Well Seasoned The Podcast
Well Seasoned The Podcast
Do You Even Pre-Record, Bruh?
We all had to learn a new world of events, pivotting from the physical to the virtual space. We went from sleeping rooms and conference spaces to virtual meeting rooms and digital graphic specs. Join Staceyann and Patrick as they discuss the new world of virtual events. How? What? Why? Where (yes where)? Play this one for your boss!!
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Welcome to Well Seasoned The Podcast. We're back. I'm Stacey.
Patrick Brochu:And I'm Patrick.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Sup, Patrick, how you doing today?
Patrick Brochu:I'm doing really good.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Are you staying hydrated?
Patrick Brochu:I am, I've actually been digging my quarantine because I feel like I'm drinking a little bit more in the quarantine than I normally would.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Everybody.
Patrick Brochu:So to keep my calories down, I have been enjoying the seltzer beverages. Specifically today I'm doing the mango flavor from Bud Light. They're not a sponsor yet, everybody but yeah, mango. So I'm not to say this, but I really enjoyed the mango. And actually, if you want to like class it up a little bit, I normally add a little bit of mango rum to it, put it on ice, add a sliced orange and a little bit of orange juice that tastes delicious. And if you're by a pool or beach, you just blend that sucker up. And it's like a frozen cocktail kind of drink that no, it's pretty good. It's pretty - and it gets you there.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Sometimes you need that. I would add a jalapeno slice in it and make a spicy one. I'm drinking a local brewery here 10Torr, and it's a lavender lemonade, and it's delicious.
Patrick Brochu:Oh it does sound delicious.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:And I would like to say yes, because of quarantine. I have been drinking more. That's what I'm going to say.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, I don't think that anybody really remembers at the beginning of the quarantine when Anthony Fauci because everybody's like, oh, Dr. Fauci is so knowledgeable, etc, etc. But the one thing that nobody listened to when was when he was saying, but alcohol, it's actually worse for what's going on different reasons, like people putting their guard down that it but nobody listens.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:That's something I'm not about to commit to memory. Absolutely not.
Patrick Brochu:Exactly. Exactly.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I'm trying to stay sane you know,
Patrick Brochu:when this whole thing was really, really probably about April, or may, I would sign off my emails. And I normally just say best. And there's a long story about why I always say best and nothing else. But I would always say stay safe and sane. Right. So if I didn't really know you stay safe, stay sane, because everybody was like, you know, going crazy. Yeah. And then for people that I know, I would say stay safe, sane and sober.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I never got the sober. So what does that mean? You're assuming that? Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:Well, I mean, you're you're a sommelier a, you know,
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I mean, I guess I am constantly drinking wine in an educational setting
Patrick Brochu:In an educational setting?
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:In an educational setting. Yeah. Yeah.
Patrick Brochu:You're very smart to do that.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Thank you. That's what I'm telling myself. So you know what we've never explained to people, I just want to call you this Pepper?
Patrick Brochu:Oh, my goodness.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Okay, so we're called Well Seasoned the Podcast, we are Well Seasoned Education. And Patrick is pepper. And I am Salt.
