AI, Retro Appeal, and Creator Economy: Navigating Visual 1st with Hans Hartman

In this interview, Hans Hartman describes the seismic shifts in the imaging industry and how the Visual 1st Conference stands at the epicenter of these changes. Moving to KQED's spacious headquarters for its 13th edition, this year's gathering promises an elevated experience with theater-style seating, immersive displays, and the industry's most forward-thinking voices.

Visual 1st creates a uniquely candid environment for industry dialogue. Join us Oct. 28-29 in San Francisco to experience firsthand the technologies and trends shaping the future of visual communication.

Agentic AI represents the next frontier beyond the generative AI revolution. Unlike systems that simply create content from prompts, agentic AI accomplishes complex visual goals with minimal user direction. This technology promises to transform everything from editing workflows to print production, potentially creating a "zero click" future for many imaging tasks.

Counterbalancing this technological acceleration is the surprising durability of retro imaging. What many dismissed as a passing fad has become an enduring consumer preference, with Fujifilm's Instax leading substantial market growth and companies like Ricoh/Pentax doubling down on film cameras. The conference explores the rejection of "too perfect" digital imagery, examining why authenticity resonates so powerfully with consumers seeking tactile, imperfect visual experiences.

The conference culminates with its legendary Show and Tell sessions, where innovators demonstrate their breakthroughs in lightning-fast four-minute presentations. These rapid-fire demos consistently earn the highest audience ratings.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Visual First Conference
• 3:19 New Venue at KQED Headquarters
• 6:49 The Evolution of AI in Imaging
• 16:20 Enduring Appeal of Retro Photography
• 22:16 Photo and Video Convergence
• 27:24 Creator Economy and Fireside Chats
• 33:24 Show and Tell Format and Awards
• 38:37 Conference Details and Closing

Transcript

Erin Manning: 0:02

Welcome to the Dead Pixel Society podcast, the photo imaging industry's leading news source. Here's your host, Gary Pageau. The Dead Pixel Society podcast is brought to you by Mediaclip, Advertek Printing and Independent Photo Imagers.

Gary Pageau: 0:18

Hello again and welcome to the Dead Pixels Society podcast. I'm your host, Gary Pageau. Today we're joined by Hans Hartman, who is well known as an industry consultant but also for the Visual 1st conference which happens every year in October, and we're going to talk a little bit about that. But first, Hans, how are you doing today?

Hans Hartman: 0:38

I'm doing great. I'm living in part of the country where it's not steaming warm and fog in the morning. A little sunshine in the afternoon cannot be worse. There you go. It's going to get hot in October, but not now in July. San Francisco area.

Gary Pageau: 0:54

So the Visual 1st Conference is like the networking destination for the imaging industry, in the fall, that's where people kind of plan their schedules around. What number is this for the Visual 1st Conference?

Hans Hartman: 1:09

It's the 13th edition, so we've done it 12 times before.

Gary Pageau: 1:13

So you can talk a little bit about the format You've got you know you've got a co-chair that works with you and can you talk about kind of what the objective of the conference is.

Hans Hartman: 1:22

Yeah, well, I guess, like most conferences, it's a combination of education, meaning in this case, in our case, it's educating getting really thought leaders, very smart people on stage who are pointing in the direction of where technology and our photo and video industry is going. So there's that. You, you know. You learn a lot. You know what's what's up and coming, and it's not just the topics, it's also the who is who and what kind of new players are coming on board. You can meet with them personally because of you know it's still a fairly intimate affair. You know up to 200 people who typically attend. So that's the education part. And the second part is that you alluded to also. It's a great networking event. It's a day and a half conference. At the end of both days there is also a reception, there's lunch, there's breaks. There's a lot of ways of people getting to know each other, but first and foremost, we try to put a program together and get really thought-provoking speakers. So you also learn a lot attending the conference.

Gary Pageau: 2:33

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention that the Dead Pixel Society actually hosts a coffee meetup on the morning before the conference in a place yet to be determined, but we'll be announcing that soon. But that'll be the morning of October 20th.

