Airship DVR / NVR Video & Video Management Blog

Surround-sound Branding (Colors you can almost hear)

We're moving offices, and let's just say the new property managers didn't do much to make the new space look inviting. We had to remove a bunch of cheap shelves anchor-bolted into the walls at shoulder-height, and the carpet is something perhaps better not to describe. (You can see the crappy shelves in the picture, on the floor.)

Anyway, so even though we're on a tight timeline to get the move over with, we decided a little morale-building prep work was in order. Gryph stayed late last night painting our office Airship Orange, and Doug came in with a rented carpet cleaner and made a big difference.

The orange office is just a few people — and many of those who who will be in non-orange offices have voiced doubts it was a wise color choice. Once the cubes are in, much of the orange will be covered and — hey — when the 2 PM slump sets in, the walls will give us the jolt we need. And Marketing will definitely find it easier than ever to stay on-brand.

Abigail

(ed by Gryph) Yeah, but some people have no style. And we can deco the place like some cool night club and serve tropical rum drinks on those grey Seattle days. THEN people will get the point of adding some color to your work space. And plants! Don't forget the plants we'll have.

Also, not seen in the picture - I was rocking out to KMFDM and The Murder City Devils while painting...

 

Donate to the Hungry Devs Fund

We were recently informed that we would be allocated funds to repaint the walls in our new office. Puzzled with the choice of having to pick a color, we came to the best solution in a very dev-like fashion — in a chat room.

Here's the log showing our engineering genius, synergy, and perhaps hunger:

Aaron says:
OK. So we all agree that they should save the money for painting our room and buy us some beer or something?

Sam says:
what color is it now?

Aaron says:
White, I think.

Aaron says:
Which is what we have now.

Aaron says:
Gryph and Doug just wanted to spice it up.

Sam says:
yeah, save the money

John  Su says:
yes i agree in the first suggestion by aaron

John  Su says:
donate to the hungry devs fund

John  Su says:
we need food and drink to work

Prasoon says:
ha ha ha

Aaron says:
Haha. OK, I'll tell Abigail tomorrow.

If you would also like to contribute to the fuel which drives us to our goal of Airship software perfection, please donate to the Hungry Devs Fund. (Or buy an Airship DVR, since small percentage the profits indirectly goes to feeding the devs). Thank you for your support.

John Su

The things you find lying around at the office

Who knew a little 1" gizmo could do so much?

Abigail

Concerns about moving

An e-mail went out to all of us from a wise co-worker today:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Wednesday, April 09, 2008 10:14 AM
Subject: The Impending Move

If I may impart a small bit of "wisdom" regarding the move, it is "start throwing away things now".  We all keep things in our spaces far too long and if we start cleaning out today, it makes it much easier on moving day.

The last couple times I had to move businesses, when it was all said and done, we found so much crap we didn’t want to move the dumpsters were overflowing.

I guess it generated some concern, because these are two of the replies I saw go by:

Please! Don't throw me in the dumpster. You might find some use with me down the road.

and

Does this mean Santa's wrapping paper needs to find a new home?!

Abigail

Authenticity

Having grown up in Vermont, I have some serious standards for maple syrup. In fact, I mail-order it in gallons from a farm there that does its own annual sugaring. Sometimes, you can't even get it because sugaring is not done year-round —unlike Mrs. Butterfield's, when it runs out, it runs out.  The owner of the farm I order from is the Honorary Director of the the Vermont Maple Sugar Makers' Association. I do this not just because I love authentic maple syrup made where  I grew up, but because authenticity is rare and wonderful. If we can make video systems that are as authentically made and as high quality as the maple syrup I order, we'll go far. And if we can value our customers as much as Mr. Clark of Clark Farms does (see note above, featuring classic Vermont awesomeness), we'll go even further.

In our business, authenticity is about caring about customers' problems and addressing them, not  gussying up old technology and spending  a fortune marketing it.

What about our systems is "authentic" in that sense? We write our own software in Bellevue, WA — we don't settle for or dress up the dumb software that comes with the powerful hardware we use. We take feedback directly from customers and implement it as soon as we can. And we're doing everything on an open platform so users know it's going to work with everything else and  grow into the future.

Abigail

Oh yeah — and if you want some kickass maple syrup, call  a real Vermont sugar farm at 802-325-3203.

