Nick Borelli | Patrick Rife | The Pixilated Podcast Season 3

Everyone got COVID wrong, I think, because they didn't fundamentally understand that they didn't get any more resources. So like, you're like, they learned all these new things. The attendee learned all these new things. There's an opportunity to fail now because people have experienced that. All these other things, they're like, all that stuff's true. They still didn't get any more resources. So they could be like, you could absolutely have a conversation if you could have a frank one with a planner and they would say, yeah, your product, your service, it's better. We get more value. I just don't have more time. I don't have any more resources. Hello and welcome to CIT Number 3, Health and Pixelated Podcast. I am Patrick Drake from Health and Pixelated and I'm extremely excited to be back for season 3. For any of you who have been following along over the years, you know that it's been a few month break. Season 2 was dedicated exclusively to interviews with other people in the events industry, other event professionals. Season 1 was a grab bag of all kinds of things. That was the weeds of COVID where we were trying to talk about all the new things that were happening in the world. Do some interviews, do some tips, like just trying to be useful people. So that being said, season 3, I'm looking to kind of really mix it up amongst all those things that we've done as well as starting to add in some more proprietary content. We're going to see if we can't figure out a way to do some podcast video cast versions of our blog post that we've been publishing, but not being said, I am super excited to have episode 1 be one of our interview series and with none other than Nick Brielli. Nick and I met a few years ago, kind of I believe, first through Instagram and doing some kind of other association work showing up at the same events. And we've stayed in touch all through COVID and chatted intermittently. He's done a lot of amazing things. If you're in the events world, you probably know who Nick is or you're at least aware of him. But I don't want to speak for him instead. We'll let him speak for himself. Nick welcome to the pixelated podcast. Yeah, thank you. I've done some podcast work during COVID too, as you mentioned that. And I remember those days very strongly of each week going like, all right, what are we talking about this week? It's more about like making people feel good, feel like they could say active. They have things to do. But I'm really glad to be on the other side of that as far as like optimism and everyone I know and all my friends, like I have healthier businesses now and it's I don't know. I'm glad to have these kind of conversations in a world where the possibilities are much more open than they used to be. So maybe you've been through that too, I'm sure it's a different mindset. Definitely. Yeah, it's also really fun to be, you know, like the last year, the whole kind of talking cycle was about like post COVID. And now we're kind of like post post COVID. And we just talk about things that are changing the industry as a totally to like the recovery, being the conversation of what's changing the industry. So that feels great. Well, so Nick, I have a bunch of questions of which I'll probably get through very few because no doubt we will just turn into a lot of really interesting stuff like we normally do. But before we go there, like, you know, let everybody know, give them a little bit about your background, maybe a bit of on zenith and kind of what you're working on now. And then we'll get into the nitty gritty after that. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I've been in the events industry since I was a teenager. I see myself, you know, in my career as I've stuck in that same pond, but I've just been kind of swimming all around the different circles of it. I've been in event catering venue sales event production. I've worked for a trade show company. I have worked for at a consultancy for a number of years where I worked for some really, really large institutions, also some startups. I have worked with event entertainment companies. I mean, anything in the events industry, I really like to keep it varied. And from that, I get kind of this as much as a person can, kind of a 360 degree viewpoint of events and what their impact are and the value of intentionally designed experiences, which brings me to where I'm at right now, which is, you know, I'm a big fan of being on trend. So at one point, I was selling metaverse style events. And now I'm in the world of AI. I mean, whatever the number one trend is, I'll just be on that seemingly. But with zenith, it's a facial analysis, which is kind of like the non-creepy cousin to facial recognition. You know, it's kind of poised to be the answer to the biggest pain with facial recognition, which is it's taking personal information from people that who don't consent. Facial analysis is a variation on this where there's no personal information taken. It's just using vision AI cameras, which act as kind of eyeballs or lenses and discern faces as math as a series of numbers of data sets. And these data sets are added to an aggregate score. And the upshot is booths or events or what have you any kind of experience in IRL. They know when there's individuals who are in a specific place, we call that impressions as you would for digital marketing. We can determine how long someone has stayed in the same spot or the kind of, you know, maybe what angle they've been at. And therefore we can look at that as a dwell rate. And we also can discern biographical information from people's faces, from the math there as well. And sentiment analysis, which is super interesting because that's kind of a return on experience number. So all that adds up to solving one of the biggest problems I think the events industry has. And that is we know events move the dial, but how much? And digital advertising and digital marketing. I mean, I've been in it since the onset of it and I can tell you, it doesn't impact people the same amount, but it can prove it. So being able to bridge the gap to be able to arm everyone who is working in live events with the data to prove what they do is valid and valuable and moves the needle is really our goal. It's it we're kind of in just in the empowerment business. Awesome. Awesome. So tell me a little bit about so zenis is this is this product number one? Is it a young company or what's the background for for you know like I'm guessing with something that is so forward thinking and so technology heavy that it's probably coming from a set of founders that you know this isn't their first rodeo more likely than not maybe maybe I'm wrong, but give us a little bit of background about understanding kind