Hans Hartman: 2:46

And very well attended. As far as I know, I haven't personally been able to attend because that's right before the conference starts, but I hear great stories about it and see your photos about it. Everybody who's doing the photo printing part definitely attends your coffee.

Gary Pageau: 3:02

There you go, but there's also been another change, and it's a change in the venue. Yeah, it's been at the presidio for a few years it was uh places before that but now it's changing completely to an entirely new venue. Can you tell us where it's going and why it's going there?

Hans Hartman: 3:19

yeah, yeah, so where it will be. It's actually the headquarters of a public television station in the bay area, where people from from around here and all be. It's actually the headquarters of a public television station in the Bay Area. People from around here all know it, it's KQED. It's one of the largest public TV and radio stations in the country and they have a fabulous facility. They totally refurbished it three years ago. It's all state-of-the-art tech years ago. It's all state of the art tech For the very first time. Like I said, we've done it 12 years. For the very first time it's actually sort of a staged area. You're sitting in the theater instead of everybody sitting on the same floor and looking at somewhat small screens. This is a gigantic screen. It feels, feels professional. There's also a very big screen when you enter the venue. It's almost like a Broadway kind of thing, where sessions are also being streamed and in the breaks you see all the video and info there. It's just a step up from the technology and the AV that we have historically done.

Hans Hartman: 4:21

And I attended the conference. Actually, one of our moderators, elodie Mailly. She has moderated various sessions in the past, so she's the CEO of an organization, catchlight, which is focused on promoting visual journalism and I attended one of her conferences. We're at KQED and I was just, you know, that's exactly the size of what our conference is and the kind of facilities that I really like. So I said, hey, can you introduce me? Because you know it's not a commercial venue that rents your space, so can you introduce me to them? And they were they liked what we are doing and said, hey, yeah, you can rent that facility. We basically have 70% or 80% of the whole venue, four floors high, separate meeting rooms. There's a great rooftop terrace where we can do our reception, so it's all very nice.

Hans Hartman: 5:18

We've always been sort of in a what do you say? A grassroots kind of venue. So they have their charm. They're also next to the bay, the Presidio or Fort Mason. I always loved it. We don't want to say anything negative about it, but you know we don't want to be a boring hotel show and you can do it anywhere. This is part of the San Francisco heritage so we really wanted to do that step up there. Anyway, that's where it will be this year.

Gary Pageau: 5:48

Yeah, I think some people are going to miss the kind of spilling out on the lawn on the Presidio sort of thing, and then you have to kind of wrangle them back in. And then of course there's the beautiful view of the bridge and everything that was there at the time. But I'm sure that the KQED facility is very nice. Now, where is that located in relation to the precision? It's in what's?

Hans Hartman: 6:05

called san francisco mission, so there are a lot of startups also in that area. It's also not that far from the warriors chase arena there, so it's a little bit more towards the bay side but a little bit more farther away from the the gold gate bridge and the Bridge a little bit more south there. Yeah, sort of an in-development area there, so it's new for a lot of people from out of town.

Gary Pageau: 6:31

Let's talk a little bit about some of the trends that are driving the program these days, because I remember a couple of years ago, generative AI was the big hot thing and it was the first time a lot of us had even seen it. Now, of course, it's promoted everywhere and you're not really an AI show, but there's always sort of AI running through it.

Gary Pageau: 6:55

And so Kentucky Love is actually a gentic AI seems to be the phrase everyone's using today. What is that and how is it different from the other flavors of AI we seem to be hearing? Yeah, and you're right.

Hans Hartman: 7:04

What is that and how is this different from the other flavors of AI we seem to be hearing? Yeah, you're right. I mean, technology is just a thing that people worry about because they're thinking about, you know, how can we ultimately make money with products and solutions that cater to our customers. So AI is not a goal per se for what we covered there, but we have covered it very early on. For what we covered there, but we have covered it very early on, you might remember, we had, I mean, one flavor of AI that started at least five, six, seven years ago.

