Podcast appearances and mentions of David Levin

David Levin, Interim Global Head of Healthcare Investment Banking and Co-Head of U.S. M&A, Ahmed Attia, Managing Director, Healthcare M&A and Jason Levitz, Head of Healthcare Equity Capital Markets, convened at RBC's Global Healthcare Conference in New York, to share insights on the latest M&A trends in life sciences, MedTech, and equity financing.

När och vilken information ska polisen, socialförvaltningen och skol- och fritidsförvaltningen föra ut? Vilka är deras utmaningar och vilka informationskanaler är effektiva? Hur påverkas verksamheterna av omvärldens förändringar, vad är sant och vad är vilseledande information? Richard Glantz, David Levin och Maria Boman Hansson ger svar på tal! 43 min.

This episode was recorded live at Ulster Bank as part of our mini series for Black History Month. It features David Levin and Charmaine McConville. In this episode we discuss: The early days of social media The challenges of growing a start up Acting on advice from loved ones The best petrol station in Ireland Whether Bradford or Leeds is better (it's Bradford) How race and identity overlap

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When I was buzzing around the InfoComm trade show earlier this year, I stopped at one stand for a chat, looked at the next stand over, and saw some familiar faces from Poppulo - the rebranded name for a company long known in digital signage industry circles as Four Winds Interactive. I went over and got caught up on what the company was up to and why it was showing at InfoComm, as I had grown in recent years to regard Poppulo - right or wrong - as being primarily focused on omnichannel workplace communications. I was mostly wrong, though I think it is fair to say that in the wake of a private-equity backed merger of Four Winds with an Irish company that did employee communications, there was marketing more noise for at least a while on the workplace side. David Levin, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Four Winds, stepped back from that role almost a year ago now, and I had been wanting to do a podcast with new CEO Ruth Fornell, whose background was well  outside the signage and workplace comms industries. After a preliminary chat, and me saying I'd poke away at her about digital signage stuff, she suggested I'd be in better hands with Joe Giebel, who has been with the company almost 20 years and is its Senior VP of Digital Signage. Joe and I get into a bunch of things in our chat, including the journey of blending technologies and culture, and the shifting needs and profiles of customers. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Joe, nice to catch up with you. It's been a while. Can you tell me what your role is at Poppulo?  Joe Giebel: Yeah, absolutely. My current role is Senior Vice President of Digital Signage, which is a fresh title for me. I'm coming out as a vice president of sales for America's role, where I've been fortunate to lead a number of our sales teams. For those who don't know Poppulo, there, a lot of the digital signage folks will probably know you or know the company more as Four Winds Interactive, but that changed, what about five, six years ago now?  Joe Giebel: That's right. I think we did that in 2021. So not too long ago, but, yeah, let me give a little bit of a history.  Four Winds Interactive was founded in 2005 as a digital signage company and remains so, but right around 2020, we started looking at different opportunities to enhance our offering, and made a couple of acquisitions. One of those was a company called Poppulo, which was the best-in-class enterprise, internal communications tool. So we brought them into the mix and when we did that, we started to look at the names, like how do we go to market and how do we want to do business as, and so we started doing market studies and it turns out that the name Poppulo, which loosely comes from a Latin term for the term “people” resonated and we decided to change the name to Poppulo. Four Winds Interactive serves as a parent company. We do business as Poppulo and the name Four Winds Interactive was always interesting and people wanted to know what's the origin of that name and its significance, and there wasn't a big story there. So I think we were open to considering a new brand and look and feel, and that's the story, Dave.  Yeah, if we go way, way back to almost 20 years ago, Four Winds kind of got its start with those little semi-electronic touch panels that you would play back samples of music, right? Joe Giebel: That is correct, and they were dealing with specialty media. So there was a company called, Four Winds Trading. That company was dealing with specialty media and a lot of it had to do with native tribes. So the Four Winds related there a little bit more. During that business, they started to think about how do we get loyalty around the distribution of our media titles and different things that we're distributing, and of course, screens were new at the time and media in an interactive format is very engaging, and so they were looking at how we merchandise this with technology?  And out of that was born the concept of digital signage and Four Winds Interactive. You go back, I believe right to the beginning to the rented mansion house in downtown Denver, right?  Joe Giebel: I actually predated the mansion where we had a corner of the warehouse, for our sister company, in Arvada, Colorado, and, yeah, that was in 2005. I think I was certainly a single digit, I think I was the fifth employee in the company and I got to be there from the beginning and started to see what markets will digital signage be valuable in and, where should we target people and it was an incredible time.  So if we go to today, I bumped into the Poppulo stand at Infocomm, and admittedly, and I said it at the time, I was kind of surprised to see the folks there because you being a little bit absent, I would say from the trade show circuit, or at least from the circuit that a lot of the other CMS software companies show at, so it struck me as almost like the company was getting back into digital signage a little more seriously, but I was told, and I suspect you'll say the same thing that no, we never left.  It's just that, maybe we're kind of amping up marketing again.  Joe Giebel: Yeah, I would agree with that, we never left. When we went through our acquisition period, we had a lot of great new tools and we were looking at how do we adjust what we're putting to the market and what are the right arenas to play in. Distracted is not the right word, but it's probably close. We were dealing with a lot of things and not to lie about trade shows following the pandemic. We're a little bit quieter and I think potentially we were being smart with our budget and certainly had some areas to apply it.  We missed the trade show circuit, and this year, we're jumping back into it and it feels good.  My impression, and you can correct me was post-acquisition of Poppulo and kind of merging the companies. It seemed reflected in part in online marketing and so on, or what I would hit on the website that you were focusing more on workplace experience and, maybe not making as much noise around digital signage, perhaps because that was established. Joe Giebel: Yeah, we brought in these new channels. We started to look at the workplace and the way we communicate with employees in a broader sense, and I think you could look at one of our major focus areas is the workplace and employee experience, and we started to say: as the world moves to remote work, and then we've kind of swung back to hybrid, and it looks like, there have been some big splashes in a full return to office by some major organizations, digital signage was a channel that we think is extremely effective in pushing a message, but we wanted to be able to reach people in more ways, and we do that now through a multi-channel approach, which includes the ability to reach employees by email, the ability to land messaging and collaboration tools, and still maintain the scale and governance that you want from an enterprise tool. So I'd say we're multi-channel. Digital signage is near and dear to my heart, and I think we're about to see a major pushback into how we drive that employee experience through digital displays, as more and more people come back to the office, it becomes a mandate.  Was it a little worrisome because of the whole idea of, okay, everybody's just going to work, from home from now on and I saw lots of software companies doing the equivalent of desktop screensavers, ways to push messaging to people who are now working at home instead of coming into an office.  So did you guys have to kind of look at things and go, okay, this could be a problem if we're not kind of broadening our offer? Joe Giebel: I think we saw an opportunity and, one, we saw an opportunity to make the digital signage for those frontline workers and the people that didn't have that option to go home even stronger, and at the same time we always had that question. How do we better engage people who aren't in the offices where we are putting our displays, maybe their field workers, maybe they travel constantly, or maybe they work from home? I think that really brought it to the forefront. Luckily, we were in the process of figuring out how to extend or create extensibility within the platform, ahead of everybody leaving office buildings. So we felt like we had a good foot forward, and we're all in on how to provide the best possible platform to reach your audience now. I struggle to say we're entirely workplace-focused because we also have a lot of people doing customer-facing things. So it truly is understanding your audience, what are the things you want to enable or shape their behavior with and what's the best way to reach them, we really want to be that platform for our clients and it's about value, you know, what is it you hope to affect or inform and what's the best way to do it.  When you say customer-facing, how do you define that?  Joe Giebel: Yeah, I need to get information in front of people who may purchase from me or interact with my solution. So I look at my clients and you know the classic use case is a retail environment. Obviously, you've got customers coming through a retail environment. What I don't think always gets thought of is that lobby of big headquarters. Many of our clients are bringing customers and. partners through their spaces that are customer-facing as well or major delivery centers. If you've got people building very expensive items, they often have delivery centers where they bring clients in both pre-sale and post-sale, to understand here's that product you're going to invest in over the next two, three, ten years, through that partnership, and then you look at things like executive briefing centers, very similar.  How do I bring my client base and prospects into an environment where I can show off what we do? In the market, I want to be able to show that in a number of ways. Digital, obviously, is an outstanding way to show use cases and product information, and really shape an experience when you have your customers in your space. Tell me if that was a good answer for what you were hoping to define. You did fine. Since more and more in the marketplace, larger customers, whether you want to call them enterprise or choose a name, are looking to slim down the number of vendors that they have, and they would like one vendor to do multiple things. Have you found that with some of your established clients that maybe you started with the workplace communications piece that they've then asked about doing large video walls, things like that, and on the flip side, maybe, whether it's an airline or an automaker, I'm thinking of some of your clients, more established clients. Have they said, yeah, we'd now like to also do workplace communications. Do you do that?  Joe Giebel: Yeah. First of all, if we make our clients successful, naturally, those teams that manage whatever solution they're implementing are getting questions from their peers on, how do I do that? You know, can you help me, and, who's your partner making this possible? So we see expansion across the products they own and new use cases. As you mentioned, maybe they're doing employee comms on screens and then it becomes large video walls and experiential things, maybe it's facilities related to meeting room signs, wayfinding, et cetera.  To the other element of your question, they're also saying if that partner is making us successful, where else can we use them? They do want to consolidate solutions to one vendor that they have success with. That's the biggest question that comes up with my clients. If I invest in you, how are you going to guarantee this solution is successful? And my team sees an ROI and it's not another tool that goes unused. So without a doubt, there's a desire, I believe, by Finance and IT to consolidate technology and vendors, as much as possible, especially if there's a track record of driving a return on the investment and making teams successful. I'm guessing the conversations are very different than they were, 20 years ago, and even 10 years ago, in terms of. I would say in the past, in the history of this digital signage was sold and people were interested in, from the idea of the kind of the sizzle of the screens, the visual elements of it and these days, instead of talking to marketing people, you're talking to IT people and they care about security and they care about data integration, things like that, is that accurate?  Joe Giebel: That is 100 percent accurate and I think you highlight in 2005, when we started the screen had such a sizzle, most homes didn't have flat-screen TVs. We were talking about plasmas back then. The iPhone didn't exist. So the concept of a touch screen and a large flat screen display, made life a real fun for digital signage.  Now the screens are more common. security and value, are kind of the table stakes to get into the game and where you really start to differentiate, you you understand the use case and how that is going to benefit a company, whether you're increasing productivity, reducing risk, and is that apparent? And do they understand how you're going to deliver that? And then on the security side, you almost don't get to pass go if you don't have a security posture that can scale globally, and, provide a safe feeling. I don't even think they have worries, right? You just don't do business with a vendor that's going to create worry, they've either got the security you need or you move on.  