To all THWer's,
I have just received an email from Randy Mac (Chairman THW) on how the LiveStage Tour is going. It was very positive and THS is getting a great deal of exposure. Below is a piece of the email I received with some parts left out because I don't want to hype anything and neither does Randy. We should all be very pleased with the tour and should congratulate Randy on doing an excellent job for his company and for all shareholders.
I have posted pieces of this email with the permission of Randy but will not do so in the future if people on this thread take was is written here and change it. Please do not email me privately as I will not forward the entire message to anyone.
The LiveStage Tour with Apple (East Coast)
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March 21 to April 9, 1999
Over 900 attendees for all the cities.
Why hold a LiveStage Tour now?
Apple encouraged it and the demand is strong and growing daily.
The Rich media market is starting to really buzz and we think, as does Apple, that LiveStage and QuickTime are the best solution out there for creating and delivering rich media. So now is the time to expose it.
Apple has been SO PLEASED with the LiveStage event on the East Coast, that they asked us to do a follow up event after we conclude the West Coast Tour.
If the LiveStage tour wasn't popular with attendees, Apple wouldn't ask us back and attendees wouldn't stay past the 2 hour time to push my presentation to 3 and sometimes over 3 1/2 hours. Many times I never even stopped for lunch. The demand to learn more by attendees was that strong. I think I might have lost some weight, and each night I dropped in exhaustion when I got back to my hotel room. Each event was a huge success, in each city.
To my surprise, many attendees don't consider Director Shockwave or even Flash in many cases to be a the best solution. That's why they chose to attend the LiveStage Tour Seminar. To find a better solution.
During my East Coast Tour, many people found out about LiveStage Tour after the fact, by word of mouth, after others attended the event in each city. A high percentage of those that attended the LiveStage Tour want us to come back to the East Coast for another set of sessions. We have informed Apple that we will return to the East Coast as soon as we complete the West Coast Tour. This high demand is very encouraging to us.
I think the volume on Wednesday and Friday indicates that Toronto and New York attendees of the LiveStage Tour event are major supporters of Totally Hip and believe we are a good investment opportunity. As soon as they learned about what benefits LiveStage and QuickTime could provide during my presentations, and from those shareholders that brought up the discussions about THW being public on the ASE during Q&A period.
US investors that are knowledgeable about rich media (also including many Toronto attendees) seem to think that we have the best solution for rich media content creation and delivery. They must be willing to invest in it, because I see the volume went up without any news being put out by THW this past week.
I was equally pleased that many THW shareholders attended the Toronto and New York events, as I was about the popularity of LiveStage and WebPainter 3. The attendance by these shareholders and corporate investor types sparked the interest of other attendees about the opportunity to invest in Totally Hip. One shareholder spoke up in Toronto in the morning Q&A session about THW being public. He put me on the spot to discuss more about the investment opportunity and wanted to debate that we were very undervalued when compared to what Narrative was acquired for by @Home Network. I informed him and other attendees that my goal was to educate the attendees about LiveStage and QuickTime, and I was immediately surprised to hear that most of the attendees wanted to learn more about the investment opportunity in THW. Eight other shareholders brought the same questions up in the afternoon session. This made it easier for me to answer the fact that we are publicly traded.
Word of mouth is the best form of advertising for a company, and we are heavily focusing on this on our LiveStage tour. My goals of the East Coast Tour were to promote LiveStage and QuickTime, and the many benefits that our tools offer for rich media content creation and delivery. While I didn't focus on the fact that we were public, I was encouraged by many attendees to discuss the opportunity to invest in Totally Hip during the sessions, so I have decided to speak out more about THW as an opportunity on my West Coast Tour.
I must admit that I was amazed that the investment opportunity in THW was always the first question brought up by attendees in each of the many sessions during my East Coast Tour. This proves that LiveStage is being well received by the LiveStage Tour attendees. The demand for more information on LiveStage, Totally Hip and our subsequent exposure, is definitely growing by word of mouth, city by city.
Many more people now know about Totally Hip, LiveStage and WebPainter than 3 weeks ago. The West Coast LiveStage Tour begins on April 19th and I hear from Apple that they are going to be jammed packed with attendees. This will have a very positive impact on THW's exposure.
As far as the investor type attendees.
In Toronto:
There were 8 investors that were shareholders in Totally Hip in attendance out of 115 people for the two sessions. Approximately 8 other attendees were there to investigate Totally Hip as a possible investment. They stayed for over an hour after the session to discuss the benefits and thoughts on Totally Hip is an investment. Many think that THW is under-valued based on our technological lead and the fact that there is the start of increased activity and emphasis on rich media in the market and no other company has a compelling solution to match that of LiveStage.
In New York:
Out of the 110 attendees, there were 12 in attendance that were shareholders in Totally Hip. Approximately 10 other attendees were there to investigate Totally Hip as a possible investment because of friends and associates attending the event the week before. Many attendees stayed for over an hour after each session to discuss the benefits and their thoughts on Totally Hip is an investment opportunity. The New Yorker attendees, just as the Toronto attendees think that THW is under-valued based on what they saw in my presentation. That comes from the attendees and not me.
Based on the East Coast Tour, I am no longer going to down-play the fact that we are public when I do my presentations. I will be working it more into my presentation, but the main focus will be on LiveStage and QuickTime as the best Rich media solution. Regardless. It seems that LiveStage enthusiasts are those that want to know more about investing, and are investing on their own, without me promoting it.
Why?
Narrative is not very widespread, and is considered by attendees to be a real lame solution.
LiveStage can create great interactive content that is very responsive. It can also create real small interactive ad banners of less than 25K that play back with the most popular media player (QuickTime).
Since attendees all agree that Shockwave outputs files that are too big to be used as Ad banners (OVER 60K TO 100K and even more), the attendees agree that Totally Hip has the best tool solutions. As demand for rich media tools and solutions grow, demand to find out more about Totally Hip and our tool solutions will increase accordingly.
The LiveStage Tour is booked solid on the West Coast. Many think that Totally Hip's exposure from this tour will help spread the word about THW as an investment opportunity because of our excellent rich media content creation tools. We have been asked by Apple to do another East Coast tour and we will be attending many other industry events over the next few weeks and months, so you can expect that our exposure will increase.
I think we are finally in the right place at the ripe time. While WebPainter 3 is an excellent product, there have been many other tools available. LiveStage is the only scripting solution for creating QuickTime movie based interactive rich media. We are the first into this market and wait until you see what we have planned for future release.
I am really pleased and can't wait until the West Coast Tour and the NAB trade show event start in a week.
Momentum is building. |
