LaunchPod - Tricia Maia === [00:00:00] Jeff: Alright, Tricia, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining. Tricia: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. Jeff: I'm stoked here because I mean, Ted, I've been a, you know, long time fan of TED Talks, which you're head of product over at ted, but I mean, previous to that you were at AlphaSights, Verizon bras. You, you kind of been all over. You know, we're gonna talk about the, media journey. That Ted's been going through and, and really the, you know, world in a post AI world is, you know, a lot of media companies facing the same thing. But maybe before we jump into that could you give us a kind of like TLDR on, on how you got here and, you know, how'd you wind up running product to Ted? Tricia: Yeah. So I guess I've been in product for about 15 years now. I di didn't know what product management was. I barely was interested in tech to be honest. I studied economic development and I sort of fell into this agile business owner. PM sort of role at a, at a startup. And I just loved it. I loved working with engineers and designers and customers and really just unpacking their problems and building creative solutions [00:01:00] towards them. And so over the years I've, as you said, sort of meandered among different growth stage startups. You know, Verizon was very different from a lot of my previous experiences. And now at Ted, I am, I feel like I'm coming sort of full circle to my. Economic development and sort of NGO nonprofit mission oriented interests my student years and merging it with product and tech. And so, yeah, it's been, it's been an exciting ride. Jeff: Yeah, Ted, I mean, given the background for NGOs, the kind of nonprofit side, Ted is a great kind of juxtaposition of both those things, right? Like plays very much in the tech world and, and all that. But, and I, I don't think you could find anyone you know in. Most of the adjacent industries who, who don't follow it and aren't fans but at the same time, like you said, it's a nonprofit that has all of those elements and, and you get to do a lot of good around education, which is fun. So. Cool. Yeah, I mean, so like, we can just dive right into it, right? The thing we're gonna talk about is you know, not just head, but the, the kind of the entire media landscape over [00:02:00] the past couple years post ai, but, but even before that, like consumer. Behaviors were changing and you know, things like Ted and and other media properties are seeing just pretty big change , in how you operate kind of digital media , and media in general. Do you wanna maybe walk us through what the journey's like, been like Tricia: definitely. So just to sort of put Ted into context, 'cause most people, I mean the number one question I get is, what is product at Ted? Our name is Technology, entertainment and design, and so technology's number one, but what is tech and like, what do we do? So I feel like the best way to describe it is across sort of three different areas. One is our events. Business and conferences. So most Ted Talks, people I've seen have been filmed at either one of our flagship events or one of our local TEDx events. And so it's like, you know, the big red circle, sort of iconic TED design. Our teams spend a lot of time not just curating those events, but our team works on the technology behind it. So how do people you know, register or. Purchase tickets. How do, when you're at a conference, how do they [00:03:00] check in? What are the different staff tools, attendee apps, like anything around the technological enablement of the event. So the events business is sort of. Separate but related to our media business. And, and you know, that's what I'll, I'll talk a little bit about next, but that's, you know, how do we get our talks that are often, again filmed at, at conferences out into the world and out to our global audience. And it was always was and is important for Ted to make those free, easily accessible. And so a lot of our work is just, you know, how do we. Build our own platforms, our website and our app, but how do we meet people where they are on YouTube, on social media, on emerging platforms that you know, more and more people are accessing. We wanna get our ideas out to as many people as possible. So how we think about that, how we monetize that has definitely changed. And I'll get into that. But the third pillar I would, I would say is more around our sort of like impact initiatives and programs. All the things that underscore our events in our media. But are really leaning into our mission driven nature. So we have [00:04:00] a social impact fund, we have a fellows program. We, we manage lots of amazing volunteers across translators, across TEDx organizers. So there's a lot of programs and initiatives that help support Ted's mission, that have tech needs and product needs as well. They all need websites, they need community management, they have data needs. And so, a lot of our time is spent with them as well. But for the media business in particular. We're not the only ones, but it's been sort of like a rollercoaster in terms of how people are discovering content. So it's not only being on the platforms where people are, but how do you get discovered? Like some of it is sort of a black box of algorithms of different social platforms