of the trajectory of the company. Yeah, yeah. Honestly, the company's been around nearly 10 years, but the majority of that time coming out of the founders coming out of academia and other startups is one of lots and lots of testing in in the real world. So I mean the majority of the company now has I would say been with the business no more than five or six months. And then the core founding team was about four or five people who were creating the algorithms and testing the AI for years and years. So for me, I kind of twitch a little bit because like I'm used to you know if it's if it's good enough you ship it or you know if you're not embarrassed by your first iteration you waited too long, borderline waited too long, but and that's this is absolutely just my opinion, but not for the events industry like for the events industry years and years of working on this and testing this especially during COVID where you know what else can you do but test it. The the upshot is is it absolutely works like it's plug-in play and the numbers work like there hasn't been an error or an issue in over a year in any capacity which is remarkable and that's that's from the strength of the data, but that's a lot a lot of years ahead of time doing testing. So I mean that to me in the tech companies that I work with is fairly unusual for the percentage of time. So now we're hitting the market hard, we have a partnership agreements with Freeman, we work on all the events for IMACs, all the events for PCMA, client lists like Dell, Meta, Google like big companies because it's it's a fairly black and white transaction like they they invest already in these events and now they have the proof to validate the money that they're spending and also have the ability to see within sites to make iterative improvements and before that they were just kind of I usually just say spray and pray you know you spend money on a sponsorship your big logo and your sign is up somewhere, someone were to ask you was that a good investment, how would you know? You know it was there like you accomplished that maybe overall attendance right you know like there's 2,000 people at this event it's like okay but who looked at that you know how did they feel how many of them were there did they actually pay attention were they just in the same room as and this gives you a lot clearer picture as far as the value of these in person opportunities for sponsorship and exhibition or with shows we have the ability to even see like when it comes to speakers every every minute you know peaks and trops of sentiment analysis based on any kind of grouping of individuals we want so again the upshot for that is you know someone saying you know it maybe it's an internal event and the CEO says okay you're all going to get a raise and then you know sentiment peaks and you know people really like that and they cross the board and I said unless you have only been with the company for five years then you can look at people under 30 and you can see their sentiment score drop dramatically sure so those types of things that mean that would be if one you could probably fairly hypothesize but like all kinds of things that you might not be as far as when you're losing people in certain groups within a conversation those things all become available and that's all been through testing you know like the applications for this weren't all apparent initially and the acquisitions of talent in in the last few months have been around people who have been in the events space like myself who can then come up with more and more ways for this to be deployed that are applicable specifically to live events so that's kind of what we're right now is is we're we're out there and we're also working with partners on ways to get this out there but really it's it's we're dreaming really really cool dreams now because everyone has we we've all individually on the new in the newer team members we've experienced these pains you know like I've had to go back to a CMO and say all right you know we spent 30,000 on this booth and you know all you know all said and done flights hotels etc and we have 30 leads that that was my story you know I mean I could say anecdotal stuff it felt like a good show it had a good energy you know I had some really good conversations but you go to excel and you put good conversations in there and it really is hard to you know graph right it gets just anecdotal sort of soft everything and this allows them to have you know a lot more a better number so for me it's like if I could go back and say like oh we had this many impressions and their dwell rate was this and you know with 65% females seem to be have a high sentiment you know on day two yet day three where there was a dip you know below this many people like now I'm having real conversations like an educated a marketer and I feel good about it and I think that events in general like for us to get all of us to have a rising tide you know be it you know what we're doing and any other way we need to be able to prove what we do like I think that the investment in live events has never really reached nearly the potential it could because of that reason I think we all in our gut know it works but prove it yeah definitely definitely so you know previous us officially hitting record maybe some of these bits are going to make it kind of on on to the chapter of block what so we talked about the latency with which technology adoption tends to happen inside of the events ecosystem and kind of like you know a lot of the the you know endemic things that caused that to happen like the way that the the entire ecosystem is kind of set up but that being said right knowing that there is a long adoption period right for particularly for a product like this right look I bring turnkey photo booths to association and business events and set it up and then tell you know eight people standing around like yeah this comes in a box and we ship it to you and we can ship 10 or we can ship one and we can be there for a week or a month or a year or whatever and it's like completely flexible and they're blown away at the flexibility and the eat it they're like wow this would be perfect you know like they've never been in this same we're in the same business to see right yeah so my key pointers though right like yeah it's it's still just a photo booth right like here we are 12 13 years into this trend and there are people who do not even have never even begin to think about how much value something like that could bring it to their space right you have something that is even newer and quite frankly a little bit more technologically sophisticated in terms of what it's going to do for you right so that drip time needed to own board this idea is certainly a barrier as we start to figure out