TalkingHeadz with Kevin McMenamy, CTO of Neat

In this engaging episode of TalkingPointz - Talking Headz, hosts Dave Michels and David Danto chat with Kevin McMenamy, the CTO of Neat, to delve into his fascinating journey through the video conferencing industry. 

Kevin shares insights from his early days at Cisco, where he contributed to pioneering video technologies like IP telephony video and telepresence, to his current role at Neat, where cutting-edge video solutions are developed. The conversation covers the evolution of video conferencing, the challenges and triumphs of integrating multiple firms into Cisco, and the vibrant, innovative culture at Neat that keeps Kevin passionate about his work. 

This episode offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the industry's transformation and the key players driving its future. Tune in to hear about the technological advancements that shape how we connect globally and the personal stories of those at the forefront of this revolution.

Transcript

Dave Michels: 0:21

Welcome to Talking Heads, the informative, entertaining and brilliant podcast on enterprise communications from the team at talking points. Okay, Hi, Steve Michels from talking points. Welcome to another episode of talking points, chats, Dave. Dave Danto and myself will be interviewing Kevin from Neat. Kevin, you're in a brand new role at neat, and I just saw you change seats. I know you wear multiple hats. I didn't know you said multiple seats exactly. I

Unknown: 0:56

just wanted to be a little bit closer to all the equipment.

Dave Michels: 1:01

Brief introduction, a quick introduction of your role. At

Unknown: 1:04

me, yes, I'm a CTO and run the software engineering team here, and

Dave Michels: 1:10

you've been there for how long? 10

Unknown: 1:12

months. I joined in September of 2023, all

Dave Michels: 1:16

right. Well, that's going to be a part of our conversation. We've got a whole lot of history to cover before we get there. So, Kevin,

Unknown: 1:21

first of all, what equipment are you using right now? Where are you so I'm in Oslo, first of all, meets headquarters, and I'm on a bar pro with three screens. I see both of you really fantastically well. We're using meet center here for the microphone array. And also, if I sit and, you know, look at you guys this way, which would be awkward and uncomfortable, but for demo purposes, but you know, if I was talking to somebody across the table, then, you know, within a few seconds, the needs center would detect, oh, I'm looking here, and switch to this camera view. And then if I turn and talk to you guys, you know, this way on the screens, then it's going to detect that I'm looking there. We can't

Dave Michels: 2:03

see that meat center. So let me just ask it a curiosity. Is that sitting on the table or hanging from the ceiling?

Unknown: 2:10

It is sitting on the table right? Old school. When you get up and walk over to the screen, we will see it in the foreground there. So, so let's, let's go backwards a little bit. You were, you were lucky enough or unlucky enough. I don't know how you want to phrase it, to be at Cisco when video actually became a thing, working for, you know, ultimately for John Chambers. You know, what was that experience like? I know that the Cisco vision originally was, you know, the Kuva, the Cisco Unified video advantage, right? Gotta remember that that's, yeah, but actually that came after, yeah, you know. So I've been doing video conferencing since 96 I'm super, you know, privileged to have been a part of the industry since then, back in the days of ISDN, H dot 320 and then H dot 321 ISDN, or, I'm sorry, H dot 320 over ATM at a company called first virtual and then I joined Cisco in 2000 working on H dot 323, video conferencing. And then we came up with the idea for Kuva and IP and video telephony as part of the enterprise PBX solution, Call Manager. Back then, people nowadays know it as Unified Communications Manager. So, so that was the idea, again, for people who aren't familiar with that, is like you would pick up a phone and call somebody, and if you had it, and they had it, all of a sudden, you see their face on the screen when you're calling. So just magic, a bolt on to the to the IP telephony. And then, you know, Charlie Giancarlo and the team, you know, around telepresence that that sort of became a thing, right? Yeah, exactly. And then we pivoted, you know, really big from, from, you know, desktop communications with with Cuba unified video advantage and and IP phones, to high end, 10 ADP, 30 frames per second, immersive telepresence. And that was an incredible journey, really privileged to have been a part of that give us some color that we may not know about, that you know, obviously, you know, those who people are familiar with the technology, we get the technology. But what was it like inside Cisco, around trying to kick that off, around the bandwidth, around the network? What was that experience like? Yeah, it's a lot of fun. And, you know, we were essentially like a startup inside of, you know, Cisco. So it's like, fantastic, right? We had all this funding from Cisco. But we were, we treated ourselves as like a seconded, you know, often in another building, working on this Skunk Works telepresence thing, you know, small team, completely focused, you know, working like startup hours, you know, we're out there in the parking lot, you know, cutting up a table and painting it, you know, and security guard came driving by, what are you guys doing? Oh, we're doing this telepresence. It's gonna be amazing. He's like, You guys are crazy. And he drove off. And, yeah, bringing telepresence to market was, was a thrill, just the immersive experience, right? You know, sitting across from the table from somebody on the other. End of the planet, just going, my God, you're aware. You're in you're in Hong Kong. Holy You look like you're right there across from it. It's amazing. And you know, we weren't the only ones doing it, as you know, tanberg had their t3 and Polycom had their RPX and HP had Halo and such. And that the success of telepresence really set us up to then start to think seriously about we need to triple down on this market, you know? And that led to the acquisition of timber, which brought me to Oslo. Well, that's actually a great point talk a little bit, because you were there for tanberg acquisition and you were there for kanos acquisition a few years later. You know, those product lines probably wasn't easy. Anything you want to tell us about the that joy or those scars, I would say very few scars, all joy, but, you know, I tend to be an optimist, so yeah, first of all, on a personal level, moving to Oslo was a phenomenal opportunity for me and for my family, my wife, my daughter, our daughter was seven at the time. She loved it. My wife loved it. I loved it. Working here, you know, the timber team is phenomenal. It was a joy to work with them. And I was got to wear many hats. You know, it's kind of like part product manager, part architect, part janitor, part whatever you need help with getting to understand how to operate within Cisco, you know, all all. And what do you call that? Master of jack of all trades, master of a couple, you know? And just, just here to help, right? And so I think the timber team really appreciated me as an asset. And yeah, we