or YouTube, like what do we need to do to rank highly in search or get people to access our stuff for our owned and operated platforms, our website, our app you know, how do we improve our SEO and what do we do about, you know, AI generated search and how people are finding content in new ways? And so we have predominantly, at least for our [00:05:00] own platforms, like really relied on search and direct traffic. And those have. Honestly been challenging over the years with all the different changes to increase competition, new content out there. And so for us it's really about coming back to what's the value we're providing the world, how do we get that message out there and hoping that people come to us, but also trying to, not game the system, but make sure we're keeping up with the times. And yeah, there's a lot of dependencies, I would say, on third parties that make the job difficult, but, you know, rewarding in, in many ways as well. When you do get it right. Jeff: it's funny because for Ted, you know, it's the balance of you, you obviously need to the viewers, you need the engagement, and you need to, you know, have some level of monetization. You need to sustain the, the organization and bring in funding and money, but at the same time, like there's a big mission element of. Get content out there and, and don't restrict and, and ensure that you're spreading ideas. Which I have to assume is a little bit of a blessing, a little bit of a curse in that, you know, if you're a, [00:06:00] for strictly for-profit media organization, you kind of need to get people back to your your owned sites because you don't have the mission element. For Ted there's the element of you can fulfill that mission and still run into issues around kind of getting people to your own site so you have a little bit more optionality, but, but maybe not always in the same way. I guess how do you balance that kind of concept of, the mission of spreading ideas and at the same time, like trying to get people back to some of the core platforms? Tricia: I think traditionally we really relied on an advertising business model to fund our efforts because we never pay walled our content or, and we likely will never, I guess, as part, as part of our mission. And that was like great in the good days, like when traffic was flowing and, on all platforms, including our own getting, you know, more views, more eyeballs was always really helpful. But again, as search has changed, as discovery across different platforms has changed. We've realized that sort of [00:07:00] being at the mercy of a lot of, you know, decisions and technologies that are out of our control is really risky. And so we over the past few years have thought about how do we. Think about monetization in new ways. Yes. Advertising and is still an important part of it. But we have increasingly leaned into our membership program, which is basically people can donate to TED and you get certain benefits, you know, exclusive events. You, you're part of a community you know, where that can go. I think we have really exciting ideas for how to grow that. But that's one element you know, we've started to, to develop new products that we can. Maybe monetize in different ways. So games is another example. We, we started launching some new games a few years ago, and , we've grown a, you know, a very active user base around them. So, diversification has really been important and, and not resting on our laurels in terms of how we were making money back in the day, but. Regardless, our, you know, our site, our app have always been and will continue to be a really strategic area. [00:08:00] We can of course, you know, advertise on other platforms. YouTube is a really big partner for us. We have podcasts, we have social platforms. But there's a brand element to ted.com and the app, like what we see with our partners is they don't necessarily advertise on our site for pure traffic, although we do have a sizable, you know, user base, but they think about in terms of brand alignment and so like they wanna be affiliated with the TED brand. It's a little bit, you know, you could do something a little bit more custom, a little bit more differentiated on our. Properties than maybe you could do on a third party platform. So I think that value prop is great because it's not necessarily dependent on pure traffic. And so that's, you know, our brand and upholding our brand is really important. And then, you know, once people are in our ecosystem, we can just understand more about them and so then we can target different initiatives. Maybe they're right to be a translator or a TEDx organizer. Or maybe they are, might be really interested in our membership offering. The more that we have understand and know about our [00:09:00] users, the more that we can target our offerings to them. So I think that has always been sort of in the back of our minds as something important. But more recently for all of our teams, product, marketing, et cetera, we've realized we as the big top of funnel number. Maybe slows, how do we lean into growing that depth of connection with the audiences we do have, and we, we feel the best place for that is our is our site, is our app, but we do know those other platforms are super important for reach and how do we connect them to sort of get the best of both