Patrick Brochu:For anybody that hasn't seen us speak live yet. Stacey and I have been touring going to different educational events around the country, whether it be IMEX or at CITE National different MPI chapters, etc. We go in speak about a variety of topics. And we have a cool website that you can check out wellseasonededucation.com. And the original idea of that one was to do a podcast, but for whatever reason, I pushed back on it. And then we came up with all these topics. And I was like, Well, you know, Stacy, those would actually be good topics just to do speaking and going to conferences. And that's how Well Seasoned Education was born. And I don't exactly remember why the salt and pepper thing popped up and why the well seasoned, but I just clicked and clicked and clicked and it was awesome. So if you go to our website, you'll understand why we call each other Salt and Pepper and why it's Well Seasoned.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:And I think it's hilarious, because you didn't know, I'm black and he's white. I'm Salt, he's Pepper. And every time I have to introduce ourselves to a group of people, I always pause because I'm like, I can't believe I'm saying this out loud. And then I introduce ourselves and people look at us and they're like, I'm and I'm like, it's as awkward for me as it is for you. Why, sweet black baby Jesus? But anyway, let's -
Patrick Brochu:Well you know what, okay, okay, but I don't know if you and I have actually talked about this because there was a reason. Originally, when I did the first drawings and again, if you guys see the website, it's our heads on salt and pepper shake. It was because Stacey's a planner, and I'm a supplier. So I was salt and Stacey was pepper. And then after I finished with that, I thought, Hmm, I just made the black girl the pepper. I can't do that. That can't be and then I thought to myself, well, she's Stacey so Salt Stacey. And I'm Patrick. So Patrick Pepper so I'll just be the Pepper. She'll be the Salt that's in so we switched around, because I was like oh my goodness
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:What you guys can't see is the blank tare on my face right now. And h w I let this run through and I m like, yeah, it
Patrick Brochu:And our slogan with well seasoned is delightfully. goofy, undeniably good. And normally delightfully, goofy goes under my name because I came up with kind of some of the crazy imagery or themes to our educational programs. Yeah. But Stacey actually came up with the good content. So I'm delightfully goofy, and she's undeniably good. So yeah, that's kind of the history behind that.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:That's Salt and Pepper, that's Well Seasoned. I felt the need to tell people that because I almost said, let's get started Pepper.
Patrick Brochu:Exactly.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:So, back to my original statement. Let's get started Pepper.
Patrick Brochu:All right, let's do it.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:We're just doing this podcast, and we're gonna talk it out.
Patrick Brochu:This is rare ones that we didn't really plan or have a topic, we were just like, why don't we do one?
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Okay, I thought about this because yesterday, Patrick called me about virtual meetings. And we clearly have a lot of meetings going on. And we're talking beyond the in office, person to person meeting, we're talking actual virtual events, right. And the amount of work that goes into this virtual and planning these virtual events and how everyone went from a complete standstill in March and April, you have to think COVID, hit right in the middle of our event season journey. So everyone was just on the road busy, busy busy, then we had a little bit of downtime, that's when I adopted 20 plus plants, then all of a sudden, we are now planning all these virtual events again, because you know what? It's still event season, right? And truth is show must go on. So we just have to adjust to it. So okay, let's start at the very beginning of proposals and quotes. I don't know if you felt it as much, but immediately went to Okay, let's plan virtual events, we were getting quotes. But then nobody knew how to execute these virtual events. So it was just like, Did you find yourself putting out all these quotes and nothing coming through?
Patrick Brochu:So my timeframe was a little bit different from a supplier perspective, and specifically, technical supplier. So somebody that does audio visual production going into the space, we did have experience in virtual prior. But even that experience versus what we're doing now is totally different. What I will say is, it was around March, I would say the last show that canceled was probably March 15, or something like that. We had a meeting at the office, and it was like, okay, we're going to close down the office because of everything going on for a little while. And it was all hands on everybody at home, join any webinar, anything that you can do to start our pivot. We knew at that point, we had a pivot that had to happen. And then all the quoting started by midway through April, I probably had 40 to 50 quotes out there just floating, you know--
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:That soon?
Patrick Brochu:Yes, yes.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Wow.
