500 Cats
From the creators of How to Ski It, 500 Cats is BCC Live's newest and most unpredictable podcast. Dive into the wild, unfiltered world of event professionals as they share the highs, lows, and hilarious moments from behind the scenes. Unhinged, a little chaotic, but always entertaining—this is the podcast that gives you a front-row seat to the fun, challenges, and camaraderie that make the event industry tick. Tune in for candid conversations, stories, and a lot of laughs. 500 Cats is only here for 500 episodes... so don't miss it!
500 Cats
22 - Auto Responders are like YouTube Comments
Welcome back to 500 Cats, Episode 22! After a much-needed (and very busy) hiatus, the team is here to dish on the trials and tribulations of event production, starting with their number one pet peeve: auto-responders. Find out why these "out-of-office" emails are a "plague in the event business" when you're literally on-site with the sender.
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Are we back into our 500 cats note? Yes. All right. Three, two, one. Go. Episode 28. Okay. So episode 22. 28 is the wishful thinking number, but 22 is where we're at. It's the actual number. A 500 Cats, a podcast dedicated to the trials and tribulations of... Cat ownership. Cat ownership or working events. Very similar, herding cats. Very similar. Yeah. I would think if you had like 100 cats or... you just put on a sporting event would be about the same amount of work. Yeah, I would agree. Anyway. Yeah. So first thing that we had that we were going to talk about, I can't take it anymore. Yeah. Let's get into it. It's too much. It's, it's a plague in the event business. And that is. Autoresponders. Autoresponders. I like how all of us were like, okay, who's going to drop it? Autoresponders in email. Autoresponders in email. Often referred to as out of office emails, but they don't have to be out of office. And I think that's what makes me the most angry. Well, and in the event business, typically, and to be super clear, because I'm sure most of our clients are like, oh, snap, they're talking about us. It's everyone. It's everyone. And in the event business, you're pretty much out of the office all the time. While you're at work, you're pretty much out of the office. But you send somebody an email, and here's an email, for example. you know, hey, great, we're on the ground. We'll see you guys in about two hours. We're hoping that you have the code to the XYZ door. And then you get an email that says, thanks for your email, but I'm out of the office and I won't be able to respond. And you're like, I'm coming to see you in 30 minutes. What do you mean you won't be able to respond? Like I'm effectively coming to your office. I'm effectively coming to your office. But then I could go on all day about just– We all have to respond to our emails. If I didn't respond to emails when I had events, yesterday would have been the first day I would have gotten back to emails since February. Yeah. You know how many
SPEAKER_01:events we would have not been able to effectively plan if we had out-of-office emails when we were at events? All of them?
SPEAKER_02:And here's the thing. A lot of them say, like, some type of nice, you know, please excuse the tardiness, like... Okay, first of all, I understand. You're traveling and you're on the road. I get it. But just, it's okay. Just respond. Yeah. When you get a chance at the end of the day or the next day or whatever. But saying, because the people that are emailing me this week, so we have an event this weekend. It's the Ironman European Championships Frankfurt. And so I'm getting dozens of emails every day saying, It wouldn't be appropriate to be like, I'm out of the office. I mean, and I'm not, so I'm in a studio. But if I was going, Ryan's going, and just saying, hey, I'm out of the office. Well, how does that work? Yeah. Like we still have to put on the event. You're out of the office for that event most of the time. That's what gets me. No, we should maybe clarify. I think we are getting autoresponder emails on that particular subject from our European counterparts because they are on vacation. And vacation, I think, is different. I think that's different. I'm saying that... I think that's the point of it. That's the point of it. I will not,
SPEAKER_01:not even I can't, I will not be responding to this, just so you know. I
SPEAKER_02:am out of the office this week for the Ironman European Championships Frankfurt. people would lose their smack by the end of the day today. You guys would get phone calls. We'd get phone calls, yeah. And then if you're traveling every week to a different event, man, that's a lot of upkeep, which some people don't do, to be like, okay, now I'm not in Boulder this weekend. I'm in Coeur d'Alene, so please excuse my tardy emails. And it's like the time to manage that, you might as well just respond to your email. Yeah, and I think that's– That's where I know they're total BS is when I send somebody an email and it's like, sorry, I'm out of the town for an event that took place five months ago. And you're like, okay, now it's not even real. I got that from a vendor that was like scheduled a time to meet up at NAB. And that was like three months ago. That was in April. That was in April. That does not bode well. So I guess one of my questions is, is this mandated from a– like corporate level, I'm assuming because it's so ridiculous in some situations. I feel like it must be because everyone has it. On all our clients. Yeah. And I love when we're going to meet our client at an event, like, hey, we're on the ground in XYZ. New York and sorry, I'm out of the office and I won't be able to respond to your email for a week. I just flew to New York to meet you.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I like when you send an email and you can see them across the way and you send an email to them and they're, they're literally within your line of sight and you get a response. It's like,
SPEAKER_02:sorry, we've talked about that before actually of doing a test. Oh yeah. Like who am I going to get the autoresponder from? Yes. Have you ever set one? I never have. I have not. No, I have not. I never have, but I'm gonna. Yeah. Because we're going on a company retreat. The second, well, we're going from the 5th to the 10th of July. So go ahead and email me your super secret, top secret plans on how to put on an event and I'll have an autoresponder. But it's going to say it's that I'm out of the office for the 2006 Ford Ironman Arizona. I was thinking it's like for the Olympics. Like I'm on site at the 2027 Olympic Winter Games walkthrough.
SPEAKER_00:The 16 Torino Winter Games.
