Greg Guzzetta

TECH PROFILE

Greg, tell us a bit about yourself and your journey to your current role, it’s a great story…one our readers would love to hear.

It has been a circuitous route…I started working on the Associated Students concert program in 1982 and was hooked.

Everything about producing live music events was interesting and fun to me. I left college without graduating to go on the road with bands. The 80’s were a great era for music, and I experienced all of it.

Becoming an audio engineer really got me into technology, but oddly enough I got off the road and moved on before everything turned digital and mixing a band became more like playing a video game. I had to get off the road. It was time to attempt to live a more ‘normal’ life.

Got a job at Saban Entertainment (Power Rangers) and attempted to apply my production skills in video and film production. It was a great gig! I got to cut sound effects for cartoons, I taught myself on some of the original Avid editing systems and ended up producing kids’ TV specials for a while.

Live music was calling me back though, and I had the opportunity to work with some friends and design and produce multi-screen video content for large radio station music festivals…think Summer Jam, Jingle Ball and Wango Tango. I was able to use skills from both live event production and the video production. It was perfect for me and the fun factor went way up again.

Once radio industry consolidation happened in the late 90’s these great festivals with big budgets became ‘Alternative Revenue Events’ for the radio groups instead of fun marketing events…I was out.

After all the radio business dried up, I took a job at a company that produced Action Sports events. Another well-funded project, I was able to drop a 45’ half pipe at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and in various arenas around the US.

Fun factor was high (see the trend?) and the work was very satisfying. Things really got fun when a corporate monolith bought the company and we had the ‘magic check book’ that would never overdraw. I was not savvy enough to understand that this would never last but me and my accomplices were able to build a good size Action Sports event and content production house that created some of the most well produced Action Sports events and network television ever.

When the downsizing occurred, I had the pleasure of having one of the highest salaries and was one of the first to go. One

of my good friends was COO at the time. To this day I give him shit for laying me off…it’s been more than 12 years and I still call him out on it after a few cocktails.

Festivals here in the US were becoming a thing so I decided to make a play in technology in this growing market. I learned about RFID and saw the potential in thwarting counterfeit tickets, which was a serious problem at the time. I flew around the globe several times working with partners to beat Intellitix to the market but alas our money guy went bonkers and I bailed on that.

While pursuing RFID, I spent quite a bit of time in the UK and Scotland at festivals and discovered temporary CCTV systems and the Command Center concept. Nobody had tried to open the CCTV market in the US so I bought some cameras learned the tech and was deploying the first temporary wireless CCTV system at ACL that Fall and Coachella the next Spring and we were off.

We have come a long way since then and the tech just keeps getting better and better. As we started to become an integral service provider in these Command Centers, I began the development of GigAware to manage all of the incidents and dispatchers in those Command Centers.

You have an extensive career covering a wide variety of event management tools and software solutions. How did you get started down this path and what helped create your passion?

When I was a touring production manager, I had to build my own software tools. I would get into FoxPro and build advance forms and that sort of thing. The reason for creating GigAware was born out of all of the time that we spent in these festival Command Centers where all of this data was coming in and going out and there was not a real solution for that in the festival space. Lots of folks were still in spreadsheets and legal pads. There was one solution that tried to make its way into these events, but it was old and clunky. Everyone complained about it, so everyone was cranky. I started to ask questions and take notes and decided that I could possibly build a real solution to gather all that data and make it easy to use and more enjoyable to use. So, I did what anyone would do and went online and found a developer dude in Pakistan and started down the road of building the framework of GigAware.

I would build a version, take it out to events and get input and then go back and make changes. It is completely built on user and client input. The more I would do with it the more I could see what it could become. I had the idea of incorporating GPS data from Motorola radios 2 years before I was able to achieve that.

When did Event Intelligence Group merge with TOURtech? What led to those decisions?

Event Intelligence Group (EIG) merged with TOURtech last June. Al Cook, CEO of TOURtech, and I had become friends and colleagues over the years of working on the same festival sites. We always knew that our companies had a lot in common.

Both companies offered related services in the same markets. We shared similar values in regard to running a business. I decided that if I was going to scale EIG and GigAware to its potential, I needed more resources and I needed more collaboration. I could have very easily taken venture capital money for EIG, but it always scared me to have to perform to metrics that I would not be creating. So now, I run EIG as the Public Safety Division of TOURtech.

Tell us about the software and how it helps safety and security measures at events.

Public safety management is all about data. The more situational awareness that you can create the better the response. You can create situational awareness through collecting data. Whether it is from CCTV cameras, radio traffic, GPS tracking, from dispatchers taking calls or ticketing systems, weather services or traffic data, or LiDAR detectors or Thermal Scanners…the list goes on and varies from event to event and venue to venue. My goal with GigAware has always been to collect as much data as possible and turn it into something that will create a more efficient Command Center which will enhance incident response, thus creating a safer event.

What are the key elements that differentiate GigAware from other solutions available?

There are a couple key differentiators between GigAware and the other solutions. One of the most important is that GigAware is location based. Location based data is key. It does you no good if you know that something happened, and you cannot get a good location on the incident. When you are in the dispatch dashboard in GigAware, you don’t see a list of locations, you see a map of your venue, you have landmarks to help navigate, you have data surrounding the venue, so that you can have a complete picture of what is going on. The other key differentiator is that we can create a custom solution that will integrate with systems that you may already be in use. Whether it be a ticketing system to acquire gate counts, or a drone detection system or all of the technologies that we are working with to assist in getting everybody opened back up after the Pandemic. We have the overt systems such as thermal screening and we have the more covert systems like LiDAR detectors to assist with enforcing social distancing. We are always coming up with new integrations.

P E R S O N A L QUESTIONS FUN

Besides your hobbies, what do you enjoy doing when you are not working?

When I am not working, I enjoy travelling with my wife, Lisa. I’ve always found it odd that folks that travel for work so much also enjoy travelling when not working…probably all those frequent flier miles. Our two favorite places are St. John, USVI and Flathead Lake in Bigfork, Montana.

What is the most prized possession you have in your office?

I have two prized possessions in my office. One is the Challenge Coin that I received for producing the second inaugural parade for President Obama. The other is a Fender Telecaster signed by Bruce Springsteen.

What is your favorite sporting or entertainment event annually?

I’m a long time Green Bay Packers fan. Any day the Packers are playing is my favorite sporting event.