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Unknown
Welcome to the On Record podcast. A podcast where we talk with professionals and subject matter experts from diverse markets that are using and providing video and audio systems in innovative ways to support their organization's objectives. My name is Mike Anzalone and my co-host is Andy Simmons. Today our guest is Kevin Marti. Kevin is the founder, president and CEO of Intelligent Video Solutions.

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Unknown
Welcome, Kevin. Great to see you guys. Yeah, thanks for being here. Kevin, Mike and I obviously are very familiar with you and we know your back story. But for our listeners, why don't you give us just like, a kind of a five minute who is Kevin Marti and how do we kind of get here today. Yeah. Well, thank you for the opportunity to talk with you guys.

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Unknown
I've been president and CEO of, IVS since 2013. Kind of been in this the video industry since 1995. So it's been a while. Seen a lot of different things throughout my career. And yeah. Looking forward to our discussion today. Kevin, out of the years that you've you've been in video. Can you give us some examples for our listeners on how some of your clients have used video in innovative ways?

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Unknown
Sure. You know, what's interesting about video is that it's changed so much over the years, right? I mean, when we first started, when we first got started, we're doing we're talking about analog and VHS and things like that. But with our customers, they're primarily using video for what we call three different use cases. And, we term those training, research and evidence.

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Unknown
So in most in a lot of cases what they're using video for is some hands on training skill. They're trying to teach a student a specific skill. So they're using video to not only record those sessions, but, actually observe the students while they're they're doing it. And then what they do is they do a debrief process, typically with the students and, so that the student can do a better job at that skill.

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Unknown
The other thing that video is being used for is on the research side. So in there you're doing a lot more observation and you're going back and doing what they call coding. So they're bringing in different participants, recording those and then doing comparisons over time. As far as how a treatment is actually working with a patient or clients.

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Unknown
And then the last, the last need that we actually serve is on the evidence side of things. And that's more for just interview archiving. For evidence for purposes. Sounds like you've got a variety of different types of clients. Can you tell us a little bit about the specific markets that you work in? Our core markets are, higher education, healthcare and government.

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Unknown
And, you know, in each one of those spaces, there's as I mentioned, there's use cases. So, in the higher ed, we do quite a bit of clinical, work as well as in the medical simulation space. So in the clinical space, it's people like, psychologist counselors, speech therapists that are teaching students to work in some type of a clinical setting.

00:03:29:13 - 00:03:54:14
Unknown
We're also doing quite a bit of work in the simulation space, which is really it's, it's a fast growing market for us. And they're, they're not necessarily working with live patients, but they're working with, in a simulated health care environment, which is safer and it's more repetitive for students. And, it's a growing space because of one of the reasons that there's not enough clinical hours for students.

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Unknown
So they're bringing these in-house in each one of those cases, they're using video to watch that student doing this, you know, performing the skill, recording it and then doing a debrief afterwards. So I know you've had probably seen like hundreds of implementations of kind of those standard deals, some of the ones that you just described. Yes. Maybe tell us about some of like the interesting or maybe more niche like use cases that you've seen or heard of, or maybe something that that's kind of up and coming in this space.

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Unknown
What's kind of interesting is, I think one of the biggest, surprises with video is that you never know where it's going to end up and what people are going to dream up, you know? So we've seen it used in, like, a math lab, you know, where you would think, oh my gosh, how are they going to use video to, you know, study how somebody does math?

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Unknown
So it it's really, quite interesting. And it it really depends on the creativity of the users as far as the different, diverse ways that people are using video, just to make their make their lives better and to be more effective at what they do. Yeah. I don't think I can, blow right past the math one, because that was my degree, and I majored in math spent a lot of time in math.

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Unknown
Empty classroom. Do you know how they use it in the math lab? Yeah, I think that was actually at, I believe it was at Penn State. And there they were. They would have, groups of students and they would give them a problem, and then they would actually record how they worked through that problem together. It was more of a research.

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Unknown
I was on the research side of the space. It wasn't necessarily, the training piece of it. Which is why they call it a lab, but, yeah, it a very interesting thing. So, Kevin, it sounds like you have a wide variety of clients. How do you go about recommending equipment for such diverse use cases? What's interesting with with what the approach that IVS took is that, the equipment is pretty standardized.

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Unknown
The cameras and audio gear that we put into each one of our customers, that's pretty standard. We almost use the word cookie cutter for that. What's quite different, though, is the use case or the workflow of as far as how they're actually using that video, you know, how they're interacting with their students or the or the study that they're actually doing.

