EventNewsDXB

Rudi Buchner: Three Monkeys & Dubai's Virtual Event Revolution

• W4 Podcast Studio • Season 1 • Episode 12

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🎙️ This week on the EventNewsDXB podcast, we’re joined by Rudi Buchner, co-founder of Three Monkeys, whose journey from a 10-year-old cable runner at a Pope’s visit in Bavaria to one of Dubai’s most innovative event producers is nothing short of remarkable.

⛑️ When the pandemic brought the industry to a halt, Rudi and his team didn't just pivot - they reimagined what virtual events could be. By applying broadcast-level production techniques and integrating features like AI-powered captioning, simultaneous translation, and sign language interpretation, they helped set a new standard for corporate communication.

🎧 In this episode, Rudi shares how they scaled up his busines to run four event broadcast control rooms simultaneously, the art of transforming corporate executives into virtual stage pros and the brand challenge of being too good at virtual - only to have clients forget their creative roots in experiential and exhibition design.

It’s a fascinating conversation filled with insight, resilience and a vision for a more sustainable future in events.

Production Credits:

Presented by: Ian Carless
Studio Engineer & Editor: Roy D'Monte
Executive Producers: Ian Carless & Joe Morrison
Produced by: EventNewsDXB & W4 Podcast Studio

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Speaker 2:

Event News DXB. I'm Ian Carlos and each week I'll bring you the behind-the-scenes, inside stories from the people shaping one of the world's most dynamic event markets. This week, we're joined by a true innovator in the world of experiential marketing Rudy Buchner. Rudy is the founder of Three Monkeys, a creative agency, probably best known for their work delivering virtual events during the pandemic. Known for their work delivering virtual events during the pandemic. In his own words, rudy's goal is simple to find technical solutions to make concepts become reality. A Dubai resident since 2008, rudy brings a unique perspective on how events can go beyond the ordinary to truly connect with audiences. Rudy, welcome to the podcast. Hey, ian, pleasure being here. I'm going to do what we do with all the guests with the initial question and that's pretty much start at the beginning how did you get into the event?

Speaker 3:

industry. Well, I was a I think 10-year-old guy in a rural town in Bavaria, Germany, and I was acquired by the local TV station as a cable hand. I mean, think about that right now, outrageous right. But I had a lot of fun there, I enjoyed it and I enjoyed basically this show, which was the Pope in my Hometown. Oh, wow. And I was just totally fascinated by what happened there in the dynamics between the stage and the audience, and I was hooked. That's that.

Speaker 2:

So then, fast forward a little bit there from the age of 10. How did you end up in Dubai, well?

Speaker 3:

I was sitting in a very, very boring control room in an exhibition center in Germany doing some video work there, and I had a conversation with my now business partner, mark Mikula, and he was kind of hey, I'm looking for a tech director for a new company in Dubai, how about you come? Well, I came, worked there for some time and then the two of us founded Three Monkeys. And well, that's by now also quite a long time ago, so Three Monkeys since 2008.

Speaker 2:

Forgive me, but if people weren't aware of you before COVID hit, then for sure by the time we were a few months into COVID, I think you'd have to be hiding under a rock, certainly in the event industry, not to have heard of Three Monkeys. How surreptitious and I hate to say this because it's probably you know not that you'd wish that scenario ever again in our entire lifetime, but how surreptitious was that confluence of events that COVID happened and you had three monkeys there almost ready and waiting.

Speaker 3:

Well, at the end it was kind of a lucky coincidence for us on one side because we didn't play a lot to knowledge that we had in the company from where we were coming from. All of this broadcast tv, early streaming stuff that we did like in the 2000s was never really called upon in this market. So we didn't do a lot of that stuff but we had the knowledge.

Speaker 3:

So, covid, hit and we started to do puc of that stuff. But we had the knowledge. So COVID hit and we started to do POCs between our living rooms in the lockdown to find out how are we doing that nowadays, how can we make that a corporate product? And so we kicked it off and we started communicating it at some point and there was obviously a need for it in the market. So Three Monkeys became a name for virtual events, but on the other end, three Monkeys was in the market. So Three Monkeys became a name for virtual events, but on the other end, three Monkeys was in the market by far longer as someone who produces activations, interactives, exhibitions, shows, et cetera, et cetera. But at that point we were just really at the point of what people needed.

