Welcome, everybody.
This is a session at Big Blue Button World 2023.
I'd like to welcome, as the slide says, Lars and Ted.
I'll turn it over for them to introduce themselves in terms of how they have been using Big
Blue Button to provide live content on websites and or turn a website into live
content.
Over to you, Lars.
Perfect.
Thank you very much, Fred, for the short introduction.
Thank you very much for having us here at the Big Blue Button Conference.
We've been using Big Blue Button for two and a half years now, and as we benefited
from the community and from all the open source and all the availability of knowledge,
we thought it's a good possibility and a good chance for us to give back to the
community and to show what we have done using Big Blue Button and using the framework
of Big Blue Button and what we have added to it.
So I'll go through that in the next round, about 20 minutes.
I'll try to keep it short so there might be time in the end for a couple of
questions that you might have and that Ted obviously would be happy to answer.
So, yes, I'm very happy to speak to you today in a setting which is very much
about education, which is very much about training and about how knowledge can
be imparted, how structures can be built in such a way that all of us can
participate and get the maximum out of it for ourselves.
So thank you very much for having me, having us.
The first question always is, why did we do that?
And for me, it's very exciting because I'm not a software guy.
I'm not an education guy.
I'm doing trade shows.
I'm in the trade show business.
I'm in the trade show and event business.
And for more than 20 years, we've been doing B2B live communication.
And that can also be designed in such a way that it brings together the needs
of one person with the offer that another person has.
So it's also about knowledge, but it's more or less about the added value.
And it's always a B2B communication.
It's about the question, what is in it for me?
So what we experienced in the last 20 years is that B2B companies rely very
much on trade shows and events when it comes to personal communication.
And we found out it's very essential that people talk to each other because
no website can respond to the needs the way a human being can.
So when we interact, when we start talking to each other,
that is where all the magic happens and it doesn't take place on a website.
So that's why we've been focusing on events and exhibitions because that is
mainly the two options that companies have when it comes to live communication
and when it comes to interaction, intense interaction with their audience,
with their target groups.
And that's where, as I said, all the magic happens.
And we see that in the budget because over here in Europe,
I think in North America, it's pretty much the same.
It's round about 50 to 60 percent of all the marketing budget go into events
and exhibitions.
So all the companies very much rely on these offline channels, as we call them.
And then in 2020, obviously, the pandemic came and suddenly there was no
more live communication.
People could no longer meet.
They could no longer exchange ideas.
And with that, the most important communication channels just fell away
from one moment to the other.
And as you all also experience that, we all quickly switched to all the
communication, to the digital communication channels.
It was like tools like Teams, like Zoom and others very much quickly became
the standard of the communication.
So while before the pandemic, it was for us very unusual to be in front of
a camera, which we're doing right now, we feel after the pandemic,
it's become the new normal.
And we over here, we always say a good camera and especially a good
microphone is something like the new tailor-made suite today.
So everybody is professionalizing on the communication and trying to get better
and trying to be like more like television standards.
So semi-professional.
So in the months after the pandemic started, many different platforms and
developments that are focused on the needs of the B2B communications saw the
light of the world.
And I'll just show you a small graphic here of a very heterogeneous
landscape of events.
You see streaming tools, engagement, ticketing, networking, event management.
I'm not going to read out everything of that.
And there are these all in all platforms.
And all of them tried to serve the needs of the of the B2B companies.
And that graphic, you see around about 400 tools.
I think in the meantime, it's even more, although the market has consolidated
quite a lot in the past months as the analog events came back and people are
going back to trade shows and events, but still digital communication channels
remain.
So that's to the reason why, because we with our customers, we have tried and
tested many of these different solutions ourselves.
And whenever we tried and tested them, we noticed the same weak points that
nearly all of the tools have in common.
And that's one is the traffic.
They all provide traffic and data on the foreign platform.
So they host their tools on a Microsoft platform or whatever platform it is,
but the traffic stays on the platform.
So in the first site, that might not be so dramatic.
However, the companies are really reliant when it comes to visibility in the
internet and therefore they need good content that takes place on their
website that leads to better rankings because search engines like Google,
they honor when people stay longer on your website, but they don't when the
traffic is on different tools.
So we said that's a problem because we put very much effort into good
content, but it's other companies that benefit from that content.
And as I said before, those companies, those B2B companies, don't have professional
online channels, so they're trying to build them up, but that's a very,
very downside part of it because the traffic doesn't take place on the website.
So that makes all these tools that we've tested very challenging.
Second, and that's a major issue over here in Europe, is the GDPR topic because
most of the tools originate from the US and therefore are not GDPR compliant
due to the legal regulations, obviously, that apply over there.