Hans Hartman: 7:31

It's called computational photography, where you use AI to make capture devices smarter. So, for instance, at that point we had Alex Schiffhauser from Google, who was their main person driving the product management of their computational photography in their Pixel phone, and that was a time that the Pixel phone had only one camera on the back, as opposed to iPhone already two cameras and was capable of making better bouquet effects than the iPhone itself. So computational photography was one thing that people say whoa, you know what that? That means that smartphone, or the photos that are coming from the smartphone, are learning better and better and better. Uh, so that was one thing Almost too good, actually.

Hans Hartman: 8:20

Yeah Well, but certainly, and it will get even better. The things on the way now that, for instance, last year we had which is interesting, we had Glass Imaging, and these are ex-Apple guys who actually that's funny they actually were the team responsible for the portrait mode in the iPhone and they have their own company, a startup, glass Imaging. They actually raised not too long ago, did a round of $20 million, and they use AI to actually make lenses in smartphones even better than what's currently available. And that's with a lot of AI. Some things started maybe five or six years ago. Some things started one year ago and you see a lot of benefits, or you saw a lot of AI. Something started maybe five or six years ago. Something started one year ago and you see a lot of benefits, or you saw a lot of benefits when it came out, but then these things keep still going on as well. So computational photography is still on the way.

Hans Hartman: 9:15

Image recognition we had quite a few speakers talk about. Now how can I not just find whatever? You know all the photos with a cat in my collection there, but that has gone a lot farther than that. You know what are my best photos or what are photos that I would never care about and delete them or put them in a separate category. So image recognition was a thing.

Hans Hartman: 9:39

With ai generative ai we were very early on and I know a lot of people in the audience hadn't even heard about that term when we had a Fireside Chat presenter from Barcelona showing what it really was and early examples on that, and that's still sort of in our audience in our sort of ecosystem. That's what most people are now very much setting their teeth in generative AI solutions. How can you create photos from scratch or, excuse me, images from scratch. Or how can you have a photo that was taken with a camera whether it's smartphone or a digital camera and make it better through generative AI and make it better through generative AI. So that's still very much the focus of what a lot of people are doing and a lot of improvements are happening there, particularly also on the well, both in photo, but also that's the very latest you see a lot of generative AI for video so you can make the creation of video and editing of video easier and easier.

Hans Hartman: 10:45

But so what is now not that well known yet in or you don't see that many examples yet in our industry is what's called agentic AI. That's very much the buzz in Silicon Valley or in AI land, silicon Valley or in AI land, and that's the idea. It's not that you just give a prompt, like a text prompt or a photo prompt, and say, hey, make an image from that, but you actually say, hey, you know what I want to have this and this accomplished with that video, make it whatever, make it look more retro or make it work with my audience that has Disney's demographic. Just change that photo like that Is that more conversational in the prompts.

Hans Hartman: 11:33

It doesn't have to be, but it could be. It could be tied to chatbots, and so there's more back and forth in explaining, but I think the core idea of agentic AI is you pay instead of saying this is what I want or or this is how you need to do it. It's more, you give a goal for what you try to accomplish and then that agent is pretty darn smart and say okay, I'm gonna grab photos from here, or maybe with this photo, I'm gonna apply these and these kind of effects, and in essence, you're removing an interface. I mean, people don't even have to.

Hans Hartman: 12:11

It's almost like zero click Right, right, you know imaging or photo editing, or it could also tie to printing, like you know what. This is my supply chain. This is the kind of orders that I have. Go figure out how I can send jobs back and forth, so you will see it in printing. You will definitely see it in photo editing.

Gary Pageau: 12:35

So it's sort of independent of a specific platform. Almost it's like you're giving it a task and then it's going to go do the task independent of specific instructions.

