Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you so much for your time to join us in this webinar. We're really happy to have so many of you online are numbers that mean really great for today's webinar and for the other ones in this series. This is the second of three economic development essentials webinars that the Economic Development Division of the Ministry of Jobs, Tourism, and Skills Training is hosting over a month or so in September and October. If you missed the first of the series, which was focused on investment readiness, it was recorded, and it's now archived in the Rural BC site. And just for those of you who aren't familiar with the Rural BC site, it's www.ruralbc.gov.bc.ca. And if you go to the webinar section of that website, you'll find archived webinars and also registration for future upcoming webinars. And the next one in the Economic Development Essential series is on Strategic Planning for Economic Development, and that's on October 10th. So first, I just want to provide a little bit of context for where the webinar series originated. About a year ago, here in the Economic Development Division, we were hearing directly from communities that training on economic development concepts would be beneficial for local leaders. We heard that some focused information about the role of local leaders in economic development processes and activities would be beneficial for communities and, you know, communities across the province of all different sizes. So in response to that need, in the early part of 2013, we held 15 Economic Development Essentials workshops for local leaders. We had about 400 attendees at those workshops in really positive response based on the feedback that we received at the workshops and also from folks who weren't able to attend one of the workshops. We're following up on them with these webinars. And the three topics that were chosen were the topics that were indicated to be of greatest interest to those that we did hear from. So just a quick rundown on the structure of today's workshop. So in a couple of seconds, I'm going to turn it over to Kathy Kod, as she'll start us off with a brief overview of business retention and expansion information and some new resources that we've just launched to support your work in this area. And then we've got three, I'm sorry, can't start me yet, we're on the next slide. Sorry, yes, please, keep me in the queue. And then we'll have three case studies. We'll start with Perry McDonald and she'll provide us with an overview of Kootenai Business Retention and Expansion Pilots. Peter McGee will talk about his experience leading a BR&E process in Nanaimo. And then Colin will talk about the CAM Loops experience, the Venture CAM Loops Advisors Program. Following the three case studies, well, we've got some time for a discussion and information sharing, which I hope you all participate in and open up your phone line to or submit some questions online so that we can share some information and answer any questions that you might have. So I mentioned that we just launched some new business retention and expansion information and Kathy will be walking us through the details. And that information is on our relatively new Business Attraction Toolkit for BC Communities and the website for the toolkit is on the slide that's in front of you there. So this is an online resource that was launched last spring and it focuses on the stages of investment attraction. So, and it's a community resource to support your economic development work and whether you're a community who's just starting out along the journey of attracting investments or business to your community, or maybe you're looking for guidance on how to host a potential investor that's coming to your community, or maybe you're looking to do what we're talking about here today and support the communities that are currently in your... Sorry, to support the businesses that are currently in your community to stay where they are and to expand. There are tools, resources and support to assist wherever you land across that spectrum. So Kathy's gonna talk about the section of the toolkit and I'm not sure if you can see it on the slide there. It's kind of the top left part of the circle there. It's titled Support Businesses Within Your Community. So we've heard from lots of community representatives such as yourselves and local leaders that this is a key area of focus and more support is needed. So we've enhanced this section. We have built it out, added more information, added some tools to support your BRNE activities. And so with that, to walk through the details, I'll pass it over to Kathy. Kathy told us a policy and program analyst in the Economic Development Division and she led the development of these BRNE resources. So, over to you, Kathy. Well, thank you, Amy, for that. And I'm pleased to know that so many of you are already familiar with the BRNE process so that makes my job a lot easier. But just to begin at the beginning, then the BRNE is an approach that's focused on encouraging existing businesses to stay and grow within your community. Research has shown that in an urban and suburban setting that local businesses are responsible for 80% of the jobs and investments. And of course, this reliance increases greatly in rural settings. BRNE promotes business access and vitality through developing those relationships with local business operators. So it's basically an approach that helps facilitate a dialogue then between local economic development, representatives, and businesses. Through this process, you can find out how businesses are faring in the local economy and come up with strategies and tools then that will help businesses operate more efficiently. Some of the things that can come out of a BRNE are assisting with regional promotion of your community. I mean, what's your business known for? Why do people want to come into your community? It can help your community retain and recruit workers, help companies export and expand awareness of local products. And most of all, lead up to that business networking and collaboration that will develop supplier chains and enhance consumer markets. So I'm going to give you the whirlwind tour then of the online resource that we've developed for you. Although there are many approaches to BRNE, I've featured actually two specific ones, either one of them that can be developed and modified according to your specific needs. I've focused the first one on the structured BRNE process whereby you develop a formal committee that's complemented by a fleet of volunteers. You do a survey, the data collection and analysis out of which come the recommendations that form the action plan. And again, is umbrellaed by that ongoing relationship building. And then the second approach that I'll take you through is the business walks approach. It's a blitz style approach, which is a fast, immediate blitz throughout the community, business community that is, that develops an action plan and again depends highly on an ongoing relationship building process. So for community leaders, it's an opportunity to show how valued local businesses are and to develop an environment in which businesses can thrive and prosper. And for business owners, it's an opportunity for a forum to voice their concerns and ideas for remedies and a chance to be part of the process and the solution. So for the purposes of this presentation, I've divided the structured BRNE process into three phases. So if we could go to the website then, Darby. Yeah, so I'll have to hurry here. So, so I've, I'm sorry. Okay, so basically the three phases are the community readiness and preparation. Second phase is business survey, data collection and analysis leading up to the recommendations. And then the third phase are the recommendations, action plan and ongoing follow up. So the structured process can take up to two years. So the key is to know that you have lots of patients, really good, strong and dedicated project committee and a really good volunteer base. And of course, developing those relationships will help alert you to issues sooner and so that you can address them more quickly. In terms of community readiness, you have to know where your community is in terms of developing this process, what the local economics are, what the leadership is, what your current resources are, what your budget and volunteers look like. And what are some of the challenges that you're facing? Is it a decline in economic activity in the downtown core? Are you competing with the big box stores? Is there a scale labor shortage? The next one is the BR&E process then, which is the actual process where you set up the committee, you recruit your volunteers, again with a great diversity and ensuring a dedication of all the people involved, learning what your budget is, setting up your goals, your communication strategy and designing the process and conducting it. And then the next slide would be the recommendations and action plan where you're actually taking those actions and implementing them to develop those solutions then that will help your businesses thrive and prosper. So that's the really important part. And the results that can come out of this are encouragement of these markets, the developing the local supplier chains and holding local events to build ties between local businesses and consumers. And also for further edification, we've developed resources for you. We've got information concerning case studies and an entire list of resources and links that will help you through the process. The next one is the business walks, which I talked about earlier, which is the blitz approach. And this is an approach pioneered by the Central Okanagan Economic Development Commission and I'd really like to thank Kerry Griffiths of that organization for agreeing to share the materials that they've developed. What they've done then is throughout a three hour period they've had mayors and economic development leaders blitz through the community asking three questions. What's working for them, what's not working and what the recommendations are and from there an action plan is developed. So in the website then we've got a toolkit for you that talks about what is a business walk, goes through the process and then has a list of the resource materials then again thanks to Kerry Griffiths from COEBC. So everyone is welcome to use these materials and to adapt the survey templates and the process to whatever needs their communities come up with. So if you have any questions please let me know. Thank you Kathy. Does anyone, should we go to questions at this time? Any questions on there and we're already just a little bit behind so we can go on to the matter. Yeah, so next we'll turn it over to Terri McDonald. Dr. Terri McDonald holds the PhD in Educational Studies from UBC and serves as the DC Regional Innovation Chair in Rural Economic Development at Southcourt College. Terri also has a team of researchers at the Columbia Basin Rural Development Institute at Southcourt College Columbia Basin Trust Partnership focused on supporting informed decision making in the Basin boundary region. So with that I'll turn it over to Terri to walk us through her case study. Thank you. Can everyone, can you hear me okay? I'm going to go ahead. Thanks. Okay, perfect. Thank you Darby and Amy and Kathy for inviting me to join the webinar today to share our experiences here in the Kootenai region. Let me see if I can get these slides moving in the right direction. Here we are. As mentioned, I serve as the DC Regional Innovation Chair in Rural Economic Development, but I also head out a unique partnership here at the college focused on supporting informed decision making. And if it wasn't for the resources at the institute, much of the work that we've done over the last year in a bit probably wouldn't have happened. So it's a great partnership between the Columbia Basin Trust and Southcourt College. A little bit about our institute, we're the only