And even if they claim it in their terms and conditions, the data still is
transferred to the US in case of any doubt.
And different regulations apply there and for our customers and companies in
Europe, that's a very big issue.
At the moment, not all of them care about the GDPR, but our authorities start
looking closer at how companies are dealing with data and therefore it's
very important that companies own and possess their data and they can decide
by themselves where all that data is going to and especially where it's not
going to.
And the third point is the solutions rarely have options for customizations.
Yes, you can adapt colors, yes, you can adapt forms, yes, you can integrate your
logo and obviously you can change text at some points or the other, but as I
said, because live communication in B2B is so essential and so important,
we think and we believe that live communication must be, also in the
digital world, a solid part, a fundament of the company's website.
And therefore we needed to find a solution on how to bring all the
digital content, all that digital content to company's website.
So considering all of these thoughts of these where am I coming from, it's the
B2B live communication companies are really reliant on that B2B live
communication and seeing all those weaknesses, we found our mission.
That was a little bit by chance because we just worked with all the
other tools and said why can't they do this, why can't they do that.
So we said, OK, we need to find a solution that makes sure that the
traffic stays on the company's website and doesn't go anywhere else.
And that also meant that we needed to find a way where we develop a tool
with all those functionalities that people use from the other tools,
but find a way to inject that to a company's website to make it look like
it's a part of that website and to make Google believe that all the
traffic is on that website and not on our LiveBridge tool.
So we said it must be on the website, must be within the design,
and then it needs to bring all the freedom that you also know from
Big Blue Button in some part, all the freedom to set up digital events
as you need them, be it a classical webinar, be it a town hall meeting,
be it a product presentation, be it a one-on-one, be it training.
So there's a whole range of formats and we didn't want our tool to limit
those formats, but we want our tool to serve these formats.
So for this, it was important to set up also rights management,
how we call it, that gives different people different access to our
platform, to our software.
That means how to use the camera, how to use the microphone,
but also to be able to switch these rights within an existing session.
And the last part was, I don't know if you know tools like StreamYard
and Restream, where all those YouTubers stream too.
They have really nice stage effects, so the organizer can control the stage
completely by himself and can decide where to show the video,
where to show a camera, where to show text, and so on.
And we wanted to add that to our software as well and wanted to take
full control by ourselves, making sure that not the audience can decide
how to see the picture, but for us as the company to make sure that
everybody sees the same picture the way we want to have it.
Sounds a little tricky.
Five most important components.
You can see them here.
I'm not going to read that out to you now,
because I'm going to show you everything.
That first is the front end, obviously everything that we see
on the company's website.
Second is the back end.
That's where all the magic happens, that where all the technical stuff
comes together.
Third point is the rights management stage tool.
And then a mailing system, which is obviously in communication
very important.
Once somebody registers to a webinar, to a session,
whatever you call it, it's important they get messages.
They get messages that the event will start soon.
That they missed the event, that the recording is available, and so on.
And all of that is integrated into Big Blue Button with our solution.
So the first question, whenever we approach companies and they say,
oh, Lars, yeah, that's cool.
I fully understand.
I want to have that on my website.
How does this work?
So the trick that we are using, the technology that we are using
is called cross-origin resource sharing.
And that works with a little JavaScript that we implement
into our customer's website.
And that makes us able to host all the content
and showcase it on their website.
I'll show that to you now.
I have prepared our home page to make it easy.
Yes, you can see our home page here.
It's just easy.
So I don't need to show any client's home page.
And you see we have here a header.
And then it's just a basic one-pager, you all know.
And what happens here is the live bridge integration.
That's where all our webinars take place.
And you see the header remains the same.
So it's the same website.
And everything underneath the header is what we are doing.
Everything is hosted by us.
And everything is controlled by the back end.
I have prepared just a little demo for you to see how this works.
You see here, big blue button demo, we call it.
So I can go into the back end here.
Big blue button demo.
And say big blue button demo by Lars.
Sorry, I'm going to type.
It's very late here in Germany.
Long day.
I say OK.
Go back to the page.
Refresh.
And you see, demo by Lars.
So that's how the whole back end works.
Everything we do in our back end immediately appears on the customer's website.
So that's very cool because as you can see here in the front end,
we have many, many possibilities to make adjustments,
to make all the rights management.
You can have any kind of text here.
You can set the dates.
You can decide when to start displaying the event,
which is very comfortable for companies to say,
OK, I'm doing 50 webinars within the next 40 weeks,
but I don't want to display them all at one time.
So they can set them up, all of them, and then decide,
OK, that webinar is shown only two weeks before the start.
