As COVID-19 (Coronavirus) spreads across the globe, it is clear that its spread will not be limited to isolated outbreaks and is developing into something much more widespread. So it makes sense that governments, corporations, and individuals take reasonable precautionary measures appropriate to stop its propagation.
At EditShare, we have watched with concern as the human and economic toll has continued to rise. We have been asking what can and should we do to help. As technologists, scientists and engineers, our response should be directed not just to limiting the effects of the current outbreak, but to considering how we can protect ourselves, our livelihoods and our industries today, and in the future should this happen again. It’s now very clear that a novel virus can appear unexpectedly from anywhere, putting the world on alert, and, in the process, cause significant disruption.
Of course, a degree of inconvenience is not only tolerable but completely acceptable if it saves lives and avoids mass discomfort. But a safe, stable and liveable society depends on a functioning economy. There is no way around this. Managing the situation so that lives can return to normal only happens if essential parts of the economy keep going.
Luckily, the last few years have seen a very significant shift in our ability to work remotely, and that could be the key to minimizing future outbreaks. Digital communication is at the heart of this and video conferencing via Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime are part of many people’s lives – especially when they are spread across a city, country or the entire planet. We’ve not only learned to embrace and leverage these technologies through work but also to keep connected with friends and families around the world.
At EditShare, we have an entire collaborative video production workflow in the cloud, and in the future, all of our products will scale geographically across the globe and move from bare metal servers in the office to the most abstracted and virtual systems in the cloud.
But it’s not just the physical ability to transcend distance and work remotely that matters. It’s also that telling stories – whether through traditional or digital media – has more influence on the way a society changes than almost everything else. In times of crisis, there is an additional responsibility on storytelling enablers: the technologists that build the real and virtual means to create stories and get them delivered to their audience. To keep workers, friends and families connected and functioning in society at a time when they most need to be.
We don’t want to make this an opportunistic shout-out for our technology. Far from it. We want to be open and to work alongside all our friends, colleagues and competitors in the industry and beyond, to make sure that during this episode and whatever comes next, we help to keep things going, keep our businesses moving, keep our lives connected, share our stories and learn from this experience in ways that will make us a stronger and more connected society in the future.
To support remote collaboration across the creative community during this challenging moment in time, EditShare is making its FLOW media management solution available for free now through July 1, 2020. FLOW enables individuals as well as large creative workgroups to collaborate on story development with capabilities to perform extensive review approval from anywhere in the world. Complete this form and one of our FLOW experts will follow up.
