t use PowerPoint. And I use a vert I use over the NVIDIA virtual chroma key or I use a V cam XSplit V cam. And I’ll cut out myself and put myself on a virtual green screen. I’ve got an Elgato green screen behind me as well. But I use a virtual green screen to do stuff. So that’s quite useful but for traditional video meetings, proper nicely again, nicely composed, not cluttered, fills background. It’s beautiful because it’s just you know, it’s a nice setting. Mine looks a bit kind of, you know, those are toys on a shelf. But again, compose that setup because I always think again, what are you trying to hide what’s going on behind I’m just always curious what’s behind the blur what’s behind the virtual background never feels looks very good because he’s using an amazing face cam pro camera. So the cut on his,
Rolando Rosas 1:25:12
I’m looking at the monitor on his feet. And it is I would have to show I was like a DSL almost like a DSL.
Neil Fluester 1:25:21
I waited till he said it, I thought it was as well. But then there was a cut when he said it I there’s a couple of tiny bits you can pick up
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:25:28
But it’s an amazing video background blur as well. And
Neil Fluester 1:25:32
you could adjust it on the Cam Studio on the on the face cam software, exactly just the amount of blur as well as are really nice. So I think resume it’s like on or off. Whereas again, on the Elgato, you can just tweak it up a little bit, just to just to take the edge off. Or you use a lens with loads of, you know, a shallow depth of field. This is an F 1.4 lens on the Sony camera, which again gives you that bokeh effect, which is quite pleasing. So
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:26:01
that’s something that I find that both XIM XIM and Zemun tombs zoom and teams do is zoom, zoom and tombs. They they’re built and background blur is way too aggressive to the point where it is not so fake. I mean this right here, you could kind of you know, you could conceivably do this with a regular Telebrands. So it’s very elegant. Yeah. And so I’m gonna just turn it up here. Right. And but I could do like this. Well, that’s completely fake. Obvious. Yeah, that’s tough. Hard. You see? Yeah, yeah. And that’s what you see in all these applications that we’ll do. And it’s like, none, I’ll just turn that down. You know, this is the maximum that’s like on a percent here. I’m just gonna turn that down to zero, right. That’s more pleasant. That looks a little bit nicer. But for some reason, they’re they all you know, they cool on aggressive on Yeah. Yeah. So zoom teams give us reduced background blur settings.
Neil Fluester 1:26:52
Don’t just use an Elgato camera and the camera or do that. Yeah, go
Rolando Rosas 1:26:55
that’s that meet the solution. Right?
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:26:57
Do you want to come work at Elgato, we got all the product already. And everything’s
Neil Fluester 1:27:03
missing. So just finish off my studio. Hear that. All right.
Dave Kelly 1:27:09
We were on a Zoom meeting a couple of weeks ago, I don’t know if Rolando had caught that. So it was an early morning meeting, the person that we were talking to was delivering some training to us. And he had a virtual background on. So he’s using zoom, virtual background. And he kind of got distracted for a second. So we kind of did one of these. And then someone had come into their office, hands and knees. You just saw like, like a blur of yellow. So it was like, is someone that lives with this person came into the office, dropped to the ground didn’t think that they were in camera, went across grabbed something and kind of left but it was just this yellowish blurring, moving mass, kind of going back and forth. So that’s what they were hiding that their coworker Sorry, there were they were living with it but I’m kind of funny.
Neil Fluester 1:28:05
Again, props to your background Rolando with that that blue is not you got a much better my rooms quite small. So I don’t have the depth to be able to get that that really nice blue behind me,
Rolando Rosas 1:28:14
but I don’t have I actually so that’s beautiful that that teeny something else. Just a side note that I don’t have. It’s not really that far behind me. Really and and the blue are coming from to accent lights that I got on Amazon for $10. So this is something that is very accessible for somebody. The trick is then on the like what you were talking about earlier, the F 1.4 and got a I’ve got a lens on a Sony camera as well. And I’ve dialed that about to 2.2 somewhere in that neighborhood. And so now the light that’s coming off of here is exaggerated because when I look at my wall, it’s great. Yeah, it is great. Let me let out the cat in the bag. Get out of the bag. I have gray walls, but the it looks as if I painted it blue. And it’s coming off from two, two LED lights down at the bottom.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:29:12
Showground and listen, isn’t it? And what’s that? Going through? It shows that you just also don’t need much, you know, it’s very, very little can make a can make a huge difference and a huge impact.