00:06:29:00 - 00:06:52:04
Unknown
So in that case, what we tried to do is we tried to make the software flexible on the on the back side of it so that they could actually tweak it to their different workflows that they have. But as far as the equipment, once we understand, the audio piece and how many cameras that they're looking in, you know, that they want to have with inside of the room, that's fairly standard.

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Unknown
And then it's just a matter of working out their workflow. That makes a lot of sense where you said like, the equipment is kind of cookie cutter, but the software is, is is what changes and adapts. So talking about like keeping a customer long term, keeping someone happy for more than, you know, a 3 to 5 year initial contract.

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Unknown
How do you make a software sticky and something that they want to continue using and growing with in their organization? Well, first and foremost, I mean, you have to keep improving, you know, the technology so that it it's keeping up and it's it's meeting future needs. And just from from an IT infrastructure perspective, you know, software ages out.

00:07:34:19 - 00:08:02:08
Unknown
So you have to make sure that, all your core applications that you're using to build the software, they're modern and it's a modern framework. So, I think that's first and foremost is that you have to, you know, you have to continue to, innovate, rebuild, rebuild the tool set and then just take a look at, you know, what new things that you can actually do that you haven't been able to do.

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Unknown
Because quite frankly, when you started with technology, you know, you just weren't able to do it. Like this session, right? We couldn't have done what we're doing right now in the 90s, right, even early 2000, you being in one room, you know, at a remote location, me being here at IVS and, Mike being at his home office, we would have had been physically in the same room because of the transport, what we were using for transport back then.

00:08:34:04 - 00:09:02:11
Unknown
But the technology, when everything went to IP, it enabled us to open things up from a wider perspective. So as new technologies develop, we we need to take advantage of those, implement that into the software so that it enables our users to do new things with the software. We we talked a lot with some of our previous guests about, balancing being like an early adopter and cutting edge versus waiting to see if a technology is more of a fad.

00:09:02:13 - 00:09:21:19
Unknown
How do you kind of way that when you're developing software like should we add this in or should we wait to see like where, technology is kind of going, like, how do you how do you consider what you're going to build for your customers based on kind of like what's available? First of all, the thing that we take a look at is, what are our customers telling us?

00:09:21:19 - 00:09:55:20
Unknown
What are they wanting to do? That's kind of first and foremost. And then, you know, we need to take a look at the tech to see if the tech is available to make it a reliable solution that you, that is scalable, that that works, all the time. We don't want to be bleeding edge. Just due to the fact of that reliability, ease of use for our customers, which is, which is really, really, really critical in this in video space.

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Unknown
I mean, you know, video is extremely effective, but one of the challenges has been it's been hard to work with and hard to use on the back side of it, just just due to the how it how it's all put together. Right. So we want to continue that to be extremely reliable, easy to use. And, you know, adapt those technologies that work.

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Unknown
So as technology becomes more and more powerful and more like integrated into our lives, how do you ensure that it is still something that is easy to use and it's not something it's going to say over complicate workflows for your customers? One of the, you know, one of the core beliefs that I've always held on to is, video is really powerful.

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Unknown
Okay. It's really I mean, when you think about the information that is shared, the amount of, you know, information that is gathered and, it's just a it's a really powerful tool. However, if it's hard to use and hard to get at, people just don't use it. So that's where that ease of use is pretty critical. I mean, if we if, if, if you build a feature, but it's really hard to get at, you know, users just are not going to they're not going to enable it.

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Unknown
It's it's no different than, you know, where in Excel, you know, the basic applications that we use every day from a, you know, from a user perspective, there's tons and tons of features back there. But how many of them do we actually use? And, and if they're fairly simple to use though, you know, like spell check, you know, one spell check originally came out, you had a, you kind of had a go and enable it and everything like that.

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Unknown
Now you just it just works. Right. It actually we're, we're actually telling you, hey, you typed in incorrect word and also just the new word. Not even that. Like, one minor difference, like spellcheck used to have to push a button to run spell check and write one click. Now it does it automatically and it's like a world of simplicity.

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Unknown
Yep. And so if you if you create these features that, you know, are cool, but the users don't really they can't really use them because of complexity. You know, that that in itself isn't that isn't great either, due to the fact that you've just complicated your entire system. Sure. And I think really, if you look back to like the release of like the iPad in like, maybe like what?

00:12:26:18 - 00:12:47:08
Unknown
08-09 their big thing was you already know how to use it, right? Yeah. After that, that was kind of the big push in technology, wasn't it? Like, I want to know how to use this right off the bat, right? One of the things that I've always said about video was that you know, when we started one of our first use cases, what is in the law enforcement area.

