This week's episode of Automation Unplugged features our host Ron Callis interviewing John Henkel. Recorded live on Wednesday, July 12th, 2023, at 12:30 pm EST.

About John Henkel

John started out working in broadcast TV with a successful career in video editing before moving to the manufacturing side with roles in product management and marketing. His extensive travel experiences include covering two Olympic Games for NBC Sports and winning an Emmy Award for his work at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Interview Recap

• John’s experience in broadcast TV and video editing
• John's Emmy winning journey, covering two Olympic games for NBC
• Why Netgear AV entered the CI channel
• The role of AI in copywriting and imagery and other forms of content creation

SEE ALSO: Home Automation Podcast Episode #246 An Industry Q&A with Jason Knott

Transcript

Ron:

Welcome to the automation unplugged podcast. The podcast for technology professionals featuring leading industry personalities. I'm your host, Ron Callis. Today's show features John Henkel, director of product marketing at Netgear AV. John started out working in broadcast TV with a successful career in video editing before moving to the manufacturing side with roles in product management and marketing. His extensive travel experiences include covering two Olympic Games for NBC Sports and winning an Emmy Award for his work at the 2004 Athens Olympics. We live stream today's interview on social media on Wednesday, July 12th at 1230 p.m. Eastern Time. During our time together, we discussed John's experience in broadcast TV and video editing. John's Emmy Award-winning journey covering two Olympic Games for NBC. Why Netgear AV entered the CI channel? And the role of AI and copywriting, imagery, and other forms of content creation. I really enjoyed this conversation with John, and I hope you do as well. Let's tune in to the interview with John Henkel. John, how are you, sir?

John:

I'm doing great, Ron. Great to meet you for the first time, and thanks for having me here.

Ron:

You are welcome. I am wearing my hat. I have crazy here today, so I'm putting the hat on here.

John:

I don't have that problem. You can see.

Ron:

There you go you know. We have different solutions to problems. There's more than one way to solve problems. John, where are you coming to us from?

John:

I am coming to you from a small town in Northern California called Nevada City. It's still in California. It's on the way between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe. A very sort of Tahoe.

Ron:

I've heard of Lake Tahoe as one of those places I need to visit. I've never been there.

John:

Another one. So you did the Tetons. You did Yellowstone. Now come out to Lake Tahoe, and you can cross them off your list.

Ron:

I've also, said you live in Nevada City.

John:

Yeah, little town.

Ron:

Never heard of Nevada City. So tell us about Nevada City.

John:

So it's actually adjacent to a little slightly larger town called grass valley and from the broadcast world, people have heard of grass valley group, perhaps. There's actually a town called grass valley, and they built this little area. It's three hours from the Bay Area where I spent many, many years in San Francisco, and then Oakland for a long time. And as the pandemic hit my wife and I were trying to get out of the big city, we have relatives up here. There are a couple of good tech companies up here, AJA, and Tell a Stream or located up here as well. And there was this little weird little Mecca of some tech, some really good people, and we're just three hours from my headquarters in San Jose.

Ron:

Oh, that's awesome. Well, tell us, and we're gonna go through a number of different areas of fun convo today. But yes, all sorts of fun things to talk about. But first of all, product marketing at Netgear AV is Netgear AV different than Netgear.

John:

That's a good question. Yeah. So like you said, everybody's heard of Netgear forever. You probably have Netgear in your house. I'm working on an Orbee router wireless mesh thing from my house. So Netgear has been around as a consumer company for a long time. We also have this business division that your business for a number of years as well, but really when we started focusing on the AV portion for commercial and the CI channel is when those of us that are working and said, we need some way to really identify that this is different than the rest of Netgear. We have products that are focused for that. So we kind of rebranded our own team last year and said Netgear AV. So you kind of understand there's a different part of Netgear now.

Ron:

Got it. And at a high level, what are your roles and responsibilities there and at Netgear AV land?

John:

I do all the product marketing, which means data sheets, brochures, and things like that. My team and I work on all of those, the web pages for products, podcasts, things like that, and webinars as well. All of our we do a lot of channel relations as well. So if you are selling Nick your products, we will be the ones to provide you with some of that imagery and the data sheets and the cut sheets and everything else for that too. Where do I stop? It's endless. A lot of trade shows, of course, too. There are so many things that we do in product marketing. But really, in essence, it's really translating what the product line managers do, or product managers do, which is very technical, and really what are the benefits for you.

Ron:

You mentioned podcast, is there a Netgear podcast or what's that from a content creation in terms of video or audio format? What do you guys doing regularly?

John:

We haven't been as regular as you like since what 2017 for that.

Ron:

That's right.

John:

We are starting a more regular series. We've had webinars for years. Like once a month, we've had webinars that product line managers and myself will do here and there. We're just starting up with some ask an Expert series coming up. On LinkedIn Live, it's going to be once a month. And a little shorter kind of coffee break series. We call it on our web platform that will be just a simple topic, little bite size topic. We can help you with so 15, 20 minutes. That'll be more of a regular cadence. Haven't graduated to the full-time regular podcast yet.

Ron:

It's hard for those that are listening. You don't know this, so I'm going to help describe what I'm seeing. But for the people that are watching, you clearly see, and that would be over your left shoulder. I see this beautiful piece of gold hardware. Can you tell us what ornament that is or what trophy that is?

John:

I forget, of course, yes, there are people listening. So yes, describe it. That is an Emmy. I have a past life, like a lot of people do, of course, and I won that with the team from NBC Sports on the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

Ron:

All right, give me a little bit more there. That sounds amazing. Like not many people, you're my first Emmy Award winner here on the automation unplugged podcast. What team were you on or what was your role in ultimately being awarded that Emmy? That's by the way, congratulations. It's really cool.