Dave Michels: 6:37

went through another transition too, because when Rowan came in, everything shifted to spark

Unknown: 6:43

the cloud. Exactly right. That's right. That's been a journey. But yeah, the you know here working with the timber team, is all about getting all the timber endpoints to register to communications manager, so lineside SIP integration, getting the coding MCU and telepresence server to act as conference bridges on, on communications ventures really like bringing telepresence and unified communications together and integrating all of that whole, you know, all three, right, Cisco TelePresence, tanberg and Cisco UC altogether, and then, and then we acquired econo in 2015,

Dave Michels: 7:17

where were you working? When? When meat emerged?

Unknown: 7:23

I was in London, so fast forward, 2015 Cisco acquired acano. Fast Forward, three years later, 2018 I moved to London to act as Director of Engineering for what was born out of the coding acquisition, which became the tele transcoding back end of WebEx, and the on prem conferencing portfolio, which was the econo portfolio. And those two teams both very close to each other, about 15 minute drive away from each other, our 15 mile drive away, depending on traffic, that can be anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes in London. And you know, so I took on both of those teams and brought them under, you know, common leadership and common vision, common goals and all that, even though one team was focused on prem and the other and cloud really doing very similar things, transcoded conferencing, applications, servers and such. So that was a really fantastic journey, and that that was after Cisco Spark, Dave, because Cisco Spark started around 2014 or so, and I moved here in 2018 sorry, so the coding acquisition was after Cisco Spark, but then I moved here in 2018 trying to put the together when

Dave Michels: 8:37

Nieto merged, that was, yeah, It was after. It was after after Spark, you're right, but where were you working? Were you? Were you still at Cisco at that time? Or were you I was

Unknown: 8:47

at Cisco? Yeah, when neat started in 2019 I'm sorry, that was the question you had asked. So neat started late 2019 as they announced themselves at zoomtopia. So I was still at Cisco, very much competing with me and watching them, uh, succeed, and knowing all of them, right? They're all former colleagues from tamburg. So I was like, Oh, that's a great bunch of people. Great products. Uh, super amazing industrial design. The user experience team does industrial design team that need is top notch, best in class. So seeing the products that they came out with, knowing the people, knowing that their ability, you know, all of us were watching me closely, of course. And then fast forward to 2023 I had been at Cisco for 23 years. I was 47 years old, and I thought, Jesus, that's half my life, almost. And so I thought, you know, geez, maybe I should consider, for the first time in my career at Cisco, consider leaving Cisco. And I love Cisco. I think the world of Cisco great company. It always has been. I've had so many opportunities. And, you know, I debt a gratitude to Cisco for all the opportunity. Opportunities it's given me, but it was the right thing. It was the right time for me to think about a change and what

Dave Michels: 10:05

I was trying to get to. And I guess it's kind of tricky for you, because you knew everybody at neat and you had a lot of respect for them. But I would imagine that when meat popped up, that that a big company like Cisco kind of probably was kind of dismissive of them. I would I would imagine that, oh, you know, they're a fly on the wall, whatever you know, but, but you knew all these people, so you probably had a little more respect for that.

