McKay Allen:

Hi everybody. Welcome to today's webinar. We're grateful you're here. Let's get started in about one minute. One minute. All right everybody, let's get started. Thanks for being here today. We're excited that you're here on one of our webinars. I think for many of you, most of you, this is your first LiveView Technologies webinar. Today we're going to talk about securing large outdoor events, and we're going to focus a specific case study on Thanksgiving Point's Tulip Festival.

And it's a huge event with over a hundred thousand people that attend every year, and we're thrilled to talk through the event with the man who's in charge of security for the event who we'll introduce in just a moment. Here's our kind of overview of how we're going to discuss and organize the presentation today.

We'll talk about the actual background of the event itself, how they will control crowds, property protection, and then also Q&A at the end. So we do encourage you to ask questions. That's an important note. So on the go to webinar panel, on your screen, you're going to see the little questions drop down that's going to allow you to engage with us and ask questions throughout the presentation.

We encourage you to do that. In fact, what I'd recommend at this point is go into that little question area and type in maybe the city and state or the location you're dialing in from today. That's going to help us know who's on the call and also help you get to know how to ask questions as we go throughout the presentation. So just go in there, type in city and state where you're dialing in from today, and again, that'll help you get to know how to use the area and help us get to know who's on the call today.

And we've got a good crew. So we've got folks dialing in from Illinois, we've got Philadelphia, we've got Brandon in Dallas, we've got Patrick in Colorado. We've got a good crew today. Some folks from Utah, from California. Should be a good discussion. In terms of timeline today, we've been on a lot of webinars in our lives that are 60 to 90 minutes long and that get really long and boring.

We're going to try to keep this at about 30 minutes. So we'll move quickly and try to make it very useful and actionable for you. So with that, why don't we get started, Chris. You're the head of security at Thanksgiving Point. Chris Watson joins us now. Chris, tell us a little bit about yourself, but most of all, thank you for jumping on the call with us today. We appreciate it.

Chris Watson:

I'm excited to be here. This is a great opportunity, not just for me, but to be able to share about Thanksgiving Point and the Tulip Festival.

McKay Allen:

That's great.

Chris Watson:

I'm a retired police detective. When I retired, I was retired for about two years and I kind of got kicked out of the house and told to go do something. And so I went to a buddy at Thanksgiving Point and got hired on there in 2016, and this is where I'm at today.

McKay Allen:

That's great. That's awesome. And you got kicked out of the house and told to go do something and this is where you landed. That's fantastic. What a fun place to work. So give us a little bit of background for those of us because we're both in Utah and I'm familiar with Thanksgiving Point, but tell the folks who are on the call who aren't from here locally, a little bit about Thanksgiving Point, but also a little bit about the Tulip Festival as well and some of the challenges associated with it, Chris.

Chris Watson:

Sure. The one thing that you need to understand about Thanksgiving Point is how big it is. On our property, we have 13 buildings, eight venues. Those are divided up between two separate campuses, which we call an upper and lower campus. Within that, we have six open venues. We've got a Butterfly Biosphere, the Museum of Ancient Life, which is a dinosaur museum. We have the Museum of Natural Curiosity, which is a learn and play together for families.

We have farm country, which is an actual working farm. It's not like a petting zoo. They actually buy and sell animals. And then we have the Ashton Gardens where the Tulip Festival is held, and we have a certified PGA type golf course, which is actually the largest in the state of Utah. It's 7700 yards, which is about 200 acres.

McKay Allen:

The thing that you mentioned that I think people need to understand is the nature of the venue all year constantly, but also these large events that you have, because Thanksgiving Point's open basically all day every day. People can go and walk the gardens, they can golf, of course, they can go to the museums, they can go to the restaurants, but then you'll also have these gigantic events multiple times a year through the gardens and in the venue where you have a hundred thousand people plus to descend upon the venue in a week period of time.

So for example, one of the events that I'm familiar with is you do a big outdoor Christmas light show through the gardens that is always just absolutely wall-to-wall packed. And then also you have the Tulip Festival, which is what we're talking about today, which draws a hundred thousand people plus every year. So it's kind of this interesting combination, isn't it Chris between the steady stream of visitors every day punctuated by these really big events as the year goes on. Is that fair?