how it trickles down but more so than that the thing that you said leading up was people did these things but they didn't gain any more bandwidth during COVID right yeah weren't able to to use these new tools and meaningful ways because they just cut them because they didn't have more bandwidth to do it so one of the things in generating when we built pixie cloud right part of it was that there was no photo booth software that was cloud based that was scalable and easy to manage and operation of them the other side of it was that we were working with like GNC and Pandora jewelry and underarm are doing these activations all over the place and they weren't doing anything meaningful with the data and we were like this is a huge opportunity that's why we built it right we wanted to be able to scale what we were doing but we also wanted to be able to hook he asks to underarmers sales force instance and have all the running people at marathons go into the appropriate drip campaign or the high school volume all players go into the appropriate campaign and what we found was that even with big companies that you would think have very sophisticated operating systems in place that they don't right so I'm all this is to set up and say how does something is sophisticated is what zenis offers how does it become how do you present it and get it into the hands of the everyday planner so that way not only can they understand it but they can make it make sense without having that same kind of taxing issue and and I guess my my broader question is are you planning for like a very long ramp to do that with knowing that like education is just it's critical to just let people kick the tires in the events world honestly like one of the reasons that I'm on the team and one of the functions that I do is to serve as an ongoing opportunity to engage with this audience and educate because it's frequently what I've done throughout my career as a speaker and talking head and working for different organizations like a event manager blog before it was skipped meetings like I you know I can distill these ideas and create ways that engage because it's absolutely required to bridge the gulf of what does this actually do though and yeah I mean one of the main ways we've been thinking about this is through partnerships with organizations that already have a lot of trust so like a Freeman is a great example for that Freeman's clients trust them fairly completely in their world you know like if they are they're saying like look here we're spending this much money with the design of our booth or or the sign of our show then yeah let's add you know a few thousand dollars more to be able to have this information and that's part of it and then they get to be the ones to build in the insights into their overall work so that's a big help is to be able to find organizations that they're already working with and supplement what they're doing so we don't have to have these individual conversations with you know hundreds and hundreds of planners which is you know it's tough the information like we're just like oh yeah I mean people would love data like it's like an obvious thing like it's where you're making guesses now you're making less you're making more educated guesses at the very least but you're probably making actual decisions based on empirical data so the partnerships is one engaging the industries in other so like I'll be speaking at Ejicon for PCMA and Montreal and in June here I've got chapter events lined up all over the place Pano also does a lot of that stuff too he's a CEO and founder so engage in the industry in that way and and spending a lot of our time having these deeper conversations is a big deal but none of it really solves that one problem which you mentioned which is them having more resources I try to frame these conversations in like how what what we can offer or or and not just us but like how anyone can offer things that will be hopefully empower a planner to be able to be bolder and ask for more resources because they're producing better and better events or they're getting to the bottom line like I used to be the proctor with MPI for a course called the event marketing strategist course and in that the whole goal of it was to educate the planner in marketing terminology that translates what they do into things that matter for the the people who are in charge of the silo that they should be in that they've been sort of cast out because events are weird I mean you think about like the rest of the most of the marketing conversations that take place especially around digital but just in general it's all about like you know lead gen and closing percentage and churn rates and and I don't know different cycles and then you've got someone over here that's talking about chicken or beef you know shavari chairs or egress you know things like that it's it's it's a completely different language right like it still has to result in marketing you know it still has to result in impressions and things that matter maybe customer lifetime value etc but boy there's a lot more there's another language on top of that right like the the root language of events I think is really hospitality and the root language of marketing you know in the 21st century is is more or less data and having hospitality translated into data and having experiences translated into data is it's it's an awkward dance so uh that's why that the silo's kind of exists I think in a level that is fair to the planners like you know I but I do think that like the ones that will especially with the onset of AI the ones that will survive and thrive are the ones who can easily translate what they do into uh terms that matter to a CMO or you know a director level or whatever and I think that like where we're at right now you know as far as the supplier world as we need to give them what they need in order to do that like we need to sort of explain like bottom line there's a way you can get more resources with this but it requires first them to have a seat at the table and you know that's going to be a fight yeah yeah that's that's an excellent point um also it gives me like the you most you just set up the most amazing like segue for me because you said AR and a seat at the table and I wanted to say in this day of the Lord AR Gold Rush that we're currently in right you're playing it again right like here you are like you kind of like you you equipped about it before but um as it as it happens you you were you know you were part of the the metaverse boom in in some capacity you were part of the virtual uh technology boom uh in some capacity and and now you're here doing this I'm really curious about um so like uh what I'm referring to is you're a lot of your work with all seated right another big company that