SPEAKER_02:So I don't know. That's just a gripe. I'm sure a lot of our clients are like they're talking about us. But it isn't any specific client or customer. But we are talking about you. It's everybody these days. But it's even our vendors. Like Dylan was saying, he reached out to get some support from one of our– dearly loved vendors, and they were like, we're at a conference last April. Yeah, which is wild because that's like a sales person that we reached out to in that vendor. I mean, we go through them to buy new products. Our account rep, yeah. So what? Just update it. Yeah, well, update it and tell me why you're out. And NAB is not an– if you're at a conference for work– All the more reason to just pour it on and get back to all your emails as fast as possible. If we went to NAB, I would want to be able to get, you know, hey, I met you today and we have an event that we're thinking you might be a good fit for. What do you guys think? How's your August looking? Sorry, but I'm out of the office and I'll get back to you when I get back in the office. I don't think that's a very good fit for us. Yeah, I agree. I don't know. And again, Email etiquette is, and if you've worked with me or for me, you know that I'm kind of a stickler that we don't send one word emails. We don't send emails that are like, we don't send emojis in place of emails. And we also clean your inbox out at the end of the day. Let people know I don't have an answer. But I got your email. Yeah. And I'm working on it. And I'm sure somebody out there is saying, oh, BS. I think I do pretty good. As a company, I think we do really good at getting back. We do better than our clients and our vendors. We do much better than our clients and our vendors. And that's been like something that I've worked hard to make sure that our vendors– work at the level we do, or why are they our vendors? Because when your client is saying, where's the widget, and your vendor's saying, I'm out of office to the 1978 Ironman on Oahu, that doesn't really help us tell our customer when the widget's coming. So anyway, Pet Peeve, not really connected to events, but it's all the event production companies we work with. Who started it? Who did it first? And then who thought it was a good idea? No, you know where I guarantee this is how it
SPEAKER_01:got over into the event. Because there's no way that some event person from the ground was like, I need to send an out-of-office email. It came from somebody who used to work in corporate America. Oh, we use out-of-office. And they're like, I left the office building. Therefore, I
SPEAKER_02:need to set this. And everybody's like, this is the greatest idea ever. Yeah. But imagine what a turnoff it is if you're, hey, we're ready to move forward with that project. And it's like, sorry, I'm out of the office at another project. And I understand you're trying to set expectations. And that's really what an out-of-office response is. But the expectation should be that I'm either out of the office on vacation at Lake Powell, the 5th through the 10th, and I'm not going to get any response. Yep. Or– it should be that I'm gonna respond. And delayed response, that doesn't do anything for me. Yeah, I agree. And I know everybody wants it now, but I feel like customer service is the easiest thing to add to a business. And it doesn't matter if you're a landscaping business, a painting business, or a broadcasting company, adding good customer service is the easiest thing to do. Getting your finances honed and stuff like that is a million times harder. But taking care of customer service is like showing up on time. It's the easiest thing to do. For sure. And if you're one of our customers and you disagree that we don't do that, I think we do. But somebody just kicked a puppy into the lake somewhere. And just know if you ever get a one-word response, that was calculated. Yeah. We did choose that. Yeah. Okay. So to be clear, the only time I'll reply to an email without– you know, the salutation of like Marcus. Yeah. Glad to hear you enjoyed blah, blah, blah. Thanks. Comma Dave. Um, the only time I won't add that is when it starts going back and forth and they're not adding it. Yeah. When it becomes like a text message chain essentially. Or I'm just freakishly pissed off. Do you have a, and I know lots of people and I won't call them out. have a statement they add to emails. When you're mad. Yeah, and a dear friend of mine used to say, oh, what did she say? She had one that said bless you or bless, I don't know. Yeah, the classic one is regards. Yeah, that's what I was thinking as well. That's the classic one. I just take off thanks. Generally speaking, I'm like, yeah, thanks, appreciate it. I just take it off. It's just Marcus.
UNKNOWN:Marcus.
SPEAKER_02:I try to, yeah, guard my frustration or lack thereof by just saying, you know, Marcus at the beginning, thanks Dave at the end. And I might not feel that way, but seldom do I add a salutation or something that is a code word for I hate you. But if I did, oh, I hope I haven't sent this to anybody. It's been a long time. If I really don't like what you said... I usually end my email with, hope this helps. That's a good one. That's a good one. I use that one seriously. So I'll think about that in the future. So at the top of Outlook, there's a search bar. And if you just put in, hope this helps. And see if it was from Dave Downey. I don't think it is. Well, first of all, I've admitted it before to clients. And so I've been really careful to not use it. And I have. put it in there so that if I ever cross that email, I can remind myself. I'm going to start using hope this helps sincerely just to throw everything off whack. Yeah. And, and I wish I could remember what the other one was that one of my friends used. Yeah. I remember seeing, I wish I could find it. There was just some social posts of a list of them, kind of like what we have to share it in a bit that Man, it just had me rolling. There's some good ones out there. Oh, yeah. I mean, the classic
SPEAKER_01:one, which is not like a sign-off, but the classic thing to put in your email is, as per my last email, which I really love.
SPEAKER_02:Yes.
SPEAKER_01:When you get the opportunity, but as per my last email.