John:

Thank you. It has my name on it. Of course, and they spelled it right. The first thing I checked when I got it a few years ago. So I spent about ten years and we can talk about some of this later on as a contractor working for an audio mixer manufacturer that's actually was based up here called grand patent systems. And they had audio mixtures that were being used in the Olympics, NBC Sports was the one with the ones who were putting that on. And they come to the Olympics and have their major broadcast facility, of course, within the international complex, if you will. So they hired me to come in with others as an edit supervisor. Come in and we set up the edit rooms. We call them the toes rooms. Traditional old edit systems. Not the newer fangled. This is old still. Nothing non-linear rooms. These are the linear tape-based rooms. So we come in with four or 5 of us and set up these rooms ahead of time. About a week or two, I think, have set up. We have training manuals we create, make sure everything's working right, then the editor is flying in from all over the world from Paris, from the U.S., from Germany, and they come in and use the rooms. We train them on how the equipment uses because they might not have used all the specific equipment. And then we kind of sit back and coast, hopefully, with no issues or emergencies during the actual games. And they produce all the segments you see, all the background stories, all the maybe it's the live recap of the events, all that stuff that they work on during the show.

Ron:

What did that feel like to be part of such a globally known event or activity?

John:

It was pretty cool, Ron. You know, for me, at the time, I was a contractor. So for me, first of all, it was like a 7, 8 week gig. And that was awesome. I got paid for 7 weeks straight. But really, there's a whole group of people that have done this for many, many, many years. And I had just done the Salt Lake City in 2002 first. And then they wanted the same group back for 2004. So for me, it was a new experience. And these are, this is the top of the pack. The cream of the cream in Sony broadcast people were there big time. All kinds of other people there, the number one people, because everything's got to work. There's just no backup. Well, you have a backup. I mean, there's no other choice. It's going to go, which is one thing I love about live, actually. So it was great working with these super knowledgeable experienced people. I learned a lot. They were good people because you're hanging around at close quarters for weeks and some of them are months. So they're really good people. Some of them I still keep up with as friends. And that was a really pleasurable experience. Besides the fact you're working on the Olympics, which everybody in the world has heard about. And that's pretty special, for sure. So that was a great experience.

Ron:

This podcast, you mentioned, I've been doing this interview show since 2017. And from day one, we were always live. And in the little, you know, in our industry, residential commercial industry, there are some different shows out there. I'm the only live show. And on day one, we were live, and we're still live today. And you're always living a little bit by the edge of your seat in that you're live and our regular audience knows that because sometimes there are hiccups. And it just happens you're live. What were some of the lessons you learned just out of curiosity and being live? Like what leads to a good live experience? For the audience. Yeah, preparation. Number one hands down for anything.

John:

Preparation. For a podcast, know your material, of course, ahead of time. Do your homework, but also for the Olympics, of course, they have spent the last year or two before the other Olympics that just finished getting ready for the next one. So they have everything set up. They're massive backups, of course, in case of equipment failure. They're just used to that in broadcast in general. So prepare, and have the right people in place to make sure that things are going to work right. And you can empower them to make those decisions if you need to in case of something going down. And you have a backup plan always.

Ron:

Have a plan.

John:

Yeah.

Ron:

Have a plan and then know that your plan probably won't go as planned and have a plan if your plan doesn't go as planned. What's the plan?

John:

Yeah, it's going to happen. You know something's going to happen. So first of all, so don't get freaked out by that too. Because you know when something happens, sometimes if you're so caught up in it, it has to be a certain way. I got to make this thing happen the right way. And then it doesn't. Then you can't figure out how to undo that. And that's what I learned. I've been I've learned a long time ago is to have backup plans and don't get too freaked out when something doesn't happen.

Ron:

Yeah, that's awesome. John, let's go back in time, sir. Let's go back to as much as you're willing to cover. Tell us about your background. Like, here you are in the at Netgear AV and you're in the CI channel working with integrators and driving this product category. How did you land here? Go as far back as you're willing to go.

John:

We have an hour, don't we? Yeah.

Ron:

We do, yeah, we can make you two or three hours, you know, tell us.

John:

Yeah. Well, good stuff. I go back. I was really raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, and moved there when I was two. I'm not going to go back every year. Don't worry. But the key thing that that was, I was in a township of schools that had a career center, and it was fantastic. And we also had the Benjamin Harrison base, an army base there for the head of finances with there. And there was a defense information school at that facility there too. So like in 7th grade, I remember going out to the defense information school learning radio at those great old army-style consoles with a big knob and everything. That's when I first got my taste of, this is fun. I like operating equipment. And then in high school, we had a career center that had an auto lab, had nursing, had all kinds of stuff. And they had a radio and television setup as well. So I got into there, took a TV class, summer of my freshman year, or no, that was somewhere in there. And then had a radio show all through high school, the jazz show with Sean Hank.

Ron:

You were the DJ or the MC of the show?

John:

Yeah, I did some morning announcement kind of stuff and did those. And then I started playing around with the equipment then. And I really love just the operation of equipment. There's some actors and thanks to my family. My dad was a part-time actor. So I have some of that performance in me, but I wasn't a performer. I was always a stage crew guy. I was a stage crew nerd. Not the AV nerd, similar. But stage crew guy. So I loved all the equipment operating in that. So I got through high school and went off to Purdue University to be an electrical engineer. That was too much theory. I wanted more of hands-on , ended up in this radio and television, and got a job. My summer of my freshman year, that's what it was. Summer of 1980 to date myself. I got a job in TV. So I started working in broadcast television in Indianapolis then, got up to do news and other production specials and things like that doing audio mostly, running camera and stuff. Then went to work for a video production company that bought a new editing system, built a whole new facility, helped wire the facility, build the consoles, and started being a video editor. So I learned how to do tape-based video editing and all the effects. I love that. And they can stuff flip tumble and spin and do a local commercial in longer form segments.