Chris Watson:

Yes, that's absolutely true, and that fluctuation takes a lot of planning and especially on the security side, to be able to take care of all those visitors. And so you can't do the same thing all year long. You're constantly having to change.

McKay Allen:

That's interesting. So the Tulip Festival, tell us about this event specifically. We're seeing a lot of information on the screen about it that people are reading through. I'm not a believer of reading bullet points out loud because people can read, but I do think the scope and the size of the event is something I want you to hit on, Chris, maybe hit on how big the event is and how intensive it is during the two or three weeks that it's happening.

Chris Watson:

Yeah, it's actually, it's six weeks long that the Tulip Festival is, but you're looking at 300000 tulips, over a half a million other type of plants and flowers throughout a 50 acre garden. So 50 acres, to put that in a context is that's the size of Disneyland when it first opened. So that's how big it is, the gardens is.

But we have, like you said, over a hundred thousand people that, they come from all over the United States, all over the world we really get visitors, but the tulips are really, that's the most important part of the Tulip Festival.

McKay Allen:

Interesting. And the thing I'll stress about this as well is the grounds are really big, but the parking lot and the areas where people sort of get into the gardens are really compact. Like you're cramming a lot of people in those lots and through a couple of primary areas to enter in. And that's where a lot of your security and event issues are traditionally is what you were saying, Chris, right?

‍Chris Watson:

Absolutely. We're limited by how many people come to the Tulip Festival because our parking. We have roughly over 1000 parking spots and just on a drive, and that's what limits us. But the challenge of monitoring that parking lot and monitoring the guests inside, that's where our security really shines.

McKay Allen:

Got it. Okay. Well, let's talk specifically about some of the crowd control challenges that you've had and how live views helped with those. So let's dive into this a little bit. One of the things that you mentioned, and I want to hit on this very first in terms of crowd flow, is let's start in the parking lot.

You mentioned that in the past, in previous years before you had a live view unit deployed that you would have people leaving their doors unlocked in the parking lots and issues with that in the parking lot. Talk about how big of a challenge that had been in the past and then what you've seen in those parking lots when you deployed a LiveView security unit.

Chris Watson:

Yeah, well that's true because we have, like you said, people leave their doors unlocked. One funny thing is somebody left their car running for happened to be an employee, but they left their car running for eight hours. So you just have all kinds of issues. But because of LiveView in the past we would have, well, I would say probably a dozen break-in to cars during a festival where we fill up the whole drive.

And since we've deployed Live View in our parking lot, we have had zero, zero break-ins we have had. That doesn't mean that we haven't had issues or intruders, but the deterrence of the LiveView camera is so valuable. I just can't tell you how much it helps with deterring people from criminal activities.

‍McKay Allen:

Well, the thing that you were mentioning is that it's really visible, right? For those of you who don't know, it's essentially a trailer that is pulled up that can fit into one parking space or like a corner of a lot with a mast and solar panels that go up and the solar panels stay near the ground, but the mast goes up into the air with a camera, with a flashing light on it if you want. Specifically talk about how it looks in your parking lot and how that deters people from engaging in bad behavior.

Chris Watson:

So the blue light on top is something that we get asked about all the time. It's something that you can see from the freeway and as you come around, what we call the point of the mountain, you can see from a long distance away the blue flashing light on the edge of this hill. And that's the edge of our property.

But the lights and the mirror appearance of the camera gets a lot of attention and we get a lot of questions about it. And that's what I love about the LiveView camera. I mean, not just besides the fact of the mobility of it and being able to look at three different cameras in three different directions, and you can look at it from your phone, your iPad, we use that all the time to watch and to monitor our parking lots.

McKay Allen:

So how many people do you have monitoring it? And before you answer that, let me back up and just mention something as well. And we should have put a picture of one of these units in the presentation so we can explain more what we're talking about. But essentially this goes up into the air, it's got three different cameras, it's got the ability to have lights, you can have audio deterrence, things like that.

Who do you have actually monitoring this or are they're monitoring alerts that come from the system? How does that actually work functionally on a day-to-day basis with you and your team at Thanksgiving Point, Chris?