college based rural placed rural development institutes in the country. Other RDIs or CDIs are located at universities so we're uniquely positioned in rural communities. We cover a pretty large catchment area. It's the Columbia Basin Trust area in addition to the boundary. So we go from the Alberta border to big white all the way up to Vermont. So it's a pretty big catchment area with 28 municipalities. And our work really focuses beyond the economic. We're understanding rural revitalization sort of in a more holistic way with respect to economic, social, environmental, and cultural aspects. And we take a truly regional approach. So we look for things that matter across the communities and we try to pull together regional collaboration to address them. That's really exactly what we've done here with the business retention expansion. A little bit about our project. When I started my position two and a half years ago, some of our communities had moved forward with a brief effort and a number were stepping up to the plate very interested to move forward. And from a research perspective, I certainly noted that the different communities were using different surveys. And to get a better understanding of what's happening in our corridors or in our region as a whole, I knew instinctively that we really should be using the same survey. It also became very clear that communities needed resources as we're talking about here. They wanted to do a brief but didn't really know what was involved, what types of resources they needed and they needed tools to help. So that's where the VRDI stepped in. So we did a little bit of research. We formed a regional advisory group and we looked at creating an approach which is still evolving. We're in the second year of a three-year pilot where you can see on point two here this idea of capacity inclusive. A number of our communities do not have EDOs in place. Many don't have anybody paid to do economic development. So we knew that a collaborative approach was really necessary for our communities and we needed to recognize that many of these communities really locked what I call economic development capacity but we wanted them included still. So we moved forward with some process support. The Institute does all the research support. So we do all the data analysis and reporting and report back out to communities. So that's a key piece making it much more affordable for communities to move forward with a brief and we've tied to the BC Business Counts program from EDABC which I'm sure many of you are familiar with about. And then we're looking now, we have about 500 I think surveys to date in the database that we hold for the region and we're looking at not only community but corridor and regional level analysis. The example of the regional analysis was the recently completed manufacturing and technology sector development project. So we were able to do a report and I believe that report is on the provincial BC site. Okay, so as I mentioned, we did some background work and we formed an advisory group and we developed and are responding a number of tools and this is ever evolving as we're really figuring it out as we go. We've put together some training materials and training workshops, one day long workshops for folks that are gonna be undertaking a brie. We have a manual which I believe is posted in the handouts section up on the top there. I think Darby showed you where that is. And we developed an analytic and reporting framework. Some other products, one of the recent products that we've developed is something called a lead sheet. So we're noticing that our communities aren't necessarily following up on action items real time as they're collecting their data. So when the project is finished, we give them a lead sheet to remind them, hey, here are some businesses, if you haven't contacted them yet, you should with things we call low hanging fruit and that can be red flags, businesses that are rating themselves as poor or talking about exiting, they don't have a successor or green flags that they wanna expand but they're having problems finding an adequate site location. So we provide that support and the Columbia Basin Trust also steps up to provide support for communities to offset costs of hiring a coordinator or a researcher. So again, that's a great partnership. So what we've decided to do collaboratively as an advisory group is really to focus more on the research and relationship building side of things as opposed to the business walk side of things. So we have structured survey driven interviews that are undertaken by, it varies between one and three people, we'll take on that researcher role and it's data focused but it's not compromising of building a relationship. So we're really taking a strong research angle here and the rationale is that we want the information that we need to support planning at a regional or a corridor level and with good research we can feel comfortable about the findings and allows us that level of confidence that these findings can actually be used. We have a rigorous research protocol and analysis and that's something that we take very seriously and is a big part of the training, the one day workshop. And then again, we've got that regional collaborative model where it's community based but we're really supporting one another. So partners are picking up the phone, talking to each other about what they're learning and how did they go about doing this. So it's a really good collaborative approach and the model is really ongoing and evolving. So to date, as I mentioned, this is actually so much has happened over the last couple of weeks we're over 500 surveys now. We have finished a project in the boundary lower Columbia which is the Trail Rosland sort of mini corridor. We've done the regional manufacturing and technology project with the Innovation Councils here. The CUST has just concluded and Golden is actually 40 plus surveys into data collection right now as is the Slow Can Valley. So we have a couple of other communities stepping up now. Kimberly has started their efforts farward soon and we're talking with other communities in our region about their interest in BRII looking forward to our final year, the 2014. And hopefully we'll have all communities completed but that's ambitious, but we'll see. The other part of the strategy is that this would be a sort of on a rotation and focusing on what we've learned through best practices that it doesn't stop, it's an ongoing thing. Communities should be revisiting this process every three years and should be focused on the follow-up. So we talk a lot about community readiness and I know there's a little bit about this on the provincial site, so I'm not gonna repeat it but it's really do you have the human and the financial resources to support this type of undertaking. We spend a lot of time before implementation of a BRII in a community talking a lot about pre-planning. It's critical that you know what your goals and your objectives are. So we talk about what is your purpose? Are you looking general business climate? Are you looking to better understand certain sectors? What's the geographic scope? We have some communities that are moving forward with multiple communities in a corridor or if it's a community by itself and identify the businesses in your community and the scope of the project. So a number of our communities don't actually have business licensing in place. So it makes it a little bit more tricky for them to find a sample that's gonna be right for them and to identify those businesses but they are managing to tackle this challenge and then looking at whether or not you want a random sample or a targeted approach and again in the manual that I've posted there's some information about how you roll both sampling to meet your needs and your objectives. So what we've learned so far is that businesses do wanna talk. There was some thought when we first started that businesses have been surveyed to death. They are feeling that yes, this is actually going to result in something because communities that have moved forward have done so in partnership with their local government, their Chamber of Commerce and their community futures and any other economic development folks within the community and that sort of shows that hey, we are committed as a community to work together to address the needs that are coming up to these surveys. It's been more about green flags and reds which was a pleasant surprise, meaning that there's opportunities businesses do wanna expand, they're just having some challenges with certain areas. You can expect about four hours per business if you wanna undertake one of these projects and that's from calling, making the appointment, doing the interview, entering the data. We have found that the findings are now being linked to economic development plans and concrete action and that context does matter. So the process does need to be customized to meet the unique needs of each community but it still can be done within this regional model. Okay, so critical ingredients to success. So as I mentioned, you need strong and committed leadership. It sends a really big message. The partnerships are key. You need to make sure that you have the resources in place and you do that pre-planning. Before you start going out and talking to businesses, you need to make sure that you have resources for follow-up, which is critical. You need champions. It's good to start with some short-term success and you need to commit over the long-term to things like business appreciation events and follow-up. The other thing that we've learned here in the Putanese is so far we've done really, I think a pretty good job connecting the findings to economic development planning. The thing that we are struggling with here is really making sure that we're doing that follow-up with the individual businesses, particularly in the communities that don't have those dedicated economic development folks. So now I'm going to turn it to Darby. I have a short video, and that concludes my presentation this afternoon. Good morning, group or government. Can you pin this or that? If there's something you challenge, it's not here, it's in your spaces. Thanks very much, Teri. Hey, yes. Thank you, Teri. Thank you. His experience in Nanaimo, Peter McGee is the Economic Development Coordinator within the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. His professional background is in communications and marketing, which has lent itself well to the promotion and execution of a successful BR&E program. In his current role, one of Peter's primary responsibilities has been a program administrator of the BR&E program, Nanaimo Business Counts, and that's what he'll be talking to us about today. So I'll pass it over to Peter. Great, thank you so much, and thank you very much for having me on this webinar. It's an exciting process and I'm excited to be included. So yes, I'm Peter McGee, and here we go. So just a little bit about the NADC, the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. We were formerly a department within the city of Nanaimo and separated about two years ago to form an arms-length corporation, which is now the corporation that I'm in, the Nanaimo Economic Development Corporation. As we are right now, we include both an Economic Development Division, which I am in, as well as a Tourism Services Division or Tourism Nanaimo. And we serve the area of Cassidy, which is essentially the Nanaimo Airport, up to and including Lanceville, including Gabriel Island. So right now in 2013, we have a BR&E program, but what I'd like to talk about today specifically is our 2012 BR&E program. It was a very exciting program and I really liked it a lot, so I want to tell you all about it. It was focus group-based, which is a little bit different than the norm, which would be one-on-one interviews. Forum participants were groups by industry sector and discussions would vary based on the industry represented in that