Introduction
Nice to have you back on the Digital 4 Productivity podcast. And don’t be surprised about the background noise. I’m on the road. This episode features another exciting interview with Peter Bluhm, the host of the Performance Manager Podcast. We meet up from time to time at events where we’re both on stage. And one of the last times we talked about whether online is stupid or just that most online formats are stupid or how to make online formats a success. I hope you enjoy listening to this exciting interview and have lots of good ideas. Yours, Thorsten Jekel.
Peter Bluhm
Welcome to the Performance Manager Podcast. My name is Peter Bluhm. I’m in Schwerin at the North-East Conference of the International Controller Association and I’m joined on the podcast by a good old friend, Thorsten Jekel. He is an IT entrepreneur, outdoor spearhead and expert in digital working and Thorsten Jekel has been supporting people and companies in the productive use of IT technologies for decades. He is also one of the pioneers in the technical conception and implementation of digital events and this has become even more important in recent months. I would like to talk to him today about this last topic in particular. But first of all, welcome to the podcast, Thorsten Jekel.
Thorsten Jekel
Thank you very much for the contribution and I am very happy to be back.
Peter Bluhm
And the last time we spoke, a lot of people approached me and said: Wow, that was a very, very good podcast. We’ve spoken to each other many times before. We picked up a lot of good ideas and impulses. Now it’s like this: Since last year, many congresses, training courses, seminars and events no longer take place as face-to-face events, they have had to go digital and are now hybrid again. It’s impossible to imagine life without it. If you first think about this event industry or speaker industry, how will this industry develop and then perhaps think one step further, what does this mean for companies, for further training in companies?
Thorsten Jekel
What we saw last year, at the end of February, similar to what you probably experienced, was a lot of calls saying: We’re sorry, but unfortunately we have to cancel the congress, the event. And of course, just like you, or just like you, we didn’t say: We accept that, but we think about it: We can help our customers. And then we very quickly said: Okay, maybe it will be a little different, but let’s perhaps convey the goals that you want to achieve with this event in a digital form. And then, to a certain extent out of necessity, we digitized this event to a great extent. And in response to the question, one very interesting response we got was to say: Hey, wait a minute. In the old world, I’ll call it the old world now, in the purely face-to-face world, we reached 500 people. With business live streaming, we reached 4,000 people at once. And what we’re noticing right now is that we’ve already had a lot of requests for next year, where they’re saying: we’re assuming we can do it in person again, but we’d also like to reach more people, we’d also like to stream the whole thing again and not just send it out in the sense of one-way, but also in the direction of dialog.
Thorsten Jekel
And I think that’s where we’re heading, towards more hybrid formats and that companies should also think about this: How can I expand the presence formats to reach my customers, reach potential customers and also reach employees? After all, many companies are spread out internationally and can’t always get everyone in the same room. And how can I reach them better? And what many people don’t even think about, what we notice, is the topic of recruiting, being attractive as an employer and reaching even more people than you can reach through the traditional face-to-face format. There’s more to it than you might think. And the nice thing is that the target groups, customers and employees have also become more digitally savvy out of necessity. In other words, this Covid issue was a digitalization offensive in Germany that we previously missed out on a little.
Peter Bluhm
As you mentioned, it’s not just the event industry, the speaker industry – and you are part of this industry, so to speak – that is affected, but also companies, of course. And you’ve just mentioned that companies, of course, deal with customers, recruiting is an issue, suppliers are issues. But if we start by looking at internal communication within the company, then the fact is that entire departments in companies have become digital overnight, so to speak. I’m not talking about the PC, that was already there, but everything else, all communication apart from emails, has suddenly gone digital. This results in necessary technical opportunities on the one hand and organizational opportunities on the other. And quite honestly, I’m still experiencing a lot of misery. What would you say are the challenges?
Thorsten Jekel
Well, I recently made such a nice prost because, like you, I often communicate online with my customers when I’m out and about and I now have something like a bookend, an angled stand where I can put my laptop up at an angle so that the webcam sitting on top is at eye level. And then I wrote a hashtag behind it: No more nose hair. And then someone posted a link to a nose hair shaver and said: You could solve the problem with that too. So joking aside. What I often notice is that we simply say we communicate at eye level. And communication at eye level often doesn’t take place in the digital world, because the laptop is low, the camera is low and that doesn’t come from deliberate disrespect, but as my esteemed fellow speaker René Bourbonus always says: most disrespect arises unintentionally from carelessness. And when I look down into a camera like that, no one would look down on someone who might be sitting down in a face-to-face conversation. And it is precisely in this internal communication that this carelessness often leads to people simply not communicating at eye level.