worlds. Jeff: Yeah. And so kinda question I was wondering, that goes back to maybe earlier in the conversation was, you know, what, what does product mean at Ted? And you kinda there talked about building community and, and driving views and, and you know, it's pretty wide remit of things we were just going through. What parts of that fall under, you know, the product team and like how do you guys think about. You know, driving more people into community or on the owned sites and converting them, like you said, into [00:10:00] TEDx organizers even, or, or some of the other elements there. Tricia: Yeah. So functionally, maybe it's one lens to look at it. So within product we have product management. So product managers scoped for different areas maybe on the web, the app events. Like what is the scope of work, what are we prioritizing, how are we leading the engineering teams? And we have design who obviously works very closely with the product managers on. Understanding user needs, fleshing out the experience. We have data and analytics, so, understanding user behavior, reporting for the org, it's all sort of like we're a small team, but all of those functions are sort of intrinsically related. And then community support. So. When people reach out to us, they're having issues or they wanna give feedback. Even at our events, the team that leads the, the community support we are part of the product team. So we see product very broad in terms of functions. And then of course, we, you know, are part of like the larger. Engineering team, I co-lead the tech team [00:11:00] with with our CTO. And so we're very like close knit org. So functionally we're very broad. We also work on a lot of different platforms. And I think like the way that we think about it is. We have to compartmentalize product in some ways. Like our events team, our events PM is thinking about very different problems than our consumer oriented audiences like our web PM or our mobile pm. So I'd say we sort of like loosely divide along like the events line the consumer product line, and maybe even like our infrastructure platform. Those are sort of how we divide it and conquer. But I would say that all the teams that are working most on some of these questions are our consumer oriented squads, web app membership, those sorts of things. Jeff: If you're enjoying Launch Pod, the best way you can show support is simple. Follow the show so you never miss an episode. Leave us a quick review to help more product leaders find it, and share this episode with a friend or colleague who'd get value from it. Every follow, review and share really helps us grow. Jeff: It seems like this is [00:12:00] not a novel thing of kind of product taking a wider. Remit of, you know, getting more into the go to what would be traditionally considered like go-to-market side of things. Like you said, you work closely with the CTO on running the tech team as well and you know, at some level we're seeing bigger and bigger companies look a lot more like early stage startups and I can't help but think that has something to do with just the speed and change driven by AI and, and even like post COVID and, and you know, the whole Zer period kind of coming to a close. how do you handle it? How do you handle, like in ever widening aperture? Tricia: That definitely resonates. And I mean, well, I will add, because we're a nonprofit, we have to do more with less. So it's like, yeah, we'll function, add this platform, but you're not getting new people, so just like figure it out. So as cliche as it sounds, I mean, AI has, has helped us. Like we, you know, , we have a lot of, interesting conversations with leadership. It's like, how are we using AI or like, what can, how can we streamline with ai. W the biggest argument I feel like I can [00:13:00] make is like, okay, look at what we did 12 months ago, 24 months ago, and look how many people we have. We have roughly the same amount, but we're able to show higher output. Like that's the best. I've seen even our design designers and our PMs, like use tools that we already pay for, like Figma for example, and using a tool like Figma make to just like prototype. Different solutions that previously we might've needed an engineer for, or a designer would've spent a week creating an interactive prototype. So, for us, and for me, it's really important that we are keeping a finger on the pulse of different tools that are available to us, that if there is a training need, I'm, you know, fighting for some even small budget for the team to be able to upscale and do things a little bit more cross-functionally. I'd say because we're small, because we're a , closely knit team, we don't have a lot of this mentality of this is my job, this is your job. Like the lines have always sort of been blurred because we do operate like a startup. So people taking on sort of more and more [00:14:00] responsibility across what previously spanned different domains, whether it's product, engineering, design, that has been really natural for us. But yeah, I would say like , those trends resonate with me. And maybe it's, I'm biased because I do come from more of a startup background, like that's just how I work. So maybe I am imparting my worldview onto the teams I lead now. But I find like the most successful teams, no matter how big or small, are