SPEAKER_02:And it's hard. And again, we're supposed to be talking about events and the event business. But as with all industries and stuff like that, email is a huge part of it. And the event business is different. Yeah. Like sometimes things get way more heated in the field than would ever be tolerated in an office. Yeah. And then now overlaying email on top of that and trying to convey maybe your feelings or your urgency or some sometimes goes across wrong because sometimes I get emails and I'm like, oh, no, you didn't. Yeah, for sure. It doesn't come across in text. And then the best thing I think to do is pick up the phone. Yeah. And a lot of times you pick up the phone and you're like, oh, that's not what they meant. Yeah, for sure. And did you read what you wrote? How many times have you written out something and then be like, no, no, no, no, back up. My drafts are full of emails that are like, this is the last time we are going to talk about this. And then I'm just like, I definitely have learned something. of being in business for almost 30 years of sending jerkish emails or rude emails don't really get you anywhere. Yeah. But they're always a reminder that somebody has in their inbox of what a jerk you were. Yeah. And so sometimes you have to be curt. Right. And sometimes you have to be to the point. And this isn't acceptable and we can't, I mean, we deal with electricity. We deal with a lot of things that there's not a lot of room for negotiation. True. And so sometimes you have to be really to the point. Yeah. Which is, is very much different than being rude. Having to be direct. But if you were going to be rude, so this isn't our content. We found this on the interwebs. Yeah. And so we didn't make it up, but they were nicknames that you wanted to use for bad coworkers or lazy coworkers or something. And it was kind of funny because we do have some code names for things where words are no longer appropriate to be used in the professional environment. And so then you just have a code word. But these were really good. So nicknames for lazy coworkers. And moving on from email, but these would be good to put in email because it wouldn't be so rude. So one of them is to call somebody cordless. And you think about it doesn't seem like mean, but that's when it only works for two hours. Different than wireless. Different than wireless. And then ET, I feel like that one, I get it, like always wants to go home. Yeah. Oh. Famously. And I feel like we've had ETs or people. Definitely. Oh, I could name names. I could name names for all of these. And we've had people here at our office that it's like noon and they're like, well, anything else? Oh, just to be clear, when I said I could name names, I meant from people that have worked here. Oh, yeah, that's what I'm saying, yes. Kit Kat, always taking a break, which is pretty good. And then the muffler, always exhausted. The thing I love about these is if someone just sprung it on someone, like a new guy, it would sound fun and lighthearted. Be like, what's up, Kit Kat? Okay, I guess he likes me. Yeah, what's up, seaweed? Seaweed just floats around all day. So those are pretty good. Okay, so the next two are by far my favorite. This next one's my favorite right here. Because I've worked, so this is somebody, this is for the event business. Oh, yeah. And there are some people that don't, really work that hard until you put the spotlight on them or until you walk by them or something. And it's called sensor light. Only works when somebody walks past. No, I've read that one before. Oh, floodlight. Yeah, floodlight. And then wheelbarrow. Only works when pushed. That's such a good list. And the conversation evolved from the overabundance, overusage of autoresponders And then we talked a little bit about email etiquette. And then it was nice ways to be a jerk. Yes. So you see the natural transition there. The natural progression. But anyway, two events. So we had a couple events this weekend. Ryan High is supposed to be coming straight from Illinois. Rockford, Illinois. Brand new 70.3 out there. And I heard it was really hot. Yeah. And he's going to tell us a little bit about that. He landed, and he's on his way to the studio. The guy's working hard. He's got to go to Frankfurt this weekend, and we're going to ask him if he puts an auto-respond on his email. I can tell you the answer to that by the fact that he works here. We have encouraged staff to go back. to put an autoresponder on their email if they're on vacation and they don't want to get bothered. But do you know what happens when I ask somebody to put an autoresponder on their email so they don't get bothered? They never turn it off. No, they say, I'd rather just get my email and stay on top of it. And that's definitely not something that we push for or demand or anything like that, but it's pretty much the common thing. And that's where I stand. I would rather... When we're at Lake Powell, we'll take a Starlink. And I'd rather stay on top of my email than come off the lake after five days and watch emails of, hey, can I get a copy of this video? Hey, I'm still waiting for this video two hours later. Hey, do you not have it? Hey, you're the worst person in the world. Hey, maybe we'll find somebody else to make it. And then it's like, thanks, I was on the lake. Here it is. Well, no exaggeration. I mean, five days. What is that, like 750 emails? Yeah. Oh, man. Hundreds. Yeah, that's an interesting number we should find out in those five days. I'm working hard because I even did a podcast about it. Don't email me. The fifth through the 10th. So I'm hoping that we could head some of it off, but I think 750 would probably be the number if we had it off. And to be clear, 250 of those are autoresponders.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Exactly. From us saying, hey, I got your email. The logos look good. We'll insert them into the video. Send. Hey, I'm out of the office. Yes. But you just asked me to update this video. Does this mean I didn't need to update it? Anyway, so we'll talk more about Illinois and Illinois. Illinois. I like that he said it right and then intentionally added the S. So a funny little story. And this was long before I really was an announcer or started announcing. And we were at Iron Man 70.3 Steelhead. And back then it was just called Steelhead. And Dave Kappas, who's a great announcer, was the announcer. And like I said, this is before I announced. And he said, do you think you could take over for a little bit? I need to go use the restroom. And I mean, it's like you're just reading off names. Yeah. Big deal, right? So I sit down and it was going really well. And he even came back from the bathroom and then just stood behind me. because he was like, hey, he's doing fine. I'll let him go for a little bit. And then I was like, and here comes Dylan Camacho from Chicago, Illinois. And no exaggeration, the crowd would just, oh. And then I got some booze. And then Dave Kappas patted me on the back. And he's like, all right, I'll take over. And then he's so class. And then he went. All right, where were we? Dylan Camacho from Chicago, Illinois. And, you know, let it have it. And anyway, he's one of the people that taught me a lot, not just with funny jokes and giving me the hook, but also was like, hey, read this. Yeah, that's awesome. But anyway, yeah, I know how to say Illinois. I just like how riled up people get. Almost as riled up as people in Kentucky when you say Louisville. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Which is weird because that's the proper pronunciation if you're from Colorado. Yeah. And that's my favorite. The few times that I've done some announcing is at least once in my experience, I had someone from Louisville, Colorado immediately after Louisville, Kentucky. And you nail that. Yeah. Who heard? Yeah. And funny stories about announcers was Dave Ragsdale in Louisville, Kentucky. just ripping through it, Louisville, Louisville, Louisville, Louisville. And he's nailing all the people. And then he looks over at me and like raises his eyebrows. And I'm like, what is he about to say? And then he's like, from Louisville, Colorado. Because you're just reading this scrolling list. So it would be really easy to get wrong. But that he made the point of like, I'm paying attention. That's awesome. That's pretty clever. But what we're going to talk about before we talk about Illinois was we're working on mountain biking and gravel. Yeah. Mountain bike and gravel broadcasting. Broadcasting. And I think it would work for not, but shaky cameras. Way shaky. And we're not the only people that have shaky cameras. The people that do the UCI World Cup have shaky cameras. And I think we figured out why, because it's mountain biking. Yeah. There's a bit of bumps. There's some stuff going on. We've started to invest money in different kinds. And we've used gimbals. And we ride in vehicles and motorcycles with gimbals. And that works really well for gravel. Because you have a second person on the moto or in the vehicle that's holding the gimbal and levels it off. And it essentially solves the problem. Almost solves the problem for gravel. For the most part, it does. But for mountain biking... It's not like on a road, it's on a trail and we have to slot in with electric bikes and moto cross bikes and there is no cameraman. The moto driver is the cameraman. Yeah. And then if you just mount it on the handlebars, GoPro, whatever, terrible. Shaky footage. Yeah, and... Why I mean, what is it that people don't understand about GoPros that because you think a GoPro rail smooth, right? What's different about broadcast the
SPEAKER_01:processing? Internally whenever it records is different than whenever it outputs through HDMI Significantly different. Yeah, there's still stabilization but the I can't remember what their stabilization is called, their special... Hyper smooth. Hyper smooth. So GoPro's hyper smooth stabilization is all digital, and it's all processed on the camera itself. It is not processed on the image sensor, and the image sensor is what's rerouting and sending out the HDMI. So it has very minimal stabilization.
