It’s not ‘do more with less’, it’s ‘do better’: 5 lessons from ‘Kaltura Connect on the Road’

With over 15 sessions presented by amazing Kaltura customers and marketing and learning & development leaders from top brands such as Salesforce, AWS, SAP, Google, IBM, Twilio, Accenture, EY and more, our series of ‘Kaltura Connect’ events held in 5 major cities welcomed hundreds of senior executives to learn about the future of digital experiences across industries.

What a month we had in June! After months of planning and hard work, we wrapped up our incredible ‘Kaltura Connect on the Road’ program, where we welcomed hundreds of high-level executives to our first international multi-city series of  events to hear from customers, and leaders in marketing and learning & development.  The focus of the events was to discuss how to maximize return-on-investment (ROI) with today’s reduced budgets, and important trends that are impacting the future of digital experiences and the usage of video in marketing and learning & development.

I’m excited to share the following main trends that emerged from Kaltura Connect on the Road:

Endless hybrid experiences

In the immediate aftermath of COVID, marketers rushed to bring back in-person events. The realization that not all events need to be in-person is becoming the standard approach, and hybrid in various forms is the new norm. By way of example, Ewelina Dunkley, Events Lead at Meta stated that around 60% of their events are now hybrid. But even within the world of hybrid, it took some time to realize that it’s more complicated than merely posting a video, as Bradley Kemp, Senior LX Designer from Google School for Leaders, noted “It’s not just broadcasting, it’s an experience.”

While some do miss the hustle of in-person events, it will not be missed by all, with Colin Fleming EVP Global Brand Marketing, Salesforce adding that this may be for the best, as conferences had become a contest of one-upping each other, while in virtual interactions the focus is on the quality of the material. Having said that, Dreamforce is still a very large in-person event, but has changed significantly – specifically, Fleming mentioned the reach and breadth of bringing together in-person experiences together with an events platform like Salesforce Plus, and partnering with Kaltura, they now have 115 countries represented in these events, versus around 20 countries pre-pandemic from the in-person only event.

Speaking on the topic of defining the hybrid road ahead, Ada Agrait, SVP, Global Head of Corporate Marketing at SAP, a long-standing Kaltura customer, discussed the evolving perspective of personalization and why events are an important moment in the overall customer journey. For their SAP Sapphire 2023, the focus was on creating an immersive and interactive hybrid event that guides customers to find their next steps in their SAP customer journey.

Laura Heisman VMware CMO spoke about finding the right experience for the right channel, and having the right experience for the in-person events and then a different one for the online ones.

Continuing on that point, Joyce Kim, Twilio CMO, elaborated that you can’t replicate the reach of a virtual event, but you can’t give them the same personalized experience as in person. People’s attention spans online are much shorter, and for in-person it needs to be worth actually showing up, so organizers need to design each experience for the right setting.

One vendor to rule them all – convergence is king

When video became a critical tool across companies, departments within organizations each selected a tool to best serve their needs, often resulting in tens of overlapping and non-integrated solutions. As different departments had different needs, it seemed unavoidable, but as costs ramped up, workflows got clunkier and compliance, consistency and security became increasingly concerning, consolidation became necessary for many organizations. Consolidation around video and digital experiences can be found in organizations on several levels – be it on the tech side of consolidating tech platforms across departments for the same purpose, or consolidating solutions across use cases, from marketing, through learning & development, to internal communications and more. Craig Chapman, Senior Manager Broadcast and Live Events at VMware discussed consolidating into Kaltura what used to be done with 6 other vendors. Paul Gibbons, Senior Global Product Manager from Ernst & Young stressed the importance of keeping virtual and hybrid events unique. Event professionals love making every event unique, but it is impossible to build a new technology framework every few months and get it through compliance. Creating a common technology background that marketers can take and adapt as they need, is critical.

ROI – both tangible and intangible

ROI was a frequent topic across all the events, which comes as no surprise with the current economic climate. But, as Craig Chapman from VMware pointed out, ROI goes beyond the traditional, standard measurements, to other goals that are vital, including making video systems more accessible to creators, easier for publishers, and critically for large enterprises – more secure.