Yeah, and I mean, at least historically, I'm not sure where you're at right now, but historically you had a very large casino group and you had a very large Airline and those are two companies that have to be like, everybody has to be concerned about security, but they really care about security.  Joe Giebel: They do. It's paramount, obviously it presents a ton of risk. If you don't have that secure environment that matches their standard and those two examples, especially within the gaming world, those are tremendous partners of ours that kind of walked us through: Here's where you need to be, and we're so fortunate to have worked with them, and been able to develop that security posture with them in real world scenarios.  If you haven't set up gaming integrations and received gaming licenses. That is an in depth process that most of your leadership gets to go through and they get into personal stuff, they do a great job of remaining secure  So if you're going to work with those kinds of whale clients, you got to be prepared for a lot of hand holding and a long process?  Joe Giebel: That is correct. They're going to look at everything. I mean, they will find if you've got an NFL pick thing going on internally and you somehow put that interface onto a website, they're going to find that and they're going to ask you questions on why you're running a gambling ring. It goes that in-depth. They will see your resumes, they're going to do background checks on most of your team. So, there is a process to it. it takes some time and they leave no stone unturned.  It's been a few years now. Was the process of blending two companies, and I believe it's actually three companies that were kind of blended together, was that a bit of a journey? Joe Giebel: It is absolutely. Our company for the early history, we bootstrapped it. We had a visionary CEO that founded the company with one partner and we were a tight-knit family that didn't have outside investors. Taking on outside investment was a journey, and an experience, and then as we acquire, these are new experiences for our teams and so it is a bit of a journey.  There's the whole business operations side of things and how do you get multiple systems to speak to each other? How do we blend processes and then you've got the cultural elements of bringing organizations together, and you have to balance all of that? The people need to remain happy, the systems have to work. So it was a process and if I look at my resume and time with these organizations, what an education it's been for the last 19 years.  Are there kinds of tribes, so to speak? I'm curious if the operation in Cork, Ireland, which was where Poppulo, came from. Is that the workplace side and are the people in Denver more focused on digital signage?  Joe Giebel: You know, that's part of the journey and the early stages of the journey you definitely have. I'll stick with your term tribes and people that have knowledge and quite honestly, comfortability with a certain way of doing business. Along that journey, you start to see that tribal element go away, and you start to see the company mesh and become one organization that grows, and so early on, Denver had to be the hub for digital signage. It's a, I don't want to say complex, but if you're used to selling a pure SaaS solution, and then you start to add in hardware and the different elements of digital signage, it's more than you're used to and without a doubt, I hadn't talked about email and corporate communications in that sense prior to the acquisition. So it took me time to understand it.  I would say now, our entire company is so excited about a multi-channel tool, that everybody's leaned into it at this point and we work cross functionally quite well. It extends the workday quite a bit.  I'm sure there was also a bit of a journey kind of massaging and figuring out the right message, because going to target customers and saying, we do this and we do this, and we also do this must've potentially left them a little cross eyed. Joe Giebel: Without a doubt. I think we've learned along the way, when to talk about. the channel for a client and when to focus on a specific offering, and that's a delicate dance as well to feel that out. Because not every customer understands our vision quickly, and they certainly don't share the excitement that we have over new stuff because it's not at the forefront of what they do every day. So you can absolutely create a ton of confusion, and we probably did that, in the early process of coming together as Poppulo.  It probably feels like you're trying to sell them more stuff.  Joe Giebel: You know, as a sales guy, I'm probably insensitive to that, but, yeah, absolutely. You kind of get that sense when someone's sniffing out a salesperson coming into the room, and I bet we did pass that as well.  At the end of the day, we are trying to sell more stuff, but if we can't illustrate what the value is and why it makes sense to buy more solutions from us, we haven't done our job and we're probably not going to win that. So at the end of the day, we really do want to try to enhance the offerings and drive value to our client base.  You also have an office now in Bangalore, India. Is that a Dev team or a remote Dev team?  Joe Giebel: You know, we've got a number of functions, including development in Bangalore and that's an exciting market. I just saw endless content about how important digital signage is in India, and so we were excited to open that office up. I think it's been open for several months. We held our grand opening last week, but we've got a great team there, including a lot of technical folks and so we're very excited about that expansion.  But it's sales as well? It's not just purely, what would be perceived at least as being lower-cost, software development than what you would pay in North America.  Joe Giebel: Correct. It's not purely an offshoring effort. We see some strategic elements there. We've always provided technical experts to support our clients 24/7. That certainly helps the effort. We used to do that from Denver and have people working through the night. We now have folks in support as well in Bangalore.  The work culture in India, I think opens up a ton of possibilities for any digital signage vendor. That's looking at how do I enhance the workplace and employee experience within an office. I think that's going to be a tremendous market.  Yeah. I mean, it's a vast market. I suspect the challenge is based on the emails and pitches I get from people that the expectations on cost for SaaS licensing, software, and so on are somewhat lower than they are in North America. Joe Giebel: It's interesting, and some of the organizations there, that's a tough game if you don't have scale in what we're talking about, oftentimes though, if an organization is looking at this correctly, they're looking to roll out at scale and obviously we can build in better commercials that way, to better understand that, but without a doubt, as we look at a number of our clients are truly global, you do feel that pressure, as you go region to region, and that's an interesting thing you've got to handle, and try to solve for.  Do you have a client who you're allowed to talk about, because often the larger ones, it's difficult to get any permissions, that kind of really reflects the full meal deal of what you can do in terms of workplace, venue-based, customer-facing digital signage, maybe staff facing digital signage, like the whole shoot and match?  Joe Giebel: You know, I think Delta Airlines is a great client that takes advantage of most of our solutions, and then especially within digital signage, they've got so many use cases that they deploy both employee-facing, above wing for the passengers and below wing for the employees. So I think that's a good client that, we're fortunate does a lot of speaking about the solutions and is someone we can discuss.  Yeah, you've had them for a long time, right? Like, at least a decade.  Joe Giebel: That is correct. Long-term client. They started out with employee comms, and they've won a number of awards in the industry for some of the innovations that they do. I believe last year we started rolling out passenger-facing applications broadly for flight information displays.  Yeah. I did a podcast with Ryan Taylor going back about three years or something, and I've been seriously impressed by what Delta is doing. Because they totally get it, you can use screens really help inform the passenger journey and from the moment you walk into the check-in area all the way post-security. What was really intriguing was what they were doing, as you said, below the wing with, ramp information screens that are talking to the guys who are heaving bags into the planes and everything. Joe Giebel: Yeah, that's right. It's heartwarming when you see them roll out, one Ryan, leads a team that focuses on a number of things. Digital signage is a large part of it and they all understand what use cases and applications we can leverage digital screens for to help our customers and our employees. But when you see images of a 30-year pilot pulling up to a gate, and the ramp information display is saying, thanks for your work and dedication to Delta, and you know, that pilot's retiring it. That's a cool use of the technology, and it feels good that they think that's helping them build their culture and recognize people. It's awesome to see that in use, and in context like that.  The industry obviously has evolved quite a bit over 20 years. I'm curious about what you're seeing these days that you're seeing more and more customer demand for, I suspect it's things like data integration.  Joe Giebel: Yeah. I think data integration is the key and trying to understand, how do we make these things real?  The industry is asking for, it's odd when I hear it, I want consumer grade. Because I think 15 years ago you wanted everything to be the commercial grade which seemed to mean Strength quality, you know now they're thinking about the experience and consumer-grade is the goal. Consumer grade meaning I want it to react and be as simple As you know, maybe a social media app, and what I experienced on my personal devices need to be intuitive and need to be smooth. There can't be a need for training on how to interact with this thing. So, part of that is data integration. Is the data automated? Is it near real-time, and accurate? And are we putting the right data in front of people that they want? And you've got to have flexibility on that integration side because oftentimes, we'll see things get deployed and we see behaviors driven and it's like, wow, we didn't predict our clients and us and our project teams will say, we didn't predict those results. Let's tweak this and this to get back towards what we were driving and that flexibility and data integration, I think is the cornerstone of being able to deliver that experience. You have a platform you call Harmony. Is that the piece that kind of stitches together the different components versus, yeah, I just want the digital signage thing or I just want the email marketing thing?  Joe Giebel: That's right. So as you start to think about all these channels coming together, we call that platform harmony and it is a multi-channel, omnichannel approach to putting content really, I want to say communications, but, let's say getting content in front of the right people at the right time, and it gives you that ability to broadcast across every channel, or maybe you're using our analytics to say, “Look, we know these disconnected workers are not looking at the email, so we don't need to address them with email, that's creating too much noise.” So that concept or that name of Harmony, is the concept of all these channels coming together in harmony within an organization.  Without giving away business details, I'm curious, what percentage of customers are using Harmony versus those who still just want the traditional workplace comm stuff and those who just want digital signage for their retail environment or whatever it may be? Joe Giebel: Yeah, we've got a massive client base. So I would say about 10 percent of them are taking advantage of multi-channel, and on what I would just define as the Harmony platform, and I would say we've probably had serious conversations with about 80 percent and are working with them on plans for which channels might make sense. Oftentimes you've sold one solution to a team in the past, and that team's not going to necessarily handle that full digital strategy. So then it becomes a process of meeting the other stakeholders, showing them the value, and then planning how we roll this out. Because these are so highly visible, both digital signs, email, what we call feeds, putting messaging into collaboration tools, it's so visible that you have to be thoughtful on how you roll that out, how you plan it. So it takes a little bit of time.  I'd say 10 percent are the early adopters and taking advantage right now and it's certainly something we evangelize across the client base.  I suspect the leadership team likes that situation because there's a lot of growth potential there.  Joe Giebel: Yeah, we absolutely love it. The question then becomes, and what we've been working through quite honestly, for the last two years. How hard do you push on a platform play? And then how hard do you focus on nurturing the existing solutions and making sure that the teams that originally bought them aren't getting flooded with, “Hey, here's a shiny new toy.” And they're getting the adequate focus from us on how we make you most successful, within what you own and what are your expansion plans for that singular solution.  So there is a balance and, honestly, it might come across as a little disrespectful, if you don't pick up on what the client needs in the moment and we don't mean it that way. But you got to have your ears open, and stay customer centric, as you kind of navigate those waters.  All right. This is great. Good to catch up. if people want to know more, they'll find you just at poppulo.com?  Joe Giebel: Poppulo.com is the best place to reach us and you'll start to see all those solutions, both from an individual, description and promotion, as well as here's how all these channels play together. All right, Joe. Thanks again!  Joe Giebel: Dave, great catching up. Thank you.

