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Orlando Post Pros’ NAB Recap
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[Oliver Peters] “In the TV, film, and even commercial world, Avid dominance is still pretty strong – especially in the major markets.”
They certainly have a loyal following but with the stock price at near historic lows, one can’t say all is rosy in Avid-land (I still own Avid stock so I can bi**h about this). At least in my neck of the woods, Avid is a non-player. Barely gets a “participation award” in the market. I don’t think you can reveal the heath of a company based on a Vegas rah-rah user-group meeting. Any company. Financial data tell the story.
Maybe Media Central? For that certain niche, maybe. Article on Motley Fool about that: https://www.fool.com/investing/2017/05/11/why-avid-technology-inc-stock-gained-20-in-april.aspx
More on Q1 financials: https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/2017-05-10/avid-technology-announces-q1-2017-results-and-issues-q2-2017-guidance
Avid went public for a reason, just like Quantel, and there are rules you need to play by, like it or not. They make good products so the investors in the company to get a return and revenues grow. Same with Adobe, same with Apple. Quantel, now private, can afford, and even revel, in being really really niche. Perhaps that would be a good future for Avid? Unknown, but it will be interesting to watch.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Bill Davis] “Everything you saw about X at NAB was private, not Corporate dollars talking – the whole thing is is pretty astonishingly grass roots. Heck we didn’t even KNOW we would be doing the LumaForge stuff until about 4 weeks prior to NAB!
I bet Adobe and AVID started working (and spending) for NAB 2018 a few days after we got back from last year.”I’m not trying to discount these efforts by any means. Kudos to all the Lumaforge & FCPworks folks involved. The point was more about the user base reaction. There was no Adobe-specific side-event at NAB to my knowledge. And yes, Avid dumps a lot of money into Connect. However, it was still interesting to see the amount of paid folks at Connect for a company and product line that supposedly is on a downward trajectory.
[Bill Davis] “You remove ALL that money for the big south hall booths, the monster banners wrapping the halls promoting stuff, and ARMIES of booth monkeys (a term of true endearment!) and our Apples start to look a little more like your Oranges. “
I think that would be fair if you weren’t talking about Apple. Given their overwhelming mass marketing (versus Avid, Adobe, BMD) and brand recognition, I would say the playing field is pretty level, even if they are visibly present in the south hall.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Scott Witthaus] “They certainly have a loyal following but with the stock price at near historic lows, one can’t say all is rosy in Avid-land”
I wasn’t talking about company health. I think Tim did a great job of explaining those issues. I was talking about the presence of the use of the applications. As editors, we focus on Media Composer, but I bet Pro Tools is pretty widely used in your market, too. And what about the TV news departments in your market? Newscutter or something else?
[Scott Witthaus] “Maybe Media Central? For that certain niche, maybe”
Well, I certainly agree that’s more marketing BS than anything else. However, there is some substance there in the form of common APIs and so on.
[Scott Witthaus] “Avid went public for a reason, just like Quantel, and there are rules you need to play by, like it or not.”
And it may now be time to go private again.
[Scott Witthaus] ” Quantel, now private, can afford, and even revel, in being really really niche”
Well, to be clear, Quantel is owned by the same venture capital group that picked up Snell. SAM (Snell Advanced Media) is the new blend of both companies combined at the direction of the venture capita group, not by the management of one company or the other. An arranged marriage, if you will.
Ultimately it’s a challenge for all companies in this space. The Foundry, Autodesk (although they also have a huge CAD CAM software part, which is bigger, I think, than Media & Entertainment), Grass Valley (now owned by Belden), PESA, and many others, face challenges as they try to find their footing in the new order of things.
– Oliver
Oliver Peters Post Production Services, LLC
Orlando, FL
http://www.oliverpeters.com -
[Oliver Peters] “I wasn’t talking about company health. I think Tim did a great job of explaining those issues. I was talking about the presence of the use of the applications. As editors, we focus on Media Composer, but I bet Pro Tools is pretty widely used in your market, too. And what about the TV news departments in your market? Newscutter or something else?”
We in this space have largely slept on Avid’s dominance in the newsrooms, which is not unlike their dominance in TV and film production, except on a global basis, rather than just inside a couple of cities.
