Exploring Some of the Many Webinar and Virtual Event Platforms

Greetings everybody, how's it going? It's Eric here at WSI and thelinkedbanker.com. I got to remember to start working that into my introduction. I'm really excited that you're joining us. Today is Wednesday, August 19th, 2020, and you are live here at Free Webinar Wednesdays. Today's show and all shows are recorded. Just double checking and making sure the recording is actually going. It is. Because I had a webinar 2 weeks ago, and I forgot to record it, and I said I would. So I've got a little sticky note right on my monitor that you can't see that says press record just to make sure that I don't miss it. But today's show and all shows are recorded and made available out at freewebinarwednesdays.com, which you're looking at right now. And if you are joining live and have a comment, question, question or thought and you'd like to share it with us, um, us being everybody, not us being me, although I do have a couple of golden retrievers joining me today, feel free to toss it into the questions in the comments area and would love to hear from you as well. Um, today's a big day for us here at The Linked Banker because we're having our first official monthly mastermind, which I've started referring to as M&Ms. I don't know how the Mars Bar folks would appreciate me using their term M&M, but our first monthly mastermind call coming up today at 3:30 Eastern time. So those of you that are bankers, and I see that there's a couple of linked bankers joining me for Free Webinar Wednesdays, so with any luck you're gonna get a double dose of Eric today. But those of you that are watching that are bankers that maybe haven't signed up yet, or if you're watching this on replay, you can hop over to the linked bankers And join our community and join us every Wednesday, at least, the 3rd Wednesday of the month at 3:30 PM Eastern time for our monthly mastermind calls. And those will bring all of us together in a Zoom, whereas we're using GoToWebinar for the Free Webinar Wednesdays, and be part of that process. So what, What I'd like to talk about today, and I'm hoping that I can throw this out there and some of you might have some ideas or some thoughts that you'll share in your chat, or maybe this will catch the eye of someone on the recording and they'll get in touch. But we have a client that normally does— it's not in the banking industry, but we have a client that normally does a lot of events, and that's really how they make most of their money. They bring people together, they get really Excited, and I guess I can share with you who that is. It's the Michigan Brewers Guild. And so they do these events, and of course it's a little difficult to drink beer virtually with other people, but like many organizations, whether it's the Brewers Guild or we've talked to some banks that have been part of events in their communities, with COVID and virtual events now becoming the norm and in-person events being somewhat difficult to conduct just because of the spacing and the distancing and all the other logistical things that have to go into it. More and more businesses are looking at how do they shift their events that normally had brought people together into virtual and to be able to continue to monetize those because, you know, when the Michigan Brewers Guild and other organizations like them do events, you buy tickets, and the tickets go to help fund the event but also generates revenue for the association. And with these, you know, winter beer conference, summer beer conference— or not conference, festivals— drying up and not being able to take place, that's creating obviously some business challenges for a lot of organizations. And so we Have started doing a little bit of research here within our office, trying to figure out what are some of the platforms that seem to be resonating with businesses, not just like this where we're bringing people together on a webinar and I'm talking and you're in the audience and you're listening to me. And if you have a question, you can ask it. Or even bringing on screen sharing where we've got multiple people showing But looking at different ways to take that really to the next level with breakout rooms and, you know, like, vendor sessions and booths and exhibits and other sorts of things. And I suspect that we're gonna see a lot of shakeup in this particular market segment. And I was talking to another one of my friends through some text messages earlier today because I was asking him, you know, what platforms are you seeing? You do a lot of presentations. And you participate in a lot of conferences. And I remember 3 or 4 years ago when I started seeing more and more of the physical events embracing the, the event apps and being able to download the materials, and you get the app on your phone, and it sends you ping notifications of when the next session is gonna start. And Networking opportunities. So you can create a profile in the app and that gives you the ability to virtually meet other people and business cards, and you can tie in your LinkedIn profile. So all of those like virtual event apps that were tied to a real event started coming out and some of them were good, some of them weren't so good, some of them lasted, some of them flamed out and didn't survive. And I suspect we're gonna see a round of that here very shortly as a lot of those app providers maybe have to rethink their business model and figure out how they can support a virtual event, or if they're just gonna go under and, and virtual event platforms are gonna take hold. So as I walk through some of the platforms that we've come up with, I've certainly not had an opportunity