group. Each forum was directed by a highly skilled facilitator. That was not me, we hired in a facilitator who's absolutely fantastic. We guide the conversation and contribute to the discussion when appropriate. So some of the short-term goals of the program were to identify businesses that were at risk of leaving the community, as all business retention expansion programs do, develop an understanding of their issues and concerns and help them to resolve those issues in order to keep them in the area. Identify businesses that are considering expansion or have expansion potential and develop an understanding of their concerns and or barriers to work proactively to help them to expand their operations here and create new jobs for the NAMO residents. Together, feedback about the NAMO business climate. This focus group style of doing BR&E is actually an excellent way of getting feedback about the business climate as a whole because as I'll discuss, we get to touch on a number of different industry sectors, which is a great piece of this type of process. And to facilitate business connection through greater knowledge of the NAMO business space. Some of our long-term goals are to drive resources, organization, community and partnership to economic opportunities, determine the needs of growth and value of companies in the community and watch for business and economic trends. So the way the process actually worked was it would be a two-hour session with a group of business professionals, usually between 10 and 15 business leaders from any given industry sector. And during that session, a professional facilitator gathers information on key issues from participating company representatives. Those company representatives, we'd like to be either company owners or senior management. Those folks who have their finger on the pulse of business decision-making and what impacts that business in the community. Confidentiality on business issues is preserved throughout the entire process. And that's a key element in having these business leaders convinced to actually participate in the program because they're in the company of their peers when we're having these discussions. So confidentiality is a big deal. And information collected through the business forums is managed through a web-based database, sorry, a web-based database system, DC business accounts through the executive pulse software. So these are the forums that we held during 2012, construction, retail, tourism, green tech, professional, scientific and technical. In June, there was no session. And in July, transportation, manufacturing, healthcare, social agencies, large employers, and ending the year with arts and culture. They're all fascinating discussions. And there were different things that were consistent throughout and different things that we'd find different depending on the group we were speaking with. But these are some of the considerations that we thought about throughout the process as well as at the beginning of the process before actually getting into the focus group style VR&E program. Will participants be forthcoming in the company of their competitors? Now this is one of the things that when you're doing one-on-one VR&E interviews, there's no real need to be concerned about this because it's just you and the business owner in front of you. But put in front of a group of 10 or 12 of their competitors in the field, that's certainly a consideration to be taken. How are individual business needs addressed in a group setting? So when you're talking about general trends and general challenges and opportunities facing an industry sector, how are you talking to business A, B or C about their particular business interests? And finally, what is the appropriate balance of information gathering to problem solving? So I'll go through these one by one being cognizant of the time. So will participants be forthcoming in the company of competitors? Like Terry alluded to, businesses love to talk and they want to tell their story. And because we weren't gathering information about business secrets or trade secrets, companies were actually incredibly forthcoming about the different challenges they were facing and different opportunities that they saw in their sector. So we had fantastic conversation regarding just those challenges and opportunities. And that comes with great help from a good facilitator. That's a really important piece of this is finding a facilitator who knows how to move a discussion along, knows how to move from topic to topic. So that's very important. So we found that that was actually really encouraging. How are individual business needs addressed in a group setting? It's inevitable that in a discussion of industry trends, very often the stories will come down to individual business challenges. At which point you need to find a balance between talking about those in the group setting and setting an appointment for later to discuss those. And the latter is often what we would do. We would say that's a very interesting issue and we would schedule an appointment to meet at a later time. It just got the conversation moving so that we got our foot in the door. And finally, what is the appropriate balance of information gathering to problem solving? This process was very much an information gathering process. It was also of course very important to have a problem solving aspect to it. But being that this was the first time we've conducted this style of session, information gathering was a big piece and it was actually a very successful piece. I'll get into what we did with that information a little later. So some of the outcomes of this program was dynamic conversation, one that I thought. In my experience, I haven't found in one-on-one interviews as interesting as they are. Being in a group of industry professionals that don't have the opportunity to meet regularly, it's fascinating hearing from a particular industry sector on what are the different challenges that they're facing in the community. Individual business problems are addressed as I noted, industry-wide challenges are discussed. Excuse me. Cross-industry issues are identified in a way that otherwise would be difficult to discover. So I had alluded to earlier that in talking to all of these different industry sectors, we found certain themes would run across all of the industry sectors regardless of which one you're talking to and that was really interesting. And in that respect, we got a lot of information that we would be able to pump out to the community at large, not focusing on an individual industry sector that would really benefit all businesses. And I'll get into that. It's actually really exciting that we're doing right now. It's right at the end. And economic development is seen by the business community as proactive in supporting businesses in the multiple sectors. So that was important to us as well. We weren't singling out a particular industry. We were trying to be inclusive and to speak to really our key industry sectors, multiple industry sectors. And that was received very well by the business community. So looking forward, we're actually reinstating a similar focus group self-program to be delivered in 2014. This year in 2013, we are doing the one-on-one business interviews in a little bit of a different fashion. We've coordinated with some of our community partners, including the Chamber of Commerce, the Downtown Business Improvement Association, and others to administer the program, which has been very interesting and very good for our partnerships. But like I said, next year, we're going to be going back into a focus group style program. The cost and time effectiveness of this style of program administration benefits the team with limited resources or staff, which we are. We are a team of, I would say, two and a half on our economic development side. So going from business door to business door, conducting interviews, that takes a great deal of time, but inviting once a month a group of 10 to 15 people to our office, to our boardroom, has proven fantastic for time management and getting everyone back to their day. And it also presents a fantastic marketing opportunity in that multiple key industries are being considered and not just one or two. So that's been really excellent. And before I move on, I live it to before that the information we gathered, some of it pertains to all or if not most industry sectors. So what we've done with that is actually created a seminar series this year to address some of those challenges that were brought up over and over again last year. So they've come on into four categories, which are information gathering, sales and marketing, there's succession planning and long-term strategic planning for small business. And all four of those, we've conducted three panel seminars this year and there's one left to go, which is succession planning. So that's been a good way to show that we're not just gathering information for the sake of gathering information, but we're actually using it to benefit the VISTA community at large. And I've been very successful as well. And that is my presentation, so thank you very much. But at time, oh, did I rip through that? No, that's fine, Peter, that was excellent. But yeah, Darby's just mentioning that we've got a little bit of time, so if anyone has any questions that they'd like to pose at this point in the webinar, please go ahead and do so. You can do it in the Q&A section online there. Yeah, so you have the Q&A top of your screen there. You can type in your question, or you can use that feedback indicator on the right-hand side of the top of your screen there to raise your virtual hand and pose a question to any of our presenters today. And Peter, I know it's certainly a great presentation. Thanks for asking time for this opportunity. Thank you. Discussion after each order to see if people aren't typing away and just trying to, yeah, we do have a question a little bit, so what was the feedback from the participant up to be focused to you? Sure, absolutely, and correct me if I'm not interpreting the question right. Was the feedback within each two-hour session or the feedback about the process itself? I could answer both, I mean. Sure, why not? Let's do that. Sure, let's do that. Excuse me, just getting over a test goal. I'll try not to get you all sick. So the feedback within the session itself, each two-hour session, like I said sort of early on in the presentation, that that was certainly a consideration of will participants be forthcoming or will we hear crickets? Because they're in the company of their competitors. Will they just sit silently in hopes to learn trade secrets? What we found was actually just the opposite. And the feedback within the sessions was incredible. Our participants were incredibly forthcoming about different challenges that they were having. And we found it was actually even more so in the company of their peers in that they were, they seemed to be having the discussion with themselves. They were almost excited by the fact that they were in a room with other people who were sharing the same experiences. Because often these businesses are essentially islands in the ocean and they don't get this kind of dynamic conversation very often. So that sparked some really great conversation that led itself really well to our information gathering purpose. As for the feedback about the process itself, it was incredibly well received mostly because we were listening. That was a big aspect. And I think it's a big aspect. Regardless of how you're executing your BR&E efforts, it's the fact that you seem to be listening to your community. That's a big step just on its own. Is that you're listening and you care and you're part of the community and you want to help. And this program definitely showed that. Definitely showed that we wanted to hear from our businesses and we weren't going to shape our policy or our programming before we had a chance to sit down and have a good discussion with groups of our industry leaders. I hope that answers it. We should move on to columns at this point too. We do have a couple more questions and we'll make our attendees for those questions. We'll definitely have you at the top of the queue for our discussion following columns. Thanks again, Peter and Amy. Thank you. Okay. Yeah, thanks, Derby. So let's move on to the column's presentation. Colin O'Leary from Cam Loops. So with a robust foundation in science and technology coupled with an MBA from the Sotter School of Business, Colin brings an eclectic mixture of business acumen and experience to his position at Venture Cam Loops. Having been a part of many successful business startups and working with numerous new business ventures, Colin can bring firsthand understanding to the table for clients looking to embark in the excitement of their own business startups. So with that, I'll turn it over to you, Colin. That's great. Thanks. Hello, everyone. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And before we get into it too much, I should warn everybody that I was actually just over at an EDAC conference in St. John's, Newfoundland. I flew in late last night. So I'm probably not firing on all cylinders. You'll have to bear with me for the presentation. But I'm going to talk to you today about the VK Venture Advisor Program. And this is kind of an interesting program in that we are also doing three business retention and expansion survey ourselves. It's huge value in that it's an excellent program. But we are finding that our BR&E survey was typically dealing with like medium to large size businesses. And so the idea behind the VK Venture Advisors was to come up with a program that actually targeted and focused entrepreneurs and new businesses that were starting up. So with that, I'll get into it here. So the mandate of the program is to help and develop and support local entrepreneurs to achieve success, but provide and construct a feedback, professional advice, and networking opportunities. So the VK Venture Advisors, so in essence, really what it is, was not reinventing the wheel. One way that I often describe it to people and what people can easily relate to is it's much like the Dragon set, which is something that I find naturally captures entrepreneurs anyways, really captures their interest, captures a lot of people's interest actually, because it's something they can relate to and they really enjoy. And that's in essence what this is, except for the differences that they're getting up these entrepreneurs. There's one entrepreneur is selected every month. It's an opportunity to basically pitch their business idea and get professional, constructive feedback on it. But there's no funding provided whatsoever. There's no, this is not a financing program. It's instead, it is purely raw feedback, constructive feedback from very successful people that have been there before them, and also the connections. And connections I found actually have been one of the biggest things that come out of these meetings have been very exciting. So the day of the presentation, what does it actually typically look like? So it's held over at the KPMG office, a very nice office. We provide lunch, happens over lunchtime, because we find that that's actually a very good time for a lot of these professionals. And the entrepreneurs arrive a little bit early and get up for the presentation. And then the idea that the presentation is made to a panel of professionals and experts for around 20 minutes or so. And typically what we find is that it, this way it's supposed to run, but it actually usually doesn't. The idea is the presentation happens first and then the next 40 minutes is open to discussion. But what we actually find is it's very dynamic. And so very rarely will an entrepreneur make all the way through their presentation before there starts to be feedback coming from all directions and questions. And so the panel themselves, who they are, is they are basically what we would call pillars of influence in the community. But these are professionals and business leaders that are very well known, very well connected in the community. They're usually on all sorts of boards, you know, constantly volunteering for different events and things like that. So people know them. And they're also very well respected and like I said, very well connected as well. And so it's a unique experience to be able to tap into this panel, typically during a meeting we'd have anywhere between eight and 12 of them actually sitting around a U-shaped table in front of the entrepreneurs. So let's go to the next slide here. So what's expected of the entrepreneur? So the first thing is the entrepreneur has to prepare a presentation. This is actually something that I will work with the entrepreneur on. We'll actually spend easily about eight hours before the presentation. It's working on it together. Part of the reason behind this is that we don't want to, I don't want to waste the professional, the advisor's time really. I don't want to waste anybody's time. So I want to make sure everybody is as prepared as possible so everybody gets the absolute most out of the experience. The idea at the end of the entrepreneur comes in and they're supposed to address professionally or where they're uniform if they've got one. They're supposed to bring the product. We try to sample the product as much as possible. It really helps the advisors wrap their minds around it. I also asked them for an executive summary of a forehand and a bio so they can actually circulate it to the advisors so they can try to think about things the week before. And I asked them to actually look at the bios for the VK venture advisors. And that way they can actually target their questions. So we have an accountant, we have a lawyer, we have an insurance professional, a finance professional, a real estate professional. So we kind of cover the gamut of everything, HR, marketing. And the idea is that this is a chance for them. They don't have to have all the answers. So this is their chance to actually ask questions and say, well, I don't really know where to go with this. Like this is where I am right now. I'm thinking about doing this, but I don't know. What do you guys think? And they can actually get professional feedback for free. And it's better than just a one-on-one kind of interaction because the advisors interact with each other. It's actually quite exciting to witness because it's a very lively discussion. They all actually disagree with one another, talk about experiences they've gone through and during their career. So it's quite good actually. As far as what's expected of the advisors, so I ask that they review the business plan obviously before the meeting. I also ask that they give professional feedback that's constructive and in a respectful manner. Unlike the dragons then, we're not going after drama. I try to keep it as constructive as possible. The idea is not to get up there and pair somebody's ideas to shreds. It's instead to get up there and still asking the tough questions though. Because it's the reality of when these entrepreneurs go out there to start their business, they're going to come up against these challenges and they better have answers. And that's the idea. It's to repair them before they really get going. The biggest thing about this next point is to try to make beneficial network connections. This is absolutely the hidden kind of bonus of all this. When we started doing this, I didn't really anticipate these network connections playing such a major part in things, but that's really probably the best takeaway from all of this. And the idea is they're also supposed to provide a free follow-up professional appointment to the entrepreneurs. The Entrepreneurial Canal Access were free after this on one-on-one, an hour with the accountant, an hour with the realtor, an hour with the lawyer, which is great for them because they often have quite a tight budget. So some of the outcomes, very, very positive feedback from the entrepreneurs. That's not very surprising, but very positive feedback from the advisors, which is something I did not anticipate because this is a volunteer thing. And they really see it as an excellent way to give back to the community. And so this is something I didn't anticipate, and it's actually been nice to have this from both sides. Very constructive information and connections. The connections are absolutely unbelievable that have come out of this. For example, one of the very first entrepreneurs was Red Seal Chef. He lived in Jamaica for a while and he's supplying cheesecakes to five-star restaurants. He's coming back to Canada where he's born and raised and he wants to start up his cheesecake business in Canada. And he kind of didn't really know where to go. We got out of this meeting, he got a mentor with a fellow named Bryce Herman, who is extremely well-connected in the community and with hospitality. Bryce managed to hook him up with a commercial location for 50 cents on the dollar, all of the equipment already included, and it was a least-to-own arrangement because Bryce knew the owners. And so, I mean, that is something... I remember the entrepreneur just coming out of that and saying, I would have never found that on my own. Like, this is unbelievable. That's an example. I mean, just our last presentation we had was with Oda Lee Awesome, who are a really unique kind of food manufacturing company in town. And we were able to, through, again, through some of these connections, we were able to link them directly to somebody very high up in the Paterson Group, Dennis, who was able to get them in front of the right people that have their products carried in, Save On Foods, Coopers, Overweighty, that whole Paterson food group, which is, again, something where the entrepreneur was just like, this is unbelievable. I didn't really even know how to get into a grocery store, let alone access to multiple chains right across, I think, Western Canada. So that was pretty amazing. So that gives you an idea of some of the connections that come out of it. The other things, we get increased community awareness for venture families. This is something that I think a lot of us struggle with. But I don't know about you guys, but we get a lot of what's economic development and what do you guys do for the community. This is something that is, it's kind of a sexy program. It's actually a bit kind of marketed, but it gets really, it gets people excited and interested. And something that's kind of unique is I'm actually getting professionals in the community approaching us and saying, by the way, I'd like to participate as an advisor for the speaking venture advisor program. I'm hearing about it in the community. It sounds really exciting. And I'm now getting entrepreneurs on a regular basis coming in and hearing about this program, which is great because it's driving clients through the door in essence. Because a lot of these advisors are the owners or CEOs of companies in town, and not only that, then we also have the entrepreneurs coming in. So the pretty great outcomes. And yeah, I think I've finished it a little early, but that's a logo we came up with a brand for and everything, we have a website. And it's just kind of a, it's a difference program, like I said, just specifically targeting new venture creation, which is kind of a unique thing to go after and for a lot of fun. So there, I hope you enjoyed it. I don't know, Darcy, if you want to take it, or Darby, if you want to take it from here, or? Thanks, Colin, that was great. Yeah, absolutely. So now we can shift over to our discussion portion of today's webinar, and there were a couple of questions that weren't addressed when we had last set that for a period after Peters. So, but in the interim, while we speak to those, I certainly encourage the rest of you, and I'll just steal a camera away from you, there, Colin, back to us. So yeah, I certainly encourage the rest of you to please put in any questions out in the Q&A there, or we'd love to talk to you too. So if you use that feedback button again on the top right-hand corner, you can raise your virtual hand there, and again, we'd like to speak to you for sure. So, after those come up, I'm just going to drag this out so we can see it here. And Peter, we did have a question that I think kind of following up to the question you were speaking to before, and the question is, do you anticipate doing this every year?  