Likewise sports. What Avid is doing there is absolutely insane. Even if you just watch sports, and aren’t in that field, you should take a look. They’re really way out front of what’s possible.
And for THESE folks (news and sports), Media Central is a thing. An actual thing. For Media Composer, not necessarily a thing. ☺
[Oliver Peters] “[Scott Witthaus] ” Quantel, now private, can afford, and even revel, in being really really niche”
Well, to be clear, Quantel is owned by the same venture capital group that picked up Snell. SAM (Snell Advanced Media) is the new blend of both companies combined at the direction of the venture capita group, not by the management of one company or the other. An arranged marriage, if you will.
“And to be clear, SAM are not just reveling in being really, really niche. They’re growing the business 20% a year. There’s not a company on earth who wouldn’t kill for that.
I think that they’re potentially illuminative for Avid because Avid too is really, really niche! Editing, not niche. Hollywood (and Hollywood-like editing) is a niche. Sports is a niche. News is a niche. Pro audio is a niche. But even a combination of a LOT of niches may not necessarily scale up far enough for traditional metrics to play out in a way that broader markets expect.
[Scott Witthaus] “They certainly have a loyal following but with the stock price at near historic lows, one can’t say all is rosy in Avid-land”
Exactly my point. Take stock out of the picture. NOW what’s wrong with Avid? Nothing that can’t be fixed.
Every company has issues related to customer satisfaction, pace of development, competition, etc etc etc — and on every front, the majority of their customers feel the company is moving in the right direction.
Including on the issue of customer engagement! I mean, to Bill’s point about Apples and Oranges — here’s a fundamental difference between the Supermeet and the Avid customer CONVENTION — because that’s really what it was. Avid is hosting advisory boards with customer-selected representatives from every major market the company serves. They’re publicly taking input on feature requests, publishing the results, and holding themselves accountable for future outcomes. Apple sure ain’t. That’s not about money. That’s about how the company values customer input or doesn’t.
When I see a company that’s being THAT accountable, pushing ahead in key markets with compelling new offerings, and a customer base that’s energized, using any metric you care to come up with, THAT’s something you can build a BUSINESS on.
One’s ability to jump through the flaming hoops of oligarchy to appease the quarterly bloodlust of the market? Irrelevant to the ability to build a business on engaged customers. There’s no need to play that game.
But hey, what do I know? Nothing. I sold my Avid stock when it was at $13. It had been the one exception to my diversification strategy of never investing in a sector I work in, so I don’t have any skin in the game. And it would please me no end if the money truck backed up to the door of my friends there should the stock go back up to where I bought it at $49. ????
But I’m a fan of the industry, and I see the benefits that have come to people like SAM and Blackmagic who refuse to play. And even though when everything else is said and done, I may end my careers (this is my sixth I think) having made more from investing than I did from my jobs, I’m also happy when people say, “Enough. The market is not the boss of me. We can do better than this.”
Avid’s customers are saying that Avid is doing better than the market says. Better to spend your time pleasing the people who are happy with you doing what you love than chasing the people who say you aren’t good enough for them for reasons that aren’t actually important to you.
It’s the same advice I’d give my kids for their lives if I had kids who cared about my advice. ????
Besides, if we were choosing NLEs by stock performance, we’d all be using Premiere Pro. It’s a fine NLE, but that’s a terrible reason to choose it.
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[Tim Wilson] “Avid is hosting advisory boards with customer-selected representatives from every major market the company serves. They’re publicly taking input on feature requests, publishing the results, and holding themselves accountable for future outcomes. Apple sure ain’t. That’s not about money. That’s about how the company values customer input or doesn’t.”
Could not agree more with Tim here in his basic observation.
If you think progress in the next decades will come largely from “listening to your customers” – you need to bet this way. Any thing else is silly.
OTOH, if you believe (as I do) that the innovations that will actually move this industry l farther forward will NOT necessarily come from your customers expectations – you need to look elsewhere.
My observation is that when you’re in an incredibly fast evolving arena – letting your customers drive your innovation agenda is far more likely to stifle your progress rather than accelerate it.
Not because your customers are not smart or experienced, but because they increasingly live, work and (quite reasonably) think near the end of a constantly widening Knowledge Gap.
By the time most of us “customers” get a clue about the viability of A technical capability , there’s likely been someone working on that in a lab for YEARS.