Unknown: 10:30

What they were, yeah, yeah. I think you're right, Dave. I think lots of other people at Cisco knew all the people that need as well. I think we all had a healthy, healthy amount of respect for them. That's that tanberg DNA that if you really take a step back and look at it, in the industry it's in so the diaspora, there's so many different companies that have a little bit of that piece of tanberg. And obviously, you know, at the time, you know, you're essentially, you know, OJ started it. You know, OJ was running this. It was a lot of back and forth. It's almost like a volleyball game where people are coming in and out. So, so it's interesting. So tell us a little bit about what you do on a daily basis. At neat, what's the, what's, what's the, the magic sauce there that that got you to come over? Well, yeah, so maybe those are two different questions. So what got me to come over was, as we've both been talking about just in the last couple of minutes, as the people, the talent, you know, the products are phenomenal. You know, they're so simple, elegant, easy to use. You know, the out of box experience is best in class for anybody who hasn't experienced taking a new product out of the box. Pick any one of the products that could be a neat frame, a neat frame, a neat bar, it doesn't matter, a neat board, 50 is, you know, a really, truly magical experience. And just, you know, plug it in and walk through the setup process, and you'll be floored at how simple it is. And, you know, all the microphones are built in, so you don't need cables, you know, stringing across the floor onto a microphone on the table. We do have a pad for control, and that does have a cable, of course, but that just plugs into an ethernet jack on the floor. So there's no, like, cables running, you know, between the devices. It's all over IP. We talk about more that the technology side of that a little bit later. So that's what you know, attracted me to neat. And then the first part of your question about what my role is, you know, it's really a dual role, right? For as leading software engineering, it's really execution oriented, is getting it done, getting all those features done, chewing through our backlog, delivering, you know, high quality software on time, you know, consistently, reliably, etc. And then there's also the CTO hat, which you know, is much more outbound, talking to customers, going to trade shows, meeting with you guys, which I love. So it's, it's a joy for me to be in this role and have the opportunity to do the more of the outbound stuff. Again,

Dave Michels: 12:54

everyone enjoys meeting with us. That's understandable. But I was thinking about, I was thinking about when neat launched. It was a zoom play. It was all about it was, it was focused 100% on Zoom. And of course, Cisco was always 100% focused on on Cisco the whole time you were there. And both company, or both need and Cisco now have moved into the Microsoft ecosystem, much bigger opportunity and a whole new set of requirements and user base. Yeah, is it was that hard for for you, because you for so much of your career, you saw Microsoft as the enemy, and now all of a sudden it's an opportunity and partner? Was that? Was that a hard shift, or is that pretty easy?

