Digital Signage

The Digital Signage Show: Las Vegas, May 6 & 7

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 6:31 pm

The Digital Signage Show is at Mandalay Bay in Vegas today and tomorrow – May 6 and 7!

Follow the Digital Signage Show doings on Twitter.

You’ll find most of the best digital signage companies at the show, including Scala, Netkey, and Symon.

Here’s what the Digital Signage Show website has to say about the show:

The Digital Signage Show offers an in-depth look at how digital signage/OOH/Place based media – from one location to thousands, both interactive and non-interactive – can bring increased brand impact and sales, as well as improved customer experiences and revenue for organizations. Discuss and plan for all phases of your deployment from pre-launch to budgeting and measuring ROI, and find all your technology solutions under one roof!

KioskCom: Digital Signage Show Highlights New Tech for Real World Demands

Posted on Apr 20, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

From Self Service World.com comes this very informative article about how self-service and digital signage can help the bottom line:

The question has always been asked, but as the economy continues to worsen, it has become more pronounced: How will self-service and digital signage help the bottom line?

It is a question organizers of KioskCom Self-Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show plan to answer when the show convenes May 6-7 at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas. As businesses look to cut costs in a shrinking economy, executives have to be more focused than ever on efficient and effective ways to communicate with customers, employees, patients, and students.

“The real question businesses face is how does this address and solve a problem they have,” said Lawrence Dvorchik, general manager of the event. “It’s kind of always been there, but I think people are more openly focused on it than they would admit to before.

“Now it’s front and center. Granted, it’s cool technology, but it needs to be more than that. It needs to make their operations, communication and overall business better. That’s one of the reasons for our success, it’s the laser-beam focus of how this technology solves a problem for businesses. It’s been proven that when they work, they really work.”

Last year, the show floor saw more than 300 exhibitors and about 3,000 attendants. Dvorchik said he thought the conference would draw close to those numbers this year, if not more. To entice attendees, he said he is providing free full conference passes — as opposed to exhibit hall-only passes — which last year cost up to $1,500.

Attendees can hear a host of customer-facing technology users from many different industries talk about the challenges they’ve faced and the solutions they’ve discovered.

Experts will talk about maximizing existing data and on-screen content production to be used across multiple platforms and giving advice on the next logical step for first-time deployers — do you add content, invest in additional machines or try digital signage or handheld speakers?

“I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all for any of these solutions,” Dvorchik said. “There are many options to choose from, and people need to really understand the value of these options and select what works best in their situation.”

One scheduled speaker is Robert Fort, chief information officer and vice president of information technology with Virgin Entertainment Group, who will talk about how his in-store digital signage network pushes customers to listening stations that are tied to loyalty programs, blending all the components together to create a sales lift and enhance the customer experience. The company recently announced that it is closing all its stores, but that business deal does not impact the lessons attendees can learn from the store’s programs, Dvorchik said.

“You can imagine there’s quite a bit of noise in that kind of store,” he said. “He’s very in tune with it being something customers pay attention to, rather than something they’ll ignore.”

And Ron Potesky, a corporate communications executive for Ricoh Americas Corp., will speak about why his company chose to use wind- and solar-powered digital signage in New York City. The 35,000-pound sign will be 55 feet off the ground, and it will go dark if it doesn’t get enough power, as a message to consumers and other companies that resources are important.

“It’s about their program that they launched of eco-friendly digital signage, and why they went green,” Dvorchik said. “It’s easy to put up a digital sign, which uses a lot of energy. There’s always a risk with (solar-powered) digital signage that on a dark day it’ll go out, and they’ve got it up in Times Square. Ron and his group weighed the options, and chose this route. It will be exciting to hear from him why they made that decision, and how it impacted their brand and their strategy.”

Other education sessions include a discussion of how digital out-of-home media is reviewed, analyzed and purchased by advertisers. The discussion will be led by former NIKE digital signage expert Pat Hellberg, ConAgra vice president of marketing and communications Gerald Johnson, and Ray Rotolo, senior vice president and managing director of Schering Plough DOOH agency Chrysalis.

There will also be a session on employing digital signage on a limited budget, with tips on choosing low-cost but effective software, for example.

“People are looking at every item within their businesses and how effective and efficient they are,” Dvorchik said. “Those that are not are being replaced with alternative ideas. Getting the best practices of successful — and sometimes unsuccessful — projects first-hand helps to further that process. Coming face-to-face with the solutions that can help allows organizations to test drive the technology and ensure that they work with a company that meets their every need — from understanding their strategy to their deployment timeline to the cultures working well together. All these factors contribute to an organization’s success, and we want to do everything in our power to make sure they have access to the tips, tools and techniques for success.”

Digital Signage Expo: Buzzword Is “Small to Medium Businesses”

Posted on Feb 27, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

The Digital Signage Expo started yesterday, and according to Digital Signage Today.com, , “Economy makes the big players take the low–cost route.”

The article, edited by Bill Yackey, follows:

LAS VEGAS — The buzzphrase of the first day of Digital Signage Expo seemed to be “small-to-medium businesses,” or customers that have only a small number of screens or deployments. There has always been a segment of the digital signage industry focused on this long-tail market, but the economy has no doubt lead even the big players in the digital signage industry to reconsider their target customers.

That was highly evident when Scala issued a press release this morning, announcing six new initiatives to “lower the barrier to entry to digital signage.” Most notable of the six is a partnership with FASTSIGNS, a traditional signage provider that announced in January that it is offering a packaged digital signage solution using NEC hardware and Scala software. FASTSIGNS CEO Catherine Monson said that in the six weeks since the product announcement, the company has received $2 million in quotes for the system.

Scala’s other initiatives consists of:

• A partnership with Frame Media to launch SignChannel, a new low-cost, self-service, easy to use, entry-level digital signage service based on wireless photo frame technology.

• Scala as a Service, a hosted version of Scala Content Manager that provides an online digital signage network for a monthly fee.

• The “Ultra Low Cost PC” (ULCPC), at approximately half the cost of traditional PCs.

• Support for several all-in-one devices that include a “PC built into the Screen” form factor.

• An initiative to support cost-effective video appliances (aka “MPEG Players”) reducing the total cost of ownership of both the hardware and software per Player.

Although NEC Display Solutions was highlighting its impressive 82-inch LCD and its ultra-thin bezel MultiSync X461UN for video walls, Mike Zmuda, director of business development, made a point to emphasize the release of NEC’s MultiSync 15 Series and the 46-inch LCD4615, designed for entry-level digital signage applications.

“You have to give up the thin bezel for the 15-series, and there is less firmware, but the 15-series easily allows the addition of touch overlays and protective panels at a cheap price,” Zmuda said.

In the sense that time is money, Omnivex’s next release of its Moxie software (due March 1) is engineered to save users time scheduling content using a system similar to iTunes’ Genius, where songs are given attributes and tags and play when those attributes are selected. Here digital signage content is given meta-tags and assigned to play based on the user selecting relevant tags.

Black Box Network Services has had the SMB customer in its mind all along, offering a complete digital signage solution and emphasizing its 24/7 tech support specific to digital signage. Although the company has more than 180,000 SKUs in its catalog, it showed the iCompel, a player designed for small deployments which comes with software already installed in the player. Brian Kutchma, director of marketing, also said that although the software is licensed, customers aren’t charged for future upgrades.

Check back to Digital Signage Today all this week for constant coverage of Digital Signage Expo. For live updates from the show floor, follow us on Twitter.

Digital Signage Expo Will Showcase New Products!

Posted on Jan 16, 2009 by Jane Goodwin at 12:05 am

From INewsWire comes a preview of the newest, most cutting-edge technology for digital signage and all kinds of interactive technologies!  The Digital Signage Expo will be in Las Vegas at the Convention Center, from February 24-26.  If you want to attend, or wish to exhibit, please contact Chris Gibbs at 770-649-0300 ext. 17, or visit the Digital Signage website, where you will find even more information!

Here is a partial list of what you can expect to see in the way of new digital signage/interactive technology at this year’s Digital Signage Expo:

•    BroadSign’s Creator, a web-based content creation tool that allows simple and intuitive template-based dynamic messaging.
•   Adder Corporation’s new Adderlink X50 Extender allows greater user flexibility among others: a system administrator who works on a PC that is located in a secure or isolated area at the site, or the ability to make presentations in a room where it is not feasible to have a computer.
•    AdFlow Networks’ Media Player Engine, an interactive selling tool that encourages impulse buying, may be updated in real-time, is easy to use and requires no IT resources or large up-front investment.
•    Allure Global’s DigiBox allows display of fully animated digital movie posters with movie times and ratings in full color.
•    DT Research’s DS1700, 17-inch all-in-one-signage system which provides an integrated computing display in one slim, mountable package, ideal for digital signage and kiosk applications.
•    NEC’s new MultiSync 15 Series with new mechanical design, comprehensive output panels and robust functionality.
•    Omnivex’s Moxie offers digital signage design and management tools, through a browser interface.
•    Samsung’s Matrix Interlocking Display 2 allows sturdy, stable video walls up to four displays high, by an unlimited number of displays wide.
•    Thomson’s PRN’s new interactive product Display TV merchandising solution.
•    Tightrope Media Systems’ new Carousel 5.2.0 offers Carousel Touch, allowing interactive bulletins through touch screen panels.

According to the President of ExpoNation, LLC, and producer of Digital Signage Expo Chris Gibbs:  “The Digital Signage, Interactive Technologies and Out-of-Home Network Industry is still growing.  As of this date, we have a record high number of exhibitors and more registered attendees for 2009 than we had for the 2008 show.  Those statistics suggest that organizations are focused on the significant benefits and opportunities that our industry’s technology and solutions offer.”

The Expo will feature, among many other things, a full day conference called “Revolutionizing Interactive Marketing in Public Spaces with Mobile and Gestural Digital Signage.”

The International Pavilion will host exhibitors from around the world, and the New Product Pavilion will showcase what’s brand new in the world of digital signage!  And there’s more, much MUCH more!

The full press release for the Digital Signage Expo may be read here.