Patrick Brochu:At that point, we were quoting two people that didn't know what they needed to do. They didn't know what dates they didn't know, anything. It was like, I don't even know if this is going to be a one day meeting a five day meeting, I don't know, our quotes, were just all over the place. Because, you know, we were being asked all these things. And we were like, okay, here are some ranges, putting those out with some capabilities and some imagery. And then we didn't hear anything for a while. But more quotes were just coming in. I remember having a conversation with my CEO, he was like, I've never been so busy in my entire 40 plus year career and made no money. It's like it was crazy, because we were all so busy. And then on top of that, probably going more into May, it was like, okay, all the happy hours and all the virtual networking events were happening. And that was actually good for my company. Because we were able to get our name out there, do some branding. And then we had more quotes coming in. We had a few that booked over the summer. But it wasn't until I would say probably into June that all of a sudden, it was like the floodgates like, can you tighten this up a little bit? Here's my actual specs now. Yeah, dun, dun, dun, dun. And then we move into August and here in September, and things started booking. And it was ironic because in our industry, the joke is that everything always is in you know, one set period of time. And it's like, why, like space things out. But all these events were happening all on the same time period, we found ourselves, okay, we know that we could do up to so many events at one time, executed perfectly. And then we started having to turn people away that came back and said, Hey, you quoted on this for me over the summer. Well, we've booked that time now. And we no longer can fulfill that because we're booked, booked solid.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:And from the planners point of view. I know when this all hit in, I'll talk from my corporate life. Everyone went into extreme panic mode. We were in the middle of launching. So it was like, Oh my God, we have to plan something. We have to plan something right now. Get quotes for virtual meetings, figure it out, Stacy. So you get all these quotes. And you go into planning these virtual meetings, but nobody knows how to plan a virtual meeting. Right? So it's like, Okay, how are you going to keep their attention? What's the agenda going to be? Do you have a presentation because we were talking about launching products at trade shows. And so how are we going to bring that tradeshow experience into the virtual platform? how exactly are we going to do it, and then it was like, everyone's optimistic. And then it was, you have no money cut. And so you went from planning to being like, Wait a second, we're not making money, we're bleeding. We can't even put this money back into planning a virtual event, it was a hard pause. And so I think what happened on our side is that we started planning a lot of virtual meetings on teams and zoom and go to meetings, and you start seeing these numbers pick up, right, you start seeing that maybe if you're planning this in person event, you might have gotten 100 people, but now you're getting the attention of 1000 people, because guess what, they don't have to leave home, they can log on, and you start seeing attendance pick up, you start seeing engagement, you know, people are emailing after that. And it's like, Wait a second, this can actually work. Now let's get back into it. So that August, September came around, and we're, we were like, Okay, let's do this, let's actually get an event on the books with a proper company. So, you know, on my side, in terms of planning, I find myself having to tell people that just because it's a virtual meeting doesn't mean it could be in six or eight hour meeting. I mean, I don't know if you're fighting that in your side. But I'm like, dude, I can't keep your attention for 30 minutes right now. And you think you're going to keep someone's attention for eight hours? It's so hard doing that.
Patrick Brochu:100%, we're seeing that across the board. We have people that because of the cost. And that's another thing that we can talk about, but because of the cost of it, they're like, Okay, well, why don't we consolidate it down to a one day meeting? We're going to do it for eight in trust me 10 hours, whatever. Okay, well, that's good. But are you expecting different people to hop on at different points? No, everybody on for the whole day? Well, okay. And I believe it was MPI global, that put out a study based on you know, this, and they're really suggesting more like Ted Talks, like for your actual keynote. So it's like, okay, break it up into 15 minute segments, you know, maybe a 30 minute segment here and there. But you know, beyond that people aren't gonna pay attention. And you know, maybe you have a few of those day and break it up over three days, and you do four hours, four hours, four hours, something like that. But as far as like a full on long meeting, it's not the same, I tell my clients to think of it not as a meeting. And I think that's the mistake that some people are getting into, they're thinking of it as like a traditional meeting, like they wouldn't have ballroom where you have everybody all day going in and out of segments, taking those coffee breaks, having those human interactions. So you're missing all of that. So it's not really the same. What I always say is, it's more like interactive TV, if you're gonna sit there and watch your TV, how long are you gonna watch your TV before you need to get up and have a break or do something, you know, people go to the movie theater here in the United States, in another part of the world, not as much. But in the United States, people go like that was the best movie ever. But it was too long. Well, you know, they had to do that to get off the continent, it's the same thing with your meeting, if you're talking about a meeting, that's going to be that long, people aren't going to pay attention. So you really need to break it up.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:You have to also be smart about your agenda, too, you have to be smart about how you're planning it because it's going to be Ted Talk style, you don't have the time, it's a different level of engagement than having someone sit in the ballroom. So let's talk about common misperceptions combined with some tips and tricks. Let's start with costs. And I'm going to speak about it from the planner side, people think that these virtual meetings are going to be significantly cheaper than in person, the truth is, yes, you don't have the overhead, you might not have the food and beverage, we'll get to why it's a might, you are probably going to have less speakers. So it is going to be cheaper or more cost efficient on that side. But when you talk about AV, think about when you have to live Skype someone into your ballroom, that is a huge cost to make sure that that internet is stable, and that you can do that this is a huge cost. And so I know when I went to the powers that be on my side to say it's going to cost X amount, they were like, We don't understand we do this on zoom for free. And you know, I had to be the voice of reality, aka the controversial one. And I'm like, Hey, have you seen your last meeting that you did on zoom? That's not what you want to represent for a larger meeting. So when you go to budget, this, I would say, look at what your AV costs are for a three day meeting, and you're probably going to come in around the same rate. I mean, it's going to be a little less. Is it a faux pas for me to kind of talk about general price?