going to have to adapt to that, you know, new worldview. Jeff: I think just we have a lot of. Things we've run into with a business like this in common where, you know, at one point Log Rocket, we were operating probably not quite the magnitude of Ted, but we, you know, we ran a, a blog that I think was generating in the realm of you know, eight figure traffic monthly. , But then AI has really changed how people behave online and, and we've just seen a lot of that kind of online, you know, owned blog media is not quite as easy, but you know, Ted has continued to succeed in the media landscape. [00:15:00] Adaptability is great, but at some point you have to, you have to think about goaling and what does actually success even look like? How has that, you know, evolved over this time to ensure that you're still even shooting for the right goal? Tricia: No, totally. Yeah, I think, honestly, I think that's something we're working through right now. We have. Always, at least from the media perspective, have always been focused on talk views. Like how many people are like starting a talk, and that's like the basic metric beyond, you know, SE sessions or, or whatnot. It's been. Good. In some ways like that's directly correlated to ad revenue and other things that we are monetizing on today. But in terms of impact and in terms of where the world's going, we are sort of at this crossroad roads right now where we're like, is this the North Star metric? Is that what we wanna reach? Because. We have seen, even with changing user behavior, just for an example, people moving to short form content and, and that resonating more with them. Obviously we have short form and now in our app, our site, YouTube elsewhere, you know, our social platforms are very [00:16:00] successful because they are, you know, predominantly short form driven. But is like someone starting a talk, like are they, are they getting through the talk? Are they getting through , half of it? Like completion rate has always been like a secondary metric for us, but that, for example, is one of the things we're like, maybe we should be elevating that. Is someone not just interested in the title or topic of a talk or are they interested in the content enough to. Consume the whole idea, whether it's a one minute version or a 20 minute version you know, repeat usage, retention, in product circles, that's always like, oh, well duh, you have to get people to come back. But like, just because product wants to focus on it doesn't mean it's important to the org. And so like we have to sort of. Work with stakeholders across the org to understand these metrics and say, wait, maybe this is not the main thing. Also, like there are all these tides that we are fighting, like maybe top of funnel traffic is not the thing we should be going after. Maybe we should be taking the traffic we get and converting them into someone completing [00:17:00] a talk and then coming back next month and signing up for an account or signing up for a newsletter like. Those are the things we control. And those are the things that actually have deeper impact on the business, on the users than that, you know, cursory metric we measured for, you know, 15 years. And so it's it's something we talk about for a while, but I actually think this year we're like, okay guys, things have really shifted and we need to measure progress differently. And so I'd say that's sort of the shift we're, we're thinking about how do we move from sort of those, not just vanity metrics, but sort of, you know. The metrics of yesteryear into something that's a little bit more controllable, more meaningful for our audiences. And you know what that looks like. We could go, you know, there's nuance in terms of how you measure that Exactly. But that depth of engagement with our users is something that we're starting to prioritize a little bit more of. Like how many people click this talk? Jeff: Has it become more important for, to kind of drive people into membership or even something deeper, like, you know, organizing a [00:18:00] TEDx or something like that? Like, is that, does that have a higher priority now? Tricia: I mentioned earlier the data piece is really important, so understanding people like who's coming to the site, what are they interested in, , what they may be open to. We don't know that with anonymous traffic, ultimately, people need to tell us who they are, what they want, and then we can serve them the right thing. And so. For example, next year, just, we just had a call with our marketing team earlier today. Like I really wanna explicitly move away from talk views to, for example, like account signups or percent of authenticated sessions as the main goal, because the marketing team needs that to be able to understand not just. Upsell things, but understand cross platform user behavior. Like a question I get often is like, you know what, you know, what's the relative behavior of someone on the site versus a newsletter? How many, like, what's the, you know, share across different platforms. I'm like, I don't know if they, if they are anonymous, I generally don't know much that I would like put any credence towards, so. To even understand user behaviors better. We need [00:19:00] to encourage them and give them the features, give them the incentives to come join us and then come