That one is shown three weeks and so on.
I think you get the point.
So we have all that right management here.
So we can say we allow the microphones.
We can say we allow the videos.
We can say we do a recording.
We can also add the speakers here.
I'm not showing you that in detail.
We can do all the vitas of the speakers with all the pictures.
We can make referring links to any web pages and so on.
So basically everything that you can see here,
we can set up completely individually with the whole registration process,
which is important.
We can also say we don't want registration.
It should be free for everybody.
So I can just switch the registration off.
But for all the companies that we are working for,
as we call it, the lead management is very important.
And that's what they are doing it for.
They want to generate leads.
And therefore they need all that registration system.
That's also fully included then into Big Blue Button.
I'll show that to you now because I'm running a little out of time.
I'm going to be quick now.
As you can see here, we have various types of emails that can be used.
You can add new emails.
You can make use of the existing ones.
All those mails can be completely over the mail server of the customers.
So in the end, LiveBridge doesn't appear at all.
And it makes the impression of, wow,
that company uses a complete own digital live web page.
What I want to show you now
is just skip a couple of slides.
I want to show you I've set up a small event.
You can see me here.
That's my laptop camera.
The picture is not as good.
And you can see that pin.
And that makes it very comfortable.
As I said, I can just say, OK, I don't want to have Lars on the stage.
I can pin him on the stage.
And that gives our customers the feeling of being in a real conference hall.
Because what happens in a conference hall is someone is just making a presentation like I am doing.
And then one of the audience says, hey, Lars, I've got a question.
So I could hand him over a microphone.
And that's exactly what I can do here in LiveBridge.
I can just say, OK, you want to say something?
Just a second, I activate your microphone.
So the next one says, Lars, it's pretty cool.
Can I come up on stage?
I say, yes, sure.
So I activate his camera and I pin him on here.
And then I have different presentation modes.
I explained to you before.
So I can decide if I want to be in a large screen, you see a bad camera picture.
I can make it even small.
I can make it 50-50.
So I have to scroll a bit.
But I think you get the impression.
And we have six of those presentation types.
Which gives you full control.
And as you can see, that's all, obviously, big blue button.
You all know it.
As we have added quite some more functionalities, we have also rearranged all the menu that we have down here.
So we did all of that.
Just added it, making use of the existing structure and add the features that we for B2B live communication need.
But we also see that some of these features also are interesting for different areas, also for education purposes,
also for conferences, especially when taking someone onto the stage and so on.
So with that, I'm rushing through here and see that was a lot of content.
I switch back to the presentation.
Yes, that was quite a lot now.
We have 22 minutes.
I promise to be on time.
Let me take a deep breath.
And at this point, I would like to point out once again, if you have any question, this is not about selling anything.
It's just about making a presentation and a demo to inspire you what we have done.
And my hope is that you say, OK, wow, that's a cool feature.
I want to do that as well in big blue button.
And if you want to and say, oh, but I didn't get it, how did they do it?
Just get into contact with me or with Ted.
And I'm very happy to connect you with our developers because they can answer all the questions that you might have now.
And I want to close the presentation because the question is why big blue button?
And we looked at quite a lot of tools when we had our mission and said, OK, what's the software that we want to develop?
And we had a look at them.
And what we loved about the idea of big blue button is that it gives us the full control of the data.
And I think I pointed out why data management is so important, especially when it comes to industry and technology companies.
And the availability of the source code makes our customization.
Well, it makes it possible in the end because we can develop further what was there and we didn't need to start from scratch.
It made the error analysis possible.
All of you who develop software by yourself, you know how difficult the whole process is, how many errors occur.
So it made us also the community was very helpful for us because everything that we experience we could share with the community.
And from one or the other, we got hints and they say, I had to try this.
So that was the whole also a decision pro big blue button.
And then there was this framework, especially with the with the rules and the rights management that was already there.
So that was very much our idea already.
So we found the big blue button very much matched to what we are planning.
And that's why in the end we chose to use big blue button.
And up to today, we are very happy using it, very happy developing it.
And well, with that, I am finished for today.
I thank you very much.
If you have listened carefully now, you have probably received five or more impulses on how to maybe improve your every day's work with big blue button.
If not, as I said, get in touch with us, get into discussion with us.
That's what we are here for.
And with that, I close my presentation for today.
Thank you once again for having me.
And I wish you a lot of fun with all the other presentations that will follow.
Thank you very much.
Lars, thank you for making the presentation.
The recording will be available.
There's some questions here in the chat you may wish to answer, but I'm going to stop the recording at this point.
And very cool to see what you've done with big blue button.
Thank you.