Today we’d like to introduce you to Chris Kooken.
Hi Chris, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
In 2010, my significant other was the director of a small non-profit school for autism in Georgia and my now business partners were on their board of directors… but I didn’t know them at the time. As you do in a relationship, I was “forced” to go to a carwash fundraiser for this school and found myself standing on a street corner holding a sign trying to get people to come and donate to the school. Coby’s wife Janet was sick that day, so she sent him in her stead.
We both found ourselves standing on the corner holding signs and making conversation. “What do you do?” he asked? I replied with, “I’m a software engineer” and he immediately jumped back with something along the lines of “no, way! I have actually been looking for a software engineer. I have an Idea for a tool that is very much needed in the autism industry”.
From that day on, we started meeting regularly and developed the product that is now known as Catalyst. A data collection application for the treatment of kids with autism.
Over the next eight years, we grew the business and eventually sold it in 2018 for around 20 million. Video production had been a hobby of mine and while at DataFinch, we would often hold CEU events for practitioners to watch their favorite speakers present on topics they needed to hear about.
After leaving DataFinch post-sale, myself, Coby and Janet started BehaviorLive. Our initial goal was to find studio space in Atlanta, bring in “Mavens” in the field to produce high-quality Behavior Analytic content and sell it on our platform. I also had the desire to go to all the Autism conferences and stream those conferences to an online audience. We had our first conference (Women in Behavior Analysis) booked for August of 2020, right when COVID-19 hit. Devon, the executive director called me in a panic one day “I don’t think we are going to be able to have this conference in person, what can we do?” Being a software engineer, I immediately said, “let me see if I can build something for this”.
I spent the next five months building out the full BehaviorLive platform. A full-fledged virtual conference platform. Attendees could register, speakers could join with their webcams, share their screen and all the attendees could watch the content and earn CEUs in an automated way. We finished the first version of the software about a week before the conference and it was a flying success. This was the kick-start the company needed to be the top player in this field.
Over the next few years of COVID, as word got out, virtually ALL of the main Autism conferences reached out to us and wanted to do the same thing, so we started booking them. One after another. On top of having a really nice product that attendees, presenters and conference staff loved, our customer service was second to none. Our reputation started building and getting quite good.
As COVID was running its course, I knew that it wouldn’t be forever that these conferences would be virtual, so I started to consider what hybrid events could look like. We started building out more of the application so we could stream to the same platform. As COVID faded, we started doing Hybrid conferences for all of these organizations and evolved the tool quite a bit. We now to conference planning, scheduling, sponsor stores, badge scanning, on-site CEUs and much much more.
Because of all the AV gear we have acquired, we also started doing non-autism events (under the StreamifyATL brand) in Atlanta bringing our same skillset and attention to detail. One of my skill sets has always been to streamline efficiencies with technology so while COVID was in process, I started building a fully retrofitted AV Production trailer to streamline our setup/teardown and costs for events all over Atlanta. Today we take that trailer all over the country and do streaming and full audio visual for a number of organizations. The team we have is second to none and everyone enjoys the work immensely!
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Building out BehaviorLive/StreamifyATL has definitely been a pretty smooth road. Having the experience of starting a multi-million dollar software company definitely gave me a lot of lessons learned over the years.
I’d say the two biggest struggles by far has been building the software fast enough to add new features for each event as it approaches and the travel. As we are still in the “hustle” phase, I go to most of these events and I have three small children at home…it can be pretty hard to be away.
As you know, we’re big fans of StreamifyATL a BehaviorLive Company. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
In Atlanta, our primary focus is live event production. We do full Audio Visual for lots of events all over the city. Things like hybrid meetings, conferences, sporting events, concerts and more. We do audio, lighting, video, streaming all using cutting-edge technologies.
I am most proud of my team. Our focus, attention to detail and customer service is what our customers love the most about us. All of the engineers on my team are nerds and absolutely LOVE what they do…and we are always looking for ways to streamline and reduce costs using technology.
This is the main reason we are building our mobile production unit. This is a 16ft trailer that we can bring to any venue and reduces setup time drastically. By running a single 700ft fiber optic cable from the trailer, we can bring in up to 24 cameras into the truck for streaming, recording and broadcast. The truck has eight stations but is structured so fewer people can work multiple jobs. For instance, by using robotic cameras, one camera operator can operate four cameras whereas in other companies you would need four people…and we all know labor costs are the highest costs for these types of events.
Pricing:
- Live-streamed events start as low as $1600 for a single day!
Contact Info:
- Website: streamifyatl.com & behaviorlive.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behaviorlive/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/behaviorlive