Speaker 2:

So was that and I hate to say this word again, but so for that, for you, was that a pivot?

Speaker 3:

Oh gosh it was a pivot in multiple regards at the end, because, first of all, okay, completely new line of business, not seen. Okay, nice, that was the first pivot. How do we get that to work? How do we make that stable? How do we make that as flexible as possible to cater for the specific Middle East touch of the market? Where's the bow, where's the never seen before? Where's the extra? Where's the special thing about it? So that was an interesting part. The other interesting part kicked in once. We've been doing it for some time and it was very successful Because we were sitting there and like, oh, we are doing back-to-back events now, really In a kind of close one, the next rehearsal, which we usually don't have and a company our size would not be ready to do in in an in-person environment.

Speaker 3:

So it went into okay, how do we make our work more efficient without losing our creative edge, the reason why people were coming to us all along. So it was about finding out a lot about workflows, about work processes, about optimization, looking how does broadcast really do it? How do they, with the small crews that are in museums right now, manage to get 24-hour program out, adopting methodologies and technologies that are coming from other industries, also ideas from other industries, to enable us to do the quantity of work that we did, how difficult of a sell was.

Speaker 2:

It was the whole idea of virtual events during that time. I mean, clearly, you know, for some clients I imagine it was a no-brainer and it was something that they eagerly wanted to do. But equally, I imagine that there was perhaps a little reluctance on the part of others who may have been far used to doing in-person events.

Speaker 3:

Well, it started off with a client telling us you need to do monkey magic for virtual events. It's too boring. So that was kind of one of the real kickoff points. If I look back at, I was doing up to five sales calls a day explaining our methodology of producing virtual events. Methodology of producing virtual events.

Speaker 3:

Yes, there was reluctancy because people had to understand that a virtual event workflow is not the same as an in-person workflow. It goes with. I mean, we all heard it enough. How does the remote caller come in? How is the remote caller, the remote speaker, presented in the best possible way? How do we create engagement? How do we create the wow factors that any client wants?

Speaker 3:

How is that differentiating from out-of-the-box solutions, for example, that were on the market very fast, from people like Zoom or Microsoft Teams? What's the special thing about it? Why would we go to a company called Remonkeys providing a control room in Dubai? And I mean we implemented things before Teams or Zoom even thought about it. We had AI-based closed captioning, human-based closed captioning. We had Simtrans integrations in-house via DLC helping us out, as well as remote Simtrans. We did ASL integration in our programs. So we did a lot of stuff. Basically, that is now a standard in what we know as Teams, and that was the actual edge. It was also a selling point for many people to see OK, we can add an additional value to this program and we can make that and that was the breaking point at the end People understanding that we are producing actually a corporate TV program here for them.

Speaker 2:

I was just going to pick up on that, because my background is actually broadcast television as well and I think you know you mentioned a very salient point at the beginning that the, you know, designing a virtual event is very different to designing an in-person event and for me, you know, the similarities between any type of broadcast event are enormous, I mean almost duplicated. Was that the kind of approach that you took?

Speaker 3:

That definitely was the approach. So we were looking at okay, how do I get a TV show running and being exciting for the audience? Because our corporate program there is nothing else than a TV show. We're just not utilizing all the big, expensive tech that a TV broadcaster might have available. But okay, then BBC started using Skype many years ago, so forget about it.

Speaker 3:

It's the same stuff Adopting the methodology of getting a story-centric approach into a TV show and make it interesting for the audience. Don't overwhelm, don't make it too content heavy, don't make it too hard for people to follow. Make it interesting, make it informative. Kick the key messages out. And there comes the point again that discussions about what's the key messages that we need to transport in the broadcast is by far more intense on a virtual event than it is for an in-person event, because there are people who rely much more also on this wow, what's going on around me, oh, big screen, big audio and all of that than what you can put on a two-dimensional screen, which it is at the end where you have your audience.

Speaker 2:

How difficult was it in terms of the people that you were actually not going to say running events, but were the speakers and the people that you were doing the events for? Because obviously in broadcast television, you know everybody, that's their job, that's what they do when you've got hosts on stage and performers on stage. They've done this before. This isn't their first rodeo. But for many companies in particular, you know, we have sometimes some very inexperienced people up there in front of the microphone, in front of the camera. How big of a challenge was that? A big one.

