“Some Guy From the Crew” Part 1: The importance of rehearsals with Cameron Magee

Cameron Magee (00:00)

Welcome to Presentation Thinking, aka the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mikey Medusky, co-host, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design agency. I'm joined by my co-host, your favorite, Molly Gagan on the West Coast. Molly, what's going on? What's up, Presentation? We have very special episode in store for you today. Mikey, I feel like we've talked ad nauseum.

 

Mikey Mioduski (00:02)

Welcome to Presentation Thinking, AKA the Storyteller Study Club. This is Mikey Medusky, co-host, founder of Ghost Ranch Communications, a presentation design agency. I'm joined by my co-host, your favorite, Molly Gagan on the West Coast. Molly, what's going on?

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:20)

What's up, Presentation Nation?

 

We have a very special episode in store for you today. Mikey, I feel like we've talked ad nauseum

 

about and with people that get up on stage and give presentations like all the time for their career or coaching people that do it. And today we have a little someone that's spends most of their days behind the scenes in the dark, but very much in charge of events and presentations and, ⁓ big conferences as well, variety of things. So, ⁓ Cameron McGee owner of a VOD.

 

Cameron Magee (00:27)

about and with people that get up on stage and give presentations like all the time for their career or coaching people that do it. And today we have a little someone that spends most of their days behind the scenes in the dark, but very much in charge of events and presentations and ⁓ big conferences as well, variety of things. So ⁓ Cameron McGee, owner of Avad3,

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:52)

three incredible presentation tech

 

Cameron Magee (00:53)

incredible presentation tech.

 

Molly Geoghegan (00:56)

production company. I'll let you describe it. Welcome to the podcast.

 

Cameron Magee (00:56)

production company, I'll let you describe it. Welcome to the podcast.

 

It's an honor to be with you guys. Thanks for what you've built and for letting me come on. Thanks a lot. Yeah. My God, this is awesome. Yeah. And I mean, you guys go way back. How do we, how do we know each other? Mikey? Cameron, we met in Costa Rica at a digital bureau event. Yeah. Yeah. There was a bureau event that, that Carl was putting on and it was for owners only. And, and I love those conversations because we can be super open.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:03)

Yeah, my god, this is awesome. And I mean, you guys go way back. How do we know each other, Mikey?

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:10)

Cameron, we met in Costa Rica at a Digital Bureau event.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:14)

to greet me cute. ⁓

 

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (01:25)

And then when he said this year it was gonna be, or that year it was gonna be in Costa Rica, your wife said, I'll be there, and my wife said I'll be there, and then we met there. It was great, it was a good trip. Yeah. It was prioritized in the We had a great company. And I remember like, I always take a ton of notes at those things, because it's so cool, like Cameron said, like to exchange ⁓ ideas, what works, what doesn't, with fellow, you know, your peers, other agency owners. And I remember taking a particular ton of notes.

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:30)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (01:31)

It was prioritized in the calendar.

 

Mikey Mioduski (01:35)

We had great company. And I remember, I always take a ton of notes at those things, because it's so cool, like Cameron said, to exchange ⁓ ideas, what works, what doesn't, with fellow, your peers, other agency owners. And I remember taking a particular ton of notes

 

whenever Cameron spoke, because this dude's been at it for a while. Cameron, can you tell us how you got started with Avad3? I love the story.

 

Cameron Magee (01:55)

Whenever Cameron spoke, because this dude's been at it for a while, Cameron, can you tell us how you got started with Avad3? I love the story.

 

Yeah, I'll keep it brief. I have a goal for this to be your shortest episode yet. We'll see how the time code runs out, but I'll keep answers We're already swaffling on that. no, all right. We'll see how this goes. ⁓ Yeah, I started doing AV and event production a long time ago. was ⁓ 12, wandered up to the sound booth at my church, and just, it was a great volunteer.

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:09)

We're already waffling on that. ⁓

 

Mikey Mioduski (02:11)

Yeah

 

Cameron Magee (02:24)

up there, a great guy, he took me under his wing and taught me how to run the sound and the lights and the video. It was a pretty big church, so we had some pretty big stuff. And then just immediately just fell in love with it and started doing it around my hometown here in Arkansas, middle of nowhere, but center of everything. And yeah, I went to college and was going to major in this sort of thing and ⁓ decided to just get out of college as fast as possible and get a quick degree and get this going.

