524 Ed Manna - Live at ASCII Edge

Marvin Bee 

Hello, friends. Uncle Marv here with another episode of the IT Business Podcast Broadcasting Live from Clearwater, FL at the ASCII. Event we are out here on Radio Row and we're about to be overrun with people for lunch, people doing headshots, our good friend. Josh Lieberman is doing the headshots. We've we seem to have a little bit of an audience across the way. Ray and Gucci and Heiko from ABC Solutions. Hey out there, that just lets you know we are live. I am joined right now by Ed Manna from Bizzity. 

Ed Manna 

Hello there. How are you today? 

Marvin Bee 

I am good. So I grabbed him real quick out of. The vendor hall and. We're not even going to chat about visiting, are we? 

Ed Manna 

We so I yeah, as everyone may not know because we were just chatting about this yesterday. I am very much a techie with in terms of audio and video and I started asking about the rig you have now and. You mentioned the stuff I'm doing and I we were like, hey, let's talk about that. 

Marvin Bee 

So, well, that's good, because I've actually had several MSP's and some vendors ask me, hey, what are you doing to, you know, produce your shows and stuff because everybody's looking for, you know, the next, you know? Gadgety thing to use and we are recording on this is my newest mixing console, the broadcaster duo. It's kind of a mini version of what I had before. Does recording adds in my audio I can bring in, you know phones you know by Bluetooth and just a nice little piece. But Ed, what do you what do you? Using for your stuff. 

Ed Manna 

So we're starting a video podcast and I decided to from the video side, we have an A10 mini. I think it's a 10 mini pro ISO, so using black magic or black tragic depending on how you look at it. 

Marvin Bee 

Ed Manna 

Right. And we're using that, I have a Sony A6000 camera that I'm using for the video side of things. When I'm remote, I plan to use the iPhone. Believe it or not, because it integrates right to the Mac. Is another camera my goal for the road was to create an entire video rig I could fit in my laptop back, and I've done it. I have a two tripods that are 42 inches high. When extended I have a I have a light that will blind you literally. I have Rd. The wireless go to system and I can do man on the street interviews. I could do 2 lab mics it it's really nice in terms of what the capabilities are. So that's. Where I'm starting out. 

Marvin Bee 

Alright, well so I'm familiar with the road stuff. I don't have the wireless mics yet. As you can see I'm using some other microphones actually here for the boom effect so that we're not catching up all of the room, but the wireless go is on my list. 

Ed Manna 

Yeah, I actually. So I found one of my friends who gives me some advice and I help him out with his IT he had it and I needed to improve his video setup and he bought all this stuff because someone told him to much like in IT, right? Why did I buy this stuff? Oh, somebody told me to and I ended up saying to him you're never going to need this. So I will happily take it off your hands. And I still have this Venmo him his money for it. But you know, it's all good. I ended up buying that extension that lets you make it into a man on the street, kind of Mike. And we're going to create a. A little, I forget what they call it, but it's a little placard that goes around the mic that gives you some identifier of who it is. So we're going to take the busy both and put it on there and maybe 3D print or what have you, you know. So I ultimately I want to do 2 things I want to in a podcast sense I want to do something on the business side of. Being a tech company, right, there's so many people that talk about all these things and I want to give people real info to take with them, not super technical. On the technical side, but the. 

Speaker 

Ed Manna 

Business and I want to have some fun and we also want to do feature requests, so I'm sorry feature Fridays is something we're looking to do so I can analyze some new feature and explain it to people about our product. And you know. 

Marvin Bee 

All that fun stuff, alright, so those would kind of be more studio broadcast. I want to ask you about the man on the street type stuff because I've. I've thought about doing that and as you can see my gears kind of bulky and not set for that. So you mentioned just simply using the iPhone. 

Ed Manna 

Bunch of podcasts and videos on YouTube on how to do podcasting. And believe it or not, GarageBand, it's built into all the Mac, iOS's and stuff, and the people they say that is an excellent platform to use. Put the mic on narration and you're good to go, so I even have a lab mic that goes right into the iPhone and this is stuff that you find on Amazon or B&H. This is not obscure. Stuff that anybody that you need to have some big technical knowledge to go find, right? It's that stuff anybody can find by Google. 