Rolando Rosas 1:29:25
Absolutely. And and you know, that’s the thing that you can pick up after 100 over 100 videos now. I don’t know if we’re up to four or 500 I have no idea where we’re at exactly but those little little tricks and like you’ve got that that background, Neil that that purple That still looks good it’s it definitely gives off that tech vibe you get the gamer cheer going on. I’m just playing around with standing up lately I’ve done so many freakin videos after all you get I used to have a bunch of plants in the background have gone to the blue have gone to standing up and then after a while I’m yeah I’m tired of looking at myself standing on me I’m gonna go back to being seated because I did that for every almost every video. So let’s come up with. I’m just playing around with standing right now. So Dave, did we have enough? Yeah, we did. Tic Tac? What do you think about when you hear the word? Tic tock? Let’s start with Phil on this one. What do you think?
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:30:21
There’s the personal and then there’s the professional side, the personal side is I deleted it off my phone.
Rolando Rosas 1:30:28
Hey, listen, don’t be suck is listening to you to learning just as much as tick tock.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:30:35
For some reason, tick tock. I noticed that my bathroom breaks went from about one to two minutes, like five minutes, because I would pull out the phone and then start doing this. And then you kind of just kept sitting there. And it was like up till I moved back. Right? It’s getting ridiculous, you know? And same with sleep. You know, at the end of the day, I would do the what do they call it? Doom scrolling? Right, every now and then, you know, it’s 1030 or 11. And I’d be there. And then it’s one in the morning. I’m like shit.
Neil Fluester 1:31:01
So I do that what usually, but it doesn’t know that. But you do this over YouTube? Yes, you start here. And you end here, you start, oh, look at this. And then suddenly, you’re looking at something completely different.
Rolando Rosas 1:31:11
Yeah, we had somebody on a couple of episodes ago, John Morgan Stern, who’s actually the head of head of media and investment over at VaynerMedia. So and he said to us that the algorithms at tick tock, and the algorithms at Facebook and Instagram have gotten so much better at delivering content than, yeah, you’re gonna be doing Doom scrolling, because the billions of data points that they have on users and lookalike audiences are at a point now where you give them a little bit of, of detail on who you are and what you like, they’re going to keep serving that up and delivering it to a mass audience on a customized scale that we’ve never seen before.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:32:05
It’s just incredible. And it’s, it probably knows me better than I know me, right? That my it probably has a better sight profile of the things I do and don’t like and what I gravitate towards, and kind of the subconscious things that I enjoy. And so yeah, I just, I had to delete it, because I didn’t. I don’t know, I’m the person on the professional side, though, right? It’s a little bit different. Right? Of course, we’re on tick tock we make tic TOCs about, think about being Switzerland, like Oh yeah. You know, how, what is the creation flow of content look like? You know, for tick tock, it’s very different when it’s so mobile focused, and they do allow desktop uploading by now. There’s also live streaming, right? So it’s changing a little bit from just, you know, 1530 seconds, you can now do full, you know, multi minute videos up to 10 minutes, I believe, right. So it’s all changing. And, you know, what does that look like? And, you know, it’s interesting. Also, YouTube just enabled vertical live streaming together with horizontal live streaming. So that’s also, you know, the vertical, just generally vertical content is becoming much more, much more interesting lately.
Rolando Rosas 1:33:10
It’s the dominant form in everybody’s chasing tick tock in some way or another. YouTube and everybody, you know, reels. And on both Facebook and I mean, just listen to Gary Vee. And he talks about a lot about all this stuff, in terms of mobile and shortform, and all that. But But Neil, what do you think about when you hear
Neil Fluester 1:33:33
I’ve answered it before we had this conversation before on LinkedIn poll that you did, I think and I feel, I feel like my mum and dad did when I started talking to them about the internet when I was like 18 or 19 on a dial up modem, and they’re like all these newfangled internet, I feel like that about tick tock, I’ve got to that age where I am now. The old person going, what’s this tick tock business all about? I do feel old.