Hans Hartman: 12:50

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think that's a great way of summarizing it. And you, as a user, you don't care how it does it and what kind of tools it uses. Assuming it has access to these tools, it can go on the web. Maybe it only uses stuff that is on your computer. So that has created a lot of buzz in the technology world in general.

Gary Pageau: 13:16

So it'd be almost like an example would be almost like you know, I want to book my flights to Visual 1st. I'd like to stay near the mission district and the AI knows what airlines I like to fly, where I'm flying from, where my points are, what hotels I like to stay at, and it would just go do that.

Hans Hartman: 13:35

Yeah, exactly. And so those kind of things are being developed outside our industry and that is stuck. You know, people in our industry to sort of notice like, hey, you know, can we not do anything in our environment and our goal? You know, at this point it's not that much of a trending topic yet in our industry, but it will be in October, I am very, very, very sure about it. So we already have two fabulous presenters lined up in a panel specifically to that. We had them speak once at a virtual edition during COVID there. But basically they do it with video and, along the lines of what you just described, you know, basically say, hey, this is what I want. Go find some stock photos where the video is a little choppy, or get rid of the pauses. I mean, figure out how to make this video better. So they actually have already something in place there. And then the second one that we just signed up what was it last week is Eric Yang from Topaz Labs. Okay, who wants to do this in a photo editing workflow solution?

Gary Pageau: 14:48

Yeah.

Hans Hartman: 14:49

So we very much. I mean, it's actually this is one of the panels normally. You know it's very easy to fill in the panel there because you know lots of potential candidates for particular topics. This was a harder one to fill in. So we're really going out of our way and asking hey, you know what? Are you already thinking about developing an agentic AI solution? Is there something you can publicly already talk about in October, about in October? I have no doubt that we'll have a full panel, meaning four speakers coming up, especially given the quality of the first two. But it's funny because it's, like I said, sort of percolating. It's beginning to create awareness.

Gary Pageau: 15:32

I'm sure there are a lot of people working on it. It just may not be ready for prime time yet, right? I mean that might be one of the issues.

Hans Hartman: 15:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. They might just try it out a little bit, have the smartest engineers play with it over the weekend, then come up with some ideas, but it's not primetime yet, exactly. So anyway. So that's a Gentic AI and that will be a big, I think. Well, you never know before a conference what will be sort of the buzz at the conference, but I think this will spur a lot of thinking.

Hans Hartman: 16:06

Right, and the other topic I'm very, very pleased that we can finally really zoom into that is this idea of we call it the enduring appeal of retro. So retro and vintage mean that you've seen all kind of things happen in the past and, uh, lots of naysayers maybe, including myself at times. Yeah, hey, you know what this is a fad people will get tired of. You know, my photo looks, needs to look like a vintage photo. Or why would I buy a film? I mean, there's all these benefits of smartphones or digital cameras. So for the longest time, people thought you know what, yeah, it's trendy five years, ten years ago.

Hans Hartman: 16:54

Or, you know, outside imaging, people buy LPs and record players there. That will come and go, but retro it keeps growing and growing In our industry. The biggest example of that is Polaroid, and then I would say, in particular, instax how important that has become. Sure, absolutely so. We are very pleased to have then the VP of Marketing, ashley Reeder of Fujifilm, who should be very specifically involved with all the Instax marketing and those demographics and done lots of research like why are people so interested? You know, are they only youngsters, are they also older people? I mean, there are lots of questions there that she will share her light on.

Gary Pageau: 17:43

So that's one in our retro panel yeah, it's a weird thing because it sort of doubles into the resurgence in traditional film that has happened over the last few years. It's the same idea. People, I think of a certain age, who kind of lived through that age and made the transition to digital would think why would you even go back? I mean, I know photographers who are like I'm never gonna load a camera again in film because I did that for 20 years and I'm never doing that again, and uh. But there's others who are like saying you know, and I think it even goes back to what we're talking about, about computational photography, right when it almost makes the pictures too good, where people want the authentic experience of imaging, right when you know what's more authentic than an instant print.