back and come back again. And we have seen with different marketing campaigns, different tests we've run, when we have more targeted data, when we know something about someone, they are definitely more likely to convert to a membership or. Go to an event, like there is obviously success there, but for us it's about getting more of our marketing to be more targeted, more of our users into that pool. Because otherwise it's sort of just like throwing things against a wall and hoping they stick. And that's not effective. Jeff: do You have the, the situation where, you know, the kind of a smaller group of maybe your traffic, I guess would be the best word, is. Worth a, you know, predominant amount of value to the, to the org. Like, is, are members like a hugely important revenue aspect of it? Or, what makes I guess driving 'em down the funnel that way? So, so important to the Tricia: Yeah. I, I think the one thing we think about is, it's interesting, as I mentioned, we [00:20:00] are a nonprofit, but like we do sell things. We've, our events are actually quite pricey. I mean, our flagship event, I think the starting tickets, $12,500, like it's not cheap. That's it. Mean, that's the big one. You can, we, we Jeff: It's a cool event. I mean like it's a kind of singular, yeah, Tricia: That's the thing too, is like, I, yeah, that's a whole other maybe topic, but anyway, my point is like, we have that, and then we have like a, you know, billions of free users all over the world. There's nothing connecting them. So something like a membership, okay, it starts at $5 a month. You could donate whatever you want. But that's the start of like, okay, they're paying something. They're clearly like invested in Ted's mission enough to donate something to get some benefits. We still have a big gap between $5 and $12,000. So we see it like that. Whereas if we offer other things that maybe. , Those people are more likely to maybe one day go to an event. Maybe it's not a big TED event. Maybe it's a local TEDx event that costs less money or you know, whatever. So [00:21:00] it's about building that, that funnel of people who, you know, also location we have events across the globe, but sometimes like, you know, if we have a big event in Atlanta, you know, we have, tedex is another big conference we have. Like maybe people aren't willing to travel internationally. For that event. So we wanna target our US based audience. I mean, that's just an example. We have plenty of international attendees as well. But the, the point is it, part of it is like just understanding people where they are, what they want, and like, you know, some events are not relevant to them, some products aren't relevant to them, but then also. A lot of people don't wanna pay for anything Ted has to offer and that's completely fine. And like that is why we exist, but some people are. And so getting those people a little bit more down the funnel to eventually also like understand what we do better to say, Hey, actually it would be cool to do X, Y, and Z. Whereas it's very different from watching a random video on YouTube to your point, and like not making the connection of like why you should pay for anything at Ted. Jeff: it's unlikely that someone's gonna come in off of [00:22:00] a random video on YouTube and like you said, pay 12 grand for a ticket, but it's not. Unlikely that of the people coming in who are gonna start a membership, some portion of that are going to be the people who turn into the $12,000 ticket buyers and stuff like that. So you gotta, you gotta plant the seeds. Right. I think that generally an under underappreciated aspect of, of I think kind of what this modern amalgamation, of product and go to market, everything has, has kind of. Mist is there's a lot of value often like that, that mid the mid value you have to, but you have to find how to distill it out. 'Cause we, we similarly, like right when we would look at traffic to the blog, we had the core search very similar to, to, sounds like on Ted's side, but we'd get picked up in kind of these random promotion things or, or traffic sources that would be very cursory. And you know, you always get the big celebration like, oh, we got like the five exit. Traffic today that we normally get that's incredible. But then you look the next day and, and you know where it [00:23:00] was, where it was, it was gone. It was, and, but we started to realize can we track how many people come in that way? And, and how many of those people are, are here a week later? Like, is there, is there any effect to like, do we, do we convert any of those into long-term people or do we see our own normal long-termers coming in that way too? Like, was it another way that, that our loyal people found us Tricia: It's a nurturing tactic, like your blog, your, you know, everything your, your organization is doing, your podcast, like you're getting people to understand what you all do, sort of develop a relationship with you in some way so that you know, when they are looking for a service or a software, you are top of mind. I think it's the same thing for us. It's like, even if they don't join membership, for example, like they join a newsletter, they're, we're in their inbox. Every day, every week, and they see all the cool things we're doing, and over time they start to develop, an affinity maybe