Ron:

This is before digital, right?

John:

This is linear tape-based , yeah.

Ron:

All right, for those that are uninformed, what is linear tape-based ? What does that mean? Break it down for me like I'm a 5th grader.

John:

Good one. So when you shoot something, you showed it on tape, videotape , of course. So you come back with these 47 different videotapes. And they all have time code on them. They have a number for each frame of video, and you have to go through and find the shots and put them together in the right order. That means transferring it from one tape to another tape, your master tape. With a time code for the two seconds, 5 seconds, or whatever those shots were, and build an edit list of all those events. It's all linear, so you have to lay it out in real-time , stop, lay the next shot out, stop. You can't move them around without having to go back and relay everything else in real-time . So again, back to preparation, you have to think ahead to know what you're building as far as maybe a bunch of layers of effects as you're making a big cube spin around with different stuff on it. You've got to really focus and figure that out ahead of time, so you don't have to go back and, oh, I want to change that third shot. Well, now you have to go back and do everything else after that if you pull it out.

Ron:

That's very manual.

John:

Yeah. It's not as creative as it is more. Number crunching and technical operating equipment and knowing how to pull it off and not spend 5 hours on something that should take an hour because they're paying $1000 an hour for what I was doing sometimes.

Ron:

I'm curious in that role you technically knew how to do it. Were you also the creative figuring out not only technically how to do it, but what should be done, or were you normally partnered or allied with a creative, and then collaboratively you would execute?

John:

It certainly more collaborative you know. Somebody would come in with a vision that the producer-director or creative director, or art director, would have their vision, and we have to pull it off some way. So it's a little bit of both, but I would say in my particular brain and what I was doing was less of that overall creative craziness than pulling off somebody else's vision along the way.

Ron:

That's interesting. So keep going. I interrupted you. So keep going.

John:

That's great.

Ron:

What's the career trajectory?

John:

So editing and I was having fun and playing, I wanted to get out west in reading those trade mags at the time. You read about places in San Francisco or Chicago, Chicago is a great market as well, doing some really great special effects during these high-end commercials that we've all seen. So I was feeling the poll I had a sister who lived in San Francisco for a while. And that'd be really cool. So long story short, I did get a job in San Francisco for an editing facility, and then another one was offered after the earthquake. This was 1990 when I moved there. They had a big 89 earthquake. And its facilities being built up multi-million dollar facility latest of all this equipment was really freaking cool. And I'm a little guy from the Midwest going, hey, I'd like to work for you if you don't mind. So they hired me. And I was just living in cloud 9, living in San Francisco, in the early 90s, single, nothing, you know, no tie downs, whatever, working my butt off at this high-end facility, making commercials. You've all seen like the Hershey's Kisses commercials, the ring, the holiday one they bring out. We did that. We did all kinds of Nike commercials as well. But before Industrial Light & Magic had their own facility, they would come to us at western images where I worked in colossal pictures and do stuff with us. Just a really fun time. Really great people. Amazing talent for digital artists. Now they're starting to now we're getting into the artists who are doing all the designing digitally and rotoscoping, taking one frame, cutting something out frame by frame. This is the hard way. This is how I learned how to do some stuff I do now, still in Photoshop, just tracing around somebody. Of course, now the software does it for you automatically. But that was the fun, fun time for me also was working with artists who were not editors like I was and they kind of changed things up. Let's just make a reel of these shapes moving around, make a real of these shapes and then bring them together and see what happens. And just kind of figure out what might come of that versus trying to plan everything out accordingly. And that was I'll never forget that moment with one of the artists. It's just those things you just can't go back. That time of life was pretty special, for sure.

Ron:

Is that for in that example, was that for like an artist that was going to do an artist's installation, and they were just inventing and using you as the editor and your facilities for that creation?

John:

We did some of that. This was an artist on staff. Who was used to doing stuff on his own and was working with mead in a linear in its linear style edit bay that was a little bit different, and I always wanted to say, what's your vision? Let me just map it out. We'll do this. He's like, ah, let's just throw these things together and try to see what comes of it. So in that case, it was an internal artist. We did stuff for some with like John Scofield was a name and a video world back in the day. We did a thing with Todd Rundgren. I remember a couple of things with him back in the day as well. So that was fun. And there's one little detour I'll take you on, too, that that was when I got in People magazine as well.

Ron:

What? Tell me more.

John:

Bricks. So I was just one day, honestly, where this woman had come in, we had been doing a lot of work with her on some medical instructional videos, nothing real fancy, but just, you know, I forget who she'll work for. And she had taken, had the idea to work on some soft porn movies, more with the women's focus and just amends. So she had done this film and she had come into our facility to change a credit. That's all it did. She didn't edit it there, and I wasn't the editor, but her editor was there and changed her credit. Well, People magazine was doing a story on her that day, so they came in with a photographer that day in the edit suite I was working in and there's me posing with the editor and the producer-director of this film. So then which was great, pretty cool. So I had the conversation with my mom now because People magazine is pretty big. Mom, I'm in People magazine. It looks like I'm editing porn. I'm not.

Ron:

Oh, that's amazing. So that was just that one-day random shot in time, but you're now in People magazine.

John:

15 minutes to change a name on the credits. That was it. But that was the right time, right place.