Can you speak to that? Sure, absolutely. We're dedicated to doing some sort of BR&E effort each year. I personally am a huge fan of this style. Just after having done it the one time, it was a bit of a pilot in the way that we were doing that focus group style session. But it was just so great, and I would be very happy to do that every year. And I know that we're, like I said, we're reinstating that style program in 2014 with a little more focus on problem solving. We've already done the program, so we're really focused on information gathering and also problem solving. But this one, we've gone through the process of information gathering about challenges and opportunities. Now we're really going to get to the heart of the matter and really address individual business issues to see how we can do that. We're still structuring that program right now, but I would love to see an iteration of that style program every year. I think it's really effective. Queuing up here. So Peter, another question for you. This did follow your presentation there, but the question if you're not able to see it and others won't be, so I'm going to read it out. So a question for Peter. Do you think businesses were more comfortable with a third party facilitator as they were, and in quotations, outsider? They were an outsider who had no opinion or bias and a continued question. Do you think the convo would be as dynamic if the facilitator was someone from the active department? That's a good question. Maybe. The only thing that I would say maybe not would be at each of these two hour sessions, members of the economic development team were present. That was sort of a big piece of it, just to really tie up to the program to make sure everyone knows that it's the economic development office that's doing this. Maybe I'm biased, but I don't think we saw any hindering of the process by our being there, which makes me think that if there was a member of your economic development team that was a professional facilitator that was very knowledgeable about different business sectors that I don't think that would really be a problem. The important piece is that the facilitator is capable. That's a big one for me, is that they're very good at moving a conversation along. Like I said, we were worried about hearing crickets, and I really feel like if we didn't have a professional facilitator, we may actually have heard crickets. So I really attribute a lot of our success to the fact that we brought in someone who does this for a living, so that was important. Being in an outsider, I'm not sure. Maybe, depending on the group. Now if I could ask all the attendees to actually help us by actually ensuring that your line is muted, and that's star six, because what I'm going to do is open up the lines here, and Emily, you've raised your virtual hand, so I'd ask you actually not to mute your line. I'd do the opposite with star six here in a second. So I am going to take things out of lecture mode, and hopefully the audio will be good enough that we can start a discussion here. So just a moment, please. The conference is no longer in lecture mode. Emily, are you there, muted, and... Sir, yes, I'm here. Please go ahead. Okay, I guess my question. I understand that BR&E programs are meant to be preventative and help you to engage with businesses throughout their business life, but what happens if you encounter a business where they're already feeling very frustrated or very tangled in their operations and how do you help them to untangle that knot? Do any of our presenters... No one else will, sure. So I think it would depend on what the business issues were. A big part of what makes, I think, economic development so successful is our ability to link to resources in the community. So if it's an expansion real estate issue, we can link to our real estate partners. If it's something in financing, then we can go that route as well. So I wonder if, depending on the business issues that they're having, if they're already frustrated, then it might be a different process than, like I said, sort of the information gathering side because that's already been done for you. They're giving you all that information and then it's right into sort of business as usual, which is problem-solving, and getting them the right resources to get them on track. I wonder if that's sort of an answer. That's helpful. Thank you. Thank you. Other presenters want to speak to my question here for Jerry, it looks like. So here it is. So back to Terry. She mentioned those communities that don't have active capacity, have some challenges getting back to how to address the capacity challenges of these very small communities, rural areas. Terry, can you speak to that? Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Debbie, for the question, because that is our big challenge here in the Kootenies with, as I mentioned, a number of these communities having what I'm referring to as limited economic development capacity. And in fact, I had an email from one of our partners this morning about just feeling a little bit of anxiety about releasing their business retention and expansion findings and feeling a little bit out of the loop with respect to what supports are out there. So what we're looking to tackle from a regional level and through the advisory group that actually got together last week, we're speaking of this very thing. And what we've learned so far is that we do have a number of supports, business supports, that operate on a regional or a sub-regional level. So the example being the community futures groups, the innovation councils, the colleges, and we also have something unique here in the Kootenies. It's the Business Basin Advisory Program, and that's something that's offered through the Columbia Basin Trust. So what we've realized pretty quickly with these smaller communities is they themselves don't even know what supports are out there, nor do their businesses. So a couple of things that we are moving forward with to tackle this very thing is one of the communities that has just finished, when they release their business retention expansion findings to the community, which is going to be happening within the next month or so, they'll be doing it in conjunction with the Business Support Fair, where they'll be inviting some of these folks to come in and speak to the businesses about what supports are out there. The other piece is really plugging this information back into community partners in the smaller communities so that they have a list and an overview of who they can refer to. So it's not that they're not willing and able to refer, it's just they don't know who to refer these businesses to. So it's an information gap, I think, is a big piece. The other strategy is to formalize a bit more of a regional support network so that people can really feel free to pick up a phone and if they don't know who to refer to, they can start asking around and getting those referrals in place. And then I guess the other piece, this being a pilot project, and of course myself being a researcher and this being an applied research project, really paying close attention to what gaps are existing within our region. So what challenges are these smaller communities facing and what are the gaps in our region with respect to the supports that are being asked for through this business retention and expansion project? I hope that answers your question. I mean, we really are figuring it out as we go, but the information gap was a low-hanging fruit piece for us that communities just didn't know all the great supports that we do have. So we'll start there. Thanks, Terry. Thank you. EQ Advisor, I recall. How often are presentations made to the panel of advisors? We typically, we aim at one a month, one per month, and the idea behind that right now is that it is a time commitment from the advisors. So we are volunteering, so we don't want to take up too much of their time. But also right now, probably our biggest bottleneck with it is actually finding new businesses that are really ready to go. And that's, I mean, like I see a lot of entrepreneurs, I'm sure, you know, during my peak, I'm sure I'm seeing at least 100 a quarter. But the problem is, there's a big difference between an entrepreneur who just walks through the door of an idea and an applicant and an entrepreneur that has a fully fleshed out business plan has already like registered a trademark for their name and blah blah blah and or has a prototype or has lined up sales. And that's kind of more of the entrepreneur I'm looking for with this, just so that we, because I don't want all this energy and effort to go into an entrepreneur that walks away and just never starts the business. And so that's why it's limited to one to a month. But we might start to ramp that up to twice a month if we can start to feed in more entrepreneurs that are really ready. So, yeah. Question here? Oh, we've been doing this all the time, yes. And we might be having just a little bit of feedback there, so if you haven't, if you don't mind muting your line unless there was a question there and please do pose it if that's the case. So again, you can raise your virtual hand or type it in through the Q&A there at the top if any of you are just listening in as well. Do you have any success stories or lessons learned you would like to share that we've highlighted here? So here's the Business Attraction Toolkit as well as the Business Retention and Expansion Week and Business Logs Program. And our presenters today have kindly made themselves available to you if you do have additional questions. Here is their contact information and it looks like we do actually have another question. So, Carolyn, you've raised your virtual hand. If you do get our sticks, please go ahead and pose your question. Hi, this is for, I'm sorry, I forget your name, but for Adventure Kamloops. Colin, there we go, sorry. Colin, how did you know or how confident were you that you'd have enough of these entrepreneurs to make a go of the program? Did you do any initial, sorry, go ahead. Yeah, sorry, no, that's totally a tough question. And it was, it was quite hard kind of making that decision, but I had, like I said, I don't know about your community, but in the first quarter of the year, I see a lot of entrepreneurs. Like I actually joke, it's kind of like trying to drink out of a fire hose, but we actually try to like find ways of like slowing down the inflow and making sure we're only capturing people with really strong ideas. And so I was lucky enough, I can't take 100% full credit actually for the program because a long time ago in Kamloops, there was something called Business Care that was existing in Kamloops and it was similar. It was along the same lines and it had just kind of faded out into nothing. So really I kind of, I resuscitated the program and rebranded it and actually chaff changed it quite a bit, but I mean the essence, it was there. And the biggest thing is that I had the, I had the contact information from the people that were the advisors before. So that's the other half of the story is actually lining up the advisors and getting them on board. And so I started contacting them and said, do you have any interest in trying to get something like this going again? Like would you participate if we did it? And had basically overwhelming feedback from them that absolutely we loved it. And this is, we were very sad to see it go. We'd really like to participate. And so having that support from that side and knowing that I would see a lot of entrepreneurs, I basically decided, okay, let's just give it a shot. Let's give it a go. And if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out.  