for the brand that maybe opens them up to new possibilities in the future, which again, is very different from someone. Watching a YouTube video and then [00:24:00] watching, you know, something from a different organization, and it's just one of many things. Whereas, you know, the importance of our, you know, own owned and operated ecosystem is getting people like gradually more comfortable with who we are and what we do, and then maybe we can deepen that relationship in the future. Jeff: I think we started to touch on events here. Thinking about that, right, like the events world is, is probably one of the most changed. Things basically if you look six years ago and specifically six years ago, but like, , how does Ted think and, and from a like, product standpoint specifically, how does that fit into the mix over there for the team? And like what, what have you all needed to do to, to adapt to that? What's new and different that maybe was, wouldn't have been, you know, seven years ago, six years ago? Tricia: That's actually like when I joined Ted, I joined in 2021, so it was sort of like af right after the pandemic hit. And Jeff: Whew. Tricia: just coming into like a very tumultuous environment like what's happening because the event honestly was like. You know, the, the [00:25:00] cash cow of the org. Like that's like sort of what funded everything else and we couldn't rely on that anymore. Like we didn't, I don't, I believe we didn't even have an event one year. It was just virtual, which is like not the same thing. And you know, previously or so I've heard is that Ted literally never had to work for the events. I mean, like, we do a lot of work, but in terms of marketing it, like, there was not like a specific marketing function. Jeff: Well, they were so prestigious, Tricia: yeah, it was so like. Exactly like it was the brand itself and the returning users like, just sort of created this world where, you know, we had to say no to people. Like it was crazy. Like that was what we were used to. So after COVID when people didn't feel comfortable meeting in person or sort of just like recalibrated the whole world and the events business in general that wasn't the case any longer. And so a combination of just like. That happening, increased competition with other events, like Ted's brand is strong and iconic and all of that, but there, there are a lot of brands that are, and that we're, you know, [00:26:00] putting on events. And so, you know, from a marketing perspective, I know we've, we've beefed up that function in terms of how do we. Let people know what you know about our events, how to attend all that. And we work really closely, especially from a data perspective to give the marketing teams what they need to, to do that job better. But from a product perspective you know, it's really interesting like. The repeat behavior it's the same for, you know, our media business. Like, we wanna get people to come back. And so we feel like if we could get to them to one event, they see the magic of Ted and then we see, you know, great retention rates from there. So I think like. The awareness in the marketing is one piece, but then once they're in the funnel and they're at the door, we spend a lot of time on our attendee app, for example, TED Connect and getting people, not just to see their schedule, but to connect with other humans at the event. Like we, we want technology at events to always be sort of in the background. Like you don't really know what's happening, but it's facilitating everything around you. [00:27:00] And that includes the connection piece. And so sometimes when you go to these events. Maybe back in the day it was a stronger, you know, tighter knit community. It was the same people going every year. But since we've sort of had a, you know, quote unquote reset, we have a lot of new people coming. And so how do you connect with someone at a large event? It's a bit intimidating. And so, you know, we've been partnering with this organization called Brain Dates, where, where you can set up one-on-one meetings at events on different topics. Like it's an easy way to sort of. Get you to meet people at events and how do we facilitate that through the app, you know, making sure that it jives with your schedule and that everything's sort of really seamless. Like the connection community piece has been something we focus on in order to drive that retention. And in general, we're just thinking about like. You know, there is so much noise out there, especially in the media landscape, like so much competition in terms of content, we still feel like, I mean our content is obviously differentiated, but we feel like where we really have a special sauce is our events. So even if you [00:28:00] know, it is harder to market, you know, they're expensive to produce. Like leaning into that aspect of like where people are. Meeting in person, sort of connecting offline, like that's something so increasingly rare in today's world and like that aspect is something we wanna sort of lean into more going forward. Jeff: It's even now kind of that we're, you know, six years removed from, from the onset of you know, of the whole COVID thing that, that occurred. People have gone back and realized like, Hey, I kinda miss humans. Even with all the return to office and, and everything. People feel a lot