Visual 1st conference with Hans Hartman

Gary Pageau of the Dead Pixels Society talks with Hans Hartman, president of Suite 48 Analytics and chair of Visual 1st.  Visual 1st is the premier global conference focused on promoting innovation and partnerships in the photo and video ecosystem, hosting executives and entrepreneurs at photo and video app development startups, mobile device vendors, carriers, cloud storage providers, software companies, print product providers, camera manufacturers, and many others. In 2020, the conference will be the Visual 1st 2020 – Virtual Edition conference, Oct.14-15. In this interview, Hartman discusses the program and how the event has adapted to maintain its networking capabilities. 

The event will be held Oct. 14+15; 8:00 am - 12:00 noon, Pacific Time, with optional attendee roundtable get-togethers: Oct. 21, 22, 23, 24 at 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM, Pacific Time.

To register, click here. Ticket price: $199; Early Bird price: $99 (until Sept. 30).

Prior to founding Suite 48 Analytics, most recently Hartman was senior director, market research at the multimedia software company, Nero, and director, product strategy at desktop publishing software company, Quark. 

He has directed the first European Future Image Mobile Imaging Summit and chaired various Seybold Seminars PDF Conferences, as well as the Electronic PublishingMagazine Print Workflow Summit.  

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Transcript

Gary Pageau  0:02  
Hello again, and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. And this week, we're joined by Hans Hartman, chair of the visual first conference, which is coming up this October. Hello, Hans. How are you today?

Hans Hartman  0:18  
I am doing great. I can actually breathe here in the San Francisco Bay areas. Some days I can breathe. This is good breathing, because of the smoke and the fires.

Gary Pageau  0:29  
So speaking of the visual first conference, can you share with us some of the background of the event which some considered to be the leading conference in the photo imaging space?

Hans Hartman  0:40  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Very short background. So we started this eight years ago, and we called it Mobile Photo Connect. And we we meaning Alexis Gerard, some of your audience might remember from his days at 6Sight and Future Image. And he, we're partners in this. So we started, MP used to work mobile photo connect on purpose, because that was really the time that folks in the industry and outside the industry start taking the concept of mobile photography, or photos taken with your smartphone more seriously, sort of as mobile was a second element was photos. And then the third element was Connect, meaning networking and bringing people together from from different industries. And that went great. We started I think, the first conference, we had 80 people. Last year, we have close to 200 people. So we have gradually grown. But two or three years ago, we came to the conclusion that the concept or the term mobile was not encompassing enough and became sort of a useless term. Also, like in the past, people call themselves an internet company. Well, at some point, everybody internet company and everybody in the photo space as a mobile component. And the second element that we thought was not not appropriate anymore, was the concept of photos. There are also many use cases where they are the same whether you're using photos or videos. And there's even space in between which we at some point, we did a research project two years ago, I believe, and we call that folio. So these are very, very short, sort of hybrid in between photos and videos which are popular in particular under among youngsters. Sure. So we renamed the conference to the core of what has always been about and that is visual first, cell communication, memory, retention, everything is a visual first kind of thing. And you have by renaming the conference, a much broader perspective of what can be included or not be included.

Gary Pageau  2:56  
So the hallmark of the event is the location, which is the Golden Gate club in San Francisco, unfortunately, between the wildfires COVID. And who knows what other natural disasters are in the offing, you've chosen to go to a virtual event for this year. But you're still maintaining this a set timeframe. Can you describe how you're shifting the event from a in person networking event, which is really it's it's strong suit, you get a lot of quality face to face time with industry leaders to a virtual event?