Like for example, I partnered with our university PRU and I actually talked about this program and they have two streams of entrepreneurship. One of them is the management entrepreneurship and the other one is just new venture creation in business. And so I go in and talk to the classes and I participate in other kind of class events and things. So that kind of helps to see to me kind of a steady supply of entrepreneurs besides what I get normally in the community. So I don't know if that answers the question or not, but. Yeah, definitely. Thanks. Yeah, no problem. I do have another question for either Terry or Peter if there aren't any other questions from any other people out there. Do you wish to speak to, is it the same question or? No, no, a different question. A different question. I'm here. I'm here. So this would be for either Terry or Peter. But how did you ensure that any of the home-based businesses were reached in your efforts? Or were they or were they not maybe? Well, that's a good question. That's actually come up. One of the areas that's undertaking the degree right now is in the Silken Valley where the majority of businesses are actually home-based businesses. So it really was sort of get the key partners sitting down at a table and talking about all the businesses that they knew. The other strategy, and it was used by the Innovation Councils as well, was to when they did a business interview with a company, they asked that company if they knew of others. So it's sort of called, it's sort of the snowball technique to try to uncover some of these home-based businesses, particularly in the communities that have a high percentage that are very interested in what's happening with the home-based business. The other piece that we did and piloted with the Silken Valley was we created a shorter survey. So we took the BC business count survey and we cut it from, I don't know, I think they have 97 or so questions and we cut it down to 30 questions and selected the questions that were most applicable to home-based business. So customizing the survey was also a real key piece. These businesses really don't want to sit down for an hour and a half interview, being asked questions that don't relate to them in any way. So yeah, I guess the two things would be the short survey and then the tapping into local knowledge about where these home-based businesses are and then using what I call the snowball technique to start uncovering those that we've missed in the first sort of list of businesses to contact. Does that help? Yeah, thanks. Great. Sure, yeah, that was a great answer, Karen. I'll follow it up with an issue. That's a great answer. The way we've recruited folks to participate in our program was based on NAICS COAS and our business license holders with the city. So if there were businesses without a business license they wouldn't even be on our list. For consideration and many of the sectors, a home-based business wasn't as applicable but for some they were such as healthcare. If we had a senior care company that was working at home they would be in the group. So they were represented certainly. Although we didn't have a group particularly for home-based businesses it would just vary depending on the group and depending on how their company fit into the context of their sector and the context of the group that they were speaking to. But we didn't particularly reach out for home-based businesses. We sort of came upon them a little more organically. Great, thank you. Thank you. Meeting to wrap up here. So President, I say thank you to each of our presenters today. Thanks very much for very engaging and informative presentations. I'd like to point to the attendees back to the handouts section. Again, those materials won't be available at the end of the year. So I know Teri would be the materials she has up there as well as the APTF of today's slide. So I encourage you to download those now. Also I'd like to emphasize again that we will be putting out a survey all the way in a couple of days here. Please keep an eye out for that. Please provide that. Otherwise, thanks very much everyone.


Oh my gosh. What? Are you kidding? Dude, are you kidding me? Bubby, this is the coolest. We're taking a look at the next generation of avatar video transmitters that come in in two flavors, right? We've got the Avatar HD Kit V2 and the Avatar HD Pro Kit. So there's a new video transmitter. I'm excited for that. It's got this black finish. It's got some really exciting features. Just looking at it. Sotter pads. Sotter pads. That's really great. So you have the option to plug in your connector or solder direct, which is great. For ease of building, it's nice that you can keep things plug and play.  Yep. Something I immediately see is they also have 20 by 20 mounting hole as well now. So exciting. So nice. Yes. It's these little things that make a big difference. You've got holes on both side of the heat sink and threaded. You can mount it on either side, thread right into the heat sink. Nice. There's still 25 by 25 holes, but it comes bolted together with nuts and bolts. So if you wanted to mount it, something 25 by 25, you could remove the hardware and run it through. But I think most people are going to choose to mount it with the 20 by 20 threaded holes. I think that's how I'm going to be doing it. Me too. That's how I'm doing it. Also, for the plate that retains the antenna connection, M2 screws. That's cool. That's so nice. It's the same M2 screws that are holding the heat sinks together.  So finicky. We don't have to deal with that anymore. Basic M2 screws. Everyone's going to have a 1.5 millimeter driver in their rotor ride toolkit. So no problem dealing with that. And speaking of antennas. There's only one. Only one, not antennas. With the original Avatar video transmitter, you had two antennas. They've only got one antenna. I mean, what do you think that's going to do for performance? Do you think we'll have less range or anything like that? I'd be curious to test it out. But from seeing other HECs in the past go from two to one, I think it'll be basically the same performance. Yeah, I don't know exactly how it functions. I know that the digital systems have inputs and outputs. The goggles are transmitting and receiving. It's a two-way communication. And my understanding is that having two antennas on the video transmitter helps with that. But we've seen successful digital systems before use one antenna. So hopefully they've done it right. I think it's just going to be important that we mount it in a good way so it's straight up, so we have the best RF. Yeah. Now when it comes to cameras, you've got two flavors. You've got the standard V2 camera. And you've got the pro camera. So the standard V2 camera. Some changes from what we've been using before. It's got a 4 by 3 image sensor. So that means a native 4 by 3 aspect ratio. That's interesting because the goggles are still 16 by 9. Yeah, back to the good old days of when people flew 4 by 3. I mean, it's tricky because 4 by 3 is what we all flew when we were flying analog FPV systems. It was just a lot more common that standard definition cameras had that 4 by 3 aspect ratio as we're going digital. 16 by 9 is becoming more prevalent. I think a lot of people think that there's an advantage to 4 by 3 because that image is taller. So all things being equal, same lens, same everything, you're going to have a taller field of view with a 4 by 3 camera sacrificing some of the width. But with a 16 by 9 camera, you're going to have wider on width but a little bit shorter on height. Right. And so it's kind of saying, what do you want, right? And if you're doing flips and rolls, maybe you want things to be a little bit more equal. And I can see how having a taller field of view would help some of those power loop gaps, some of those maddy flips, things like that. I might argue that what you should do is just take a 16 by 9 camera and use a wider lens so that you'd have the same up and down field of view but gain some of the left and right for free. But out of the box without making any modifications, the 4 by 3 sensor of the standard V2 camera is going to give you more up and down field of view than the original avatar camera and then the pro camera because this one's still 16 by 9. Okay. Yeah, so this is a 16 by 9 camera but it boasts a Sony sensor. That's nice. So it should be higher image quality and it's supposed to have very good low light capability. Interesting. Yeah, so this is supposed to be a camera that's going to let you fly in the dark. So when you get either of these packages, of course you get your video transmitter, attached to your camera, your antenna, and the accessories that it comes with include a connector. So this would plug right into the video transmitter and then you could solder that to your flight controller or cut the connector off and direct solder it like we mentioned. You get this cable here so that you can use data transfer and dump footage off of it because it does onboard DVR. Right, so the video transmitter has built in storage. There's unfortunately not an SD card slot or anything like that. So when you want to get footage off, you have to use this cable, which would plug into your video transmitter. But the other end, unlike the original avatar video transmitter that had a USB, this is another connector and you're supposed to use this separate USB board. So that plugs into there. Now you have a standard USB-C connector. In some ways this is an improvement. USB-C is the improvement, but it's a lot of pieces that could get lost. Right, so you have to go from the video transmitter to a cable, to a board, to another USB-C cable versus before you could just... Plug in one cable to the video transmitter. You know, I guess the thing is though you could leave this board plugged in and you could mount this somewhere on the drone. Yeah, it looks like there's some mounting holes. They're not standard hole size, but... Yeah, I mean the hole size looks to be like a standard M2. But the spacing isn't anything that you're gonna find inherently on a drone. So it's not like there's gonna be some built-in mounting point on the frame you already have. So maybe frame makers will start putting mounting points for this, but I don't think that's that likely. It's an interesting choice. I think there's some pros, there's some cons, but it's not a huge deal either way. We haven't talked about the DVR capabilities of this, though. We have not. What are the capabilities? I don't know, is it 1080, 60, it's anywhere? Both these units, both the V2 and the Pro, record in 1080p, 60 frames a second. The image quality is supposed to be improved over what we had before, especially with the Pro camera. And more interestingly is that these have a gyro built-in which is meant to give you support for gyro flow. What is gyro flow? Gyro flow is a post-stabilization software, so you can take any footage. If you have camera footage and gyro data, you can put them together and gyro flow will basically give you a stabilized clip. If you've seen real steady clips like cinema shots, it'll give you that style of look. When you're trying to make things look as smooth as possible, it's really helpful to use post-processing stabilization to give that like crazy, buttery look. You can take out any little jitter and just kind of keep your subject the focus of the shot rather than seeing all the little options on the fly. So it's interesting that they put that in there. I appreciate it. Yeah, I don't think it took much size. The fact that it caps out at 1080p and it'll wall to 4K, how useful is that going to be, you think? I think it'll be like a solid backup for, you know, you're out-free styling, your GoPro stops recording. I think it'll be a good backup to like I can still show this clip on my Instagram or my YouTube channel. For Instagram, definitely, right?  