Unknown: 13:39

Yeah, no, it's a really good question, because I think, you know, in some ways it was hard, like, personally, I was in engineering, so it's not like I was spending a lot of time, you know, evaluating the competitors, right? Like, like somebody in more of a customer facing role would do, so I didn't have a whole lot of hands on deep hands on experience with either Microsoft Teams or zoom, living in the WebEx bubble for several years. But so that part was a little hard, you know, a bit of a learning curve for me to, you know, instantly be an expert in, you know, oh, let me introduce you to our new CTO. And, you know, you feel like, oh, I have to be able to answer all the questions. So, so that was certainly a bit of a learning curve for me. But, you know, it's all the same stuff, right? Whether it's teams, zoom, WebEx, Google, meet, whatever, it's all the same technology. We've all been working on it for, you know, the last 26 years, or whatever, my career. So, you know, it's picking up pretty quickly. It was easy in the sense that, hey, you know, this is just the role. The transition to the new role, new business Microsoft is now a partner. Embrace that relationship. You know, I get on really well with everybody at Microsoft. Ilya and I have regular sync ups. We meet with Ilias team on a weekly basis. You know, they were just out visiting us about four. Weeks ago here in Oslo, and I also visited Cisco and pexip and other players here in the what's called Video valley here in the Oslo Lee soccer for Naboo area. So yeah, from from that perspective, it's been no problem, seamless transition. So let's take advantage of the fact that you're sitting in that room, and while you're there, I want you to show us some of the stuff that's in there, and then maybe later on, on the call, we can get you to disconnect and reconnect from one of the other devices. So you said you're a bar Pro, now I see you've got some bars behind you. I see you've got the board behind you. You want you as long as the camera will track, which I assume it does on the bar. Pro, why don't, why don't you get up and just really quickly walk around and show us what's in the room. Yeah, and the reason I set this up is I wanted to talk, and it kind of ties into what you wanted to talk about, Dave, about what's coming in the next year, what's coming in the next 10 years. You know, our needs vision is to try to keep things super simple. So really, we strive to reduce, you know, cabling complexity. You know, lots of nerd knobs and tweaks and like, just make it work. Users haven't, shouldn't have to think about it. Having tons of options is not necessarily, you know, sometimes a bad thing. So we try to try to give flexibility without introducing complexity, and not just clutter the user interface with a bunch of options and nerd knobs and things like that. Things like that. And to do that, we're doing everything over IP. So the bar Pro, which you can't see because you're on it, is mounted on top of three televisions, and that's just connected to right behind your head. Oh, yeah, exactly. Thanks. Here, let me grab it. Good suggestion. So, yeah, the VAR Pro is what you guys are on there. And that's just connected to an ethernet jack, right? Power Ethernet HDMI to the TVs and then over IP. It's pairing with the neat pad, you can see that and with the neat center. And, you know, the neat pad is, you know, one thing you could think, Oh, well, that's just control signaling, right? But the neat center is something else, right? The media is streaming from the neat center. Microphone array is doing all the neat audio processing, like D reverberation and noise suppression and so forth, and streaming that to the bar Pro, and then the bar Pro is deciding, is that microphone better, or is that microphone better? So we're doing dynamic beam selection, which is when we met Dave, yeah, yeah, a couple weeks ago in Las Vegas, sorry, Dave, the we had announced and we were demonstrating there the dynamic beam selection, which we just released in our 24 dot pre release a couple about a month ago. So when

Dave Michels: 17:59

you do that dynamic selection, is it one or the other? Or do you use both? Is the other might become a noise cancelation, or does it explain that a little more clearly? Yeah?

Unknown: 18:12

Yeah. It's a great question, because that's that's why I started calling it dynamic beam selection, because we're not actually mixing just yet. That's the next step for us. Right now, we're selecting which beam is best. Every single audio frame on a frame by frame bracelets. We're switching to this beam or that beam, or this beam, or that beam or this based on who's speaking. That means that if two people literally speak at the same time, one will win, and the other will be slightly attenuated because we haven't selected that beam. So we're attenuating the other beams to reduce, like air conditioning noise and you know, so that's how beamforming works, right? You select a beam that you want to gain in, gain up on, to enhance that the volume of that speaker and attenuate the others. Right? In the future, we hope to literally mix. If there's two beams that both have, you know, energy on them, attenuate the others, and mix those two. But the reason I brought all that up is, if you think about technologically, these devices now are streaming over IP, doing real time media in a distributed architecture, right? And you could start to think about scaling that out to other use cases in a distributed architecture, and that's what brings me to the board. So if you don't mind, I'd like to show you so you know, as as people might be able to tell from the user experience, we're using zoom for the meeting we're on. This is Microsoft Teams on a neat board 65 and our newer, neat board 50. And one of the features that we have, we're it's not fully shipping yet, but we're coming out with it is called neat share, and it's another example of how we're doing this distributed media processing and distributed architecture that, let's pretend that we were in a meeting on this Microsoft Teams device. But I wanted to share. Something that I'm working on in like a Miro board or some other collaborative application on the knee port, 50 if I just swipe out to get the neat menu up and hit Share, instantly you see on the knee port, 65 everything that's on that screen today, it's only video. In the future release will include audio as well. So you can, like, watch a YouTube video, for example, over this and on this side, we're essentially treating it as like a virtual HDMI input. So the Microsoft Teams application thinks, oh, a user just plugged in the PC. Do you want to share that into the meeting? Yes, and that is configurable on the Microsoft Teams application, whether you want it to auto share when you plug in a computer source, or whether you want it to prompt and you have to hit Share, right? That's configurable by the user, so either way you know it would either automatically share into the meeting, or you'd have to click on your Microsoft app to say, yes, I want to share this. And then everybody in the meeting sees whatever this whatever's on this screen. So that's an example of us pairing and associating multiple devices in a distributed media architecture, and that's our vision of how we go forward, is rather than having complex codecs with lots of inputs and outputs and wires running through ceilings and floors and to get multiple cameras in a large auditorium style room. Well, what if you could just take multiple neat products, arrange them in the room the way you want them to to be. You know, a neat bar Pro on that wall, maybe another meatball Pro on this wall, maybe a neat board 65 in the back, you know, neat Center, which can provide, like a presenter camera, because if I'm standing, you know, more like up here in this position, talking to an audience, you know, you're looking at the back of my head, but with neat center, you know, then you're going to see me from this perspective instead of, you know, from that perspective. Does that make sense? Did that flow great? And the idea that these cameras and audio pickup devices are talking to each other. You know, that's the the AI that that's hidden in plain sight, if I quote my buddy Kevin again, that talks about that, that it's not, you know, generative AI, it's this machine learning algorithm, yeah, smart enough to recognize your face, smart enough to switch, smart enough to do everything else, and you exactly into all your products, I guess, exactly. Well,