Rolando Rosas 1:33:58
When I was a youngster, we walked 10 miles to school, and
Neil Fluester 1:34:02
it’s like your parents always prisoner. You know, there’s always there’s always the new thing. That’s That’s new. And I think my issue with it is, is that I mean, I love creating content, but much like Patrick zoom, it’s not my day job. It’s a hobby. I’m the Alliance director and Technical Marketing at Crestron. So I’m not a people think, Oh, you’re the video guy question. Again. It’s a hobby and something that I do as a tool to help raise awareness and stuff. But, you know, for me to spend my time creating content for YouTube, LinkedIn, x, or whatever it’s called now and Instagram and ticular too many of them so I’ve picked my poison, which is I like longer form horizontal content because I’m old. So I like YouTube. And I like LinkedIn because it’s very business focus. So you know that I don’t if I had more time on my hands, and didn’t have any hobbies, I probably would probably get more into tick tock and Instagram And, again, I don’t do Instagram, either I find it, you know, and have enough time in the day to sit there and do it’s very clever. And again, the cat cat I think he’s made by tick tock as well. It’s so people it’s so again, some of the maybe the technology, they’ve taken out a tick tock, I’ll use that in the content creation tool. But as a social media network, I’m going to continue to be a dinosaur and be a YouTube person was my
Rolando Rosas 1:35:22
number. It’s number two in search, right? In terms of what YouTube’s search engine, yeah, YouTube.
Neil Fluester 1:35:27
Yeah. I mean, you said earlier, it’s like, how do I win? I always used to talk about YouTube to my company and said, we should create more YouTube videos. And you know, this is why I’m doing it. It’s the number one search tool for how do i because to write a PowerPoint present, I write a PDF of like, you know, take the thing out the box, plug this cable in, do this, do that, and this kind of step process, to be able to visually show that of like, you know, this cable goes in here, this cable goes in there, and then that goes into there, and you push this button works. Do you want to, you know, my belt broke on our tumble dryer the other day, and I just went on YouTube and search for how to change a belt on a Bosch tumble dryer and watch the video and bought a belt for $10. and changed it. If I had to read a manual of how to dismantle a German tumble dryer, which is amazingly bill, it would not be possible but to watch a video to know what you’re into. But was a lot lot easier. So again, for me, I think creating video and creating content is a much better tool. And, again, Google is the number one search engine in the world, I believe still. And they own the second largest search engine in the world, which is YouTube and the number one for how do i So
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:36:38
can I throw in an interesting tool. That’s so YouTube, I believe it was YouTube. As for YouTube, a stat just came out that and I just pulled it up just to verify. And I’m gonna just read here, it’s internal data indicate that close to 45% of overall YouTube viewing in the US today is happening on TV screens, literally 50% of content is viewed on a TV, which you know, we think about 50 6070 inch TV, which is, you know, if you is completely the opposite of a mobile device, a mobile device is vertical, it’s small, right? It’s, it’s in your hand. So it’s like the complete opposite of what we all think, which is that mobile is completely dominating, which, again, for tick tock might be the case. But for YouTube, I find that an incredibly interesting stat. And it’s something that informs us at El Gato, and also how we produce the content for our products. Because if 50% of people are watching all these big TVs, which are all 4k These days, well, we want to make sure that everything you know, is high quality, and you know, viewable at in 4k and also readable, right? Like you don’t want really small text in videos because of that. And then the other thing, Neil, since you were talking about PDS, that’s another like kind of insider tidbit here is Al Gato, we have shifted to doing video based reviewers guides for our products. So we don’t do PDS written Doc’s or anything like that anymore. We actually put together a video where the pm or someone on my team, technical technical marketing, will put together like a 15 minute video walking through the product because that is much more engaging for PR and media to watch or for a tech reviewer than it is to just you know hand them a 10 page PDF go Here you go. Here’s all the info. Yeah, they’ll glance through it or whatever. But there’s no story. There’s very little storytelling. It
Rolando Rosas 1:38:27
sounds like a pro tip to me. If I heard one.