Ron:

When did the transition from tape to digital happen, particularly as it relates to video editing? The time period, and what was your role in that?

John:

Well, that's interesting. That was the early 90s. So I remember all those systems coming online avid is a well-known name. Now I'm for video editing for years. One of the first, the biggest non-linear edit companies. So what I did for a long time, because avid wasn't high enough quality yet, they could rough cut on there and do 14 versions of the commercial, pick the one, and come into my suite with all the final editing, and then we put all the shots together in the right order, that they had given me. So that was early 90s or so. And then took off from there. So really, the mid-90s , late 90s, early 2000s is when it just took off, and it faded away. The tape-based systems really faded away. And that's unfortunate because there was a bunch of companies who were those editorial companies who would do that finishing or do the pre and then we do all the finishing. That changed the industry. So all those post houses, post-production houses like I worked in, faded away. And that gave rise to all these really empowered all these people to do it on their own then. They didn't have to come to a big company.

Ron:

Yeah, we're today 2023. We're in this rise of AI. And there's all this talk of jobs that are going to be lost. And, you know, all these scary things that are popular to talk about, that at the same time, what's often not commonly talked about is all the new things that will come from this, all the new jobs, new industries, changes in society. But going back to this digital transition that you observed in the early 90s, did the tape or the analog video editors and all the people in that space did they lead the industry? Or did they transition into this digital transition? What was that like?

John:

They transitioned. And to be honest, sometimes I kind of miss that. I wish I'd stayed with it with editing. There are people who are still editing today that I work with back then. So they transitioned for sure. And in some ways that I use the same word again, but it empowered them, but it gave them more control over the craft. It was just easier to do this. Editing now on these nonlinear platforms and all the motion graphics and things. So some of those editors could now do everything from the motion graphics production, and also editing the same way. And people realized that, hey, I can edit on my iPhone now. I can do my own videos. And once you start doing that, you go, it doesn't look the same. It doesn't have the same rhythm. It's hard. So, you know, there is truth to, you need a professional sometimes to do that. And these people have maintained that, for sure.

Ron:

And so it was in that early 90s, I'm trying to think the timing for the Olympics. When did you say that was?

John:

2002 was Salt Lake.

Ron:

Okay. All right, so take me 90s into the early 2000s and how did that opportunity present itself?

John:

Yeah, so I was editing time in my life like I said, San Francisco, cool stuff. We use one of these new editing platform that was really a mix of linear and non-linear because then disc based system started coming out. Where you could put a bunch of video onto a disk digital disk and jump around from one second and 45 seconds, and you could build that non-linearly , basically, and combine that with the really great processing power we had of real-time video coming through with high-end digital video players and recorders and things. And effect systems that would flip and tumble stuff live versus having to process that. Because back then, that would take minutes to chunk through. So our graphics artists were always really good at pool. We had a pool table to work because they go set up their shots and to go render out for half an hour.

Ron:

And they go play pool.

John:

Exactly. They'd always be the editors because we were stuck in the edit bay. But so there's a mix of those things. So the system we use from a small company called Akon at the time, they'd come in and they help us tweak this massive keyboard and control the disks and control the video switcher and the digital effects devices. And I thought that was fun. I'd like to help them make the equipment for an editor. So I went to work for them, it's one of those things in life where you guys just take it 30% decrease in salary, and make the move, and it was one of the best decisions in my life. So as an editor, I got to work for these guys and help train editors, and other people how to use it. And those editors were great. I did a lot of time at NBC. That's why I got the NBC gig. At 30 Rock, training your editors, how to use it, and you customize certain things on the editor because I was one of them. So I could speak their language.

Ron:

He spoke their language. You were one of them. That allowed you in the door and they would accept you. That makes sense.

John:

And that was fun. Yeah, I mean, I'm traveling around the world, you know, Sydney, Singapore, Munich, wherever London for helping companies install their systems and train their editors, and then go away and watch them work. That was great. And then when I came back, I did some work on website development and work for other manufacturers and product development as well, product management for the audio mixer manufacturer I mentioned some others, started this small company with some friends up here in grass valley called Renegade labs. I always liked that name.

Ron:

That's a good name.

John:

A small digital audio mixer that people could use in post-production suites. It wasn't big enough for me to sustain a full-time job. So there was ten years I was laid off first, so we go back. So I went to work for the manufacturer for a couple of years, and then was laid off, knowing they could still hire me for training and other customers can hire me directly. And that's when I realized I should take my first motorcycle trip across the country to get into another topic.

Ron:

So that was what was your first trip? Where'd you go?

John:

So I went about 8 weeks around the country. I forgot how many thousands of miles. I went to Vegas for NAB broadcasting convention. I had a friend turning 40 and New Orleans. I said I'll just keep on going. I've got no job. No relationship. This is the time because I may never happen again. So I went to New Orleans and then up through the Smoky Mountains and software in Atlanta, the sister in D.C., I went to New York on a different trip and then came across the Midwest. Saw my family went up to door county in Wisconsin, another beautiful place in their country. You should go see, and then door county, it's called Wisconsin. It's the thumb of Wisconsin. Okay. Anyway, and then came across through South Dakota and badlands and Yellowstone and Grand Tetons as well. And then eventually won my way back to California. Yeah.

Ron:

All right, so I'm going to put a pin in that. I'm going to come back to the motorcycle track. And bring us, bring us, you know.