Dave Michels: 22:24

that was a very neat demo. I have to say, You did a good job there. Kevin, great, very easy. You can't see all the little munchkins, kind of behind the behind the scenes, making it all work. I,

Unknown: 22:36

you know, I literally am here by myself. And I did not rehearse that. I rehearsed the neat share bit, but the getting up and doing the presenter camera thing that was totally on the spur of the moment. Hey, are you able to connect from one of the other devices, like the neat frame, and give us that experience while we finish this conversation? Absolutely. Yeah. Tommy's perfect. Let me just drop here and I'll jump over to another room and dial in from any friend. Okay, there'll be a magic edit here so people won't have to wait only Dave Michels and I right? Yeah, you're gonna play like the doo doo doo music, right? Welcome back now that Kevin has rejoined us from a different room. You're in one of your little demo room. So lighting might not be perfect, but you're on a neat frame, right? Tell us about that. Yeah, that's right. It's a portrait mode. You can look on Nita. No, you'll you'll see it. It's a great product, super portable. You can literally, there's a little handle built into the top of you can just pick it up, carry it around just a single power cable, Wi Fi, or Ethernet, if you want to, you know, connect it to the corporate network via Ethernet. But, you know, I use Wi Fi on my new frame at home all day long, and it works fantastic. And the, you know, microphone array and the camera built into it and the speakers built into it. It's beautiful. You can pinch to zoom. You know, if the somebody's sharing content that's a little bit hard to read, like a PowerPoint or, sorry, like an Excel spreadsheet or something, you can just pinch to zoom, and it's a great experience. Sitting on a neat frame behind me is some of our engineering desks, so forgive the clutter, but I'm here at our neat engineering headquarters in Oslo Norway. Okay, I

Dave Michels: 24:24

got a, I got a specific question about the frame. And you don't have all the history and baggage of meat, and you're the new guy. So this is, this is a, this is a tricky question, because the first time I saw the frame, I said, Why don't you stick a handset on it and make it a phone. And I think Simon was going to start crying. I think, you know, it was like, it was like, Oh no, don't go there, whatever. So, so let me ask you, have you thought about making that a phone? Or, does zoom have any excuse me, does neat have any thoughts about expanding into telephony?

Unknown: 24:57

That's a great question. David, especially, I think, in. Contact Center right. Video is increasingly becoming important in contact center products, right? If you think about, like, Cisco's contact center offerings, and five, nine and and others, you know, video is, you know, still sort of a minority use case, but it's, or like a niche use case, I guess, but becoming more prevalent, becoming more of a requirement. So I could definitely imagine use cases with agents sitting in front of a neat frame with headphones or a handset plugged in. But I think in general, the sentiment of the phone business is not really the growth market. It's not really where we want to focus video telephony, as we spoke about earlier, was, you know, back in the 2004 2006 time period, until we then, we kind of focus more on the high end, immersive stuff with telepresence. Although, having said all that, I mean, Cisco just came out with a brand new with 8800 series phone, I think, with, you know, beautiful camera in it, and beautiful screen. So, you know, video telephony is still a thing. It's just not the market that need wants to be focused on.

Dave Michels: 26:13

All right? Broader picture, I would say, the past year or so, the story has really been about multi camera in the room. You just demonstrated that in the other room with all these different cameras, and they were also showing multiple microphones. Do you see multiple microphones as expanding as a concept?

Unknown: 26:35

Well, we do, yeah, absolutely. So I showed you earlier neat center that's got a 16 microphone array, and the top of it, phenomenal micro. And we imagine I don't want to set expectations. I want to set expectations appropriately. Here I'm also responsible for software, so there's an element of, once I say it, I have to deliver it. So we envision adding multiple neat centers in a room that's that's one step. But we also envision, as I alluded, building can't

Dave Michels: 27:07

be called centers. If you do that, then you're centered, or something like that.

Unknown: 27:13

And center, yeah. But also sort of in if you read between the lines of the demonstration I showed you with neat share, and I mentioned audios coming as part of neat share in a future release as well. Is you know that those boards that I was showing you that demonstration on of neat share had microphone arrays in them. So imagine the microphone array in the bar Pro that we were talking on, plus the microphone array and the neat centers in the room, plus the microphone arrays and the board in the back of the room, we can, you know, wire all this up in a distributed IP based, you know, distributed media architecture, and be able to do dynamic beam selection and mixing and and so we can't do that today, but that's absolutely where we see it headed. You

Dave Michels: 28:00

didn't even mention the pad. What about the pad? Oh, yeah,

Unknown: 28:03

thank you. I skipped that one in my mental map of the room there, yeah, on the neat pad. Neat has always had two microphones in the pad, and we've talked about doing enabling those microphones. The feature is known as mics in the pad. And I'm super excited to announce that in the upcoming release, 24.4 which we're literally putting out to beta imminently, like in the next like, by the time you watch this recording, it'll be out. Mics in the pad are enabled as a beta feature. And the only

Dave Michels: 28:38

reason that's a really bad idea, because you hang those pads outside the room on the wall. So, so that seems like a really bad idea to have active mics outside the

Unknown: 28:48

room you want, you want. We wouldn't activate those. Those are, those are running in scheduler mode. Mics are never enabled in scheduler mode. The way that it works is they have the knee pad has to be paired with, like a board or a bar or whatever parent device, and then they, you know, know about one another and the bar or the board, or, you know, bar, bar, pro, board, board, 50, whatever, whichever model you know, activates the microphones in the pad. And we're using, you'll find this probably interesting. We're using the IEEE 1588, precision time protocol for clock synchronization between them, which is why we say you have to connect them by Ethernet. Wi Fi is harder to make that work right, because of the variability of the you know, transmit, receive, on Wi Fi. So we're for now, we're saying they have to be connected on Ethernet, and we negotiated P to P, and then we take the microphone and. A signal from the knee pads, stream it over IP to the to the bar on the board, and then we do all the processing there.

Dave Michels: 30:07

Seems like a lot of things are going back to wired Ethernet just because of the Poe standard.

Unknown: 30:12

Yeah, yeah. Poe is another reason why you'd want the Ethernet on the especially on the pad, because you can power the pad through Poe. So you just need a single ethernet port under the table for the pad to plug into power IP, and then it pairs with the bar over IP. Well,

Dave Michels: 30:27

you've been been extremely open and transparent. Tell us something confidential that hasn't been announced yet.

