April 10, 2023 • 30 mins
TalkingHeadz is a series of interviews with the movers and shakers of enterprise communications - we also have great guests. In this episode, we check in with Brad Hintze, EVP Marketing at Crestron.
Brad beleives that the foundation for marketing success is contingent on the combined strength of one's ability to: a) build (and ship) fantastic products, b) clearly communicate why one's product is excellent, and c) create the right tools to win more customers.
While that may sound interesting to some, it's 1 Beyond that got us hooked. Crestron has a built a strong collaborative reputation with its Flex video conferencing systems, and that story got better about a year ago when it acquired 1 Beyond.
1 Beyond has been in business for 20 years, but the past seven have seen exceptional growth. The story got even strong with the when it opted to acquire 1 Beyond. Crestron was demonstrating its new capabilities earlier this year at ISE Barcelona, where seven One Beyond cameras collaborated so effectively that any meeting can become compelling.
Crestron's Flex solutions integrate video conferencing, wireless presentation, and smart room control. The company works closely with Microsoft Teams and other platforms as well, and 1 Beyond isn't it's first date to the rodeo either: Crestron has announced partnerships with Huddly, Shure, and Jabra, too.
Prior to joining Crestron, Brad served as the Vice President of Consumer and Brand Marketing at SnapAV, where he designed and led marketing efforts and strategies. Before assuming that role, Brad held the position of Senior Director of Product Marketing at Control4 where he was responsible for directing product marketing strategy and development.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Unknown (00:00):
Well
Dave Michels (00:13):
hello and welcome to Talking to kids. They Evan
and I are back. It's been awhile. The last time I saw you.
Evan Kirstel (00:20):
I know you've been working way too hard. You've
been using properties all overthe world. I can't keep up with
you like what's next a privatejet or what's going on here?
Dave Michels (00:29):
I'm going around like the Tasmanian devil you got
to come in now for me like fixall the damage. I've been doing
all these companies butEnterprise Connect was just a
blur it was it was absolutelycrazy. But I'm looking forward
to getting back into the intoour groove with our podcasts,
you know, I guess record stuffgrew. We're gonna we're gonna
make records here with grooves,we got Brad hips today from the
CMO over a Crestron, that shouldbe pretty interesting. When you
(00:50):
do that Enterprise Connect. Imean, I saw you at least two or
three times they're
Evan Kirstel (00:54):
like Enterprise Connect was the wrong name. It
was the enterprise chat GPTshow, for all intents and
purposes, was really
Dave Michels (01:03):
opening the show.
Evan Kirstel (01:07):
But you had the emerging tech and innovation for
how did that go? Who won?
Dave Michels (01:14):
You know, I might be I might be a little biased.
But honestly, I'm pretty surethe Innovation Showcase is
always the best session atEnterprise Connect. Maybe it's
because I run it but we did withWednesday morning. We've always
done Monday morning andWednesday morning. First thing
in the morning, eight o'clock.
I'm thinking no one is going toshow up at eight o'clock. I
mean, I was I was exhausted. Butwe had a pretty full room. We
had six wonderful companies.
(01:35):
I've written about them onnanogenerator. They did the six
minute presentations a littletricky. Some of these companies
are like, I can't possiblydescribe everything in six
minutes. And like this one guygets up there and like does
everything to kind of like holdmy beer type of thing. But
anyway, it was a great session.
Very, very pleased with theinnovation. I was really pleased
with Enterprise Connect ingeneral. It just took me about
four days to recover. It wascrazy.
Evan Kirstel (01:58):
Yeah, you look pretty exhausted. But innovation
isn't just for small companiestoday. We're gonna chat with
Brad at restaurant. And welcomeup to the show here.
god (02:07):
Talking it is a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration. Your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
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(02:29):
points with the Z and Evankirkstall.com. That's ki r s t e
l.
Unknown (02:36):
Brad, how are you?
Brad Hintze (02:38):
Great. Thanks, guys, for having me on.
Evan Kirstel (02:40):
Well, thanks for being here. Maybe introduce
yourself to the audience. Whereare you from? Where are you now?
Tell us about your careertrajectory at crest drop.
Brad Hintze (02:49):
So I joined Crestron a little over two years
ago as the CMO. Well, EVPmarketing. So thanks for Dave
for giving me a promotion toCMO. Yeah, I've been at crunch
time for two and a half yearsbefore that. Prior to that it
was really involved withresidential control for
residential smart home andautomation. And then before that
(03:11):
a number of software startups,development tools, SAS and
integration tools, ecommerce,mobile applications and kiosks
and MDM, all kinds of fun stuff.
And it's been great to be hereat crunch time, especially in
this moment where you'rebringing to bear the whole
restaurant ecosystem with allthese new trends and modern work
and you see and been having agreat time here. And I actually
Dave Michels (03:36):
met up with Brad and the Crestron team in
Barcelona at the ISC show. Me, Ithink I sent you some photos. I
mean, they had a booth that wasbigger than a typical Walmart,
that's probably I've never seenbooths this big. And they had
all these different thingswithin their booth. One of them
was like a 15 person conferenceroom that was on display within
(03:58):
their booth. It was just likeone little part of it, but
absolutely insane that the wholeshow had booths or like stands
or on the other side of theocean stands. Yeah, I've never
seen stands or booths as big asany conference. And these were
just extraordinary. And so youjust went all out there. And I
was really impressed becausethat kind of restaurant
(04:18):
improperly siloed in my filingsystem. They do this and that
and that and it was really quitesurprised at what you what I've
seen in there. So we're excitedto have you on the podcast to
talk about this a little bit. Sowe're going to talk about I
think I don't know your brand.
You told me what your what youwant to talk about. But But I
want to talk to you about thisone beyond stuff that you are
showing in the booth. And solet's just start off with some
(04:41):
basic introductory stuff. Onebeyond is a company that you
acquired. Why would crest runthe maker of electronic curtain
controls by a company called onebeyond what were you thinking
what was going on what was goingthrough?
Brad Hintze (04:57):
Well, it's a good question. We had a lot of
internal debate. about it rightand we like to Crestron has
always operated in the mode oflet's leverage our internal
domain expertise to build reallyfantastic products that can pull
technologies together to makethe experience in a meeting room
or in any space really, reallysimple and easy to use. And you
(05:20):
know, that started with control.
And then we start bringing AVaudio and video. And then of
course, some of theenvironmental stuff, lighting
and shades. And all of that'simportant too. And then about
five years ago, we startedgetting into the video
conferencing game with onesolution. But now with the just
exploding, embracing and use ofvideo conferencing, we knew we
(05:41):
needed to add camera andintelligent video expertise
internally. And we could gobuild it. Or we could bring in a
really talented team thatalready has a really good head
start with intelligent video.
And so that's what led us to dosomething which was actually
kind of rare for Crestron, whichwas to acquire this technology
(06:04):
and bring the team in so that wecan have that engineering
expertise. Now of course we getthe existing products, right.
But that also puts us on a pathwhere then we can do even more
great stuff with that expertiseand building on top of that
technology and bringing it in ina more integrated way to the
rest of our ecosystem.
Dave Michels (06:24):
Well, that was the first available when I started
in January. Was it available? Oris that a preview? Like let me
let me click Make sure I gotthis right. It's available. It's
that was the first availablemulti camera system I had seen.