Patrick Brochu:No, no.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Yeah, like, for a day meeting in a virtual conference, you're probably looking at anywhere between 25 to 30,000 per day, right? And that, if you're lucky, includes pre production and two days or three days of testing, as well as the live event day. It's not a $5,000 meeting, if that's what you're going into this thinking, please do get that out of your mind. If you're looking at a $5,000 virtual setup that's very different.
Patrick Brochu:That sounds about right. If you have a middle of the ground meeting yet, it's probably about the same AV wise, if you have a much larger production, and I'm talking like huge stage set, big, big speaker presenters coming in, stuff like that. I feel like those people, their cost is actually going to be lower than what they experienced in general session.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Right? Right.
Patrick Brochu:Because of certain things, they don't have to pay the extra for the speaker to come in, they're able to zoom them in or so you have some of that cost is lost there. And there's not a huge cost when you go from 500 people to 1000 people to 2000 people, there's not a huge, huge cost differential. So for those people, they're actually winning middle of the ground, I would say they're probably coming in about the same. If you're used to spending like 50 to $100,000, for like a 500 person meeting, you're probably going to be about the same Yeah, into a virtual however, the people that are really going to be suffering and are suffering are the people that have the lower budget events. Yes, in the lower budget events. As far as AV goes, like, if you're just used to you're in a nice high quality hotel, but you're used to that podium microphone screen kit. And you're used to having one AV tech sitting there with you all day, when you go virtual, you're having to add a lot more things that you're not used to adding because you have to take care of all that for you. So those are the people that their cost is much higher than they were expecting.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:To go along with that. A tip when you get these quotes is to make sure that your quote includes those pre production days, I can't stress that enough. When we just did a meeting on teams. For our customer group. It took us about a week to go through and test presentations, make sure the presenter knows how to present so you don't look like you're scripted. It's so important to have those pre production days. And I know a lot of people think oh, we can skip that. Because we can do that ourselves. If you can't. And along with those pre production days comes the pre recording, you want to make sure those keynote speakers, those important presentations, you might want to pre record them, you might not want them to be live just because you want to mitigate any outages or challenges that would happen. So it's really important to include those pre recorded days. Do you have a lot of people on your end, Patrick, that one it kind of skip that?