00:12:47:08 - 00:13:10:18
Unknown
And I if you talk to a cop, they will tell you that you need to make it cop proof. You know, cop proof is so, you know, you put a big red button on there. And so it's just, you know, it's extremely, so intuitive that, you know, and nobody can really mess it up. And, you know, I one of the things that I used to like, like to say is that it it should be as easy as turning on and off the water.

00:13:10:18 - 00:13:36:08
Unknown
You know, it should be that intuitive. Let's talk about like when it's not intuitive. Like what? What are some of the like in in your career in working in, in this field. What are some of the, the challenges you had to overcome? And like some of the lessons learned from there and you think that you might be able to help someone in a similar situation to you or maybe some of our customers, like, you know, overcome some of those hurdles that you've come across in your career.

00:13:36:10 - 00:14:03:00
Unknown
You know, I would say take a look back at video. I mean, one of the one of the core problems has always been transport prior to IP video. What did we use to transport video? It was, you know, it was a coax cable. So getting video from one location to another and, you know, allowing multiple people to see it at ease and being reliable, that's a really, really, really big deal.

00:14:03:02 - 00:14:38:12
Unknown
And so as as transport has improved, what that does is it opens up access for more and more applications. And then, you know, what goes with transport is storage. Traditionally, you know, video has been big and you needed, you know, you needed tape originally. Right. And so you just because it tons and tons of information, so the better we get at at some of those things, it just enables us to do more things with it.

00:14:38:14 - 00:15:03:08
Unknown
So how about if we kind of, you know, jump to to now, not necessarily like products you're looking to build or anything, but what are the challenges that are currently on your mind that you think like, you know, maybe in the next 5 to 10 years the industry will have to, kind of find solutions for, I think, the biggest one, which we've been chasing for a long, long time.

00:15:03:10 - 00:15:34:12
Unknown
And it's kind of it's for why we have our namesake, you know, Intelligent Video Solutions was search and and, you know, with video and making it extremely interactive. Getting, getting to the content that you want to see extremely easily. I think that I think that's been a battle that we've been we've been really chasing for for quite a while, you know, because when you think about video, it's typically linear.

00:15:34:12 - 00:15:53:18
Unknown
There's a beginning and the end, even as you guys roll out this podcast right, there's going to be sections withinside it that are more applicable to people. Well, how do you make that searchable? How do you how do you make it so that it's discoverable and for people to just get at that exact piece of information that they want to consume?

00:15:53:19 - 00:16:19:09
Unknown
So I think we can we can get a lot better, especially as the AI gets more and more powerful that where the AI can ingest the video, and it can allow users to get exactly to the content that they want to see. That's probably. Good call back to like the question I asked a couple minutes ago, in regards to like early adopter versus waiting and seeing where the technology goes.

00:16:19:09 - 00:16:38:15
Unknown
Right. Like had you been thinking about AI just a couple years ago? We didn't know that much about it. Now, in the last just two years, world has changed a lot and you start to see a little bit more what's possible. Yeah. I mean, when when we started, it was we were doing manual AI right. We originally called those markers.

00:16:38:15 - 00:17:07:06
Unknown
So, you would have to put in the comments and, the information that a user would look up so that they could get to exactly to that point. But in the future, you know, and even now, we're doing transcription on the fly, and then we're putting that into a database and that's completely searchable. That wasn't that feature wasn't available a couple of years just due to the accuracy of transcription.

00:17:07:06 - 00:17:35:04
Unknown
So as that is, transcription has really, really improved in the last five years, that feature just gets a lot easier. And, it's become more reliable at the same time. Manual AI, that's a term I've never thought of. That's a Kevin term. How about, so, you know, we talked about where you see, like, challenges you might see in the next 5 to 10 years or so.

00:17:35:06 - 00:17:58:08
Unknown
How about just like we talked some about the markets that that IVS works with and maybe some of the different use cases that you have seen, anything that you see on the horizon where it's like, you know what, I bet in the next, again, five, ten years or so, we might see more need for video in this industry or any anything that you ever look at that doesn't currently use, technology.

00:17:58:10 - 00:18:34:19
Unknown
One of the things that I've talked with people about is that one of the limiting factors in our I'm getting kind of vertical now, and when I'm talking about our space, right. You know, there's if you take a look at the entire universe, I mean, there's video video is, very, very big, but in our, smaller space, one of the, one of the things that's limiting our people to do work with more students, train more students is just on the pure evaluation side, you know, and again, this gets down to the fact that video is big, right?