And then of course I wouldn't Iwould just said Enterprise
Connect last week or a coupleweeks ago. And an Enterprise
Connect we saw multi camerasolutions from Microsoft from
(06:47):
Cisco and from zoom. So you werekind of ahead of these guys. You
guys are you guys are shippingthis multi camera stuff earlier.
Clarify again is one beyond thebrand you're using or is
Crestron the brand you're usingwhat? What exactly do you name
this multi camera meeting roomsolution.
Brad Hintze (07:06):
So the meeting room solution, the cameras today and
the intelligent video softwarethe technology that is under the
brand one beyond right they wereavailable in the market under
the one beyond label you orderthem today they'll come with an
A one beyond name on it. But itdoes plug in natively to the
rest of the Crestron ecosystem.
And what we showed there, and wecall it the sightline
(07:30):
experience, which is really thekind of really representative
experience of what can becreated when you pull all of
these technologies together toreally create a fantastic
meeting room experience. Thecameras and multi camera view,
the outside looking in was onepart of that experience that was
really powerful, certainly, andyou see a lot of people chasing
(07:51):
down this path for good reason.
That's what customers want. Andthat's what they need to have
these really effective meetings.
But it also included thedisplays around the room,
leveraging our videodistribution and control
technology also. And we thinkthat when you bring all of these
elements together, and you haveto experience that's why we
(08:12):
built a 15 person conferenceroom on our stand, you have to
experience it so that you seeyou begin to understand what it
can do for you. In the meetingsome of this stuff when
everybody was locked away. Inthe pandemic, we started
pontificating around, oh, whatdo we need now in this newly
expanded hybrid world? But thenyou start getting more and more
(08:32):
people in the office, but noteveryone, you start experiencing
different kinds of challenges,and how do you help solve them?
Right,
Dave Michels (08:41):
Evan, and I get a lot actually, though Evan and I
were just pontificating recentlyabout new ice cream flavors that
need to be.
Evan Kirstel (08:49):
But you guys have been in this game for I think
four decades at restaurant, isthat right? And automation, and
control technology. And thismust be the most exciting time
in that journey. When you lookat the blurring of the workplace
and the home, the office, smartbuilding and the smart home. Do
you see these things comingtogether, you know, in a
(09:11):
meaningful way? Or do you stillsee the dividing line between
the two?
Brad Hintze (09:16):
Well, I think that they are coming together they
need to come together. They haveto I think that if you really
want to create a compellingexperience that everyone in an
enterprise or a business canfeel comfortable walking in and
using, right? How do you set upso you can have a meeting
without needing to think aboutthe technology in the meeting in
the meeting, you can just focuson the purpose of the meeting.
(09:38):
In order to accomplish that. Yougot to bring all these things
together. And we do feel likeCrestron is in a unique position
to do all of that to bring itall together to create that
experience. Not only do we havethe technology but we have the
channel we have theprofessionals that are trained
on Crestron that are alreadycalling on these customers. They
know how to deploy this and soWe do feel very fortunate to
(10:02):
have all these things cometogether at this time.
Dave Michels (10:04):
I think it's interesting that for vendors
have basically launched multicamera type of solution to the
meeting room in the last fewmonths, they're not even
similar. They're all fourcompanies are doing it very
differently in their approach.
What does this come from? Imean, why did all of a sudden
the video guys decided that weneeded a multi camera? And was
this? Was this a breakthrough intechnology? What do you think is
(10:25):
causing this,
Brad Hintze (10:27):
I think it's probably more the arms race that
is happening today. Becausethere's so much demand,
everybody's talking about it,everybody's trying to solve the
various problems that areintroduced by hybrid work, and
actually just this move intomore flexible working, it's
become clear, you can't solve itwith just a video bar on a wall,
(10:48):
right. And as more organizationsget back to work, as they tried
to bring people in and keeptheir teams really focused and
productive, they encounteredthese new challenges. But
because there's an arms racenow, by all these vendors, like
how can we capitalize on thismarket the most, you know, you
see these various ways thatpeople are coming at it. Great,
(11:09):
it's awesome. I think it's agood thing for our industry,
right? The opportunity, hybridwork has driven people to
embrace video conferencing in amuch deeper way, in our industry
can step up and innovate, andcreate really great solutions
that keep it that deeplypenetrated. And I think it's a
good thing.
Dave Michels (11:27):
I'm gonna put you on the spot here. I'm an
analyst. And so people lie to meall day all the time. So I'm
gonna give you a chance, I'mgonna push back on here, this
give me a chance to defend this.
Because certainly the industryhas decided that the world needs
multi camera solutions in theirmeeting rooms. Is there any
indication whatsoever that theenterprise is asking for multi
cameras, multiple cameras intheir meeting? Yes,
Brad Hintze (11:53):
let me qualify that a little bit. We get questions
along those lines. And in fact,since ISC, our experience center
is booked solid for all ofApril, doing demos of the multi
camera technology, and this isof enterprises raising their
hands and saying, I want thisright, we have major enterprises
today that are deploying it,right, we have a major partner,
(12:14):
a big brand name in the servicesthat has it as well. And we're
bringing customers there. So Ithink that yes, there are
corporations that are coming in.
Now, they're not coming in, andthey're saying I need multi
camera. They're coming in andsaying, I have a space that's
like this, and I need to enablea meeting like this. And our
answer then is multicam. Here'sthis experience. And so that's
(12:38):
why I qualify it, they know theyneed it. Some people are asking
for multicam, specifically,others are just describing the
problem. And we're putting allthe camera out there as a
solution.
Evan Kirstel (12:51):
Interesting. So let's shift to flexible work,
hybrid work, whatever you wantto call it. Where do you see
your customers settling? What'sthe balance or the flow between
work from home and in office? Sowhat's your anecdotal feedback?
Brad Hintze (13:05):
So far? Oh, yeah, I know, it's a debate that will
probably be having for at leastanother couple of years. Our
perspective, though, is, withinan organization, if you have one
person that's remote, it doesn'tmatter, you got to enable
flexible working in terms ofyou're going to have meetings,
that will likely have a remoteparticipant in so you need to be
(13:29):
enabled for that
Dave Michels (13:30):
at all wrong, Brad, if you got one person
locks, and you just celebrate.
Brad Hintze (13:37):
Exactly. If you're not hearing the site for the
meeting, then you don't get toparticipate, right. But then
also, like how many companiesare truly insular and only talk
to their own employees, right.
And anytime you work with avendor, you work with a partner,
you need those capabilities. Soin our perspective, you know, we
don't wait into or we don't havean opinion that most companies
should be on a three by two, oryou should be half and half or
(14:00):
whatever we know. And so we tendto make investments around the
realities of what we know thoseenterprises or organizations
will always need. And that isthat they will always need to be
able to include remoteparticipants. But the thing
that's also unique to Crestronis that we also know those
organizations need to enablereally effective in person
(14:22):
collaboration doesn't matterwhether they're all in once a
week, once a month, or even oncea quarter, when they're in
that's a high value meeting. Andyou need to be able to have
effective collaboration wirelesspresentation in the AV needs to
work you need to have space todo all that. So that's what we
bring uniquely to theconversation. You know, we're
not only focused on the videocollaboration and put a bar on
(14:44):
the wall. It is that holistic,flexible working experience,
which video collaboration is ahuge part of but it's not the
only part.