you worked with over the last few years um that was in the middle of the stream when the flood waters rose again right so yeah kind of in a similar place now where you are and and at this point in time right it's just convenient right zenus has been working on this and and now the kind of buzz is there yeah where it's with all seated like it was like they were they were doing things but it was definitely like as a pivot the whole world turning there's this massive pivot right and yeah you and I have talked before about the bajillions of dollars that flew into the event ecosystem to ultimately build a whole lot of no code micro website builders with like widgets into it and I'm not saying that that's what you guys were doing but it was a whole world we were weirdly doing it a completely different angle uh but uh but yeah I mean the innovation if you were to just to look at the actual innovation that took place on the on the uh virtual event side is minimal at best uh in my opinion I mean that's uh you know uh I don't know I don't know I'm I'm making anyone feel good about that uh in in any part of the ecosystem but I really believe it to be true it was just right place right time and lots of band-aids on top of you know pretty existing products because they had a user base right like they're like they're they're they went from most of them went from an event app which is primarily around the idea of expediting uh and simplifying experiences it's it's it's like lots of wayfinding really event apps right like yes there's a networking component in it as well but for live events especially like the primary use for it is it's just expediency organization I used to go to conferences and I got a giant binder you know with event apps I didn't uh and to say that these are the same people and the same visions that uh went into creating experiences through virtual is a big jump you know like it's a big ideological jump but they not only had to do it but they were the only ones who could do it by you know like that meme where they you know there's a hole in the water and the thing and then they slapped that product that you know fixes holes or it's like that right like slapped you know a video component on top of these things and all of a sudden all of the uh the people that you were talking to uh in your emails and your newsletters and your in your leads uh you had something to sell to them and then the TAM for that was you know just this absurd number a guess based on a world where COVID never ends uh and then and then COVID does end and that number gets uh knocked down to about 25 to 20% of where it was uh because planners are not held at gunpoint in order to adopt a virtual event and you're seeing you know this like real scrappy you know fight uh for the who who's left and you know every three or four months a major player mergers or disappears um so that's the current state and like a lot of the prognosis from the the talking head world of the event uh space you know predicted something completely different than what we got like I don't think many of them maybe they were too idealistic but I think that really just comes down to the fact that there's a distance between the people who make these predictions and the people who are in in everyday positions uh if every time they would have made a you know a prognosis about well now that everyone's trained on virtual events etc there was just one person being like yeah but I got no more money and no more time you know and my my my sentence has been you know if if you can if your virtual event uh it would be it uh you know a uh uh simultaneous event uh or uh or an asynchronous it doesn't matter but let's say it's synchronous if your synchronous synchronous virtual part component of your hybrid event takes makes my whole experience 1.1 times more work and produces two times the results still not gonna do it I don't have the point one and like that just does not compute in the tech world like in the tech world it's like it's better so it will do you know it will be adopted like it's better than the current uh you know world it adds more value there's more sponsorship opportunities more money there's more eyeballs etc and that's where these hop ins and everybody else of the world like had all these high evaluations and in high expectations and they didn't realize that their client base just doesn't have more time yeah yeah in a world of shrinking time like yeah I mean and resources and budgets we're not we're not seeing a uh we're not going gangbusters with with growth right like people are expected to be able to produce the same amount with less not not not the interest and and you know like that I think that was the interesting thing you know having you know been in the events industry for a decade before covid you know winked its eye like uh like that's just not the events world you know like uh people have people that don't know the events world tend to think that everything every event is looked at with you know like a Nike budget but what they don't realize is that like a Nike budget isn't even a Nike budget from the inside looking out on the outside looking in you so me too like a lot of them and like they aren't sexy the money is not there's no money guns there's no money guns the organization is usually pretty nuts like there's also a lot of middlemen uh which I probably is the reason why you know budgets aren't what they are and there's a lot of you know and it's a lot of subbed out specialty which you know if it was all done under one roof it would be less expensive for sure but yeah once you get to an agency who then subs out a specialist who then subs out vendors like that pie that the slices get thinner and thinner and thinner and it looks all good especially actually especially with the Nike's or a good example like that because you know people they're willing to forego a lot of profit for the you know being associated with it or the hopes for long term or plays or whatever because the the thought in the events world which is predominantly lots and lots of small businesses is that you know it'll work out in the end where a large business just say no to that business if it doesn't have a certain level of profitability regardless who the client is so like there's always someone especially in the agency world who's willing to you know take the prestige client and take the reduced budget and they know that so like it it ends up being like these like events where from a attendees standpoint you're like man no expense was spared and it's like yeah that's never almost almost never the case like it's always someone's getting burned uh profit-wise yep yes yeah you're absolutely right you're absolutely right I still like to count the redundancies that like I go to an event and like I have this