SPEAKER_02:So it's almost like a no-go with a GoPro.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, pretty much.
SPEAKER_02:So... We started experimenting with gimbal cams, cameras that have the gimbal built in, and tiltas, which are like spring-loaded arms and stuff like that. So this week, we have a whole bunch of equipment coming in, a sweet-ass motocross bike, and we're going to dress it up with multiple cameras. I'm excited to try this, too. A front, a back, and a right. I think we'll pass on the left. I agree. You don't typically go on the left side of athletes. I'm sure the very first course we do. All four sides. And I'm excited to do it, but it seems like a lot because as we've dug into the industry, guess who else is doing that? No one. No one. As typical with how we do things, no one else does it this way. We did set ourselves up with some pretty good technology to be able to do that, though, right? I mean, because how many people use the LU800? Right. True. Yeah, so one of the nifty things about our backpacks, and these are the backpacks that have the radios in it that transmit video, is we do have a couple backpacks that have four inputs. So four cameras. And we're going to try to do three. And then the person in the studio chooses the camera shot. So they'll be able to look in front, to the right, and to the back and then pick the best shot and then hopefully it's stabilized enough and it has the talent in frame. Yeah. Which with a GoPro it probably would automatically because they're so wide. You can get a GoPro to shoot 160 degrees I think is what you can output. Okay. Which is like half of everything in front of you. Oh yeah. Or is everything in front of you. It's half of everything around you. I'm excited about the the DJI Osmo Pocket, though, because it seems really intuitive just to say, hey, track this. Yeah. It would be sick if there's a reasonable way that we can start the tracking on an athlete as you're driving because it would pan with them and stuff. That's what we're hoping. Yeah. So like motocross gloves that are missing the finger. Yeah, just that one finger. You can just reach over, tap it, and get back. So I'm hoping we'll try all that stuff out this week. Yeah. And we'll see... And then we have several dirt events in the next 60 days. And if it works, you'll see it at all of them. That's my guess. I agree. So we're getting rid of the camera people. Getting rid of the camera people? In exchange. Or are we getting rid of the driver? Yeah, one of them's gone. So I'm kind of excited about it. It's fun. All the... All the... I think the thing that I love and what we do anymore is buying crap and making it work. Yeah. Or not making it work. There's like an engineering project every time. It's fun. Yeah. And what I think is the most fun is none of us at this table really are successful at any engineering project on our own. Yes. That one of us will get like the– the mounting and then somebody else will get the technology and somebody else will get the battery power. And it's always a multi-person. And then when the one person stuff fails, the other people are like, why don't we try this? Why don't we try that? Because at the end of the day, none of my mounting matters if your battery power doesn't or vice versa. So it is a really cool team episode. that we work on together, which is kind of cool. Yeah. I thoroughly enjoy that. It allows you to do so many different things throughout your year to like, okay, now we've got to engineer a way to do three
SPEAKER_01:cameras on a motorcycle with no camera person. How do we do that? The volume is down, so you might have to go turn the volume up on yours. Nice. We're going to be joined by Ryan Hack. That's what that reference was. But yeah, it's so cool to be able to be like, man, I don't know that anyone has ever done it like this
SPEAKER_02:for this purpose. We got to figure out how to do it and make it the best it can be. How many things do we find that we go, nobody's ever done this before. And three months later, we're like, okay, so that's why nobody's ever done it. There has been several things that we've done that with. I feel like that happens a lot. And it worries me because when you Google it, who else has done it this way and you don't find it, it's a pretty good warning sign to back off. Yeah, but sometimes you get gold and everyone goes, I don't know if you can do mobile data
SPEAKER_01:in a helicopter. And we say, well, why don't we find out? And then you have amazing coverage from a helicopter. Yeah, or Starlink in a helicopter.
SPEAKER_02:Even Starlink on a motorcycle, we were like, how come no one's tried this before? Let's just put it on a pipe. Let's figure it out. That was us. And after we successfully did it, we still got feedback from some of our, like we keep, we work with a lot of our, the proper term would be competitors, but we work with them. Yeah. They're like, we're their vendor. They're our vendor. We share stuff. Yeah. And after we tested Starlink, some of our competitors were like, yeah, it doesn't work. And we were like, hang on. And now all of those people are deep dive. Every camera has Starlink. Posting blogs like, look what we're the first in the world to do. That kind of burns me up eight months after we did a broadcast with it. And then now we're working on integrating our live view packs and our Starlink packs into a single pack that has the Starlink on the pack. and the batteries for the Starlink are in the pack, the live view units in the pack. Are we still waiting on that in the mail too? Yes, everything's in the mail these days. What's so exciting about that too is all of a sudden you have Starlink, not just when you're on the moto, but when you're handheld too. Which is one of the issues when we come off a single track and switch into a four-wheel drive. So sometimes we're on like a mountain bike and then we switch to a four-wheel drive. You have to unmount everything and then remount it. And in this case- It's just going to be hop in one, hop out the other. So it's going to cut. There's like that 10-minute window of them having to catch up to the Peloton or whatever. That'll be gone. Maybe. Yeah, totally. Maybe. Maybe. It's another one of those things. Why has nobody ever done it? All right. So that's all stuff we're excited about, and we'll fill you in more as we make headway on building our own broadcast packs. Yeah. blah, blah, blah, Starlink and helicopters. Oh, and stabilization on motocross bikes, which is a big one. But we had talked about Illinois. Illinois.
SPEAKER_01:Illinois.