Dave Michels (14:57):
So I'm guessing you're playing I'm Scott, Rouen,
right? You are going to be thefirst of all, you weren't the
first to market with a multicamera solution and you were in
that was going to be a bigdifferentiator. Now, everybody
else has multi camera solutions.
So the question now is, ifeveryone has multi camera
solutions, how do youdifferentiate your solution? And
is it hardware software? Orboth? Or it's now standard
(15:19):
issue? Apparently.
Brad Hintze (15:23):
The word multicam is standard issue. Everybody has
it pointed out earlier, right,the implementation is quite
dramatically different. Thereare several core things that we
lean on as thosedifferentiators, right,
certainly the hardware, right,optical zoom is really
important, but also the softwareand the technology to track a
presenter to frame a speaker,right to do it from far
(15:45):
distances, you know, 50 feetaway, not just six feet away, or
eight feet away. So thosecapabilities exist for us today.
And that, and that's reallycritical. But when you think
about everything else that hasto happen around the video call,
right? And how can you augmentthat experience, the video
distribution that I talked aboutearlier, the control, you know,
(16:05):
the automation to walk into ameeting room and have it start
turned on, ready to go so thatwhen you sit down at Sing, it's
a single touch, right? Our deepintegration, of course, with
Microsoft Teams and zoom rooms,those are really critical.
That's where we're leveragingour domain and engineering
expertise, to add to themulticam experience, and bring
(16:27):
all of the value that we've gotthere combined together to
really create that flexiblestuff. Like you said earlier,
we've been in those customspaces, the townhall spaces, the
divisible rooms, the ballrooms,and all that we've been in there
for decades, we've been in theboardrooms for decades. Now
we're taking it also down to themeteors. So for the enterprise,
we can bring all that togetherand one vendor, all the various
(16:50):
meeting room types. And when youcombine all of that with the
multicam, we feel like that's astrong differentiator. And
Evan Kirstel (17:00):
this discussion has been very disappointing. For
me, we're already a third of theway in here, we have not
mentioned artificialintelligence, machine learning
or chat GPT. But Brad, in allseriousness, what's the impact
in your product developmentprocess or in your products of
AI and ML? And you know, thetransforming the user experience
(17:21):
and other things?
Brad Hintze (17:22):
Yeah, I think it's interesting. We, as people that
are paying attention to industrytrends, and all this, we've
heard AI and ML for many, manyyears, right? People, you throw
it out there as a as a buzzword,but it didn't really reach the
moment that it is now until youcould see real valuable output,
right? And the magic that youget, like here, put in a prompt
(17:45):
and create this text for me,right. And I used it this week
on the little marketing campaignidea that I had, right. And so
once you create a bridge, fromthe promise of AI, into a real
tangible outcome, nobody cares,right? And chat GPT did that AI.
Now I've got this text output inour world, that AI is really
(18:08):
related to Speaker tracking, andpresenting and group framing.
But it also extends to analyticsin terms of room utilization,
and space optimization, inmaking recommendations around
how you might change the way youdo those things, the way you
make things operate the healthof the system, so that that can
(18:29):
inform your space planning. Butalso, we're in the business of
control, which means creatinguser interfaces that are easy to
use, and how do you do thatreally, super efficiently. So
you can see a world to where youcan use AI to help in using
simple language, not code, butsimple descriptions to
(18:50):
autogenerate a user interfacethat is directly custom to that
room and that experience, whichthen therefore creates a more
intuitive experience. So thoseare all of the opportunities
that you can leverage with AI,some of it we're doing today,
some of it we're playing with.
Dave Michels (19:05):
So that is your role at Crestron limited to one
beyond or is your marketing rolebroader or the whole portfolio
or what are you responsible for?
Brad Hintze (19:15):
All right, all of the whole Crestron, all of
Crestron. Yeah all of themetering technology, all of our
commercial technology, includingthat residential technology as
well.
Dave Michels (19:25):
Oh, we got to talk about residential stuff because
yeah, right.
Evan Kirstel (19:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Dave has some tech support issues he
may have his curtains are lockedto closed, but I know a
Brad Hintze (19:36):
guy I know a guy.
Evan Kirstel (19:39):
That's what would you say is growing faster, the
smart home space for you or theenterprise? Or are they apples
and oranges?
Brad Hintze (19:48):
They're apples and oranges. In a way. I think that
over the course of our history,we've seen back and forth
trends, historically, where whenresi was really hot, you know,
maybe commercial was a littledifferent. First, and then 2008,
residential really slowed downwith housing crisis and
commercial took off, right. Andwe we were poised at that time,
(20:09):
fortunately, with newtechnologies in vx and our video
distribution, and so we werereally able to accelerate at the
beginning of the pandemicresidential took off. And so did
you see and so did demand forother technologies. So we are in
this moment where both havereally kind of accelerated now,
as we see in economic headwinds,you know, residential is
(20:31):
battling some of that. But we'vegot a really strong durable
business there too, which isreally good. And we continue to
see really good demand for therest of our technology, awesome.
Dave Michels (20:42):
Cholesterol is a global company, is that correct?
Brad Hintze (20:44):
Yeah, we are
Evan Kirstel (20:46):
going to talk about that. What's the culture
at Crestron? And how do youencourage employees to be
creative and come up with allkinds of new cool ideas? Give us
a peek behind the curtain punintended?
Brad Hintze (20:59):
It's great question. I think one of the
things I've loved about this,the culture here at Crestron is
it's a culture that's alwaysbeen centered on two things,
taking care of the customer anddoing the right thing for the
customer every single time. Andhow can we use our experience
and knowledge to build reallygreat products. And that extends
everywhere we've been for a longtime is particularly on the
(21:23):
engineering side, where you'vegot teams of people that are out
there generating ideas ratherthan kind of this top down
dictatorial approach. But wealso have a very engaged field
team and channel team that's outin the market. We're not like a
typical manufacturer, that youjust sell through distribution
in that you have no relationshipwith your end customer, that
customer obsession, the beingout there with them and in front
(21:45):
of them. And then this culture,this engineering culture, it's
tricky.
Dave Michels (21:49):
I mean, you're not a direct, I don't believe your
direct, right, you're going fromshallow part. And if that's what
your customers?
Brad Hintze (21:56):
Well, we have started over the last several
years investing more in buildingteams that can go direct to
customer with our partners, aswell, our channel partners. So
we think that that is reallycritical, it unlocks
opportunities for our channelpartners, right? Because when
they go in with themanufacturer, right, it adds
added confidence for theorganization to choose us and
(22:19):
that partner, so that's supervaluable. But you also get major
customers that are doing fiveand 10 year deployments in the
10s of millions of dollars, theywant to have a direct
relationship with themanufacturer and know that
they're making the rightchoices. So we've started to
invest in those relationshipmanagement teams, those account
teams that have that long termengagement with the customer.
(22:42):
And with the pro partner, wethink that is really, really
important.