Aug. 28, 2024 - David Levin, a senior consultant for End of Life Choices New York, explains an update to the state's laws governing health care proxies and makes the case for end of life planning.

Episode 74. Rabbi David Levin-Kruss is a Jerusalem-based life coach, educator, and community organizer. David sees himself as a bridge between Jewish wisdom and those who want to utilize this wisdom to live more meaningful lives. In this conversation, we talk about his coaching practice often using a text to explore issues in the client's life. David has held educational and leadership positions at the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, Melitz Centers for Jewish Zionist Education and at Stanmore Synagogue in north-west London.Highlights:·       Basics of coaching: forward-looking, strength-based, and problem-solving approach·       Coaching as a mechanism and the client already having the answers within them·       Rabbi Jonathan Sacks' view on coaching and contemporary problems·       Technique of reframing negative texts or songs into positive messages·       Emphasis on peace over absolute truth or justice in a Jewish law court·       Differences between education and coaching, emphasizing the role of the teacher in drawing out understanding within the student·       Value of interreligious dialogue and listening to people teach their own faith's textsSocial Media links for David:Article about David's methodology – https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-tinkertoy-kid-2/Social Media links for Méli:Talking with God Project LinkedIn – Meli SolomonFacebook – Meli Solomon Transcript:  Follow the podcast!The Living Our Beliefs podcast offers a place to learn about other religions and faith practices. When you hear about how observant Christians, Jews and Muslims live their faith, new ideas and questions arise:  Is your way similar or different?  Is there an idea or practice that you want to explore?  Understanding how other people live opens your mind and heart to new people you meet. Comments?  Questions? Email  Méli at – info@talkingwithgodproject.org The Living Our Beliefs podcast is part of the Talking with God Project – https://www.talkingwithgodproject.org/

#kisles S05E32 Újra VB láz 0:57 Beköszönés. Ketten vagyunk ma, de igyekszünk

On this week's episode of the Seekers of Meaning TV Show and Podcast, Rabbi David Levin discusses his recent visit to Israel with a delegation from the Philadelphia Board of Rabbis. [Read more...] The post Seekers of Meaning 11/24/2023: Rabbi David Levin discusses his recent visit to Israel with the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia appeared first on Jewish Sacred Aging.

Picture this: You're at your family's holiday gathering, and suddenly a heated argument breaks out. The festive atmosphere quickly turns tense, and you find yourself wishing you had a mediator on speed dial. For a wide variety of reasons, holiday family gatherings can sometimes feel like ground zero for conflict. Welcome to “Navigating Family Tensions: Lessons from Mediation”, Episode #128 of Co-creating Peace, a podcast about conscious communication and conflict transformation. Joining me today is my good friend and colleague, David Levin, a long-time mediator, to share some insightful tips on navigating those tricky family conflicts that can often arise during the holidays. David offers gems of wisdom and lessons learned from mediation, advising us to tread lightly and avoid direct intervention, while stressing the impact of individual, meaningful interactions, and nurturing our relationships to create a peaceful dynamic where we can. Highlights you won't want to miss include:Don't mediate your family What you see & what you cannot see when you look at othersHow to navigate family tensionListening to connectWhat mediators have learnedDavid has provided us with brief synopsis of the insights he shared in our conversation, which includes a diagram of the communication tool called “looping”, that he described to us: “Navigating Family Tensions: Lessons from Mediation” HandoutHere are just a few of the past episodes of this podcast which describe other tools you may find useful when navigating family conflict:Episode #3 – “When the Need Arises”Episode #5 ­ – “Breaking the Chain of Conflict”Episode #18 – “Re-humanizing One Another” Episode #43 – “Using Nonviolent Communication® to Speak Your Truth”, Part 1Episode #44 – “Using NVC® to Speak Your Truth”, Part 2 David Levin graduated from the University of New Mexico School of Law, in 1977 and has been a trained mediator since 1987. David began his legal career as a civil litigator and a general practitioner, later becoming a Board Recognized Specialist in Family Law and establishing a general private mediation practice.  He is currently practicing mediation, providing mediation training and education, and serving as a resource for alternative dispute resolution programs.  To connect with David or learn more about his work, email him at: davidlevin@mindspring.comPlease support Co-creating Peace: Subscribe to Co-creating Peace on your favorite podcast provider Send me your ideas for topics and guests or be a guest to talk about your communication or conflict resolution challenges and receive free communication coaching Share on social media & tell the world about Co-creating Peace! Become a patron at www.patreon.com/CocreatingPeace Visit BridgesofPeace.com to learn more about Kathleen and her work.