to To test them all. One, because not a lot of time in the day to do all that. And 2, if you wanna really test any of the platforms, you're gonna have to pay for them. And we haven't really allocated budget. So some of them have got free trials that I likely will kick the tires on just to see how they work or set up some demos. But we're in the early stages of looking at this on behalf of our clients and also to determine if it's anything that we would wanna use. Either here within WSI or within the Linked Banker, or even from a partnership perspective to be able to bring a platform to our customers to make it easier for them to participate or to hold or conduct events down the road. So I'm gonna share with you, this is our internal document that we've created. I've shared this out with a few of my conference friends that are also participating in events and conferences. But I thought I would bring to your attention just some of the presentation and the platforms that are on our radar screen and give you at least what I know about them from a high and a low perspective. And then if there are any that you are aware of, I would really love it if you'd shoot me an email at eric@poweredbywsi or post a comment into the live chat, or if you're watching this on the recording, send it to eric@poweredbywsi. And let me know what you think. One of the first platforms, I guess, that I wanted to mention because it's still in private beta, but I was able to get an invitation to the platform. And I think I've talked about this on Free Webinar Wednesdays before, but it's called Mm-hmm. You heard it right. Mm-hmm. And so it's, it's kinda funny every time I tell somebody the name of the platform. They're like, what was the name of the platform? And I have to say, mm-hmm, and that's the name of the platform. But the folks that are behind this are actually the same folks that were behind Evernote, which is one of the note-taking and thought collection platforms that I use. I've got a little shortcut on my phone that I use if I'm out on a bike ride or a run. I can create a quick note, and though I haven't come back to Or come back to talking about the GTD process, which was several episodes ago, the Getting Things Done. Evernote is where I'm dumping a lot of the GTD things, although I will have to admit there's a little bit of crossover between Evernote and Asana now, which is our project management platform. But that's going down a completely different rabbit hole. So that's— par for the course for me, but you don't need to know all that detail. So this is a platform that has come on recently, and it's a, like, a virtual camera. So it's not really a webinar platform per se, but it's a camera plugin that allows for you to turn your camera into a presentation tool that gives you a different way of conveying information. So right now, for example, You're looking at my screen, and then depending on how you have your settings, I might be on the left-hand side or up on top or whatever the case is. But you're seeing the screen, and you're seeing a smaller version of me within the app. If you enable it on your camera, it allows for you to go full screen with just your camera, and then you can pull information in as a background. And there's a couple of kind of screenshots here you can go through, and he'll show you. This is basically where images and backgrounds. So even though if you're using a platform like GoToWebinar that doesn't support video or image backgrounds, you can still use an app like mmhmm and give you the ability to create kinda that virtual presentation. I actually did a presentation for several banking associations out west as part of a virtual summit. And I used the app to pull in my slides so that I did it as a virtual video. So it was a full-screen video, and I was able to take my picture and push it down into the bottom left-hand corner as a little vignette. So I'm a talking head basically, but then all of my slides continued to be available in the rotation. So this is one of the platforms we're playing around with. I would share it with you. If you're interested, you can click on grab an invite and, and play around with it. The next platform that I think the entire world is familiar with right now, whether it's good or bad, although I think they've gotten a lot better, is Zoom. I mentioned on a prior Free Webinar Wednesdays, I actually did a poll out on LinkedIn to just see what my connections are preferring. as it relates to conferencing services, just primarily from a webinar perspective. And Zoom came out the overwhelming winner. Not a surprise. People are familiar with it. They're comfortable with it. There had been preliminary concerns early on when Zoom was like, everybody was jumping on the bandwagon and they offered it for free, that security issues. And you probably heard the term Zoom bombing, where people were just jumping into Zoom meetings without authorization, turning on their webcams, doing inappropriate things. Zoom has addressed that issue with passwords and they've tightened up their security certainly. But the thing that I like about Zoom is I've noticed that it is integrating with other third-party platforms and they've released new functionality. Unfortunately, GoToWebinar really hasn't released a whole lot of new functionality. It's still the same webinar platform that I started using almost 10 years ago, over 10 years ago when we launched Free Webinar Wednesdays. Now GoToMeeting has implemented some cool functionality where if you record a meeting, which is more of a one-on-one or one-to-many meeting as opposed to a webinar blast, if I record the GoToWebinar or the GoToMeeting, it'll do things like transcribe