MIPS 2021: Everything You Need to Know About Milestone’s Conference About Video, on Video
About MIPS Milestone Integration Platform Symposium, fondly referred to as MIPS 2021 was a virtual conference showcasing the future opportunities within video technology and how the Milestone Community can seize them. MIPS is where the Milestone Community comes together to share insights, experiences, best practices and the latest innovations. While this was the 16th annual MIPS conference, and my 12th, it was the 1st time it was offered totally virtually. There is no doubt that MIPS 2021 felt a little different this year. While I was bummed that I wasn’t going to get to see all of my colleagues and friends from within the industry and Milestone itself in person, I was excited to see how the Milestone team would translate their elaborate, giant event into a virtual experience. Much to no one’s surprise, the pivot masters over at Milestone did a great job creating a seamless experience and engaging content. Who knew that a virtual event would require just as much production effort as the in-person ones? That’s at least what it seemed like from where I was seated… at my kitchen counter. I never knew I wanted the ability to to pause, rewind and replay but now I’ve seen the light and I’m never looking back. As you know, I’m not about wasting time with the boring stuff so I’ll jump right in to the good stuff. All of the keynotes were great but something about Peter Hinssen of Nexxworks’s talk really stuck with me. The way he articulated the need for continuous change in life and business resonated with me on a deep level. This idea of constantly evolving to improve and innovate is not new to me. It’s actually a core driver of mine and something I have been working towards for the past 20 years. Hinssen’s keynote reinforced my belief that change is the only way to maintain relevance in our, or any, industry and more importantly, with clients The biggest takeaway from Hinssen? Instead of fixating on the idea of ‘old normal,’ which will never return, and “new normal,” which will constantly be changing, we must move forward and prepare for the “Never Normal.” I took that to mean, when you are light on your toes, you can walk confidently into the future. If you are a Boring newsletter subscriber, you already know that I am infinitely both amazed and skeptical about all things AI. If you’re not, sign up here. So, when Milestone CTO, Bjørn Skou Eilertsen, took the virtual stage to speak on ethics in business and technology, I was intrigued. In Eilertsen’s keynote he noted that we, as technology and security professionals, are responsible for both establishing and upholding a code of ethics for this evolving technology. Ultimately, his emphasis on using AI responsibly and calling for a mindshift left me feeling a sense of pride: proud to have aligned my company with another forward-thinking, value-driven company, like ourselves and proud to be part of the Milestone community. His talk also left me thinking about Tom Cruise…Check out this scary real deep fake video that made its viral appearance just a few days before the conference. Read more here. @deeptomcruise Sports! ♬ original sound – Tom As much as I like the mind-boggling, big picture content, I loved seeing Day Two’s schedule packed with more technical information that I could dig into and geek out on. There are few things that I love more in this world than an informative tips and tricks video and the one from Jason Wallace and Alex Laffrenier was perfection. They even dropped a few tips that even I, after 12 years working with XProtect, wasn’t familiar with! I’m already planning an upcoming blog post recapping their great tips since it is available on-demand! Woo-hoo! A few other highlights: Christian Morana discussing the lost art of hardware specification for video. He and his team have tested over 100 different scenarios to give us, the community, benchmarks on how to build tailored XProtect solutions using the right hardware. Finally we had a really great breakout with Matt Fishback, Jared Tarter and an integrator, John Kostelac from NWOSS, discussing deployment options for XProtect in AWS, what it looks like and how to get started. This was great because it clearly outlined the value proposition and the path to get there. Given the unique circumstances that made this event so different from the previous MIPS events, I thought the Milestone team did a great job putting together an engaging virtual event that left me feeling excited about our Boring future with Milestone. Although next year may look “never normal,” I miss my friends and colleagues and hope that they will find more ways to integrate networking into the experience. In closing, MIPS taught us about XProtect, Milestone as a company, as a community, and opened our eyes to the future of innovation and our role in paving that road.