Please join Jeremy Lentz, the Executive Director of the Teaneck International Film Festiva in The Locher Room to learn more about the 2023 festival which runs from November 5th - November 12th.Jeremy has been with the festival for 15 years and under his direction the TIFF has been dubbed by a nationally recognized newspaper as the “film festival with a social conscience,” and is now considered one of the most prominent social justice film festivals in the nation.The Teaneck International Film Festival draws over 3,000 filmgoers each year. Films and talkbacks illustrate what TIFF is about – making untouchable topics part of everyday conversation by addressing racism, oppression, the environment, the LGBTQ community, women's concerns, immigration -- stories of the little guy whose story is not often heard. With the theme, Activism: Making Change, the festival is an excellent starting point for fostering appreciation of differences, understanding all that we share, and encouraging efforts to help make the world a better place.Joining Jeremy will be filmmakers, David Levin and Jeff L. Lieberman who has the closing night film, Bella on November 12thDon't miss the opportunity to learn more about this incredible film festival which which runs from Sunday, November 5th through November 12th. Visit: https://www.teaneckfilmfestival.org/

Greetings Glocal Citizens! Did you miss us? We missed you! September threw me for a bit of a loop with travel and wifi access which resulted in a brief break. My travels took me on a Northern Lights adventure through remote Alaska where we actually experienced the North Pole! Then it was a return to summer in the southern U.S. with a grounding trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I'm back in NYC for this two-part episode and taking a stroll down a few Brooklyn memory lanes with my guest, Ky Adderley is a leadership and education expert, mentor, super connector; and networking guru, a persistent link between people and their dreams. He has conducted school reviews and training for teachers and principals on three continents – North America, South America, and Africa – working to increase the number of quality schools and leaders available to low-income children worldwide. He has been a leader in the education sector for 20 years, and has more recently pivoted in the direction of sports management. Coming from a family known for professional athletes he is no stranger to sports and operations. He was an All-American high school and collegiate runner at Georgetown University going on to run as an Olympic hopeful before hanging up his spikes to focus on giving back to the communities that raised him. Also an advocate for social justice education, he has been nicknamed by some: “Know Justice, Know Peace.” Ky has recently taken on a new role as Vice President of Maven Sports Group (https://www.mavensportsgroup.com). We know this too will be a smashing success for Ky--Congratulations!! Where to find Ky? www.kyadderley.com (https://www.kyadderley.com/) On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyadderley/) On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kyconnex/) On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/kyadderley) On X (https://twitter.com/KyConnex) What's Ky reading? The Art of War (https://a.co/d/iD8AaR5) by Sun Zu Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (https://a.co/d/67k3Ocs) by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months (https://a.co/d/38qPLN2) by Brian P. Moran, Michael Lennington Other topics of interest: Germantown, Pennsylvania (https://www.visitphilly.com/areas/philadelphia-neighborhoods/germantown/) Mount Airy, Pennsylvania (https://www.visitphilly.com/areas/philadelphia-neighborhoods/mt-airy/) Frank Gagliano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gagliano) Ganas! (https://speakbetterspanish.com/dar-ganas-de-in-spanish/#:~:text=Ganas%20and%20ganar%20in%20Spanish,de%20(from%2C%20of).) meaning Teach for America (https://www.teachforamerica.org) KIPP and David Levin (https://www.kipp.org/team/dave-levin/) Kung Fu Theater (https://www.epicroadtrips.us/2003/summer/nola/nola_offsite/FQ_en.wikipedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Theater.html) Capoeira (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira) Cannonball Adderley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley) Professional Football Hall of Fame Cornerback Herb Adderley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Adderley) Nasifr Adderley (https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/chargers-safety-nasir-adderley-announces-hes-retiring-at-age-25-after-just-four-nfl-seasons/) About Cash Money Records (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_Money_Records) Father Raymong Kemp (https://ourtowndc.com/father-ray-kemp-georgetown/) About Ky's work with Danielle Fazio (https://preminentecounseling.com/) About Match Fit Academy (https://www.matchfitacademy.net/) Special Guest: Ky Adderley.

Greetings Glocal Citizens! Did you miss us? We missed you! September threw me for a bit of a loop with travel and wifi access which resulted in a brief break. My travels took me on a Northern Lights adventure through remote Alaska where we actually experienced the North Pole! Then it was a return to summer in the southern U.S. with a grounding trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I'm back in NYC for this two-part episode and taking a stroll down a few Brooklyn memory lanes with my guest, Ky Adderley is a leadership and education expert, mentor, super connector; and networking guru, a persistent link between people and their dreams. He has conducted school reviews and training for teachers and principals on three continents – North America, South America, and Africa – working to increase the number of quality schools and leaders available to low-income children worldwide. He has been a leader in the education sector for 20 years, and has more recently pivoted in the direction of sports management. Coming from a family known for professional athletes he is no stranger to sports and operations. He was an All-American high school and collegiate runner at Georgetown University going on to run as an Olympic hopeful before hanging up his spikes to focus on giving back to the communities that raised him. Also an advocate for social justice education, he has been nicknamed by some: “Know Justice, Know Peace.” Ky has recently taken on a new role as Vice President of Maven Sports Group (https://www.mavensportsgroup.com). We know this too will be a smashing success for Ky--Congratulations!! Where to find Ky? www.kyadderley.com (https://www.kyadderley.com/) On LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyadderley/) On Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/kyconnex/) On Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/kyadderley) On X (https://twitter.com/KyConnex) What's Ky reading? The Art of War (https://a.co/d/iD8AaR5) by Sun Zu Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity (https://a.co/d/67k3Ocs) by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford The 12 Week Year: Get More Done in 12 Weeks than Others Do in 12 Months (https://a.co/d/38qPLN2) by Brian P. Moran, Michael Lennington Other topics of interest: Germantown, Pennsylvania (https://www.visitphilly.com/areas/philadelphia-neighborhoods/germantown/) Mount Airy, Pennsylvania (https://www.visitphilly.com/areas/philadelphia-neighborhoods/mt-airy/) Frank Gagliano (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Gagliano) Ganas! (https://speakbetterspanish.com/dar-ganas-de-in-spanish/#:~:text=Ganas%20and%20ganar%20in%20Spanish,de%20(from%2C%20of).) meaning Teach for America (https://www.teachforamerica.org) KIPP and David Levin (https://www.kipp.org/team/dave-levin/) Kung Fu Theater (https://www.epicroadtrips.us/2003/summer/nola/nola_offsite/FQ_en.wikipedia.org/en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kung_Fu_Theater.html) Capoeira (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capoeira) Cannonball Adderley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannonball_Adderley) Professional Football Hall of Fame Cornerback Herb Adderley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herb_Adderley) Nasifr Adderley (https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/chargers-safety-nasir-adderley-announces-hes-retiring-at-age-25-after-just-four-nfl-seasons/) About Cash Money Records (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cash_Money_Records) Father Raymong Kemp (https://ourtowndc.com/father-ray-kemp-georgetown/) About Ky's work with Danielle Fazio (https://preminentecounseling.com/) About Match Fit Academy (https://www.matchfitacademy.net/) Special Guest: Ky Adderley.

Hear from Vito Sperduto, RBC's Co-Head of Global M&A, and his panel of RBC Capital Markets' expert bankers on how large healthcare firms with strong balance sheets are putting cash to work — driving a ‘fast and furious' surge of M&A activity in the second half of the year and into 2024. Learn why healthcare momentum is building and how smaller deals are shaping M&A across the sector in the latest episode of Pathfinders in Biopharma. This podcast also features insights from Andrew ‘Cal' Callaway, Global Head of Healthcare Investment Banking, Ahmed Attia, Managing Director of Healthcare M&A, and Co-Head of US M&A, David Levin. This podcast episode was originally broadcast on Strategic Alternatives, the RBC M&A podcast.

Compressed valuations, heightened CEO confidence, and the desire to accelerate top-line growth and scale innovation are the key factors driving healthcare M&A in 2023. As deal activity starts to accelerate, our banking experts are asking, what's next for the sector? Listen to Pathfinders in Biopharma to find out. This episode features insights from Vito Sperduto, Co-Head of Global M&A, Andrew ‘Cal' Callaway, Global Head of Healthcare Investment Banking, Ahmed Attia, Managing Director of Healthcare M&A, and David Levin, Co-Head of US M&A at RBC Capital Markets. This episode was originally broadcast on Strategic Alternatives, the RBC M&A podcast.

The Nottingham Panthers forward David Levin - who scored four goals last weekend - chats to Panthers Radio in association with Xynomix.

Welcome to Navy Sports Central - The Official Podcast of the Navy Sports Nation!Today, our discussion will focus on the athlete's ongoing quest to sharpen their mental game. Our guest is David Levin, author of Raise Your Inner Game and founder of the Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy.This is a conversation that you'll find to be highly informative and educational. I know that I certainly learned a lot from it.And of course, we will have our sports update, Question of the Day and Mid Watch segments as well as our "Ask Me Anything" feature.Related Links:Key, Koser & Griess Advance to Day 2 of the NCAA Wrestling ChampionshipsRaise Your Inner Game Sports AcademyWe want to hear from you! Give us your answer to our Question of the Day. Here is the one for this episode:Over the years, we've seen Mids with strong mental games perform at an extremely high level in their respective sports. Name one male and one female athlete who've had the confidence, resilience and focus to consistently deliver when it counted at crunch time. You can reply on the Navy Sports Nation group Facebook page by putting your answer in the comments section. Feel free to go into as much detail as you like. By the way . . . extra points if you name any athletes who are still at the Academy. Follow Navy Sports Central wherever you get your podcasts:Apple PodcastsSpotifyPodchaserGoogle PodcastsCheck out the Navy Sports Nation group page on Facebook!Music is provided courtesy of Audio Jungle. Artists featured in order:Seven In Music (Intro)Alexiaction (Deep Dive)Loka Music (Deep Dive Pt. 2 Lead In)Artlss (Question of the Day Lead In)Cinematic Alex (Closeout Music)Support the show

On this weeks Panthers Pre-Game Podcast - In association with Xynomix - Chris Ellis is joined by Jono Bullard & former Panthers netminder Dan Green to look back on Panthers excellent 4-point weekend, David Levin's wonder goal, look ahead to big games against Sheffield Steelers at home on Saturday and Guildford Flames at the Spectrum on Sunday and congratulate Belfast Giants on their Challenge Cup Final victory.