Hans Hartman: 18:33

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This resistance against too good or too easy, that's part of the allure. There are even apps for a phone. You take a photo but you cannot view it until 24 hours later there's a few of those.

Hans Hartman: 18:49

It attracts a certain audience. Fujifilm came out with their what is it? The Half-X digital camera that also have an option that actually delays you being able to see too many photos at the same time, right, and then going back to film specifically. So we also have Ken Curry, who you might know from your PMA days, who is the general manager or president of uh rico pentax nationwide, so he will talk about. I mean, they're basically the only film camera company that's coming out with new film cameras right, exactly of the old ones, kind of doubled down on that.

Gary Pageau: 19:31

That's kind of their thing they are known for is kind of that authentic sort of uh experience, sure yeah, yeah.

Hans Hartman: 19:38

So I'm thrilled to hear that perspective, you know, vis-a-vis or in conjunction with the Instax, because that might be different demographics, different use cases, so so that those are two interesting ones for that panel. What I'm also looking for is then a smartphone, and there are quite a few out there. We'll have somebody lined up very soon on that. You know, a smartphone app developer where you take your photos with your iphone or your android phone and then say, hey, give me these vintage effects so that photo also look as if it was taken with a film camera.

Gary Pageau: 20:15

So that's in the, the smartphone world, as opposed to yeah, you know it's interesting because the people are doing that sort of thing. I find Like Hipstamatic is one of those, yeah and they really push kind of the community side of it.

Hans Hartman: 20:30

Yeah, fisco is another example. Yeah, yeah, but part of their.

Gary Pageau: 20:36

I think their business model is not just the authenticity piece or the vintage look, but also finding other people who are part of that ethos.

Hans Hartman: 21:05

Yeah, that's old kind of photo, so we'll have. We'll most likely have somebody from the print world, somebody from the app world. We have the film camera from Pentax, we have the Instax for the instant camera printers there. So we're really finally diving into this retro theme, I think, in a very big and exciting way. Lots of people are very interested in that. And then maybe another topic I think that we'll Well, actually two. There are two other topics. Again, I was Two of the other topics that we were covering in a big way and, like I said earlier, you never know beforehand afterwards which of those three or four or five things I'm mentioning now will be the buzz of the, the culture. So we'll see what that will be.

Hans Hartman: 21:52

But another one that times we sort of touched upon is you know how do all these video solutions, whether it's from a camera or an app world, you know how, how does video now gets a place in the world of photos, so we call it a photo and video convergence and all. Yeah, you see solutions that lots of almost everybody who has a photo solution now is at least thinking, if not already, has some kind of element of what they're doing. Is videos as well, cameras. Actually, what drives a lot of camera sales is not is also having the video capabilities and the vlogging, etc. So you have. So you have cameras. You have editing almost editing app Almost every editing app or software has both photos and video capabilities. And you see it, even up to printing, where you see more and more finally, I would say, more and more augmented reality solutions being folded into printing. So you have this nice photo book of your vacation, in your case in in aruba. You quote a book there, but then you, you hold your camera there or your smartphone there and you, you, you click and then you see this cute little video and you were laying in a pool and whatever you were doing, probably in conjunction with a beer, but anyway.

Hans Hartman: 23:21

So even the print world, which normally you would say, what do they have to do with video? But that's becoming part of visual storytelling and that's, I think, important that also the print world really thinks about. You don't want people to say about, the real way of visual storytelling is videos and we are not part of that and you will be left out there. So even there, people are thinking about the place of video. So that panel will specifically talk about how are these two worlds merging? Some of them start with photos and other videos, but there are actually also some video solutions. We have Hypno in that panel. They started with a video solution first, and then there's a way to get photos out of it, or Instax 360. Or, excuse me, insta360, the 360 camera. They started with video, but you can also make it very, very easy to extract frames and you have single photos there.