Speaker 3:

How did you get around it? We created this job function Stage Manager, virtual Events and that kicked off with we had multiple stages of rehearsals with people. So the first one was purely technical. So, do you have a proper microphone? Do you have a proper camera? Do you have a proper microphone? Do you have a proper camera? Do you have a proper light? How can we enhance what you have without making a studio and making it too complicated and too expensive for the purpose?

Speaker 3:

Then, in the same rehearsal okay, how's the framing? Are you having a proper framing against your background? Are you halfway having a decent level of your head? Are you visible? Is something shadowing in? How are you behaving? Yeah, do we see your hands? We want to see your hands, we want to have expression from you. So a little bit of acting advice. Maybe at that point you already filter out people that are just kind of no, I cannot do that, I don't want to do that. Okay, good, I mean, it's. Mean, it's your show, it's your corporate messaging that you're doing.

Speaker 3:

And then in an offline rehearsal that was most of the time run by the corporations or the agencies that took care of them themselves, was kind of the okay, how do we get your presentation to the point. This broadcast format is less forgiving than a big, impressive stage. When it comes to boring PowerPoint, I agree. You need to come to the point faster and you need to make it more compact at the end Again, sometimes people listened and we had good outcomes. Sometimes people just did their seven points fiber chart graphs and it was maybe not that interesting for the audience.

Speaker 3:

And then the last thing was interaction. So interaction as in how do I come in, how do I get out of this show? So the process that the stage manager would take care of in a real event and in terms of interview situation or in terms of panel discussions, what's your head orientation to make this entire thing look connected? Also, you're sitting in completely different venues, so a lot, of, a lot of time spent on rehearsing with people, and it was even worse when we started doing green screen, obviously. So we had corporate employees in green screen and it was always very interesting to get to the point with them at this level.

Speaker 2:

I can imagine green screens are not an easy medium to work in at the best of times, but when you've got a lot of inexperienced people in front of it, yeah, that can be fun. Yes, it was definitely Now. You mentioned, obviously you had all the sort of ingredients in place, and I know by the end of sort of as COVID was coming to an end, I think you'd mentioned that you had two facilities, one in Dubai and one in California. How did you manage scaling during that period? Actually, let me ask two questions that period of super busyness for want of a better word that you had, how long was that and how did you manage scaling the business during that time?

Speaker 3:

There was one aspect With one control room you can cater only for that much. So we had in the warehouse in dubai we had a total of four control rooms so we could produce four shows at the same time, wow. Or link all of that stuff together and become a broadcast unit that could handle 144 remote callers at a time. Wow Could handle, obviously, four completely different program outputs as well. So different program flavors. One might go on an audience on LinkedIn, the other one is a paid content, stuff like that, content stuff like that.

Speaker 3:

And well, we, we had huge staff efforts that we had to undertake. So calling all the friends in the av companies most of them were luckily not too busy. So hey, I need another audio engineer. Hey, you're a video guy, can you, can you come over and we teach you something and you might run that for us. So we basically acquired people from the industry and and had them working in our control room Staffing agencies. Some of them hearing me now will be like oh gosh, yes, I remember Rudy calling for more stage managers for his virtual stage managing. It was maniac. So we didn't increase our core staff. We basically hired from the market at that point.

Speaker 3:

Which must have been very welcome at that time, as well, exactly, it was not difficult to get people at the end yeah so it was kind of call them and do a quick test check whether they understand the mix minus or whether they understand how a good picture looks like, and give them the flow and make them understand how this virtual event product, from our perspective, needs to work to make it professional.

Speaker 2:

Now I think you know I'm probably not alone in saying that there must have been a fair amount of event professionals looking on during that time with a certain amount of envy, obviously, at how busy you guys were. Was the attitude during that time somewhat of a? You know, let's make hay while the sun shines? This covid probably isn't going to last forever. Obviously you as a business owner would hope that the viability for virtual events would continue, but I'm sure there must have been a little question mark in there that once in-person events comes back there would be a dip. So I guess the question is twofold. Again, you know how much of an attitude. Was it right? You know what, if it takes 24 hours, seven days a week during this period, that's what we're going to do. And then, how did you plan for the eventuality of the return of in-person events?