 

Mikey Mioduski (02:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (02:52)

Started at my dorm room, got married with my wife that year, and we've been in business for 14 years together. That's so cool. I think it just speaks to like, presentations are everywhere and like, you're tapping, you tapped into that, that's how you grew up. Okay, to get back to business here, you've agreed, very kindly, to tee up a series for us of sorts, because A.V. and the behind the scenes of presentations cover so much that we haven't really tapped too much into, Mikey.

 

Molly Geoghegan (02:59)

That's so cool. think it just speaks to like, presentations are everywhere and like, you're tapping, you tapped into that. That's how you grew up. Okay, to get back to business here, you've agreed very kindly to tee up a series for us of sorts because A.V. and the behind the scenes of presentations cover so much that we haven't really tapped too much into, Mikey.

 

And so today we kind of want to focus on like the rehearsals. We know it's a huge priority for you and your company.

 

Cameron Magee (03:21)

And so today we kind of want to focus on like the rehearsals. We know it's a huge priority for you and your company.

 

In the future, we can talk about stage, working with teleprompters and some of your event wisdom and evergreen knowledge. But yeah, very curious. Just what is the importance of rehearsals for you and your team at Avad and how have you developed some of these processes? Yeah, I rehearsals are super important. We...

 

Molly Geoghegan (03:29)

future we can talk about stage working with teleprompters and some of your event wisdom and evergreen knowledge. But, ⁓ yeah, very curious. ⁓ just what is the importance of rehearsals for you and your team at Avad and how have you developed some of these processes?

 

Cameron Magee (03:49)

We have three shows today. We're in Portland. We have a crew in New Orleans, and then we have a crew in our hometown here serving Walmart today for a 1500 person event, and they're in rehearsals today. And we have the whole day set aside for rehearsals, not just rehearsals in the general session, but also in the breakouts. And I've been over there checking on them and just came back to my desk to get to see y'all and spend some time together. ⁓ But they're so important. And that's what I'm here to talk about, basically, is the importance of them.

 

Maybe talk about some of the behind the scenes stuff from the guy leads the crew that maybe stuff that folks aren't used to hearing our perspective on. But I just share all of it graciously to kind of maybe help educate and inform some of the decisions that people make ⁓ to help make rehearsals better than ever. So I'm here to talk about it. This is amazing because Cameron, Molly, you know, we have a lot of listeners who are in, if you're in marketing, you know events like you, you probably help with your user conference, maybe the SKO.

 

Mikey Mioduski (04:34)

Yeah. this is amazing. Cause Cameron, Molly, you know, we have a lot of listeners who are in, if you're in marketing, you know, events like you, you probably help with your user conference, maybe the SKO.

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (04:47)

You might have helped put on a couple big ones, but Cameron has put on, would, how many, hundred events do you put on a year at this point?

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:47)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (04:47)

You might have helped put on a couple big ones, but Cameron has put on, would, how many, several hundred events do you put on a year? Yeah,

 

Molly Geoghegan (04:55)

Yeah, several hundreds.

 

Cameron Magee (04:57)

do over a hundred a year. We did 203 last year. Yeah. We're 14. We've done over a thousand all over the country. It's pretty, it's pretty amazing. So you've seen absolutely what works, what doesn't, what might set someone up for failure or success. And so I think if you're starting,

 

Mikey Mioduski (05:03)

Yeah, yeah. And so you've seen absolutely what works, what doesn't, what might set someone up for failure ⁓ or success. And so I think if you're starting

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:05)

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (05:16)

with the rehearsal, that's because clearly you see it as something important. And I will say, you know, I've worked in events a lot myself. Not every client even thinks they need a rehearsal. And so that's why I'm loving this as a place to start, because we absolutely should listen to what Cameron has to say.

 

Cameron Magee (05:16)

with the rehearsal, that's because clearly you see it as something important. And I will say, you know, I've worked in events a lot myself, not every client even thinks they need a rehearsal. And so that's why I'm loving this as a place to start because we absolutely should listen to what Cameron has to say. And

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:32)

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (05:33)

we should lean into some rehearsal time.

 

Cameron Magee (05:33)

we should lean into

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:34)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (05:34)

some rehearsal time. just to to your own horn Cameron, like you guys that your variety of clients so interesting to know you just mentioned Walmart.

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:36)

And just to toot your own horn, Cameron, like you guys, your variety of clients is so interesting. I know you just mentioned Walmart and

 

Cameron Magee (05:42)

I mean, you do a lot of local stuff too, but like you've had the White House as a client for a number of years. do it like these are high stakes events where like press conferences and stuff come together. So if you are a person that works in events and, and knows the high stakes or is coming into an event as a speaker and you're kind of like scared and nervous about all these things, you could get something from, from Cameron here. So

 

Molly Geoghegan (05:42)

you do a lot of local stuff too, but like you've had the White House as a client for a number of years. So do it like these are high stakes events where like press conferences and stuff come together. So if you are a person that works in events and, and knows the high stakes or is coming into an event as a speaker and you're kind of like scared and nervous about all those things, you could get something from, from Cameron here.

 

Mikey Mioduski (06:03)

Yeah,

 

so where do we start? What's some of your thought process? What do we need to start thinking about?

 

Cameron Magee (06:04)

where do we start? What's like, what's some of your thought process? What do, what do we need to start thinking about? What, ⁓

 

First of all, thanks. That's great. And we're honored to serve really neat events. ⁓ Some of the smallest events I'm the most proud of and some of the big ones I fail to mention sometimes and people get excited about this. So yeah, we're the AV guys and girls in the back of some really neat rooms. ⁓ One of the main things about rehearsals, and this is so silly and so boring, if we're writing this blog post, point number one, set the time aside and set the time aside six months out. Usually... ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (06:21)

Mm-hmm. Sure.

 

Cameron Magee (06:38)

If we're gathering people together, the event dates are set, that's no problem. But it's the presenters that are the toughest to wrangle. one of our largest events that we do each year, we do with Ghost Ranch, you shout out to Ghost Ranch, you guys knock that out of the park. And we set the presenter rehearsal schedules about six months out because we know they're putting on their calendar that they're going to be at the event. We know that their ⁓ team is booking flights, whether they have assistance or the travel team or whatever. But we're putting that rehearsal time on there.

 

And so kind of the first thing is six months out, we reserve that. I can kind of break down like what types of rehearsals and when and how much time you need and things, but just point number one, set aside the time. People typically don't think of it until about three weeks out and then the time is spoken for. And so set the time aside early would kind of be an opening comment. Yeah, three weeks out, you're like everything's stacking and becoming a little bit of a to-do mountain. Yeah. And, and yeah, I just, I just got back from ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (07:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (07:22)

Right.

 

Molly Geoghegan (07:22)

Yeah,

 

yeah.

 

Yeah, three weeks out you're like everything's stacking and becoming a little bit of a to-do mountain.

 

Cameron Magee (07:37)

⁓ story camp with you all this summer. And Terry inspired me thinking about the power of these moments, the power of these moments that happen on stages throughout not just the country, also not just like the country, but also through time. And these key moments that have happened and how, you know, he told stories of people that became the president and just some of the key speeches they had early in their career that positioned them where people turned their head and kind of looked at that person behind the podium differently. And I just, ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (07:39)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (08:07)

Well, lot of the famous people that we talked about that he had worked with, they practiced their craft. You know, a key athlete is not winging it. You know, they're excellent at their craft because they've practiced it. And it's a busy world. The world's moving faster and cheaper than ever before. And executives are busier than ever. And everybody's being told to do more with less. And so it's natural that an executive or a keynote presenter or a guest or a sponsor, it's natural for them to...

 

deprioritize the time put into it. But everything that we do with AV and production, everything that you do with presentation, everything, it's all kind of like held like this for the person who goes up on stage. We're kind of like serving it to them. We're all servants. We're to say, here's your deck. Here's the stage. Here's everything. But they have to rehearse. They have to practice that. And some of the cringe moments are pretty obvious when they don't, frankly. Yeah, you kind of know.

 

Molly Geoghegan (08:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mikey Mioduski (08:57)

Yeah

 

Molly Geoghegan (08:58)

Yeah.

 

Yeah, you kind of know.

 

Mikey Mioduski (09:03)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Like I'm gonna wing it. I've done this before and there's a lot of, I guess, environmental elements and context that goes into each and every kind of ⁓ presentation, right? And so Cameron, like, so you start, you put it on the calendar, because speakers love deadlines, creative love, writers love deadlines, we get it. So then it's there. And how do you actually format? Like what else goes into thinking about

 

Cameron Magee (09:05)

And I'm going to wing it or I've done this before. And there's a lot of, I guess, environmental elements and, and context that goes into each and every kind of like a presentation. Right. And so Cameron, like, so you start, you put it on the, on the calendar because speakers love deadlines, creative love writers love deadlines. get it. So then it's there. And how do you actually format? Like what, what else goes into thinking about

 

the rehearsal room?

 

Mikey Mioduski (09:33)

the rehearsal room, ⁓

 

Cameron Magee (09:34)

some of those ideas.

 

Mikey Mioduski (09:35)

some of those ideas.

 

Cameron Magee (09:36)

Yeah, it's a good flow. Any project manager would want kind of a work back, a Gantt chart, and it's almost like another thing would almost be like a funnel or like a sales funnel, like a cattle chute that we're trying to run people through. And the most expensive rehearsal that you can have is on the stage the night before. I mean, that's the most expensive time to rehearse. And so that's what you should not do. ⁓ A lot of people don't think about these event crews. They work on a 10 hour day and after 10 hours, they're in overtime, they're in time and a half.

 

Molly Geoghegan (09:58)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (10:05)

And it seems like rehearsals usually get thought of about three weeks out. The crew is set, the times are set, and then they say, our executive or this person who's flying in, they'd love to do a 6 p.m. Can the crew hang out? But that crew's in overtime now and we've got to do a meal break. And that's the most expensive way to do it and the worst way to do it. And so ⁓ we want to schedule those rehearsals within seven to five, kind of during a block of time for the day. If it's an opening general session the next morning, if it's a

 

evening general session or opening thing we can do them the day of. But as you guys know from the presentations and the revisions, it's tough to do an overnight revision, let alone a same day revision. So it's best if we can go 24 hours back. But that's the most expensive time to do it. And so what we've done over the years is we've started backing that up, almost like a work back, ⁓ you know, just a good Gantt chart. We said, okay, how can we get them to rehearse this without it being so expensive, not just within business hours, so to speak, but

 

the general session, the main stage, whether this is a 1500 person event or a 10,000 person event or a 100 person event, tying up the literal stage with the literal crew running it in the back of the room is, I mean, you're paying thousands of dollars an hour for that rehearsal. So to take a step back from that, we typically will set a room across the hall that we call offline rehearsals. And what's really cool, I'm not gonna share my screen and show a picture, but I'll just talk with my hands. You can kind of imagine.

 

Mikey Mioduski (11:11)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (11:29)

We get a small room, like a breakout room, a salon across the hall from the general session back hallway. ⁓ And we mask out on the floor the shape of the stage. Some of our stages are like triangles and weird shapes. So we mask that out. We go and put the confidence monitors, the DSMs, we put extra TVs in there. We put bigger TVs behind them to kind of mock up the screens of what it's gonna be. And then my favorite, we put stage lighting in there and turn it on 100 % bright. ⁓ It's awful.

 

It's super annoying. And that's the idea, know. It's like blocking a show. I used to do this in theater. It's just like theater. It's just like blocking. Thank you. Yeah, it's just like blocking. And just like, and I'm about to talk about a table read before then, you know, but this is the blocking rehearsal. This is like the dress rehearsal, so to speak, you know, and what we love about that room, we can put maybe two people in there. We can put the teleprompter operator, which I'd love to talk about prompter in a minute. When we talk about prompter, we talk about graphics operator. We don't put editors in there. And y'all know this from when you work with us, you guys are in another room.