Unknown: 30:38

I just did actually, you know, the fact that we're shipping mics in the pad and the next release coming out like, literally, as soon as I, you know, walk out of the room here, I think we're pushing we're going to do three weeks ago. Go now. Do it now. No, the let's forget NDA for a second, forget current releases, our current roadmap. Think in your head, as I said when we were talking before, five years from now, 10 years from now, What? What? What are your as the CTO of the company now? What's your vision for the collaboration space? I've always envisioned that what you described with your microphones is something we're going to do with cameras, more than just a front, center back, but, you know, a little, cameras around a bezel, and all being brought together by a processor. Maybe it's a holographic in some way. Maybe it's 3d in some way, without glasses, with lenticular screens. We know, you know that project is going on right now, and we'll see if that has any What do you see happening in the space to be cutting edge and ahead. Yeah, you know, 10 years is a long time. So it was safe. From an NDA perspective. Nobody's gonna come back and ask why it wasn't done. Yeah, you know, I think, I think our focus at need is definitely on the multi device, distributed media kind of architect, because you're exactly right. What you said is exactly right. I talked about doing using the microphone arrays, but absolutely, there's also the cameras in all of those devices and the intelligence to be able to select the best camera based on where people are looking today, with neat center, we if the majority of people are looking towards neat center, we select that camera view. If the majority of people are looking at the main front of room screen device, then we, you know, select that camera view. But we absolutely don't want to stop there. We want to be able to select the best view of each individual from that camera, or from that camera, or for that from that camera, from that camera. So you can, you know, imagine the products around the room and all working in conjunction with the best microphone beam for that person who's speaking in the best camera based on where people are looking. But video processing is a thing now where you can, you know, open up some some apps and have, you know, virtual cameras do things. Oh, sure. And have deep fakes go on and and there have been a couple of companies successful and unsuccessful that take, you know, a camera view and kind of stretch it or unstretch it, or do things with it. I'm of the opinion that you know, if you if you use, you know, telephone size 816, 20 megapixel cameras around the bezel of a screen or around the table or wherever you do it, and the camera might not have a shot to go to that camera. But there might be some intelligence in the back end that takes a piece of this, a piece of that, a piece of this, reassembles the room, right, and creates some so, I mean, I've got to think we're going in that direction, because the processing power is there at this point. Yeah, I would say, you know, like, if you look at some of the holographic offerings that are on the in the market, you know, from Google, from Cisco, etc. That's essentially how they're working, right? Multiple cameras in an array, you know, generally speaking, in a horizontal line, because the application is video, so you kind of want to shoot that the scene, like, from that perspective, right? And then interpolating between multiple cameras, so you get that 3d effective, you know, if you know, David sees me looking from this perspective, and the other day sees me like it from this perspective, because based on where my head is, you know, based on where you're sitting, you know, you want to, you know, a system makes you feel it makes it feel like you're looking at me from that perspective, right? Because there's an array of cameras.

Dave Michels: 34:21

I just want to clarify that the other David is damn good,

Unknown: 34:27

right? So, so, yeah, I think I think you're right. I think you know, those are two kind of different things that right, like a an array, a camera array, doing stereoscopic holographic telepresence, video conferencing. Telepresence, whatever you want to call it, is one application, multiple cameras around a room is a completely different thing. In both cases, you know, there's some selection of which camera is best, and then compositing that into a view for the far into, you know, for the remote participants. To see and whether that compositing is done locally on the device. Because, as you said, processing power is always increasing, Moore's law, but also in the cloud, right? We see increasingly, like Microsoft and teleframe, a lot of that processing is being done cloud side, right? And you know, there's, there's a pendulum there as well, because doing it all in the cloud means, you know, well, that means you're, by definition, decrypting, decoding, processing, compositing, re, encoding, re encrypting. So what about end to end encryption? Right? And versus doing it on the device, you can maintain that end to end to end encryption all the way through. So there's pros and cons to those two approaches. So yeah, I think the next 10 years will be a continued advancement in all of these fronts, right? And like you talked about earlier, David, the actually it was before, before our session, but you and I were chatting about center of room cameras, like the need center and outside in cameras that other competitors are doing. And there's not a right answer or a wrong answer right there's there's sort of advantages and disadvantages. We chose to approach it from the center point of view. But I think ultimately, in 10 years time frame, the right answer is a combination of both right which is kind of what I alluded to, with multiple needs, neat devices around the room. So then you have a combination of center of camera looking out at the table, people at the table, but also the bar, the board in the back of the room, the bar in the front of the room, you know, maybe another bar on the side of the room, and being able to film the room from either outside in or inside out perspective. All right, one last unfair question before we end this. And I'm pref No, no, I

Dave Michels: 36:45

have the last question, but go ahead.