Speaker 3:

Okay, I mean there was quite a lot of regulars coming up in this game for us with virtual events, so there was no saying no. Very simple Did we plan for what's happening after that? Well, retrospectively, we didn't plan enough. We had this thought of okay, what our control room does, we can put it on wheels, we can break it up in a different way and we can make that available for hybrid productions, which is what we started doing in 2022.

Speaker 3:

And again, especially for the regulars in the UAE as well as in the US, it was a very viable market.

Speaker 3:

What turned out to be a bit of a downside for 3Monkeys was, like, we've been in this market doing interactives, activations, exhibitions, show content plus broadcast. All of a sudden, the market only saw us oh, that's the virtual monkeys, they are doing this broadcast stuff. So, in at the end of 2022, I was sitting with mark miko and we were like, okay, we, we really need to do active acquisition for the other areas now, because we, we are not, we are not recognized in the market anymore for what we've been doing the past eight years before that right. So it took us actually really until last year to get back in all of the market segments that we covered before COVID. So I mean, as I said, we didn't think about that. It was kind of, it was successful, we were doing it steam on and we didn't think people would forget that we are a great company to work with for an exhibition stand doing interactives, but people forgot we are a great company to work with for an exhibition stand doing interactives, but people forgot.

Speaker 2:

I think they were so enamored by what we were doing in the virtual space. Clearly, yes. So, leading on from that, how do you see the industry now? I mean, how much of a drop-off was there on the virtual side of business and where are we now, would you say, in terms of the event industry and its health?

Speaker 3:

Well, in sum, I think this virtual event phase added a component to the industry that especially in the.

Speaker 3:

Middle East was not present beforehand, and it makes total sense to have this component because it gives you more reach. It has a sustainability component. It does a lot of things that in-person only event cannot do. If you use it strategically and correct, you are a big enterprise. You have I don't know how many 10,000 of employees. You do an internal gig. It's a perfect way for internal communication, for example. So there was a learning curve in the industry, but the industry as such, the way we produce events, has not changed. It is just another component.

Speaker 3:

What I see is that since COVID, with all this work from home flexibility and with having a tad of an easier life for some time as an event professional, there is a new demand in the employee range, in in everyone that I that I meet on a regular basis. It's the the quest for can we, as event professionals, have a better work-life balance as well? I mean everyone is talking about is where are we? It looks like the events industry doesn't give us the chance to have that, and that is a field where we actually come back to what we did with this virtual events as well, because we had to so massively work on our efficiency, on the way we do things in that period, which was, for sure, not good for work-life balance at all. But we had to work on this methodologies, on this thinking to make things happen.

Speaker 3:

And and I took that for the past few years and was thinking about okay, what is it that makes work-life balance in the events industry so difficult? You cannot blame your boss, you cannot blame your client for that. It's an overall construct that you need to look at. So we did a lot of interviews with people from really different areas in the events industry, from a talent manager to someone who is a techie, to someone who is taking care of catering so, basically, individuals in the event industry taking care and specializing in different things, kind of collecting. What is it that they are stressed out about? What is it that they are lacking to have a better work-life balance in this entire game?

Speaker 3:

possibly, yeah and there was okay in the first place. That was a nice repository and a framework of okay what would be needed to make it better. But if you try to fulfill that, it doesn't lead you anywhere because it's too individual at some points. So we started asking this typical enterprise question how do you get efficiency via technology, in layman terms, a piece of software that makes my life easier in the process of event ideation, planning, production.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

And the results that we got from that little survey was that 83% are using generic software. Well, yeah, I know we are all dying in Excel and PowerPoint, but most of them are also super unhappy with their software packages. So we concluded that there is no tech support for event people, despite event tech startups booming after COVID, it looks like these products don't hit the really, and the base thought behind it is that technology support would possibly create a more efficient way of working and increased efficiency is good for your work-life balance. But hey, business owner, it's also good for your bottom line Because it reduces mistakes and it makes at the end end for a better outcome against your customer.