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, you want to pre record as much as possible, because you're just taking a lot of the guessing out for exactly the reasons that you're talking about whether it's an internet outage, a power outage, we had a speaker on that was in Puerto Rico when a hurricane was going through, and we lost their signal this past year. So luckily, that one was on a pre recorded thing. So we just rescheduled it and we're able to do it. But what about if that happened on the actual show day, you're gonna want to mitigate as much as possible. I always tell people, hey, if this particular speaker presenter doesn't have a actual interaction with the attendees, there's no reason because we're going to do what is known as a look live. So it will look like people think it's live, but you don't have to be live, you know, unless I'm actually or something like that.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Yeah, the reason that's so important, because that's something I'm fighting right now is everyone thinks, oh, I need to be recorded. I want to speak live because it's a live event. Are you taking Q&A Are you interacting? Why are you putting yourself in a situation where maybe you're going to stumble over abominable snowman can't say that word, bom -- I don't put myself in a situation where I know I struggle over this word. Or I know that when it comes to these facts and statistics, I need to be looking at a screen or I need it right here, pre record that because talking about looking live, you can play your video as if it's live, and you have a live Q&A going on at the sides. Now you're interacting with people as the video is going on. And so it takes a little bit of convincing. But it's really, really important to let them know you're avoiding so many things that can happen by pre recording. Another thing that goes into the price that people don't think about is the number of people on the back end that it takes to actually put a show on live. And I think that people think that there's two people in the room that Yeah, press play and pause. And that's it. How big is your crew?
Patrick Brochu:I would say not the most basic but the majority of the virtual shows that we're doing. There's about seven people behind the scenes that are running it live, we've had some virtual shows that will have 11-12 people. And that's normally if we're using like a studio, we have some extra camera operators, etc. But yeah, I mean, you're you got to think about it just like you're going backstage at your actual show. And this is a very technical thing. You have your main switcher, just like in regular audio visual, that person is basically taking all the content and putting it out and condensing it together and putting out that one image and that person's going to an operator that's running the encoders and the encoders are actually what are taking those images, compressing them and then putting them up live to the audience. You're going to have a sound engineer with all those feeds coming in, even if we don't have the person in the studio, all those audio feeds that are coming in from whatever we're using to communicate with speakers and have speakers coming in from any playback graphics. So you're gonna have that audio person. Another position that you will have is your playback position playback in the audio visual world is whoever's running video. So if you have any videos like a commercial or something that needs to play, or if we have a pre recorded session that was recorded, that person will be responsible for making sure that those flags, then we have an operator of a system that would manage all of the speakers coming in. A lot of times on the back end, it's something as simple as a goto meeting, or a WebEx, Skype, or even just a Zoom, and those signals are coming in to that center person. And then they're putting it back out to the platform. So that's five. Six would be the technical director, and seven would be the stage manager and stage managers job is to communicate with the speakers and get them up. Okay, you're coming up next, etc. Let's work with this person. So that's seven person crew right there. And like you said, Stacey, a lot of people think that it's just two people in the room. And I'm going, I didn't mean, technical, but I felt like people need to know.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I feel as though people need to hear how smart you are. So it's important that people hear all of that, because they need to know that it's not a two man job. And when you're putting on a professional virtual event, it's going to take a crew of people much like if you're in person, so that's talking about the numbers and the number of 25 to 30,000, although that includes labor also includes the license for the platform for you to actually host your meeting, right?
Patrick Brochu:Depending on the platform. Yeah, depending on because some platforms are really expensive, some are less. And that's another thing to talk about when I was talking earlier about the timeframe that we were working in earlier this summer, is that right? Now, a lot of these virtual platforms, especially the higher end ones, you can't even get a meeting with them because they're backed up. And I'm not going to name names of particular platforms. But there are some there's some clients have been talking with. And they're like, Hey, you know, I just did an event with so and so. And I did that because I couldn't even get in a meeting for three months with this other platform that I was really interested in.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I had to explain that to my group, when they wanted to change dates, I told them, it's not that easy. The same as when you try to book a hotel in the middle of event season. And they're booked the same things happening on the virtual platform side. And they were shocked when I said that we don't understand. It's just a platform. Just put it on internet. That I don't know how it works bruv.
