Enabling the Move from Pro A/V to Professional Productions

Organizations large and small are demanding more from their Pro A/V professionals, who are still scrambling to the demand for their services that emerged during the pandemic.

Some of Ross Video’s customers saw the number of events and productions they were producing double and even quadruple during the pandemic as their organization’s leaders strove to remain connected to their teams and staff.

What types of events and productions are we talking about here?

• Large, in-person events held in-person an auditorium with a few speakers, a few hundred or thousand in-person, and hybrid attendees
• Important internal communications directed to the entire company or whole divisions
• External content directed to shareholders
• Ensuring senior leaders look and sound excellent when being interviewed by news or other external organizations

Content producers at large enterprises, whether their audiences are internal or external, are demanding:

• More engaging approaches to keep hybrid employees engaged and aligned
• Dynamic, collaborative approaches that still retain a professional feel
• More polished content

Recently, Ross has been fielding requests from customers to help them deal with these demands and “take their productions to the next level.” They’re aware that they need more professional equipment to get the effect they’re after, but the complexity of professional production technology can be a bit intimidating.

In this post, we’ll examine some of the things Ross Video is doing to address some of the fears that our Pro AV customers have shared with us:

• “Ross isn’t for me – it’s too intimidating. I’m not a broadcaster.”
• “I’ve worked in this industry for years, but don’t have the knowledge or familiarity I think I need.”
• “I don’t have the personnel to staff a broadcast-level production.”

The Rising Focus on Keeping Employees Engaged

Following the pandemic, we’re seeing organizations facing a new challenge: keeping employees engaged to deliver on retention goals. The workforce that became effective and accustomed to working remotely is now exhausted from sitting in the same long, boring online meetings.

Leaders want to offer their hybrid and remote employees more professional, engaging events for a variety of reasons, and here are a few things we’re seeing from the world’s largest companies: Summary

We’re excited to support more organizations with their goals of increasing the quality of their events and improving employee engagement and are delighted to offer everything you need in one solution.

A desire to have more work done in person.

Leaders perceive a value in the networking, communication, and enjoyment that employees get out of seeing one another in person when attending an in-person event and want to promote it. With that said, if the experience of attending an in-person event is equivalent to (or worse than!) than attending online, a barrier is introduced to the employee.

Increasing production value will help to align teams around shared objectives.

Leaders use dynamic, exciting yearly kick-offs and quarterly updates to energize their teams and support them in communicating their objectives. With many large organizations having a geographically distributed workforce, ensuring that everyone is aligned is key to ensuring work flows smoothly through the system.

Increasing production value will help ensure that company-wide messages are heard and understood.

Thousands of hours go into corporation-wide training materials and messages on updates to policies and practices. Ensuring that the employee onboarding, human resource announcements, yearly ethics training, or quarterly safety and security updates are well attended and engaging is critical to the effectiveness of these messages.

A desire to show employees they’re valued.

Great presentations by an organization’s leaders inspire connection, boost engagement, and improve morale. Professional production equipment is being deployed worldwide to create amazement and drive organizational loyalty in huge numbers of employees. Offering employees a professional-feeling event expresses how much they and their work are valued.

A Return to More Polished Internal and External Communications

To keep companies functioning during the pandemic, many organizations turned to Zoom and Teams to run large meetings. Slides were shared, dogs barked, and leaders appeared via pixelated webcam video feeds at various angles with terribly lit, eclectic backgrounds.

While the leaders at these large organizations use a variety of communication styles, all of them need more than a webcam and some slides to engage their audience. In addition to assisting leaders with how they’re perceived internally, additional benefits include:

Resetting the tone for communication with customers and staff.

Organizations everywhere are struggling to regain the sense of professionalism that existed as part of their corporate culture prior to the pandemic. When leaders begin to relinquish their spare rooms and t-shirts, they’re modeling the behavior, conduct, and appearance they expect of their staff and, in turn, will impact the customer experience their organization offers.

No more dogs barking.

Throughout the pandemic, carefully crafted messages were continuously interrupted, and executives are done with the status quo – dogs barking, children talking, someone off mute. The organizations that Ross works with are keen to regain control over the messages that their staff are receiving.

Enhancing your leader’s public persona.

When an organization’s executive has an interview or a spotlight by a news channel, they want to look their best. Fortune 500 companies worldwide are investing in small studio spaces that allow their executives to present confident, properly branded communications that set them and their organization in the best light.

Good News! Companies like Ross are Catering to Pro A/V Professionals

There’s no question that professional production equipment creates great productions, but it’s also very complex, and the flexibility it provides can be daunting. At first glance, the terminology can be obscure and almost impenetrable, even for the most seasoned A/V professional.

To help large organizations up their production game, Ross is repackaging our boutique technology to help onboard organizations into its use. And we’ve been successful: the demand for Ross technologies is growing dramatically for use with internal and external messaging.

 “You no longer go to multiple vendors. Ross offers a single solution.”

— Matt Morgan, Business Development Manager, Ross Video

Here are a few of the ways that Ross is investing to make our technology more accessible for companies:

Robots make things simpler.

Much of the tone of a show is given by the speed, direction, and movement of the cameras. Moving away from static camera positions is one of the first ways that content teams want to improve their productions.

Ross’ Camera Motion Systems create beautiful, engaging, stable shots and only need to be configured once. Once you’ve set the cameras up, you can easily recall movements again and again. This allows a single operator to simulate a full-scale production.

Architecting solutions.

Ross Video offers all the professional broadcast-quality production equipment that organizations need. Our solution architects work directly with corporations to define solutions that can be deployed repeatedly at various sites, which lowers the need for training and maintenance. Our customers love that they can work with one team to purchase, install, commission, and configure their solution.

Included in our corporate solutions are:

• Custom Control Interfaces – DashBoard
• Production Switchers/Mixers – Carbonite, Acuity
• Cameras and Robots – Furio, SkyDolly, ACIDCam
• Recording Servers – Tria

Conclusion

We’re excited to support more organizations with their goals of increasing the quality of their events and improving employee engagement and are delighted to offer everything you need in one solution.

Come visit us at NAB 2023!

Come visit us for a tour of our Corporate Solutions and book a demo to learn more about our products and how we can cater to your every video need, from the camera lens to your customer’s screen.

Contributors

About Amanda Holtstrom

Amanda Holtstrom is Product Manager for DashBoard and Ross Platform Manager. She’s responsible for ensuring that Ross’ investments in her product line align with customer needs. Amanda previously worked as an enterprise content management consultant, and she’s passionate about clear and effective communications and the value they present for organizations large and small.

About Matt Morgan

Matt Morgan is the Business Development Manager for the corporate market at Ross Video, where he supports customers in finding the right solution to host their live events. Matt has over 10 years of experience working in various technology segments and the church production industry. His last gig was managing a 4K facility that broadcasted to over 40 campuses and to viewers worldwide.

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