Photo by Tom Jenz
Jeff Cannady - Pwr Fwd Media
Jeff Cannady, Pwr Fwd Media
If you ever attend a Milwaukee Bucks basketball game, you might see yourself live on the Fiserv Forum Jumbotron. If you are a Bucks player, you will definitely see yourself performing. This technique is called live streaming, the real-time broadcast of video and audio content over the internet to a live audience. Live streaming delivers content exactly as it happens, allowing viewers to watch and interact simultaneously.
In Milwaukee, few have done more to shape live streaming than Jeff Cannady. A self-described gear head with an eye for innovation, he founded Pwr Fwd Media in 2016, building a company that specializes in multi-camera productions, professional live event streaming and digital storytelling for community organizations, corporations, and national media outlets.
I met Cannady in the cavernous hall in the Creative Corridor off 32nd and Center Streets, where the night before he had streamed the Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial debate to an appreciative audience. For my visit, he had transformed a section of the hall into a professional interview set. A microphone hung overhead, and a Sony video camera focused on us as we sat across from each other,
Tall, confident, and blessed with a rich baritone voice, Cannady has the authority of someone accustomed to making complicated productions look effortless. He soon admitted, “I’ve wanted to tell my story.”
He talked. I listened.
Growing Up on 12th and North
I come from a single mother household. I have a twin brother and a sister. We grew up in a religious kind of home in the inner city—12th and North. My grandfather was a pastor of a church, and all of his kids followed him, and so we followed our mom, and we were at church a lot.
I got my creative start playing drums at church. Summers, I got into a Milwaukee Public Schools recreation program where we were going at it in drum class, and I was really shining.
I became a DJ in high school. DJing was the one thing that kept me out of trouble. I was always in trouble as a youth. In high school, I got into a program called Urban Underground, which is what connects me and a lot of people in this city like David Crowley who was a part of it. I didn't have a father in my life and I needed some guidance. I found a way out of the neighborhood through this program, Urban Underground.
I went to Bradley Tech High School, taking the city bus all the way down to Tech, but after school, Urban Underground became a very big part of my life. They got us teens into social justice work. At a very early age, we were having conversations about things that people weren't talking about among the youth. Maybe 30 of us in this cohort. We were learning about so many different issues affecting young people and adults, learning how to talk about these things, learning about how to deal with the LGBTQ. social justice issues, topics like that.
Music Became My Way Out
I DJ’d my high school prom. I thought that I would be this big DJ. That was my plan. In my senior year, I DJ’d for Puff Daddy. They were having a rally called Vote or Die at MATC, and I’m a senior in high school, and Puff Daddy came here. They shut down the whole city. It seemed downtown was just for Puff Daddy to come here, and I was able to DJ this big event.
After high school, to make money, I was DJing in Milwaukee, at parties and in the clubs. I ended up joining an organization called Public Allies, the parent organization of Urban Underground. It placed you in the community where you would be working and you would get paid. On Fridays we would all meet and talk as a group.
For a job, I got placed at the health department and I was in a cubicle as an 18-year-old. One day in another room, they were having a meeting about condoms. I walked in and sat down. They started asking me questions. I gave them feedback. Immediately, a relationship was built.
This lady named Tracy and I met in this room. Tracy learned that I was a DJ. She thought I could be a spokesperson for the program, No Condom No Way. That sparked maybe a five-to-10 year relationship between Tracy and me, all because of this organization called No Condom No Way.
Our work was to build partners that will allow us to place free condoms in sites around the city on the east side. The No Condom No Way ad campaign appeared on the buses. Because I was a DJ, I told them they could make me a spokesperson. My picture ended up on the back of the buses as a spokesperson for No Condom No Way.
This was in 2008 when Facebook became a thing. I made a Facebook page called No Condom No Way. I was on the cusp of this new technology where no one knew what to do with it. The Health Department owned the No Condom No Way brand, but they don't know how to run Facebook, but I grew the page to 30,000 fans like overnight in 2009.
I'm young. I'm posting anything. I was taking pictures of condoms and just posting them. They would get 1,000 likes.
That's the start of my digital media career.
From Milwaukee to Snoop Dogg
I ended up touring with a band that was from here, a gentleman named DA Wallach, and the band was called Chester French. These guys went to Harvard, and they got signed by Pharrell and the Neptunes, and they came looking for some support online, and they found me. I went on tour with Chester French who led off the Lady Gaga concerts. I helped push their brand around the country. My job on tour was to be their biggest hype man, you know, advance their brand in these different cities. I was kind of like taking myself off the turntables and into marketing. And so it got me into my creative side and not just like just playing music. That was like a two-year thing. It was fun. That all happened between 2009 and 2013.
I moved from Milwaukee into Los Angeles to work for Snoop Dogg. So I'm out there working with Snoop Dogg doing his marketing. So the artist D.A. Wallach, he ended up connecting with the Spotify owner, Sean Parker. I connected Snoop Dogg to D.A. Wallach, and Sean Parker gave Snoop Dogg his first Spotify account when Spotify started. Well, because I was working for Snoop Dogg, I was a part of a creative agency, so i took all of my creative agency skills and brought that back to Milwaukee.