 

Molly Geoghegan (11:58)

Yeah. ⁓ gosh. It's like blocking a show. I used to this in theater. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (11:58)

Right. The gauntlet.

 

Molly Geoghegan (12:09)

Mm-hmm. Right.

 

Mikey Mioduski (12:19)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (12:27)

across the hall. This is not an editing room. This is a rehearsal, offline rehearsal room. And so let's say we've got 10 presenters. We need to cycle through here in a 10 hour day, 30 minute slots with breaks and things. When they're in this room, they're running it. We've got the prompter up, we've got slides behind them. We're giving them a clicker that's the exact same model as what's gonna be on stage. We can simulate stuff. We can kind of mess with them, so to speak. The lights are on bright where they're already like, whoa, this is bright.

 

Molly Geoghegan (12:31)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (12:55)

We're like, great, let's work on that. Let's get that smile up. These lights are gonna be bright. Let's feel it. ⁓ We're not mean to them. We need to be respectful, but it's for their own good. As I said, all the work that we do, all the work that you do is held loosely in the palm of our hands until someone takes the stage. And if it's the first time they walk up and they kinda go, whoa, this is really bright. It's amazing the dumb things that people will say their first 10 seconds on stage if we haven't rehearsed it. Right, right.

 

Molly Geoghegan (13:22)

Right, right.

 

Cameron Magee (13:24)

So that's that offline rehearsal. I'm not so sure what's happening yet today. They walk

 

Molly Geoghegan (13:24)

They're like, well, I'm not so sure what's happening yet today. Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (13:27)

up and if it's the first time they've held that clicker, this is the clicker in my car, but if it's the first time they held that clicker, they'll look at it. And that's a bad look. That's a bad look. The first 10 seconds on stage, never get a second chance to make a first impression. You don't want to look at it. So we have them hold the clicker in the offline rehearsal room. I'll keep moving so that we keep this episode short. Across the hall from that is the editing room and we send them to the editing room first. it's on stage is last, offline rehearsal second to last.

 

Molly Geoghegan (13:40)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (13:53)

editing room before that where they can look through it one more time. And we have a screen in there and a DSM confidence monitor, downstage monitor, confidence monitor in there. TVs are very inexpensive, it's not an expensive move. We have them look at it in there. And that's just the day of, they've surely been working with y'all, with editors, with whoever their team is for weeks and months, but it's one last moment to kind of see the formatting. Before they're ever on site, though, all that's the 25 hours or four they're on stage, whether it's the last day or the first day of the session, of the general session. Before that, though, we do

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:15)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (14:22)

virtual rehearsals, we do them over Zoom like this. A lot of these presenters are from all over the country. But if you can just get three 30 minute blocks, which some people may laugh at and say these executives are too busy, but I would just argue if they're gonna get on stage in front of 1500 people that they're not too busy to find three 30 minute blocks the month before, ⁓ if you reserve it six months out. But we like to have those off lines and those are more like a table read, like you're saying, Molly, I almost like the blocking rehearsal. Yeah, very cool. Have you ever like in the case, like if someone's not available in person, have you?

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:39)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, very cool. Have you ever like in the case like if someone's not available in person, have you

 

Cameron Magee (14:52)

had success with a rehearsal like virtually would anyone like how does that work for you? Yeah, we have to do that sometimes and again like

 

Molly Geoghegan (14:52)

had success with a rehearsal like virtually? anyone like how has that worked for you in the past? Okay.

 

Cameron Magee (14:59)

we've we've served the president a couple times is sort of the the current administration the administration before that was sort of red and blue all colors. Yeah, but those guys they don't they don't rehearse and so sometimes people ask me well Yeah, well our president's too high-profile to rehearse and so when we work with those they typically have a handler and We we schedule rehearsal the same and we make somebody come to it ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (15:05)

Yeah.

 

Sure.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (15:20)

And like when we work with very high profile, like CEOs of corporations, their speechwriter or their assistant or their head of security, someone comes. And then what I'll even nudge them on, because sometimes they're not used to doing that every day. They kind of walk in there and are big eyed. But it's just know that at the office for us, I'll kind of grab them and say, hey, come on up here. Hey, grab your iPhone. Take a picture from the stage. Just take that picture. Will you text that to him? Will you show him what the room looks like? He's going to love you for this. Like that way the presenter sees the confidence monitors. They kind of see.

 

Molly Geoghegan (15:44)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (15:48)

you know, if we're using prompters and jumbo bright glass out in the audience, they see the glass. That's a, yeah, it's a great move. Whether, even if they're in the air in the private jet or something like that, they just get a text and like, okay, there's a rehearsal. And that's when they'll ask, hey, can my countdown clock count up instead of down? It looks like in the corner of this, it's going the wrong way. And that's huge, you know, or hey, can we actually do current and next on opposite things for me? Or do we need to keep it like this for the previous? They'll ask questions to get their mind rehearsing.

 

Molly Geoghegan (15:53)

Mm-hmm. See where stuff is. Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (16:10)

Right.

 

Cameron Magee (16:18)

even from 40,000 feet. And Cameron, like that's a great point because this is our ask a crew guy, right? But some people don't even know that they can ask to arrange that stuff. like all that's on the table. It's like, I my notes bigger. I yeah, that's fine. That's why you do that. Yeah. And the crew, mean, and I'm not just tooting our own horn. I have been in the industry a long time. I've worked with a lot of freelancers, a lot of subcontractors, a lot of competitors. Most crews are not

 

Mikey Mioduski (16:20)

And Cameron, like that's a great point because this is our ask a crew guy, right? But some people don't even know that they can ask to arrange that stuff. like all that's on the table. It's like, I want my notes bigger. I yeah, that's fine. You're that's why you do that.

 

Molly Geoghegan (16:33)

Yeah, what, yeah, for-

 

Cameron Magee (16:47)

grumpy old sound men who don't want to, you most crews want to help. don't, nobody wants to see you go, I keep holding my hands up, nobody wants to push you up on stage and like watch you bomb. the graphics hop would love to change those slides. You know, we would love to change the clock. We would love to work on the lighting, ⁓ but we can't if we don't have the time. And so that's why like the number one thing is like set aside the time. If we've got the time, we can do anything, but.

 

Molly Geoghegan (16:57)

Yeah, no one wants it.

 

Cameron Magee (17:12)

At the point where they're on stage and seeing all that stuff at that point, we want it to be like the third time we've seen them. We want it to be the third time that they've said their opening sentence where when they walk up on stage and say, hey, how's everybody doing? Good morning. How are we doing over here? We want them to have said that on Zoom and then said it in an offline rehearsal room. So they come out and say that. And they realize this room isn't as big as I thought it was going to be. I shouldn't say how we doing over here. I should say, how are we doing in here? Because there's not really another section over here. Those things really matter and they help you not, you know, put your foot in your.

 

Mikey Mioduski (17:17)

great.

 

Molly Geoghegan (17:17)

Mm-hmm.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah. Mikey, you asked what I was thinking about because we, yeah, of course we've had this experience with the high stakes and the really experienced folks, but a lot of Presentation Nation, our listeners, might have accidentally or unintentionally fallen into a role where they do have to give presentations and they're kind of like, it's their least favorite thing, they dread it. And they might not have a ton of experience working with a crew. So have you had that where you almost have to train someone to be like, yeah, it's like a collaborative effort of like, what to expect? What's the flow look like?

 

Cameron Magee (17:42)

Yeah. Mikey, you asked what I was thinking about because we, yeah, of course we've had this experience with the high stakes and the really experienced folks, but a lot of presentation nation, our listeners might have accidentally or unintentionally fallen into a role where they do have to give presentations and they're kind of like, it's their least favorite thing. They dread it. And they might not have a ton of experience working with a crew. So have you had that where you almost have to train someone to be like, yeah, it's like a collaborative effort of like what to expect? What's the flow look like?

 

Here's

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:12)

Here's what a teleprompter looks like. Have you had that experience as well? Yeah, okay.