the actual meeting notes, and it gives you kind of a running history of who's said what based off of voice recognition. It gives you a nice easy shareable link, which is pretty cool, and I'll talk about A little bit more maybe when I get into the GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar. But the thing that I like about Zoom is they've brought in the virtual backgrounds. And if you're using the latest version of Zoom, if you update that, go to your Zoom and go to properties and then update, you get the latest version. They've now got video backgrounds and video screens and other sorts of ways where very similar to like an environment. You can actually put yourself inside of a television or on a bookcase, and they'll wrap it around. So you've got these, like, little filters and vignettes that you can go into. They've also released a function where if you wanted to do something like an, you can go in and you can attach a PowerPoint presentation, and it will actually download the PowerPoint for you as individual JPEGs, and then you can pull each one of those up. Now the The plus is you can take that PowerPoint and show it in the background, very similar to the app. But the downside of it is any of your fancy slide transitions or animations that you may have built into your PowerPoint with words coming in or maybe images layering on top of one another essentially get eliminated. I would suspect that Zoom We'll be figuring out how to do that shortly. And so that's gonna be an interesting thing to keep an eye on. I'm just gonna take a look over here because it looks like I might have a question. Oh, it's just a smart aleck comment from Sean. Yes. Who's on first? What's on second? I don't know who's on third. I don't know. We're probably dating ourselves because most of the millennials probably don't have a foggy clue what we're talking about. But You can Google that. Google what's on first, and you'll know what's going on. So thank you for that little chuckle, Sean. Appreciate it. The next one on our list, and this is kinda working our way down from most well known to some of the other platforms, is certainly the the LogMeIn folks who own GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar. There's also a GoToAssist. They have a GoToStage option as well. So those are relatively new. So the, like, the GoToStage, I think, is more of a presentation platform. But, but we've been licensors or users of the, the GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar platform for a long time. We did pull the trigger and we purchased a license for Zoom. We're using Zoom primarily on the linked banker side of the fence and the GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar primarily on the WSI side. Although I suspect that they will cross each over, cross, cross over each other on occasion. And we've used Zoom for some WSI meetings already. So it's 6 of one, half dozen the other, I guess. But these are platforms that I think they understand that there's a little bit more competitive pressure. What I found really interesting when everybody was rating and raving about all the webinar platform and options that were out there, For whatever reason, you know, March, April, May, when all the recommendations were coming out, GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar were largely not mentioned. And I don't know if it's just because they're maybe more expensive than others and they didn't get mentioned, but everybody was talking about Microsoft Teams and Google Meet slash Hangouts and Zoom and some of the others, but nowhere was GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar mentioned. And, you know, for all their bumps and all of their you know, issues that we have. Back when we started looking at platforms, they were the only platform that we really could use that had integrated calling, voice over IP, screen sharing, recording. And, you know, I've not had technical issues, knock on wood, for several months now. And so I think when the world went to an online environment, all of the webinar platforms really were taxed with their resources and just getting overloaded as everybody and their brother was jumping on and doing virtual meetings. So that seems to have stabilized a little more. I suspect all of the platforms have added additional resources and horsepower and bandwidth in order to make it possible to accommodate those. But GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, those seem to work still. Pretty well for us, um, provide the ability to offer up handouts and polls just like Zoom does. I don't believe GoToMeeting and GoToWebinar provide the ability to do breakout rooms, which is one of the areas that Zoom also has introduced, and we'll actually be using those in our mastermind call later today. So sneak peek for those of you that are on that are also linked bankers, you're going to get to use breakout rooms. Hopefully I don't accidentally like lock everybody out or shut the meeting down, but we'll keep our fingers crossed there. The next platform that I know a lot of businesses have embraced just because it's part of the Office 365 environment is Microsoft Teams. Now they've gone and implemented, you can see with their screenshot here, they've actually done some studying and realized that the square talking heads and what's known as Zoom fatigue, although I think it's just webinar fatigue, for the entire world just hopping on a webinar and looking at a box of, you know, people Brady Bunch-ish, started to get a little taxing, started getting a little fatiguing and draining and almost kinda wearing people out. So they've actually implemented, and they were one of the first platforms