weird thing where I'm looking and I'm like I was too much staff or or like there's this or that like I'm like looking where the where the like the profit loss is or whatever and it's it's funny I'm like oh they could have done this you know this on that like uh experiential audits or something that you know I know that like a merit-scoeble events has done uh there's super cool to be part of where you get to see like you know like what people really care about what they don't I mean you do kind of a shotgun approach but pretty much with all experience design is you you know you try to hope for making everybody happy but then when you look at it and you're like you know what we could have cut that out completely wouldn't have made a difference like a lot of like what you do like I'm sure that there's lots of opportunities where people are like oh well I have to do this so I have to cut you out and you're like yeah but the whole goal of your event is to make an impression the whole goal of your like let's go back to the goal of your event the goal of your event isn't having the best lunch you could possibly have most people are just like I just eat food forever uh it's just a Tuesday the goal of your event is to make an impression is to to stick in their minds to change behaviors and you're better poised to do that than a lot of the staple elements of events which people feel like they have to do like no one remembers any chair of any event they went to meanwhile there's the the upper tier pricing of what you could spend on you know chairs is insane so like really like you just got to be on the ground level sometimes to realize that like there's uh you have to kind of bring people back into that as far as what's this about like what's this actually about and just reset every once in a while yeah I mean the slave of hand is mandatory like tech big tech thinks that tech in an event should be like yeah right crazy tech in an event should be completely transparent except people feel it through the effects of the the light that their experience right the convenience with which they're navigating but otherwise it shouldn't be acknowledged whatsoever like it has no active role unless you're maybe at a tech conference yeah as you said it's the only one it's nobody cares how the sausage is made they just they just don't feel right so like if tech doesn't make you feel something it doesn't facilitate feeling if it doesn't help you audit feelings if it's not about like the experiential itself like if it doesn't disappear or become part of an ingredient in the experience and it is trying to sell itself as a course then it feels awkward and you know we've experienced that stuff we were like tech for tech sake or whatever and it just feels sloppy and uh yeah it should it should just become a feeling where you're like oh man I went to this thing and then I felt like this and I really thought this was cool like more adjectives than nouns you know when people describe like what they what they went through yeah you know it's funny I was going through I published a new blog post last week I think and it was kind of about uh marketing and experiences and and kind of like the brand side of it and in doing that I went back through when I was finding old photos and I came across a gallery from Bonnarou when we went with GNC and it's a photo of me and I saved it to I'm the share of my LinkedIn and I was writing this morning kind of for what will be the post ultimately but thinking about ways that could expand kind of the topic and I was like oh instead of trying to write long prose over this thing I'm just going to write bullet points of everything I think about when I look at this photo of myself right and like the things that I noticed and that came to mind for me are all of these inflection points in my life and in pixelated life and how I started to think about our company and those things are like you know there's an iPhone in my hand that I've been a pixel user for like years now you know like there's an RFID bracelet on for Bonnarou that I kept doing for an entire year afterwards one because the experience was amazing to me but two because I walked away being like how do I make these photo booths RFID compliant and I told that story like I got so much mileage out of that thought and we never built it it never existed but being able to tie those threads together right to take the things that you're experiencing and be able to come patently talk about how those could inflect with your world and with the greater world and just kind of going through and I you know I looked at it and I was like guys there's like eight solid memories that are evoked from just seeing this image right like in an instance and that is what you're talking about that's what events that is the context trigger that you want people to be able to have a value their experience yeah intentionally designed experiences the goal of all of them are to create change and one of the ways that change becomes lasting is creating memory markers it's one of those things where I'm sorry to anyone who maybe works for the lost Vegas CVB when they're about to hear this I say that my issue sometimes with all the events that I take attend and I'm probably not large because I attend more events than most people so fair all the events I attend in Vegas I mean I was at two shows every other week in April you know in Vegas for a week at a time the third time I've been there this year probably be end of either six times this year that's 16 or 17 years if I've met you in Las Vegas I don't remember the show I don't remember the year I just you get sort of jumbled in that mix if your event takes place one year in a parlance in Vermont or Jackson Hole or something like that my ability to create a memory marker associated with that more unique experience becomes stronger and therefore more vibrant so like even even in the idea of like choosing locations for events you know one of the things that I always think about you know when I'm in those rooms is just just letting you know I understand that Orlando and Anaheim and Vegas have all these cool distractions but like also they're gonna be there and and you're not necessarily going to be able to the attendees not gonna remember them in the context of this event so they might not remember oh yeah like Tim like I met him at in Jackson Hole and you know we said we were gonna do this thing and we should I should call him up and I should you know do that event with him or I should work with that person like those types of memory markers that be get actual action that that are the reason why we do these things like I used to I used to go to a shows that I was working on the marketing of and I had a shot list and I'd work with a photographer and my shot lists frequently I