Dave Michels (22:45):
Is it the same for residential? No,
Brad Hintze (22:48):
we've not done that. The same on residential
rate, the scale is different thetype of relationship the
customer is on the residentialside, they rely so heavily on
the channel partner fordifferent kinds of things.
Right? Residential.
Dave Michels (23:00):
Yeah, you're not you're not, we're not buying
your stuff of Home Depot. We're
Brad Hintze (23:04):
Yeah, no, totally Yeah. And while customers prefer
Crestron the brand and they wantit, many of them don't actually.
And they rely on therecommendation of the
residential partner to say thisis the technology you should
use, right? And they're actuallybuying more into the
relationship with the channelpartner, right? And that the
service that you provide, andthe technology choices,
(23:25):
unfortunately, sometimes asecondary choice, which is fine,
right, and that's why our go tomarket
Dave Michels (23:30):
is the primary choice because I went with a
different home automation. Sothis is old, this is 2008. And
then my last my dealer becausehe became a Crestron dealer and
I was like he couldn't help meanymore.
Evan Kirstel (23:38):
Dave has very particular requirements for home
automation, things like faxmachines, and dial up modem
Dave Michels (23:47):
enterprise because I wanted to find out more about
residential home automation thatthat is Isha. But there were
very few people that I'm noteven talking restaurant, I'm
talking the whole show very fewpeople that were able to talk
really about home automation.
That's a business enterpriseshow.
Evan Kirstel (24:02):
Yeah. Speaking of that, you mentioned Microsoft is
a partner. Maybe describe thatpartnership and a little more
detail and one other partners.
Are you looking to integratewith or interrupt with?
Brad Hintze (24:13):
Yeah, we have a really unique and valuable
relationship with Microsoft.
They've been a customer of oursfor a very long time, very long
time. In fact, 15 years ago,they came to us and said, Hey,
we want to be able to show theschedule of a meeting room
outside of the room on atouchscreen and so we jointly
developed a solution for them asa customer on Password today.
(24:34):
They have teams panel andsoftware. We're one of the OEMs
that that run there. So they'vebeen a longtime customer. And
then of course as a developmentpartner. You know, we're deep
into the the team's roomecosystem. We have several
products that are certifiedteams rooms at Enterprise
Connect. You probably saw theannouncement we're the first
manufacturing partner to releasea BYOD team's product with There
(24:57):
are AirMedia wirelessconferencing solution. So we
have a fantastic relationshipthere with Microsoft. And we
also have a great relationshipwith zoom in zoom rooms, we have
a number of products that arezoom rooms certified, including
our multicam solution was justrecently certified with Zoom
scheduling panels, digitalsignage at the show, we also
(25:18):
showed our controls integratedinto our control interface
integrated into the Zoom Roomexperience. And so deep
partnerships there, we know thatcustomers really rely on that.
And then of course, we've alsobeen partners with Cisco for
quite a while we have nativeintegration with some of our
control products to work withCisco, they come to us, we work
(25:38):
on a lot of projects, AVcontrol, and distribution and
all of that, but those are ourprimary ones on the UC front.
Now
Dave Michels (25:46):
back to the one beyond the multi camera thing
that is kind of like independenttechnology, right? I mean, I
know you want to get certifiedand everything, but it doesn't
really require an integration tozoom or Microsoft or Cisco, it
should kind of work by itself,right? Is that correct? Yep,
Brad Hintze (26:02):
that's exactly right. So it will work with any
of the other services too, it isindependent. In fact, you can
also integrate it into acompeting or an alternative MTR
or a Zoom Room. So if you have adifferent platform that you
want, but you want thisintelligent video multicam
experience, we can support thatas well. Right? Again, we want
to provide our customers themost choice to deploy
(26:23):
technology. And, and so we givethem many of those options.
Evan Kirstel (26:28):
Fantastic. Let's shift gears a little bit to
yourself. You're in a beautifulpart of the world Salt Lake
City. I can only imagine whatyou do for fun. I imagine
there's a lot of outdooractivities involved, of course,
refer to that
Dave Michels (26:39):
white powder all over the mountains. I think it's
called salt. Salt.
Evan Kirstel (26:43):
Exactly. Yes.
Brad Hintze (26:46):
That's right. And so much outdoor activity here,
which I really, really love. Onthe weekends in the winter, it's
skiing, except for we've justgotten so much snow lately, the
resorts can't even open. It'sjust a wild thing. So a lot of
skiing, lots of hiking andcamping out there. It's a
beautiful, beautiful place. ButI love to travel around and
visit our customers and ourpartners and eat all the great
(27:07):
food. That's one of thewonderful things about
Barcelona. You're out till 130Because you've spent all night
over some really great tapas andgreat wine. And yeah, it's
really wonderful.
Evan Kirstel (27:17):
Good times, what are you looking forward to
coming up any trips, travelevents or otherwise? On the
agenda?
Brad Hintze (27:24):
Yeah, we actually have an event that we call
modern work Summit. We're backin Spain in Madrid,
Evan Kirstel (27:29):
you pick the worst places for events? You know, I
think David, every one of them,actually. But yeah.
Brad Hintze (27:36):
We're actually really looking forward to it,
we're going to release severalnew products. We'll have
Microsoft there. We've gotseveral customers really big
name customers that are going totalk about
Dave Michels (27:45):
what they're doing. So what is this
conference? What is this?
Brad Hintze (27:49):
It's called Modern work Summit. It's May 23, and
24th in Madrid. And it is not aCrestron training event. Right.
It's not a croissant salespitch. You know, we're getting
together and talking about thetrends that are driving the
future of work and modern work,hear from partners hear from
customers, right? We talkedabout those kinds of how do you
(28:10):
evaluate your readiness to toembrace modern work? And where
should they look at investmentsand that kind of stuff. And then
of course, we'll unveil severalnew technologies as well. So
yeah, it's a great event. Andthen two weeks later, we'll be
in Orlando for Infocomm. Sothat'll be also a really a
really great show. Yeah, it's
Evan Kirstel (28:27):
great to see the world returning to normal, and
it's good to see you guyshelping that transition. So
yeah. Thanks, Brad. Thanks somuch for joining us on Talking
Heads really enjoyed the chat.
Dave only stood up once ortwice, which is a record for
him. But yeah, we're just gonnasay goodbye to the audience
here. And thanks so much. Lookforward to seeing you soon.
Brad Hintze (28:46):
Thank you guys. I really enjoyed the conversation
as well.
Evan Kirstel (28:51):
Well, Dave, that was really interesting. I didn't
know much about restaurant, Iwas quite insightful and
illuminating.
Dave Michels (28:57):
You know, we both moved recently. And you know, I
had a huge investment in homeautomation in my old home, but
it was
Evan Kirstel (29:04):
basically yeah, I'll say it. Yeah.
Dave Michels (29:07):
Investment in all the tech has changed for 15
years. Are you gonna put on anyhome automation into your place?
Evan Kirstel (29:13):
I have a hodgepodge of half working
Alexa's and Googles and Siridevices, it's a complete mess.
Maybe I need to call arestaurant partner and really
come in and do this properly.
Because
Dave Michels (29:24):
there's so much that I'm really missing from my
old house that I don't have inthis current place that because
you said all that technology isfantastic. I'm gonna start with
whites. I forgot the lights. Idid. Actually I was turned I did
put into electric curtains. Butyeah, this is like everything is
available. But getting it all towork in a seamless environment.