that I actually used, and I played around with it through the actual Skype because you can go to Skype and you can do pretty much the same thing as Microsoft Teams and offer up an opportunity to run a Skype meeting. But they were one of the first platforms that I used that gave me the ability to blur my background. So right now, let's say I don't want people to see, you know, the window and the ore in the background and my Link Banker poster. If I wanted— if I was in a coffee shop and I didn't want the background to be seen, I can enable blur background, and artificial intelligence basically would outline me and use it as a green screen, virtual green screen, and then blur the background. Well, they've taken that technology to the next level, and you can see with their kind of classroom-style, auditorium-style layout on their screenshot, they've actually copied or cut you out of your background and placed you in a chair in a virtual classroom. So now when you're the presenter and you're talking to the audience, or you're part of the audience, You've actually seen everybody in a little bit more of a comfortable conversational way as opposed to just a gigantic screen of square talking heads with backgrounds and whatnot. So they claim that this layout has been shown to be more engaging and less fatiguing. I don't know if that really is the case or not, but I'm not gonna argue with Microsoft. They've got way more money than I do, and I'm sure have spent the time on research. So, so that's kind of a cool approach, just different ways to be able to participate in a meeting. So I mentioned already the Skype environment. So whether you are a Skype user or not, you have the ability to use this platform. You can go up to 24 hours on a call if you want. I don't know why you would want to. But we use Skype a lot within our organization to communicate with some of our other team members across the country or across the pond in the UK and other areas. So this has also got some interesting capabilities with it as well that are available for free. Another platform that's available for free is Google Meet. If you're a Google user, you can go to meet.google.com. I just actually heard the news that Google's Video chat service, which I actually use quite a bit with friends and family because we're an Android family and seems like everybody else that we know is using an iPhone. We've actually been big fans of Google's Duo, which is an app that allows anybody to be able to do FaceTime-like phone calls, but you use basically the app that just gets you to connect. I heard on a webinar the other day that Google has announced end of life. for Duo, and they're killing that. They seem to launch products and then they seem to kill products very consistently, which is a bummer. Anybody remember Google+? So Duo apparently is going away and they're blending it in with Meet. They took Hangouts and blended those in with Google Meet. And so Meet is really, I think, where they want to try to get people to go. And if you're a Gmail user and you have Gmail on your phone, You probably have noticed if you've updated your app recently that Google Meet is now integrated as part of your Gmail app. So when you fire up Gmail, you can see in one area your messages for email and the other area for Meet if you want to create— I still call it Hangouts occasionally, but if you want to create a Meet. Joining meetings is pretty easy. It's pretty simple. And if you're using it within a G Suite organization like we are, You can give it a name and you can just say, hey, hop over to Meet and join me on the WSI meeting. And so Colleen can just go to meet.google.com, click on join a meeting, and just type in WSI, and boom, you're on the same. So you don't need that long digit number. You don't need to send them a hyperlink with a URL, any sorts of crazy stuff. Just gives you a quick and easy way to go ahead and hop in to be able to get together. Speaking of hopping in, here's another platform that I was invited to. Beth Z, who is— I've heard her speak at a number of events. She can be found online at Your Nerdy Best Friend. But Beth, like a lot of conference speakers, and I do a lot of speaking at conferences, but that's not the way that we pay the bills. Conference speaking and presentations generate a little revenue for us, but they're primarily a way to get with bankers and to network. And our WSI agency is really where, you know, we make our revenue. Let's be honest. Event speakers, on the other hand, that speak 40, 50, 60, 70 times a year that are charging $7,000, $8,000, $10,000 per session, that's how they're making their money. They're professional speakers and that's what they do. Their world has been turned upside down significantly because they've had all of those opportunities basically get canceled. And so what Beth has done over the last several months, to her credit, is figure out all of these different platforms. So I'm sure she's got way more detailed information over at nerdybestfriend.com if you want to really dive in and kind of learn. She's got some great webinars and some others But this is just really designed to give you kind of a high level of what sorts of things you might wanna be thinking about. But this is a platform that I actually sat in on a demo with her on. And this more in the lines of going from a webinar to more of a virtual event where you've got people that can come in, you've got different rooms, you've got sponsors, you've got a technical support option, you've got online live chat and conversation that can go back and forth. This gave me a feeling of like Zoom meets Facebook Watch where you can actually watch a video or watch a presentation. Because