Gary Pageau: 24:18

So anyway, that's another property. It's a 360 action cam and it's actually quite a. I use mostly in my last vacation of Cuba. I actually mostly use that and actually it's quite a good stills camera.

Hans Hartman: 24:29

Yeah, it has. All these guys are amazing. We had them. I mean, they've been around, I think, for 12 years or so and they just went public. Yeah, they went public with a valuation of $10 billion I don't know if that's still the case, but really like totally amazing there, where the valuation of a GoPro is a couple of hundred million at this point. So it totally blew them out of the water and we had them speak when it was like a very early startup, like a three-year-old startup. They won the Best of Show, show and Tell Award and I'm very pleased that one of their co-founders, who is the global VP of marketing, he will also be speaking in this photo and video panel. So, anyway, that's going to be an exciting theme, like what do we do with video? For the guys who are coming out of the photo world, all we're going to do with video can be you know stay on the sideline how we're going to incorporate it here. Best of breed examples, sure?

Gary Pageau: 25:30

yeah, because it is one of those things where I think you know it's interesting. Even, like you know, instagram started out as a primarily a still photo, but it didn't really take off till they added video. Yeah, well, be real is adding it. I mean, a bunch of people are starting to like, trying to realize that probably, you know, photos used to be what people had to add to their platforms to make them sticky, right. I think video is what they have to add to your platform to actually make money with it.

Hans Hartman: 26:01

Yeah, and it's a different dynamic. And that's part of what I really want to explore with people who are way more into it than I am in that panel is you know, how do people, how do end users make decisions, whether they start with taking a photo or it's a video? First kind of scenario. It is a different demographics, it's a different in different situations birthday parties, and do you start with a video and then somehow you make it very easy to get beautiful photos out of that video and plus it's a different process, completely Like if you spend any time at all looking at, like influencer culture or people who have videos.

Gary Pageau: 26:46

There's a whole visual language there in terms of cuts and the way they were zooming in and starting with that.

Hans Hartman: 26:53

It's not really instinctive, you know, and it's it's almost like a visual language you have to learn if you want to be really good at social video yeah, yeah, if you get to that level of serious uh yeah, which actually ties in not meant as a bridge, I'm sure, but that ties into another this is going to be the buzz afterwards of Visua 1st presenters. So we also have Lauder back. We're very pleased in a fireside chat session. You and I know him from way way back. He was the editor-in-chief of PC Magazine, but for people maybe more recently, he was the CEO of the VidCon event, which typically had between 50 and 100,000 creators attending. Every year sold it to Paramount. So he's like Mr Creator Economy, knows a lot of where, yeah, what is trending and use cases among influencers. Where is that going and what's really the difference between an influencer and a creator? So it's a video first kind of world, but photos also have a place in that. So we're gonna explore that one as our fireside chat. So it's one-on-one, actually it's one on two. We always have two moderators there, but we really, you know we'll be able to tap into his knowledge about where that world of influences and creators are going.

Hans Hartman: 28:30

Is it all hype? Is it all low quality? I mean, there's also a lot of labels that have been put onto that world in the past, but and to some extent they are correct, to some extent they are not, and it's a very interesting market if you can tap into it, because all these people basically that's the definition of a creator with a capital c that is focused on definition all of these creators do this because they make money somehow out of their visuals. So people say, hey, I'm you know, whether it's through YouTube enumeration or whatever sponsorships of companies, etc. If you make money out of visuals but it's photos or videos or a combo of those, it's also worth to spend some money on the best possible tools. So for our audience and it could even be again, think about some of your audience it could even be there is merchandise, photo print, merchandise that goes with the video. So even print fits in that world of creator or should at least be aware of where the opportunity oh yeah, I mean, that's a big.

Gary Pageau: 29:50

That's what amaze does it? Right? They connect creator economy with an output platform, right yeah?

Hans Hartman: 29:56

and that's also a very interesting task. Visual 1st presenter, the other CEO. Yeah, so the creator economy. I think that could be the buzz of the conference. The photo and video world combining could be the buzz. Genetic AI, for sure. And what else were we talking about? Oh, and retro. I think these are sort of the main topics at the conference.