(29:44):
That's a whole nother story. AndI'm finding that I don't have
time to figure it out. It's justit's too. There's so many
different people to talk to youabout this. I can barely
Evan Kirstel (29:53):
get this podcast to work. So yeah, we should do a
dedicated session. Well, thanks,everyone. Thanks for viewing.
Thanks for watching. We lookforward to our next guest until
that take care
Unknown (30:02):
you may get into conversation
man you gotta get out of here.
Phone don't don't don't readyour phone. No man knows me
Well
Dave Michels (00:13):
hello and welcome to Talking to kids. They Evan
and I are back. It's been awhile. The last time I saw you.
Evan Kirstel (00:20):
I know you've been working way too hard. You've
been using properties all overthe world. I can't keep up with
you like what's next a privatejet or what's going on here?
Dave Michels (00:29):
I'm going around like the Tasmanian devil you got
to come in now for me like fixall the damage. I've been doing
all these companies butEnterprise Connect was just a
blur it was it was absolutelycrazy. But I'm looking forward
to getting back into the intoour groove with our podcasts,
you know, I guess record stuffgrew. We're gonna we're gonna
make records here with grooves,we got Brad hips today from the
CMO over a Crestron, that shouldbe pretty interesting. When you
(00:50):
do that Enterprise Connect. Imean, I saw you at least two or
three times they're
Evan Kirstel (00:54):
like Enterprise Connect was the wrong name. It
was the enterprise chat GPTshow, for all intents and
purposes, was really
Dave Michels (01:03):
opening the show.
Evan Kirstel (01:07):
But you had the emerging tech and innovation for
how did that go? Who won?
Dave Michels (01:14):
You know, I might be I might be a little biased.
But honestly, I'm pretty surethe Innovation Showcase is
always the best session atEnterprise Connect. Maybe it's
because I run it but we did withWednesday morning. We've always
done Monday morning andWednesday morning. First thing
in the morning, eight o'clock.
I'm thinking no one is going toshow up at eight o'clock. I
mean, I was I was exhausted. Butwe had a pretty full room. We
had six wonderful companies.
(01:35):
I've written about them onnanogenerator. They did the six
minute presentations a littletricky. Some of these companies
are like, I can't possiblydescribe everything in six
minutes. And like this one guygets up there and like does
everything to kind of like holdmy beer type of thing. But
anyway, it was a great session.
Very, very pleased with theinnovation. I was really pleased
with Enterprise Connect ingeneral. It just took me about
four days to recover. It wascrazy.
Evan Kirstel (01:58):
Yeah, you look pretty exhausted. But innovation
isn't just for small companiestoday. We're gonna chat with
Brad at restaurant. And welcomeup to the show here.
god (02:07):
Talking it is a semi monthly podcast with interviews
of the top movers and shakersand enterprise communications
and collaboration. Your hostDave Michaels and Evan
Kirkstall, both of which offerextraordinary services including
research, analysis and socialmedia marketing. You can find
them on Twitter, LinkedIn, or attalking points.com. That's
(02:29):
points with the Z and Evankirkstall.com. That's ki r s t e
l.
Unknown (02:36):
Brad, how are you?
Brad Hintze (02:38):
Great. Thanks, guys, for having me on.
Evan Kirstel (02:40):
Well, thanks for being here. Maybe introduce
yourself to the audience. Whereare you from? Where are you now?
Tell us about your careertrajectory at crest drop.
Brad Hintze (02:49):
So I joined Crestron a little over two years
ago as the CMO. Well, EVPmarketing. So thanks for Dave
for giving me a promotion toCMO. Yeah, I've been at crunch
time for two and a half yearsbefore that. Prior to that it
was really involved withresidential control for
residential smart home andautomation. And then before that
(03:11):
a number of software startups,development tools, SAS and
integration tools, ecommerce,mobile applications and kiosks
and MDM, all kinds of fun stuff.
And it's been great to be hereat crunch time, especially in
this moment where you'rebringing to bear the whole
restaurant ecosystem with allthese new trends and modern work
and you see and been having agreat time here. And I actually
Dave Michels (03:36):
met up with Brad and the Crestron team in
Barcelona at the ISC show. Me, Ithink I sent you some photos. I
mean, they had a booth that wasbigger than a typical Walmart,
that's probably I've never seenbooths this big. And they had
all these different thingswithin their booth. One of them
was like a 15 person conferenceroom that was on display within
(03:58):
their booth. It was just likeone little part of it, but
absolutely insane that the wholeshow had booths or like stands
or on the other side of theocean stands. Yeah, I've never
seen stands or booths as big asany conference. And these were
just extraordinary. And so youjust went all out there. And I
was really impressed becausethat kind of restaurant
(04:18):
improperly siloed in my filingsystem. They do this and that
and that and it was really quitesurprised at what you what I've
seen in there. So we're excitedto have you on the podcast to
talk about this a little bit. Sowe're going to talk about I
think I don't know your brand.
You told me what your what youwant to talk about. But But I
want to talk to you about thisone beyond stuff that you are
showing in the booth. And solet's just start off with some
(04:41):
basic introductory stuff. Onebeyond is a company that you
acquired. Why would crest runthe maker of electronic curtain
controls by a company called onebeyond what were you thinking
what was going on what was goingthrough?
Brad Hintze (04:57):
Well, it's a good question. We had a lot of
internal debate. about it rightand we like to Crestron has
always operated in the mode oflet's leverage our internal
domain expertise to build reallyfantastic products that can pull
technologies together to makethe experience in a meeting room
or in any space really, reallysimple and easy to use. And you
(05:20):
know, that started with control.
And then we start bringing AVaudio and video. And then of
course, some of theenvironmental stuff, lighting
and shades. And all of that'simportant too. And then about
five years ago, we startedgetting into the video
conferencing game with onesolution. But now with the just
exploding, embracing and use ofvideo conferencing, we knew we
(05:41):
needed to add camera andintelligent video expertise
internally. And we could gobuild it. Or we could bring in a
really talented team thatalready has a really good head
start with intelligent video.
And so that's what led us to dosomething which was actually
kind of rare for Crestron, whichwas to acquire this technology
(06:04):
and bring the team in so that wecan have that engineering
expertise. Now of course we getthe existing products, right.
But that also puts us on a pathwhere then we can do even more
great stuff with that expertiseand building on top of that
technology and bringing it in ina more integrated way to the
rest of our ecosystem.
Dave Michels (06:24):
Well, that was the first available when I started
in January. Was it available? Oris that a preview? Like let me
let me click Make sure I gotthis right. It's available. It's
that was the first availablemulti camera system I had seen.
And then of course I wouldn't Iwould just said Enterprise
Connect last week or a coupleweeks ago. And an Enterprise
Connect we saw multi camerasolutions from Microsoft from
(06:47):
Cisco and from zoom. So you werekind of ahead of these guys. You
guys are you guys are shippingthis multi camera stuff earlier.
Clarify again is one beyond thebrand you're using or is
Crestron the brand you're usingwhat? What exactly do you name
this multi camera meeting roomsolution.