00:18:34:19 - 00:19:05:16
Unknown
So, you know, they record a session and then they got to go back and review that session. And then evaluate that student. That's that's cumbersome. You know, in order to do that. And quite frankly, if you think about it, other than being able to jump to the spot with inside of the video, you know, maybe where that student was doing a specific skill, with a mouse, you know, versus using the fast forward button on your VHS, player.

00:19:05:18 - 00:19:40:04
Unknown
It's kind of it's kind of the same, but with, with AI and the ability to maybe have AI do some of the evaluations to speed up that process. I think that can be a very, very exciting space. Withinside of the education world and even in the research world, quite frankly, where instead of having a person have to sit down and go through this mounds and mounds of data, you're can you can have the AI engine go through it and it'll just automatically do the scoring and automatically do the evaluation.

00:19:40:04 - 00:20:11:12
Unknown
Now, with that said, the technology just isn't there yet because the accuracy and you know, when we go to these shows and the the instructors say that there's, you know, but they are all talking about it. In your experience, what's the difference between a good video system and a truly exceptional one that drives meaningful outcomes? Great question. I just I go back to what I was talking about earlier.

00:20:11:14 - 00:20:39:03
Unknown
Ease of use, reliability always on, you know, and that really comes down to trust, which is a basic human need. If if you don't trust something, it's not going to be used to its fullest extent. So you really have to be able to trust that the video system is going to work, that there's no user issues.

00:20:39:05 - 00:21:02:04
Unknown
You know, there's not a lot of training involved. There's not a lot of things that can go wrong with it. So as technology matures, as we can continue to make this simpler, not only from a UI design but a components design, so that we we don't have as much hardware involved so that we can increase that reliability.

00:21:02:05 - 00:21:25:18
Unknown
I think that is really, in my opinion, one of the big, big differences between something that's good. Let's face it, you you can create a there's a lot of different video systems out there, okay. There's a lot of different ways to create video. There just is. But the great ones allow you to use it without even thinking about it.

00:21:25:19 - 00:22:05:07
Unknown
So it sounds like you've, really thought about the human element a lot when you design VALT. For me, that's 100% what what I've thought about, you know, over my career and I think some of the drivers was that I hate to say how old I am, but just remembering the technology and, you know, how that was bolted together and then how powerful it was, but how difficult it was actually and costly it was to enable it, you know, to be used.

00:22:05:09 - 00:22:24:18
Unknown
And that was the limiting factor. You know, we've always been able to have a have a camera and be able to watch that remotely somewhere and record it. But, you know, the limiting factor was the human side. It's like, how easy was it for me to to do that, and how feasible was it to do that? And what was the cost involved?

00:22:24:21 - 00:22:48:06
Unknown
You know, as well, you know, getting back to our session here, how feasible would have it been for you guys to be in two different locations? You know, me being in a different location. And for us, we you know, we would have had to use some video conferencing product. We would have had to have some switchers involved. We would have had a broadcast studio tons and tons and tons of gear and, a lot of support people.

00:22:48:08 - 00:23:13:17
Unknown
Well, versus now, Andy came put a camera on my monitor and a microphone on my desk, and here we are. So that answer the question on the human side. Yes it did. Yep. Because it's a it's a question that I know a lot of our guests have been expressing. You know, there's the technology and the technology is moving very rapidly and evolving quickly.

00:23:13:19 - 00:23:41:00
Unknown
But is it evolving? Is it changing in order to keep up with that human element? So I think it just it's it's an important concept. I think that as individuals are using video, using the software, like you've emphasized today, it's it needs to be easy to use is if it's not easy to use, it won't be used. And therefore what value is the technology?

00:23:41:00 - 00:24:03:16
Unknown
What value is the investment if if it's just really just too hard to use to accomplish what their objectives are? Yeah. I don't know if this is an accurate saying, but you have to remove the technology from the technology, you know, so that the user can just have the experience because the user, at the end of the day, they're not interested in the technology.

00:24:03:17 - 00:24:28:19
Unknown
They want to have the experience, they want to do something and be more productive. They want to make somebody's life better, that they really could care less what type of camera that's being used, where it's being recorded, you know, what type of network it's on, etc. they, they just need it to work. Sure, the goal is not to use the technology, it's to get some sort of result.

00:24:28:21 - 00:24:48:15
Unknown
Right. So then how do you as a, as a business owner, we talked we talked to IT professionals and we talked to end users about like how they measure success in this field. IT professionals, they said like, okay, did people actually adopt the technology that we purchase and implement it? And the end users talked about like student, results.