LifeBlood: We talked about mental toughness, how to overcome overthinking, a simple approach to improving the mental aspect of sports, and how to get started, with David Levin, Founder of Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy, and author. Listen to learn at what age it makes sense to start teaching kids about mental toughness! You can learn more about David at RaiseYourInnerGame.com, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn. Get your copy of Raise Your Inner Game HERE Thanks, as always for listening! If you got some value and enjoyed the show, please leave us a review here: ​​https://ratethispodcast.com/lifebloodpodcast You can learn more about us at LifeBlood.Live, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook or you'd like to be a guest on the show, contact us at contact@LifeBlood.Live.  Stay up to date by getting our monthly updates. Want to say “Thanks!” You can buy us a cup of coffee. https://www.buymeacoffee.com/lifeblood

Dan Green, Jono Bullard and Chris Ellis talk at the post-game signing in Saltbox and there's also chats with Matthew Myers and David Levin.

BRN Sunday |All the right moves: Netflix adds an ad-supported tier | Daniel Kline, The Street and David Levin and Kevin Walsh, Groom Law Group | Tunein: broadcastretirementnetwork.com­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ or your favorite streaming, smarttv, podcast platform

In 1922, David Levin was a struggling singer-songwriter whose career (and life) were going nowhere. But then he had a surprising “Wizard of Oz  Moment” that changed the course of his life forever. He discovered the three fundamental skills for personal development - cognitive control, emotional self-regulation, and impulse control. To help coaches and athletes benefit from his blueprint and tools he founded the Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy. Every coach wants their athletes to reach their full potential. Indeed, that's the whole purpose of coaching. The problem is, a lot of times the athlete's mental game is holding them back and the coach simply doesn't have much available to help with that. So, the athlete continues to struggle, and the situation just gets more and more frustrating for everyone involved.   Whether your audience is coaches, parents, teachers, or anyone else who works with teenagers, they'll discover a simple yet powerful new approach to mental performance training that helps kids in every area of their lives.This episode is brought to you by N2N's Illuminate App, The iPaaS for Higher Education. Learn more at https://illuminateapp.com/web/higher-education/Subscribe and listen to more episodes at IlluminateHigherEducation.comContact David Levin: linkedin.com/in/authordavidlevinLearn more about David Levin: https://davidlevin.comLearn more about the Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy: https://www.raiseyourinnergame.comGet a copy of Raise Your Inner Game: https://www.amazon.com/Raise-Your-Inner-David-Levin/dp/0981989241        

Absolute Fire!! Success for Life Podcast_ Guest David Levin, Raise Your Inner Game, Amazing!! Topics discussed: Mental Game of Athletes Improving your focus Links mentioned in this episode: www.nucsports.com MyFootballCamps.com Legendaryleadership.com https://www.amazon.com/Raise-Your-Inner-David-Levin/dp/0981989241 Raiseyourinnergame.com This podcast is powered by ZenCast.fm

Jono Bullard, Dan Green and Chris Ellis discuss Panthers new signing David Levin, preview the weekend action at home to Dundee (Fri) and at Sheffield (Sat), as well as reflecting on Sunday's win over the Steelers.

Episode Notes: David Levin, founder of the Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy and author of the book - Raise Your Inner Game, joins the podcast to challenge us to do just that through a mechanics based approach that is easier to teach, coach and practice. David looks at how you can depersonalize errors by asking who is in charge right now: Am I or is this thought? It is critical to become aware when we let the thoughts decide and to be aware that thinking and hearing thoughts are different things. Learn to get cognitive control, emotional self-regulation and impulse control -- master the three domains of performance: thinking, feeling, doing. Whether you are a coach, an athlete, or someone with a desire to improve daily, you will be better for listening today. We appreciate you joining us and choosing to live differently. We'd love for you to share this with someone you care about and if you find value please do not forget to hit the little subscribe/follow/rate/review button and as always, LIVE EYES UP! Website: raiseyourinnergame.com Free Assessment Book: Raise Your Inner Game Connect with us: Facebook Group: LIVE EYES UP FAMILY YouTube: Eyes Up Mindset Channel Websites: http://www.eyesupmindset.com/ AND https://www.jshirkeycounseling.com/ --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/eyesupmindset/support

BRN Sunday | Reconciling recent state ESG legislation with Federal guidance, Chairman Powell speaks from Jackson Hole, Stocks slide, dollar rises | David Levin and Kevin Walsh, Groom Law Group and Oliver Renick, TD Ameritrade Network | Visit www.broadcastretirementnetwork.com­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

In our second podcast from Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Weber Shandwick's EMEA CEO Michael Frohlich and David Levin, co-founder of sister IPG social creative agency That Lot, talk about what every brand in Cannes is after: cultural relevance. The duo talk to Maja Pawinska Sims about how brands can not only intersect with culture shifts but also drive cultural impact in fast-moving times.

TBT's Mitch Maley and Dawn Kitterman sit down with political candidate David Levin this week. David is running for Bradenton City Council, Ward 2, in this November's election.

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of BWB Extra where we continue our conversation with David Levin, Co-Founder and Creative Director of That Lot, an award-winning social creative agency. We take a deeper look into how David went from being a freelance writer to becoming the world's first professional Tweeter being paid to be the voice for some of the world's biggest brands, to then meeting David Schneider who he started That Lot with.Welcome to A Tweeter's Life.BWB is powered by Oury Clark.

David Levin, Co-Founder and Creative Director at “That Lot”, an award-winning, platform-first social creative agency is this week's guest on BWB.After working as a writer at MTV and freelance for a number of brands, David's initial foray into social came when he set up a spoof Twitter account for his local Hackney pub which attracted a cult following and was named Time Out's ‘Best London Twitter'.He was then asked to write and create social content for numerous brands and broadcasters including PG Tips, Adidas and BBC One's The Voice which broke BBC records for engagement.David specialises in nailing tone of voice and creating shareable social formats, many of which have contributed towards some major wins for That Lot's clients such as making Channel 4 the most viewed UK broadcaster on Facebook.Expect the usual BWB drilling into what made David's career tick and grow and the challenges he's faced along the way.Check out David Levin's recommendations:GARY VEE'S AUDIO EXPERIENCE Rory Sutherland's On Brand PodcastP DIDDY'S HONOUR YOURSELF PodcastBWB is powered by Oury Clark.

Coach Forward is an interview-style podcast hosted by Jason Mejeur (Coach J), accomplished Coach, Mentor, and Founder/CEO at MaxOne. To see the MaxOne platform, schedule some time here. Imagine every player having the tools to consistently perform at their highest level? Today, i'm excited to be joined by David Levin. David is the author of Raise Your Inner Game and the founder of Raise Your Inner Game Sports Academy. In this episode, David takes listeners through the 5 keys to training the mental game, and how coaches and athletes can thrive in today's distracting, fast-paced world. Learn how athletes can shut out distractions and stay focused, access their most creative and innovative ideas, perform better under pressure, strengthen willpower and self-control, find more fulfillment in life, and much more! About Jason Mejeur (Coach J) Jason has more than 15 years of experience coaching basketball at the college and high school level and has lived on the sidelines and in the locker rooms working to build teams and inspire athletes. His mission is to build authentic relationships with his players so that he could have an impact on their lives beyond the basketball court. More recently, Jason founded MaxOne to be a platform that makes coaches' lives easier and helps them use technology to have a bigger impact on the lives of their athletes. Keep up with Coach Forward on social media: Twitter, Linkedin, Instagram. Enjoying Coach Forward Podcast? Consider subscribing or leaving us a review! 

How do we make sense of a Torah portion that is — in Amanda Katherine Weiss's words — “savage?” I guess we'll need a good Teacher, one like Rabbi David Levin-Kruss, Director of Jewish Education for JDC Europe and Jewish Learning Director for Yesod Europe. For Parashat Sh'mini, we're discussing Jewish Education and how we put learning into practice. To continue the conversation: Rabbi Levin-Kruss's email: dlk@jdc.org NEW DISCORD LINK: https://discord.gg/xeeghhpSy3 Show the love with some Drinking and Drashing: Torah with a Twist merchandise at store.drinkinganddrashing.com, and don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating on Apple Podcasts—it's a great way to help our show grow! Edited by Kate Griffin

This week, Paul goes behind the curtain with James Earl Jones, II, star of “Come from Away” which returns to Chicago at the Cadillac Palace Theatre from February 22nd – March 6th. The show is about 9/11 but as James makes clear, it's really about 9/12 and the wonderful people of Gander, New Foundland who took […]

The COMEDY Festival has shown an unprecedented three films in the past 3 months from David Levin. - HARVEST MOON, a film starring Don Most & Anson Williams (from Happy Days fame). - BEST BUDS, a film starring Jenny Leona (who also wrote the film), & Mary Chieffo. - TOOTH FAIRIES IN QUARANTINE, starring Barry Bostwick (The Rocky Horror Picture Show), and Yvonne Jung. Conversation with David on the making of these films and others during the Covid-era. Subscribe to the podcast via Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook @wildsoundpod David P. Levin is an American producer, director, writer and editor. In the early days of MTV, he produced Rockumentaries on Madonna and Michael Jackson, and later went on to help create and develop the "Uncensored" brand for MTV. Later on he created, produced and directed TV Land Confidential for TV Land, and also produced and directed When Pop Culture Saved America, Which Entertainment Weekly cited as one of the 10 specials to watch on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 Terrorist Attacks. He is the founder of BrainStorm Inc., a video production company with a focus on television projects.

