Zooming Into The Future

Posted June 21, 2020

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For more than thirty years, we have run a rather unusual business.

In Person Video Bootcamps.

Don't get me wrong. This was a very good business, and our clients ran the specturm from global TV networks like The BBC to local TV stations liike KRON to partnerships with companies like The Travel Channel or The Guardian to entire governments like The Government of Nevis and St. Kitts or The Eritrean People's Liberation Army. 

More than 200 different clients in 67 countries around the world. All in person. 

That meant living on airplanes and in hotels. 

We have acquired millions of air miles, but who wanted to go anywhere?  

Then, with the advent of Covid-19, our entire business came to a halt. 

There were no hotels, no confernce centers, no one going anywhere, The very basis of our business - in person bootcamps, came to a grinding and blinding halt.

It was astonishing. 

And fast.

We spent three months sitting in our apartment in New York - the longest time we had ever spent there in years and years - with nothing to do.

Then, we decided to try and run our bootcamps online, with Zoom.

Ironically, John Katzman, the rather brilliant founder of education companies like The Princeton Review, had suggested that I try Zoom more than a year ago.  Sitting with nothing to do in Manhattan, I remembered that conversation.

So we tried Zooming a bootcamp.

The results were nothing short of astonishing.

The Zoom bootcamps, (we did these with Spectrum.  We had worked with them to design and build out an all MMJ/VJ TV station in Los Angeles - but we did that one physcaily in LA) worked.

They worked better than the in-person bootcamps we had done for more than 30 years.

The reason?

In the Zoom classes (as Lisa noted) everyone is in the front row.

There is no 'hiding out'.

On Zoom, we are available quite literally 24 hours a day.

Last week, one of the participants texted us at 2 AM with a question.

We may have to limit our 24-hour access.

We aren't Denny's.

But we are always there - or here - or wherever the client is.

No more flying.

No more hotels.

No more schlepping.

We converted our next-door office to a Zoom studiio

Our commute to work is not about 30 feet down the hall.

And, astonishingly, we are now booked solid from now until October.

8 AM to 8 PM

Every day.

Is this the future of all work?

As I look out over the forest of empty giant office towers in Midtown Manhattan, I tend to think that they will never be filled again.

A crisis can drive change.

This one has.

It has catapulted our business into the 21st Century

Or maybe 22nd. `