So our VISION of what’s possible increasingly lags way behind what is ACTUALLY possible.
And when companies ask “what do you want?” It’s harder and harder or those at the END of the development tail to even know what it’s reasonable to ask for.
If production was Medicine – this would be a little like holding focus groups to ask patients which therapies they feel might be effective for their treatment – over trusting a highly curated group of actual experts at the Mayo Clinic to do a better job of knowing the medical literature and keeping up with the latest techniques in order to help you develop your treatment strategies.
Yes there are areas of life where customer focused surveys do GREAT things for making systems function way better.
But there are also areas where in order to make serious advances you need superior professional expertise that’s NOT generally found in broader survey populations.
You may feel survey-driven advancement is plenty to develop the tools of the future.
I just don’t – based largely on the way all these tools have developed over the past 30 years.
We’ll see who’s right over time.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Bill Davis] “You may feel survey-driven advancement is plenty to develop the tools of the future.
I just don’t – based largely on the way all these tools have developed over the past 30 years.”
You’re positing this, as Apple does, as an either/or. Sorry, Bill, that’s nonsense. Companies can do both. Avid does both, as do many other companies.
I assume you believe that such a thing is possible, yes? Or would it actively bother you if Apple were to allow its customers to select a group of customers who’d work with Apple to implement some specific user-based suggestions? And if Apple were to publish the results of customer requests, and hold themselves to implementing them?
Do you think that would create an environment somehow inimical to industry-shaking innovation? “Thanks for asking, Apple, but my input will only grind your development to a halt, or send it down blind alleys. Better not to ask any of us. Keep doing what you’re doing. I’d rather just be surprised.”
I’ve certainly witnessed a couple of cycles of this myself. One example I can tell you about was the development of Avid DNxHD, the predecessor to ProRes. That didn’t come from the minds of customers. That came from Avid, . I sat in rooms where Avid’s then-CTO made pitches to studio execs, watching them scratch their heads until the lightbulb came on.
I was merely the monkey who went on the road to show it to people. What is it? An intermediate codec? We already have that. I want uncompressed! Extra steps I don’t need. On and on. People didn’t want it. I SOLD it to them. It finally caught on, and when it did, it became huge.
You know what also became huge? DNxHD 36 in particular — far lower res than it had ever occurred to Avid to make available, but because the codec is so robust, it still looks fantastic. That was a customer-driven resolution that’s arguably the most popular format for post, even if it’s not typically part of the acquisition equation.
I’m not meaning to oversell my insider-ness. Like I said, my role on the team was “monkey”. And as hard as I worked to sell this workflow, it STILL took Apple a few years to sell the all-but identical (and for workflow, EXACTLY identical) DNxHD after its first arrival 4 years later.
I’m asking, though, because I’m curious. Are you seriously saying that you don’t think Apple can both hold itself accountable to a handful of customer feature requests and still innovate?
Because ironically enough, I think that the launch of FCPX shows that Apple can easily do both if they wanted to. A huge part of what I think made the launch of FCPX flawless — and for the record, I believe that I am the one and only person here to say it was FLAWLESS in every single particular; you’ve certainly fought me on this every time I’ve brought it up — is that they KNEW they launched it before it was ready for the same kinds of professional production that FCP Legacy customers expected, SAID that it was missing key features, and gave a roadmap for when those key features would arrive.
See? Accountability. It can be done.
At the same time, I absolutely believe companies have a responsibility to act in their own longer term interests, even when it provides short-term disasters for customers. Apple has certainly built itself by burning its own customer base to the ground repeatedly, and they’ve proven that it works. I think that X was probably the least painful for Apple in their history.
But I’m genuinely curious if you’re telling me that you’d rather not have Apple take advice from a customer-selected group of advisors who were bringing Apple a list similar to the one that the CPUG network puts together, and having Apple publicly respond with their take on the requests with a prioritized plan for addressing them. Is that so objectionable to you?
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[Tim Wilson] “But I’m genuinely curious if you’re telling me that you’d rather not have Apple take advice from a customer-selected group of advisors who were bringing Apple a list similar to the one that the CPUG network puts together, and having Apple publicly respond with their take on the requests with a prioritized plan for addressing them. Is that so objectionable to you?”
But Tim, they already DO that!
Apple has a public feedback system built directly into the software.