John:

All the way to the present. I'll cut to the chase. So that got me into product management and product marketing. And after ten years of contract work, I realized I needed a full-time gig because I was linear stuff was starting to die down. I didn't retrain myself to non-linear , be able to teach all the avid courses, things like that. So I got a job in product management and technical writing. Did a lot of tech writing as well. So I was the first product manager tech writer for a company called element labs that became part of Barcodes pixel dots, I think it was, or something like that. Making LED screens. They had a lot of concert tours. You saw LED screens back in the game. 2004, 5, 7. Somewhere in there. And they did really cool great processing on LED walls for concert tours and things. And then they printed some problems I was laid off from them, went to work for a company called PRYSM. I was going to be careful about that. I did my time in prysm.

Ron:

It sounds like that's a bad thing.

John:

It's a subtle thing. So they made a new technology which was pretty fun with lasers on a little display, like a 25-inch diagonal display, cube for making video walls. So they had to they were in stealth mode for several years. They came public when I was there as well. So they have this technology called laser phosphor display. LPD was supposed to rival LCD, low power really seamless displays. You could put them edge to edge and all this stuff. It never quite got to where they wanted it to be. It was still kind of deep of a package and had a weird little shape and everything. So anyway, I worked for them for several years in product management. And then went to work for RGB Spectrum, where I'd done some tech writing before. RGB Spectrum did around for 30 years, maybe now, 25, making a video with all processors and multi viewers, mostly for the commercial market, but they'll get into the residential CI stuff here and there. And then that's where I kind of rose up through product marketing and really got into director of product marketing for Netgear doing the website and collateral stuff. And then a little time at Lona and the Netgear came calling. So I'd load everybody knows from the residential market. I thought I need to get changed it up a bit here. I'm getting older. I want to I don't want to spend the rest of my life here. So Lona and Garth called, and we had a good little thing going there, and then Nick called and I felt bad, but Netgear you know, everybody's heard of Netgear. I've never worked for a company. Everybody knew about. You talked to your in-laws , and they're like, who do you work for? What? But everybody knows Netgear. And that is a good story because Nick here started focusing on the pro EV industry first, the commercial industry, and now CI. And they're putting together a team. They wanted somebody, didn't matter who you were, or where you were from, they wanted the right person to come in for the marketing. We had a sales and biz dev guy and a more manufacturers guy as well. So really three-pronged approach here to start focusing on pro EV. So like Netgear, never would have thought of them for AV background. But it worked out.

Ron:

Help me understand. So what is Netgear doing today to serve the audience that might be watching or listening to this show? Because I think Netgear, I think of, you know, the many pieces of Netgear hardware I picked up for my house over the years at Best Buy. And that's obviously very different than maybe the applications for a CI business yeah. So what is it like today and at a high level, like where's Netgear going in terms of their focus on the space?

John:

Well, as more and more things started turning to IPE, certainly AV over IP was a big thing in Nick, saw their minutes, which is being used for that. Purpose. And that's when the product manager Laurent Massey, who I called the father of pro AV at Netgear, he really started seeing that and tweaking things so that what we came up with was basically an AVOS, AV operating system, that helps people configure a switch for IP. Is now the networks involved, I'm not a networking guy at all. I don't know how to configure a switch for that for audio and video. So they made an easier way to configure a switch so that it can be more accessible to people that are now having to deal with AV over IP. And that works, of course, across your home network. We've been partners with Savant for many, many years. And Crestron now as well. And we make products on our own through the channel. So from the beginning, these switches were not sold on necker dot com. We made a clear choice. We knew that.

Ron:

This is not the same package of gear. You find it at Best Buy?

John:

No, it's not. And we still have those, of course, we still have lots of great unmanaged switches or plus switches that you can buy for certain needs, but they're not going to be your best AV switches, for sure. So we had that focus on the market. And then when we started seeing more of the wireless needs for the CI channel, specifically, last year, about CD time, really when we started bringing out models specifically for the CI channel that you can't buy on our own store even or an Amazon or somewhere else that bundles some more pro support with it or our cloud management with it. So we listen to people and say, what we really want is a wireless product, we can buy and sell to our customers that you won't discount the crap out of on somewhere and you can buy the customer could buy for less. So really about a year ago, we started focusing on the CI channel and saying switches have been in channel for years. You got those. Now you've got wireless access points. And we also have a little teaser. We have a new router coming up as well. Well, now it's at CDA. So then we have that total solution. We got everything you need right there. And people started chomping at the bit to be part of it.

Ron:

How does the channel do business with you guys? Do you have you buy through distribution? Do you do direct?

John:

Yeah, through distribution. I mean, people already have their relationships and we don't want to upset that or don't no need to. And we're almost too big to do it by direct relationships. We have to have so many so we have the distribution already worked out. So that's the way to go.

Ron:

Okay. And you mentioned CD. Do you want to drop a CD of number here at least for anyone that might be booking their game plan for CD?

John:

Absolutely. We're at three 5 four 7, three 5 four 7.

Ron:

This will be your second year at CDU.

John:

We've been multiple years. Last year was really the big introduction. It was still a smallish booth. We're going to do a bigger booth presence this year, but we've been for several years at CD, but now we're really now we have the right products, I think, for the channel there, and we know what we're doing, and people have heard of this more now. So it's more of a presence than any other year.

Ron:

Okay. And in terms of, if anyone does want to learn more about the Netgear, where do you send them? Is it to their local distributor? Do you want to name any distributors? Do they go to you? Do they go to a head of sales? Like who would be the person they would talk to to inquire you know if they're curious?

John:

I think whoever you're buying gear from now, you talk to them you know. Our sales guys.

Ron:

What if they're not buying Netgear gear?

John:

No, I mean any of you, whoever you buy stuff from. I'm always concerned about pointing somebody out because I don't want to miss somebody else. So I don't want to drop names, but really it's we've done the due diligence to connect with who you're dealing with now most likely for other AV gear, other CI others. And we'll be part of that for sure.