Marvin Bee 

All right, we're going to have to get a list of your stuff and a list of my. We'll throw it on there and. 

Ed Manna 

Definitely cause I I'm telling you. You come over to the booth later and I'll show you the whole video. Setup it's in my bag, you know, so. 

Marvin Bee 

OK, now you mentioned the camera. So is it one of those, you know, big heavy duty, expensive DSLR things? 

Ed Manna 

So for the for the office I have the Sony A6000. I bought it used. You know, it's a nice little camera. I have multiple lenses. It's a DSLR for the field. I'm actually using an iPhone 13. I believe in Pro Max. My attitude is if any Leibowitz can go and do Rockstar album covers and take all these rock star photos and she can use an iPhone. I can use it to do. You know, man, on the street videos. 

Marvin Bee 

Right. Yep. Alright, that works. So yes, I am familiar with garage band. I'm not a Mac guy, even though I have an iPhone and a tablet, I should probably look into that. 

Ed Manna 

Well, you know, for many, many years doing software development, I was always a PC. I did a Mac for a while here and there to change over. But now that we're doing software as a service, I understand it's a requirement that you have to be. So and I'm sort of an Apple fan boy as it is. You know the phone, the watch, all that stuff, right? The integration is huge. So it's awesome. 

Marvin Bee 

Alright, now you talked about, you know, doing this as a video podcast. So is it something that's just going to basically live on YouTube? You're going to create your own website for that. How you? Going to do that. 

Ed Manna 

So I'm going to do you, I think initially we're doing YouTube. But I'm also going to peel it off and do an audio version of it right, because I want to take that same content and reuse it as much as we can. So that people. Get the bang for the buck right? A lot of times I'll look at a video podcast that I won't subscribe to because I listen to a lot of things. On your drive and on a video podcast, you tend to think that you're going to need to watch it, right? But if it's a listen only kind of thing, you know you get bang for the buck doing in both places. You know, we're going to experiment. I mean, right now there's no rhyme or reason. The biggest. What is it? Paralysis by analysis so. We're just going to throw stuff. 

Marvin Bee 

At the wall and see what sticks you know. 

Speaker 

Marvin Bee 

Alright, so now you know this has been a little bit of a journey. Are you looking at, you know the type? Of things you wanted to purchase and use, has there been anything that's really stuck out as oh, I didn't know I could do that. 

Ed Manna 

That you've come across. So what I found is I have one thing I forgot to tell you I have is a stream deck. Do you know what a stream? 

Marvin Bee 

I do know what a stream deck is. 

Ed Manna 

Deck is I love my stream deck. 

Marvin Bee 

I almost got one, but I wasn't sure I'd. 

Ed Manna 

Use it if you were at 2:00 ask years ago. We raffled one off in the booth and if you knew you knew, but the stream deck allows us to preprogram buttons to do different things, whether it's video, whether it's your computer or whatnot. So you could do. Stuff like that. But what I did find, and this is on the item side of things, this is a big surprise and it was actually part of the reason I purchased the model. I did. If you it has simultaneous streaming output. So if you put a USB a USB drive on that attempt as you're recording up to you, I think that unit takes in nine inputs. It will record a mix of your live streamed. Output but it will also record individual mixes of each. I'm sorry individual source content so and it creates a da Vinci file which is their editing tool. It's a free editing tool, right? So if you want to take care of something, as they say in post or have that archive footage of every input as you did a podcast or something, it will. For it and you have that so you can make changes. 

Marvin Bee 

All right, kind. Of like this because the road caster will actually record individual channels multi track, so I can, you know go back and if I need to edit one specific track I can. It also mixes down into a single stereo track. So if everything is good. I don't have to do much except clean it up. 

Ed Manna 

And that's exactly on the video side. What they do with the item you, it'll take that live if you, you know, do your transitions and your lower thirds and all that and everything is great. You just publish as is. If there's something you want to change later, cause you made a mistake. You have the individual inputs. You can always remix. As needed. 

Marvin Bee 

Now I looked at the da Vinci program probably 2-3 years ago and it was really too much for me. Mainly because. 

Ed Manna 

I got to tell you. So there's other stuff you can use, too. Camtasia is another product we've we're using. 