SPEAKER_02:Illinois. And Ryan High, who's joining us, was at Rockford. How was it? Like, first of all, just how was it for a community? And I think one of the big– things I ask about events these days was how was like the community support, fans, and then of course like city support
SPEAKER_01:let me tell you i mean i've been to a lot of events you know all over the country all over the world now and the amount of ground support that we had from the city and just all over was really incredible i mean uh our hotel was a ways out from the city center and there are still signs and like placards up and say hey welcome iron man athletes and you know notice boards and stuff every like business was like hey come in we're open on race day everywhere and i mean when i was uh securing power for our finish line i talked to the city power guy and then he directed me to the parks department guy and they don't actually work together they just knew each other and they got me in conversation to help get this figured out i mean like every business everybody that we ran into was so so psyched to have us there and that was that really helped a ton as for spectators i mean there weren't a ton there i think because of the uh the weather which we'll talk about but um those who were there seemed to really have a blast whenever the announcers was like who's here from rockford the crowd went crazy nice um or you know who's from chicago ah and uh athletes uh everybody who finished they were they were super jazzed and volunteers oh my god we had almost as many as we had athletes that's awesome yeah and they they got it i mean when when we were knocking down swim start um The volunteers, you know, they finished picking up trash. They finished picking up like anything that got left behind. Then they start clipping down a soft fence, rolling that up without being asked. And then they start picking up barricade and stacking that up. And they were just like, Oh, awesome. Cool. We didn't ask you to do that, but awesome. Keep going. It was incredible.
SPEAKER_02:That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. And it was
SPEAKER_02:hot.
SPEAKER_01:It was hot. For those of you listening in the future, this is that time when it was really insanely hot in the Midwest. Our actual air temperature, quote unquote, only got up to like 96, but the humidity was absolute. So basically we got, you know, marinated and broiled. I'll still maintain the most uncomfortably hot I've ever, ever been
SPEAKER_02:in my life was Chicago in the summer. And man, it is just something unreal. I feel like I totally understand. It was like 96 degrees, 96% humidity, full sunshine. That is not okay.
SPEAKER_01:It's really oppressive, yeah. It sneaks up on you because the air temperature, it wasn't like 100, 110, anything like that. But the humidity and just the sun beating down on you was really rough. And that's why it took us so long to get done because we had to keep stopping or else we'd pass out.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And 96 and humidity is the exact recipe for the hottest event I've ever been to, which was in Chattanooga a few years ago. So it doesn't like we had a hundred here, but I think it was that same year. It was the same year that was, it was rock and roll Chicago. And then immediately after that was Ironman Chattanooga. And I think, was it the, that same year, I think was Coeur d'Alene, the famous Coeur d'Alene year. There was two famous Coeur d'Alene years, but that was in June, early June. Similar concept. What was the other one? It was a German race that
SPEAKER_01:got brutally... Frankfurt got really hot
SPEAKER_02:one year.
SPEAKER_01:That's right. It was that same year. Anyway. Yeah, just that oppressive Midwest heat. So that was super challenging. It was a solid event. It just made it, you know... So
SPEAKER_02:Ryan, I know you're political and stuff, but is global warming
SPEAKER_01:going to end
SPEAKER_02:the event business? They added every 15 minutes of game time, they added a hydration like two minute break. But it's a dry heat, they say. No, that's way better. Yeah, it is way better. It is so much better. Every time I hear people talk about a dry heat is always preferable. Oh, it's hot, but it's a dry heat. It'll be a dry heat at Lake Powell. Yeah. It always is. From the 5th to the 10th. What a good event. Let's go back to your hotel. I think something we haven't talked about on the podcast is how you tell how supportive a hotel is. Did they have snacks at 3 a.m.? They didn't. Oh. Yeah. First year, we'll give them a break. Exactly. But I remember, and I don't think we ever talked about this, our Fairfield Suites in St. George. has full breakfast at 3 a.m. Full hot breakfast, eggs and toast. That's support of triathlon and Ironman and stuff. And there's several hotels we go to that do that, but I'm always like... Fairfield at Geneva for Muscleman is another one. They just don't have to do it, and they do. And that's why there's a lot of nice hotels in St. George, and it's funny because they go, where do you want to stay? And I'm like, Fairfield Inn. Because they get it. That's funny. I didn't think about that. They're both Fairfields. That's, that's saying something. That's a big one. And it's one in very few. I know the stay bridge right next to the, in St. Petersburg, they always did breakfast in the morning. Yeah. And that was, I mean, like it just meant, and that's not an Ironman event. That's the Skyway 10K.
SPEAKER_00:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, that goes a long way. Cause I think you, you just said it this way is like, I mean, you go to, St. Petersburg on vacation. you bet you're going to stay bridge without a doubt because of how well they've taken care of us. Cause we used to stay there for St. Anthony's triathlon also. So it's not just the Skyway 10 K, but it is a lot of the same people. And so they choose the same hotel. Yeah. And I, you know, I'm pretty sure when you drive to Vegas for a different event, St. George is halfway. You stay at the Fairfield.
SPEAKER_01:I do. Yeah. Yeah, I do.
SPEAKER_02:And part of that's because of the ribbon chop house across
SPEAKER_01:the street. Yes, exactly. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So it sounds like a bright future for, Rockford, Illinois. Absolutely. And I know like somebody who I would say a friend and one of the best people in the event business, Eric Atnap was the race director. Yep. How did he do with the heat?
SPEAKER_01:I mean, he was, uh, you know, at the end of the day, everybody was out real late, you know, working and he's, he still had a smile on his face. He's still slinging barricade and unloading, you know, all sorts of gear and helping out medical. I mean, he was staying very positive. And of course we have a new regional director and ops director who, uh, really stepped up the game as well. But yeah, Eric, Ryan Richards and Onslow Carrington, they, they were a good leadership team and, and that really showed in a situation like this. They, they did a great job.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I don't know Onslow yet, but Ryan Richards is one of the best in the history of the business. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I see race director of the year two or three years in a row back in the, Oh yeah. 2000s. Like when we were allowed to do the race director of the year? When we were allowed to choose a race director of the year publicly. Yeah. Now it's private.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Now it's private. Is Eric Gatnip in the running for race director in the year after his one Forte into 70.3 Rockford, Illinois.