mean yeah they had like the big moments of the CEO speaking or whatever but like most of my stuff I really cared about on my shot lists where and I would manufacture them if I couldn't get them show me somebody handing somebody a business card show me someone hugging somebody I want to see a high five like I want to see the reason that we actually attend events which is is creating experiences creating memories etc because like I capture those images because like when I marketed the events you know it was really about that like that's really why you go so for you going to Bonnaroo like you have all these memories that are attached to the change the things that you felt that you wanted to do next you know like it it's it connected you to it and I mean I think that we could all do really well by you know in capturing these and and really really focusing on it I mean even to the degree that I've been thinking we've been thinking a lot of zenis too about scent which you might not be an obvious thing for people who are in vision AI but we have these we have ability to take in either QR scans or a facial analysis and the QR scans will individualize because there's an opt-in what would then be triggered on a screen or if it's a facial analysis then it would if you're in a certain grouping of people but it would know you as an individual one is you know a consensual you know very intentional thing where you swipe your badge and then something comes up on screen but we were thinking along the lines of like okay what what sense really be gets memory the most and and still something and it's sent you know like the smell of something is the number one trigger in sensory for creating memory markers and like being able to utilize that to say like something that was like maybe there's a dispersal mechanism you know as we're just dreaming stuff up that would have sense from different events that that person attended maybe that maybe there was a sort of signature scent from an event that took place two years ago in a different one three years ago and then someone scans their badge and it deploys one based on the experience that they had to you know trigger a good good seeing you Sally we haven't seen you since the 2017 show and then there's a scent associate with the 2000 like there's so much cool stuff we can do if you really focus on like what do we hear for and you're right the memories the capturing the like the triggers like that that's that's really more it than a lot of stuff that we focus on yeah yeah the old factory yeah it's a big deal see in the old factory I mean it's you know it's it's out there like a lot of stuff are doing is more like focused and that but we spent some some time thinking about stuff that no one else would be you know thinking about to stay out of it the curve sure sure but I mean like I mean I think that that's it's it's not irrelevant like it's not an irrelevant statement to say that what we're looking to do is to optimize an ecosystem and you know like as we become more capable you know that we're gonna look for more opportunities to be more capable and I think that you're you're 100% right I mean like if that same room smelled like trash like it wouldn't be a positive experience right right right so it's it's interesting because like you can think about it in terms of setting an environment right so like we're going to a vice an advice isn't like a popular reference anymore but like right we're going to the Snapchat South by Southwest activation right and they want it to have a specific vibe right they want it to exude something tangible right all the way across to like a keynote being given and like the tone of that keynote whether it's you know like a CEO speaking to the sales team for the annual like January like you know goal setting kick off conference to you know talking to the C suite like how how you can dictate their mood the ambiance of the space so that way the message that you're gonna deliver to them is as poignant and harness as possible right yeah yeah I mean the the presentations that we're doing a PC may edgicon we're designing the presentation to along an emotional journey so like the the way that we're telling the story and the way that we're deploying the information is one where we're we're building from sort of negative to positive and then we're going to show them you know the upshot is is that we're going to show them uh our analysis of the conversation itself at the end of it to prove our hypothesis of how we designed it but the real thing is is I want to show people about like designing experiences based on uh an emotional journey and not just you know distribution of information because like I think youtube does a great job of just getting content into your brain just getting ideas in your brain but it's not exceptional at creating experiences because it's you know it's on a screen it's disposable or whatever but like when you're in person uh the the opportunity to look people in the eye so we're going to start off somewhat at adversarial and uh a little bit like with all the worst parts of data and security of like what's out there in the world and like what's actually happening because most people don't know half of how much information of yours is out there so we're going to expose them you know to like you know exposure therapy or river like we're going to expose them to the realities of of cctvs and uh and and uh online data collection and like uh a pools and uh opportunities that these things are and then we're going to show them opportunities where they can you know become safer and uh ideas on on how they can get back their privacy and questions to ask so they can make sure that like they're protected and their attendees are protected and considering data is really under the umbrella of duty of care which is like one of the most important things that uh a uh an event when a planner has to has to consider uh but like the whole goal of it is to the front load it with sort of negative feelings and to see and then have various check-in points so we're getting which are the called check-in points and you know internally and are kind of like a Lucy script uh where we're going to you know ask them how they feel and make an introspective and then create these feeling markers you know within themselves uh and then we're auditing that process to see if our hypothesis is true if we're actually you know making an impact on that and the the fun part is that we get to do this five times uh over the course of three days so like we'll be able to have these like kind of focus groups uh based on this methodology uh but like it's one of those things where like yeah for us you know showing off our technology i think it's like a cool way to do it i guess but like the main thing i'm thinking about is