Thorsten Jekel
And if you then expand in an external direction, it is simply so important to find this balance between professional and human. And that is sometimes a contradiction Sometimes you add to it. So I don’t think it’s a good idea to be overly casual. So when you’re communicating with a customer and you’ve got this kind of daytime show, 100% painted atmosphere, that sometimes comes across as artificial and no longer genuine, where the customer doesn’t even consciously, but subconsciously says that something isn’t genuine, that it’s an issue of trust. On the other hand, I’ve recently experienced this, where someone really had an ironing board in the background or I’ve also seen the classic hanging laundry. So there’s just a certain professionalism, I’ll say as you put it here, that’s definitely called for as a company when it comes to exceptional communication.
Peter Bluhm
Let’s perhaps stick to the subject of the picture again. You said something like this, then you take your webcam and put it on the monitor and that’s where the problem usually starts. Many people don’t even have a webcam, but use the devices that are in the notebook, so to speak. And since you’re also technologically minded and Apple-savvy, how do you assess the situation? Is what’s coming out of the hardware manufacturers still up to date? Webcams are coming out that basically can’t do anything. Are they still up to date from your point of view?
Thorsten Jekel
So it depends on what hardware you have. There are really very good devices and if, for example, you have an iPad, if you have the latest generation of iPads, for example, they even have a feature called Center Stage, which has a very wide angle, but doesn’t use it completely, but then ensures that you are always automatically in the picture, even though you are moving. So sometimes they are very good and therefore something that most people don’t think about. The first thing I always remember is that, regardless of whether you’ve put a webcam on top or whether you’ve integrated it – unfortunately you can’t hear it in the podcast, but you might see it in the camera – a lens cleaning cloth and maybe a moist lens cleaner in a spray bottle works wonders, because sometimes I think to myself: Oh, another episode of the series Gorillas in the Mist, because the lens just hasn’t been cleaned. So I’d say cleaning lenses is a good idea when taking photos or making video calls. And what you usually notice is that a webcam that you put on top has two advantages Firstly, I’m a few centimetres higher, which usually leads to an eye-level perspective. Secondly, the …
Thorsten Jekel
There’s more space in such a thing, even if it’s only a C9, 120. I don’t want to do any surreptitious advertising here, but by far the least problematic webcam and unbeatable for me in terms of price/performance ratio is a Logitech C920. It’s been around for years. Now some people say: There’s also a Bryo that can do 4K, where I say: Nobody is streaming in 4K today in any case. And I always say relevance before frippery. You’ve probably heard me say that before, where I always say it’s important to transmit a relevant message. And we always think first, so the question is very symptomatic, we always think of the image first, but I can watch a bad image much longer than I can listen to a bad sound.
Peter Bluhm
And we should also talk about that, because you’re absolutely right: the picture is one thing. If the sound is bad, then it gets really scary, because that’s what you have on your ears when you can’t understand anything. Or what I experience more often is when people have a headset on and then there’s always a bump against the headset, not because you bump into it but because somewhere, I’ll say almost somewhere, the air waves always cause a bang somewhere. In other words, it’s about checking the technology accordingly and that’s basically the cheapest way to optimize yourself with the headset.
Thorsten Jekel
Absolutely. And there’s another Logitech that costs 80 euros. The headset that I usually recommend, a ZenHazard PC USB7, costs 30 euros. It really doesn’t cost any money. It’s a one-ear headset, which always has the advantage that you can clarify something on the phone in between if you can’t reach someone, for example, or hear something from the room. And the thing has noise canceling. So you should also make sure that these headsets suppress background noise as automatically as possible. And I have a lot of fans in my office, you can’t hear them. And another very practical tip: the listeners don’t hear it, the viewers see it. Most people always put the boom with the microphone directly in front of their mouth. And professionals do it in such a way that it’s always placed on the inside arch, so that it’s always at the bottom where the inside arch is, because then you don’t breathe into the microphone. That’s exactly the effect you’ve just discussed. And a death technician once gave me this tip, where he said: “Please don’t put your headset directly on the schnitzel, but make it a little lower.
