Bridging Cultures at Live Events the Wordly Way with Kirk Hendrickson

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Welcome to the Event Pro show, your ultimate guide to the world of corporate

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events. Whether you're a corporate event planner, experiential marketing

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pro, producer, technician, or anyone involved in creating exceptional

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events, this podcast is your go to resource for valuable insights,

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expert tips and inspiring stories from the industry's leading professionals.

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Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Event Pro Show. I am

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your host, Seth Macchi. I'm the CEO of lemg. We're an event production

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company based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. But we do corporate

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event productions all over the country and I'm very excited about

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this week's guest. As you know, every other week I have an

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expert that touches corporate events, among other things that

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I think that you, if you don't know about them already, you need to

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know. And so today's guest is definitely making

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waves all over events and other markets.

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Today's guest is Kurt Hendrickson. He's an entrepreneur and

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COO and co founder of

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Wordly, the platform transforming live events and conferences with automated

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real time translation in many languages. With a

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strong history of scaling early stage companies to successful exits, he brings

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deep expertise in product strategy, operations and

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customer development. Kirk's leadership is helping redefine how

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event organizers create accessible multilingual experiences

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for audiences around the world. Kirk Henriksen, welcome to

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the show. Well, thank you for having me, Seth. I'm really glad to be here.

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Yes. And I'm very excited. I have had lots

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of guests, but I think your product is amazing

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and in a setup for my first question, I'll just go through a few

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stats here that I know of and there's a bunch. But

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it just was your six year anniversary, correct? You guys have been around

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six years. You've been on the Inc. 5000 list. Now

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it's one of the fastest growing companies in America and including one of the

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fastest growing software companies.

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You've been used at IMAX America 2025

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and I think previous years you have surpassed 3,000

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customers. You have over 4 million users in more than

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60 countries. I could go on, but here's my question.

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What is Wordly? Well, Wordly is a platform

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for providing real time simultaneous live caption and

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translation. 100% powered by artificial intelligence

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for your in person meetings, your virtual meetings, any type

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of meeting event that you have. It's used globally by

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as you mentioned, companies ranging from Fortune 100 to

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the United nations to your small church around

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the corner. We're used all over to provide this great

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language translation and interpretation solution that just

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allows anybody to now no longer have language as a barrier which

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when communicating, that's fantastic. And I know

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this is always, you know, as an event

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production company we deal with this a lot, especially

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international companies need some sort of service. But

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even just for accessibility, this always comes up just, you know, there are people

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that might need to read what's going on or different, different uses

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and what. When you showed it to me, when we met each

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other, we met each other at WEC in St. Louis and just

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on the floor there, you showed it to me on a phone and it was

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like so powerful and accessible and easy to use

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that it just seemed like a no brainer of like a, a

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something in the market. Now that is solving a problem. That's been a pain point.

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But as far as you. I'm going to back

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up before I get into Wordly because I want to. I have a few specific

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questions about worthy but you're

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obviously an entrepreneur. Were you always an

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entrepreneur? Is that something that developed over, over your career?

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I would say it probably is something that developed over my career

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and I've always seen myself less is about necessarily

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being an entrepreneur as more about interested in

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how can I help solve problems, real problems. And

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one of the challenges that I found when I worked for really big companies like

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Boeing, PricewaterhouseCoopers and I would solve problems. I mean it was

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really cool building airplanes and designing wings for airplanes and

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things like that. But you did a little bit of the problem.

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And as I started working for smaller companies, I got to

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solve more of people's problems and I got to influence

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what problems we were solving. And so, so as I said, it's, it's. I've

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evolved into being an entrepreneur because I love to help

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understand what the issues are that people are having and how we

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can develop solutions that will really make their lives better,

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frankly. And, and so, and I, the more I

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can contribute the, the more I enjoy it. Which has led me to

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getting into earlier and earlier stage companies to the point where I

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founded a previous company before Wordly and in the market research world.

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I then was a co founder with my co founders

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Lakshman Rothnam and Jim Furby for Wordly

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just because this was a fascinating problem that I wanted to

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solve for the world. How to make it so that people could actually speak with

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each other even though they don't speak the same language.

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Right, right. And now with AI all of a sudden things

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open up and you start seeing possibilities

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and are you, would you say you're more of like a

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hands on founder or are you more of like the visionary, like you're always 10

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years ahead. What's your style? Or are you both? Do you play in both worlds?

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So, so you do have to be a bit of both. I mean there's definitely

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the classic visionary founder that, that's not me. I

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generally probably tend more towards being the hands on person

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because as I said I like understanding like what are the problems that

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people are having? How can I actually help solve those problems?

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And sometimes that's being a visionary to see beyond what is

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available today. Sometimes that's a little more, you know,

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how do I actually physically make it possible for

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you to be able to get the translation in real time on your phone?

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You know, so, so there's, I have to bridge that gap. But yeah, I probably,

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I'm probably a little more biased towards the hands on piece. That's one of the

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reasons I run our sales team, I run our customer success, I run all over

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customer support is because I like to be in the trenches and

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making that happen. Right. I think both

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sides too though require a ton of creativity. It's

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just it comes out in a different way. It requires you to see things in

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a way that other people don't believe in it in a way that people

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can't see. You know, it all kind of requires a ton

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of creativity which is inspiring to me. And also why you

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mentioned big company versus little company, you know, that's why I love

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small businesses. You get to look at the entire value chain and have influence

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on it instead of just a tiny little bit which

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to me always from a little kid, you know, I wanted, I wanted to

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do a different thing every day. And so if that's, you

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get into small businesses, startups, those type of things because you will be doing something

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different every day. And when you know

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like that sounds like how what you

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are, what you're describing there and you were talking about solving problems.

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So when you started wordly, what were the problems you were trying to

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solve? You know, as you looked at the, the market.

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So we explored a lot of different areas related

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to wordly and we found that, you know, events were a big,

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really big opportunity because really what we were trying to solve with a, was

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a math problem and the math problem was really simple and that is

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human interpretation is really good but

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it's really expensive and it doesn't scale. If you want to

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say for instance, like today wordly supports 67 languages

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simultaneously. If you wanted to actually support 67 languages, I mean

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you've been in AV forever, how many sound boosts Would have that been, especially

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back in 2019, how much infrastructure would be involved?

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How many people? You have to have two interpreters for switching on and

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off. I mean, to support that, even imagining just five languages,

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right? Or. Yeah, and I'll give a little context for that example. Even one.

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One or two languages. So doing. We used to do these

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shareholder conventions for a global company. We'd have to set. First

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of all, we'd have to have a footprint in the arena for

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a bunch of booths that we set up. And then each one had to have,

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you know, headphones and some sort of mixer. They had to have

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soundproofing in it. They each had to hear a mix, and then they

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each had microphones, and they all were going separate places. All of

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that infrastructure is expensive. Then they're physical people. And

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as we know, labor is very expensive. You know, talent's very expensive

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having people doing it. And it was a very challenging problem

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to solve just for a few languages.

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Oh, absolutely. And one of the things that we. We always like to think

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about is that the demand for interpretation

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far exceeded the supply of interpreters that were out there.

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So when we. When we look at AI solutions today, you know, see,

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sometimes people, they get. People get a little scared about the AI, you know,

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what's AI going to do to my job, etc. And the reality

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is that the need for this was just so much more than

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professional interpreters could possibly provide.

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And as a result, you know, when we started, we would often,

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we would be going to an event and they would

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ask us, okay, well, well, we always deliver in Japanese. We already have our

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Japanese interpreters, but we get demands for 10 other languages. Can you do those

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10? So we, you know, go in and do the other 10 languages.

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And that would be that. That was kind of actually a

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decent amount of our business in 2019. Or there was the.

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You know, we're a small event and we have an international audience and they really

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need it. And what we've told them in the past is bring your own interpreters.

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Doesn't always work out very well. The person's. You hear all this

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whispering in the back of the room. It's effectively whisper interpretation.

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This could solve that problem because, you know, we just can't afford to have our

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own interpreters and hire the interpreters and do all that. So

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now we've created something that. Where it's not just the biggest

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conferences, the plenary sessions, all the breakout

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sessions could use this. All the small conferences can use this. I mean,

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we literally work with your local church that has a tiny budget because

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they have a new family that's joined their congregation that needs. That

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speaks a different language, and they want to be able to

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have that family join their flock. So, you know,

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it's such an amazing tool where we've dramatically

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expanded people's ability to have language

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access. It just simply, you know, wasn't there before and was done

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only in very specific events. So it

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started as kind of supplemental. And then I. I would imagine people

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saw how easy it was to deploy, and then it started becoming the

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primary. But when. When you were

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launching it at the beginning, what were some of the early, like,

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challenges that. That you didn't see that you had to kind of work

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through? And I'll give you one to start with.

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Here's one I'm thinking of. And it might not. It's not a technical challenge.

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We have clients that. I can already hear the argument, and

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you might have already solved this with them, but I would hear,

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we don't want anything like that because all of our data is

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sensitive and translation has to be perfect. You know, we have a lot of

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technical language. You know, these are the type. You know, it's either

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proprietary information, scared about, you know, security,

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or translation will just be wrong because we use a lot of acronyms. We use

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a lot of technical language. So I imagine those were those some initial

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challenges. I mean, those were definitely some things that would be. Would be brought

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up that we had. It was, I would say the biggest

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challenge, frankly, was that people just

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simply didn't believe you could do it. Oh, right. I

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mean, that was it. It was very fundamental. It's like, I don't believe

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it. That's one of the reasons why, if you ever schedule, like, a demonstration

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to see this and like what we did in St. Louis,

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I enter. I mean, I introduced myself, but I was showing you our product probably

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within a minute to two minutes of us. Maybe not even that. It was so.

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Maybe not even that. Because the only way to get through

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that is to say, no, it's real. It's here. There's

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a reason why we don't use pre recording and for my. For our

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sales team and we have them talk live. It's because you can see, oh, it

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really is responding live to what they're saying. Oh, it really is

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translating it live into Japanese, what we are saying. Right.

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And now today, people. More

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people pretty much believe that that's true. 2019

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blew their minds that you can. There's been a lot of

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mental shift in the whole market around AI

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too, since Then and I were you guys. Because this is all, this

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is pre chat GPT. Oh yeah, absolutely. AI craze. Right.

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So you guys kind of were right place, right time too. Right. In

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your positioning for people even embracing the technology

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as a whole. Yeah, so, so I, ironically

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the, the events industry itself has actually been always very receptive

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to this. They've the bench managers, the idea

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of wow, this has always been a problem for us. It's

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expensive, we know it prevents engagement and engagement is a

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huge part of what we're doing. We want to be more inclusive, we want to

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be more accessible. This really solves the problem. Usually,

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you know, the part that took a while was getting their clients to, you know,

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to believe this as well. Right. The event space though, I mean

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you've, you've, as you described, it's the, all the challenges and, and we

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saw this. It's amazing how easy it is to be

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able to use our solution, provide real time simultaneous

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interpretation into 67 languages. And so

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this is, you know, so it took

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us, it took us longer to get through the, to the client side

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of this. But you know, once, once we did once,

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once we do, you know, people just, oh, they can't

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believe that what it, what a difference this makes for them and

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how easy it is and how simple it is and how

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they can now have 60 breakout sessions running

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simultaneously with interpretation in all these languages

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and just not even worry about it. It's so simple. You turn it on in

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the morning, you turn it off at the end of the day and you're done.

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So let's talk about that. So

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two sides of your software. It's obvious it's a SaaS

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product. So but how do you deploy,

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how does the on site team deploy? So the technical team or the producer

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team, whatever you people define that as like

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the event managers, how do they deploy it to

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their attendees and then on the other side, how do the

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attendees or the users join and access and experience and

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benefit from it? So it's a two sided. Yeah, so I

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always love to start with the attendee experience because I think ultimately that's what we

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have to have is regard, you know, to a certain degree, regardless of what it

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takes on the, on the back end, it's that attendee experiences. It's

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really what matters for event professionals that we work with.

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And so there's three ways that people will typically interact with

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Wordly. The primary way is directly from their own phone. They scan a QR

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code or there's a link in the event app and you're now viewing

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it from your own phone. You can both read and listen in real time. So

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you don't. It's not just text, it's audio as well. The second way

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is that often in many events they'll put up a display in the

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room where they'll show wordly. Now you can have multiple languages.

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Like we work with a very well known

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hotel in Singapore. They'll put up four

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languages for example, because it's what happens

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to be the common languages in the region. Whereas other events like

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we work with the Dreamforce, they'll put up a single language on

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a cap on a, on a screen that often is about

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accessibility. When you're just putting that single language up there, you still should

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get translation through QR codes. But you'll put up the screen so you can

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be able to follow along. Like subtitles in a movie.

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Well, yeah, it's. And so it's just on a display they can see the. And

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then the third way is that many of our. For, for some of the more

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premier events depending on, on, you know, maybe this will

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be for the main stage or something. We'll work with the production team.

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So now it becomes a lower thirds type thing. So you can just, you know,

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embed the lower thirds. Sometimes it's just a single language, sometimes it's

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multiple languages. So we have a unique capability to make it really

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easy for you to embed. Like say for instance you could embed English and Spanish

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onto the, onto that lower third in your main stage.

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So those are typically that it's done by far by like

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99% of the time. It's done with the QR code on. Your phone

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for amazing. And so that's the attendee experience. Super easy.

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We don't require you to download an app. Everybody hates downloading apps,

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right? Yes. So, so we don't require that downloading apps.

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Don't give me another app, please. Yeah, any. Anytime. Someone in my

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internally says, oh, we could do this as an app.

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And I was like, no, it needs to be a web. It needs to be

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in the web browser. Because ultimately it's about the attendee experience in me

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making it easy to use. Now on the flip side, it's like, okay, what do

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you need to do as the AV production team to make it all work?

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So it comes down to in most conference rooms, you have

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your mixer, you bring in a laptop or tablet.

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That laptop or tablet goes to Wordly's website. You connect your

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mixer to the laptop or tablets and the audio from the mixer into

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Wordly and you're done. Done. I've

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set up 30 conference rooms in two hours. And

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you know, the, the usually the longest time was waiting for

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the right moment for the AV tech to be able to do the sound check

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because of course you got a million other things going on. So, you know. Yeah,

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but yeah, it's, it's. But once you've got their attention, it's like, it's easy, it's

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up and running. It's easy. It's up and running. You walk in, in the, as

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I said, you walk in in the morning, you turn onwardly. You generally, most

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of our clients will just let it run all day and then at the end

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of the day you turn it off. It will pause itself during breaks if

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it doesn't hear anybody speaking for about 10 minutes.

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And so you know, and then it will start back up as soon as it

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hears people speaking again. So all those things are just try to make it

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super easy for the event

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managers to be able to use Wordly and the AV teams to be able to

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use Wordly. Amazing. And this is just from my

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curiosity, are there integrations with common streaming platforms that you

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guys work with or does it embed?

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I don't know. These are just so we do support

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RTMPs and we are able to provide

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streaming. There's some, some are better than others,

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but it's, it's. That

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used to be a question that I could like give you pat, probably in 2022,

315
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but it's been a lot less these days. But the

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refocus on in person events has actually been delightful. And that's for

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real. That's for real. You know, minute it was all, all

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virtual and now it is a mix of it. But it's definitely

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just side note, I just think in person events are

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here to stay and there's something special about now. The

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format of them, it might get smaller or more boutique or you

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know, smaller but more, you know, spread out. All

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of them need language services and the fact that you can deploy

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it efficiently is a plus. I mean I just see

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you guys positioned really well in that space. But you know, this is the

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event space. But what were other some like some other surprising

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verticals or other industries entirely that embraced

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these services that maybe you weren't thinking about or maybe you were maybe like

329
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your beachhead market was events and then you branched out. But

330
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what's happened since? What are other markets that have opened up?

331
00:20:32,620 --> 00:20:36,340
Yeah, so so obviously we do events in person

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events, virtual events. We also then corporate

333
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meetings, executive briefing centers, those are

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the kind of things that, you know, we, we kind of knew. The three of

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us who founded this actually came from environments where we were thinking

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corporate meetings was going to be the place to be because I

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had been fairly recently working with a team in Shanghai

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and you know, their English was way better than my Chinese. But

339
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it was still a struggle. Right, right. Because you know, the we,

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the they were, they weren't necessarily hired for language

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skills. I wasn't hired for my Chinese language skills. And so we always

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had these, had these challenges and we see a lot of. So, so this was

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the same experience that, that we, that my, my colleagues had. It's just

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that turns out no one other than the executive

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suite in most of these companies was, was

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spending any money on interpretation. They just kind of said well, let's make it

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work. And so there was no budgets for it. Whereas on the other hand events,

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well, I mean, you know, boy, when you had to do it, it

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was expensive. And so there was often a lot of money, money

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already kind of set aside for it and a beggar recognition of the

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criticalness of that one event. Having language support versus

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say 52 meetings a year now that's changed. There's a better,

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much better recognition among enterprises. But in terms of

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other spaces that we work with, you know, we look at other

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verticals. So we work a lot in

356
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state, local and education in the U.S.

357
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government in Canada because of course it's a bilingual country.

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We. One of the wildest things that we

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applications was related to impound lots.

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So go to an impound lot in

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most cities in the United States

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and you now have someone who's trying to retrieve their car. Well, what if they

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don't speak English now? They

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don't have their car. It's a, it's a huge issue. And they

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literally can't talk to the person who they need to be able to communicate with

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to get their vehicle back. Right, right. So, so like, like I said these,

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all these applications, we never even

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considered that. Right. You know, yes, sure, sure. The city council meeting, that was

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like a kind of a no brainer. Like we, they need that. The county

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board of supervisor meeting. Sure. The city planning meeting. So you know, those,

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those types of things make sense that you would have it. But then that, you

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know, the impound lot, you know, we are working and we,

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we do work in a variety of other areas that one of the other

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growing areas is in houses of worship.

375
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So it's, I could see that for sure. Quite amazing.

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And then this is globally, it's not just in the US the,

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the that, you know, the houses of worship tend to want to,

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you know, be welcoming, increase their flocks. And so part of that is in a

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global, in the global world we're in is being able to allow,

380
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you know, bring people in who don't necessarily speak the same language that you do.

381
00:23:41,120 --> 00:23:44,840
Right, right. Amazing, amazing. So it's

382
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:48,440
all, it all makes sense when you, when you kind of reverse engineer

383
00:23:48,440 --> 00:23:51,760
it. Like these are people trying to communicate with other people

384
00:23:52,239 --> 00:23:54,880
efficiently, you know, and that, that does make sense.

385
00:23:56,000 --> 00:23:59,840
Oh, absolutely. I mean, ultimately, that's what we're trying to do is

386
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just make language

387
00:24:03,450 --> 00:24:07,210
no longer a barrier to communication. Right, right. And

388
00:24:07,210 --> 00:24:11,050
that, that's sort of the, that's our ultimate driving, driving vision here

389
00:24:11,210 --> 00:24:14,970
is let's make it so language is no longer a barrier. So

390
00:24:14,970 --> 00:24:18,570
that's the long term mission vision of wordly is

391
00:24:18,890 --> 00:24:22,650
just pulling that barrier down. Yes. And, you know, we

392
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look for more places we can do it and ways to make it

393
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even easier and make the experience even better. And

394
00:24:29,970 --> 00:24:33,250
ultimately we, we hope the experience is better. Back in 2019,

395
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you know, the, the audio piece was definitely not anywhere as good as it

396
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is now. The accuracy was definitely lower than it is now, but it still,

397
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it still worked. And you were. I was able to have conversations with people in

398
00:24:45,250 --> 00:24:48,730
Brazil and Japan using wordly. Now the

399
00:24:48,730 --> 00:24:52,330
conversations are even better. They're more fluid, they're. I, I

400
00:24:52,330 --> 00:24:56,150
don't have to ask quite as many times, could you repeat that? Because the

401
00:24:56,150 --> 00:24:59,990
answer came out very odd, but. Right. It's, you

402
00:24:59,990 --> 00:25:02,110
know, I literally have these conversations

403
00:25:04,670 --> 00:25:08,190
all the time with people all over the world in their own preferred language.

404
00:25:09,070 --> 00:25:12,710
What do you think wordly looks like in 10

405
00:25:12,710 --> 00:25:16,310
years? Like, if you can peek into the future and how it's being deployed and

406
00:25:16,310 --> 00:25:20,110
used and consumed, is it more of an integrated experience

407
00:25:20,190 --> 00:25:23,670
where people aren't even thinking about it as much? Or what does that look like?

408
00:25:24,060 --> 00:25:27,860
I mean, that's what I would love it to get

409
00:25:27,860 --> 00:25:31,660
to, is that it's more of, you know,

410
00:25:31,660 --> 00:25:35,420
you walk into your conference and you sort of have wordly inside that allows

411
00:25:35,420 --> 00:25:39,060
you to be able to see all the live captions, follow

412
00:25:39,060 --> 00:25:42,700
along with the language, listen along in the language of your choice.

413
00:25:43,420 --> 00:25:46,580
But I think that one of the things that we also have, you know, we

414
00:25:46,580 --> 00:25:49,740
also look at is how do we go beyond,

415
00:25:50,490 --> 00:25:53,450
beyond this. And part of this is that this is

416
00:25:54,090 --> 00:25:57,530
breaking down the language barrier is the first one of the key

417
00:25:57,530 --> 00:26:00,650
steps in allowing us to have meaningful and engaging

418
00:26:00,810 --> 00:26:04,490
conversations with everyone, regardless of what language

419
00:26:04,490 --> 00:26:08,330
they Speak. But now that we're having these meaningful, engaging conversations, you know,

420
00:26:08,330 --> 00:26:11,370
what's that next step? What's that next step in engagement and

421
00:26:12,890 --> 00:26:16,210
making meaning out of what we're doing? And so, and so that's one of the

422
00:26:16,210 --> 00:26:19,620
areas that we're definitely, you know, we, we think is going to be a part

423
00:26:19,620 --> 00:26:23,180
of Wordly in the next 10 years. When you think

424
00:26:23,180 --> 00:26:26,940
about, you know, you guys started it just six years ago and it's,

425
00:26:26,940 --> 00:26:30,660
I imagine it's been quite a roller coaster ride and journey as

426
00:26:30,660 --> 00:26:34,500
most companies are especially, you know, on a, the trajectory that

427
00:26:34,500 --> 00:26:38,220
you're on. But do you have like a most satisfying

428
00:26:38,220 --> 00:26:42,060
success story from a client that you share with people or something that just kind

429
00:26:42,060 --> 00:26:44,850
of brings you joy? That like, hey, we did that, we made that happen.

430
00:26:46,840 --> 00:26:50,400
So I actually go back. I, we do so many

431
00:26:50,400 --> 00:26:54,080
events that I'm just delighted that we support and are able to help

432
00:26:54,080 --> 00:26:57,800
people with. But I, I, the

433
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:02,200
most impactful event was one that we

434
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:05,840
did really early on and that was a event

435
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,680
for a major company. I can't mention who it was, but it was their sales

436
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:12,460
kickoff. And this was in 2019. So it

437
00:27:12,460 --> 00:27:16,300
was, it was December of 2019 and this was in

438
00:27:16,300 --> 00:27:19,980
person. This was still our first year in business. And they

439
00:27:19,980 --> 00:27:23,620
had brought us in because they standard delivered their translations

440
00:27:23,620 --> 00:27:26,940
in two languages, but they had had requests because it was a

441
00:27:27,260 --> 00:27:30,980
huge global company that wanted to have other languages. So

442
00:27:30,980 --> 00:27:34,620
we said, okay, great, well, here, those other 10 languages you want, we have

443
00:27:34,620 --> 00:27:38,330
those, we'll do those other 10 languages. So here

444
00:27:38,330 --> 00:27:42,010
I am walking into big, big

445
00:27:42,010 --> 00:27:45,770
convention center in, in Vegas as, as I spend a lot

446
00:27:45,770 --> 00:27:48,610
of time in Vegas now that I didn't used to when I was not in

447
00:27:48,610 --> 00:27:52,410
the events industry. Yeah. But so,

448
00:27:52,410 --> 00:27:56,090
so here we are and I walk in and there's the,

449
00:27:56,250 --> 00:28:00,010
there's the sound booths for the two languages. You know, huge

450
00:28:00,010 --> 00:28:03,820
amount of the, of the back is, you know, backstage taken up

451
00:28:03,820 --> 00:28:07,340
by these sound booths. You've got the couple of interpreters all ready to go.

452
00:28:07,900 --> 00:28:11,420
They have set up an enormous table for me for my

453
00:28:11,420 --> 00:28:14,980
equipment. Yeah. And then I

454
00:28:14,980 --> 00:28:18,820
pull out my ipod. It was an

455
00:28:18,820 --> 00:28:22,500
ipod. It wasn't even a phone back then. An ipod. I put my

456
00:28:22,500 --> 00:28:26,060
ipod down on the table, I run a cable from it to the

457
00:28:26,700 --> 00:28:29,030
mixer and I

458
00:28:30,230 --> 00:28:34,030
join the Internet. Click, attend. And then I'm

459
00:28:34,030 --> 00:28:37,550
done. You're done. I'm like, there you go. So you now have

460
00:28:37,550 --> 00:28:41,150
10 languages that you can use. And the most

461
00:28:41,150 --> 00:28:44,550
amazing thing is people scan the QR code and

462
00:28:45,750 --> 00:28:49,390
they used it used wordly in the languages that were

463
00:28:49,390 --> 00:28:52,870
provided by the human interpreters. Oh, because you had that.

464
00:28:53,190 --> 00:28:56,670
Yeah, because they were there anyway. They were there

465
00:28:56,670 --> 00:29:00,430
anyway. But that's because there are people who didn't want to go get the headsets

466
00:29:00,430 --> 00:29:03,550
and deal with all that, but they just scanned it and said, oh, I can

467
00:29:03,550 --> 00:29:07,270
follow in Japanese here. Oh, that's amazing. And so.

468
00:29:07,270 --> 00:29:10,550
So to this day, I mean, that was like. That was the moment I knew

469
00:29:10,550 --> 00:29:14,270
that what we had was, like, I mean, was going to

470
00:29:14,270 --> 00:29:17,830
change. Change everything. About how. Absolutely. Events

471
00:29:17,910 --> 00:29:21,750
would manage language translation and allow us to create just

472
00:29:21,750 --> 00:29:25,520
such more inclusive and accessible events and to

473
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:29,360
allow them to be more engaging. I mean, imagine going to your sales

474
00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:32,280
kickoff, and you have all these people who you bring in from all over the

475
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:36,120
world who don't really speak English because it used to be. I mean, still

476
00:29:36,120 --> 00:29:39,039
way too many conferences. The price of admission is you speak English.

477
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:43,600
Yes, that's right. And. And it doesn't have to be that way anymore. It

478
00:29:43,600 --> 00:29:47,200
really doesn't. It's really inexpensive to not have to do that

479
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,200
and now seem like a sales kickoff. Imagine you.

480
00:29:51,630 --> 00:29:55,390
You get 20% more productivity from the result of the fact that they actually

481
00:29:55,390 --> 00:29:58,870
understood what was being presented. Right, right. Not missing

482
00:29:58,870 --> 00:30:02,470
anything. Yeah. So that's a fundamental shift,

483
00:30:02,470 --> 00:30:05,990
for sure. And how it was being done, because I. I

484
00:30:05,990 --> 00:30:09,670
remember that setup, how much of a pain it was. And

485
00:30:09,670 --> 00:30:13,310
then no matter what, it's just not as efficient. It's just

486
00:30:13,310 --> 00:30:16,510
not, you know, And. And while your algorithm's getting more and more

487
00:30:17,080 --> 00:30:18,360
accurate all the time,

488
00:30:20,520 --> 00:30:23,960
it's. It's just kind of. That is definitely a fork in the road right there

489
00:30:24,200 --> 00:30:27,720
where technology is taking it in a different direction. Yeah. And

490
00:30:27,880 --> 00:30:30,360
there's so much more that you. You can do with.

491
00:30:31,560 --> 00:30:35,400
I mean, now, it used to be you'd have the interpreters, and

492
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:39,240
then if you wanted, say, a transcript, you'd have someone else generate the

493
00:30:39,240 --> 00:30:42,680
transcript for you. Now, the transcripts are literally a byproduct of

494
00:30:43,140 --> 00:30:46,980
word. Of using wordly. So it's. It's just.

495
00:30:47,060 --> 00:30:50,580
Okay, you were wordly. You get the live. Oh, and you also get a transcript.

496
00:30:50,580 --> 00:30:53,980
Oh, you also get an audio transcript. So if you want to have a audio

497
00:30:53,980 --> 00:30:57,500
of. In the Italian, you can. You can have the audio in the Italian. Oh,

498
00:30:57,500 --> 00:31:01,300
was that one of the languages used during the event? No, you. You needed

499
00:31:01,460 --> 00:31:05,220
in Vietnamese now. Sure. There you go. Transcript in Vietnamese, audio track

500
00:31:05,220 --> 00:31:09,060
in Vietnamese. You're. You're ready to go? Yeah.

501
00:31:09,060 --> 00:31:12,800
And I think I was just talking with a

502
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:15,360
friend recently about utilizing

503
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:20,000
resources from an event post. Event and how. How do

504
00:31:20,000 --> 00:31:23,520
you search for it, how do you utilize it? And tools like this,

505
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:27,320
allowing you to utilize content that you spend a lot, to

506
00:31:27,320 --> 00:31:31,040
create in different ways and engage with your attendee

507
00:31:31,040 --> 00:31:34,760
in kind of an evergreen format. I think people are very interested

508
00:31:34,760 --> 00:31:38,200
in that. And you know, like you were calling it, it's like a byproduct of

509
00:31:38,200 --> 00:31:41,950
something that you weren't, maybe weren't intending to. But there's all these other outputs

510
00:31:41,950 --> 00:31:45,790
from Wordly that you can utilize post event or while the event's

511
00:31:45,790 --> 00:31:49,630
going on. That's powerful as well, you know. Absolutely.

512
00:31:49,630 --> 00:31:53,390
I mean, it's. It is so amazing what we've

513
00:31:53,390 --> 00:31:56,630
been able to do and what our client. The value our clients are able to

514
00:31:56,630 --> 00:32:00,390
derive from using Wordly. It. It's as. I

515
00:32:00,390 --> 00:32:03,430
mean, I gave you the story about that sales kickoff, but

516
00:32:04,390 --> 00:32:08,030
another story that, that we have of one that was very profound was we

517
00:32:08,030 --> 00:32:11,840
started working with the city of North Las Ve. Uh, so city of

518
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:14,480
North Las Vegas is a majority minority community.

519
00:32:15,360 --> 00:32:19,040
And many years ago, for those in the Vegas area might

520
00:32:19,040 --> 00:32:22,400
know that, you know, North Las Vegas went bankrupt. It was like the largest

521
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:26,800
municipal bankruptcy in. In the US at that point. And

522
00:32:27,200 --> 00:32:30,960
it's unfortunately been exceeded, but, you know, that's. But not by them, thankfully.

523
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,800
But they've come back a long way. So. So we attended one of their

524
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,850
city council meetings where they entered, had recently introduced

525
00:32:38,850 --> 00:32:42,450
Wordly, and it was specifically about street cart vendors

526
00:32:43,250 --> 00:32:46,690
and which is in that area, predominantly Hispanic,

527
00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:49,250
you know, and

528
00:32:50,610 --> 00:32:54,450
every one of the speakers that came up presented

529
00:32:54,450 --> 00:32:58,210
in Spanish because of Wordly. And so it

530
00:32:58,210 --> 00:33:02,010
no longer was that they. They didn't have to have an interpreter there. They

531
00:33:02,010 --> 00:33:05,370
didn't have to worry about the fact that, yeah, okay, great, the two

532
00:33:05,370 --> 00:33:08,970
bilingual city council people can understand, but nobody else could know the

533
00:33:08,970 --> 00:33:12,790
city that. So instead they were able. Everybody was

534
00:33:12,790 --> 00:33:16,270
able to follow along. They were able to. To express their

535
00:33:16,590 --> 00:33:20,390
desires and open comment in their own language. And

536
00:33:20,390 --> 00:33:24,230
that's. That's actually the. Probably the biggest. That's the biggest change that we have

537
00:33:24,230 --> 00:33:27,870
yet to really get the event industry to embrace, and that

538
00:33:27,870 --> 00:33:30,350
is let speakers speak in their own language.

539
00:33:31,630 --> 00:33:35,350
Oh, I love that. I love. They still. There's still so many

540
00:33:35,350 --> 00:33:38,710
events you go to, and it's like, okay, I brought in this. I brought in

541
00:33:38,710 --> 00:33:42,270
this amazing person from Japan. He's like the most

542
00:33:42,270 --> 00:33:45,990
knowledgeable person on this subject. Speak English. Right,

543
00:33:45,990 --> 00:33:49,750
right. Oh, I love that. Yeah, yeah, you should

544
00:33:49,750 --> 00:33:53,430
normalize just native languages. That's fine. No big deal.

545
00:33:53,430 --> 00:33:57,030
It's not a barrier. It's Not a barrier for us. That's right. It's not a

546
00:33:57,030 --> 00:34:00,230
barrier. I've been so, so every year

547
00:34:00,710 --> 00:34:04,510
for the last 20 years, I've taken my, my, my oldest daughter,

548
00:34:04,510 --> 00:34:07,450
she was very young then, to San Diego Comic Con.

549
00:34:08,560 --> 00:34:12,200
Okay, cool. She. She is, she's. I mean, she's. We started going because she

550
00:34:12,200 --> 00:34:15,840
loves anime and manga, so Japanese comic books, etc.

551
00:34:15,920 --> 00:34:19,120
So, so anytime there's like some big deal

552
00:34:19,600 --> 00:34:23,200
Japanese artists that comes, we had a person

553
00:34:23,200 --> 00:34:25,040
who was heavily involved in like,

554
00:34:27,680 --> 00:34:31,520
you know, the, like Spirited Away and movies like that

555
00:34:31,520 --> 00:34:35,330
Studio Ghibli. And you know, these people would

556
00:34:35,330 --> 00:34:38,650
come and they would usually have to bring an interpreter with them

557
00:34:38,970 --> 00:34:42,170
because, you know, even though San Diego Comic Con is huge, it doesn't provide

558
00:34:42,490 --> 00:34:46,130
necessarily that service in quite the same way. Like a

559
00:34:46,130 --> 00:34:49,930
wordly would. Right. And you'll hear the person, they'll talk and

560
00:34:49,930 --> 00:34:53,370
they'll talk for a while and then the interpreter will say like 10 words.

561
00:34:53,930 --> 00:34:57,770
You know, it's like. Right. Did you really. And so

562
00:34:58,730 --> 00:35:02,370
this, this last year, I actually, I took wordly and I

563
00:35:02,370 --> 00:35:06,200
ran it in the, in the audience so that I could actually follow

564
00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:09,760
along. And no, it wasn't, it was kind of what the

565
00:35:09,760 --> 00:35:13,320
interpreter said, but only kinda. Oh, no.

566
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,640
So. Okay, well, it sounds like that client right there.

567
00:35:17,800 --> 00:35:21,640
Well, but, but it's the idea that there, it's. Because

568
00:35:21,640 --> 00:35:25,480
it's, it's not normalized to have the person speak. So, so,

569
00:35:25,480 --> 00:35:28,760
so, you know, they're, they're not necessarily. This conference isn't set up to have

570
00:35:28,920 --> 00:35:32,640
necessarily a lot of interpreters. Maybe we shouldn't mention them by

571
00:35:32,640 --> 00:35:36,440
name, but I shouldn't mention them by name. But that's, you know, it's one of

572
00:35:36,440 --> 00:35:39,240
these challenges that we get with these,

573
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:43,840
with this. The need to change that attitude that it really

574
00:35:43,840 --> 00:35:47,480
is. Okay. I love it. Anybody planning events listening,

575
00:35:47,480 --> 00:35:50,760
let's normalize people presenting in their native language. And

576
00:35:51,320 --> 00:35:54,760
by default, your attendees getting used to accessing that

577
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:58,510
language through wordly, that, that you

578
00:35:58,510 --> 00:36:02,230
can now, you know, listen to it in all

579
00:36:02,230 --> 00:36:06,030
of its. Or read it in all its glory. Absolutely the way that the

580
00:36:06,030 --> 00:36:09,790
speaker intended it, you know, without that delay of an interpreter.

581
00:36:10,030 --> 00:36:13,590
And you know, there's still times when that's appropriate. But I could see on a

582
00:36:13,590 --> 00:36:17,150
whole, that would just open up a whole new experience for attendees,

583
00:36:17,230 --> 00:36:20,990
you know, well. The, the

584
00:36:20,990 --> 00:36:23,630
language you speak affects the way you think

585
00:36:24,650 --> 00:36:28,370
and to get someone's true thoughts, you really want to hear it

586
00:36:28,370 --> 00:36:31,970
in the language that they're thinking about it. And yes, there'll be an

587
00:36:31,970 --> 00:36:35,770
interpretation that will come in that, that flow. But right

588
00:36:35,770 --> 00:36:39,450
now, what generally happens is we get, we get this, get layers and

589
00:36:39,450 --> 00:36:43,250
layers before we actually get to that person's real thoughts.

590
00:36:43,250 --> 00:36:46,930
And if you're forcing them to speak a language that you know, they're

591
00:36:46,930 --> 00:36:50,650
truly bilingual, it's not a, not a huge issue. But if they're not truly bilingual,

592
00:36:50,650 --> 00:36:54,230
that, that, yeah, we got, we got to change that. That's the big change

593
00:36:54,230 --> 00:36:57,990
that we want to see happen in the events industry. I mean,

594
00:36:57,990 --> 00:37:01,670
the embrace in general has been great, but that, that's the one thing, that's the

595
00:37:01,670 --> 00:37:05,070
one hurdle we could still take another go at.

596
00:37:05,710 --> 00:37:09,470
I support this. You heard it here first. We need, we need keynote

597
00:37:09,470 --> 00:37:12,750
speakers presenting in their native language. People have Wordly.

598
00:37:13,470 --> 00:37:17,190
Well, if people. You know, I've really enjoyed this conversation and

599
00:37:17,190 --> 00:37:20,970
it's been a learning for me too, because I,

600
00:37:20,970 --> 00:37:24,690
I'm curious. You know, I, I've been around Wordly a little bit,

601
00:37:24,690 --> 00:37:27,970
but I, I don't know everything about it and it's really cool to hear what,

602
00:37:27,970 --> 00:37:31,530
how it started, what it's doing now, where you're thinking about going with it.

603
00:37:31,530 --> 00:37:35,370
It's powerful. This is a power piece, powerful piece of software. So thank you

604
00:37:35,370 --> 00:37:39,050
for stopping by and talking with me. Well, Seth, my

605
00:37:39,210 --> 00:37:42,850
absolute pleasure. It's been delight. It was so nice to met you in

606
00:37:42,850 --> 00:37:46,590
person in St. Louis and Nice to speak to you today. Yes, sir. And

607
00:37:46,590 --> 00:37:49,750
if people want to learn more about you or Wordly, where should they go? What's

608
00:37:49,750 --> 00:37:53,430
the best place to go? So we're on online@Wordly

609
00:37:53,430 --> 00:37:57,230
AI. That's our website. It's the best place to be able

610
00:37:57,230 --> 00:38:01,030
to connect with us. We also have a presence on

611
00:38:01,030 --> 00:38:04,550
LinkedIn and Facebook if you want to join us there.

612
00:38:04,550 --> 00:38:08,310
But yeah, absolutely. Go to Wordly AI. You'll see all the good

613
00:38:08,310 --> 00:38:11,970
things about that for me myself, I'm Kirk

614
00:38:11,970 --> 00:38:14,970
Hendrickson at LinkedIn. That's pretty much my, my social

615
00:38:15,290 --> 00:38:18,410
presence. Don't have a lot of to do a lot elsewhere.

616
00:38:19,290 --> 00:38:22,890
Wordly keeps me busy enough, so. But you, you can also,

617
00:38:23,130 --> 00:38:26,849
you can also reach out, reach out to me through there or as I said,

618
00:38:26,849 --> 00:38:30,610
go to our website, Wordly AI. Love it. Well, thank you so

619
00:38:30,610 --> 00:38:34,450
much and thank you listener for joining us on the event Pro show.

620
00:38:34,450 --> 00:38:36,940
If you want to hear all of our episodes, you can go to the

621
00:38:36,940 --> 00:38:40,700
eventproshow.com to learn more about us or

622
00:38:40,700 --> 00:38:44,340
hear our backlog. And as you know, we put out an episode

623
00:38:44,500 --> 00:38:48,180
every week where we're either introducing you to great people like Kirk or

624
00:38:48,420 --> 00:38:51,740
we're showing you or teaching you a little bit more about how to work better

625
00:38:51,740 --> 00:38:55,460
with your AV provider. Thank you for joining us and we will see you

626
00:38:55,460 --> 00:38:59,060
on the next one. The Event Pro show is a

627
00:38:59,060 --> 00:39:02,640
production of LEMG video by Nick Barrett,

628
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:06,800
audio and post production by Prince Thompson. You can learn more about

629
00:39:06,800 --> 00:39:09,040
us at LEMG Live.