There are also plenty of professional public facing communications idioms like Richard Taylors FCP X Feature Request lists – that I know Apple tracks. There are a WIDE range of public facing FaceBook groups, both public and private, amateur, intermediate and professional where Apple watches and gains insights into what their actual customers are saying. I’m dead sure they track Twitter feeds with X hashtags and Instagram pastings as well.
With JUST this system in place, the software has vastly improved and evolved RAPIDLY and has contributed highly capable and UNIQUE thinking to digital video editing. And more critical, the MAJORITY of what’s been added is valuable only to WORKING editors, not the low end of the market.
So I’d argue that this demonstrates an effective mechanism for customer feedback at ALL levels is already in place.
So what’s missing except perhaps a system that excludes SPECIFIC types of users who feel THEY should have more sway. And to that idea, I’d respond “What have they done to EARN a place at the table?” Have they engaged in thoughtful discussions of FACTS? Or have they just been more voices pissing on everything Apple has tried to do with FCP X.? If YOU were on the Apple engineering team – would you rather listen to the voices that have at least demonstrated understanding of how the thing you’re building is supposed to work? Or conference tables of those who barely glanced at it and rejected it out of hand?
But traditionally, hey HAVE NOT grown Apple on over-reliance on customer “wants surveys” in the product evolution area – they seem to instead just create and send out what they think is cool, then obsessively track “customer satisfaction” to see if they’re on track. So far it’s worked for them without paying too much fealty to the voices in the industry that might have a bit much vested interest in maintaining some type of status quo.
Maybe it’s an echo of Gil Amelio trying to turn the Mac into just another mass marketed PC? But anything that hints of that approach seems to cause Apple to spasm a bit.
They’ve built this massive platform on a pretty solid foundation of contrarianism in a lot of areas. Not all, but more than most companies that have gone this far this fast. And somehow, they manage to continue maintaining and growing it – even tho they inarguably ARE the status quo on many areas.
I’m just LOATH push them toward acting more and more LIKE an industry leader – particularly in the area of the insufferable tactic (to me) of surveying the same old “industry leaders” in order to suss out what those folks might want in an NLE.
Those folks already HAVE what they need. And the budgets to buy it in truckloads.
It’s OK to have some alternatives.
My 2 cents.
Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery. -
[Tim Wilson] “Take stock out of the picture. NOW what’s wrong with Avid? Nothing that can’t be fixed.
“You can’t. The company runs on the price of the stock. You just can’t do that.
[Tim Wilson] “They’re publicly taking input on feature requests, publishing the results, and holding themselves accountable for future outcomes. Apple sure ain’t. That’s not about money.”
Pardon my french, but this is bulls**t. This is PR. It’s about money. You think Louie Hernandez is doing this for the good of Avid editors in LA? No way. He is in it for the stock price (btw, he sold about 9,000 shares recently). It’s rosy to say that it’s all about customer engagement, but it’s not, It’s about ROI for the investors.
[Tim Wilson] “Avid is hosting advisory boards with customer-selected representatives from every major market the company serves.”
If you talk to some of those members, this too is not as rosy as it seems.
[Tim Wilson] “having made more from investing than”
Excellent! Avid was one?
[Tim Wilson] “Besides, if we were choosing NLEs by stock performance, we’d all be using Premiere Pro.”
I never said that. I was referring to Olivers statement about Adobe in a financial magazine. Pick an NLE that works and hope the company sticks with it.
[Tim Wilson] “Avid’s customers are saying that Avid is doing better than the market says.”
As well they should and hope but that does not mean alot if the numbers aren’t there. The real deal is in the numbers.
Scott Witthaus
Owner, 1708 Inc./Editorial
Managing Partner, Low Country Creative LLC
Professor, VCU Brandcenter -
[Scott Witthaus] “You can’t. The company runs on the price of the stock. You just can’t do that.”
The only way you can do it is if you get out of the market. It can be done. Companies do it every day.
That really is my point. Other problems that you allude to — and that I know exist, and was one of the guys on the front lines hearing about them if you’ll recall ???? — are much more easily surmountable if Avid isn’t also having to also carry the burden of the market’s expectations.
[Scott Witthaus] “It’s rosy to say that it’s all about customer engagement, but it’s not, It’s about ROI for the investors.”