Thorsten Jekel
And you also notice that when you see someone like Ingo Zapparoni on TV, they either have it lower or they’ve moved it back a bit so that you can’t hear the breathing noises.
Peter Bluhm
So it’s an easy way to remedy the situation and also, you almost have to say, to do something good for those around you, who are listening to what you say into the microphone and immediately appear professional. Let’s come back to the picture for a moment. What I see from global corporations is the classic ironing board in the background, the surfboard in the background. What do you think of that? What do you think? What’s sleeping there at the end of the day? Yes, I don’t even know who’s responsible for that. Maybe the PR department. Are they oversleeping? What’s happening? Doesn’t there need to be a background?
Thorsten Jekel
Yes, well, I always think when I look at Herbert Diesen from Mrs. Weber, for example, that he can be in the picture with the surfboard, because I know whether you’ve seen the number. He was standing on the thing, he went down the Mittelland Canal on one of those electric things and was on it. So that’s really cool.
Peter Bluhm
But the stand, if I say so myself, was not behind him.
Thorsten Jekel
Exactly. Exactly. Why do I mention that? I say I mention it because what he did and what I think is the best way is to have the most unusual settings, the most unusual locations possible. For example, I once, we live in Berlin, we have an attic apartment and from our roof, from the roof terrace, you can see Alexanderplatz, you can see the Red Radar outside and the park inside on Alex. And that used to be so beautiful, with such a heart, it used to be so well lit, with the rooms during the Corona period. And I got some of my best feedback for a lecture I gave above the rooftops of Berlin in the Dämerung. Any of you cameramen would have freaked out because they said: Completely stupid conditions and no light and so on. But the people: Can I have a lecture like this on the roof with you? Is that also possible with the little heart and these lights and so on? So just having something that’s different, that perhaps deliberately appears a little less professional. But of course I also had a good tone with me again. If it’s a background, then I also say it should be professional.
Thorsten Jekel
But sometimes I’m also someone who says: “Dear, do you have a real background? than the Golden Gate Bridge in Zoom. I can’t see it anymore, for example, when after three years you discover: Oh, there are virtual backgrounds and everyone has the same one. And very practical, which I always recommend: Ideally, you should have as neutral a wall as possible behind you and it should distract as little as possible. So when I have a bookshelf, I’m always looking at it and saying: Oh, do I already know that book? And what I unfortunately often experience is that people have windows behind them. So you should really avoid that, because then you have backlighting and then, especially with the optics of webcams, you often just disappear unhappily into the picture. And you can really do a lot with very little effort Another thing I learned from Michael Rocier, for example, is to make sure that the contrast of the clothing matches the background. For example, Michael Rocier always starts off with a light-colored suit set and a dark suit set, saying that when I come on stage and I have a dark background behind me, I don’t want to disappear, so I wear a light-colored suit and vice versa.
Thorsten Jekel
So these are also things that you can pay attention to in front of the camera. Sometimes you want to disappear somewhere. So it’s also a cool effect if you have a black background, you’re wearing a black suit and all you can see is your face. It can look great, but it’s good if you think about it and if you just try it out and maybe ask someone from the target group how it works.
Peter Bluhm
Okay. Before we talk about another topic in a moment, Thorsten, maybe a quick note about the products you mentioned. You don’t get anything out of it, you don’t get anything for it, but if you mention something here, then it’s something, firstly, that you’re convinced of and convinced means that you’ve tested it out. You buy the products, you look at them, if they’re good then you’ve been lucky and if they’re not so good then you’ve made a bad investment, but you would never say anything from hearing that something is good. You try it out and then give your recommendations. I’d like to emphasize that again, before anyone – and you said this yourself – talks about surreptitious advertising, it’s definitely not in this case. Let’s talk about companies again. Companies also hold larger internal meetings, perhaps even congresses, with several hundred people. These also took place less last year and have now had to go hybrid, sometimes even completely online. And what makes corporate events special? What do you have to pay attention to if you want to bring them into this new format and possibly have to?
Thorsten Jekel
People always think that virtual and digital events have completely different rules. Ultimately, however, the rules of the game are the same for normal events. And these are the two most important rules of the game, plus a third. The first important rule is relevance. And I always like to add relevance instead of elephancy. Michael Rousier always says so beautifully: “If your counterpart has the lottery numbers and you have the lottery ticket, ideally before the draw, then the performance doesn’t matter at all. Then you don’t need to do flying cows and other things because you have highly relevant information. So relevance is very important. The second thing that is very important, the most important rule for a good speaker: you must not be boring. For example, I often hear the following statement from other event professionals: you can’t make an online presentation longer than 15 minutes, not longer than 18 minutes. The formats are much shorter. I say: No, that’s complete nonsense. I can watch a James Bond movie for an hour and a half and it won’t be boring. But I can watch a ten-minute lecture and fall asleep. In other words, you just can’t get bored.
Thorsten Jekel
That is the issue. And the third element of digital communication is simply professionalism, that you understand this format and that you … But that brings us back full circle to the analog format. Even in an analog format, you should interact, enter into a dialog. If I stand on a stage and talk the whole time, it’s different to how we did it here at the ICV conference. There was an online question with a QR code, I was able to get involved, there were questions about it. And these are things that are a bit more technically complex in the digital world, but they work. And maybe one more thing. You can already see that I was at a conference about a week ago, and there was a conference organizer, a technology service provider, who comes very much from the traditional world. And we are now someone who is perhaps not so strong in the traditional world, but who is more active in the online and hybrid sector. What we noticed was that almost every time we had a speaker connected externally, the picture and sound were synchronized.
Thorsten Jekel
These are the professionals who say: add audio delay. And that’s something you don’t see in normal classical events. And if you book someone, you should make sure that you have someone who has already done all the audio delays in all directions in the world. So we’ve definitely done that before. And that’s simply important, because just as bad sound is irritating, it’s irritating when the picture and sound are simply delayed. It’s totally irritating. So if it’s obvious, you consciously notice it. If it’s not obvious, it’s almost more dangerous, because I don’t trust what he’s saying, because something isn’t right.
Peter Bluhm
Thorsten, we’ll come back to this in a moment, because many companies that plan digital events have an idea of how the content can be designed, but are looking for a technical partner because they don’t have their own resources or expertise. However, many CFOs, CEOs and company management are also thinking about this: Gosh, is it even efficient to hold a digital meeting or a hybrid meeting? You are also a man of presence in a way. You come here and you hear different things. There are advantages and disadvantages on the other side When you evaluate it a bit, what are the advantages, what are the disadvantages, but you also have to balance them out?
Thorsten Jekel
So the clear advantage of an online format is that I can simply reach many more people at the same time who are in different places around the world. Let me give you a very blatant example: We streamed a patient day in the medical field, for example. It was simply the case that we reached around 500 people in the past. We reached 4,000 people online and that was largely due to the fact that we had many people as patients who were simply no longer mobile at home due to their illness. And we received such enthusiastic feedback from people who said: Wow, I was never able to go there for years because I’m just not that mobile anymore due to my illness. So that was very moving. The second topic is when we talk about international kick-offs, which you often have in large sales organizations. Coca-Cola, for example, is one of my clients. And when I look at what it costs to send hundreds of employees, some of them from the company, to Barcelona, Lisbon, Madrid, Mallorca or wherever you buy them for event locations, you can spend a very, very large amount on digital technology and really make television quality and still be far below these costs.
Thorsten Jekel
That’s the advantage of doing this and, of course, if you do it intelligently, you can also use the pre-carriage and post-carriage for this. So hopefully we have the link by now. Just last week, we were talking to a customer who was planning two trade fair appearances and who always had the same theme in between: “Now we have a great trade fair, they’re all secretly written, they’re all really keen and then nothing happens for six months. So now we’ve said: Hey, wait a minute, you can give an additional boost every month on a digital platform. So I don’t think it’s either or, as we naturally had it during the corona phase. We had to do it then. And when you go completely online, my experience is that people are social beings. We are also haptic. We want to smell, feel and touch people. So that’s completely normal. This effect is missing. In other words, when I have this topic of first contact, when I have this topic more emotionally, face-to-face formats are definitely stronger in this area. But you can also think about it intelligently. For example, we have also built formats where we have said that we have regional groups of employees who then practically meet regionally.