But if you're making an Instagram clip, I mean, 1080p is definitely more than enough. Everyone's watching on their phone. Yeah, and I'm sure there's enough detail where like you can work it in the post-processing world and, you know, get it to look pretty good. So we're gonna test out this new gear. We're gonna try doing some cinematic shots where we're gonna have you chase me, open broad daylight. We're gonna see how the gyro flow is able to make things look a little bit more cinematic. Then we're gonna go do some freestyle and spot where we'll have, you know, some brights and some dark shadows, see how the dynamic range is. And then we've got to test out the low light. They're really talking about the low light capability. Is that even worth, I don't know how good that's gonna be. Let's see. For testing out these Avatar video transmitters, we have built two CL2 errors. This is our five inch frame with dead cat arms. So that moves the front props back a bit. Okay. Okay, and that's gonna help get the props out of view. Because it does look like Waxnail is wanting to give you more of the option to use your FPV camera as the recording camera. So you probably aren't gonna wanna see props in view. So dead cat's gonna help with that. And on the pro camera, which has 16 by nine, which has an even wider field of view, we're using this special forward mount, which pushes the camera forward and prevents you from seeing the standoffs in view. You might get a little bit of that with a four by three camera, but not as much as you got with the 60 by nine. We are here at a lake to get some juicy cinematic footage so we can test the V2 camera and the pro camera of the new Waxnail video transmitter system. So he's gonna be on his E-foil, is that what it's called? Yeah. Yeah. Especially electric flying surfboard. We're gonna see if this can give you like good cinematic video right onto the video transmitter. I'm honestly a little bit hesitant just knowing that it's only in the cap out at 1080p. Save some weight not having to carry a GoPro and save some money. Definitely. In the event that I lose my drone, water bottle's always a good backup. So we're just gonna electric the tape right onto the drone and we'll shoot. Should be good. He has a rotor right as far up on his goggles, wouldn't like to do that. We are up. That's so funny. I can hear the drone through his microphone. Let's see. So right now we're flying the pro camera. So this is the top of the line. This is the fanciest, fanciest, goodness camera you can get from Walksale. Now we're gonna fly the V2 camera. This is like the mid-tier camera that you can get with this VTX option. So we have the pro camera and the V2. We'll find the V2 right now. Oh, so this camera is four by three sensor. That is the biggest immediate difference that I noticed. This camera looks better. Yeah. Nope. This camera looks significantly better. I don't know, maybe there are different settings on it, but this looks really good. Like the colors really pop.  It's weird. I like this camera more than I do the pro. As of, this is the first time I've flown on any of it. So just like immediate, bubby consensus. So far I'm like in the normal camera better, which is weird. I really thought I would like the other one camera, other camera better just cause like it's a, you know, higher end camera, but this one just looks better. It has some cool lens flares, which might not be desirable for like freestyle, but the cinematic footage we're trying to get today, I think it'll look pretty good. If you want a durable option that also has no props or nothing in view, I guess this would be a pretty good frame for it.  So we took these drones out. You chased me out on the lake. What did you think of the footage that you got? You know, would you use that? Would you post it? I think it would be good for like Instagram clips. I still don't think it's like at the quality of a GoPro, but then again, like nothing is at the quality of a GoPro. It's when you have a dedicated recording camera, you know, that's five, $600 shooting in 4K. Of course it's going to be better. I'll say the footage that you were getting off this exceeded my expectations. I was thinking, hey, 1080p, I don't know how good it's going to be, but it looks pretty good. Yeah, from what I saw, there's definitely enough like detail for me to work with in the editing software and try to make it look better. Right, so the V2 kit that we got was not the version that supported gyro flow. There is a gyro flow version. So if you want to use the four by three camera with gyro flow, that's possible. But the footage that you're seeing was kind of more raw straight out of the camera. The pro camera, we were able to run through gyro flow. And it's pretty cool to have that option to take the recording from your FPV camera, run it through gyro flow and get something that looks pretty good. I mean. It's definitely a usable image. Oh yeah, I think it looks going to look great for Instagram. You're probably going to want to carry a GoPro and get the full 4K recording for most purposes. But I mean, that's a really solid backup. Yeah. And it's not just a nice looking 1080p image. It's one that you can also run through gyro flow, make it look stable. I mean, it's really cool to have the option. And it doesn't cost that much more to get the version that supports gyro flow or the version that has the pro camera.  But since switching to avatar, I've been flying 16 by nine and I really like it because it's a 69 sensor and a 69 display. My opinion is the best aspect ratio is whatever matches. If it's a 16 nine display, use a 16 nine sensor. And if you want a wider, taller field of view, you can just do that with different lenses. The lens you put on the camera to change how wide what you're seeing is. I feel like there's kind of this misconception that four by three inherently gives you a taller field of view. And that's not necessarily true because you could just put a wider lens on a 16 nine camera, get the same top and down field of view and then you just have wider stuff for free. Since the goggles are 16 nine, I'm not exactly clear why Waxnail wanted to put a four by three sensor. I don't know, I'm gonna try that. Yeah, looking through it immediately like is a little bit jarring just because I'm used to having the wider view. But at least what's nice is that the displays and the goggles are OLED. So that means that any black areas are just not lit. So it's not like an LCD screen where there's a consistent backlight. And so blacked out areas kind of have that washed out look like this at first glance, I might think was a four by three display. So it's not too annoying. You can probably get used to it pretty quickly. And it feels great to me. Oh, I'm playing Bubby rates. Ah, shoot, Bubby.  It feels pretty good. Hold on, I'm going to- Yeah, Bubby rates, man. Super slow. I'm gonna go to my rates though. In case you didn't know, yes, the avatar system has full beta flight on screen display. So you can go into the menu system and change rates and everything. So now I've got my rates. Yeah, there we go. It's good to me. You know what? No, actually, until you said something right there, I had completely forgotten that it was four by three. Nice. Yeah, I was totally being whiny about it, but actually flying it, you get used to it really quick. Yeah. Like I'm just definitely not thinking about it. Yeah, I mean- Yeah. Let me go back to back. Let's go to the other one. Like I wonder if this will kind of have more up and down. Like it depends what lens they put on it. You could take the 16 by nine camera, put a wider lens and still have the same up and down field of view. That's not to say that that's what you get out of the box. So maybe I'll have less an up and down out of the box. I guess let's find out. Not going into the goggles. Yeah. Wide screen, baby. Can't tell, I wonder, am I getting less up and down or not? B, we'll have to do like some side by side, you know, looking at the same thing. The four by three was giving me better up and down. Really? I mean, again, that's just based on the lens that's coming out of the box. So I feel like the ultimate would be take the 16 nine and put a wider lens on it to match the four by three. So then the left and right get wider for free. Yeah. But out of the box, yes, out of the box since they have the same lens, I guess you are getting more up and down, which, you know, makes sense. I can see two of those ridges, two of the plug-in lines. Ooh, I can see less. You can see less. But you do get more up and down out of the four by three. Is this back to normal? But you do get wider out of the 16 by nine. My opinion is still that what you should do is match your image sensor to your display and then change the lens to tune the field of view. But most people are just gonna use these out of the box. Yeah. And so out of the box, there is an advantage to the four by three camera because while you do lose a little bit left and right, I think you still have plenty and you do gain up and down. So then you kind of have an advantage for power loop, mad flip sort of things because it is nice to have more up and down. I guess it just depends on the pilot. I mean, in the beginning I was like, oh, we need four by three because it's just what I was used to.  I do more roll stuff. So like I kind of like, I mean, I got to fly them back to back, but I kind of like having a little bit wider in my brain. You should fly them back to back because until we kind of measured it, it felt to me like you had the same up and down with the 16 by nine. And then when I flew it, I was like, the four by three does seem to give me more up and down control. And then once measuring it, I'm like, I do see. After flying them for freestyle, I definitely kind of like the four by three camera a little bit better. I'm surprised, but I think I'm gonna agree with you. So I mean, going into this, I just think, hey, match your image sensor to your screen size, right? But when you fly the four by three, as they come out of the box, that taller field of view, it's kind of nice. Yeah, I definitely didn't notice it helped, but that said like the 16 by nine was not stopping me from doing anything. That's what we've been flying. That's what we've been flying. So it's totally fine. It's totally fine. I kind of think that the ultimate would be to take the 16 by nine camera and swap out the lens for something that's even wider, which I would hope would give you the same up and down field of view as the four by three camera and give you more left and right, essentially for free. Yeah, but out of the box. Out of the box for freestyle, four by three might not work for me. It's not a deal breaker though. We've been flying 16 by nine. It's totally rippable. It's still a lot of fun. And 16 by nine is kind of a more immersive experience because you have a bigger image in the goggles.  Right, when you put the goggle on, you're like, oh, I'm in there now. But then when you actually fly and you start trying to do some more of the advanced tricks, that four by three is nice. Yeah, it is. It's just great that there's options now. Yeah, that's cool. So we're going to test out the low light capabilities of the camera. Yeah. This spot is going to be great because there are some lit areas that I think we could fly normally. And then there are some dark areas that the cameras we've been flying, you wouldn't be able to see anything. Yeah. So I'm interested to see if this low light camera, you know, will be able to fly in that dark area. And if you'd like, hopefully the transitions will be nice. Like if you could still fly under the lights and then go into the dark area, that'd be nice.  