00:24:48:15 - 00:25:19:19
Unknown
So how do you, as a business owner, analyze if when you implemented a customer and they used it for a while that it was successful? If they expand. Quite frankly, the litmus test is, you know, if they like the experience, they're going to find other places for it. That's, you know, that's one of the cool things with video is that there's never a shortage of ways that it can be used.

00:25:19:19 - 00:25:44:00
Unknown
Right. As long as what you put in works. And so you brought up a really good point. You know, you've talked to it people and you've talked to end users. At IVS, we have two different customers. We have the IT side and we have the end user side. Very different. I mean, they're very, very different people. Right.

00:25:44:00 - 00:26:10:05
Unknown
And what their, you know, needs are the IT people, you know, they, they want it to play well with their network. They want it to be manageable. They want it to be scalable. They want it to be secure. And on the user side, you know, they're looking at, how easily can I, log into my system, how, you know, can I can I watch somebody doing something?

00:26:10:05 - 00:26:29:07
Unknown
Can I provide feedback to them? Can I find the video that I actually recorded? So there it's more than just the pure user experience and their workflow as far as getting their work done. It's interesting. So when we talk about like how you develop, you said you wanted, you know, ease of use to be right there, but you also need to go with the technology.

00:26:29:07 - 00:27:00:14
Unknown
So you're you're thinking of both of those customers as you're developing. Right. When we sit down and we go through our, you know, I call them like, development workshops, like, where are we going to go? In the next six months, there's always there's. And you have to you have to balance this. There's always what what are the IT people asking for, you know, do they want better SSO integration?

00:27:00:16 - 00:27:23:10
Unknown
Do they want more rights management? You know, do they want it to be able to play on their SaaS platform better? Versus, you know, a user environment? Do you know, do we incorporate some type of a draw feature so that they can provide additional feedback, you know, to the user, do we build something out like an OSCE feature?

00:27:23:12 - 00:27:50:06
Unknown
For medical students in their exams. So we have those two different camps and what we, what we try to do with each, you know, each development cycle is hit the, you know, the highest requested items for each one of those for the groups so that, you know, we're providing additional value for our customers. And getting back to what you, you know, you originally ask like, well, how do you how do you measure satisfaction?

00:27:50:06 - 00:28:22:20
Unknown
I mean, if they're happy with VALT and we're doing a good job and we're continuing to innovate and continuously improve, they're going to they're going to find new uses for for VALT. So, Kevin, as we, wrap up our our session today, what would you like to leave our listeners with? I would just say be creative. And really, if, you know, really think about how you can use video more, you know, with inside of what you're doing.

00:28:23:00 - 00:28:47:16
Unknown
And because as you enable it, there's you're going to see more powerful result results that are going to come forward. So don't put yourself in a box with the technology, you know, think creatively, not just do what you've done in the past, but but think about, hey, can I do this? And, we love those type of questions, you know, because that's that's what actually spurs development, right?

00:28:47:16 - 00:29:08:08
Unknown
It's like, okay, hey, I would really like a camera that would roll around on a cart and, you know, so we never thought that somebody would, you know, want a cart that, you know, has a camera on it that you can just move from place to place. But as users got creative, you know, and they were asking for it.

00:29:08:10 - 00:29:26:09
Unknown
So that's what I would say. Get creative. Think out of the box and you'll it'll be amazed to see what is possible. And anybody who's listening to this podcast wanted to get in touch their questions on something you said or, you know, questions on, on, on the products that you put out there. What's the best way for someone to do that?

00:29:26:10 - 00:29:47:09
Unknown
I have a LinkedIn. You can reach out to me on LinkedIn. I don't check it regularly, but feel free to link up with me. You can always email me at Kmarti@ipivs.com. You could also send it to sales@ipivs.com. And I'd be happy to. I would love the floor with those questions.

00:29:47:11 - 00:30:11:05
Unknown
It's kind of funny when you become president nobody talks to you anymore. So, I would love to get those questions. Well thank you. We've been speaking with Kevin Marty, founder, president and CEO of Intelligent Video Solutions. Thank you for your time today. Kevin. Thanks, you guys. It was a great conversation. Have a great week. All right. Take care.

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00:30:13:01 - 00:30:25:02
Unknown
On Record is a podcast presented by Intelligent Video Solutions, hosted by Mike Anzalone and Andy Simmons and produced by Kyle Shelstad. Find us online at ipivs.com/onrecord and on social media at Intelligent Video Solutions.

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