Thorsten Jekel
We had an event with colleagues in the summer, for example, where they met in the garden with colleagues, practically tied up the garden and we had lots of small teams that were then together again, but were scattered all over the world. So it’s always important to give it some thought. Right down to the issue that I totally underestimated in the past. I really had to apologize for that. I used to always say: what do you need a director for at such events? And now, especially for the bigger events, for companies like Toyota for example, we really do work with a director who has also made things like Wetten, das, because what people expect is that you don’t have a camera perspective where someone narrates for three hours, but you simply have to have quick cuts, you have to have quick changes. And if you look at our highly esteemed colleague Ralf Schmidt, for example, he has just created a format for a very young target group with the Ideas Expo. It’s even faster there. They have TikTok stars there that we don’t even know anymore.
Thorsten Jekel
And then it just goes bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. So the younger you are, the faster you have to build such a format. But also in the world of presence. So that’s why things come full circle and some things are a bit more challenging and some things are perhaps a bit easier. And I think the combination of the two is important and, as always, first you have to switch off your brain, then the technology.
Peter Bluhm
And as you say, it always depends on the content. That’s the most important thing. An online event is as bad as a face-to-face event if the content isn’t good, if it’s boring. My impression of an online event is that you’re fully immersed in the content, but if the technology doesn’t work, then the event quickly turns into a disaster. If the transmission is no longer correct. You’ve just mentioned the issue of sound, sound distortion and all the things you can experience – are there any typical challenges where you say that these are serious showstoppers that I’ve also experienced, where I’ve possibly broken into a sweat myself?
Thorsten Jekel
We’ve all been there. So the most amazing thing we experienced was when we did the first event for Toyota: A TV studio built at Toyota in Cologne with a camera crane, with three cameras in the entire Domsetrans, rear projection, i.e. really shot from above. And the first event starts on Monday and that was exactly the Monday when the online vaccination campaign registration option started in North Rhine-Westphalia. So, we had already bundled five lines. We had Vodafone, we had Telekom, we had WLAN, we had landlines. Fortunately, we knew beforehand that the network wasn’t super stable, but we didn’t know that it would be so catastrophic. That’s why it’s an important tip that we have: You can’t always assume 100% working internet in Germany and that’s just the basis for it. In other words, I say backup instead of fuckup. So that means always having at least three lines in parallel and we have now optimized this so that these lines either complement each other for more speed when they are all there. If one fails, the other system immediately switches to the other. So that’s the issue – the line must always be there. Which is also the classic case, let me say, that someone somehow comes in too late, doesn’t come in.
Thorsten Jekel
So that requires good planning. So I sometimes stress out my colleagues because I say, we’re not doing this, we’re betting on this, we’re doing Tagesschau and Tagesschau starts at 8 p.m. and it’s precisely timed which Matzwahn is on. So you need a lot of discipline, especially if you have formats where you also have parallel strands, because our experience is that at a live event it’s more the case that people come in and are there all the time. With online, people come in from time to time. They leave in between. That’s why, for example, we don’t just leave the belly bands that come to us from TV, we don’t just show them briefly, we always leave them. So we’ve also learned, because you dial in later and then you say: Yes, is it the one in the program or is it not? We have to listen to that first. So there are a few other rules that apply. And what’s important, you have to pay attention to that, for example, we do that, I’m behind the camera on one side and we always have a two-studio principle. In other words, if we have a hybrid event, we have my partner Emmanuel Koch and his team who are always on site.
Thorsten Jekel
From November, we’ll even have our own event location where we can get 150 people in after Corona 400. There’s always a chef there with his team. I’m in Berlin in our capital city studio and if one of us goes down, you can always say: Okay, Berlin takes over, Osnabrück takes over. That’s what this mutual exchange means. And we’ve already done it, we had someone join us once and the battery in their audio pack was flat. So, and then I quickly jumped in. Or, for example, we really like working with Tom Friedlander, a musician who is also a twitcher, so he streams games and can play the piano with his right hand and operate the chat with his left hand. So that means you also need a team of people who can accompany something like this. And music, like we do with Tom Friedlander, for example, who is a co-host, a musical co-chorus. Music is also something where you can bring this emotional component back in, because music is something very emotional and also the dialog component, because that’s the human jukebox for us. In other words, when we have a format, the person says: “Play from this.
