Michael Hanks:

Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, LVT fam. We're excited for everyone joining today from across the country. We have some really cool people that have registered, so we're excited to talk to you today.

I'm Michael Hanks with LiveView Technologies. This is Chris Parker as well. I'm going to let him introduce himself in a little bit.

We're going to dive into a really cool use case here in just a little bit and talk about how Chris worked with Ohio State. Really exciting stuff, but just a few things. If anybody has any questions throughout this, feel free to ask them in the questions box. Chris and I will be happy to answer anything that you ask. If we can't answer them, we're going to find the answer and we'll get back to you, for sure.

So anyway, welcome. Chris, how about you just do a little bit of introduction, tell the people who you are, where you came from, what you do, and all that fun stuff?

Chris Parker:

Okay. Yeah. So Chris Parker. I've been here for about a year now. Previously, I'm actually from Columbus, Ohio. I grew up in a small town outside of Columbus. Went to school at Ohio State, did my undergrad there. Spent about six years in the military. Also in that time was working for a commercial insulation company called Rockswool out of Canada. So I did that for about five years, and that was before really getting into tech and moving out to Utah. So that's a bit about kind of my background, where I come from, all that good stuff.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. I didn't know you were in the military. Which branch?

Chris Parker:

I started in the Army and then switched to the Air Force.

Michael Hanks:

Oh, cool.

Chris Parker:

So a year in the Army, six in the Air Force.

Michael Hanks:

Awesome.

Chris Parker:

Yeah.

Michael Hanks:

Well, I'll have to talk to you a little bit more about that, that's awesome.

‍Chris Parker:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, of course.

Michael Hanks:

Thanks for your service.

Chris Parker:

Mm-hmm.

Michael Hanks:

Well, I don't want to delay too much. I know you've had obviously a lot of great conversations and a lot of great clients and you've been able to work with a lot of universities, and that's something that we want to talk about today, is pinpoint some of the pain points and some of the best practices and everything that you found when talking to universities and what is helpful for a university when they're looking for a solution like LiveView Technologies and all that stuff.

So I'm just going to turn it over to you and kind of talk to everybody here, and maybe from the beginning to the end, and I'll ask questions as they come along.

Chris Parker:

Okay, cool. So yeah, I'm happy to walk you guys through kind of the genesis of Ohio State. It's a cool story. As I mentioned, that's where I went to undergrad, and when I first started at LiveView and I'm looking at our system and thinking, "Okay, where can I try to go and make an impact? What's a cool vertical to go after?" For me, the first thing that obviously came to mind was Ohio State, and I was fortunate enough here to have that as my territory, Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, that whole area.

‍Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So I actually wrote their director of security a postcard.

Michael Hanks:

Oh.

Chris Parker:

It was the very first postcard I ever wrote here. Didn't think he'd ever respond. It was just a total shot in the dark. Had a picture of our trailer on the front of it, sent him a postcard, and two months later he responds and was basically like, "Hey, we have some old antiquated trailers. They're from the Department of Transportation. They suck." He sent me a picture of it and it was this little orange box with rusted axles and a 10-foot pole that had wires going up the front and I'm like, "Yeah, we could do better than that."

‍Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So anyways, we got them set up with a pilot trailer, and very, very quickly they found value in it. It was one of those things where I flew out there because I was from Columbus. We had a lot in common and I kind of felt like I was able to leverage that to get our foot in the door. But really once he got the trailer, I don't think he had any expectations. He was just kind of, "Hey, sure, we'll give it a shot for 30 days. Why not?"

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

And very quickly, I think within the first two weeks he calls me and he's like, "Hey, dude, we're going to need a lot of these things."

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So to kind of walk you through some of the scenarios that they use them in, I've got a list over here. So really the biggest thing, and this is probably a pain point for universities, schools, I would imagine, around the country is a stopgap, if you will, in their existing camera systems.

So Ohio State for example, they have thousands of cameras mounted all over campus, the sides of buildings, they've got them on trees, telephone poles, they're everywhere. It's this massive network of a camera system, and that's how they're able to keep campus safe.

If there's police chases, anything like that, they can quickly navigate through these camera systems and follow somebody if they need to. However, there's still a lot of areas on campus that they aren't able to have camera systems in place.

Some reasons for that could be it's private property, it's off-campus housing. Whatever it is, they don't have the jurisdiction to go in there and say, "Hey, we're going to drill a hole in the ground here and put our camera system in." Not everybody's cool with that, even if it does make the campus feel safer.

And I went to Ohio State, so I know this area, it's kind of on the west side of campus. And it's in a rough area. It kind of butts up. If you're not familiar with Columbus, Columbus is kind of surrounded with some rough neighborhoods, and this is one of those areas where they're saying, "Hey, we're having all these cars broken into, people are moving out of their apartments because they don't feel safe." There was a couple rapes, there was a murder, just the list grew.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So that was the first target for them as they said, "Hey, let's put this trailer there, let's see if it does anything." And almost immediately, the feedback started rolling in from the tenants that lived there, would actually would call into the police station and say, "Hey, is this you guys?" And Ohio State's like, "Yeah, this is us."