Chris Watson:

It changes throughout the day because our graveyard staff, they'll actually monitor the gardens, they'll seal it up and monitor the gardens for any kind of intruders. And our biggest intruder, which is kind of a funny thing, but it's deer. The deer will come in, sneak in, and they will do hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. The deer love tulip bulbs, it's like they're addicted to it and they will dig through anything to get to them.

And yeah, they can sense them from, I guess miles away. But LiveView has really helped us dialed in to be able to monitor the deer, to know their habits to where they're coming from and be able to avoid some catastrophes because if they dig up, especially in the front of our gardens where that's the first thing people see is if they dig up a big area, which has happened before the tulips, we have no tulips in that area, so we have to plant something else.

McKay Allen:

So John is asking a good question, and I appreciate these questions, keep them coming, is how many security guards do you have monitoring that 1000 space parking lot? Do you have people who are sitting in a room looking at screens that are feeds from the LiveView unit or do you have people, because the information's available on iPad, on iPhone via our app, are those people just pulling up the app wherever they are and looking at it? How do you actually have people monitoring the parking lot specifically?

Chris Watson:

So we have a full parking staff, which actually is security, and that can be up to five people that do parking and they have access to it on an iPad or iPads. But we have two security people that actually monitor the entire property and they will pull up, they can look at buildings inside, et cetera, from the iPad and also the LiveView camera. So they're fluctuating, they're moving between all these cameras at the same time while they're monitoring venues.

McKay Allen:

That's great. Great insight there. All right, I want to go to the fourth bullet point here. Handling alerts and notifications. One of the things that the technology allows you to do is set up alerts for activity that looks suspicious. For example, in a parking lot or if a deer or a human is walking through your grounds at 2:00 AM, you'll get an alert that indicates that is happening.

And if you don't look at it at that time, you can actually go back and see the exact time code when it happened. How do you handle or manage or use those alerts and notifications, Chris?

Chris Watson:

So one thing that when you get that alert that you can do is you simply click on it and it'll take you right to a video feed, the short video feed of the actual intrusion. And from there you can take action, you know what's happening. And like I said, this is really critical, the deer are for us and we can scare them away, move them off the drive, kind of corral them off. But when we see deer and we get that alert, we have to act quickly.

McKay Allen:

Quickly, let's talk specifically about both of the use cases you've mentioned, the first being the people in the parking lot and the second being the deer. How in addition to the actual just physical presence of the camera unit in the parking lot and how visible it is with the flashing light, do you employ any other tactics with that like audio deterrent because you can have recorded messages or even live two-way talk through if you see some suspicious activity?

Do you use that at all in the parking lot? And then the same question for the deer and the property protection is do you play a siren or music to get the deer to run? What do you do in the parking lot with humans and in the gardens with the deer?

Chris Watson:

I know it's funny, you normally don't think of deer as intrusive, but for Luminaria we have music that plays outside and that plays the entire time. So we don't use the sound system of the LiveView camera during Luminaria, but during Tulip Festival and before that in preparations for it, we actually can use the speaker on it. I've done it personally and scared deer away with the speaker. So just that speaker can be extremely valuable because it's pretty loud and it gets their attention.

McKay Allen:

That's interesting. And then anything in the parking lots that you do to deter individuals? Because you mentioned those break-ins were happening and now you've had zero. Anything you're using specifically in parking lots other than the actual presence of the unit for deterrence, any audio there? Is it just the visual and the flashing light and that kind of thing?

Chris Watson:

For Luminaria, we just use the visible, but we don't have anything playing. But it could be, the capabilities that we have set up is that we can just have it automatically play a sound that you're trespassing or that you're just the intrusive behavior. But we really don't use the sound that much for Tulip Festival unless it's in the middle of the night and there's deer there.

McKay Allen:

Interesting. Now how do you stop prohibited activities, things like photography sessions, people vandalizing the property coming where they shouldn't, and obviously just the general huge crowd control issues? Because we've talked kind of about the parking lot issues, we've talked about the deer, but I'm sure there's human issues of crowd control and prohibited activities in the gardens themselves. How do you handle that with LiveView and what does that do to help solve your challenges, if you will?

