Glad to be Back

by Jesse Lerman, President/CEO, TelVue

The Eastern Video Expo 2022 brought a welcome end to a two+ year drought of local, in-person trade shows and other industry events, giving participating vendors the opportunity for face-to-face engagement with valued customers once again.  It was great to say goodbye to endless Hollywood Squares-like Zoom meetings and welcome back the kind of meaningful conversations and collaborative-based discussions that generate important feedback, crucial for product development.

Before the pandemic, trade shows were a mainstay line item for any company’s marketing budget, and exhibiting to current and prospective customers, suppliers and other business associates was crucial.  Most importantly, the EVE gave us a chance to access key decision makers in current and prospective organizations, and to service and support any current accounts’ requests in-person.  In addition to having direct exposure to long-time clients, it was a chance to see what other products are being introduced to the market, as well as a forum to unveil TelVue’s key product roadmap items.

While the attendance was lighter than past years, not unexpected for the first post-pandemic return, it actually fostered a very productive climate for more one-on-one discussions with station operators, producers and other stakeholders, so vital to the region’s PEG channel operations. Having a single day on the exhibit floor for vendors to showcase and highlight products felt just right.  Ho’Iki’s J Robertson always wins the prize for the most frequent flier miles accumulated to attend the expo once again this year, and it was great to see him, along with everyone whose commute to the event was considerably shorter! Thanks very much to Montclair’s Rick Gearheart for furnishing a huge box of salty snack bags to balance the otherwise heavily chocolate candy-skewed bowl at TelVue’s booth, giving nice balance for grazing throughout the day.

We also said “bon voyage” to one of TelVue’s first customers in the Garden State, Woodbridge’s own Lee Beckerman, as he prepared to sail off in the retirement sunset, and, after 20+ years, it was also the swansong show for TelVue’s own founding partner and SVP of Sales & Marketing, Paul Andrews. It’s been said that retirement is when you trade the boss who hired you for the one who married you, so good luck to Lee and Paul, with both of your new bosses! At least in retirement, you don’t have to request paid time off anymore.

The EVE conference always affords vendors the opportunity for larger group presentations, and TelVue covered a range of new items this year: from next level, integrated social media streaming directly from our very affordable new AIO+ line of Hypercaster server models, automation rules, dual language closed captioning, and a special users group for the JAG Shared Server. Both of our presentation slots on captioning and social streaming were well attended with great engagement, questions, and feedback. Any trade show will offer potential to satisfy one or more of a company’s marketing objectives, but it’s also the chance for engineering and product development staff, who seldom get as much customer contact as they need, to engage directly with end users. EVE is like a dynamic day-long focus group, where we get to review our products and services and assess preliminary customer reactions, critical or not.  The annual conference is a valuable testbed for an appreciative audience and TelVue is always grateful to be a part of the robust NJ station community.