Patrick Brochu:Stacy, there's this kind of transitions? Well, because there's something that I said even before all of this in our industry. And for whatever reason the planners, they're very educated on certain things like they know everything that there is to know about attrition, you know, room rates, food and beverage, even dealing with dmcs or contracting directly with individual providers, like furniture rental companies, except they know everything. But when it comes for whatever reason to audio visual, I've always said that it feels like foreign language, we're dealing in an orient, it's just as frustrating as it is on the planner. And because on our end we're dealing with I don't mean anything derogatory about us, but an uneducated buyer because right buyer doesn't know what they don't know, I can't tell you how many times I've hopped on phone calls with people and it's, well, this person's 30-$40,000 less than you and I don't understand why well, okay, is this apples to apples? Yeah, well, let's actually go through this. And I have an actual example. I did the quote for two days show two days of pre production for virtual show. And this person was telling me that the other bidders were $30,000, less than me, we actually went through it. And it turns out, there was no pre production at all from the other two companies. And the other two companies were only quoting on a one day-
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Pre production is insurance, people. It is insurance that you'll actually use.
Patrick Brochu:That person didn't even realize that, you know, until I was like, hey, these aren't apples to apples. It's a totally different ballgame. And they wanted me to quote based on those. And I pushed back just saying, Listen, if you don't have that pre production, how is this whole thing going to happen? How are we going to rehearse anything, but our clients and our planners in today's world are more on edge and it's not their fault? It's deal, we're thrown into something that's brand new, but they don't know what they don't know.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:And let me say this, I just said it. Pre production is your insurance, and it is insurance you're going to use. That's number one. And I see it on the planner side. I think that people think, okay, I'm booking the hotel, I'm booking, AV, I'm booking transportation, I'm booking entertainment, whatever. It's their job to know what they're doing. I don't need to know that. And I encourage everyone to not do that. And to really sit down and talk to your vendors and your partners and understand what's going on. I know that that has helped me throughout the years sitting backstage with the crew and seeing what they're doing. hearing their struggle when somebody comes five minutes before they go on stage with a presentation or during the quoting process. Don't just get the quote and scroll to the bottom of the page and go, it's in my budget, sign and return, you might actually want to talk about why exactly do you have a person here? I don't understand this, ask the questions. And Patrick, I might be speaking for you or for suppliers in general, I don't think you mind when someone actually takes the time to ask you that question just means that they're further engaged and want to make sure they're putting on a proper event.
Patrick Brochu:I would definitely prefer that to the alternative, which I find that happens all too often is I'll go back Hey, just following up on bla bla, bla quoted out, you know, never heard back or, and then you know, you finally get in touch to person, oh, we want somebody else because of cost or whatever. Well, okay, what could we have done differently? Well, you had this and what was the reason that you had that? And then it's like, why do you That's why, before then, and yeah, and or, you know, maybe we're going off of an old RFP that they just sent us, but they to give somebody else the most up to date information. Or at the same point, they didn't realize that the other person wasn't including something that was asked for in the RFP that now they realized that we had that they didn't know that that cost is changing anyway. You know, that happens a lot.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Yeah. So we talked about the contract, we talked about what goes into it, let's talk about further engagement of your attendees on virtual platforms, how can I engage my customers or my attendees, and there's so many different ways. Just because you're planning a five hour event doesn't mean it's five hours of non stop speaking, please, people include breaks, especially during this time, when people are working from home and kids are home and you have all these distractions going on. Please do not plan a five to six hour straight meeting, I promise you, no one is going to retain that information and don't do it. And you could say to me, Stacy, I have a limited budget, I can't plan that much. And I bet you you have talent within your team. So we're looking at planning, cooking demos, planning our wine tasting, we're actually planning an exercise break in the meeting. So it could be just Hey, we found this on YouTube. And everyone's going to do this exercise at the same time. Or we have a yoga instructor. She's going to teach a class to the group or a break. We've spoken to Meir who does amazing virtual events. He does awards, he does virtual photo booths. There's different ways to engage your attendees. Have you seen any creative things on your site, Patrick?