SPEAKER_01:You know, it's easy. I think he's up there. I mean, especially because of the food that he provided. Right when we got on site, there was a gyros and Swedish pancakes waiting for us as we got site set up. Wow. All right. Yeah. Like day one set up? Yeah. All right. Great first impression, first of all. Yeah. That's a good way to start. Held all the good to goes and morning meetings in the air conditioned hotel right next to site. That was nice. because it was hot.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Right next to site. That's nice because lately it's been like, hey, everybody, let's meet at a hotel two miles from here for the good to go. Yeah. And you're like, I'm good. Yeah. Yeah. We're good. That's what I said. I'm good. We're still
SPEAKER_01:working. We're good together. That's going to be my recommendation for next year as we get into the hotel that the Iron Man staff were in because they could roll out of bed and be in transition.
SPEAKER_02:And you guys were a ways away.
SPEAKER_01:We were a ways away. But you
SPEAKER_02:know I don't do travel anymore. Exactly,
SPEAKER_01:yeah. So you're complaining in the wrong spot. But that was incredible.
SPEAKER_02:I'm not surprised, for whatever reason, Midwest... is low-hanging fruit as far as events that people seem to enjoy it. Communities appreciate it. Athletes enjoy it. They're usually low-stress. Our role at this one was sound, power, internet, and then merchandise support.
SPEAKER_01:Anything else? We recorded the athlete briefings of video. A little bit of video. A little bit of video. Not as much as we used to, but still video.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And then... Got a call from Lakeshore Athletics that you guys left a mic stand behind.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, we did. And in my defense, it was about 10 p.m. when we finally finished striking the expo stage and the small black mic stand disappeared, blended in with the
SPEAKER_02:black. Why don't you explain to us what a dummy sweep is?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's when you check over the entire venue, everywhere that you've been or everywhere that any of your equipment could have been to see if you left anything, you dummy. That's right.
SPEAKER_02:I'll tell you what a dummy check is. A dummy check is so that when you still miss something, you know how dumb you are. Yeah, because somebody calls you after you've done a dummy check and they're like, hey, is this your cable ramp? And you're like, you've got how in the world?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02:Well, shout out to Kevin Cooney at Lakeshore Athletics. He knew where to go.
SPEAKER_01:And
SPEAKER_02:then they said they got it on the trailer apparently, so no harm done. And we're just giving Ryan a hard time. I know, yeah. Because the record just to– so dummy check is something– You guys brought the word dummy check in. We always just call it final sweep, but I'm good with dummy check. But just to be clear, the record is... a speaker, three stands, and three pieces of on
SPEAKER_01:the highway on an interstate. Oh, we're doing this story. I love this one.
SPEAKER_02:So it was just a few thousand dollars of equipment that was rented, rented,
SPEAKER_01:not rented is even worse.
SPEAKER_02:That's the record.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. That was an incredible one.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Usually it's like a three way and a couple orange cords. You come back and you drill the team over it. Yeah. Mic stands are like 25 bucks. So yeah. But a whole PA basically. No, boss got everything.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. All done. No, not all done.
SPEAKER_02:And you know, like here's some, here's some, just since we've been giving business advice when it comes to email etiquette, here's another way you can just know if you need to go double check something is if I ask you a question, Marcus, and you start to answer it before I finish asking. I need to go check, so let's just try it out. So I'm going to ask you, hey, Marcus, did you go get all of those? Oh, yeah, I got, yeah. Okay, cool. I'll go look myself. We call that the yeah, yeah, yeahs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So it happens. We're just giving Ryan a hard time. Oh, yeah. And then you're home for one day. Yep. And then off to Frankfurt. Yes, indeed. To hand out GPS. Yes, indeed. I've been told, and we broadcast Frankfurt. This is maybe our... This may be our 11th or 12th year broadcasting Frankfurt. It was our first broadcast, which we started way up near the top, which is kind of funny because you'd think you'd start somebody else out at a broadcast nobody would watch, but that's one of the big ones. But I've been told this is outside of Kona, like the crown jewel of events. It's men only this weekend because the women were women only in Hamburg. That's correct. So when you tune in, before you go to the YouTube comments section, to say that Ironman and BCC are the worst people in the world because they haven't shown the women in 30 minutes. It's because they raced in Hamburg. Yeah. But we will get... Oh, so many comments....really mean comments about that this weekend. And we even sometimes used to put it in the title, but then it just kind of screws the title up. Right. It gets way too long. Men's race. Then people are like, where's the women's race? Yeah. So, anyway. And have these two German-European races... Have they ever been dual gender? Yeah. Okay. you really get a good feel for, Oh, he just went by her and then he, she passed him. And so, you know where people are, but it's just good television. It's good television. And, and there's, I'm not trying to wade into the argument about equal coverage and stuff like that, because I think we've proven our point with how important that is. And we backed it up, but I like the dual gender races myself, except in Kona. No, I, I, The best events I've maybe ever been to was the first year of the women's only in Kona. And I'm not just saying that. Everything about it, we had a lot of success. Everybody was just super positive. And then the next year it was men only, and we thought it was going to be a lot of what's called peacocking. And that's where you just strut your stuff to show off because you're the fittest and the flexest.
SPEAKER_01:We were convinced. That was going to be what it was going to be the whole time.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and it wasn't. Yeah. And it was funny because everybody said, here it comes, here it comes, here it comes. And it didn't. And it was almost exactly like the women's day is everybody was just chill and it was another super wildly successful event. But apparently there's only like 10 of us on the planet that wish it stayed that way. Yeah. And if you read the YouTube comments, we're the worst people in the world. Yes. Yeah. So, you know, but maybe. Nor here nor there. We talked about this from Boulder and Penn State this last episode that I was like, I don't love it when they're split up. But who knows?
SPEAKER_01:Should be a good race, though. Looking forward to it. It's a good reminder. That was our
SPEAKER_02:first intro to this podcast was that very experience. That's right. God, that was just last year. True. At Kona. Yeah. Just think of our AI songs of, uh, peacocking and yeah. Yeah. That's the beginning. Oh, we didn't really ever see it. No, no. Although I'll be honest. I didn't go to the underpants run. It just seemed like a lot.
SPEAKER_01:Like a lot.