Ron:

Okay, and you mentioned that you guys were partnered or collaborating with Savant and or Crestron. Are they, I'm just curious, are those things still in place? Are you are they reselling your gear? Are they you know, they're white labeling, some gear you're making, or what can you talk about? I'm just curious, what's the nature of those relationships? And are there more coming?

John:

Oh yeah, there's more origin acoustics, another one. That's been really great for us, and I shouldn't certainly drop them because they've been super enthusiastic and helped us figure out what we can do better for the marketplace as long with Savant and Crestron. So all of them. And there's more. We have like over 200 manufacturing partners that have certified our switches and vice versa as well. From people like NDI, cameras, tons of camera manufacturers, but also, like I said, the Crestron and Salman and the origin acoustics too, who are selling our equipment and queues this audio, Dante, you name it. The technologies that are out there, we support, and we pass through and we're certified. And we give you a profile that'll make you that'll put everything, set everything correctly on that switch. But the important thing is that we have those relationships, they will resell our gear. Nobody's white labeling our switches. You're going to see a neck here switch. It's going to say Netgear on it. Because that helps give it credence, though it is a neck your switch. And you know what it is.

Ron:

Silly question. Maybe not. How big of a company is Netgear?

John:

Good question. You know, I don't keep track on that somewhere. I think we're in like 6, 700 people overall.

Ron:

Wow.

John:

Somewhere in there. And the consumer side, again, you know, we had that clear distinction between what we call the CHP-connected home products and the small medium business SMB side or Netgear business. But that side of the company is certainly larger. Although our business side with our emphasis and commercial AV to begin with and now CI is doing really, really well. So it's a really fun thing to see.

Ron:

I'm going to go a bit tangential here, John if you'll allow me to mention a little bit ago this inflection point with AI entering our life. I know there's going to be a panel on AI. I'm going to be sitting on that panel with some integrators and talk about applications and such. I'm curious from your standpoint as a content creator. Your technical writing is about very specific, obviously, topics for products you guys are inventing or releasing. What role either, whether through copy or imagery, where are you experimenting, if at all, this role of AI in your day-to-day ?

John:

Definitely experimenting, who hasn't, I think, you have to I mean, for one thing, I've used chat GPT, of course. You've got to check them out, and we've used some things from that to start with. I think so you see it with something. And of course, it's only as good as what we've already written and put out there. That's right. So it isn't, although I was reading some stuff that can make some things up sometimes. But I think it is freely associated some things. But so it's only as good as we've already written and what's already out there. What's helpful is when you're writing and with so many things going on to stop and focus for a second and put your brain into space of this new router we have and you're writing a brochure for that or whatever and actually Brittany on my team does a lot of that anyway. It's not really me. Other things. Press release, let's say, or something. But I've used it before to kind of seed the story for me and get some ideas from that. Oh, that's great that way. It helps you kind of figure out maybe an approach you hadn't thought of for that. That's where I've used it before. I don't really, I still think we have to edit that copy, for sure. Every time, because you just don't know what it doesn't know all the nuances that you have for the way you talk about your product necessarily, especially for a new thing. There's nothing already written about us and the CI market. How will it know really what Netgear's benefits really are? So we used it for sure, and it's helpful as a seed starter, I'd say.

Ron:

Is there any initiative or scuttlebutt happening within the rooms in the halls at Netgear around just at a high-level AI entering the workplace and what role it should or should not have like? That's just that's a big business. And what I'm assuming and I'm consuming a lot of podcasts and content on the subject. And I think a lot of people are just inventing, discovering, experimenting, what role it has in their lives or their business. And I was just curious, is there any mandates that you or your team or other teams are working on inside of Netgear or is it really just self-directed , self-discovery ?

John:

Well, this is where I got to pull the public company card for one thing, but not that I have a whole lot to talk about anyway, but being a public company, I got to be careful sometimes about.

Ron:

Don't say anything that will get you in trouble, for sure. Or me in trouble.

John:

Yeah. You know, I wouldn't say it as a directive from above, for sure. There's nothing, certainly self-directed at this point. I can see how we would look at it for things like support or that. Again, it's going to be difficult to replace a person on the staff who writes for a living with that. We haven't been encouraged to use those tools necessarily. It isn't like somebody saying, do that. With the workload, I can see how I might go that route just because I want to get more done. But we still contract a writer to do our case studies and white papers, things like that. And we do a lot of stuff internally. So there are certain things that are working on it. And I'm not at that senior level to know what they're working on other ways to incorporate AI, but I'm sure there are some thoughts for sure.

Ron:

Yeah, I'll give an example. So the output of this interview is a video. And the video has, you know, audio and video. And we're now experimenting here at one Firefly with some AI tools that are take this, transcribe the full conversation, and cross reference that against chat, GPT, and what it might theorize or interesting segments. And it will then summarize and cut the videos for portrait application onto social media profiles. And it does all of the above with a click. You click, and it's outputting something useful. And so our audience across our social channels is going to start to see more tight segments, you know, a typical show's 30 to 60 minutes. But maybe two minutes of conversation might be particularly interesting or insightful or educational. And you can have a human do that video editing, right? Watch the whole thing, really decipher it, and cut it. And or you know with some AI tools, now we're still in testing phase. So we're not totally locked in on one particular tool we're experimenting across a couple of different tools, actually. But you're able to upload this video and it outputs a nearly finished product. And that's just like, man, normally we might have had someone sit and do that for an hour or two. And now I can upload the video and get an output in 5 minutes that is 5 to ten minutes. That's useful in that it enables us to do more. I'm a big personal advocate that AI. It's nothing more than technology. AI plus a human allows you to do more than a human alone.

