MAP Digital’s Virtual Event Portraits: from the Ballroom to the Kitchen Table

James Bowra

James Bowra, Director of Operations & Senior Producer, MAP Digital, Inc. Follow James on LinkedIn and Instagram.

How long have you worked for MAP Digital?

I started freelancing with MAP Digital in December of 2015 and became a full-time employee in August 2016. When I first started, I was working as a Webcast engineer for our onsite conferences. I then went on to work part-time doing quality assurance of code changes to our MetaMeetings platform. Soon, I was asked to train as a project manager who is responsible for all aspects of producing our hybrid and virtual events. Now, after nearly four years, my official title is Director of Operations and Senior Producer.

What is your role with MAP Digital?

As Director of Operations and Senior Producer, my job is to build budgets and resource our technical talent and equipment for each event. I also looked after the infrastructure of our office at 56 Ludlow Street, a storefront on the Lower East Side of New York City. It is not only our office but production studio where we webcast live events from around the world or ones that we produce onsite in our pop-up video studio.

Since, the pandemic lockdown, which resulted in the closing of our 56 Ludlow Street Office and making all of our onsite conferences virtual ones, my role has been to rapidly scale-up hiring and onboarding the scores of new technicians who we need to work the vast uptick in virtual conferences for our clients worldwide. We also had to send these technicians across the US and soon in Europe, a compliant, standardized, and robust laptop, the encoding and video switching equipment needed for them to webcast from their homes, either from their bedrooms, dens, or many times the kitchen table. We also check their Internet access, and in many cases greatly enhanced the bandwidth. In essence, all the technical tasks we used to do onsite in a ballroom, I am now responsible to ensure that our MAP Team can “work from home.”

What did you do prior to MAP Digital?

Before my career at MAP Digital, I tried out a few different career paths. I was a Project Manager turned Senior Project Manager for an NYC based Ecommerce agency. From there, I took a bit of a hiatus in my professional career. I explored working more with my hands and outside of an office. So, I worked as a carpenter and handyman, and then as a repair technician for an HVAC Company. After a few months, I began to miss working in digital. So, I switch positions at the HVAC company and became their Webmaster. Shortly after I made the switch, a former colleague from the Ecommerce agency, BobbiAnn Zaccarelli, who was a project manager at MAP Digital, introduced me to the company. I was soon working freelance with MAP Digital.

What do you miss most about the MAP Digital office?

I miss our 56 Ludlow Street office location and seeing the MAP Team weekly. Our office is in the Lower East Side of New York City and there is a lot to do in the area. Every Tuesday we would gather for a team meeting with a catered lunch. Now, looking back pre-COVID lockdown, I think we all took it for granted how nice it was to be able to connect like that as a team. I’m working on plans to reopen 56 Ludlow (in a limited capacity) and hope to bring some of this back.

Have you picked up any new hobbies or revisited old ones during quarantine?

I bought a nice coffee maker since we couldn’t go to coffee shops. I’ve been getting into learning how to make different types of coffee and perfect them. I’ve also been able to spend more time studying Italian than I was able to before. I should mention that my wife is from San Marino, an independent republic located within Italy. Oh! And I have spent more time with our houseplants. Previously my wife took care of them on her own. However, being at home so much has taught me to really appreciate taking care of something. I enjoy watching them change and grow.

What is the most challenging part about this ‘new normal’?

There is definitely less separation between work and home life. Considering I work from my kitchen table this makes sense, but it can be difficult to break away. I tend to work more hours. Instead of taking the time to commute to and from work, I have found myself signing on early or staying online late. Lunch breaks feel a bit shorter, and I take fewer walks around the block. MAP Digital has also seen a surge in new business, so we needed to adjust to that.

What are you enjoying most about working from home?

The time with my wife and the flexibility in the schedule. My wife has almost become a coworker during working hours. We bounce ideas off of one another and help each other out when needed. Also, being able to stand up and make a delicious lunch or sit down with my wife for a coffee break has been enjoyable. Well, that and that no shoes are required.

How do you see the events space changing in the age of COVID?

We’ve witnessed it first hand at MAP Digital. We used to travel for around 30 corporate events that webcast most sessions a year. We would work in many locations and venues around the US: San Francisco, Miami, Boston, New York, and internationally in Europe and South America — mostly Brazil. When we went onsite, we would be responsible for onsite Connectivity, registration and badging, speaker presentation network, wireless agenda signage, conference website and live webcasts; and all travel logistics, AV, and more. To go from the onsite to a virtual event company with a ½ day of notice was a massive mind shift. Thankfully our MetaMeetings platform could produce virtual conferences with only a few additional lines of code. Corporate events seem to have the mandate and resources to make the shift to virtual. For MAP Digital, I’m interested in where do we go from here. We have been producing hybrid webcasting events before they were called that, but what does our post COVID industry look like? I don’t know yet, but I know that we will be part of the change and provider of new solutions.