in a Facebook Watch environment, you can also watch it live with other people. So you've got that chat thread on the right-hand side. It had virtual rooms that you could go into. So one of the cool parts about her virtual event was She had 4 or 5 different breaks, and during each of the breaks, she had 3 of her connections within the speaking circuit that had concurrent sessions that you could choose to go to. So during one of the breaks, you could either go to session A, session B, or session C. So you left the general session, which to those of us that have been to conferences, that's pretty familiar. So you leave the general session and you decide which breakout you want to go to. And if you go to one breakout and it's not really floating your boat, you can back out of that one and go to another breakout and hop into different rooms. So each of those speakers were set up in their own virtual rooms that you could go into. It was a little— I mean, it's still in its early phases. It was a little bit buggy and kind of glitchy. It froze for a little bit. I think Beth also had a lot going on, as she typically does. So she might have been pushing it to its max. But it was, it was an interesting experience. And just like the first-generation mobile app for a conference wasn't kind of dead-on perfect, this wasn't dead-on perfect either. But it's setting the stage for what I think are maybe things to come, if you will. Another platform that I have not personally experienced, but I know one of the big data processing companies within the banking space Just conducted their virtual client conference, and they used On24 as being their virtual event. Now I also think it's kind of cool that Webinerd is the name of their chatbot. So I just had to give them kind of a little shout on that. So I'm gonna close that guy, and I'm gonna acknowledge physical events transform. Yep. Got it. I almost suspected. Expected, not suspected, expected that to be the consistent cookie notification, but it wasn't. So this is another platform that is kind of looking at the experience that somebody would have when they come to an event. I think you're also gonna find a lot of these events are gonna have to figure out ways to blend a live presentation, a recorded presentation, Sponsored content, networking functionality. You think about all the things that you get out of a regular conference when you go to someplace. You've got networking. You go around all the booths, meet with all the vendors. You've got learning. Of course, it's gonna be hard to get all the little virtual tchotchkes that you get when you go to the networking or you go to the booths where you get the cushy balls and the golf balls and the Hand sanitizer and all the other stuff. So maybe they'll just put together little care packages and mail those out to everybody. But recording, making the recording available. The other thing that I've heard from a lot of event organizers is it used to be if you went to a conference, and we've even done this with the Digital Banking School, the Graduate School of Banking, is shifting from a per-user registration fee to a per-organization registration fee and being able to say, okay, if you want to show up, here's how much it costs for your business, your bank, to register for the event, and then you get a login that everybody can basically use to access the information. So that changes the pricing model as well because while they're not spending as much money renting a hall and paying for food and all the other things that go with that the expenses are reduced, the income that an event organizer is likely going to be able to get from registration is also dipping. And so again, while it doesn't necessarily impact us from a revenue perspective, when you start looking at other professional speakers that are used to being able to demand, you know, $7,000, $8,000, $10,000 for a keynote session, that might not be a feasible option unless these events really morph and change and everybody gets a lot of value out of them and they're willing to pay more for them. So On24 is one that we've actually taken a look at. Matchbox is another platform that I can say I do have experience with. This was the platform that one of the banking associations that I taught for earlier this year switched their event to. Instead of traveling on site and being part of that banking event, They actually moved everything to virtual. And so you went into this Matchbox virtual classroom, had a schedule. It basically gave you the layout, and you had the general session information. You had breakouts and electives, and it very much felt like an educational process. Wasn't as conference-focused as maybe like breakout rooms and networking sessions. But it certainly was, I think, a pretty comfortable experience for the bankers that were the students because they— and I taught for the senior class. So the Oregon— the people that were in my session had the benefit of being together for the prior 2 years. And so it's a 1-week class that repeats 3 years in a row. I would suspect it would have been a little more difficult for the first-year students because, you know, they didn't know anybody, they didn't know each other. Whereas when I did my session, you know, I could hear people talking to each other because everybody had their webcams on and, you know, there was still that level of camaraderie, which was kind of cool. So they were able to network with each other. But first year, I don't know if that went over so well just because they didn't have the benefit of already knowing each other. But Another platform just to kinda keep your eye on, I've actually for On24 as well as Matchbox reached out