Unknown: 36:48

So my last question, the unfair question, is really simple. If you take any of the neat products and you use them for Microsoft Teams, they work beautifully, and if you use them for zoom, they work beautifully. And every end user on the planet is saying, Why can't that be a button? You know? Why can't I do a zoom call and a teams call? And the answer is that there's no technical reason why you can't provide that. Will we ever see that? Or do we think companies like zoom and Microsoft are going to be preventing that capability to switch for as long as they exist. Yeah, that's a, it's a good question. It's a tough question, because it's a politically charged question, right? Yeah, you're right. Technologically, I mean, technologically, there's no reason but, but the honest, you know, let's, let's, you know, dig into that a little bit more that, you know, Scratch one layer beneath the surface on that one. Technologically, there's no reason why, why we they couldn't or we couldn't as an industry, but there is work that would require be required, right? The Microsoft Teams room application is not designed as an you know, think about it like a software app, any software application running on them, on an iOS or Android phone mobile platform. It's designed to be foregrounded at background, right? It's in the software developers who developed that app did it with knowing that it's going to be backgrounded. And they built the software application to to be, you know, accepting of that. Microsoft Teams, rooms, Zoom rooms, you know, WebEx on the Cisco devices, Google meet on Google meet devices, the applications weren't built to be foregrounded and backgrounded. They expect to be running all the time. They're registering back to they're calling home, back to Microsoft attack, or Zoom's EDM, or, you know, WebEx control, hub, etc, when the the app is backgrounded, oh, in your control, in your attack, or ZDm, they look like they're disconnected. That's not good. So there is some software development required to make it possible. But technologically, there's nothing stopping it and and then politically, you know, charged because, you know, what's in the best interest of Microsoft and zoom, you know, did that? Do they want to enable that? You know, lots of customers are, are begging for it. But the current, the current approach, is the direct test joined using WebRTC is sort of the industry standard for any app to talk to any other back end, Microsoft can talk to zoom, WebEx. WebEx can talk to zoom, Microsoft. Zoom can talk to Microsoft, web and Google and those combinations as well as neat, we're like, hey, you know, we're a hardware platform. We're happy to support all this stuff. So not only can you run Microsoft Teams and zoom on our devices and in the future, perhaps others like my like Google meet, for example, potentially in the future, but also our whole app hub strategy built on top of neat pulse, where neat pulse becomes like an app store for collaboration, apps like what I demonstrated with the. The the sharing Miro board into a Microsoft Teams call, right? So we have 50 plus partners signed up to partner with us on Apple to be able to run, you know, we don't want people running Angry Birds on meat boards. But you know, any app, unless you're sitting on a train show floor

Dave Michels: 40:18

is a really good point. Though, a lot of customers are asking for but a lot of customers aren't asking for it, and that's a tricky line, and I'm often says, don't listen to your customers, because they'll scare you down the path. And so it is a it is a balancing act. I have a question for you more on a personal level, because I'm aspiring to be more like you. Amount of the world traveling all the world I was last summer. I'll be back in Sweden soon, and I was just in London. When you travel around, I want to ask you each city, San Francisco, London and Oslo, what is that? What is the one meal that you not necessarily the name of the restaurant, but what is the one meal that you try to have? Like, for example, when you're in Oslo, one of your favorite things when you're in San Francisco. Give us a little bit of a world menu here.

Unknown: 41:07

I wish you really put me on the spot there. Dave, because I am not a foodie. Dave, sorry, I am not a foodie. I wish I was. I have lots of friends who are foodies. I was in Boston a few weeks ago with you know, my great friend and mentor and former colleague, Jonathan Rosenberg. He's a he's a big foodie. We've gone to michelstar restaurants together. But that's not what. That's not my personal thing. No, I would say, you know, California, London and Oslo are all incredible places for different reasons, right? And one of the things that I love about London is, you know, the variety of of restaurants, the variety of evening, you know, entertainment, but also, like the the the amount of green space, the public parks, every park in London has a cafe in it where you can get great food, like food, not Michelin starfish, you know, great beer. You know, you can hang out in the grass. Have a beer. Have, you know, have your pub food. I love it. I love lemon. That's incredible.

Dave Michels: 42:11

Yeah, London, I always try to get Indian food in London. This is harder to find because the London is having such a food scene right now that all these new restaurants are opening up. And yeah, so anyway, we can talk about, I'll talk to Jonathan to call and ask,

Unknown: 42:29

I have to say, coming from California, I love Mexican food, and that is hard to find in London. And Oslo, sorry, yeah, I'm just kidding. It doesn't. I have a lot of respect for what you've done in your career, and all you know, your the patents you've created and the products you've helped bring to market. I hope you're smart enough in Oslo to have not bitten the line and drinking drunk the Aquavit. The Aquavit. Yeah, I have, if you go to a really good restaurant, like a Christmas dinner, for example, up in Holman calling by the ski jump, there's a fantastic restaurant up there, and they did like a five course meal for Christmas dinner, and they served Aquavit with each one like a pairing. And it was actually, it was actually good. Now I don't feel like you're as smart as you were when you started.

Dave Michels: 43:17

The call. Was a fantastic conversation. I have to say, Kevin, your rival at neat raises the bar need and really exciting to see that need is so committed to this. You bring such a pedigree of experience and expertise. We I know we can talk for hours on this stuff, but it's just, it's just great to see what you're doing. Great to great to continue to follow what you're doing. So thank you Dave, Daniel for setting this up, and thank you Kevin for participating. And we'll be back soon with another episode of talking points checks. You.