John:

For sure.

Ron:

No different than if I was going to go build a house. And I was going to use an analogy. I've got to put a bunch of screws into something. Well, I could go in with a handheld screwdriver or I could go in with a power drill. I'm still going to build the house, just one's going to let me get it done a little bit more effectively.

John:

Yeah, that actually brings up a good point that I kind of overlooked. We are playing with and are using actually some AI in our webcast, in the same sort of way. There's a tool called harmonic. And I have no stake in the company, but.

Ron:

I hadn't heard that one. I'm going to how are you using it.

John:

So we signed up for them to take a webinar. Take a video. What does anybody webinar with you and do the same thing? Cut it up into moments. So if you go to moments dot net gear dot com, you'll see some of our past webinars, moments, dot net dot com. And you'll see different webinars we can go in. So same sort of thing. Overnight, it'll go in and do a transcription of the video. And it'll you have a website you can go into and you can change those moments where you think it's more important. I'll be honest, the moments they choose aren't always what I think are the most important. So, but you highlight the script and say, okay, this part's a moment and it creates that portion from the video and puts them together. It'll make a trailer for you if you want, of those moments. And then what I love for our sales team is they're having a conversation with somebody and you're saying, mister integrator for the home, I don't really know much about VLANs. You know, I don't know what they are, how do I need them? They can take a webinar and send you that moment on VLANs and let you view just that portion of the webinar versus sending you the link for the entire thing and you're gonna go find out where it is, or you have to go search to a certain timestamp. Here's the exact moment from that. And that's where AI is using that. Also, then, that can become, we're gonna use that for the stuff I was talking about earlier, coffee breaks and things where our teams in Germany and France in Japan can now take that transcription and somebody can re-voice that video with the exact transcription. We don't have to write out a script ahead of time. And that's really powerful.

Ron:

Are you using the AI voice?

John:

Well, this is the script. They'll transcribe it in their own native, have somebody on staff, re voice it. Who speaks Japanese, let's say?

Ron:

There's AI now that actually, you can have the AI voice read it in whatever language. I haven't gone down that path of experimentation, but I'm certainly seeing and hearing a lot about that on some of the Twitter feeds that I'm on about that type of technology.

John:

I think that'll be fun. Yeah.

Ron:

I think that's an example of using this new technology for good. As we also acknowledge, people are going to use it for evil and try to make people say things they didn't say and put that out there and try to manipulate audiences you know. It's an example of most things I think in life. You can use things for good or evil. It's your choice.

John:

And that is truly scary, for sure. But there are a lot of good things for it to, as always.

Ron:

So if you were to look in your crystal ball, I ask a version of this conversation, this question, John, to most of my guests, and that is, what do you see in terms of the economic conditions? And I'm going to focus on North America for the question, even though we do have an audience around the world. What are you seeing maybe for the balance of this year and or into next year? So maybe there's an 18-month span there, 6 months this year, 12 months next year. What can you say? And I know you're a publicly traded company. So you can't say anything that is inappropriate or would get you in trouble. But it's just the folks that are listening who are trying to forecast what's ahead. And a lot of them have their nose to the grindstone cranking out their work product or running their companies. And so hearing people from different parts of the country, different perspectives. Can be helpful. Anything that you can say or are allowed to say that was in your ability to predict?

John:

Thank you for qualifying all that. Yeah. You know, I'll just put it this way, I think, Ron, that we just introduced a new line of 12 switches for you over IP. So in addition to all the existing stuff we have. And we're making more the router. So the other access points with Wi-Fi 7 access points coming up later this year. So I think we're still really positive on what this industry CI and also the commercial industry are going to go through in the next 6 months and then 12 months next year as well. I know there's been some it's really been up and down for sure. We saw a huge increase during the pandemic of everybody outfitting their offices and homes and Wi-Fi. Clearly. And some switches follow suit with that. And then everything pulled back, of course, and now we're seeing a lot more business. We haven't grown a ton. We've grown over the years. We're getting more and more market share all the time, which is great for us. I know the market itself, industry itself has pulled back a little bit. And I see that continuing to the end of the year, but it's going to go back up again, I think, as we figure out this transition of work from home and commercial and office space changing, I think we're just in this flux mode for a while here still.

Ron:

Segmented within the Netgear business that you are the integrator channels or are you also observant of the retail spaces? I'm going to keep saying like the best spies or the other places where people are online where people might buy your gear. And I'm asking that question because I'm curious if you are seeing or you're allowed to say, is CI performing differently or better? I would theorize it performs better than maybe retail where you have your everyday person that might shop at Best Buy and might be more affected by this economy than maybe the consumer of the CI dealer that's the person that you and I serve day to today.

John:

Yeah, I don't actually see all those numbers, but the Netgear business side of Netgear certainly does sell on Amazon and dot com and Best Buy and other places CDW, whatever. So we do have the smaller switches, the non-AV switches, and some other access points and lower-end stuff. They are being sold there. But I'm not involved in all those numbers. And yeah, I'm going to be careful about prophesizing what's coming up on all that.

Ron:

Do you get specific about the Netgear AV brand when they get a piece of gear from your channel from you? Is it literally it doesn't say Netgear it says net gear AV?

John:

No, it still says Netgear right now. Still says Nick here.

Ron:

It still says Netgear. So it's really from an internal team standpoint that your internally branding it and that GaryVee?

John:

Correct. Yeah. You know.