Brad Hintze (07:06):
So the meeting room solution, the cameras today and
the intelligent video softwarethe technology that is under the
brand one beyond right they wereavailable in the market under
the one beyond label you orderthem today they'll come with an
A one beyond name on it. But itdoes plug in natively to the
rest of the Crestron ecosystem.
And what we showed there, and wecall it the sightline
(07:30):
experience, which is really thekind of really representative
experience of what can becreated when you pull all of
these technologies together toreally create a fantastic
meeting room experience. Thecameras and multi camera view,
the outside looking in was onepart of that experience that was
really powerful, certainly, andyou see a lot of people chasing
(07:51):
down this path for good reason.
That's what customers want. Andthat's what they need to have
these really effective meetings.
But it also included thedisplays around the room,
leveraging our videodistribution and control
technology also. And we thinkthat when you bring all of these
elements together, and you haveto experience that's why we
(08:12):
built a 15 person conferenceroom on our stand, you have to
experience it so that you seeyou begin to understand what it
can do for you. In the meetingsome of this stuff when
everybody was locked away. Inthe pandemic, we started
pontificating around, oh, whatdo we need now in this newly
expanded hybrid world? But thenyou start getting more and more
(08:32):
people in the office, but noteveryone, you start experiencing
different kinds of challenges,and how do you help solve them?
Right,
Dave Michels (08:41):
Evan, and I get a lot actually, though Evan and I
were just pontificating recentlyabout new ice cream flavors that
need to be.
Evan Kirstel (08:49):
But you guys have been in this game for I think
four decades at restaurant, isthat right? And automation, and
control technology. And thismust be the most exciting time
in that journey. When you lookat the blurring of the workplace
and the home, the office, smartbuilding and the smart home. Do
you see these things comingtogether, you know, in a
(09:11):
meaningful way? Or do you stillsee the dividing line between
the two?
Brad Hintze (09:16):
Well, I think that they are coming together they
need to come together. They haveto I think that if you really
want to create a compellingexperience that everyone in an
enterprise or a business canfeel comfortable walking in and
using, right? How do you set upso you can have a meeting
without needing to think aboutthe technology in the meeting in
the meeting, you can just focuson the purpose of the meeting.
(09:38):
In order to accomplish that. Yougot to bring all these things
together. And we do feel likeCrestron is in a unique position
to do all of that to bring itall together to create that
experience. Not only do we havethe technology but we have the
channel we have theprofessionals that are trained
on Crestron that are alreadycalling on these customers. They
know how to deploy this and soWe do feel very fortunate to
(10:02):
have all these things cometogether at this time.
Dave Michels (10:04):
I think it's interesting that for vendors
have basically launched multicamera type of solution to the
meeting room in the last fewmonths, they're not even
similar. They're all fourcompanies are doing it very
differently in their approach.
What does this come from? Imean, why did all of a sudden
the video guys decided that weneeded a multi camera? And was
this? Was this a breakthrough intechnology? What do you think is
(10:25):
causing this,
Brad Hintze (10:27):
I think it's probably more the arms race that
is happening today. Becausethere's so much demand,
everybody's talking about it,everybody's trying to solve the
various problems that areintroduced by hybrid work, and
actually just this move intomore flexible working, it's
become clear, you can't solve itwith just a video bar on a wall,
(10:48):
right. And as more organizationsget back to work, as they tried
to bring people in and keeptheir teams really focused and
productive, they encounteredthese new challenges. But
because there's an arms racenow, by all these vendors, like
how can we capitalize on thismarket the most, you know, you
see these various ways thatpeople are coming at it. Great,
(11:09):
it's awesome. I think it's agood thing for our industry,
right? The opportunity, hybridwork has driven people to
embrace video conferencing in amuch deeper way, in our industry
can step up and innovate, andcreate really great solutions
that keep it that deeplypenetrated. And I think it's a
good thing.
Dave Michels (11:27):
I'm gonna put you on the spot here. I'm an
analyst. And so people lie to meall day all the time. So I'm
gonna give you a chance, I'mgonna push back on here, this
give me a chance to defend this.
Because certainly the industryhas decided that the world needs
multi camera solutions in theirmeeting rooms. Is there any
indication whatsoever that theenterprise is asking for multi
cameras, multiple cameras intheir meeting? Yes,
Brad Hintze (11:53):
let me qualify that a little bit. We get questions
along those lines. And in fact,since ISC, our experience center
is booked solid for all ofApril, doing demos of the multi
camera technology, and this isof enterprises raising their
hands and saying, I want thisright, we have major enterprises
today that are deploying it,right, we have a major partner,
(12:14):
a big brand name in the servicesthat has it as well. And we're
bringing customers there. So Ithink that yes, there are
corporations that are coming in.
Now, they're not coming in, andthey're saying I need multi
camera. They're coming in andsaying, I have a space that's
like this, and I need to enablea meeting like this. And our
answer then is multicam. Here'sthis experience. And so that's
(12:38):
why I qualify it, they know theyneed it. Some people are asking
for multicam, specifically,others are just describing the
problem. And we're putting allthe camera out there as a
solution.
Evan Kirstel (12:51):
Interesting. So let's shift to flexible work,
hybrid work, whatever you wantto call it. Where do you see
your customers settling? What'sthe balance or the flow between
work from home and in office? Sowhat's your anecdotal feedback?
Brad Hintze (13:05):
So far? Oh, yeah, I know, it's a debate that will
probably be having for at leastanother couple of years. Our
perspective, though, is, withinan organization, if you have one
person that's remote, it doesn'tmatter, you got to enable
flexible working in terms ofyou're going to have meetings,
that will likely have a remoteparticipant in so you need to be
(13:29):
enabled for that
Dave Michels (13:30):
at all wrong, Brad, if you got one person
locks, and you just celebrate.
Brad Hintze (13:37):
Exactly. If you're not hearing the site for the
meeting, then you don't get toparticipate, right. But then
also, like how many companiesare truly insular and only talk
to their own employees, right.
And anytime you work with avendor, you work with a partner,
you need those capabilities. Soin our perspective, you know, we
don't wait into or we don't havean opinion that most companies
should be on a three by two, oryou should be half and half or
(14:00):
whatever we know. And so we tendto make investments around the
realities of what we know thoseenterprises or organizations
will always need. And that isthat they will always need to be
able to include remoteparticipants. But the thing
that's also unique to Crestronis that we also know those
organizations need to enablereally effective in person
(14:22):
collaboration doesn't matterwhether they're all in once a
week, once a month, or even oncea quarter, when they're in
that's a high value meeting. Andyou need to be able to have
effective collaboration wirelesspresentation in the AV needs to
work you need to have space todo all that. So that's what we
bring uniquely to theconversation. You know, we're
not only focused on the videocollaboration and put a bar on
(14:44):
the wall. It is that holistic,flexible working experience,
which video collaboration is ahuge part of but it's not the
only part.
Dave Michels (14:57):
So I'm guessing you're playing I'm Scott, Rouen,
right? You are going to be thefirst of all, you weren't the
first to market with a multicamera solution and you were in
that was going to be a bigdifferentiator. Now, everybody
else has multi camera solutions.
So the question now is, ifeveryone has multi camera
solutions, how do youdifferentiate your solution? And
is it hardware software? Orboth? Or it's now standard
(15:19):
issue? Apparently.