It's pitch black over there. If this camera actually has low light performance, that'd be pretty cool because it would just open spots back up for, you know, a whole new time that you could fly. Yeah. I want to test it. So let's fly the standard camera first. Okay. Just the Avatar V2 camera. Yeah, it'd be nice to get like a baseline. This one is not marketed to have any special low light capabilities. So I think we should basically expect it to be like what we've been flying on the original Avatar camera and the DJI cameras, you know, which looks great during the day, but I'm not, I'm not presuming we'll see much right now. Yes. Black. Yours going straight into the abyss. Okay. Honestly, I can see pretty well. No, this isn't too bad actually. I'm not sure this is a normal camera. This is the normal camera. Okay, I could not see the benches at all. Okay.  It's all in there. But it's not, I mean, it's not great. I mean, under the lights is fine. I mean, obviously in here I can see perfectly. Yeah. Oh man, but when you go from light to dark, it's kind of, you just have to expect it. The transition is what you're talking about? Yeah. I mean, I can fly, but I just don't feel, whoo, whoo. Super confident, you know. See, I'm going to go out over this way. Yeah, going to the dark end. Into this parking lot. Yeah, I can see pretty well. There is one street lamp there that seems to be lighting up a decent amount of area, so. Yeah.  Here, I'll go over to the other side that there's, I think there's no lights over there. Okay. So over this way, there are no lights in, oh yeah, oh man, yeah, I definitely just almost hit a tree. This is super grainy.  Is there a detail or just grain? That's a lot of grain. I mean, it's rough. It's flyable, but you know, it's pretty rough. Oh man, especially like if there is an area with light, like over here, then the area without light is just the abyss. Yeah, I'm flying into the abyss right now. I do not feel confident at all. I mean, obviously I'm navigating, but I'm not doing any tricks or anything. So. You're far, I didn't see it. Oh, there he is. He took a swag at this boy. All right. Oh, dang. I mean, yeah, this looks about the same. Like that's what you're used to. Yeah. Oh my gosh. Dude, how far did you fly? I cannot see anything. I went like way back there to the left of the building. Like over there. Oh, yeah. Oh, I can't even see over there. Yeah, it's pretty much an abyss, but if you go slow. Okay, let me try. I just don't want to hit a tree. I don't know the area. There is a tree, and you won't see the tree. I'm going back. So let's see. So I'm going to go over to this other spot over here. Oh my gosh, I can't see anything. I should slow down. Yeah, like it's kind of dry, but once you get to the street lights, I mean, it's navigable. Now that the street lights, it's fine. And I can see like the little lights coming from it. Ooh, go over to the awning. The awning? And do the little, it's a real tight gap. There's real, real tight gap. Dive behind it? Yeah, do you see it? Yeah. Like between the building? I don't know if I want to do that right now. Oh, I don't like this. I'm good. I don't think I can do it. What? I did it. There you go. And now we're going to try the other one. I'm really excited to try to go over there and see what the lights look like. I mean, I don't know like how much of a difference this camera is going to make. We'll see. I mean, it was like navigable. Like I could see, but I had to be really close. I had to fly really slow. Oh my gosh. What? Are you kidding? Dude. Are you kidding me? I can't just tell if this is- Are you kidding me? What? I'm going straight for back here. Bubby, this is the coolest. Oh my gosh. It's so, it's just so different. Like the place where you could barely see. I could see everything. Like I can see the sky. I can see the clouds. What? Dude, this is incredible. This is, oh my gosh. And when you actually do have light like out here, this is so next level. My gosh, are you kidding? I just don't know what to say. This isn't amazing. It's just, you can see. So much more confident with this. Like now I feel like I could like dive into these things. Right. Nice. That is so fun. I need to try this. I need to see this juice. I am so mad that we didn't have this when we were flying at Rampage at night. Like the episode that we just did, I don't know, relative to you guys, but the episode that we just came out with, we filmed with the old cameras that didn't have any special low light capabilities. And we put flashlights on the drones. We had a lot of fun with it, but. This changes the game. With this, I'm telling you, I don't even know if you need the flashlight, man. You don't think you need the flashlight? Dude, it's, wait. You don't think you need the flashlight, bro?  So flashlight, flashlight drones are relevant. So what do they do? They put like a bigger sensor. I don't know what they did. I don't, I don't know. I don't, I don't understand. I don't understand. I don't understand. Okay. I see why you're freaking out. It's cool. I see why you're freaking out.  Oh, this is crazy. You can find that whole area now. I can, I can, I'm navigating the entire area just fine. It was just a black hole over there. It was just a black hole. That you could sort of make out some bars and now it's like completely usable. And there are no lights over there. Yeah, that's insane. I mean, the thing for me is that like, you can see the clouds in the sky. You remember the other one? Dude, I'm in the pitch black. What the, dude? Dude, dude, dude.  I'm, this is okay. What the heck? I'm like flying above this fricking black tree and I can make out the leaves. What the heck?   I can see everything. I can, it's so amazing. I can see everything and I can, I can, it's awesome. I can see. It's so hot. I don't understand how this even works. Dan and Sony make a good sensor. Oh, this is Sony sensor. This is the Sony sensor. Okay, so over here, it's also pitch black, let's see. Dude, what the heck? What the heck? Shoot. For daytime, oddly enough, I like the image of the V2 better. But simply because this camera can do this, I'm going to fly this camera. But this would be 16 by nine. You have less up and down. So I think I want this camera with the wider lens. Yeah, I mean, this is what we've been flying the entire time, so nothing new, right? Right, but having experienced the taller from the four by three, I'm like, I'm going to put the wider lens on here. That's going to give me the taller field of view and the low light performance and the full screen. Oh, I'm so excited about this now. This is, pros the way to go, I think. I don't know, but then out of the box, you're not going to change the lens out of the box to be able to use that. All right, glasses. Oh, look at mine, get back there. Dude, I hear your level of free out was justifiable. Like, look at this. You see that? I just split us the tree that was black on top. It is. I'm going to check my camera angle. What the heck?  I'm like, it's so dark. The Java Wax Nell on this camera, Caddx, whoever it is. Wax Caddx. Well, I don't care who made it, it's good. I don't want to fly what's good. Lightweight's killing me. You know, this is great. Yeah, no, this is insane. I just want to fly over here, like, knowing that, like, haha, I couldn't fly over here earlier. Oh, but no, I can't. Dude, I could like fly up in the tree. Oh my gosh. Do it, like, oh yeah. I'm in the tree. I'm in the branch right now. That's so cool.   I'm in the branches. But that's insane. I don't want to stop flying. I feel forever. Wild boi. Now we're ready, Teddy. Oh my gosh. I just want to freestyle. I'm putting it in every single quad right now. So, wow.  But like, what, which one do you use? Cause out of the box, the field of view on the standard camera's better. But this, the flexibility is nice. I guess, I mean, we've been flying with this field of view. And the field of view, like, is nothing different. So, I don't know if I'll plug it. I don't know. And I think maybe put the wider lens on it. I kind of want to try that. I mean, so you seem to like really want that extra field of view. I mean, having experienced it, I just, I liked it. I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't kill me too much, but it's definitely nice for sure. Oh, this is so sick. I can see everything. I love it. I love it. You know, it's sick. I'm impressed. Honestly, like, when I put the goggles on my face with the low light camera, it was, is pretty impressive. I don't think I've ever flown like a night camera like that.  Put the goggles on. It's literally super power. Yeah, it was a, it's really going to open up, I think, a lot of stuff for me at least. Cause I want to rip spots at night. We flew both drones back to back. And with the standard camera, we experienced the low light performance that we've been flying with on the original avatar video transmitter and on other digital systems. And I mean, you can sort of see, it's pretty dark though. Yeah. And then when we went to the pro camera, what, I couldn't believe it was the same time of day. Yeah. It looked totally different. Yeah. It was really exciting. I think it opens up new times and new areas that you can fly. That being said, I don't know that you're necessarily going to get like an ultra cinematic, beautiful freestyle video out of that. But it's not always about that. Sometimes it's just about having fun. And with the pro camera, you could have more fun at more times. So that's kind of a win. All right, Bobby, if you had to choose one, would you choose the standard V2 kit or the pro kit? I think for me, if I were to have to choose one to put on my quad, it would be the pro camera just cause of the low light. Like I know we talked about four, three, but I think the low light for me, like just gives it a little edge even over seeing more field of view. I, out of the box, I'm going to choose the four by three. I'm going to choose the four by three. I didn't think I was going to like it that much going into it. I was like, I don't like this decision by Warksnail. I think they should just stick with using 60 my nine sensors to match the 60 my nine display. It is what it is. We got what we got and out of the box, I do prefer the field of view. But, I'm going to try putting a wider lens on the 60 my nine camera. If that can give me the up and down view that I want with getting some left and right for free, that's great. And then I also get that crazy low light performance. So I think this- Best of both worlds. Definitely has potential. So if I was just choosing for a freestyle build out of the box, I'm going to go with the four by three, but I'm really intrigued by the pro camera. I'm going to keep playing with it, trying out different lenses and either way you can't go wrong. And it's just cool to see that the avatar ecosystem is continuing to be innovated and we got new products coming out, new features, new firmwares, keep pushing it forward. We finally got share mode. Oh, I'm really excited about share mode. What do you guys think is better? We got two new video transmitters, slightly different feature sets, either way, pretty great FPV system, but which one do you think is the winner? Is it the standard V2 kit or the new pro camera? I don't know. I could see both arguments, right? Yeah, comment down below because we want to know. Whichever you decide, we have a motorbike.com. You can buy the video transmitter, build drone drone, or if you don't want to build, we're building drones for you. You can get our pre-built drones with either set up and you're gonna have a good time. Yeah, thank you guys so much for watching this episode of Rotorite. If you like, make sure to subscribe and right next to it, there's a bell because we post every Monday.  Posted a video, come hang out.  Guys, I'm Lydred. I'm Bobby FPV. We'll see you next time on Rotorite. Every pack, if you type music change across. Bend and send crew. What's up? Bend and send. And Jell-O, crew. Tony, I got lots of comments on my Jell-O. They're always talking about it, you know? They love it. They can't get enough of it. Did you keep commenting about it or?  Right? Yeah, Drew. Yeah, they're like, yeah, yeah. Oh, there's so much Jell-O in your video.