Patrick Brochu:One that's kind of cool. Coming up, I didn't come up with this somebody else did. But it is a virtual wine tasting event. And this is a fundraising events that have a gala, they decided you buy tickets, they're going to send you a three pack or five pack of wine or six pack whatever of wine. You can literally open those bottles at your house and they're having celebrities on the other side who are going to be tasting it talking about it with a Sommelier. Again, when I was saying earlier, it's less of a meeting less of a gala, but it is interactive TV. Now you're going through the TV screen talking about this wine that you're tasting and watching big time celebrities tasting the exact same thing that you're tasting at home.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Exactly.
Patrick Brochu:Think outside the box people.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Right, and you're not going to get me not engaged in a wine tasting.
Patrick Brochu:No 100%. And I and I've seen other things that people are doing. There's another one, it is an incentive and they are sending everybody stuff at home food wise that can be delivered. So they can also say the same thing at home. I've seen bigger conferences offering instead of that, and Uber Eats gift cards. So everybody Yeah, yeah. He and not have to cook at home so that it's up to them. They can order whatever they want. Yeah, so that they're all engaged. So I've seen interactive ways.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Yeah. And you can do that. And trust me, people will appreciate it. Because especially if you're blocking their calendar, even for four hours, they now don't have to think about lunch or meal, it's already provided. Maybe you offer 15 minute breaks. So somebody could look at a menu place to order, even if you came in. And I know it's a lot of money, if you think about Uber Eats, but even if you came in at $100 per person per day, that is still significantly less than what you would pay at a hotel. And so it's nice when companies do that. And they'll say, okay, we're gonna not only provide you a meal, but for the next two days, we know we're going to keep your attention, you might not be able to get off and cook dinner for the family because now you've finished a meeting but you still have work to do. You can order dinner on us for the family. So there's just so many different ways of engaging your attendees and you don't have to worry about it being Stacey we have four hours and we have four hours and 30 minutes of content. I don't have time to give somebody a break. It doesn't have to be long. 10 minute breaks are appreciated. It kind of resets your mind a bio break. You can go to the kitchen and get your smart sweets I'm eating smart, sweet, delicious. And then it comes back, but it's appreciated on that side.
Patrick Brochu:We've covered a lot, but I feel like there's still a lot to go.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:So if you have any questions and you want to learn more, email us at
Patrick Brochu:wellseasonededucation@gmail.com
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:I think it's time for some paprika. I like seeing paprika.
Patrick Brochu:Stacey, can you remind everybody what is the paprika that we always?
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Okay, so it's our segment about nothing much like paprika, although I really do like smoked paprika, and I put it on everything. But it's a segment about nothing. It's just you know, we give you a lot of information you take it in and we just want to leave on a note of Hey, what's good in your hood. So Patrick, do you have anything that you would like to add a little paprika on? Oh, I have a paprika. So my dog's a lunatic. Every day when we walk him, we always go all the way out in the desert. Yesterday he was whining and complaining to go for a walk. He does not bark except when he wants to go for a walk and so, we took him out for a walk and we get a little bit further out there and somebody's shooting which let's just say it's a red flag warning people. Why are you shooting right now but you know what? I'll let this pass. My dog stops. Here's all the gunshots. Immediately he starts crying. I have a pitbull boxer. He's a punkest pitbull boxer I have. So we go we walk in, I always take him off the leash because it's open desert and he stays by me. It's fine. Well, they start shooting and my dog takes off like Usain Bolt runs, maybe a quarter of a mile just keeps going. And I'm like, Oh, no, I can't chase him. Rocci can't chase him. And I'm standing there all Milo No, Milo, come back. And he looks -- he does not turn around. He just keeps running. And living in Nevada, open carry I'm like somebody is gonna shoot my dog. So as I'm screaming for my dog, he finally turns around and stares at me runs towards me. Here's more gunshots, turns around, runs back and I'm like, I'm about to lose my dog. I don't know what to do. Well, eventually he did come back to me and I was able to put a leash on him. But I'm gonna call him Hussein from now on because Usain Bolt took off. Like Rocci's like, I don't know what you want me to do. I can't chase dog. And I'm like, Well, I mean, you could have at least like, yelled at him do something. And he's all Yeah, whatever. Little, bastard. But I almost lost my dog yesterday. What about your paprika?