Class 5 from Bro. David Levin's series on “Five Facets of Resurrection” Class 4 from this series was used for GCT Episode 079.

Class 4 from Bro. David Levin's series on “Five Facets of Resurrection” Class 4 from this series was used for GCT Episode 079.

Class 2 from Bro. David Levin's series on “Five Facets of Resurrection” Class 4 from this series was used for GCT Episode 079.

Class 3 from Bro. David Levin's series on “Five Facets of Resurrection” Class 4 from this series was used for GCT Episode 079.

Class 1 from Bro. David Levin's series on “Five Facets of Resurrection” Class 4 from this series was used for GCT Episode 079.

Hello Basementeers.... Yes here is the second installment of Stuart Held with David Levin again discussing life, Love and The Partridge Family lol lol and other things. They also add songs that influenced them growing up and going thru the pains of School and ect. It's actually quite interesting. So join in the conversation as we get back to Stuart and David. BTW: SFTB is working on a bunch of new shows and presentations, were all over the board on what to finish next. There will be new shows coming soon to the SFTB podcasting podwaves. Thank U 4 being patient.

Hello Basementeers... Well we have a long over due show. I have in the Basement with me a very special guest: David Levin who has been in the Broadcasting and media biz for many years. We rap about a lot of things that came to our minds and just went off into many different directions. We chatted about our younger days, growing up, our careers ect. We also played a few songs that influenced the both of us thru our lives and yes it's was a lot of fun to go over some points in our lives for everyone to hear. It was a worth taking the time to get this 3 parter show together that all together was about 6 hours long, GEEZZ how did we talk for 6 hours straight ?? well we did, but we got the show down to 3 parts, this is part 1. So please enjoy a chat with David Levin and Stuart Held .

Syria! Middle East! Missing Person! Search!  Insights into the shadowy world of the Middle East with David Levin in this book discussion with Steve Bowers ...

Paying Tribute to David Levin. Scott and Alex Fleming talk NFL Week 14 Injury Updates, Best Bets, and some Key Game Predictions.

In this episode, we'll hear from one of the formative players, David Levin, in the development of ADR (Alternative Methods of Dispute Resolution) in New Mexico. Tune in to hear about the rich history of how ADR came to be, some of its key players, and where ADR may be heading in the future. You may even learn how ADR had an indirect impact on your career or practice area! 

Scott, Candy, and David Levin discuss What Happens Next in 2020? They discuss many different things that we have been hit with in 2020; from the Pandemic, to Racial Inequality, to Decision 2020.

Scott and David Levin talk about the Miami Marlins challenging rebuild, the teams' resiliency, plus the remarkable managing job of Don Mattingly enabling the franchise to earn a spot in the playoffs for the first time since it's 2003 World Series Championship.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED - DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Four Winds Interactive is one of the largest and most well-known pure play digital signage companies in the industry. But the Denver-based company went a little quiet about 18 months ago, when a venture capital company based in Austin, Texas took on a majority stake. That perceived quiet spell changed recently when word circulated that Four Winds had itself completed an acquisition - a UK company focused on workplace communications and operations. News of that deal presented a good reason to get back together on a podcast with David Levin, who started the company and has long been its CEO. We chatted about several things, including where the company is at, how fully half of its business is now with screens that are employee-facing, and why he and his clients call the work visual communications. We also get into how the company is weathering the pandemic, with maybe 15% of staff going into the company's two Denver offices, while the rest work from home. Levin goes in, by the way. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT So David, good to catch up. It's been a long time since we've seen each other.  David Levin: Thanks, Dave. It's been way too long.  It's been my impression and you can correct me, that about a year and a half ago, you weren't acquired, but you got a major investment from a private equity firm. And, since then, you’ve been kind of quiet. I don't see Four Winds Interactive around as much as I used to, but tell me I'm wrong and that you guys are noisy as hell and I'm just missing it. David Levin: We might've been quiet, from a press standpoint, but we've been very busy. We did do a majority investment from Vista Equity Partners about 18 months ago. And we've been hard at work. I think when we talked maybe three years ago, we were at the early part of our FWI Cloud Initiative, that we are now into end to end on cloud and have had, I don't know how many releases, but a lot. We're extraordinarily proud of where that's turned out and with Vista, we've made a lot of changes operationally that are great. We've changed a lot of things in our go-to-market operation. And, building the foundation for the company for the next phase.  Now, what drove those changes? Was it because the PE guys or VC guys said you need to make these changes or the cash infusion and support enabled you to make changes that you already had in the works or wanted to do? David Levin: So one of the things we liked about Vista and the reason we partnered with them is that they invest exclusively in software companies and they are known for studying best practices and figuring out what works best. And that's an evolving process because, as companies try new things that go back into the best practice creation, companies evolve together, but you get the benefit of being able to be a member company of 60 plus software companies and figure out what works best. And for the 14 years prior to that, we had essentially figured everything out on our own. And, I was excited to have those resources available to us.  So, long story short, we jumped full-on and implemented a lot of the best practices. What does it mean culturally? As you said, you had 14 years of, pretty much bootstrapping with some angel level private investors, building the company up to where it was at, to then go to having majority owners outside of the company. And now, you're still in charge, but you have masters. David Levin: Yeah, well, it doesn't feel like that. You know, they are a majority owner, but we still retained a significant stake and we have a meaningful ownership piece in this business. I started and have been the CEO since the start, it will always feel like our organization, regardless of the equity structure and they're very collaborative. So it has felt like a partnership.  Yeah. One of the things when the announcement happened that you guys had done this deal, I looked at the company and I looked at the portfolio of companies that Vista already had under its wings and thought, this is interesting. There's a whole bunch of companies in there who I could see doing integrations with and getting you into lines of business or opening doors that would be very hard to otherwise open it. Has that played out or was I just imagining things?  David Levin: The investment thesis wasn't about integration with other portfolio companies. We are what's considered a platform investment for them, which is, they're picking leaders in software industries to go win a category. And the platform investment is the first company investment in a space. And then, in almost all of their investments, there add on acquisitions to that platform company to help when the market broadens the offering to customers, and the Spark Space acquisition was our first acquisition. That's part of that. So no, it was a platform investment versus something related to integration with the portfolio.  But when you have kind of sister companies, so to speak, who are doing work, let's say, in the restaurant or hospitality industry, and they have a platform that does whatever it does, it struck me as so many technologies are starting to blend and blur together that there were complimentary technology opportunities here that you could add capabilities to another platform and vice versa and enable integrations.  David Levin: It's super helpful from an integration standpoint. So where customers want to, in a simple case, pull data from a US system and that system is part of the Vista portfolio, then it's obviously easy to make a call and get the product teams working together, but that wasn't core to the investment strategy. That's just a helpful benefit.  Right, and what has it meant for the company in terms of how you operate? You said you made a lot of structural changes and things like that. How has that played out? David Levin: Yeah, so we've changed our sales territories. We have increased investments, and in marketing, I think, we had launched just prior to the investment, but we've made a significant investment in our customer success organization and our support for customers overall and their renewals and their growth and countless others, but those are the first ones that come to mind.  One thing that always struck me about Four Winds was that you had a lot of people and you opened a hell of a lot of new accounts, very strong in terms of email marketing and customer acquisition. But then, what comes with opening a lot of accounts is you've got to manage all of those people, and manage all of those accounts, and very small accounts can be needier than whale accounts. Has that changed or have you streamlined and focused more on corporate and enterprise?  David Levin: Yeah, enterprise across multiple use cases, but definitely enterprise, after adding to the software platform for 14 years and having the luxury of being able to work on some of the more advanced use cases out there, the product was positioned for enterprise and as a larger organization, you need big customers generally to keep growing. So yeah, that's where we're focused.  So if you have a small account, let's say a, a tribal casino in Missouri that needs 10 screens, would you push them off to a reseller or would you say it's not really what we do anymore?  David Levin: So, the interesting thing in the casino market is that even smaller casinos are great digital signage customers because they've got far more than 10 screens. We do have some phenomenal partners, ConnectedSign is one of those and we'll work with partners to make sure that they're taken care of. The most important thing is that they're on our platform. so generally, yes.  Historically you've put a lot of emphasis on vertical markets, and from my perspective at least, you’ve been very smart in terms of not putting all of your eggs in the generalized “trade show” basket, by going to vertical market-specific trade shows that nobody else, who you would consider a competitor was at, like Airport trade shows and Hotel trade shows, and the Hospital trade shows, and so on.  Have you thinned out the number of verticals that you're after? Cause it seemed to me, when I was looking last week on your website, it seemed to be about corporate and guest experience. David Levin: We've definitely put more focus there, with an overriding theme of enterprise visual communications. Some of our larger customers are retailers and have customer-facing applications. probably go to market perspective, yes, with the caveat that if you've got a lot of screens, you need enterprise-grade visual communication software, where you've got more advanced use cases, we target those. You said visual communication software. Is digital signage, the term you even use with your customers, are they asking for digital signage or are they asking for visual communications or something else?  David Levin: They ask for both. I think cust customers that have been working with us for a long time,tend to use visual communications. And I think the industry is still digital signage and both are great.  Don't really care, just by, please! (Laughter)  David Levin: Yeah.  I'm curious about workplace and enterprise-level workplace, and what's now happening and what's going to happen longed term with, big damn offices that maybe won't be as big as they used to, or at least not as heavily populated as they used to. Is that for some of your clients, as well as yourself to rethink and pivot around the new way that workplaces are gonna operate? David Levin: Yeah. I think all organizations are going through this question of “what does life looked like post-COVID in the workplace?” It has fundamentally changed and customers are at different levels of bringing people back to work. And, technology is a key part of enabling that and I think there's just this fundamental shift where most organizations have proven you can be very effective at home, so then what's the role of the office? And how many people are coming into the office on any given day, what's a safe number of people to come into the office while we're still in COVID and then how do you use technology to manage that?  Does it matter to the typical client whether there are 500 people in the office now, or trimmed down to 200 because you still have 200 people who you need to communicate with? David Levin: Yeah, I think it makes a difference because you've got to communicate, across multiple platforms. So first of all, in workplaces, generally breaking down into three categories, employee communications, which we talk about a lot in the industry, digital workplace, which tends to be more meeting or a management desk management, visitor management, interactive directories, wayfinding, emergency messaging, and then, performance-related, you know KPI boards, manufacturing floors, call centers, Salesforce, etc.  So in the employee communications realm, you've gotta be multichannel. So for people that aren't in the office, obviously digital signs are very important, but if you're at home, you've got to get communication with people on their personal device. So we've got viewer channels that enable people to do that and other tools to make sure that the communication objectives are met.  So the viewer channels are effectively desktop screensaver kinds of things, and alerts that'll pop on a screen? David Levin: Yeah, digital signage content that you can view on your personal device primarily using the browser.  Now, how do you get workers to use that? Because I'm thinking if I worked at a company, and maybe I'm just a cranky old guy, but I don't think I would want that if I could avoid it. I don't know that I would use it if there was a way not to use it.  David Levin: It's funny. A lot of us, when we were working at home, had digital signs running in the background, but you don't have to have a dedicated device for that. So for example, if you've got your laptop connected to multiple screens, then you can take one screen and make that your sign, or resize a window in the corner. And it's a way to get content throughout the day. And some of our customers who are using the product for sales KPIs, they're used to looking at those boards when they're on the office floor. You know, you want to be able to see how you're performing throughout the day, meet with your peers, and you're just running it in a different format.  One of the things I've talked a lot about is the whole idea of KPIs on manufacturing floors and elsewhere. And I've wondered how many end-user companies are actually using it yet, and while I've seen no end of chatter about workplace comms and showing KPIs for showing Salesforce, opportunity pipeline, reports, and everything on a screen. They make sense in a white-collar environment, but are you seeing many companies adopting KPI dashboards for production blue-collar areas? David Levin: We are at the evolution of visual management as part of lean manufacturing and the more screens people end up getting in a venue, then this question of “okay, how do you control the devices and Is there a better way to present the information?” The number of screens that are out there in manufacturing floors on rolling carts may be running an app, a dashboard that wasn't designed to be a digital sign, it's intended for desktop use, but you're running it on a public screen, and you're trying to view it from a long way away. that still exists quite a bit out there.  So as customers evolve their needs, they find themselves looking for digital signage or edge of visual communications products and have really good visual applications and good device management and everything else that comes along with the solution. So tell me about the Smart Space acquisition. Was that an acquisition led by Four Winds or by Vista and it's a paper announcement that this was an acquisition by Four Winds? Or is you guys?  David Levin: No, it was led by Four Winds, but it's a close partnership. We work with the Vista team on the business. So when we started 18 months ago, we mapped out the market, you know, things like where are our largest segments, where the biggest population of our customer base, what are our natural product extensions, where can we bring the most value back to customers and, what does the universe look like? And that helped create our Corp Dev strategy. And with Smart Space, we were talking to them for a while and I really wanted our first acquisition to be able to bring something more back to our base. Now our base really breaks down pretty evenly between 50% of our customers are using the product for customer-facing applications, and 50% of our customers are using the product for internal and employee communication You know, it's hard to do one acquisition to cover everybody from the start, so we're looking across the board. You know, workplace is important to us, and then in the workplace, again, those three kinds of segments between employee comms, performance management, and digital workplace. And then in the digital workplace, If you find yourself with a meeting room signage product, which we have, and customers have been adopting, you're really quickly into meeting room management and desk management. And if you're in meeting room management and desk management, then you really need analysts about the usage of those spaces, you need sensory integration, you need a mobile app for the employee experience, and so that’s why we just felt like it was a good product extension to buy.  So it was one of those cases of, “Our customers looking for this, we know that we're going to have it. We can either build it or the faster track is to buy it and get a pretty significant number of customers with it?” David Levin: Yeah, exactly. And you know, if you're involved in real estate or digital workplace for a large enterprise, then usually you're involved with both digital signage and desk and reading room management. So it's a great fit.  And with the Smart Space deal, will they be rebranded as Four Winds or will it continue to be its own entity?  David Levin: So Smart Space is becoming part of Four Winds. We're still figuring out the naming of the product. We really like what they've done with the product, but right now, Smart Space is an FWI company and will become part of our overall platform.  You had European people before, EMEA people before, but this gives you an office, right? David Levin: It gives us an office and 40 great people, most of who are based in the UK and a really nice center for our operation in Europe.  Does it play out the way I've heard from other companies in terms of you start with very simple applications with a corporate enterprise, like a meeting room sign and it just cascades out from there because if they're happy that the client asks for more capability, directories analytics, KPI dashboards, and so on? David Levin: For sure. In general, the more applications a customer can run on a single platform, the better. And that's where a lot of our growth has come from over the years, as a customer will start in an area that is the most important need at that particular time and then they'll expand and expansion is pretty easy because it's an endpoint on the platform and it's an application that's built on the platform and content that gets managed by the platform and feeds that application, so it's pretty easy to expand and we love the fact that there's so much you can do on the product. We’d love all these different use cases to get rolled out. And even at a workplace customer, it's interesting, even in a workplace customer, there are these different parts of a workplace which ends up being customers facing, like your lobby experience, your executive briefing centers, your trade show. So, it even finds its way over there, even if it started internally.  I know this answer, but I'm curious anyway, you've gone into a few verticals as a company and kind of backed off of them because it was just too hard. Is part of the drive around just being corporate and guest experience by and large a way of kind of simplifying things and realizing, “Hey, verticals like retail are really difficult and verticals like hotels”, what you were doing on your own to some degree, let's say five, six, seven years ago. There's a whole bunch of companies who now say, we do hotels and we're after that market.  David Levin: Yeah. we haven't limited to workplace and guest experience, and again, some of our larger customers are customer-facing applications in retail environments, and they're extraordinarily successful. I think where you get into nuances is if you're going to sub-sectors of retail, let's say like a QSR, if you consider that retail and then you're looking at again, the solution overall, and then you're adding self-service kiosks and other parts of the application. If the customer wants all of that and you don't have that, or don't have the experience on that, then you're not going to be as competitive there. And so, it just depends on how much of the solution is more pure visual communications or digital signage in retail, and how much is broadening into other areas of retail, and I think sub-sectors of retail, QSR, grocery, or specialty retail, sometimes it broadens a bit. Right. You're having real-world experience, well like everybody, with the pandemic in terms of having a pretty significant office. I think the last time I got a count, you guys were up around 350 people, and most of those going into an office in Denver, where are you at now in terms of the number of people coming into the office? David Levin: Yeah. We've got about 350 people in Denver. There are about 20 people in the office. Well, we have two offices in Denver, so maybe 40 people on any given day in the office and it's purely voluntary. We've got plenty of space, so people that are coming in are well socially distant. And, we were shut down completely for several months and you know, your work from home experience differs based on what you have going on at home. And so we wanted for people that wanted to get out of the house for whatever reason, to have the ability to come back to the office in a safe way, so we opened it up, but it's a small percentage. I think we all have about 3000 square feet year at the office.  And coming out of this, do you anticipate that, based on the experience of so many people doing their work from home, when you have the opportunity with your lease, that you'll trim back and this homework will be permanent for some of your staff? David Levin: I don't know if we'll trim back, but I don't see us acquiring a lot more space because we're going to implement our own desk and room booking system and make everything bookable across the office, so people will use the office, as they need, for activity-based working. They'll book what they need when they need it, and I think there'll be this hybrid model of people working from home and working from the office. And, we'll enable that through the software, and put more investment in collaboration.  We're seeing our customers do this too. They're just putting more into teams’ rooms and Zoom’s rooms, so when part of your team's in the office and part of the teams out of the office, it's still really easy to get the resources you need to have effective collaboration.  Are you challenged at all by the Zoom(s) of the world and the big consulting companies like Deloitte(s) and Accenture(s) and ones like that who seem to be getting into this space?  You have Zoom that has a very elemental digital signage system, but you know, so much of what's being done these days is done over Zoom, that they could start to offer the capabilities that you guys are presenting.  David Levin: Yeah, so Zoom is very simple, and as you described, it's good and bad. And, to me, the good part about it is that if people start digital signage and do visual communications and they put screens out, and even if they start on zoom, at least they're getting screens out and chances are the more screens that are out the more their sophistication evolves for applications and management, etc. and they will come back to the market most likely and look for an enterprise provider. The bad is, of course, it is free and they get a little bit of the market, but, I think there's probably more good than bad. And with the large consulting companies, I think they're more partners than competitors and we've done some really great projects with most of them. And it's generally part of a big digital transformation scope. And there are some digital signage applications that are part of that scope, and then they're often using a product like ours to execute on that part of the scope.  Okay. So, they're happy to sell you guys into it as long as they're getting their consulting hours out of it?  David Levin: Definitely. Nobody wants to build all these applications from scratch, you want to use a platform.  Oh, I don't know about that. (Laughter) I get those phone calls and emails almost daily from people saying, “Hey, I'm doing a digital signage startup. Can we get on the phone and talk?” And I'll get on the phone with them and they’ll talk with me, “You would be software platform #487, doing what you just described to me. Please stop now.” It makes them sad, but too bad, I’m saving them a lot of money in the long run.  You are more a technical CEO than a number of CEOs who I speak with, who come more on the sales side or marketing side, where do you see things going in terms of the way all of this stuff is done?  We've had some shifts through the years. There's a hell of a lot more adaptation of systems on chip displays, then maybe, some early observers sought there might be, are we getting to a point where devices are nothing more than little edge devices and visual communications, as you call it, is very much a software-driven initiative, and we don't get fixated on the hardware?  David Levin: Yeah, I think so. From a software perspective, Cloud and IoT have been huge. If you look at a lot of what went into our R&D investment in the last four or five years, it was transforming our own software platforms to take advantage of native clouds and all the technologies around IoT that enable you to manage these remote devices. That just didn't exist when we started 15 years ago and it probably didn't exist five or seven years ago, but we get to take advantage of what the big cloud providers offer and how remote devices are managed in general, for consumers and businesses. Related to edge devices, it's getting a heck of a lot better. To be able to use edge devices effectively and still have pretty sophisticated applications that run on those, when we went live with cloud, we supported BrightSign, Samsung, and LG, we support those three in addition to our Windows platform. And it's a matter of picking the right device or the right use case.  Are enterprise customers, the IT teams, less antsy than they used to be about cloud and unfamiliar devices that aren't HP boxes or Dell boxes that they buy by the hundreds or thousands? David Levin: Yeah, they're embracing with really high-security standards. That was another big part of the investment because it's hard to sell cloud if the security is not there and end-user customers have a really sophisticated way to assess security. So yes, cloud with the security and as far as devices go, there is a movement, of course, to move away from Windows devices and the management that comes along with Windows devices but it also depends on the organization overall. There are some people where they are still heavy Window shops and it's easier for them. And then, there are a lot where if it's more of a, if there's less going on at the endpoint device, it's easier for them to manage overall.  Do you get a sense from end-users, when they're canvassing the potential vendors/service providers who can help them with their visual communications, that most of the people they have coming in really have their act together in terms of security, or is it a breath of fresh air for guys like you to come in and have sales engineers who can talk about serious security? David Levin: Yeah, it's a breath of fresh air, but also for us, we got the security department now, led by Maurice, he’s our Chief Security Officer. So the sales team often at a certain part of the sales cycle, or if customers are upgrading their security standards, which happens quite often, then we'll bring in the team members from our security group and they'll take over from there, cause it really is a specialized discipline. How long have you had that role in place?  David Levin: Gosh, I think I want to say Maurice joined us four years ago to head up the org, and now there are probably five people in the org, and they work closely with our cloud operations and our legal and compliance team and sales engineering. And, it's been a big part of maturing the organization. Yeah, I would imagine that there are end-user customers who are somewhat comforted by the fact that you have full-time people just in that case and not saying, “Oh yeah, we pay attention to security.”  David Levin: Well, they have made it a requirement. When you see some of the security addendums that are attached to contracts, if you don't have a team handling those, there’s just basically no way to comply.  So, looking ahead, I know this is a weird year. and it's hard to forecast anything, but work goes on, so what will we see out of Four Winds in the next 6 to 12 months?  David Levin: Yeah. I think in general, what I'm most excited about is that this world is getting more digital and I think, COVID is pushing that even faster because everybody has had to rethink everything they do.  If it's customer-facing, what's the new customer engagement model? In venues, how do we interact with customers in these venues in a safe way? And how does technology enable that? And digital signage fits in. And if you're in the workplace, it's the same thing related to that to return to work.  I think that's good for our industry overall. I think we play a key role in that. And, for us, we've got a great roadmap where we've got a couple of big releases coming out before the end of the year on Cloud, we’re excited about the integration with Smart Space. Look for more integrations with that on our platform and also us to take key elements of that, like their mobile and wayfinding and some of the other sensory integration, some of the other attributes, and do other use cases for key markets and, just keep, building the company. We're still got a lot of energy.  That's good. All right, David. Great to catch up with you.  David Levin: Thanks, Dave. Appreciate you having me on. Thanks for all you're doing.  