Brad Hintze (15:23):
The word multicam is standard issue. Everybody has
it pointed out earlier, right,the implementation is quite
dramatically different. Thereare several core things that we
lean on as thosedifferentiators, right,
certainly the hardware, right,optical zoom is really
important, but also the softwareand the technology to track a
presenter to frame a speaker,right to do it from far
(15:45):
distances, you know, 50 feetaway, not just six feet away, or
eight feet away. So thosecapabilities exist for us today.
And that, and that's reallycritical. But when you think
about everything else that hasto happen around the video call,
right? And how can you augmentthat experience, the video
distribution that I talked aboutearlier, the control, you know,
(16:05):
the automation to walk into ameeting room and have it start
turned on, ready to go so thatwhen you sit down at Sing, it's
a single touch, right? Our deepintegration, of course, with
Microsoft Teams and zoom rooms,those are really critical.
That's where we're leveragingour domain and engineering
expertise, to add to themulticam experience, and bring
(16:27):
all of the value that we've gotthere combined together to
really create that flexiblestuff. Like you said earlier,
we've been in those customspaces, the townhall spaces, the
divisible rooms, the ballrooms,and all that we've been in there
for decades, we've been in theboardrooms for decades. Now
we're taking it also down to themeteors. So for the enterprise,
we can bring all that togetherand one vendor, all the various
(16:50):
meeting room types. And when youcombine all of that with the
multicam, we feel like that's astrong differentiator. And
Evan Kirstel (17:00):
this discussion has been very disappointing. For
me, we're already a third of theway in here, we have not
mentioned artificialintelligence, machine learning
or chat GPT. But Brad, in allseriousness, what's the impact
in your product developmentprocess or in your products of
AI and ML? And you know, thetransforming the user experience
(17:21):
and other things?
Brad Hintze (17:22):
Yeah, I think it's interesting. We, as people that
are paying attention to industrytrends, and all this, we've
heard AI and ML for many, manyyears, right? People, you throw
it out there as a as a buzzword,but it didn't really reach the
moment that it is now until youcould see real valuable output,
right? And the magic that youget, like here, put in a prompt
(17:45):
and create this text for me,right. And I used it this week
on the little marketing campaignidea that I had, right. And so
once you create a bridge, fromthe promise of AI, into a real
tangible outcome, nobody cares,right? And chat GPT did that AI.
Now I've got this text output inour world, that AI is really
(18:08):
related to Speaker tracking, andpresenting and group framing.
But it also extends to analyticsin terms of room utilization,
and space optimization, inmaking recommendations around
how you might change the way youdo those things, the way you
make things operate the healthof the system, so that that can
(18:29):
inform your space planning. Butalso, we're in the business of
control, which means creatinguser interfaces that are easy to
use, and how do you do thatreally, super efficiently. So
you can see a world to where youcan use AI to help in using
simple language, not code, butsimple descriptions to
(18:50):
autogenerate a user interfacethat is directly custom to that
room and that experience, whichthen therefore creates a more
intuitive experience. So thoseare all of the opportunities
that you can leverage with AI,some of it we're doing today,
some of it we're playing with.
Dave Michels (19:05):
So that is your role at Crestron limited to one
beyond or is your marketing rolebroader or the whole portfolio
or what are you responsible for?
Brad Hintze (19:15):
All right, all of the whole Crestron, all of
Crestron. Yeah all of themetering technology, all of our
commercial technology, includingthat residential technology as
well.
Dave Michels (19:25):
Oh, we got to talk about residential stuff because
yeah, right.
Evan Kirstel (19:28):
Yeah. Yeah. Dave has some tech support issues he
may have his curtains are lockedto closed, but I know a
Brad Hintze (19:36):
guy I know a guy.
Evan Kirstel (19:39):
That's what would you say is growing faster, the
smart home space for you or theenterprise? Or are they apples
and oranges?
Brad Hintze (19:48):
They're apples and oranges. In a way. I think that
over the course of our history,we've seen back and forth
trends, historically, where whenresi was really hot, you know,
maybe commercial was a littledifferent. First, and then 2008,
residential really slowed downwith housing crisis and
commercial took off, right. Andwe we were poised at that time,
(20:09):
fortunately, with newtechnologies in vx and our video
distribution, and so we werereally able to accelerate at the
beginning of the pandemicresidential took off. And so did
you see and so did demand forother technologies. So we are in
this moment where both havereally kind of accelerated now,
as we see in economic headwinds,you know, residential is
(20:31):
battling some of that. But we'vegot a really strong durable
business there too, which isreally good. And we continue to
see really good demand for therest of our technology, awesome.
Dave Michels (20:42):
Cholesterol is a global company, is that correct?
Brad Hintze (20:44):
Yeah, we are
Evan Kirstel (20:46):
going to talk about that. What's the culture
at Crestron? And how do youencourage employees to be
creative and come up with allkinds of new cool ideas? Give us
a peek behind the curtain punintended?
Brad Hintze (20:59):
It's great question. I think one of the
things I've loved about this,the culture here at Crestron is
it's a culture that's alwaysbeen centered on two things,
taking care of the customer anddoing the right thing for the
customer every single time. Andhow can we use our experience
and knowledge to build reallygreat products. And that extends
everywhere we've been for a longtime is particularly on the
(21:23):
engineering side, where you'vegot teams of people that are out
there generating ideas ratherthan kind of this top down
dictatorial approach. But wealso have a very engaged field
team and channel team that's outin the market. We're not like a
typical manufacturer, that youjust sell through distribution
in that you have no relationshipwith your end customer, that
customer obsession, the beingout there with them and in front
(21:45):
of them. And then this culture,this engineering culture, it's
tricky.
Dave Michels (21:49):
I mean, you're not a direct, I don't believe your
direct, right, you're going fromshallow part. And if that's what
your customers?
Brad Hintze (21:56):
Well, we have started over the last several
years investing more in buildingteams that can go direct to
customer with our partners, aswell, our channel partners. So
we think that that is reallycritical, it unlocks
opportunities for our channelpartners, right? Because when
they go in with themanufacturer, right, it adds
added confidence for theorganization to choose us and
(22:19):
that partner, so that's supervaluable. But you also get major
customers that are doing fiveand 10 year deployments in the
10s of millions of dollars, theywant to have a direct
relationship with themanufacturer and know that
they're making the rightchoices. So we've started to
invest in those relationshipmanagement teams, those account
teams that have that long termengagement with the customer.
(22:42):
And with the pro partner, wethink that is really, really
important.
Dave Michels (22:45):
Is it the same for residential? No,
Brad Hintze (22:48):
we've not done that. The same on residential
rate, the scale is different thetype of relationship the
customer is on the residentialside, they rely so heavily on
the channel partner fordifferent kinds of things.
Right? Residential.
Dave Michels (23:00):
Yeah, you're not you're not, we're not buying
your stuff of Home Depot. We're
Brad Hintze (23:04):
Yeah, no, totally Yeah. And while customers prefer
Crestron the brand and they wantit, many of them don't actually.