Neil Fluester 1:38:32
Join me Dave did Dave’s done a great one for joining, you know what the tech which I sat and watched before? And so you know, that’s that would be much better than an email coming through to sit and watch that that video that the amazing Dave created? Yeah, yeah,
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:38:45
that was that was really nice. Yeah. And so we found that it just, you know, when we, we put out these, you know, we send these, or I guess what’s also interesting is just the amount of people that see is very low, right? I think we for our face camp Pro, we send it around, it’s got 400 views, it’s uploaded to YouTube, it’s got 400 views, we put a lot of time and effort into a video that only ever got 400 views. But that’s going out to content creators to media to PR right to the folks who we want to make sure that they know the vision that we’re presenting and that they can then you know, relay that to you know, the people who look at the reviews. And again today who wants to really read a PDF, I mean, I’m sure there’s still a certain amount of folks who love diving into those, but are the people that we’re addressing, right, these videos are much more engaging. So we’ve shifted to that
Neil Fluester 1:39:36
multi language as well. I mean, it used to have to create the document, the release notes, whatever that went in the box or the product, you’d have to put them in 20 different languages. Now you just create an English video on YouTube, turn the captions on and it will auto translate it to, you know, Swahili or whatever you want. So it makes it a lot easier on that. So
Dave Kelly 1:39:53
yeah, I’ll tell you we still will still get a customer once, once every now and then that will leave us a review and we’ll see A, there is no instructions in this package. But I’ve definitely opened up instructions and a device that we sell, whether it’s any of these brands that we’ve mentioned or others, and like you just said, Neil, they’ll have 12 different languages. But if I open this thing up, in the whole thing is open, I’m gonna start, you don’t realize that it’s, it’s really just one little section that you need to be paying attention to, that just becomes ridiculously overwhelming. Also an opportunity for the manufacturer to save on some expense, save the planet, save a little bit of paper, save a little bit of ink.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:40:41
Now we’re switching over to QR codes there actually, as well. So on the box, you’ll get a QR code. And that’s, of course, then Geo, you know, it’s a web based your website, because that where you are presents you the manual in your language right away, which is nice. So it’s actually even just a nicer user experience than just take your phone, scan it, boom, you’ve got it right there. You don’t need to open a little pamphlet or if you lose it, right, you go, Oh my gosh, where can I you know, where was this thing? Well, we’ve just got it all on
Neil Fluester 1:41:05
the product changes as well, good. And you’ll do software, firmware updates to the product, the product is always going to evolve, you know, what version one was the version two and three, the again, the the manual, the release notes, so the video instructions can change, you know, it’s got USB C NET C now rather than a USB, or it’s got a, you know, whatever it might be feature x y, you know, yeah, huge, huge props to that one. Love
Rolando Rosas 1:41:26
that. Well, I mean, you’ve dropped some major nuggets that I’ve also heard some just recently with the other bigger content creators. One, I think I just want to highlight this again, because it’s important, if you’re creating content for YouTube. And you want to verify what just what Phil just said, you can go into your Creator Studio, which is your account inside of YouTube, you can then look at where your views are coming from. And you will see how many views and impressions are generated via desktop via mobile via tablet and TV. And so that’s where you would want to go if you have a YouTube account, and you can check that out, you can see what percentage big time I heard another content creator than talk about QR codes, because of what you just said, Phil, they are going to add more QR codes and use that inside the video. Because if you’re on a big screen, the the the impact on that is that you’re not going to be able to go you know, click on the next video like you would on your mobile right you have a QR code that comes on the screen periodically and or whenever you’re able to take your mobile phone and you know capture the QR code on whatever the thing of whether it’s a product or promotion or whatever. And then you’re able to go see the next thing versus you know, trying to fish around with the remote control. And it’s really Godley awful to do on when you’re watching a YouTube video. On my TV. It’s terrible. Right? So those are two two big things that you can do to, uh, from a content creator or or leveling up your game. But for sure, everything we’ve talked about will take you from being you know, Junior League, from varsity all the way up to all pro status. I think both Neil and Phil, you’ve done both an excellent job providing audience with an amount of tips of pro tips, even some of the ones we highlighted. Was there anything we missed that you want to leave us with? That hasn’t been said,
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:43:35
Neil, I’m gonna put you on the spot because I, I can’t. I can’t think of anything.