And then it very quickly caught on to where suddenly you had the president of the university calling the director of security from Ohio State saying, "What's this trailer? This thing's awesome."

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

And that's really how it started. And very quickly, I think within the first probably three months, they caught a murder on that camera unfortunately.

Michael Hanks:

[inaudible 00:06:50].

Chris Parker:

But it's happened quite a few times, surprisingly.

Michael Hanks:

Unfortunately, but fortunately, right?

‍Chris Parker:

But fortunately they were able to [inaudible 00:06:56].

Michael Hanks:

That's actually, finding that evidence and having that stuff, I mean, it's crucial.

Chris Parker:

They were able to use the system.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. I mean, it's sad beyond belief, but.

Chris Parker:

Yeah. Yeah. So they used the system, and then really from that point, the president stepped in and said, "Look, we need these things all over campus."

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

And in this same time, Ohio State was catching a lot of heat for crime around campus. It was national news. I'd wake up to texts from my mom and dad and say, "Hey, Chris." They're zooming in on the TV, they're like, "I think that's your trailer in the background." And all the news stations would come on campus and they would do their reportings of the crime that had happened that night right in front of our trailer, which was pretty cool to see. It sucks that it's a bad circumstance like that of course, but so really that was kind of the entrance point for them, was a stopgap in the existing system that they have.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. And to go off of that, and this is kind of a digression, but why I think that's really important is because from what I've heard about Ohio State and what that university is, is it's not just a sort of typical campus. It's basically its own city type of thing, right?

Chris Parker:

Yeah, it is a city within a city. [inaudible 00:08:10].

Michael Hanks:

Yeah. And so talking about gaps, there's tons of them, right?

Chris Parker:

Yeah. Of course.

Michael Hanks:

And so it's basically you have to run it like a small city.

Chris Parker:

Yeah. Totally. Exactly.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So that was really kind of what got them started. That went from one trailer to another to another to another, and they very quickly started finding other places to put these things for different reasons.

I have a list here, some other kind of use cases, but obviously game days are big for a lot of the Big Ten schools. If you've never been to an Ohio State game day, it's pretty crazy. They close down half the city. It's an excuse for every middle-aged man to go downtown and get drunk and rowdy.

Michael Hanks:

And walk around.

Chris Parker:

Yeah.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So they would take our trailers, let's just say, let's just call it Main Street, they'll close Main Street and they'll put the trailer right smack in the middle of the street, which you would think all these things are going to get trashed, but really they don't. People associate those trailers with law enforcement. They have flashing police lights on it, so people don't touch them.

So for game days it's been huge for them. And kind of another thing that's similar to that, a lot of your big campuses obviously have parties. When I was there, basically in the spring and the fall, every street would have a festival. First street fest, the whole street closes down for the weekend. The whole campus comes to the street and parties.

Same thing, they put the trailer smack-dab in the middle of that street, which is crazy, and it's entertaining. They're like, "Yeah, it's hilarious, sit in this thing and just watch all these kids, [inaudible 00:09:45] just watch chaos unfold.

Michael Hanks:

[inaudible 00:09:49]. That's actually one of the cool features that people understand, is the mobility of it, right?

Chris Parker:

Yep.

Michael Hanks:

And so, one thing is, yeah, there's something about infrastructure, this pole, that it's all tied together, but you're able to move it and set it up within 30 minutes, get on with our implementation team or our customer service team.

Do they move them a lot? And if so, tell everybody what to expect, because I know what we say is you can set it up within minutes, right? And so once they move it to another place, it's not that that's a bad thing, but kind of walk through that real quick just so they understand how awesome that is.

Chris Parker:

Yeah, so last time I was onsite, I was with them for basically a whole day and they wanted to move one of the trailers while I was there.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

So the guy, Paul, that works there, he's like, "Here, come on. Come with me." And we hop in this golf cart and we're just cruising around campus in this golf cart, and he backs up to a trailer, drops the hitch, hooks up to the two-inch ball on the golf cart, and we pull it onto the next spot.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

And he and I had that thing set up and torn down in probably 30 minutes total. So it's very quick and easy to change wherever it's at, to move it somewhere different.

And that's another kind of unique way that they use it is a incident response. So something happens in an off-campus parking lot, there's a rape, there's some sort of gun violence, whatever it is. The universities can quickly respond to that by taking this trailer, putting it out there and saying, "Hey, we're listening. We're here."

So incident response has been also huge for them. And having the ability to quickly pivot and say, "Okay, we're going to plug this trailer and put it somewhere where we think we're going to get more value out of it." You got to think, you can't do that with wired cameras. I mean, it's a major undertaking to say, "Hey, we need a camera here. Oh, we got to run power to it. Oh, we got to get internet to it. We got to mount the camera." It's a very cumbersome, expensive task.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

Whereas the trailer, you can roll that thing up anywhere. I mean, these guys have them sitting on the streets, the sidewalks. Wherever they have jurisdiction, they'll put the trailer, which is pretty unique I think.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah, totally. Thanks for sharing.

Chris Parker:

Yeah.

Michael Hanks:

Cool.

‍Chris Parker:

A couple other quick things. Obviously construction sites are huge. Every campus, seems like everywhere, major infrastructure is always going on. That's another kind of use case that the universities have said, "Hey, we will provide these trailers to you guys as a service for security."

‍Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

Chris Parker:

And that's a really big thing for particularly Ohio State right now where they're having, if you go on campus, the whole freaking campus is under construction it seems, and obviously people are stealing stuff from those job sites.

So being able to take some of these trailers, kind of move them around, manipulate them as they need to and place them in these hotspot areas again kind of falls into that incident response thing, so.

‍Michael Hanks:

[inaudible 00:12:54].

Chris Parker:

Yeah.

Michael Hanks:

That's a cool use case, for sure.

Chris Parker:

Obviously another thing is fleet protection. This is every school, this is even K through 12, Ohio State, every university, they're going to have a fleet of vehicles sitting somewhere.

More times than not, it's snowplows, it's excavators, it's heavy machinery, and more times than not, it's just kind of sitting in an open area and it's not locked up. So having one of these trailers out there where you can crank up that mast, quickly get surveillance out there, you can see the flashing police lights on the trailer from a half mile away so it's just a really big deterrent to have in those areas where you might have some assets sitting that you will watch over.

Michael Hanks:

Yeah.

‍Chris Parker:

So.

Michael Hanks:

Cool. One thing that I think everyone would be interested in hearing is, let's say we have some heads of security from different campuses or any business in general, but since we're talking a lot about campus security, what's some of the best ways that you found to help them talk to the president of the school or whatever they need to do to get the approval process to get them on site and to start just rolling?

Chris Parker:

Yeah, so typically it's a slower process because oftentimes, and at least this is just my perception, the way it goes is the director of security will go to his boss and then to their boss, and inevitably it will trickle uphill to sometimes the president of the university. And oftentimes they're just looking at it as like, "Oh, why does this guy want to spend more money? What's the value in this?"

Michael Hanks:

Totally.

Chris Parker:

I think for Ohio State it was being able to see that immediate value where the director of security could say, "Hey, here's 20 emails with people reaching out saying this thing is awesome," and then being able to leverage that.

So just getting that kind of feedback from the student body, which happened almost immediately for Ohio State, I think can really help to get those conversations going. And I think also taking advantage of us having the ability to give you a pilot for 30 days, and that's us saying, "Hey, we'll pay for everything. We'll let you kick the tires, move it around, see if you like it, use it, abuse it." Have an opportunity to get this thing in front of the right people so that they're just not seeing a PDF outline with some numbers and saying, "What's this?"

Michael Hanks:

[inaudible 00:15:29].

Chris Parker:

"What is the value in this?"

‍Michael Hanks:

Totally.

Chris Parker:

I think that's been really big and that's certainly helped me to get into other universities, is saying, "Hey, here, let me fly out. I'll set it up for you. Talk me through how you guys want to use it, and use it. Give it 30 days and see what you think." That makes a really big impact because it gives it time to be out there, they're not paying for it. It's basically a new shiny toy for them to play with, and yeah, that's been really helpful.

Michael Hanks:

And actually see the value of it.

Chris Parker:

Yeah, and see the value.

Michael Hanks:

That's so valuable.

Chris Parker:

Yes, of course. Yeah.

‍Michael Hanks:

Well, anything else that you're wanting to share that I haven't asked? I have a couple other questions, but before I dive into those, just wondering if there was something else on the top of your mind [inaudible 00:16:13]?

Chris Parker:

Yeah, yeah. That's been the bulk of what I've seen that universities are using them for. A couple of things come to mind like graduations, I know reacting to any type of riots that happen. Really just any scenario where you just need a rapid deployment surveillance system that you can have set up very, very quickly is kind of the sticking point to our solution, I would say, so yeah.

Michael Hanks:

Totally. Yeah, you brought up a ton of great use cases. It's so fun listening to these stories from our customers and what they found valuable. And personally my favorite is, because I've heard it time and time again, about once we've put a unit somewhere where there's some crime or it's a sketchy area or a hard area to be a part of, the people that live there that come out and thank the campus or the police. I keep hearing so many stories like that.

And I feel like, it's not our main marketing thing, but the safety of people is just hearing those stories and people feeling safe I think is so awesome. So I'm glad that we were able to do that with Ohio State and also provide all those other awesome use cases to help them continue to grow.

Chris, I really want to say thanks for jumping on. I know this was a quick webinar, but I think it was sufficient and awesome, and you gave us some really good detail. So if anybody that's joining or watching this has any questions, feel free to reach out to us. You can email sales@lvt.com, go to our website, lvt.com. We're on LinkedIn, we're on Facebook. You can find us anywhere. And then find this guy on LinkedIn, ask him all the questions, he's a smart man. And but yeah, thanks again for joining.

Chris Parker:

Yeah, of course.

Michael Hanks:

Okay.

Chris Parker:

Thanks, guys.

Michael Hanks:

All right, everybody. Thanks for joining this morning, and have a great rest of your day. Thanks so much.