Patrick Brochu:Well, there's one thing that's been on my mind. And it's been it's, you know, it's taken up my entire life lately. And that is my kids doing virtual Elementary School. In my living room, for those of you that don't know --
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:you need to see how somber he got just no
Patrick Brochu:yeah. So I so I have five year old twins just starting kindergarten for the first time. And my wife is a high school teacher. And so in one room of the house, and the guest room that's been transformed into her gym slash schoolroom. She's in there teaching and she starts probably about 8am. And she goes till 3-3:30. And my kids, they start
at 7:30-8am in the living room, and I have this desk that we purchased that is on wheels, and rolls out and then opens up. So it takes up the whole living room. Because there's two of them in there have two computers, whatever. And being the AV guy, I have all these cords and wires and everything. And it's all It's very nice. And But anyway, that comes out. And first day I was like, Oh no, they can't do this by themselves. They're wearing their headsets with their microphones and everything. And I can't hear anything. So I had to plug in an adapter. So I could hear another auxiliary line that goes out to a little speaker that plays really quietly. And so I have to listen. And I thought, naively, that I was going to be able to just, you know, work on my computer and do emails in the morning. No, I mean, it is hands-on from 8am until about 1:30pm.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:You have them set up in the living room with basically a speaker going to your office so you can listen to them the whole time?
Patrick Brochu:No, I can't be in my office. I literally have to be sitting at the table with them. So I have my laptop in there and I monitor emails but I can't really I do short replies or I just say Hey, I'll get back to you later this afternoon. And then I go to my office around 2pm I feed them lunch, everything then they go back for a little bit and then they break we typically give them a little bit of tablet time or they watch a movie or they color something they're not disturbing my wife because then I have to go work. So from two to 330 they're basically on their own like You know they're in the same house but to where you neither one of us they like we have to start our own thing. So I come out and then I normally go from two till six working, that's about four hours and then I take a dinner break. And then I normally after they go to bed around 830 go back into my office and I'm there until probably 11 to midnight, depending on what I have going on. And then the next day, it's like you just start over but the thing that I want to talk about was just the classroom from home it's great. I love, because in our world of traveling so much, I have been missing out on so much and this has really opened my eyes to how much I really missed them and how grateful I am for them and how awesome this is even though it's obviously detrimental to our industry and everything but how great this has been spending this valuable time with them. But this with the schooling is a whole nother ballgame. I'm over it.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:You're like, I would like to spend time with them, before they go to school, from 730 to 3.
Patrick Brochu:Yeah, exactly. It's going good. It's going -- their teacher's doing a great job, but I mean, it can't this Yeah, it's tough. It's tough.
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:You always play me. I say something like, Oh my God, my dog ran away and you're like, I just want to bring the mood down a little bit. My boys are home, it's just so hard. I'm like, why did you let me go first? Why?
Patrick Brochu:I'm pretty sure that you just went first
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Fine then you know what? Switch it up sound editor.
Lumbergh:Yeah. Uh, okay, then.
Patrick Brochu:Anyway, for all of you that are at home and have kids doing school from home or--
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Gonna give them a Hallmark card now?
Patrick Brochu:or anything. God love you, God bless you because I'm seeing this firsthand. And it's tough and thank goodness that my employer is cool with it. I'm just like, Hey, guys, I can't be on a conference call before 2pm but I'll work all night. I don't care. It's just that's been interesting
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:You need some eye masks Thank you everybody for joining us.
Patrick Brochu:Thank you guys for listening. We really appreciate it. Please do send us an email if you have a topic that you would like for us to cover any suggestions we'd love to hear from you. wellseasonededucation@gmail.com
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Bye. Peace out Cub Scouts
Patrick Brochu:Peace out!
Staceyann VanHorne-Doria:Episode produced by Patrick Brochu and Staceyann VanHorne-Doria. Sound editing by Rocci Doria and song by Dr. Delight.