And they rely on therecommendation of the
residential partner to say thisis the technology you should
use, right? And they're actuallybuying more into the
relationship with the channelpartner, right? And that the
service that you provide, andthe technology choices,
(23:25):
unfortunately, sometimes asecondary choice, which is fine,
right, and that's why our go tomarket
Dave Michels (23:30):
is the primary choice because I went with a
different home automation. Sothis is old, this is 2008. And
then my last my dealer becausehe became a Crestron dealer and
I was like he couldn't help meanymore.
Evan Kirstel (23:38):
Dave has very particular requirements for home
automation, things like faxmachines, and dial up modem
Dave Michels (23:47):
enterprise because I wanted to find out more about
residential home automation thatthat is Isha. But there were
very few people that I'm noteven talking restaurant, I'm
talking the whole show very fewpeople that were able to talk
really about home automation.
That's a business enterpriseshow.
Evan Kirstel (24:02):
Yeah. Speaking of that, you mentioned Microsoft is
a partner. Maybe describe thatpartnership and a little more
detail and one other partners.
Are you looking to integratewith or interrupt with?
Brad Hintze (24:13):
Yeah, we have a really unique and valuable
relationship with Microsoft.
They've been a customer of oursfor a very long time, very long
time. In fact, 15 years ago,they came to us and said, Hey,
we want to be able to show theschedule of a meeting room
outside of the room on atouchscreen and so we jointly
developed a solution for them asa customer on Password today.
(24:34):
They have teams panel andsoftware. We're one of the OEMs
that that run there. So they'vebeen a longtime customer. And
then of course as a developmentpartner. You know, we're deep
into the the team's roomecosystem. We have several
products that are certifiedteams rooms at Enterprise
Connect. You probably saw theannouncement we're the first
manufacturing partner to releasea BYOD team's product with There
(24:57):
are AirMedia wirelessconferencing solution. So we
have a fantastic relationshipthere with Microsoft. And we
also have a great relationshipwith zoom in zoom rooms, we have
a number of products that arezoom rooms certified, including
our multicam solution was justrecently certified with Zoom
scheduling panels, digitalsignage at the show, we also
(25:18):
showed our controls integratedinto our control interface
integrated into the Zoom Roomexperience. And so deep
partnerships there, we know thatcustomers really rely on that.
And then of course, we've alsobeen partners with Cisco for
quite a while we have nativeintegration with some of our
control products to work withCisco, they come to us, we work
(25:38):
on a lot of projects, AVcontrol, and distribution and
all of that, but those are ourprimary ones on the UC front.
Now
Dave Michels (25:46):
back to the one beyond the multi camera thing
that is kind of like independenttechnology, right? I mean, I
know you want to get certifiedand everything, but it doesn't
really require an integration tozoom or Microsoft or Cisco, it
should kind of work by itself,right? Is that correct? Yep,
Brad Hintze (26:02):
that's exactly right. So it will work with any
of the other services too, it isindependent. In fact, you can
also integrate it into acompeting or an alternative MTR
or a Zoom Room. So if you have adifferent platform that you
want, but you want thisintelligent video multicam
experience, we can support thatas well. Right? Again, we want
to provide our customers themost choice to deploy
(26:23):
technology. And, and so we givethem many of those options.
Evan Kirstel (26:28):
Fantastic. Let's shift gears a little bit to
yourself. You're in a beautifulpart of the world Salt Lake
City. I can only imagine whatyou do for fun. I imagine
there's a lot of outdooractivities involved, of course,
refer to that
Dave Michels (26:39):
white powder all over the mountains. I think it's
called salt. Salt.
Evan Kirstel (26:43):
Exactly. Yes.
Brad Hintze (26:46):
That's right. And so much outdoor activity here,
which I really, really love. Onthe weekends in the winter, it's
skiing, except for we've justgotten so much snow lately, the
resorts can't even open. It'sjust a wild thing. So a lot of
skiing, lots of hiking andcamping out there. It's a
beautiful, beautiful place. ButI love to travel around and
visit our customers and ourpartners and eat all the great
(27:07):
food. That's one of thewonderful things about
Barcelona. You're out till 130Because you've spent all night
over some really great tapas andgreat wine. And yeah, it's
really wonderful.
Evan Kirstel (27:17):
Good times, what are you looking forward to
coming up any trips, travelevents or otherwise? On the
agenda?
Brad Hintze (27:24):
Yeah, we actually have an event that we call
modern work Summit. We're backin Spain in Madrid,
Evan Kirstel (27:29):
you pick the worst places for events? You know, I
think David, every one of them,actually. But yeah.
Brad Hintze (27:36):
We're actually really looking forward to it,
we're going to release severalnew products. We'll have
Microsoft there. We've gotseveral customers really big
name customers that are going totalk about
Dave Michels (27:45):
what they're doing. So what is this
conference? What is this?
Brad Hintze (27:49):
It's called Modern work Summit. It's May 23, and
24th in Madrid. And it is not aCrestron training event. Right.
It's not a croissant salespitch. You know, we're getting
together and talking about thetrends that are driving the
future of work and modern work,hear from partners hear from
customers, right? We talkedabout those kinds of how do you
(28:10):
evaluate your readiness to toembrace modern work? And where
should they look at investmentsand that kind of stuff. And then
of course, we'll unveil severalnew technologies as well. So
yeah, it's a great event. Andthen two weeks later, we'll be
in Orlando for Infocomm. Sothat'll be also a really a
really great show. Yeah, it's
Evan Kirstel (28:27):
great to see the world returning to normal, and
it's good to see you guyshelping that transition. So
yeah. Thanks, Brad. Thanks somuch for joining us on Talking
Heads really enjoyed the chat.
Dave only stood up once ortwice, which is a record for
him. But yeah, we're just gonnasay goodbye to the audience
here. And thanks so much. Lookforward to seeing you soon.
Brad Hintze (28:46):
Thank you guys. I really enjoyed the conversation
as well.
Evan Kirstel (28:51):
Well, Dave, that was really interesting. I didn't
know much about restaurant, Iwas quite insightful and
illuminating.
Dave Michels (28:57):
You know, we both moved recently. And you know, I
had a huge investment in homeautomation in my old home, but
it was
Evan Kirstel (29:04):
basically yeah, I'll say it. Yeah.
Dave Michels (29:07):
Investment in all the tech has changed for 15
years. Are you gonna put on anyhome automation into your place?
Evan Kirstel (29:13):
I have a hodgepodge of half working
Alexa's and Googles and Siridevices, it's a complete mess.
Maybe I need to call arestaurant partner and really
come in and do this properly.
Because
Dave Michels (29:24):
there's so much that I'm really missing from my
old house that I don't have inthis current place that because
you said all that technology isfantastic. I'm gonna start with
whites. I forgot the lights. Idid. Actually I was turned I did
put into electric curtains. Butyeah, this is like everything is
available. But getting it all towork in a seamless environment.
(29:44):
That's a whole nother story. AndI'm finding that I don't have
time to figure it out. It's justit's too. There's so many
different people to talk to youabout this. I can barely
Evan Kirstel (29:53):
get this podcast to work. So yeah, we should do a
dedicated session. Well, thanks,everyone. Thanks for viewing.
Thanks for watching. We lookforward to our next guest until
that take care
Unknown (30:02):
you may get into conversation
man you gotta get out of here.
Phone don't don't don't readyour phone. No man knows me
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