LinkedIn

Like many companies wanting to be as visible to as many of their qualified customers as possible, we are working with our web site to make sure it shows up in search results when it should, and are making use of many new media marketing/visibility tools that are out there. I loved looking through the LinkedIn profiles of our staff ...we're quite a bunch:

Abigail

Going green with Re-PC

Today I took some old CRT monitors, old PCs, an old TV, and old Copier/Fax/Printers to Re-PC in Tukwila, WA. There, for a very small fee, they take your old stuff and recycle it into new stuff. Sometimes they just reuse the parts. Sometimes it gets melted and completely reused.

This is the same company that we will send your old Surveillance VCRs to get a new lease on life after you buy an Airship DVR to replace them. Check out their website here, and find a local technology recycler in your area.

This is a pic of me in front of their racks of cool reusable stuff. I even found an old favorite mouse that works perfectly for home!

Gryph

This post is not about politics

A fun Talent Zoo post about Obama's magnificent marketing effort hit the mark with me. In a few ways. I'll start here:

Then there’s the citizen-generated content. YouTube videos, posters, songs – much of it generated by ordinary citizens, some created by professional musicians, artists, and ad people. This is the kind of marketing that’s being preached by the “let’s have a engaging two-way conversation with our customers-as-friends” crowd. With Barack Obama, it’s become fully realized.

We've always believed in two-way marketing, and we are always seriously weirded out when companies seem to perceive their customers as adversaries trying to take advantage. We're hoping more of our customers will visit and benefit from dialogues they strike up on our Airship Community site...it could become SO cool and anti-corporate, business-as-usual I can taste it!

Perhaps it’s no surprise that the least impressive portion of the campaign appear to be the official TV ads. They’re good, but hardly different from most political commercials.

We totally feel that ads, in our industry at the very least, are all about  credibility ("being there") and awareness. They matter, but not half as much as when customers come to the Web site and engage with us as a company who doesn business in a way that supports them and their customers. And in a fun, real way. Because people who operate in a fun and real way are people who like what they do and are WAY more likely to offer responsive, personalized support.

In the face of all this hype, adulation and fast success, Obama supporters have been called a cult. That’s OK. So are Apple fans and Harley-Davidson owners. If you think this is bad for America and politics, remember: This is the world advertising created, one where a name or a product can be made to stand for more than its functionality.

I bet you alrteady know how much we would love to achieve this status through the coolness of both the products we make and the way we do business.

But product performance is still the key. Let’s say Obama gets elected President on the strength of this brand he created. He still has to give good customer service for 4 years. And people will be disappointed if the product doesn’t reflect the hype.

I think I already covered that one in this post. 'Cause really, support is not a separate topic. Support has to be part of everything we do if we're going to meet our ambitious goals.

Abigail

"Call to arms" for standards at Tech Sec

We've always been amazed there hasn't been much standards development in the surveillance industry (We feel kinda alone with our open platform) and so it's nice to see awareness of the need building (Security Director News).

"The general benefits are obvious," said [keynote speaker David Bunzel, managing partner at industry analyst Santa Clara Consulting], "lower cost of ownership, more features, higher customer satisfaction, which means more customers, and that means a bigger pie, a bigger market."

Abigail

Times a-changing

Came back from Vegas last night after exhibiting our new stuff at the World Gaming Protection show. WGP is attended by about 400 surveillance pros that are focused on catching cheaters at casinos. There were two full days of seminars on how to spot the cheaters and make sure they don’t come back.

This is a great audience for us, since their needs go way beyond the typical DVR recording/playback.

What they need is a video management system and tools to make the video really useful.  So we showed new modules to manage surveillance assets across the extended casino, provide a framework to report incidents and archive the associated video. We also showed examples of video analytics and POS data integrated with our core recording technology.

There were some very cool technologies being shown by other small, nimble companies as well. There were some new video analytics tools for identifying playing cards and chips, and tracking their movement around the card table.  There were new ways to count people and cars, recognize faces and match them to an “undesirables” database.

These are the kind of tools that surveillance managers are looking for. Casinos will need to pick and choose the best of each of these new technologies as the cheaters become more sophisticated.

At the same time, I heard grumbling about how the incumbent vendors haven’t taken to the idea of integrating tools and software from other companies. They want to keep their customers in the “walled garden”.

We’re betting that the ability to integrate tools from many different vendors is going trump the proprietary approach of the big surveillance system vendors sooner than later.

Karl Crabs