 

Cameron Magee (18:12)

what a teleprompter looks like. How have you had that experience as well? Every day. Yeah, those are my favorite. I let my team handle almost everything. They're on site doing so much right now and I'm not there and I love to give them space and they're doing great. But they know if there's going to be like a breakout rehearsal, here comes Cameron because I love like a newbie presenter. Those are my favorite when somebody comes in and they are scared or they are nervous so they don't know. And you know, and I hate when we start using jargon or

 

Mikey Mioduski (18:13)

Yeah.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:19)

so you're not alone people, yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (18:39)

acronyms or something and they can't keep up, I want to be really gracious and say, you're going to do great. And I just love being backstage with them, putting the mic on them, making sure they're ready to go, sending them out. Because people don't, they don't know. And you'd be surprised. It's not just like only, you know, ⁓ professional speakers, there's, there's executives who just don't speak. The CFO doesn't actually do many presentations. And now there's the CFO does them from Zoom.

 

Molly Geoghegan (18:43)

Yeah.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:01)

Mm-hmm. True.

 

Cameron Magee (19:06)

They're just doing them like this and so they're used to sharing their screen and having stuff up. so it's not just like a newbie or an engineer who's not used to presenting. Sometimes it's C-suite people that just aren't the CEO. And a CTO sometimes is a pretty specialized, nerdy, engineering kind of person, like me. And so I can relate to them and help them kind of see what we need to do. I just, nobody wants a cringe moment.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:07)

Right.

 

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (19:30)

We all want to see them succeed. doesn't make production. It doesn't make graphic. It doesn't make anybody look or sound great when they suffer. And so we want them real comfortable feeling real confident. Yeah. Aside, Molly, he's going to turn red, but I've seen Cameron in action and he's like the best like bedside manner, the most professional dude. If he will, he will put even the most nervous people at ease with his, his gentle touch. on

 

Molly Geoghegan (19:37)

Mm-hmm.

 

Yeah, I love that. You're a coach.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:41)

aside Molly, he's gonna turn red. But I've seen Cameron in action and he's like the best like bedside manner, the most professional dude. He will put even the most nervous people at ease with his gentle touch. So

 

Molly Geoghegan (19:46)

Yes.

 

I'm not surprised.

 

Mikey Mioduski (19:57)

unprecedented professionalism from Mr. McGee and Avad3. Tell us about ⁓ show flow and scripts. Yeah, I think that's an important facet of the rehearsal.

 

Cameron Magee (19:57)

Unprecedented professionalism from Mr. McGee and about three tell me tell us about ⁓ Show flow and scripts. Yeah, I think that's an important facet of the rehearsal.

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:01)

you

 

Cameron Magee (20:10)

Good. Yeah, and what is and what could a show flow be? Great question. I wish I had like a printed one here. We're all digital now I just want to like hold it up but yeah We we've made these templates over the years and we it's probably our most common like LinkedIn marketing like download that people do so they'll go grab him or whatever but

 

Molly Geoghegan (20:11)

And what could a show flow be?

 

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (20:27)

We've tried to coach clients over the years ⁓ to use our template when they're starting to plan their event. So when we say show flow, we're essentially saying the whole run of show for this two hour general session on one piece of paper. And it's not just one piece of paper like size 10 font, it's different columns and rows and stuff. It's a spreadsheet, it's a matrix of this is, you know, it is 10.02, this segment is gonna be three minutes. This is, it's with John.

 

and John's gonna have ⁓ a video that's embedded within his presentation, but it's an MOS, it's a silent video. ⁓ His is a keynote, not a PowerPoint. John likes the house lights up, because he's gonna ask for show of hands. It's all these little details, but all fits on one piece of paper. And so that's what we call a show flow. ⁓ We love clients using that like two months out. ⁓

 

It helps them start to think about, wait a minute, if John needed the house lights up, does anybody else need the house lights? It's just amazing how it just opens your thinking. It's just a thinking tool, basically. ⁓ So we love that format. It helps everybody on the crew on the same sheet of music, one piece of paper on every console and camera, everybody knows kind of where we are. And it's amazing how it opens clients' eyes and producers' eyes and planners' eyes to the bigger picture of these lines and what they mean. And then...

 

Molly Geoghegan (21:24)

Mm-hmm.