Neil Fluester 1:43:42
I just I would urge anyone who is even just thinking about being creating content, or again, if you want to up your game and your meetings or where your webinars, whatever you do, don’t be afraid just start doing it, you know that you can always make things better, you can learn the site. As I said earlier, just press record, do more of it, and you will hone your skills over time. I’m here obviously I work with restaurant, I’m not paid by Elgato Elgato don’t pay me, but I do love their gear, their gear is amazing. And again, I’ve worked for a very large, you know, webcam vendor and headset vendor previously and I partner with another one, their gear is great. But for me if you’re serious about video creation, then the stuff that Elgato puts out is again, as you said Major League rather than the so again, go and check it out. A bio stream deck is lovely. Great. There we go.
Rolando Rosas 1:44:45
We should have all Elgato shirts right? We should. Yeah.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:44:49
I think that happened possibly. But to kind of piggyback off what Neil said they’re around just do it. I would also leave you with you know, be be yourself. elf, right? Don’t be afraid to, you know, if you have behind you and your setup, you know, it’s it’s just all plans or maybe it’s just really techie or maybe you’ve got a bunch of plushies or something, you know, whatever it is, I mean, that’s who you are. No, don’t do that don’t don’t imitate Yeah, don’t try to hide that just put that forward. Because that way you’ll come across as the most authentic. You know, I’ve gotten comments on the Lord of the Rings thing. And at the beginning, I was kind of like, oh my gosh, people gonna think I’m a nerd. And like, we’ll aim one and B, what was the problem with that? Right? There is nothing, bro. Just Yeah, exactly. Embrace it. So you know, just embrace, you know, where you are, what your setup is, and you know, who you are. And I think you will appreciate that much more than trying to, you know, use some sort of virtual fake background and, you know, try to cover and stuff like that. So, yeah, that would be that’d be kind of a tidbit there. And then, absolutely on the, you know, on the Goddess that I am paid by them.
Rolando Rosas 1:46:04
That only one of us here by Elgato.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:46:07
So yeah, I mean, if you’re interested in any of the gear that we talked about today, specifically, you know, the stream deck as well. And I would highly suggest going going on our website, checking the checking out the products. We also make lots of YouTube videos, you’ll see my face and a lot of them where I dive a little bit deeper into, into those various products. And, well, if you go to and you’ve got a
Rolando Rosas 1:46:27
bunch of influencer all over YouTube, the one that I can think of that I know that likes talking about Justin was Harris Heller. I don’t know. Yeah. Incredible. Yeah. Ease and incredible content creator, and he makes incredible videos, so and he does love your gear, I have to tell you that even though all the different I haven’t consumed all his content, but the ones that I’ve seen, I’ve seen the Elgato stuff being featured. And he’s like, loves your stuff.
Philipp Eggebrecht 1:46:56
Absolutely. I mean, we, let’s say let’s say that Harris rd even has some of the stuff that I was talking about here, because he also tried to get out the gear early to raters to actually get their feedback, right. We can’t involve them necessarily in 100% of the development process. But as soon as we have something where we’re like, okay, the vision is here, we’ve achieved what we want. And now we want to get in their hands and refine. We try to get them involved as early as possible. And so that’s cool. Yeah, that’s really smart. Already something where he’s he’s using some of the gear that I might have teased here.
Rolando Rosas 1:47:29
So I’ll be looking for a video for him soon then on on the on the I don’t know, they’ll call it a teleprompter toy or something that you’re not really a toy but something something in that field. All right, well, you could catch Neil Fluester. He’s got a YouTube channel. You can also check him out on LinkedIn, Elgato got an army of influencer. And you can find all kinds of tech reviews on their toys, their devices, their routes, and, and work productivity devices that you can incorporate, if you want to nerd out. Like I do, like Phil, like Neil, on more content like this, and helpful information on how to level up your game at work. Go check out our last episode on the state of work. We dive into some research, and how remote work has changed. And there’s actual numbers that you can use in your workplace to help create policy or to help balance out what needs to be said in your workplace when it comes to remote work with hard facts and latest research. So go ahead and check that out at circuitloops.com or wherever you consume your podcasts. Dave and I will see you in that episode. Thanks for tuning in. See you next time.
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