Exactly my point. If you sell stock as a publicly held company, the stockholders are both your true boss and your biggest customer. The dynamic changes when all you have to do is deliver products to ACTUAL customers. Ask SAM. Ask Grant.
The problem I see is that the public doesn’t really understand what Avid is doing. Heck, we’re not the public, and with obvious exceptions like you, I don’t get the impression that most folks here see past the NLE wars.
[Scott Witthaus] “[Tim Wilson] “having made more from investing than”
Excellent! Avid was one?”
Nononono. LOL I had a few shares, but I took a bath. Bought at $49, peaked at $66, but like I said, I sold it at $13. I could have kept holding it, but even though it was just a few shares, I was ready to shift it to something that would make me money. I believe in the company (obviously), but I prefer my money to make money for me.
I really do feel strongly about diversification, and it was only because I was so excited by what was happening at Avid that I broke my rule about never investing in a sector I work in. One of my frustrations about stock in general (I’m all about funds) is that during my 3 years there, sales AND profit more than doubled….but the stock halved.
Why? I have no idea. The market was “sure” something was amiss, and if they keep saying it long enough, it becomes true. To me, a company whose sales, profit, and margin are all increasing seems like they should be a good investment, right? Well, the only reason it wasn’t is because a bunch of oligarchs kept insisting it wasn’t, until they were finally right. The wisdom of the market for ya.
And this isn’t just Avid. Almost ANY individual company, it seems to be the rule these days to have huge gaps between my old-school grasp of fundamentals and high performing stocks. I buy funds to blunt the impact of any small group of these maniacs across the largest possible pool of maniacs. I don’t trust any of them as far as I can throw them, but fellas, thanks for all the fish. ????
But otherwise, within this industry, I can’t really say anything much about stocks, because I honestly don’t watch too closely. Tying 100% of my current income AND 100% of my future income to the same narrow set of market forces just doesn’t appeal to me. The world’s an interesting place, and I like paying attention to a wider swath of it now and again.
(btw, I don’t mean to suggest that I’m the wizard here. All of our best investments have come from my wife. That she chose me casts some shade on her credibility, I know, but the numbers are the numbers.)
[Scott Witthaus] “If you talk to some of those members, this too is not as rosy as it seems. “
Oh but I do, and I agree. Believe me, folks who are unhappy with Avid have always made a beeline to me. ???? To this very day. Of COURSE Avid needs to do some stuff better. Everyone needs to do better.
*I* need to do better. I’d give myself a B- for how well I’m managing the COW. This is life in the service business. It’s hard, even for the best of the best.
(Did I just call myself the best of the best? I haven’t decided yet. ????)
My point was simply, ANY company would have walked through Avid’s NAB customer convention — Apple included — and said, “Yep, I’d be okay if my customers were at this balance of satisfaction and engagement.” They might want more and better, as I’m sure Avid did and does, but this to me was one of the biggest stories of the show, and of 2017 in general. This idea that Avid is close to the abyss because of the stock price isn’t a full enough picture.
And to the point that Oliver and I have been making about the broader part of Avid in the context of the ENTIRETY of professional media production — sports, news, storage, scalable services, audio post, live sound, etc. — it’s hard to find a cylinder they’re not firing on, or a group of customers anywhere, again including Apple, that’s more engaged across the board. They’re getting this right.
You’re right to not let me imply that that’s the whole picture, or even the only important part of the picture. But it’s a non-trivial part of it, and has far more to do with what to expect as a customer or potential customer of one of the company’s products or services than the stock price does.
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[Scott Witthaus] “Can I get Adobe Stock as a standalone contract for my school (Dennis, can you help here?)?”
Hey Scott,
Sadly, I hardly ever get the opportunity to post here anymore as I don’t want to ever be thought of as spamming too far off topic. I found this by doing some keyword searches – something I do every day in my new role.
To answer you question – Yes, you can, though for EDU facilities, that wouldn’t make sense. I think we’re connected on LinkedIn – please message me there and I would be happy to email or speak with you.
To get a TINY bit on Stock, I am very excited about our direction. We have millions of clips and we have some new content that is being developed. You can access it though the CC Libaries panel – check it out! For those that might be interested, please check this link for opportunities to develop motion graphics for Adobe.
Love and miss this community, but we’re still connected!
Dennis
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