SPEAKER_02:I've never gone cause we're working. So, um, It wouldn't have made a difference. But anyway, anything else to add for Rockford, Illinois?
SPEAKER_01:Not really. I mean, yeah, solid race. I think if it cools down a little bit next year, it could be a real gem. But yeah, people are happy. I was happy. I'm tired now.
SPEAKER_02:Did you see the Speedway in Rockford? I didn't. A friend of ours family owns the Speedway. Well, you know her, Kelsey. Deary, who's married to Ben Hoffman. Her family runs the Rockford Speedway. That's cool. And if you've ever seen Kelsey Deary sing the national anthem, you'll be like, whoa, where did that come from? Like it's, it's as good as it gets. She's as good as, and then one time I was like, cause we, we used to work expo together. So you don't expect like some girl that works expo to bust out the best national anthem. So I said, where'd that come from? She's like, oh, my family owns the Speedway in Rockford. And I sang it on Friday nights. Nice. It's funny if you ever ask somebody about where they learned the national anthem. Yeah. You'll hear more than just I heard it on TV. It's always like Dave Hewitt, who we work with in production, and we've had to fall back on him. You know, used to sing it like at baseball games growing up and stuff like that. So there's always a super cool story. So, well, awesome. I think that's going to be one of the good events. We used to have an event once. Let's see. Rockford is south of Chicago. Yep. About two hours. Mostly west. Southwest of Chicago. About two hours. Yep. So kind of near Iowa. Yeah, well,
SPEAKER_01:on that side.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yep. Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Heading that way.
SPEAKER_02:And the Midwest events are awesome. Coming up in a couple weeks, we have Muncie, which is another... Yeah, gem. Gem. Oh, it's like northwest of Chicago.
SPEAKER_01:Is it northwest? Yeah. Yeah. I just followed the GPS. And I've never
SPEAKER_02:been there. I fly in and out of Chicago all the time. We used to keep a trailer there, but we never, we just grabbed the trailer and left. This is interesting. It's probably about even less distance directly south of Madison. Yeah, and that's what I was kind of wondering.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, a lot of the local storage stuff was pulled from Madison, which of course the home of Iron Man was in Wisconsin and 72.3 Wisconsin.
SPEAKER_02:And Ryan Richards. Exactly. That's where he's from. Where'd y'all fly into? Into Rockford? O'Hare. Oh, okay. Yeah. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:So it was all right. All right. Anything else to add for Rockford, Illinois? That's all I got. Glad to be on fellows. All right. Well, good luck in Frankfurter and we'll, um, we, it's funny cause we don't, we see, well, he was on the last podcast. Yeah, he was sweet for whatever reason comes home. He's the only one that does this. Yeah. I don't do comes home and stops by the office to get equipment, drop equipment off, stuff like that. None of these other guys, they're like, Nope. They give it to the new guy to bring it in or something like that. Well, it's
SPEAKER_00:crazy.
SPEAKER_02:And we're doing GPS on the pro athletes and it's a huge field for just men. Yeah. I can't remember, but it's
SPEAKER_01:50, 60 something.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I thought it was above 60. So should be good.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And our friend Christian Blumenfeld, I believe is racing. And so that's always exciting. Yeah. Cause he won last year and that's always exciting cause he goes after it. Yeah. Yeah, it does. If anybody wants to have any, I'm not saying that nobody can beat him, but if you want to be considered like a hopeful to beat him, you better show up in Frankfurt or everyone's just going to talk about him and nice. Well, he's had some successful races. Long is also racing. Yeah, and I saw a post that he's never won this race. He's got kind of a chip on his shoulder. It's very interesting, yeah. Yeah, and I watched him take second and third to Frodeno many of years. Yeah. And I remember there was a year that I'm pretty sure there was maybe more than one year, but when it was dual gender, that it was Frodeno and Reef winning. Right, right. Man, this is stacked. Yeah. It's the men's European championship, and even though the women's field in Hamburg was smaller, it was stacked also. It was stacked also. So kudos. I think the Pro Series is working. Yeah, agreed. There's not a lot of– is Sam Laidlow on there? No, Laidlow is not on here. There's not a lot of full-distance top contenders that are not on that list, except maybe Sam Laidlow is one I would leave off. Yeah. Well, I wouldn't leave him off the list. Right, but he's not on this list, yeah. It's a good show. All right, Ryan, good luck in Frankfurter. Thanks.
SPEAKER_01:Should be good. Yeah, looking forward to it.
SPEAKER_02:All right. So we were going to talk about, I'm just looking at our notes. So what we skipped over was soccer. Yeah. Because we had talked last week about how many different setups we had done. But I don't know if we really talked about how it was going with it. Like what we've landed on and how you like it. Yeah, I don't like it. But it's, and to be clear, I love the customer experience. The soccer's exciting. And I just, I feel like it's not up to our standard and it's not anything the customer did. This is on us. And then today, were you a little surprised when I was like, I think we could do better. And the first thing, and I don't think this is exactly what you're doing. You're like, well, let's go look at what the other teams are doing because then you'll see how good we are. And the very first one we went... was way better. It was good. I mean, one thing they had that we don't have is elevation and we have to build our own elevation and they were in a stadium. Yeah. So they looked like just like a taped off section in the bleachers. Yeah. They could have went all the way up to the press box if they wanted. And we're at a very nice facility, but no stadium. Yeah. There are bleachers, but you don't want to mess with bleachers because they move. Yeah. You'd only want to do it on a stadium. You wouldn't want to do it on bleachers. No, these are the kind that are bike-locked to the light pole.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, exactly. I think the other thing was commentary is what stood out.