Gary Pageau: 30:20

You've also got another fireside chat lined up and that's kind of interesting, I think, to a lot of people who, from the traditional world, want to hear that.

Hans Hartman: 30:28

Yeah, Tom Yusoff I guess most people now know him was in the board of Shutterfly for quite a while, actually during the time that Shutterfly also bought Lifetouch. He was also interim CEO of Shutterfly for a while, so he knows the print world really well, especially in combination with where RPI is now. He was also a successful. He has his own boutique investment company, so he knows investing and the business part real well. He was a VP of Flickr in the past, quite a while ago, and he also was the founder I think it was called Photodisc. That then merged with Getty, so he was at the roots of what became the current Getty. So he knows stock photography, has lots of opinions about that. He knows both the B2C and the B2B part of photo printing. Have it the shutter fly, RPI combo, and then the more advanced photographer world with Flickr. So I'm not quite sure what we will do. Well, you've got a lot there to cover. And then the more advanced photographer world with Flickr. So I'm not quite sure what we will do.

Gary Pageau: 31:43

Well, you've got a lot there to cover. I mean you've scheduled an hour, hour and a half for that session, right, Because there's a lot there.

Hans Hartman: 31:49

Well, not totally, but yeah, it's one-on-one. You can really dive into topics with a single speaker pretty rapidly, so there's lots with him to talk about, and he's a very smart person, so I'd love to have him be on stage for the first time at Vision 1st.

Gary Pageau: 32:06

Awesome and we can't bring this to a close without mentioning the show.

Hans Hartman: 32:09

And tells yeah because we have a great MC for that.

Gary Pageau: 32:15

Well, I'm a tiny jumper, is what?

Hans Hartman: 32:17

I am. No, you did great last time for the first time.

Gary Pageau: 32:21

No, let's talk a little bit about the format, kind of what that is, because I think some people may not realize the whole story, that there's awards that come from these, there's recognition that comes from these and there's, you know, people actually have been exited out or acquired because of their show and tell presentation.

Hans Hartman: 32:38

So talk a little bit about the format, what it takes, yeah so, to start with the last one, we have what we call a hall of fame page on our website and I think we're like 22, maybe 23, asked show. They're primarily some of them are in panel knowledge, but they're primarily show and tell presenters who spoke in the past and then have since been acquired. So some of them have done really well after a Visual 1st, not necessarily because they were discovered there, but it also shows you have a good hand in selecting show and tell presenters there.

Hans Hartman: 33:12

So what it is, it's four minutes, it's a live demo and four minutes only yeah, exactly, we have a clock and we have a very strict mc who would kick you off stage if it goes on too long, but it's four minutes. It's not a pitch session, uh, so you don't have, you know, powerpoints. It's really a live demo. Typically it's the founder or, if it's a larger company, the product owner and they they show things live in and explain things in their own world why what they're showing is so unique and so good and actually the interesting thing. We talked a lot about the rest of the agenda with the panels and FISA chats, and we go out of our way to get the best possible speakers there, but ultimately these live demo sessions score the highest in terms of our audience. They love it. There are three of them throughout a day and a half conference, so it's 30 presenters all together. People really remember because it was live. Sometimes something goes wrong, whatever you know. They can kind of click the cable into their phone or their computer.

Gary Pageau: 34:23

Or the internet doesn't work, yeah, whatever.

Hans Hartman: 34:25

And our audience I mean most of us are technology developers, so they're very forgiving in that sense. But these people really love it, they eat it up and it's a great way. You can do also your search on the internet and you you read about these app developers. It's not the same experience to see this happening live and have the right people who really know these apps uh, explain this and then you can chat with them during the reception or whatever, do more than that. So so those are great sessions. They're sort of the highlight of our conference.