 

Cameron Magee (21:42)

We have a similar thing we've started doing for essentially scripts or run of show, ROS, run of show documents, where we like to format those in a way that it really sets you up to succeed as whether you're the writer doing the script or you're the graphics, ⁓ the graphic designer, the artist doing the initial stuff or the editors doing the nitty gritty, the presenter, the assistant, the speechwriter. I always talk in like these huge teams. We also do really small stuff too. ⁓ But that ROS helps them

 

with formatting on things that I just, I've seen too many people stay up really late the night before basically having to like, okay, we put the whole script in Word, but now we've to change it for the prompter. Or we did the whole show, we did a 22 page script and that has all the slide cues in that. ⁓ But then the CFO needed to edit his portion and now we're doing track changes and it's a nightmare. so we ⁓ just learned about that again from doing over a hundred a year and we just try to help share with, cause most of our clients only do

 

three events a year. And so we just try to help freely share like, just do it like this. But it's amazing how people don't ask the crew. They just think they think they can't ask the crew. They think the crew is grumpy or something and ⁓ we're happy to help and just just ask us and give us time and we'll do anything. Yeah, totally. It's a collaborative. It's a collaborative effort, people, you know, I think people do have that tendency to like shy away. They're like, I'm gonna ask something dumb or the crew is too busy. Whereas like, actually, if you asked the crew told the crew you needed something, it would be more helpful.

 

Molly Geoghegan (22:51)

Yeah. Right.

 

Yeah, totally. It's a collaborative effort, people. I think people do have that tendency to shy away. They're like, I'm gonna ask something dumb or the crew's too busy. Whereas actually if you asked the crew or told the crew you needed something, it would be more helpful. ⁓

 

Cameron Magee (23:11)

I know you've kind of integrated that into like the name itself of your company, the ethos of, you know, the guy from the crew. Talk to us about like what Avad means and how like, how you kind of keep that at the forefront.

 

Molly Geoghegan (23:11)

I know you've kind of integrated that into the name itself of your company with the ethos of the guy from the crew. Talk to us about what Avad means and how you kind of keep that at the forefront.

 

Cameron Magee (23:22)

Yeah, our company Avad 3, the name, the root of the name Avad is Hebrew for surf. And then we put the three on the end for audio, video and lighting. Those are kind of the people say AV, but there's an L at the end for lighting, audio, video and lighting. And I just believe I was, I was born, I was created to surf.

 

Molly Geoghegan (23:32)

Yeah.

 

Cameron Magee (23:40)

⁓ And the best leaders, the best books on leadership, the people that I want to follow, they're servants too. ⁓ And so I believe that we're all created to serve. Even a quarterback of a team is serving their team by leading them. And so I'm super big on service. ⁓ Our industry, the hospitality industry has kind of forgotten about hospitality in a lot of ways, sadly. ⁓ And we're super big on it here at Avod 3.

 

⁓ so yeah, that's just a little bit about kind of my heart and our brand and our culture and the type of people that we hire. ⁓ I was talking to a producer yesterday and it was our first time working with this producer and they've been with us. We're on day two of load in or whatever. And they, ⁓ they pulled me aside and they said, wow, every person on this crew is so humble and kind and genuine. And, ⁓ you know, how did you find this many? Cause it's a big crew. We're loading into me. This is a.

 

Our average crew size is like eight, but this show's like 48, like it's a bigger one. And he said, how'd you find so many people? And I don't wanna say this disrespectfully on the air, but I said something to the extent of like, well, pruning, know, like if they're not, we get rid of them quick, you know, like you just, we don't really tolerate it, you know? And it's amazing how that energy creates a culture on every crew, not just a culture on our team, but a culture on the

 

Molly Geoghegan (24:50)

Mm-hmm

 

Cameron Magee (25:00)

that even someone coming in who may be a little grumpy, because a lot of these events are long hours, they get around us, they get around other crew members that we've curated this kind of can-do attitude here to serve was the speech I gave for the crew. ⁓ It's infectious and it really works. Yeah. It's such an atypical job and I'm just thinking about other industries and spaces like working at a restaurant is an atypical job, working crazy hours.

 

Mikey Mioduski (25:16)

It is. ⁓

 

Molly Geoghegan (25:17)

Mm-hmm, yeah. It's such an atypical job, and I'm just thinking about other industries