and requested a demonstration just to kinda see what's going on. This is another platform that I heard about because the rumor was LinkedIn uses BlueJeans for a lot of their meetings. And there are a number of other banking schools that are using BlueJeans. You can You can see this is pushed out by Verizon, but this has got much more of a kind of a virtual classroom environment. Again, I'm not exactly sure, and one of the schools I teach at is about ready to formally announce that they're going with BlueJeans as their platform. So I suspect at some point in the near future I'm going to be getting some BlueJeans training to figure out how to get in and to use the platform. But from what I've heard thus far, It seems to be a very intuitive, easy-to-use platform. And while some of the learning management system platforms, if you So BlueJeans is another one to take a look at. A little bit more on the enterprise level. So if you're looking for something that's on the smaller, more budgetable size, the, the Zooms and the GoToMeetings are probably still where you want to be. But I wouldn't be surprised if some of the larger organizations are starting to look at platforms like this as well. The last 2, and you can see, unfortunately, they're not doing a really good job of, you know, Getting back to me on my chat because I've sent them a chat request an hour ago, and I still haven't heard back from them. So that's unfortunate. Note to self and to you all listening: If you're gonna put chat on your website, and you're gonna promise interaction and give people the ability to talk to you, staff it and give people the actual ability to talk to you because the expectation when you see that little chatbot down there. Is that you're gonna have some chat. And if I give you my name and my email address, and you say someone will be right with you, and it's an hour later, and I've not heard anything, not such a good experience. So I'll share that feedback with the folks at Hypebright. But on the other side of the fence, there's a lot of interest in organizations, including us here at the Linked Banker, building an online community and being able to pull people together, giving them an opportunity to chat and talk and collaborate, and doing it in a way that maybe doesn't involve any of the social networking platforms. And I know that there are a lot of communities, and I talked about one on a webinar 3 or 4 weeks ago that I'm a part of that I absolutely love. Love my Winnebago community, my Winnebago View community, all the other people around the country that own Winnebago Views. I can hop into that group on Facebook. It's a really great community. I can ask a question, I'll get an answer. The downside is, for some, it's on Facebook. So what happens if Facebook decides that they want to start monetizing their groups and start pushing advertisements, or what are they doing with my info? And again, if, if you're not paying for a service, you are the payment for that service. And I think a lot of people that get fired up about Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and all these other platforms that might be doing things with your data, the reality is that's how you're paying for the service. And if you don't like it, then just get out and stop using it. But some of these other platforms are realizing that You may not want to tolerate that, but you still want to be part of a community. So they're developing these platforms that businesses and organizations and nonprofits and educational institutions can license and pay for so that you don't have to pay for it with ad revenue and selling personal data to be able to network with advertisers to sell you products and then monetize those ads. So Hivemind is a platform that I had come across my radar screen. I've been doing a little research on this again for our Linked Banker community. We're using a platform right now to be able to pull all of our members together called Telegram, which is a pretty slick little app. It's very lightweight, it's super secure and private, it's free, um, and it's a great way to connect with each other. You can leave voicemail messages and video messages, and you can hashtag, and you can use stickers. The only potential downside that I see with Telegram, which is the same thing as if you created a giant text message thread with your friends or you have everybody jumping into a WhatsApp, is as more and more people start using that as a communications tool and sharing information with one another, that might very well become a cluttered place and difficult to find things. So the organization of all of that content Is going to be a long-term challenge. So we're already starting to hedge our bets and figure, well, at some point, do we need to make a switch and make a change? And so within your organization, you may want to create a private space. I've talked in the past. WSI uses Facebook's Workplace, which I absolutely love, and it is a paid version of Facebook that is not ad supported. So your information. Remains private, does not go out to the public world, and we get logged into the wsi.workplace.com ecosystem. And it's very much a Facebook-like experience with posts and groups and tags and hyperlinks and other sorts of ways to add images, but it's restricted and WSI Corporate pays for that as part of our business. And so it gives us that. And so Hivemrite is a version of that that gives people the ability to communicate. Another platform that I have heard of in a couple of podcasts, and you've heard me mention Pat Flynn and Smart Passive Income, uh, in the past. But this is a platform that Pat and I believe his CFO are actually now advisors to. Pat is a big advocate