‍Chris Watson:

Well, LiveView is on the outside and most of the challenges that you're talking about are on the inside where we have people that we have a photo pass that you can buy. You can take pictures obviously of any flowers like that, but we don't allow any professional sessions.

If you hire a photographer to go in and then a wedding dress, that kind of stuff, you have to have a photo pass to be able to do that. And LiveView on the outside actually has helped us to see them when they're coming. Somebody walking in with a wedding dress, we know that they're there. So then on the inside we can notify our people, hey, watch for them and make sure they have a photo pass. But-

McKay Allen:

What if they just are wearing a wedding dress to the Tulip Festival, Chris? I'm just kidding. I'm just joking.

Chris Watson:

We've had all kinds of people. I mean, well I was going to say Walmart, but I won't mention that.

McKay Allen:

Look, I think you've got a really interesting situation because you have the challenges of the parking lot, you've got the challenges with crowd control on site in the gardens as well as the deer, can you just talk through, were you skeptical if LiveView was going to work for your specific situation?

Were you surprised at how well it's worked and how easy it is to use? Talk just through what you expected versus what you got, and then maybe how simple it is to move around, set up, that kind of stuff. Just talk through that a little bit.

Chris Watson:

So part of safety of visitors and even our staff is for security is visibility. That is crucial. You have to have some kind of visibility of security in the area to be able to deter. And LiveView gives that visibility 24/7. You know what I mean? That the visibility of, it's like having a security person standing there watching the entire time. And so somebody comes into the area and everybody knows that if you want to secure something, the best thing that you can get is a lot of lights, a big dog and a lot of noise.

‍McKay Allen:

And then one final question and then we'll take questions from the audience.

Chris Watson:

Sorry about that.

McKay Allen:

Oh, you're good. One final thing from me and then we'll take questions from the audience. So please type those questions into the little question area everybody for Chris, and we'll ask him these questions.

Chris Watson:

Yeah, can you hear us Chris? Chris, you there? Did we lose Chris? We may have lost Chris.

McKay Allen:

No, I got you. I'm back.

Chris Watson:

Okay, perfect.

I did lose you for a minute. I apologize about that. I forgot to mute my phone.

McKay Allen:

Oh, you're good. You're good. Worse things have happened. No, but what I was going to ask you is as you look at the video that you've pulled from LiveView since you've had it, has there been anything that's surprised you that's happened in a parking lot that before you didn't even have awareness of, right?

You mentioned the deterrence factor, but I'm sure you've seen suspicious people wandering the parking lot or you've seen people that in other instances you'd be worried about crime. Have you seen any of those instances on video that you maybe have been alerted of that you wouldn't have even been aware of previously?

Chris Watson:

Yeah, we've had a couple incidents where we've had intruders come onto the property and it was, you get an alert, but one of the great things I love about LiveView is the thermal cameras. They're so much easier to see at night, those intruders on thermal, that it is on the regular camera and you can see them and you know exactly where they're going or what they're doing and you're able to head them off and handle the situation.

I'm going to go back to the deer. We've been able to, because of LiveView, understand more of the habits of the deer, and because of that, we've been able to develop plans of fencing coverage to protect our tulips, to protect the grounds, the plants, the tulip bulbs from the deer. So it's been extremely valuable for us to understand the habits of the deer.

McKay Allen:

That's interesting. Well, this is great Chris. Let's take some questions from folks. It looks like we've got a few. All right. What advice would you give to smaller event security teams? Any advice you would give to people who have similar events or even law enforcement that is tasked with securing events? Any advice relative to security or the visibility that these units provide?

Chris Watson:

Yeah, I would actually, there's ... Just one sec. I'd give a couple of good suggestions. First thing is for smaller security is you have to be as visible as you can. And if you don't have the staff to do that, you now do. A LiveView camera will give you that opportunity to provide that visibility that you need. The one thing that you do is utilize the camera and monitor what happens on your property and pay attention to the detail that the camera provides.

The small things are important. When I say small things for us, that could be well deer, it could be even other animals that can destroy our ecosystem. I mean, we've had mountain lions, bobcats, badgers, and skunks, raccoons, but those kinds of things can cause havoc on your property. So visibility is extremely important in paying to detail.