In a spotlight on reframing ROI Megan Henshall, Global Event Strategist from Google covered the need to augment corporate perception of what ROI means. Do participants enjoy the event? Is it resonating? By analyzing these frameworks we can better translate impact to business outcome.  This approach goes beyond the traditional ROI discussion and into the realm of “return on experience”.  Henshall shared data-based insights from deep research she is conducting at Google on the topic as part of the Google Experience Institute.

Direct businesses correlation has shifted as well, shared Jan Pilhar, Executive Director & Co-Lead of the Digital Advisory Practice DACH at IBM iX, also noting that IBM and Kaltura have been partners working together and doing great things together for several years. Plihar expanded that the above shift is partially due to the time that companies have been investing in these projects, along with the growing complexity and cost of some of these projects and CFO involvement, there needs to be a more solid business case. The time of doing things more randomly is over, and everything needs to be more strategic. This is relevant for ‘digital transformation’ projects as they continue to grow and are increasingly a strategic investment area for enterprises – video is a core part of such transformations as it takes physical interactions and transforms them into digital experiences that are more accessible, insightful, and meaningful in many ways.

AI transitioning from utility to companion and beyond

Marketers are operating under the assumption that, as Margot Hernandez SVP of Video Production at Citi put it, their budgets will “get a haircut”. As a result, the operational perspective of AI’s role in the enterprise is shifting from a relationship of utility to one of a constant companion, and as noted by Udi Ledergor, Chief Evangelist and Former CMO of Gong, that is what is enabling companies to meet new demands, “It’s not do more with less, it’s can we please do better”. AI increasingly allows marketers to maximize efficiency.  The possibilities and use cases that repeatedly came up throughout the roadshow were content repurposing, event workflow automation, video creation from text or addition of subtitles in real-time, thus freeing marketers to do more creative, value-add tasks.

And AI already goes beyond that for some, as Sam Hagen, Head of AMER Event Marketing at AWS, mentioned when speaking about how to get the most out of the endless data from virtual events, and how organizers should continue to challenge tech providers like Kaltura that powers multiple AWS events, to provide insights via their experience and tools.  AI is coming in to help find the larger picture answers about what being effective is, and will even start providing answers to questions we don’t even know we have.

AI is also becoming key in capturing interested customers, noted Eyal Manor, Kaltura Board Member and Former CPO at Twilio and GM at Google. The ability to pick up on the smallest data indicators of intent. Then, with hyper-personalized outreach done faster, companies will see better conversion rates.

Some organizations are in fact already testing and looking to put AI into practice in their digital experience workflows. For example, Craig Chapman from VMware noted that they are already working together with the team at Kaltura to launch AI features that would enable to upload content only once, and then enrich & repurpose it automatically many times to different audiences, effectively and securely.

DEI and Sustainability as principals, not passing trends

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Sustainability initiatives were raised in every session and every city of the Kaltura roadshow as an increasingly important area for organizations of all sizes, and one where video experiences play a key role – driving broader accessibility, lowering travel and carbon emissions and greater diversity due to remote engagements.

In Berlin, Amit Bivas, former VP B2B Marketing at Monday.com speaking about their annual Elevate conference last year that was powered by Kaltura, highlighted that decision-makers are currently prioritizing DEI and sustainability before making purchase decisions.

Clarissa Gent, Director of EMEA Partner Marketing Director at AWS stressed that innovation only really comes from a “rich and diverse pool of talent and perspectives”, but companies need to take programmatic steps to truly drive it. For example, Gent mentioned several AWS practices and programs, including one called GetIT that educates young girls on tech positions, as well as a recent “ladies launch” initiative as part of a recent AWS Summit.

True to Kaltura’s hybrid event strategy and range of solutions, the company is now offering access to all of the global content from Kaltura Connect on the Road here, powered by Kaltura’s event platform.

The roadshow that took place over the course of 15 days in June 2023 boasted an impressive line-up of speakers: