Red5 Pro Welcomes New CTO

Red5 Pro is thrilled to welcome Marc Pace to our leadership team as Chief Technology Officer. Pace, as he prefers to be called, describes himself as “the quintessential computer geek,” and joins us with a long history of tech innovation, a passion for VR, and a slightly irreverent sense of humor. He has a knack for founding and selling companies, solving interesting problems, and being just a step or two ahead of his time.

Although he may have preferred to be hanging in the metaverse with his cats, Pace took some time out to share his thoughts on Red5 Pro, virtual reality and the importance of customer service.

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What brings you to Red5 Pro?

Honestly, it was the team. I’ve known Chris Allen, the CEO, for over a decade and I’ve always respected his technical chops. I’ve also known Andy Shaules [Senior Software Developer] for a long time. Working with the team over the last year at my previous job really made me realize what an excellent engineering team it was. Any time you have a chance to join a team like that, you jump at it.

Rumor has it, you’re a VR fan…

Yeah, I’ve been reading about virtual reality since I was a kid and I’m a Neal Stephenson fan, of course. I always wanted to get into virtual reality and, since the nineties, there have been all sorts of horrible versions of it. Finally, the developer kit for the Oculus Two came out, and that’s really the first time you could experience on a home computer what you could find at NASA. I really started getting into it then, but I’ve been mostly using it as a communication tool and for playing games. The previous company I was at was an XR company and we were slowly integrating XR into our video education platform.

You’d go into a standard video training portal and launch a regular video experience. But it had interactive features, like it could stop and ask you a question during the video, or it could take you into a XR experience where you could then interact with something that you were receiving training on. It could say, “Hey, open the lid and show me where this component is.” And you open the lid of the device and point out which component it was asking you about. The XR allowed interactive experiences like that.

What does your ideal future look like?

Obviously the metaverse is happening. Whatever form it’s going to come in, it’s going to happen – a major change to computing is coming. I’m not sure exactly how it’s going to pan out. A lot of that depends on how quickly the tech comes out and head mounted displays are really the biggest barrier to entry right now.

Honestly, I would love to do all of my work in the metaverse. I’d love to sit down at my desk with a much lighter head-mounted display. I can imagine the workspace I could have in VR – I could set it up right now, but I don’t have the right keyboard. So, you know, I can’t type, but once these things are fixed, my monitor is going to be THIS BIG.

Is there anything else you’d like our customers to know about you?

I’ve got an extensive customer service background. Yeah, I come in with the tech experience, but it’s always had some sort of customer support aspect tied up in it. I’m customer focused – a very hands-on-with-customers sort of person. It’s important, because when you see the reviews of Red5 Pro, one of the top things is always how great the support team is.

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As Red5 Pro continues to grow and innovate, we’re excited to have Pace on board to help take our technology to the next level, as well as assist our customers in bringing their visions to life.