I researched You Tube and live streaming and technology. That got me into cameras and videography. At that time, I was in a relationship with Michelle McKnight, who later became a DJ and a radio personality in Milwaukee and Texas. Michelle moved back to her home in Texas and got on the air. At some point, I followed her to Texas. I bought a Nikon camera to take pictures of my girlfriend DJing on the air, and this camera had like a wireless feature on it where you take a picture. I'd take a picture and you could wirelessly get it to your phone. This was live streaming at that time.
Building Pwr Fwd Media
In 2016, I came back to Milwaukee again. David Bowen was the state representative. He was a part of Urban Underground. And so David Bowen helped get me a job as media director of an organization that I won’t name. This organization’s mission was to make sure Donald Trump did not win. A lot of money come through the city and people got to do things, creative things to not allow Trump to win. This organization asked me, “If you had an unlimited amount of money to do something, what would you do with it?”
I put all the pieces together, what it would take to produce a Facebook Live experience, the cameras, the computers, software, you know, the microphones, lights, everything for the studio space. This “Defeat Trump organization” bought all the gear. I had all this equipment and spent a year perfecting it. I started a whole online show called ‘Regulators.’ They paid for the equipment. So 2016 is when my PwrFwd Media company began.
We started a Facebook show. We had a lot of energy, and it was like a show you would see on 860 or WNLV, where they got guests and hosts. It looked better than stuff you would see on TV. We were ahead of the game very early with this technology. But the organization shut down. All I could do was grab the equipment and make sure it was safe. And that's where I began my business. I became a kind of pioneer of live steaming in Milwaukee. Very creative. very organic.
But then Donald Trump won the election.
Reinventing Live Streaming
There are people early on that knew me, and they were in places that needed the technology. I even did the New York Times broadcast when they came here in 2016 for the Sherman Park uprising over the Milwaukee cop who killed that Black guy at the gas station. They did a broadcast on Facebook about this uprising, and they had all these leaders, and they needed someone to stream this live because they weren't going to use the iPhone look. So I gave them a feature on Facebook that looked cinematic.
Later, I did live streaming for Manpower in Milwaukee.
They were having Manpower global headquarter meetings with the world on Facebook. Thousands of people watching. I was the one producing. After that, I streamed the 88.9 Radio Milwaukee awards show. They wanted it to look like the MTV Awards on Facebook. We produced it so well that their people were coming down from their offices. They wanted to see how we were doing it. A year later, they produced a whole Facebook Live studio for us to work in.
During the pandemic, I was live streaming for five churches each Sunday. Remember that most people couldn’t attend church in the pandemic. I was like a broadcast company. I mean, airing the church services, recording them, some live, some not, virtual, hybrid. We also did about 500 funerals during the pandemic. We worked with Pitt's Funeral Home, Reed's New Golden Gate Funeral Home, Crossey Funeral Home, Wisconsin Memorial Park Cemetery. We were even in Chicago doing funerals. You know, I could probably go to therapy for the amount of funerals I had to do.
So now we’re doing live stream events on the internet. Kind of like the live sports events where the audience and the players can see themselves on the Jumbotrons, but we stream on a much smaller scale.
Right now, my client is Will Johnson, who heads the Choir Rehearsal With Friends. This guy created an experience with churches around the country where he turns the congregations into choirs. He might have them singing songs from TV theme songs, all a fun experience. I'm out of the city twice a week for this job. Will Johnson wants the church people to see themselves on the screen, so I'm able to do like the kiss cam experience on the screen very effortlessly.
I use a wireless steadicam that projects the action to a very large screen. This camera that I bought is a stabilized cinematic camera called a DGI Ronin 4D. If I hold it and I move it around, the camera doesn't move. I can rotate the lens. It’s very stable and it's very cinematic.
In Milwaukee, I streamed the Fiserv Forum for the African American Chamber of Commerce where I’m running the Jumbotron. And I just did the Lowrider Fest at the Baird Center where they had performers on the stage. My job was to shoot the guest artists so they appear on the screen. I did that wirelessly because I could move around the huge Baird trade showroom. I was able to film in slow motion and play it back with a press of a button, and then the action is on the screen in slow motion. The people were having the best experience watching themselves. I had a kid at the lowrider fest, he was on the ground playing with his car remote lowrider. I put him on the screen and the whole building almost shut down because they were watching him.
No one's doing this kind of streaming around the country. It's the thing that I figured out how to do with this Ronin 4d camera, and I’m very proud of what I’m doing with it. It's very new, very gimmicky, but I found the places where it works for me. I have two of these cameras now because it's so important for a big part of my business.
What’s Next?
We are primarily doing live events now. We're trying to make that experience cool for the participants. Live events is going to be our thing. I went to New York to see Jay-Z's concert. Cinematically, it was incredible, brilliant. (He points to a large screen at the end of the hall) You see that screen right there? That's probably 12 panels. That's expensive. And the Jay Z crew have probably thousands of panels they got to use. That's what I want to do. I want to be able to do a big, huge concert.
For more information on Jeff Cannady, contact the website www.pwrfwd.media