Ed Manna 

Part of what we need to do is some training and my on the in the field stuff. I'm not lugging the item with me. So I need something portable and you know something like Camtasia. I mean, look, it does lower thirds, it does a lot of stuff. You know, I feel like there's not really a middle ground you have either. You know Camtasia, to do screen recordings or you end video or you have something higher end like premiere or Davinci, right? And for us, we're eventually using both and what's cool is da Vinci is free, so you don't have to pay to get into that product and learn it, right? So if you don't like it, it's too much for you, you can. Go with something like a Camtasia. And Camtasia is I think, like 200 bucks a year. So it's not breaking the bank either in terms of that you know. 

Marvin Bee 

Well, I mean have to check out your stuff and see what I can learn. Have you put any? Product out yet? 

Ed Manna 

So our product is out, it's live visit well, not on the video side. I haven't done the podcast stuff yet, but the product is stuff is what we've been working on, yes. 

Marvin Bee 

Ed Manna 

So we've been live, I think since end of April. Maybe if I'm correct and so far things are going real well, our integrations are getting tighter. For the day, we're announcing more and more, so, you know, things are rock'n'roll. I mean, I'm yeah, we're doing good. 

Marvin Bee 

Right. All right, now, is that a landing page off of busy dot? 

Ed Manna 

So yeah, visiting.com is our website and if you wanted to find me on LinkedIn, it's LinkedIn. I think it's slash in slash Ed mana. But I mean everybody pretty much knows me. So if you know. You know, so. 

Speaker 

If you know you. 

Marvin Bee 

Know if you don't know, now you know. 

Ed Manna 

I mean, everybody printed us. And if you're in the lobby of this hotel and I'm in the conventions area, you hear me so. 

Speaker 

Morning, Edward. Trying to let you. 

Marvin Bee 

All right. 

Speaker 

Podcast with. 

Ed Manna 

The best stuff, yes. 

Marvin Bee 

Hey, thank you, Shelly. Matt Scully there from this. 

Ed Manna 

The infamous Matt Skelly. 

Marvin Bee 

With his I am Kaseya shirt. 

Ed Manna 

I guess he is Kaseya I guess they have to do that because they buy so many companies, right? They have to know who they. That's right. But anyway, yeah. So busy.com you find me at a channel event? Usually I'm. I'm big in the asking community. Anybody has any questions, please, reachoutyoucangoahead.mana@visiting.com. And whether it's to talk video, audio, feature, request, anything you'd like to see in a product, I'm all in. 

Marvin Bee 

All right. Well, Ed, thank you very much for stopping by. I should let everybody know that yes, this was not the typical interview that I'm doing here, but we are going to be seeing you at least maybe what once or twice down the road, you're a part of the pitching program this year. 

Ed Manna 

Yes, and that's awesome. I mean, for anybody that doesn't know, ConnectWise does a Shark Tank like thing. I think this year there's 27 companies competing and we are one of the 27 and each week we're doing a 16 week program where we're taking in content every week from ConnectWise and eventually we will start doing pitches and they will start. Rating and ultimately they will do a top three and they will pick a winner at IT nation. 

Marvin Bee 

All right. Well, Ed, we hope to see you there. I mean, you'll probably be there anyway, but we hope to see you there as one of the finalists and we'll do a I think we're going to do a mini spotlight here in a couple of weeks. And then if you continue wanting the competition, we'll do a finalist interview at IT Nation and. Then see if you guys. 

Ed Manna 

I'm ready to schedule that right now with you. So that's where we want it. 

Marvin Bee 

Right. 

Ed Manna 

So yes, I'm happy to do that. And I'm only kidding about that. But yes, we want that and I'm happy to support you guys. In any way, you need any AV help on the road you find me. 

Marvin Bee 

Ohh, I might cause lugging this stuff around. I'm going to have to figure out a way to. Shrink it all. So thank you. Have it Ed Manna from visiting. We'll see him again down the road. For your time. 

Ed Manna 

My pleasure. 

Marvin Bee 

Alright folks, that's going to do it from here at ask the edge in Clearwater. We'll be back with more episodes of the IT Business podcast soon, and until then, Holla.