One of the other things is make sure that your team members have the equipment that they need to be able to do their job. And if you can't have a security person, you've got LiveView there as a security person for you, and really you're able to utilize the software to be able to treat it just like you were to have a security person. That's the best thing about LiveView. Yeah. I don't know if that answers your question.

McKay Allen:

No, that's a great answer, Chris. I think you make an interesting point that I hadn't really thought through, which is, you have the ability because of this technology, how rapidly it deploys, all that kind of stuff that if you have a security team, they can utilize it. It's another tool in their tool bag, if you will.

And if you don't have a large security team, you have the ability to basically have a very visible security guard in your parking lot and then just have you as head of security manage things like the alerts and the notification. So it's really scalable, whether it's for a smaller, a large team or a small or large event, which is a great point.

I think a couple more questions coming in. Kyle asked an interesting question. In terms of people being skeptical of this internally or resistance from management to utilize LiveView, did you experience any of that? How did that process go? Or are people pleasantly surprised or did they kind of expect it to work because they got it? They saw the unit like, oh, of course this'll work.

Chris Watson:

Oh, I got kick back right off the bat when I tried to present it. It was, is this really necessary? Do we need it? It's just question after question. But the biggest thing that caught everyone's attention about LiveView is when we got a demo, we were able to see, they were able to see what it is, what it does, and having that out in our parking lots, they were sold. And it wasn't about whether or not we needed it, it was more about fitting it into our budget.

McKay Allen:

Got it. Got it. All right. John asked a great question. I've been tasked with writing and implementing a comprehensive security policy for a multi-sports complex and outdoor music venue. Any advice on how to start writing the PNPs or the requests? Any advice as you presented this that may be helpful for John as he tries to convince his bosses to move forward with a project like this?

Chris Watson:

It's hard to explain. You can put down on paper what LiveView does and you can list it out, et cetera, and they can visualize in their head kind of what it does, but I can't stress how valuable getting one of the cameras out there and having them look at it and experience it, that is extremely valuable and that will sell them right on the bat.

McKay Allen:

Yeah, that's a great point. I hope that was helpful, John. Okay, one more question and then we can conclude because we said we'd be around 30 minutes and I want to make sure we keep our word is, what would you say to anybody who is either considering LiveView, has crowd issues periodically, but they haven't ever thought about it?

Would you recommend it to other people? What would your word be to people who have, whether they're in law enforcement and they're trying to figure out how to secure an event or retail and figuring out how to secure a parking lot, or in your space where you're trying to figure out how to secure a large event periodically, would you recommend LiveView and any advice you would have for people in that situation?

Chris Watson:

I would absolutely recommend LiveView. Some of the things that you deal with in security, especially in management, is your staff. And one of the beauties of LiveView is you actually have, like we said, a security person out there. They don't have emotion. They've got great communication skills, they deescalate things quickly and they're extremely visible. And I don't think you can ask any more from a security standpoint than that.

McKay Allen:

Good point. You mentioned the deterrence periodically. I think that's what I'd highlight too as we close, Chris, is the level of deterrence that is provided by one of these units in your parking lot. Even if it didn't do all the really cool technical stuff that you mentioned, the lights, the recording, the alerts, the thermal sensor, which you mentioned, which is really cool, the simple presence of it in a lot has deterred crime.

And I think that's what I would suggest here is that that deterrence is really vital and will save you and your team so much time. So Chris, thanks for jumping on, man. This was really fun and I'm excited to go to the Tulip Festival for the first time and experience it. And I really appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. Any final thoughts from you before we conclude?

‍Chris Watson:

No, thank you for having me, and I love having LiveView, and I love being ... And I hope to have LiveView more as a partner in the future, but because it really has been extremely valuable for our security process.

McKay Allen:

That's great. Chris, thanks again, man. Everybody, thank you for jumping on. We know you're busy, that's why we've tried to keep this 30 minutes and so you can get back to the rest of your day. But thank you for jumping on everyone. We know you're busy. Have a great Wednesday. I think it's Wednesday, right? And have a great rest of the week. Bye everybody.