of Teachable for his learning platform. We've used the Thinkific platform over on the Linked Bankers website. But some of the former Teachable folks actually started this platform called Circle.so. And so if you scroll down and you can get a sense, this creates kind of discussion organization. You can create private spaces for people to get in and share ideas, and then specific interest groups can be created within your community. So, So we're looking at this as a potential option. There's no commitment at this point on our part to make a shift or a change, but I'm at least— I'm not smart enough to know what's gonna happen, but I think I'm smart enough to at least know that something's gonna happen in this space. And we're just making sure that we're keeping our options open. Not that we're worried that Thinkific or Telegram were bad choices on our part. They certainly were the right choice we feel at the time we made them. But I think all businesses, if 2020 has taught us anything, is you got to be flexible and you got to be able to roll with the punches because you have no idea what's around the corner. So we're keeping our eyes open just to see what's going on. So I'm curious on your end, at your business, at your bank, at your organization, if you started thinking about this as a way to build your own community or to hold your own events. Or to build engagement with your customers? Because if people aren't coming into your store, they're not coming into your office, they're not coming into your facility, and you're having to figure out ways that you can connect with them virtually, is Zoom or GoToMeeting or a Google Hangout— Google Meet, I did it again— gonna be sufficient? Or are you gonna need to up your game and develop something even more professional That's gonna have a little bit extra to it with things like, you know, different rooms and categories and other sorts of areas that people can use to engage with you on a more virtual basis. You know, one of the very first internet banks out there was a bank called Security First Network Bank back in the '90s, if you can believe that. So when I first started doing web development, Security First Network Bank came out with a website that when you visited their website, it was a lobby. It was a caricature, kind of a drawing of a lobby, and you would click on the different area of the lobby that you wanted to go to. So if you wanted to learn about mortgage loans, you would actually click on the mortgage area and that would take you into the mortgage area. Or if you wanted to talk to customer service, You'd go to the support desk, and you would click on the little individual sitting there at the support desk, and that would take you into the support desk. That kind of concept of a virtual lobby and being able to pull people into a virtual office and direct them to different areas may end up being the type of environment that we're gonna have to be able to embrace. Now, we may not go back. I should go into archive.org and see if Security First Network Banks Original website is out there. Actually, while I'm doing that, let me just kind of say if you have a thought or a question or an idea, post it out to the comments. But let me just do a quick check here. Security First Network Bank screenshots. Come on. Where are you? Anywhere? It doesn't look like it. I'll have to go through and see if I can find it. But it was for back in the day. It was actually pretty cool. Now you can see I'm still using Microsoft Edge, and it looks like I haven't switched over my default search engine to Google. Let me, let me go to Google and see if I get any better luck here. Images. See if it does any better. Don't see that it is. Nope. I have failed you Free Webinar Wednesday friends. My apologies. So I'll see if I can dig it out, and maybe I'll mention it on a following show, or I'll maybe hop over into archive.org and see. But, yeah. But the virtualization of our service model, our ability to take care of people, bringing folks together, I think it's something that we need to put on the radar screen to try to pay attention to and to make sure that those engagement opportunities are there. We had a conversation with someone the other day and, you know, there's a very real feeling of the lack of human engagement and the inability to have that human connection with one another. It's one of the reasons why I think we're so excited about what The Linked Banker has, because it's all about bringing people together to see each other, to share ideas, and to collaborate. And, and so I think those are things that if we can figure out how to do that from a business perspective and add value to our customers, that's just gonna position us for success on a long-term basis. So with that, my friends, I am going to bring the webinar for today to a close. I appreciate those of you that are attending live and being part of today's discussion. Again, if you have ideas or maybe suggestions of other webinar or online community or online meeting or virtual meeting platforms that we should be looking at, please send me an email at eric@poweredbywsi.com and let me know. I'd really love to see what it is that, that you're looking at and what other platforms you might be— you might have been using in the past. So with that, I wish you all adieu. Have a wonderful remainder of the week. Um, I quoted the GEICO— I think it's the GEICO camel— um, happy hump day, uh, with one of my clients earlier today. So, uh, it is Wednesday and it's hump day, so hope you have a good one. And, uh, for those of you that are linked bankers, Probably gonna see you in a little bit here at 3:30 Eastern time. So see you next week, everybody. Thanks.