like i would love to like elevate the entire industry to think about like emotional uh journeys as as a big part of what you do and like yours culminated in that that that you know that photo which sort of summarized your emotional journey and and you know made it something that is tangible and there's sort of ever see you know with that emotional journey so like and i think a lot of what you you know your your organization does is in that you know that ballgame too of being able to say like okay if you build this right these uh you know these moments that you're you know putting an ember so to speak uh become absolutely powerful in these legacy pieces uh for change and like that's that's what you do so like you said something to the effect of like just a photo booth at one point and it's like it's it's much bigger than that if you consider which you know obviously but you know it's much bigger than when you consider like what's the goal you know to create change and have that change stick right so like you create the change and we help you make it stick right yeah yeah like that's a good reason than done you know as far as event design obviously but uh doing events like they were in 2019 uh and you know expecting them to be you know these innovative things when you're just going back to the old playbook is my biggest disappointment post-COVID of the the majority of that being the case um yeah but uh you know i still think there's hope i still think that we're in kind of a refractory period of time where we're you know going for some comfort food you know after not eating for quite some time uh and uh i still think that there's still the small glimmer of of hope for big change and i think that the other you know that part of it that i i think could facilitate that is is that big pain point that's come up over and over again as far as lack of resources time money etc is AI you know AI can and will continue to free up time and that's that time should be spent in evolving yourself yep yeah yeah i mean the some hopefully someone is going to you know build a dashboard that is is very much trained to being able to deploy AI for a better conceptual overview of all the comings and goings of any given event ecosystem you know like might you know what should have happened with over COVID is people should have you know they should have realized that the the goal was to create a virtuous ecosystem of people interested in your world and that it should be fluid and it didn't need to be called like virtual blah blah blah or hybrid and all that stuff and it should have just been this is where we're meeting you now right and then it has it opened back up it should have just been we're doing like by the way like not we have more options over and we're doing this it's just like hey guess what there's a live thing happening and it doesn't have to be so like acknowledge the the boogie man that shift back yeah we play on that so easily like we're we're so so easily seduced into and again it's comfort right it is there is a lot of you know we were in an uncomfortable place and so comfort becomes that much more attractive but yeah i agree with you that like community building should have been the emphasis versus trying to put a square peg in a round hole you know like the the virtual events of which you know i mean i attended a ton of them produced a ton of them you know spoke at a lot of them for years the conventions that they poured it over from live events when they didn't need those constraints were like so like antiquated you know it was like and wait a minute why are you making me do it like three eight hour days in a virtual event like do you know how awful that is like when i'm not surrounded by people like you don't have to do that like the reason that live events the reason i'm flying to Montreal you know for for a couple days for PC maize uh edgicon as opposed to going to that event and then flying back every day for a week is that the second is pretty impractical but in a virtual event you could learn something in the beginning of your day you could ask to implement it within that day you can come back the next day and talk to everybody about how you implemented that into your day and you've just shortened the curve and between you know idea and adoption but they all just sort of took the approach of live events which have the like the live events have constraints virtual events have constraints if you if you're you importing over the constraints of one into the other it's a failure of imagination like it it's yeah it's just a cut and paste mentality that sucks yeah i mean the the pragmatic logic that they got and gets ignored sometimes is just it can be hard to forgive uh because it's just you know you're just like you're you just asked for this yourself like you you did this you did this yeah but it might come down to resources again though you know like to i mean again i don't want to put everything on the on the uh i want even more on the laps of planners and saying like it's is your fault for not being a magetive or your fault of doing the same thing in different ways etc or whatever like you have to have a certain level of cachet to say we're doing this event differently and you have to i agree with you 100% like i don't think that it's on i think that you know like planners and and other people inside of the events ecosystem you know like uh that there's this this William steag book that i read in my kids and it's like a wolf and like he's being like you know like they're giving him a ship because he's a wolf and he's gonna eat the pig right and he's like i didn't make the world right yeah yeah like i got it i got to eat i'm just doing me like this is what i'm supposed to do here like a loose but relevant analogy like like event planners are just in it right and i think that we tend to forget that there are way more small meetings happening of acronyms that you have never will never hear of that are like underneath of the iceberg is so big and those those planners they don't have the agency in their role to be they're not um asked they're not expected to be leaders they're expected to be implementers and they're expected to be perfect and do all these things but the industry isn't shaped like that those those folks don't have the pulpit to say this is what's happening so you can't really put it on them at all like they're just in the environment where they're reacting to the resources they have the expectations that they're under and the way that things have operated and trying to figure out a way like their job is to move forward like just make sure that we're moving forward and so you can't fault them yeah yeah there has to be sort of like a c-suite intervention on behalf of planners by and like that's very difficult obviously to to