more isolated and, and there is a lot of value being placed again on imprison, which I think is fantastic. And then things like this where you can go and, have a great event experience. There has been a lot, I think a big upswing in the past couple years of people putting on different types of events, maybe differently than we saw pre COVID. But is it, you know, advantageous to you guys where you have the kind of audience you've built right up funnel with all the kind of other digital content you have and, and you have membership and you have all that kinda stuff. Has that [00:29:00] proved to continue to be an advantage? Tricia: To be honest, no. And that's something that we are dealing with now, like our events or thinking about now strategically, like how do we move forward? So our events audience has always sort of been distinct from our digital audience and that was okay for a while. But a big question that I have that our leadership team is asking now is like, how do we connect the dots more? And yeah, we have to recognize people are never, most of our global audience is never going to. Come to our flagship event, like that's just not happening. It's, you know, they don't want to, they can't afford it. Like, there's a many different reasons, but we also have this huge ecosystem of TEDx organizations across the world, which like it's really interesting from my perspective, it's like this thriving global community where people are literally volunteering to put on events. We run, I think, an average of like, I don't know, a handful a day. Like there's a lot Jeff: Wow. Tricia: Yeah. Like, it's crazy to think about. I'm like, wait, well wait. , What is happening over there and like how do we connect those dots? 'cause those events are literally in [00:30:00] people's backyards and they don't cost nearly as much as our big events. And like maybe that's where we lean into in terms of getting people to connect and convene and get honestly be together in person and have these discussions that's much more accessible. Whether or not they ultimately ever come to our big events. It almost doesn't matter, but it's like. We have a huge network that's thriving it's great, but like how do we connect our digital community, or at least the portion that's interested in that, to even be aware that those things are happening. So I think a theme for us next year, it's not just how do we get more, you know, understand more about what's happening in those events and connecting the dots, but like actively promoting it. And so that goes back to the KPI question. Like maybe it's not about tofu, maybe it's about. Surfacing local TEDx events near you or connecting with like-minded people. And it's like that, that becomes the core driver. The thing we're trying to push and content is a part of that, but that is something we're, we're reckoning with now is like, to answer your question, short answer is no. Like there's not a [00:31:00] big, like what we're doing in the media space is not necessarily helping us in the event space, but how do we sort of start to bridge that gap? And I think there, there are different ways we could do that. Jeff: I didn't realize it was on the scale of several per day, uh uh, for 10 x. That's wild. Yeah. I mean, there's gotta be some magic there. You're not operating something that does not have gigantic, pull of appeal. If it's driving people to do that level of activity, like there's, there's something there. Now I, I do I wanna make sure we cover one more thing because you talked about this, I think last time we ran into each other and thought it was just wildly interesting, is like, speaking of kind of reaching the message to more people you know, AI obviously has issues where, like you said, it has changed how owned sites operate and, and often, most cases. Not always in a great way where it has reduced traffic to a lot of places. But then sometimes your team is able to move faster and, and do more potentially with it. But the other thing I thought was really neat is of all these talks, it historically would've been in, in one language only, or you could have spent a lot of money to have a human translate it. You know? [00:32:00] 'cause we all know Google Translate is, is, know, you're not, that's not exactly production ready, but with, with the advent of some of these AI tools, you can now. Turn a lot of these assets from, you know, maybe one language into, almost all of the languages if you wanted. Like, but how you do this is really neat. So can you maybe bring people up to speed real quick on like, what's going on here? 'cause this is, this is rad. Tricia: So a few or last year or two years ago, we launched an AI dubbing initiative. So, yeah, a a lot, most of our audience is global and most of our, you know, big non TEDx talks are in English. And so we have always invested in. Subtitles, transcripts. Like you can read the talks in many different languages, and that's due to our amazing localization team. We have 77,000 volunteer translators, like huge infrastructure. So we're like, okay, how do we take it one step further? And so, we partnered with a company called Penya who have been great and they do this really realistic. [00:33:00] Translation of the content, but the realism comes from the lip syncing and the voice cloning, like it is, as if you sounded like you, Jeff, but you were speaking Spanish or Italian. I mean, I don't know if you speak those languages naturally, but like imagine you didn't. Jeff: Not well. Tricia: So you would seem fluent and like the, and I think dubbing, at least from my perspective, I know others like it's always viewed as like traditional dubbing is like super corny. Like it doesn't resonate. It's very expensive. And so this is a way to unlock. A lot of value and, and a lot of the feedback we've gotten from users is like, I didn't even know that this talk was originally in English. Like, it was so realistic that , it removes that barrier. People don't have to read the transcript or subtitles. They can access it in their own native language. Which has been really key, and we've seen that in results too. Like the dubbed content on average is performing, , two to three times better than, you know, the pre dubbed versions. Like people are also doing more, they're saving more, they're engaging more. The reviews have been fantastic [00:34:00] and for us it's like, it's, yes, it's, it's meeting our audience where they are in terms of making ideas accessible in a, a different and new way. But it's also reaching people we would've previously never reached. Like if someone's on a feed and they see something in English, a lot of people who don't speak English will just scroll along. Now we're able to sort of capture people who might have not even discovered a TED Talk or know what TED is because it was never in their language. And so that has been really a key initiative for us. I feel like the next frontier is now starting to take some of those. You know, gems of the TEDx world that are in all these languages that we don't even know are great talks maybe, and translating them into English. But yeah, it's been a, you know, a really key initiative for us. Jeff: That I, that would be, I think super rad is how can you kinda leverage the TEDx from all over the world. Speaking of events, a lot of events we put on. We have a, a guy named AJ Des, who's, you know, incredibly accomplished CPO, who's been at all sorts of, you know, type forum, Twitter and, and Atlassian and stuff like that. But he, he raised an [00:35:00] important point at one point that. When you know, it talks about like, oh, all the world's knowledge is now available online, generally, that, that's actually a subset. It's the subset that has been ingested into digital, but there's a lot of localized knowledge and, and stuff like that, that are in, you know, Africa or, or, you know, some areas of India that probably are, are nowhere online and could be very useful. And so, you know. Just broadening that net. Used to be, like you said, very, you know, expensive, and then you do run into like the whole dubbing thing. Sure, I can listen to it and, but if you watch it like you do, notice the mouth being off takes you out of it. The voices are always terrible. And so like, but it is, it's these little things that maybe you don't think about that really do making it seem like it's, you know, for you, for me, versus just like, oh, someone who did this as an afterthought. It does change how you engage with it. Tricia: Exactly. For us, quality is always important. And so because we have this amazing translator, like basically base [00:36:00] of volunteers that are helping us, we're also feeding the AI human quality transcripts 'cause we have them. So it's literally from start to finish. This is, I don't wanna say perfect translations, but they're like damn near perfect. Like we don't release anything until it is, which is maybe a flaw of ours. So. I think our biggest opportunity now is just like getting more talks translated and dubbed because we, you know, we have, I believe, like 50 now, and so we have a library of, you know, 4,000 talks much more if you count the TEDx Library. So that's sort of the next frontier for us. But again. Also consent is very important to us. So we, we will never dub something if a speaker hasn't given us our consent. So that's a whole other process with legal and all of that, which is the right thing to do. The technology hasn't necessarily been holding us back. It's just our attention to quality and our, you know, for right or for wrong or belief in user consent. Jeff: It's good to do the right stuff there. There's a huge opportunity, but at the same time, good to kind of balance, balance 'em both. But no, I mean, I, I think that's a really cool piece it does [00:37:00] open up now a whole bunch of new, like you said, going back, we'll bring it full circle. Going back to the mission is spreading ideas. That just greatly, exponentially increases the Ted's ability to do that, which, you know, if that's the mission, that's, that's pretty beautiful. So, as much as I'd love to, you know, dig in and nerd out about how that works and, and maybe a different day, we can. I, I do think I have to give you back to Ted now. So thank you so much for coming on. This is a blast. I, I feel like I learned a lot and, and got great insight into Ted, the organization. And you know, if you know anyone who has like tickets to win the events, like one of those $12,000 tickets, let let me know. Tricia: Yeah. Jeff: thank you so much for coming on. This is a blast. Tricia: Well, thank you so much for having me. Jeff: Yeah, thank you. Have a good rest of your day.