Hans Hartman  3:38  
It's a bit of a long story. But let's let's first go through the decision that we made about going virtual so quite early on there might have been in a march timeframe, when more and more industry conferences and also trade shows. said, Hey, you know what, we're not gonna do it this year. The trigger point was at that point, photokina. And I've been involved in that had the big European for global, but Germany based a trade show, they will can it canceled. And then we said, You know what, with almost everybody canceling here, at some point this year, people will go back to business. People want to find new, find out about new technologies, new partnerships, etc, we're going to hold it no matter what. So that was our statement in March, and we set the date October 14, and 15th. And then maybe, then we took our time, first of all, to make a decision, are we going good or not? And then secondly, you know, how are we going to do that? And that's leads back to the second part of your question. And so, you know, how can you pull off? What was a successful educational and networking networking event? How can you pull it off in a virtual format? So we did a lot of thinking we actually attend a lot of other conferences. You know, And outside the industry. And I think a couple of takeaways, number one, you know, you cannot just do it as a webinar that doesn't have enough of the qualities that people are really looking for in terms of discovering potential partners, and being engaged and being a participatory thing. We definitely also don't want we do want to make it a participatory event. So we don't make recordings or videos available of the conference, you have to be there in it be part of it, you need to participate. Then, sort of the third element is, you know, you know, because you're Firstly, we typically have a day and a half program how how you cannot put it in a webinar, people will fall asleep after two or three or four hours. So we made everything pretty snappy and shorter, sort of an essence, there are two morning events morning pacific time starting 8am. Five Minute ends, the program ends at 1130. And under still online mingling time after them, but the you know, three and a half hours with a break in between is for me think is Max. And then all the sessions are shorter, two panels, historically, were 45 minutes with four speakers nowadays, you know, 30 minutes with three speakers, so everything is shorter, snappier, that's one, then we will do some, some different networking things. And that took the longest to figure out. So you can do networking. As with most zoom like services, you can have private chats going on between everybody who's part of the webinar, so you can send messages back and forth. That's what you can do during the conference. Obviously, we try to not have them do it during the program, but in the break before and after. So that's one so you can network during it, what is the two other elements, so we came up with something new. We call it our networking page. And we did that in conjunction with a company called capsule. And they basically just released and made what they have available for conferences. And what that allows us to do is sort of provide a password protected page. So you need to be an attendee in order to get there. And that page is almost like a visual Rolodex of who will be there. So everybody who is registered to attend, including speakers and sponsors and anybody else, they will be listed there by name, job title, company name and the LinkedIn logo. very much encourage people then to also record a little video, which you can do on that site on that page that we have, you know, up to 60 seconds very short video with it sort of automatically turns into a trailer. But basically, we have a question like, Who are you and what kind of partnerships are right into to engage with. So that's what we call our networking opportunity before the conference. 

Gary Pageau  8:15  
It's a little more visually appealing, and more personality felt than just sending out a page with people's LinkedIn addresses.

Hans Hartman  8:27  
Yeah, yeah, nothing. Well, we in the business of visual communication, right, so not nothing beats having a click interview, seeing somebody's face and tell in their own words, what they're all about, and what kind of partners they're looking for. Right? If we can do that, before the conference, we actually keep the page up after the conference also, so that you can do some other network, you can search. And you can search by company or name of people and find the little video and then check it out. And then click on the embedded link LinkedIn logo that's embedded in the video, you click on that, click on that, and then you can engage with the person you'd like to, to engage with. And so that's the second element primarily before the conference to some extent after the conference. And then the third thing you know, part of why the physical conference official first date has always been a day and a half or initially day but at least a day and a half is now we had quite a bit of break time. Together the receptions as you might remember, if you always enjoy them, for you, that kind of stuff, you cannot do it as soon as you put like, you know, a 45 minute or an hour long break in a webinar, people will you know, getting a fear, yeah to disappear to do the emails, etc. So we said okay, let's keep the break during the morning events very short. There's only one one break halfway that morning. But then, let's figure out sort of birds of a feather if people are familiar concept of informal get togethers. let's organize that today after the tsunami the week after the conference, right. And then, you know, people who are somewhat like minded have similar interest would like to discuss similar topics they can get together. And the way we do that is be during the conference, we have a poll and be, you know, serve a lot of potential topics or likelihood of what people would be interested in. And then whatever choose is being elected in a call, they'll be, you know, we'll have three or four of these events. The next week, there's only one topic or area of interest, at least that we're going to do informal get together anyway. And that's what we call our women in imaging. Get together because we launched it last year, and it was highly successful,

Gary Pageau  10:57  
very successful last year, they didn't let me in, but it looked outside and it was very successful. A lot of good networking there. And those roundtables are then be the following week. So that would be October 21. To the 24th. Basically, in the run in the morning, Pacific time.

Hans Hartman  11:17  
Pacific time. Yeah, I want to have sessions, there's no, there's no formal speakers. Some we have no clue, really, you know, either gonna be 20 people attending 50 people, 100 people, or 10. People, it really depends on the topic, and they can get together and mingle. So we taking that kind of, you know, spontaneous networking, sharing of experiences, away from that very focused, fast paced program that will be on the two mornings, October 14, and 15th.

Gary Pageau  11:56  
So let's talk a little bit about the fireside chats, because those are the the what you would call a panel discussion. And you've got a couple, you've got several and I encourage everyone to go to visual first dot biz slash program 2020 for the full program, because I think a lot of people will see some sessions there that would be of interest to them from, you know, camera technology, networking technology, cloud based computing, and things like that. But I think for for this audience, um, there's a couple fireside chats that are of special interest. In particular, you've got one call to acquire or be acquired. That is the question. Can you talk a little bit about that session?

Hans Hartman  12:40  
Yeah, no, we actually announced it just today. So it took a little bit of getting that together. But as everybody in the sort of output industry, has been talking about, and is aware of, there has been a lot of merger, there have been a lot of mergers and acquisitions lately. And not just the kind of acquisitions that happened maybe three, four or five years ago, where you saw a lot of startups being acquired by bigger companies. What's happening now is that fairly sizable companies like a Blurb, or Bay Photo, or

Gary Pageau  13:24  
ColorCentric, Snapfish, Shutterfly... mature companies

Hans Hartman  13:29  
Big companies are being acquired by even bigger companies, some of them have private equity funds behind it. Right? Some, some, some, some not. But these are a lot of things have happened in a very short timeframe. Right. So what we put together here as a panel is, I would say, the three prime players there who have been acquiring Shutterfly, Circle Graphics, and RPI, the CEOs of RPI, and psychographics. And Beth Burkhart, the general manager of Shutterfly so they've been very gracious in wanting to speak about this whole concept of acquisitions, consolidations, what will the future bring? So I think we'll have a fabulous panel data, we'll discuss what that means for the industry going forward. What it means now with these bigger companies, you know, snapping up, although, etc.

Gary Pageau  14:34  
And when would When will that panel be scheduled for?

Hans Hartman  14:37  
We don't have a time set yet? on up to two mornings? Yeah.

Gary Pageau  14:41  
Okay. And then the other panel that I thought was of interest in this audience was the photo print product success stories. You've got some smaller while in one case, not so small but smaller companies who are doing some pretty innovative thing? Yeah, but and, and could you actually Explain that one.

Hans Hartman  15:01  
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I'm, I'm extremely pleased with this panel. First of all, there. I think each of the three panelists. I know well, and I very much wanted them to be part in all states at the conference. So let's start with, relatively speaking, the smaller one, most quite small Popsa is a startup still, you know, yeah, they only, they've only been around for four years. But they're already, you know, on track for this year to make $27 million in revenues, which is really, you know, not bad for a startup. And it's basically a mobile focused company that has a great app to order photo books, family and photo products going forward. So it's, it's a very successful startup who didn't get stuck in this being a little player there, they're actually making very rapid progress. So they're the smallest of the three but not that small either. Right? Then the other one is PlanetArt. And it's a little bit confusing, because they, they go under different brand names and companies. It's really the company that owns the free prints product line. also acquired cafe press just recently from Shutterfly. So that's been in the news, or if I four or five weeks ago, yeah, so they are are very successful. And they, it's not only they are free prints products, they also acquired personalized, another personalized printing vendor forgot their name at the moment. So they're also up and coming, becoming more of the big boys. tremendous growth pass over the years. So it's encouraging to have these these growth kind of companies that are still somewhat smaller and the other medium to bigger.

Gary Pageau  17:10  
And then you've got this little startup that I just have learned about called Google Photo Printing. Can you tell me a little bit about them? I've not heard of them.

Hans Hartman  17:21  
Yeah. And that's about it. Everybody talks about like, what are your What is your? What is Google going to do on the printing side of things, right. So they, as we all know, they have a tremendous audience of folks who use Google Photos with this really good photo management capabilities. It's one of the Google properties that don't have advertisements on it. Which, which is, which is interesting, and it hasn't ever had advertisements on it. Right? It really wanted people to engage with the photos and videos and became more of a storytelling proactive, you know, reminding you of worthwhile visual events that happened in the past hour they have or not now, but what is it a year or two ago started monetizing the engagement with photos, your customers who fail to print products, so you have the product manager who is leading that that endeavor. And he will talk about how they are growing and how they fit in that whole space, where most of us are coming from the more traditional photo print players.

Gary Pageau  18:38  
And what's interesting about Google photo printing is they they've tried some different things. And gotten out of them like they've gotten, they tried a subscription service and got out of it. So it'd be really interesting to see what he has to say about you know, their metrics, how they measure success and how they go forward. Because subscription models were the big hot thing, and not too long ago.

Hans Hartman  18:59  
Yeah. And it's actually Popsa and PlanetArt, in their products. They are all they also have photo, print subscription features. So I think you you're ready, you're ready to give me a good question to ask you. It's gonna be interesting to hear how they all look at the subscription. Is it indeed the holy grail that that everybody jumps on? And not only in the printing space, but also with advertisements? or excuse me with with non printing photo apps, you know, the ones who are most successful have a subscription offering. And why? Yeah, what's Google's take on that? That's interesting.

Gary Pageau  19:47  
Finally, I think one of the other areas that I think people find really interesting about Visual 1st are the show and tell presentations. Those are basically very Time constrained demos, a more or less, and you're gonna be offering that but there's gonna they're gonna it's gonna be slightly different format, correct?

Hans Hartman  20:09  
Yeah, yeah. So we've, we've always done this. And we, it's so funny because you know, we put all this efforts and already went through the two sessions that we just discussed in having fabulous speakers. So we always very proud of our in depth discussions and forward looking trend discovery and etc. But then when we do our evaluations after the conference, the sessions that always scored the highest for people really liked it, you can see it in a physical conference, everybody in the room and when these these sessions happen are free in this time, there will be four sessions, where a total of 30 app developers typically but not necessarily only app developers could also web based solutions, we had some hardware folks as well, who could do them. But basically, they are live demos, a four minute each very fast pace, if they go longer than four minutes I I gently but

Gary Pageau  21:07  
loudly, but firmly cut them off

Hans Hartman  21:09  
Yeah, kick them off the stage. And, you know, anything that happens life not not all, there's always something that is not not not going quite well, or there's some hiccups and you know, if we can help them, we'll let them do it again, etc. So there is a there's an authenticity to to these sessions that people really like. And, you know, if you're not everybody's following all these startups and new technologies and new products, and particularly, we have a lot of executives from the industry, so that, you know, they they're not following that on a daily basis. But if you have over the course of three or four sessions, you see, typically the founders or if the larger companies, you see their product owners on stage, show what they really have. And they're being forced to stay in a very concise manner and what it's all about how it's different from from what what else is out there, by people should pay attention to you hear it in these founders, or product owners own voice is much, much better. Many even I probably follow all this stuff way more precisely than than most folks. Even I, you know, I pick up more and I I retain the product way better. Once I've seen these demos in action than just reading it on the website.

Gary Pageau  22:38  
And it looks like there's you know, that list is constantly being updated to so if someone were to go to the site today, by the time the conference were to be, happen, there'd be even more names.

Hans Hartman  22:50  
Oh, yeah, yeah. So we got 21. I think on the side, there are a couple that I'm just waiting for photos will be at 30 by the time the conference, and maybe one thing to tell that it's not part of the fun, fun thing. It's not just you know, people, maybe some hiccups, but part of the fun is also we have an independent jury with pretty high profile folks who give for awards. Yeah, on his Best of Show one of the best technology on his business, best business potential. And under sort of one, we call them special recognition. They can give any reason why they just think certain developer deserves that award. But we have an addiction, who is leading the Google image search group. She was I think she was a photo editor at Huffington Post and Wall Street Journal, that very great, great lady. We have them to venture capitalists from Europe, as it turns out, most of the height of speed, invest in Austria based venture capital firm. And then Sammy nimi, you might remember is about remember, there was a there wasn't one of the most innovative startup focused startups, they were acquired by Nokia. Then he became the director of photos for Microsoft. And now he's part of a venture capitalist firm in Sweden's been top ventures. The fourth one is MD calm, who was VP of corporate development at Amazon, AWS, Amazon Web Services and was also with Nokia in the past. He based in the US, so it's, it's a fabulous panel. And it's always fun to hear their perspectives who they thought stood out. Yeah, yeah, it's

Gary Pageau  24:44  
interesting, because you're right, because in the past, and I think you've got the past winners posted on your site, that the the winners aren't always they're almost always what I would say up and comers in the sense that they they usually see something valuable. In the companies or the presentations that has that is that is that is on the way to making a big impact on the industry.

Hans Hartman  25:08  
Yeah, yeah, you never know we was it two or three years ago, we are two French guys. But that was the entire company, they they somehow could put a ticket of flight on the credit card and came here a company called regained regained i O. And they had very cool AI based photo photo app. What they had actually was an app that once you upload a photo, it gave you in, in actual words, gave you feedback to your photos. So I actually did upload a lot of white photos in them took a screen capture of it. So you know, the composition is pretty bad. But so, you know, like the color I don't know, like a butler kind of function. So anyway, two young guys, they were very early 20s, even if even that, and whatever. Three months later, Apple snapped them up. And they're part of Apple now. So yeah, some of these startups, some of the more mature companies, we also have, like insert 360 Sure. Furious camera vendor now, primarily, but not only industry 60. Would anyone under watch? And that's pretty depends on what the judges are thinking. And

Gary Pageau  26:26  
I think I was a judge that year. So...

Hans Hartman  26:30  
I usually remember what they were thinking,

Gary Pageau  26:33  
Well, no, it was an amazing. There's some amazing technology when it comes to stabilizing images of removing, you know, 360 of the moving camera. It's quite amazing. So let's talk a little bit if you can, where people can register, and a little bit about the early bird pricing.

Hans Hartman  26:52  
Yeah, very good. So the Early Bird pricing, let's start with that, ends Sept. 30. So we still have, I don't know when you publishing this, but you know, a few few days left. Normal pricing is $199, early bird is 50% off. So $99. And all of this, you know, as I sort of indicated earlier, we were trying to make a virtual conference successful, we had no clue, you know, how some of the things would turn out. And one of the things we said, Hey, you know what, no matter what, even if people for whatever reason, have a perception that virtual, you don't get as much out of it as a physical conference, we want to make the pricing attractive. So normally speaking with our physical conference is $699. dollars, right? About 70% of our audience is not from the Bay Area. So they also need to travel and have hotel costs. So we really want to make this attractive. And part of it is also to attract a new audience or an additional audience that hopefully next year, if things are a little bit more like normal will also attend our physical conference.

Gary Pageau  28:06  
Plus this year is BYOB. So that's a little different.

sum it up, if you want to interest in the conference, you want to go to Visual1st.biz, and definitely check out the program and click on the buy a ticket tab and see what your options are. So thank you Hans for your time. I appreciate it. And I look forward to seeing you in person, hopefully sometime in 2021.

Hans Hartman  28:36  
Right. It was a pleasure. Thank you, Gary. Thanks for supporting it. Yeah.