Hans Hartman: 35:00

Again, it's sort of interesting that that scores the highest, no matter what kind of education and trend analysis we do on the other ones. But that's an integral part and we really go out of our way each year and I want to stress that because I would say myself as being the primary recruiter of this I would save myself a lot of time by just, you know, asking people who have presented in the past hey, can you show whatever is new on your end again this year and fill it up in no time at 30, because everybody appreciates the exposure. There's no extra charge, it's just having a regular ticket there. What we do is go out of our way to get lots and lots of folks that have never attended the conference, have never spoken before, and show their stuff. So we always bring a lot of fresh blood, lots of innovative developers that are just coming out of the woodworks bring them on stage. So that's exciting and that's what the audience appreciates.

Gary Pageau: 35:59

And it does have an awards component to it.

Hans Hartman: 36:02

Yeah, yeah, yeah, thanks for saying that. Yeah, so we have four independent jury members this year. The three that are already signed up is because, well, kathy nelson, who a lot of people in the audience also know as being the founder ceo of the Photo Managers, so she knows that world. We have, from the financial side, rudy Berger, who is the founder of Woodside Capital, a pretty large investment bank, m&a bank in Silicon Valley.

Hans Hartman: 36:35

And then the third Show Tell Awards person is Anna Dixon. She's the VP of Content Strategy at Shutterstock and was Google in the past. She was also a director of photography at Wall Street Journal and with Huffington Post, so she has a great, great background from the high-quality photo perspective. So she looks at tools from that perspective. So it's a very varied set of judges and basically you know we have four awards. They're trophies, there's no money involved in it, but we do publicity. You can be best of show. Like I said, insight360 got that very early on in their lifetime. There's a best technology award, there's a best business potential award and then there's sort of an award for whatever reason that the judges feel we need to highlight these guys and it's called a special recognition award.

Gary Pageau: 37:28

And the only way to experience Visual 1st is in person, because it's not recorded Correct. No recaps or video clips or whatever. And no recaps or video clips or whatever. So where can people go to get information about attending the Visual 1st conference, which you have to go to?

Hans Hartman: 37:47

Thanks, I agree. Yeah, absolutely like it forces people to come, but it it. It also allows people, particularly the panels vice. I suggest to be so much like snapchat in the old days. You can totally express your opinions, you share it with this intimate community. There you don't have to think, oh, my boss or the board members will look at this two years from now and I said one word wrong and and I'm in trouble there.

Hans Hartman: 38:20

So it's we. We try to encourage spontaneous, intuitive, deep conversations. That's, that's one reason. The second reason also, the, the true value of experience, Visual 1st, is doing that networking in person as well. So, without further ado. So the website is visualfirstbiz and it's visual, and then the number one, stbiz, and you see the program, you see the bios of the presenters and lots of other information there, and it will be held October 28th in the afternoon, except the coffee morning starts early with Gary, you know, cut on being there and there's also the Women in Imaging lunch.

Hans Hartman: 39:03

Yeah, which is right after Gary's coffee. So if you are a female attendee, you not only have free coffee from Gary, you get the lunch, which is a great way for female attendees, which are unfortunately still by far the minority in our industry and also at our conference. But they have a way to do their own networking and they very, very much appreciate that. We've done this several years in a row now. So they will have their luncheon and then the program starts at 1.30 sharp on the 28th. At the end of the day, reception, and then an all-day program on the 29th and also reception. We call it the on-your-way-outth. At the end of the day, reception, and then an all-day program on the 29th and also reception, or we call it the on your way out reception at the end awesome well.

Gary Pageau: 39:46

Thank you for your time. Looking forward to seeing you october 28th and 29th in san francisco. Looking forward to another great conference likewise.

Hans Hartman: 39:55

Well, thanks very much for uh helping to spread the word and uh doing this show and tells coming up. Thank you, take care, all right, take care.

Erin Manning: 40:04

Thank you for listening to the Dead Pixel Society podcast. Read more great stories and sign up for the newsletter at wwwthedeadpixelssocietycom.