Speaker 3:

Well, and that is when we started working on a little software that's called Snow White, which is claiming elevate efficiency, minimize stress and it's meant to be a life cycle event. Life cycle tool for the entire life cycle of an event. Right, tool for the entire lifecycle of an event. Still only existing as a wireframe, nothing to sell here. But it's kind of one of these outcomes of COVID for me personally, because I would never have thought about that before.

Speaker 2:

How much of your time are you spending on that right now? I mean, you mentioned it's still only a wireframe, but is this something that you see as a viable business?

Speaker 3:

model. Well, I did the financial model for this product and I think it's viable. So I'm spending approximately, I would say, like 50% of my time on Snow White in the moment, especially now that we just started investor communication. So we are officially in the fundraising round. Here we go, 55-year-old German in Dubai, getting co-founder of a startup and trying to get seed money. So, yeah, I think it's something that could really really change the market. It could really change the way people are working events and really do something good for the people working in the industry, and how would that work?

Speaker 2:

I mean, if you're able to tell us how would that work in actuality. So what is the physical product at the end?

Speaker 3:

The physical product is a web-based product at the end. The physical product is a web-based software at the end. It's a sas product and every stakeholder of the event, depending on what his role is, has access to all the information about this event, which is one of the key factors. Is information accessible? Is it possibly drowning in some email that I never saw? No, here it is relevant because it's per role and it is accessible at any given point in time, no matter where you are, as long as you have internet At the same time. That means that all of this data that is generated there creates a wonderful knowledge base. It creates something that is continuous learning and improvement for a company for an individual.

Speaker 3:

And if we drive that further, we are coming to this wonderful buzzword, ai. Ai is great. Yeah, I use JetGPT, I use Copilot 365. It helps me getting texts done, it helps me researching stuff, but that's only the tip of the iceberg when we're talking about ai.

Speaker 3:

what we are talking with snow white is an ai solution that is sector specific, it's event specific, it's company specific. That means it adopts the way the software is interacting with you because it knows how your company does things and it can analyze the problems that you are having in your event production as a company. And it can go down up to the individual level where certain user behaviors and information is basically customized towards the individual user. And that is the great target here.

Speaker 2:

That sounds really interesting because I know from my experience in events that you know, as you said, information is key, and in an industry where detail matters so much, you know, information can often get lost or bottlenecked at certain points, can't it? And you know, as much as we'd like to try and employ the best people in the world, sometimes, you know, ourselves included, we all have our failings, we all miss stuff from time to time. So this sounds like something that could absolutely fill that gap.

Speaker 3:

I'm sure it will fill that gap. It was one of the key outcomes of all these conversations that we had. It's information transparency in all directions. It doesn't matter whether I'm in the crew and I'm a techie. I need to have that information. Only relying that my crew chief gives me the information often enough is one of the sources of errors. Yeah, and no disrespect to the crew chief here. So at the end, it is about transparency, it is about accessibility and it's about drawing right conclusions, having good conclusions from what we did in the past in order to get better in the future.

Speaker 2:

Now I wanted to ask you this as somebody who's worked in the broadcast industry as well as the event industry, like myself. I often look at the two industries and I look at my experience in the broadcast industry and I think, yeah, we've got a lot of moving parts, don't we? And I look at the event industry and think, oh my, wow, you've got probably even more moving parts than we do. I think the difference I see is and please do correct me if your experience is different my experience has been certainly in the broadcast industry that everybody seems to know what they're doing. When I go out into the event field it's like herding cats. Maybe I've just been to some very badly run events. Who knows? There's probably a whole host of event managers out there now, right, the hurling stuff at the uh at the screen I 100 agree with the statement.

Speaker 3:

I think, uh, in in the event scenario, you have a couple of factors that in a broadcast environment you don't have, and that is your live audience. So you're dealing massively with human beings, yes, and the second part of the human being is your if you're a corporate, if you're an agency, the people who are actually paying you to do the job. I mean, how many great ideas have all of us event professionals heard five minutes before the event that need to be implemented? You to do the job. I mean, how many great ideas have all of us event professionals heard five minutes before the event that need to be implemented? This kind of factor, yeah, if the editor-in-chief comes around the corner in in the galleria and says we need to change that quickly, it's similar but it doesn't have the same impact, because here it's the person who's actually paying you to do that job, asking you which makes for much more possible chaos and moving around like a headless chicken to fix something that one is fixing now, and I mean now.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for that, yeah, so I just want to go back a little bit. Obviously, the whole topic of well-being is on everybody's lips at the moment, I think across the globe, and I think it's very encouraging to see more people paying attention to it in our industry. How have you managed your own well-being during this period I mean, for example, during that whole COVID period where it was just literally 24-7, how do you manage yourself?

Speaker 3:

Well, at the end, it's still my passion. So, no matter how much it takes, it's my passion. That's behind there. I'm passionate about events. That means I don't feel it that hard, but I can see it on crew, I can see it on employees and I think the measure really is this wonderful word work management.

Speaker 3:

To start with, it is about okay. You cannot go on and on and on in an indefinite loop. You need to see where do you build in the, the rest phase, where do you build in, uh, the off time, even possibly during the production of a single event. I mean it's always this kind of okay. We event people need to run through for the next 16 hours. Yeah, hold on. There is a work management component that we are missing out on. How could we possibly schedule ourselves better? How do we make our work at the end more bearable by structuring it better? How do we make our work at the end more bearable by structuring it better? The events industry is still quite brute force. There is not a lot of thinking about how do I make things more efficient? Maybe how can I build faster, because I only have four hours to rig this LED wall in, but not how to make it more efficient, necessarily Efficient in the context of not only time-saving, but also in terms of manpower and resource well-being aspects. In other markets, it's highly regulated.

Speaker 3:

I mean, it's always a pleasure to work in the US and have the union sitting behind you telling you you have to go home now. Okay, I go home, Not happening here, obviously, but as we don't have one of these hard structures and I'm not voting for hard structures here at all, because it kills part of the creative process at times as well but having the responsibility within companies to take care of their own and make sure, okay, if I can foresee it's a 16-hour shift, please. There must be a chance that we double crew or at least 1.5 crew to give people a bit of a rest in a sequence. It's about simple things, especially in the on-site work. Where's the lunch break? Where is the bio break for the front of house staff during the event? You know stuff like that If you start thinking about it. It's very, very small steps to start with, but they have an impact.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a happy crew is a well-fed crew. Indeed. Before we wrap up, Rudy, I've been asking all my guests this I'm a bit of a music fan. I think most of us are. What's on your turntable right now? What do you listen to? Motorhead. Okay.

Speaker 3:

Definitely my all-time favorite, no question about it. And it stays in this music genre with groups like Fuzzstones, so indie, indie rock, psychedelic rock stuff as well. Fantastic. And it stays in this music genre with groups like Fast Stones, so indie rock, psychedelic rock stuff as well.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. Yeah, I would say you can tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. And no judgment there whatsoever. Everybody listens to. You know entirely what they want to, entirely what they want to. Just to finish, give me the judgment now. Oh no, I like a bit of motorhead myself all right just to wrap up. What are you looking forward to over the next few years, then, for both yourself and three monkeys?

Speaker 3:

I think one of the most important things for me is to see, uh, that we are getting for three monkeys as a this differentiation between the different fields that we are working in back. It's also a well-being factor. If you always do virtual events, it's tiring. If we start building new gadgets for an exhibition, it's engaging. So, getting that back to where we've been before COVID to 100% we are on the way, which is great.

Speaker 3:

Keep on doing work around the globe, which was always what Slimonkeys was doing, and getting that back to a high extent as well, because COVID took a little bit of a dive there as well. Developing new talent, especially developing new Emirati talent in the design space, is something that we are very eager to do. We have a cooperation with the university and I want to see more good people coming out of that. We had fantastic people coming in, so I hope that that really goes ahead and, for the overall events sector, I would hope that we find a better way of dealing with our sustainability problem. The efforts are there, these papers that we hand in. At times they are not worth the things that we are writing on in many regards.

Speaker 3:

I would hope that we take the topic more serious and that we also get the support from our clients to work more sustainable, which might mean that some materials cost a tad more than the cheap non-sustainable materials.

Speaker 2:

You know what? I couldn't agree more, Rudy. It's been fantastic having you on the Event News DXB podcast. Thank you for joining me.

Speaker 3:

Well, thank you for that. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 2:

Event News. Dxb was presented by myself, Ian Carlos. The studio engineer and editor was Roy DeMonte. The executive producer was myself and Joe Morrison. Thank you.