Business as Usual: Tobii Dynavox Details Giving People a Voice

 

Transcription: 

So good afternoon, everyone. This is Audrey Russo, President and CEO, the Pittsburgh Technology Council. And today is Monday right before Thanksgiving, I know many people are trying to take some time off. And enjoy the week ahead. Hopefully all of you are staying safe. I know that our COVID counts have definitely gone up. But that doesn't mean that we still can't have some good times and just stay safe. So I'm thrilled about being here today with Fredrik Ruben, the CEO of Tobii Dynavox. I am going to introduce him in a moment, I always want to give a shout out and deep appreciation to Huntington bank, they have been our partners right from the beginning of COVID. Hard to believe that we're in our eighth month of doing these daily updates. But actually, it gives me great thrill to hear about what's going on right in our community. And today is absolutely no exception. So Jonathan kersting is with us today. He's vice president of all things media and marketing and storytelling. And he actually is doing lots of stories each and every day, that I think if you go to our website, you'll see the amount of people that we've been talking to and just continually learning about and shining the light on. So if we have questions for today, Jonathan is going to be looking at the chat and monitoring that. And I will be trying to direct the conversation, but it's mostly casual. So we're pretty thrilled about that you have we've muted you. And I do want to warn you that my dogs for some reason at noon today are not on their best behavior. They usually are they usually are day they are not. So I don't. But I don't know what's up. But just to give you some fair warning on that. The other thing is, is that this isn't a time for you to sell your wares. This is a time for you to get to know Tobii Dynavox. That's what this is about. So I am going to jump in. And first of all, I want to tell everyone that live from Stockholm is CEO Frederick Rubin. And we had a chance to just chat a little bit before we went live and talked a little bit about what's happening in Stockholm. What's happening with Tobii Dynavox. And how many hours a day of sunshine are of light there is I was gonna say sunshine Frederick, but I met light. And I know that everyone gets used to it. If you've not been to Stockholm, you really should. And hopefully one day when we're all back post COVID, we will continue to do our international travels. And stop them is definitely a place where we would love to visit and take many of our member companies. So Frederick, we're going to start and we're going to talk about you. Let's talk about Frederick you. Who is Frederick Rubin. How long have you been at the helm? How did you get there? And then we're going to talk a little bit about Tobii Dynavox.

Sure. Hey, Audrey hey Pittsburgh, guys, I miss you. And it's so great to be here. Thank you for inviting me. So I'm Fredrik I am sending this broadcast from a pitch dark Stockholm, Sweden. It's six o'clock in the evening, but the sun already set at three today. So we're getting used to. And Stockholm Sweden is also the headquarter for Tobii Dynavox. But as you may then understand Pittsburgh is a very central part of our operation. I've been at the helm of Tobii Dynavox for this is my seventh year. And kind of wake up every day and and typically pride myself a lot with being a tech tech company CEO but I will say I cry at least twice a week, because of in the magic that some of our stuff does. And it's a unique position to get handwritten love letters from all around the world. You know, tech, that's what I do. I live here. This is my house. And this is like everyone else these days. I'm this is where I'm confined to so I'm not going to the office either. regardless what you hear about Sweden in the news, we're actually very locked down. Father, three, super outdoorsy scout leader and all other things outside of working

at SU and so let's talk about Toby. Okay, let's talk about because Dynavox is how we knew, Toby, and there's some history there. So kind of ops has been around in Pittsburgh. I think longer than Jonathan or Brian have been at the Technology Council.

Yeah, no, this The story is that Toby is a originally a Swedish company founded by three guys here in Stockholm in 2001. So we turned 20 next year, which is you know, a certain age and Toby is all about it. Tracking and developing devices that understands what what a person is looking at. And then since about 2005 or so one of the application areas has been in assistive technology. So if you know what you're looking at, that means you can control a mouse or something on a screen. If though, you're paralyzed. And it's actually quite interesting that in a lot of conditions, the body as such may malfunction, but your eyes still works. And then if I fast forward or backward a little bit in 2014, we acquired the Pittsburgh based company Dynavox Dynavox. However, they had been around all this since since 1983,

right?

And we've been focusing these two companies, we were focusing on the same segment, meaning helping people with disabilities, and specifically those who cannot communicate. Whereas we came from the technology side and eye tracking and Pittsburgh based Dynavox came more from the clinical side and other myths. So that's the story we merged over five years, Seth 2014. Right. And, and we've been one company since.

So but it's so fascinating, because when you think about technology today, and you think about even COVID, and contactless right, you know, you moved into this contactless world, your applications could actually transcend just it just so someone had to was not on mute. Okay. So have a variety of different abilities. What What is your, so describe your target market and your customers, because I feel like you have application across all of us.

Yeah, so our target users have one thing in common, they cannot communicate in the normal way that you and I can, it's either because of a physical condition, say you, you're paralyzed for because of an accident or because you've you've acquired ALS or something like that, but you're still functioning in the in the same way you you're able to do what he wants did, but you now have to use technology, that's one part of our use of it. The other one, our kids who grew up, were born with a condition, cerebral palsy or autism, where some of them are not necessarily physically disabled are hampered. They're actually cognitively or simply don't have the means to form language the way that you and I can do, that's our customer group, there's about 50 million people working the face of the Earth right now who needs needs assistive technology to communicate, and that's, that's our target group.

And so, when you talk about that target group, it's every age range.

It is every trench. So we have kids as young as six months old, but they were born born with a condition and are starting to explore what we call cause and effect, I do something and something else happens in normal development, that's when I, you know, drop something, or push something or screen something loud, or smile or laugh for that matter. But we use that technology to, to come over that barrier. And then we have people of all ages. A very common condition is his aphasia, which typically comes after a stroke. And there's predominantly an older population that has that, but we have, we have all ranges and all age groups.

And so Brian, Justin posted something here, if you haven't seen it, that Patrick Quinn, the co founder of the Ice Bucket Challenge, if everyone remembered actually passed away from

that news rich me yesterday, part was a dear friend of ours, user of our products and a fantastic person in, you know, not just in the Ice Bucket Challenge, but he was one of the big advocates for it for our users. So it's it's a great loss. And it's unfortunately, also the horrible condition of ALS. Simply it's a part of it. But by definition, as you can imagine, our users are also vulnerable, especially in a COVID situation. Right.

Right. Right. So when when you know, you your products, transform lives, and I'm going to dig a little bit deeper into it, but that, you know, for everyone around the world, I mean, it doesn't matter what language it doesn't matter where they live, you know, the you have a team in Pittsburgh. Yeah, right. And then you have a team, where else tell us a little bit about the constructs of your organization. So get a sense of even though you've had presence in Pittsburgh for almost four decades. Talk about who's here in Pittsburgh, who's around the world, what kind of role jobs people have?

Yeah, sure. So we're roughly 500 people in my team, but the US is not Just our biggest marketing from a commercial perspective, even though we're actually present in our lives, 65 countries or so selling our products, but the us is our by far the largest market. And Pittsburgh is the headquarter for not only our US commercial operation, it's also where we have our largest r&d office. So we develop our software products, we develop our hardware products, not all of them, but a significant portion of our product in the in our south side office in Pittsburgh. But we also have, it's the Center for our commercial operation in the US, our products are prescribed. So the payer is typically Medicare, Medicaid at nabru, Blue Shield, and you know what, not all the insurance providers. But that is a quite complex process to get through. So we also have some significant expertise in handling provider contracts and as well as handling and processing funding packages in Pittsburgh. So Pittsburgh is a super important office and a hub for for our operation as well.

So what kinds of people work for Toby? I mean, do you have people that are speech pathologists? Do you have obviously have software designers? What about hardware were things manufactured?

Yeah, we have, we have a plethora of different expertise, we have users as well working for our company. So with that is in tech support or great products. But I would say that we have the full range of a tech company who's also a commercial operation. So we have everything from, you know, people working in finance, or marketing or administration, all the way to developing both hardware and software. Typically, our devices are not manufactured in the US are typically manufactured elsewhere. But they're designed, constructed and and developed. For example, in Pittsburgh. In addition to that, you have the clinical side. So it's not just about building a device. It's also about understanding human language development. And just as you said, Audrey, we have speech language pathologists, occupational therapists, but then we also have a lot of graphic artists, because we need to develop a communication language, which to a large degree is symbols based, it's not just you know, letters and numbers, it's we need to overcome some other hurdles as well that that some of our users may have. And then last, but not least, super important. Pittsburgh is also our logistics hub. So any device that's being shipped out to a user in the US, or Canada, comes from our south side, Pittsburgh, facility, they're also being repaired there, you know, we have loaner pools, etc. So it's a it's a fun little company. We're about 250 people or so in, in our office in Pittsburgh.

So how about if I, if if I have a child that's under the age of 21, or 22, and they have a communicative you know, disorder, for lack of a better term, right now they have a communicative disorder? How would I obtain one of these devices? Is it through an Individualized Education Plan,

it could be both, it could be either through your school, and then of course, you have the IPS as you refer to where the school actually has an obligation to, to ensure that this child has the right means to, to be able to to be educated properly, we also actually make the solutions for the teacher to be able to have classroom activities that are made accessible for for the kids. But maybe an even more common route is that at the time of diagnosis, you will also among much among other therapists and assistants that you get that you will meet a speech language pathologist, and that speech language pathologist, hopefully, has been educated and understand that there is technology that can help this child. So one route of trying to, you know, make this child as successful as possibly can be, is to do an assessment to see whether a communication device such as the ones that we do is appropriate for that child. So there are certain routes, but I would say school or a therapist in one way is where it typically starts

or a doctor's order.

Yes, the doctor plays an important role but it's it's the doctor is more on the on the kind of the condition side to put the label on it in our devices is typically to make sure that you're more successful, and that's, that's where they come in. But as you can imagine, there's a whole crew of people around you make them successful. It would be wrong to say that super engaged parents is a very, very important element of a super successful child. So right we spend a lot of efforts on educating and helping also character Sometimes.

And so when you if I have a child who meets that criteria, is the device specified and individualized for my child? To a certain degree, yes.

But so individualization happens both kind of on the on a hardware perspective, if you're confined to wheelchairs, then of course, it needs to be set up. So it functions with your wheelchair or your hospital bed or whatever. And then the software the has is highly personalized, but that typically evolves over time. So that my communication device looks potentially very, very different from from from the kid next next to me in school or my neighbor. But that individualization happens over time. And it's more on the software side, the actual communication device is typically, you know, a set of standard components.

That's great. So last week, I think you had an announcement about the release of something called boardmaker. Seven. Yep. And that's really focused also on the special ed community. Can you talk about what that means? And how does that affect educators as well?

Sure, so. So Tobii Dynavox, is not just about making that communication device. It's, like I mentioned briefly, the tool for the special education teacher actually, in some times, it's not just Special Ed, it's actually also mainstream Ed. But to make classroom material that is adapted towards a set of students that have certain conditions. So boardmaker is yet another thing that has been around for ages, we boardmaker has been the go to solution for special ed teachers for 30 years, I, if I'm not wrong, we have well over 6 million students using it and 50 or so countries. So again, it's a very well established typically symbol communication software. And and we've been spending a lot of money and effort and time to make it really cutting edge the latest technology. By the way, total stamp made in Pittsburgh on it, everything is made tonight.

Nice. Is there like

somewhere, probably going to have it now. It's a software as a service. So it's we don't really have a box. But the box, we would have the big man in Pittsburgh stamp for sure.

So put something in there when you're SAS and then just say, Pittsburgh inside.

I see I have some colleagues on this call. So I think we take that to the list. Absolutely. No, copyright, protect counsel.

So you also, this is free advice I'm giving you by the way. Thank you. We're not asking for any licensing. So tell me, so tell us, you know you about a month ago? I mean, you've been really busy during COVID. a month ago, you announced a new partnership with Google? Yes. And so what is that? You know, what does that mean? You had? Tell us about it?

Yeah. So probably the second most asked for feature among our users, after being able to communicate, you know, face to face or over social media is to be able to control things around you. Turning on lights, or you know, opening the blinds and stuff like that, then that has been either done by bespoke assistive technology solutions that requires a lot of installation and are typically very expensive. Or on the other end of that scale, you have users who have been using Amazon Alexa or Apple homekit, or Google Home. But how that has worked, and is that they have a device, right? And then devices, hey, Google, turn on the lights. And then the Google Home device has to hear that interpret that and then hopefully turn on the lights. But as you can imagine, there's there's a lot of reasons how that could feel, you know, you're in the wrong room, for example. So what we have done together with Google, and we've been working on this for probably a year and a half, is to make our communication devices become a remote control for the Google Home. So they actually with it with the use of just your eye gaze can look at a button and say, you know, turn on the lights and the lights turn on. Open the blinds order pizza, you know, you can you could pretty much do everything here. And and we're super proud of this. And I know that my friends at Google are super proud of this. Because I think we can all imagine how much of liberty and how much normality that means for a lot of it. And this will happen during COVID. So you're right, we didn't stop and it's pretty cool.

Any other any other pivots or any information during COVID that perhaps I didn't ask I talked about boardmaker in in Google No, no with

my colleagues typically has referred to this fall as as the avalanche or product launches. Because actually what's happened we've been we've stayed very productive despite the fact that I've been working from home. I think one of the assets are being a truly global companies that we already had the infrastructure of, you know, digital communication, collaboration, despite the fact that you're in different time zones or different offices. So there's definitely the degree when you didn't have all the distractions of being in an office, we've been very productive during 2020. Despite all the hurdles that this little This is has put up for us. So we're continuing to launch renamed to examples. We've been releasing hardware eye trackers that works out in sunshine, which may be less relevant for stocking right now. But

but in Australia, wow. So so and you also have been renovating your offices?

That is true. Now, that may sound like it was, you know, because of COVID. We actually didn't start before but but it turns out, of course, that we have a wonderful office in the Birmingham towers on just off Carson Street, right. It's a magnificent big building old structure from you know, 100 plus years old. Right. And, and but it's, you know, it was in need of some love and And right now, we've been accelerating a both the renovation of the actual office, and we're also expanding to a new floor. So hopefully, hopefully, when this whole thing is over, and people can slowly return to the offices, it will also not just be nice to meet their colleagues, hopefully will be a nice office to return to to.

So it's great. You know, you have a lot of enthusiasm for Pittsburgh to I just want to do this for an opportunity. Are you Are you hiring right now? In the middle of COVID? Are you hiring in Pittsburgh?

Yeah, no, I just checked, we've been hiring, about 25 position up until now in 2020. Alone, so nothing, it hasn't stopped. Plenty of colleagues who have never seen other colleagues or the office for that matter. They've seen down this way. Now.

How in terms of onboarding, do you now,

this has been a global thing. It's not just for our Pittsburgh colleagues. I mean, if we have colleagues in China, or Germany, or Denmark, or Stockholm, or UK, it's the same thing, it's going to be very interesting. You know, for that short period of time, when we were actually allowed to travel again, here in Europe, we hired a new, great colleague from the Netherlands, he came to the office and the hiring manager was so surprised because he was seven foot tall, and he had no idea. But we're continuing to hire in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is important for us. If I'm not wrong, we have six or so open positions this very moment. So and it's it's all over the scale. It's not just in tech, but we're a tech company. But we we need all kinds of colleagues.

So let's think about your market really quick. Well, how many people around the world do you think have Communicative Disorders,

we typically say that's 50 million people. And that is an approximation from that it's somewhere around point five of the world's population have a condition which renders them unable to communicate. And it's pretty much the same regardless where you live, it's not that it's a higher prevalence in Pittsburgh than in Sweden, or in some some country far, far away. Right. So it's, it's a big part of the population, the vast majority of these people have no assistance, they're they're locked in, they are unassisted. they're unable to, you know, fulfill their dreams or be who they are, either, because there's no funding system, the funding systems also in markets, like, you know, Spain, or, or Italy has very poor funding systems, right? Or, for the other reason, where the awareness of the stuff that we do is very low, also among the professionals. This is high tech, but it's it's it's not the future. It's it's out there. It's we're helping 10s of thousands of people. Every year, it's paid for through government sponsored insurance programs for private insurance programs. It's it's not the thing of the future. It's fair enough.

So Jake, is there any way that you keep like user groups connected? Do you have family that are connected? Can you talk about that?

Yeah, I would say that still, Facebook is probably a super important platform. We have a user and in our communities, not necessarily just users, there's a lot of moms and dads and parents and professionals as well. But it's pretty cool to see that in some of our user forums, either the two big ones. There's a lot of support questions, how do I do this? And we have staff fully dedicated monitoring that they are probably the second or third on the ball because there's someone else that goes in and help them hopefully also correctly. So user groups are tremendously important and they're important for each other. It's also a very good way to keep us honest because You know, we do things less good sometimes. Sometimes we need feedback. And those groups are super important. I hope again, to be back in a day when we can have summer camps, supported by us for for kids using our devices, etc, etc. And

have you done that in the past? Absolutely.

That's a part of what we do and how we do things. And we do that internationally. We have a fantastic session. I think it's in Heidelberg, in Germany every year where a lot of our users they come together, and it's, you know, they've been doing that for 15 years. It's like this big. It's a party in a good way.

Wow. And so the American Disabilities Act, I just what what did we celebrate? How many years? Is American disability?

It was 30 years, correct? Yes. Not too long ago. Yeah.

It's and, and so how do we stack in terms of the rest of the world compared to that? In the US?

Very good, actually. And that's the foot. If you say that to European, we think about us, you know, highly privatized, nothing is working, which I can tell for sure. It's not true. We're extremely proud because what the American system did many years ago was to recognize the disability or being unable to communicate is as much an disability as been being able not being able to see or hear or move around. So that's one of the reasons actually why the US is one of our biggest markets, because it's, there's no discussion whether your child's ability to communicate is as much a problem for us, and we need to fix it as her inability to move around or hear or see. So very good, then maybe if there's something I could ask for is a little bit less red tape, a little bit less paperwork and administration. But we can actually take a big responsibility as a company to make that smoother as well. So all in all,

if people go to your website, will they see demos? Are there demo demos that are available so that people can really understand how this works? I mean, is there a voice that gets activated?

Through? Yeah, I would guess that, if you're totally new to this, YouTube is a better channel and just search for Tim. Because there are some fantastic stories, some of them curated by us, some of them truly homemade, and they are very real. And I think that it's a very good help, it will help you understand how this works, because it is still strange to explain, you know, hey, this device can can you know, it can see what you're looking at controls with your eyes. I know Audrey, you and I met probably four or five years ago. Did I think you tried it? Am I right? Absolutely. Yes. And that's typically it's it's, while this sounds like a dad joke, it's eye opening, right? It's,

it's eye opening? Yeah. And it's, first of all, people don't understand. I mean, you really are leading a remarkable company, because you are changing people's lives each and every day. Yeah. So that's quite a mission that's really working on something that is, you know, bigger than yourselves and it. And at the same time, you're building careers and futures. For people who are highly talented, they get to work on this on this stuff. So it's very meaningful.

Yeah, it also does something to the dynamic of the company, we're, again, we're an international tech company, we're almost exactly 5050 men and women in the company, we are working a lot on diversity and inclusion, because we believe it's at the end of a good for business and good for our users. And we're, I don't know, 50 or so nationalities in the company, there are definitely things we should do even better. But the fact that we've been able to stick to that also through HIV pandemic, makes me feel it, you know, we're stronger than ever before. And one of the reasons why we manage so well, also through this pandemic, in almost any country is because of some of those values. And like you said, it's highly mission driven.

You know, I think about your company, and I think about, you know, COVID, and so many people being sequestered, and particularly people who live in nursing homes, and they can't have visits, etc, should give us an appreciation for what it's like for people who can't communicate. Absolutely. You're unlocking that. So I'm not trying to draw discrete parallels, but you're unlocking that, Oh, these are

important situation like this, it becomes very concrete because everybody can understand what it's like not to be able to physically meet someone and you know, Express. And that's, that's what every day is like for the vast majority of our users. And I believe we have figured out a way how we can at least to a certain degree, and sometimes to large degree, compensate and overcome that.

Well, you have been a big personal proponent of Pittsburgh, which you know, we appreciate What's your favorite thing? You haven't been here in like eight or nine months. But what's something that you miss?

Yeah. So first of all, I'm a Swede. It's like we eat hockey pucks for breakfast. So not being able to go to a game. And from time to time cheering on some of my, my fellow Swedes done on the ice is of course something I miss. I must say, you do you do sports, not just ice hockey much better than us. And I'm just talking on the field, the whole thing? The whole

thing, right? What do you think about the Steelers then? 10 out right?

Well, to start with American football is something I have to learn. It's something and, and I am learning much more through my colleagues. And we have a little bit of a battle because I also have people on my executive team who comes from Boston. So sometimes we have to spend the first 15 minutes

doesn't really have a team. That's just pretend.

I'm not going to step into this beehive right now. One thing I do wish, however, was was that I could be there to celebrate Thanksgiving. I know it's gonna be very different Thanksgiving this year without the restrictions, but it's a fantastic holiday. And you know, I'm going to be working Thursday and Friday, like it was any any other November day. And I'm going to be thinking about you guys. So

we we can't thank you enough. First of all, thanks for joining us. What time is it in Stockholm right now six o'clock to 3030 to 630. Okay, and the sun has set for three plus hours in Stockholm by now. So we really appreciate seeing you. I'm very glad that you're safe. You've given us a link to your website for careers. And to say that we really want to make sure that you are back in Pittsburgh very soon. Thanks for being incredible champion. And I think that's it right, Jonathan? Is there anything I know that we're not going to be doing business as usual on Wednesday, Thursday or Friday? Do we have tomorrow?

You're still booking that guest

right now? Our next guest right now. Okay. Everybody else? No,

it's the joys of Thanksgiving week. So

it's all fun.

Well, I want to thank you, Frederick Rubin. Thanks for your leadership, stay safe. And we will have a happy, happy holiday as well as you should, you should probably take Thursday off. If you understand maybe Friday, at least when

we keep the wheel spinning inside and make sure that you guys can be totally off.

Thank you for the work that you're leading through really, really highly valued, so important, and so excited to see all the changes that you've made, even during the hardest times of the pandemic.

true pleasure. Thank you for having me. I hope to back really soon.

It'll be great to see you. Thanks, everyone. And we'll see you tomorrow. Stay safe.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai