Advances in remote working solutions have grown exponentially since March 2020 and the live events industry is no exception. Over the past few years, TPi has covered several productions that have adapted to remote production workflows, from 5G Festival through to Wacken World Wide. Another company joining this endeavour is Just Networking. Based out of Nashville, Tennessee, the company’s flagship product theBRIDGE, provides users with a direct connection to any network around the world. Compatible with big name protocols including MA Lighting, High End Systems, ChamSys and Avolites, not to mention disguise and Green Hippo, theBRIDGE has already proven popular within the live touring community.
Formed in September 2020 by Joshua Gregoire, Nicholas Fletcher, and Matthew Geasey, the original idea behind Just Networking dates back to April of that year. “The three of us come from the technical production side of live events, and back in early 2020, we all still had some projects that we were asked to figure out how to do remotely, which is how the initial ‘BRIDGE’ idea came together,” stated Geasey. “We had some friends reach out in the industry who also had the same need. As word spread, we decided to make this a thing and see how we could help more colleagues around the world.”
The company’s flagship offering, theBRIDGE, was designed to be a “digital ethernet cable”, explained Geasey. “It was designed to be able to get signal from A to B without any hassle that comes with creating these types of connections one by one. If a remote LED technician needed to connect to System A and then five minutes later needed to connect to System B, they simply switched the connection inside our platform between each site – as long as there is a BRIDGE at each site. The goal for theBRIDGE is to have anyone, no mater where they are located, to have access to any project in the world within a matter of minutes.”
Geasey went on to explain the interesting juggling act that he and the two others found themselves in; simultaneously trying to figure out the new state of the industry while trying to create a new way for colleagues to work together remotely. “We managed to help many teams get work done while also helping them save on costs of travel. Originally, we were aiming at smaller projects that needed to be connected in the same city. However, soon enough we had designers, programmers, and technicians used to travelling to other countries for their projects, who were the ones that bought into this concept.”
One such production was Carrie Underwood’s latest Las Vegas Residency. During pre-production, the team at Fireplay brought in three BRIDGE units to enable the creative team to connect a number of lighting desks with each other from across America.
While Just Networking offered a solution to the live events industry when the world was in lockdown, TPi was keen to ask the team what they thought the future for the company would be with the industry returning to full force. “We are really excited that live events are coming back to life and we don’t see the capabilities of theBRIDGE being overlooked,” asserted Geasey. “We have learned the need to be connected to localised systems has been more of an interest than we thought even before 2020. We see theBRIDGE being an accessory for companies, technicians, rental houses that want to be able to be remotely connected or provide simple remotely connected services.”
In short, the team believes that the concept of remote working is never going to go away completely. “Remote can mean many things,” concluded Geasey. “We are seeing a lot of live events workflows with technicians being able to update, adjust, support live events remotely instead of needing to travel for ‘simple things’ when it might not be fiscally possible, from anywhere in the world. Remote could also relate to connecting simultaneous projects, bringing seamless creative visions together. Will live ever be replaced? It’s why we got into the live events world and why we wanted to help our friends in that world.”
This article originally appeared in issue #268 of TPi, which you can read here.