conceive of how one would do that uh in lieu of that i think the only opportunity is to is to build up a cache of small enough wins uh where you know the the failure rate on on those things is is slight in its damage potential so therefore you can then ask for maybe a bit more leniency in these areas uh but like a a turnkey like revolution in the space it requires uh the organization itself to fundamentally understand or have a different feeling about what is offered from events so like from the zenith perspective like all we you know think about is how do we empower these people enough where they can start asking better questions in these meetings and they can start you know showing that in order to drive up their ability to be at a bigger table you know because when they're saying like we had a good event everyone showed up uh the post event surveys filled up by three people you know we're we're mostly positive they were talking about how the chicken was dry and the CM I was like what is this about like what sure why are we talking about chicken like three people like why are we spending this money like uh i i we had a good year this event was part of the year I guess do the same thing over again that's all I know right like pass fail binary uh anecdotal soft like these are these are the world and and like it doesn't like that's not a that's not a seed at the big table the seed at the big table is like hey we got a problem with people over the age of or under the age of 60 or whatever like they're just not getting it you know like they're not understanding like how do we do that and then you're like oh all right this person is bringing something to the table that is a bigger picture you know like the events start looking like focus groups uh for the bigger marketing questions like you're like oh look I went to this event I exhibited at it we got a 10 by 10 booth and everybody who is at this event we would all agree based on these numbers these are the people who we want to be talking to 365 and all avenues so here's how they reacted to what we put out there like imagine our booth is a website we had a bounce rate of this you know we had you know you know like that and like then they're like oh the digital marketer wakes up out of the normally snooze festive what people talking about you know uh you know 30 leads and like that's all they have to say uh that's the kind of like it you know from the bottom up revolution that can happen that you know but that only happens when we arm them you know like that to be honest more you know stuff that actually makes a difference and gets hurt so that's my like big thing to planners is just like hey you know like if you if you shock people out of what they expect from you you know because you're you're talking their language and not your language they're they're gonna start seeing you you know as as someone who you know might need more attention might need more people might need more funding etc but until you put it in their context it's just sort of like this like alchemy that like I don't know how they do it like that you know these the the the excel checkbox people sort of make it happen and people you know they didn't didn't have a problem with it etc but you don't know that like was this event 20% better than than the the previous event no idea just it was good it wasn't bad yep yep what a good one meant so many great thoughts this has been all of the chat that I thought it would eventually be you know thank you again for being flexible from when shit was going left field when we were supposed to originally record um get that that's good as much as as much as anyone would I've been there too many days you do um listen before we go though I want to make sure you know like maybe everybody know how how they reach out anyway that's listening that's curious to learn more about zenis um anybody that's gonna be uh any of the PCMA events that you might want to kind of give a shout out for um we're just you know how to get in touch with you yeah for sure I mean we're at most of the the big events uh in the events industry in general i-maxes and i-b-t-m's uh event tech lives all of them uh PCMA events as well but uh so my preference is always like let's get a coffee together and just hit hit me up there but outside of that you know the typical stuff uh it's z-e-n-u-s.ai is the website uh and then if you we want you can just hit the button at the bottom and start a chat uh and uh you know myself or or pano so be the one that'll see that uh and then you know social media z-e-n-u-s all over the place i'm just n-i-c-k-b-o-r-e-l-l-i at all the social medias uh but yeah uh you know hit me up uh niketnikveroly.com or uh niketzinus.ai any one of those things i just love like uh being challenged you know like show me something even if it's not something we can directly help with i mean one of the the best parts of staying in the same industry for so long is that i i collect people you know like i know what people are super into and what they're about and uh i match people with problems and challenges and uh i i'm sure i can help you if i can't help you directly i can find you somebody who uh who can help you know in my network awesome that is very very kind of you sir yeah that's what it's all about nik thank you so much for for your time all of your perspective ideas like this has been a really great really fun uh way to spend time but also a great chat i think that my people are going to love it so yeah congrats on season three man that's uh yeah these are tough to do uh i've had a number of podcasts not make it to that mark so uh yeah congrats yeah yeah well we'll see we'll see where this one or this one takes it but i appreciate it yeah thanks done all right guys so that's it you um you you're here you're witnessed all of the good stuff uh again as as was obviously demonstrated nik is an extremely competent very knowledgeable person who has been making his way in the events world for a long time so uh if something resonated i would encourage you reach out find out more about him connect with him um maybe you guys find a good way to work together uh and then as for me uh again welcome to season three um i don't know how quickly we will follow up with this one but it won't be too long certainly not as long as the gap between season two and season three um two questions for you or requests if you aren't yet make sure that you hit the follow button uh whether you are listening to or watching this video so that way you're notified each time and if you have a moment take a second and leave us a five star review um your reviews help our podcast get suggested to more listeners so that way we can get our information and our guests stories out to more people um so until next time i am Patrick fixated peace.[Music]