Scott, Stuart Hack, and David Levin continue to talk about Covid-19 and the success the Miami Marlins have had this season, including after their break due to their positive cases of Covid-19.

The guys talk about:  Warren Rychel's return to Windsor.  The AHL and NHL have a lot of OHL graduates playing on their opening night rosters.  Exceptional player Shane Wright finding his way in the OHL.  NHL Central Scouting releases players to watch list which includes 41 OHLers. Will Ty Tullio and Ruben Rafkin raise through the rankings and will players like Jean-Luc Foudy and Antonio Stranges fall? Cody Wall interviews one of the highest touted dman prospects for the NHL 2021 draft, Brandt Clarke.  Should the Barrie Colts be worried about their bad special teams? CHL's number one ranked team, the Oshawa Generals, are now 7-0. How long will the win streak last?  New segment called Point Per Game Player of the Week, where the guys tell us their favourite player from the last week. David Levin, Francesco Pinelli and Ruben Rafkin are the first players picked. 

This week's episode of Social Media Week's Leads2Scale podcast features David Schneider and David Levin, joint Creative Directors from That Lot, a platform-first social creative agency from the UK. David Schneider is best known as an actor and writer for TV shows and films, and has brought his vast experience to That Lot's video output; David Levin specializes in nailing tone of voice and creating shareable social formats, and was one of the UK's first professional tweeter. During the episode, they discussed how the agency has evolved since its founding days, why Donald Trump's tweets have been tremendously dominating on social media, and the hottest social tools to look out for, like Facebook Watch and Stories. This episode is brought to you by Social Media Week New York 2019! (www.socialmediaweek.org/newyork/attend code: Leads2Scale) Follow Toby and Social Media Week! @tobyd & @socialmediaweek on Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter.

Rabbi David Levin visits this episode of the Jewish Sacred Aging Podcast to discuss his new Jewish Relationships Initiative. The Jewish Relationships Initiative is a nonprofit organization formed to provide outreach focusing on the unaffiliated Jewish population of Greater Philadelphia.  JRI seeks to create relationships through meaningful connection to Jewish wisdom, ritual and community.  We do this through lifecycle events, study and learning, conversation and connection to others. [spp-player] About Rabbi Levin [caption id="" align="alignleft" width="154"] Rabbi David Levin[/caption] David Levin is a Reform rabbi ordained from the Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion (NY).  David serves the community of Greater Philadelphia. He also devotes his time to special projects including Jewish Sacred Aging, teaching and free speech issues on the college campus. David worked with the Union for Reform Judaism in the Congregational Network as a Rabbinical Director serving the East Coast congregations.  He also had the honor of working at Main Line Reform Temple in Wynnewood, PA. David Levin is a Fellow with Rabbis Without Borders, an interdenominational rabbinic group affiliated with CLAL. David Levin proudly claims to be one of Rabbi Louis Frishman's (z”l) “Temple Kids”, from Temple Beth El in Spring Valley, NY.  David attended the University of Chicago earning an AB in Economics. He went on to the New York University Graduate School of Business where he earned an MBA in Finance.  Before becoming a rabbi, David enjoyed a career centered in banking and real estate finance, and he also worked in the family garment business.