SPEAKER_02:By far. Everyone else, I think, had commentary. And our games don't have commentary. It's not something that we're responsible for. Yeah. And I think the biggest thing is how much all the other teams upped their game. Yes, definitely. Because last year... we were in a league of our own for the whole league nationwide. And then this year, there's people doing really good. I would say on par, but they're doing it. They have, yeah, they're like elevation and being way off the field
SPEAKER_01:definitely aids them, whereas we have to end up just by the nature of the beast, have to be fairly close to the field. And I feel like that
SPEAKER_02:distance and elevation really benefits them a lot. yeah especially like if the ball goes out of bounds right where our cameras are it's really hard to capture yeah the throw in because they're right in front of you yeah 100 even yeah and we're working off 10-foot ladders that sounds not very professional but it actually works really well and and i think we mentioned this a couple episodes ago we brought in the 10-foot ladders because before that we were building a a 20-foot high scaff yeah that took more time to build and strike than the whole broadcast took. Yeah, it was a beast. And we were like, and not everything, well, not really anything at BCC is about money, but we were losing a lot of money because of the SCAF, because of the labor it took to build the SCAF and strike the SCAF. And then once we got rid of the SCAF, now we're back. And it didn't take anything away from the broadcast. Yeah, definitely. It's just that our quote unquote competitors Up the game so much. Got way better. Yeah. And a lot of our competitors last year were using AI and I didn't see any of them using AI anymore. No, I didn't either. Which we were going to do. And we had bought in a couple AI soccer branded cameras, but they don't allow you to live output. You can stream straight to the web. Yeah. But for what we do, we need to go through our equipment. to add in our graphics and for reliability. The ones that use the AI cameras and stream straight from the AI cameras have a lot of choppiness and at least we don't have that. True, very true. So soccer, blah, blah, blah, blah. But it's an event. It is. And you know what's interesting about if you go to, so a lot of the events we've done this year have been on the world stage. The whole world knows about the event. Totally, totally. But when you go to a semi-pro soccer match, there's 100 viewers online, there's 100 people in the audience, but they don't care any less than the people watching Unbound or the European Championships or Kona. In fact, a lot of times they care more because it's their family members or their spouse or whatever playing soccer. And so it's funny, the size of the audience... It used to have a lot to do with how much skin you felt like you had in the game until we did funerals. Yeah. And then you would have like 25 people watching and knew that it was like- It's the most important thing. Kona critical. Yeah. And then, so now with soccer, although our transmission technology is pretty dialed, so we don't really ever risk going off the air, but- You know, an interesting thing that we still stream that has low- consistent viewership, but very important is finish line cameras. We always, people will come over and look over your shoulder and be like, how many people
SPEAKER_01:watching? It's like, well, like 25, but those people are watching. They are waiting for someone to cross that finish line. And sometimes it's 75, sometimes a hundred, whatever, but it's people actively watching. It's not on the background while they're doing something
SPEAKER_02:else. And if it goes down for a a guy carrying a flag come through and his flag closed the door on the camera and shut it off. And you get comments. The nice thing about that is everyone saw the flag and knew the flag, knock the camera out. So the comments were like, Oh, flag, flag, knock the camera out. But if you, if you're not paying enough attention, like, cause you have it on, on while you're doing other stuff, you glance over the camera goes out of focus. Everyone's telling you, put the camera back in focus, put the camera back in focus, but that's just for a few seconds, just for a few seconds. Yeah, finish line cameras are funny that way that it's like the smallest, although the audience by the end of the month ends up being a pretty good size audience. Yeah, definitely. Because all the athletes want to go back and then they screenshot their finish and then they make it their Facebook profile and stuff like that. But the viewership, yeah, when you look over and see 90 for soccer, that kind of stuff used to, I wouldn't say bother me, but made me not feel like it was important.
UNKNOWN:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:and they're 90 super dedicated viewers 100 and so then it it's it's the same amount of skin as any broadcast yeah so and um i think we've mentioned on the podcast that we got a diesel generator installed at our studio for auxiliary power and it's still not working because of shenanigans that's not what because of bureaucracy yeah that we have to have so support of the electric company in colorado is called excel energy and they already said we were good and they cashed the check yeah and spent it and then now they're not sure we're good but the generator's installed yeah so there's a generac and it's powered by natural gas and it's all installed, but if the power went out, the generator would turn on, but it wouldn't feed power back to the building yet. Can we run cables to it, like a 50 amp? I don't know. I lay awake at night of how long we've worked on backup power. We have batteries. Yeah. And so what we're hoping to do is have power that if... city power went out and it was going to be a day or two, we would still be able to have our broadcast. And you might be wondering, well, how's your internet going to work? Well, we did have power go out for a couple of days and we did run the studio off generators and the internet, because it comes in on fiber, wherever it's needs power is yeah. Wherever it needs power, it's getting power because the fiber worked. We had like a two day outage here at the studio and the fiber worked for both days. Yeah. So anyway, so anything else? Events coming up, but only one. Frankfurt. Slowest weekend with just one event since... Before April? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Since the end of March, which was busy, but we just had one event a weekend. Yeah. And then we just have one event this weekend. And then the most important event... The 5th to the 10th. Well, there's also an event. Out of office. And there's also an event on the 4th. There is. That's true. That's very important. It's on our ConnectWise ticket board. So it's an event. It is an event. We have a ticket. And the 4th is Blues Traveler at Red Rock. So if you're in town, come join us because that's always a good way to kick off the 4th of July. And then we're out the 5th through the 10th. Yep. And we will put an autoresponder at least on our ticket board. I'm not going to put a non-responder on my email. I'm going to climb to the top of a mountain every day to check
SPEAKER_01:email. We should just bring all of our starlings and see if we can bond them together and have really, really fast internet on the boat. I
SPEAKER_02:was tempted. One of our clients is doing a podcast with Alistair Brownlee. Oh, nice. Who, I love that guy. Yeah. And I don't really know him, but I know I asked him for a favor once and And it was the kind of favor that most professional athletes would not respond. And in 30 minutes, he fulfilled the favor. And it wasn't for me. It was for a friend of ours who's like, that's my idol. And we said, any chance you could record a video before a week from Friday for a TV show telling this guy, like, you get it? And he sent it to us in 30 minutes. Nice. That's awesome. And that's the most I know about him. But I wanted to do that podcast. That's kind of all you need to know. We moved the podcast to after Lake Powell, but I was thinking about taking like a Starlink. But if it failed, that would not be professional. But we did make an AI song about autoresponders. And if you ever put an autoresponder on your email, even though you were checking email every day and responding, this song is for you. I
SPEAKER_00:sent you a note, it wasn't that long. But now I'm stuck in this endless loop Your auto reply just makes me stoop I know you saw my email Why can't you just respond?
