Creating Solutions: Videon/Amazon IVS Loft Event Recap

Four is an important number to me. Four is the number of parties I attended while attending Penn State University for my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering. Perhaps I was a bit too focused, but that is a blog for a different day.

Zero is the number of events I have spearheaded, like the one that Videon and AWS co-hosted on Tuesday, June 7th, along with Nomad and Bridge Digital.

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Perhaps you get the subtle point that there was a bit of anxiety.

With engineering as my background, I do gravitate to definable outcomes. In my head, a good event results from people showing up early, people staying for the event, and the event extending far beyond the intended time.‍

And with that background, one can imagine how gratifying it was to see an amazing group of industry leaders from a broad set of companies come together at Butter Restaurant. It was energetic. It was fun. It was engaging. All of this is a reflection of great attendance and the awesome partnership of AWS, Nomad, and Bridge Digital.

We came together on Tuesday to meet with one another to discuss solutions in the interactive retail arena, Live Events space, Public Sector applications, and Video Production. We also covered advanced technology, including real-time machine learning enabling object detection and speech-to-text conversion.

And while we could have talked tech and specs and stuff like that, we didn’t. We talked about how we identify customer pain points and anticipatorily create solutions as an industry.

Solutions; we can’t speak enough about the need to talk at a solution level. We as an industry MUST rely upon one another through events like Tuesday to gain an appreciation for how we can focus on our customer pain points by creating great solutions. As I have stated, the half-life of technology has become so small that even we, as technology leaders, do not understand the pieces.

On Tuesday, the basis of these discussions was AWS’ Interactive Video Services. Thanks to Jake Hurst for supporting this event and showcasing Amazon IVS for many different vertical applications. Branko Lepan from Nomad illustrated how one could apply a very easy-to-use content management system to Public Safety using two buttons.

‍Richie Murray from Bridge Digital provided a fascinating video production workflow that leveraged Mavis Broadcast and their cloud switcher. And Videon showcased how an encoder has evolved to be an edge compute device inclusive of an encoder that moves video from the point of its origin to the cloud using three QR codes.‍

RTMP. HEVC. Packaging. GOP structure. I-frames. These were words not floating around on Tuesday. Phrases used were simplicity, scalability, enterprise-level solutions, worldwide deployment, confidence, interactivity, transformative, and approachable.

There were people at the event who were ready to apply their learnings to immediate solutions. There were people at the event that had OMG moments where they realized how they could do something different. And there were people at the event that said, “wow, I had no idea this was possible, and I certainly had no idea that I could work with partners like Videon, Nomad, and Bridge Digital, along with AWS, to create solutions that solve a customer pain point with simplicity.”

The event started early. The event was energetic. The event lasted far beyond the intended time. It was, by all measures, a success thanks to the great participation of industry leaders.

‍Attendees mixing and mingling. So many people stayed until the very end that we extended the bar for another hour.
Speaking for myself next year, and there will be a next year, I can approach this with more confidence as four and zero is now five and one.