Thorsten Jekel
And somehow, out of a thousand titles, he can’t do one. But the nice thing is that when we have the next break, he can do the title too, he’ll get it down quickly. And these are elements where you should simply switch between the elements, perhaps a bit more than at a purely face-to-face event.
Peter Bluhm
Everyone who listens to us or watches us now realizes that you do this for a living, you’re passionate about it and you’re also a bit active on social media here and there. And sometimes you post when you’re in a production like this and then I always see a whole mass of equipment. It’s not just my webcam, it’s no longer just the headset that you buy in a specialist store, but computers, batteries, I almost said monitors, monitors. What kind of technology is that? Is it even possible? Should a company even organize this itself? Because if you have the technology, you don’t have the know-how.
Thorsten Jekel
That is difficult to build up. So if you’re a company like Volkswagen, for example, that has resources that say: I communicate regularly Then, of course, at some point, as with every insourcing project, it makes sense to do it yourself in-house, because then it’s sometimes, we talk, even if you look at something like Toyota, with customers, you’re already talking about six-figure budgets when you do that. So, if you do it in-house, then if you do it regularly, you can sometimes even work more cost-effectively with your own resources. If you don’t do it as a Volkswagen every time, i.e. if you do it, let’s say, a little less, then it usually makes sense to outsource it. Firstly, because of the cost, and secondly, almost more importantly. The platforms and technology are simply developing so quickly that it’s hard enough for us, who work with them all the time, to keep up to date. And platforms that were useless yesterday are super great today and vice versa. On the other hand, I always say relevance before frippery and all these screens are only there because of what we’ve learned: I once messed up a livestream, so it really is, then we had to cancel.
Thorsten Jekel
Fortunately it was an internal one, unpaid, not from the customer. That was because I had concentrated everything on one computer and it got too hot and then at some point it was gone. And the many invoices are there because we’ve learned that if you distribute individual tasks in livestreaming production as much as possible, you can say: I have a separate computer for each connection, I have a separate computer for photos, I have a separate computer for videos, so where we can import things. Then you distribute the load, you reduce the risk of something going wrong and you always have a backup. This means that if a computer crashes, Windows and Mac are always aware of it. This means that if one of the two fails with an update, we can switch over at any time. But to close the circle in the direction of companies, you really only need that if you’re doing professional business live streaming and it’s much more important that you think about the format. And even before that, there was already the tweeting CEO or the CEO who, Mr. Dornemann for example, contacted employees once a week by email.
Thorsten Jekel
So you don’t really have to think in terms of high tech, but rather in terms of people, especially in change processes, when you think internally: what are the employees’ concerns? And here you have the classic situation where you simply often don’t have communication. And in my experience, I’ve worked in leading companies, including larger ones, right up to the management level. I’ve always found that if you don’t communicate, then this famous shithouse slogan, let me put it this way, gets bigger and bigger. The rumor mill has been churning and even as a manager you don’t always know how things are going to proceed, but at least I can stand in front of the team and say: This is the current situation. We don’t know where we’ll be in five years’ time either, but we’re working on it. We’ll keep you up to date. And here, I believe that clear communication is particularly important in deployment processes, and digital can help to reach distributed employees more quickly than if you only reach them once a year at an in-person kick-off and lose them during the year.
Peter Bluhm
Thorsten, I’ll try to summarize our conversation. The one thing I took away with me is relevance before misfits. Don’t just think about technology all the time, just do it, sit in front of the camera, record something and see how it works. And it’s usually better than you think. And the other thing I’ve taken away is that events get bigger when there really are more than 100 people involved. Backup before Fuckup, so to speak, because the topic of Fuckup is pretty obvious at these events. The degree to this last term is pretty close if you don’t have a professional at your side and that can ruin a lot of things and also destroy your reputation personally. And so, if you have 100 people in charge, then it makes sense to professionalize it and then technology also plays a very decisive role and of course you are the contact person and we will also reveal you in the show notes. Very, very gladly. Thank you very much for these exciting impulses, for the very concrete impulses and for your refreshing manner, Thorsten. Thank you very much.
Thorsten Jekel
Thank you too. Thank you very much for the invitation, dear Peter. See you next time.
Also available in: Deutsch