Ron:

What's your opinion on the value of that Netgear brand name that everybody on the planet probably has heard of or purchased? And I'm thinking from the standpoint of the integrator and the integrator has a brand, but the integrator sells some brands that the consumer has heard of. Like we do a lot of work with Sony here at one firefly. And we find that the Sony brand name has a lot of pull, a lot of power, and a lot of horsepower with the consumer, more so than the integrators brand name, which maybe is a smaller, more localized brand. What's your kind of how do you think about that from a marketing standpoint? The role of that Netgear brand in the life or business of the integrator?

John:

I hate to say so extreme of blessing and curse, but it is sort of that where, yes, everybody's heard of Netgear in their homes and everything else. But then when they look at a business, it's different for the CI channel. It is your home. We're still talking about so it's your customer's home. But I think Netgear has such a good name. We've been around for 26 years. So people understand we've been around the business. We know networking. And that's a really positive thing. The associate with us. And I think the AD part of the early this helps focus like for the channel more than the end customer that in customer can see Netgear and they're happy with that. We know it. But still, we have some challenges to overcome because not everybody thinks of us as that premium brand. So I think on the neck of consumer side as well, we're establishing that no question with our RV routers and the mesh systems for homes that is the high-end home router of choice now for your Wi-Fi. So that helps us in the business side of things in that gear and the CI channel where people see neck here as the premium. But then on the commercial side or CI channel as well, we're not the most expensive option. We're rightly priced, I guess you'd say, but you don't have to pay an exorbitant amount of money for a switch that's really tuned for AV now. You can get a knicker switch that is awesome for that. And know that we have put the work into it with a Netgear name to make sure it's going to work well. How's that for a good marketing speed?

Ron:

No, I think that's excellent marketing spend. I'll leave it.

John:

I shouldn't say I shouldn't use the word spin. It's true.

Ron:

It's true. No, that's the fun thing about marketing is properly positioned. Properly understanding your customer. I would posit that that starts with the foundation of the strategy. And then ultimately understanding your product and understanding where it fits, where it fits in the ecosystem out there in the wild. So that's how I interpret what you just said. You understand the customer and you understand where your product fits, and that's how you position it.

John:

So come by Stadia and take a listen and also tell us your opinions and we'll take them to heart, for sure.

Ron:

Awesome. I want to close with music. I know that one of your personal passions and hobbies is music. Tell us about that. When you go to your happy place or one of your happy places, what is it that you're doing?

John:

Yeah, motorcycling is a happy place for sure. The other happy place is music. I've been playing drums forever since I was a kid. And most of that actually hasn't been with the band in my 20s or 30s or whatever. It really wasn't playing with a band. It was me just playing the music at home. That was always fun. So I've had electronica set a bead drum that's upstairs. It's right there. I think, oh, I can take a break whenever I want, but I haven't done enough of that. So, you know, this job is just kind of demanding. And when I'm off, well, that's a pleasure thing. It's still time away from the wife and dogs as well. So I got to play more of that. But it's been fun. I love jazz. And that's another story for an Olympics, I should have touched on too. I was able to play with the guys during Salt Lake City. We had a little jazz band. And at least we played blues. We played rock and roll. We had a band together during the Olympics that played. I shipped my drums out to Salt Lake City and we played there. We had like Berkeley school music-trained bass player and keyboard player. We had a pedal steel person, a couple of localists. So random things like that are what make it really entertaining. I will spend when I retire my plan is to play more music, for sure.

Ron:

All right. Well, everybody listening is now your accountability partner. So on the day that you retire, we're going to ask you what your plans are for your music. But there's retirement, no time in the immediate future.

John:

I got plenty of time.

Ron:

You got plenty of time. John, for the folks that are tuned in and want to meet you directly or get in touch with you directly. Where would you send them?

John:

I would send them first to LinkedIn. It's easy to find me. If you can spell my name right, then you can find me. Otherwise, necker dot com slash AV has all the neck here kind of stuff. But also, if you want to email me, you can email Jay Henkel at Netgear.com.

Ron:

John, it was a pleasure getting to know you more and to have you here on the show two 47 of automation unplugged. Thanks for joining me today.

John:

Thanks so much for having me, Ron. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I'll see you at CD, I hope.

Ron:

You will. I'm going to be there in full force, now I'm not as prepared as you. So I actually don't know my CD or booth number. But if they're listening this far in the show, the audience will know how to come to find us. Look for one firefly to come to say hello. But thank you, John. I appreciate you.

John:

Thank you.

Ron:

Thanks for tuning in to another episode of automation unplugged. For a full transcript of this show in all previous shows, head over to our website at one firefly dot com forward slash AU. There you'll find links to all transcripts, show notes, Facebook Live recordings, and resources mentioned during the show. If you enjoyed this episode and like to hear more, follow us on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you listen to your podcast. Please follow us on social media. We are at one Firefly LLC on all platforms. Don't forget to tune in next week for another episode of automation unplugged as we dive deeper into technology trends and the fascinating people that make up the custom integration industry. Bye for now.

SHOW NOTES:

John started out working in broadcast TV with a successful career in video editing before moving to the manufacturing side with roles in product management and marketing. His extensive travel experiences include covering two Olympic Games for NBC Sports and winning an Emmy Award for his work at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Ron Callis is the CEO of One Firefly, LLC, a digital marketing agency based out of South Florida and creator of Automation Unplugged. Founded in 2007, One Firefly has quickly became the leading marketing firm specializing in the integrated technology and security space. The One Firefly team work hard to create innovative solutions to help Integrators boost their online presence, such as the elite website solution, Mercury Pro.

Resources and links from the interview:

• NETGEAR Webpage
• John Henkel LinkedIn
• NETGEAR Facebook