Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Phil Lenger, Show And Tell

Phil Lenger of Show and Tell is a busy guy, but he slowed down long enough to sit recently for a chat in his company’s New York offices, near Penn Station.

He even offered a sip or two from one of the many, many bottles of seriously good bourbon he has stocked in the corner of Show and Tell’s meeting space.

But I behaved myself, and so did he. That allowed us to have a reasonably coherent talk about the background of his company, which definitely leads with creative but does a bunch more.

Show and Tell has for years and years developed and pushed content to many of the giant LED displays around Times Square. His team also manages some of them. But the company is in to a lot more than just spectacular ad displays, including retail.

One of the projects you may have seen in your travels is the Fashion Show Mall up by the Palazzo and Wynn in Las Vegas.  We had a good, frank talk about a lot of things, including the current state of much of what’s called digital signage creative.

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Michael Schneider, ESI Design

I had a chance recently to tour the New York studio and offices for ESI Design, which has done some amazing experiential digital work in public spaces, as well as museums and in retail settings.

Michael Schneider is a senior experience designer and creative technologist at the company, and we spent time talking about the design process behind creating big, interesting and memorable digital canvases.

Among many, many projects through the years, ESI Design was the firm behind the giant fence board-like experience at the Wells Fargo office tower in Denver, and a sensor-driven ambient media wall in the lobby of a building in Washington, D.C.

To Schneider, and to the rest of the team at ESI, it’s not about the tech, it’s about the story.

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Brad Parler, Blinds.com

A couple of years ago, an old industry friend, Raffi Vartian, said I really needed to see something. He sent me a link to a video, I watched it, and I sent back a note saying, "That’s FREAKING brilliant."

The video was for a corporate communications project at the Blinds.com offices in Houston, Texas, and it showed staff-facing messaging being done in a way I’d never seen. 

The guy behind that was and is Brad Parler, a video production geek who got an entry-level job at the company to pay the bills of his growing family. He was in sales, but stuck his hand up when the company decided to add digital signs through the facility. They needed to figure out how, and what to use for needed content.

What he came up with went over big, not only within the company, but around the signage industry. Now he’s getting asked to speak at conferences, and doing what he can to spread the gospel about the importance of populating screens with truly good, attention-grabbing, effective content.

We spoke recently by Skype.

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Luka Birsa, Visionect

This week, I’m speaking with Luka Birsa, the CTO and co-founder of Visionect, a Slovenian tech company focused on solutions that use Electronic Ink.

If you’ve got a Kindle or Kobo e-reader, think of that display but used instead for updated bus schedules at stops, or for telling people whether a meeting room is booked or free. Or on the back of an 18-wheeler.

In our chat, we talk about the origins of the company, and what e-paper is all about. We also answer a big question - Where’s Slovenia?

Luka will fill you in on why end-users would choose e-ink displays over LCDs or other tech, and where it’s a fit and where it’s not. He also talks about what’s coming for the technology - like larger, full color displays that could happily run just off solar power.

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John Wang, IAdea

In this episode, John Wang, the CEO of Taipei-based IAdea, talks about the roots of his company, which primarily makes commercial-grade media players and all-in-one devices for the digital signage market.

He recalls starting up the business right out of school in Taiwan, and unfortunately timing that startup right when the first Internet bubble burst. Wang talks about the idea of Information Appliances - the IA in IAdea - and the journey taken by the company to today.

Now a trusted supplier for many signage software firms and network operators, Wang talks about staying on top of emerging technologies and where his company, and the business as a whole, are going. He also goers into the perils of cheap devices and the importance of commercial, rugged product for the signage business.

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Randy Pagnan, RP Visual Solutions

This week I am speaking with Randy Pagnan, the RP in RP Visual Solutions, an Anaheim, California company that's in the business of designing and manufacturing the special structures that hold signature digital signage projects in place.

In this conversation, done at last month's InfoComm trade show in Las Vegas, Randy talks about the origins of his company and some of the most notable projects he's done, include the giant, curved LED wall in the Westgate SuperBook in Vegas, and the digital-heavy Microsoft stores.

Randy also talks about the future for display tech, and how fine pixel-pitch LED will have a big impact, with LED display as easy to buy as carpeting. His goal: be the best LED carpet-layer out there.

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Jennifer Davis, Leyard/Planar

In this episode, I’m speaking with Jennifer Davis, who is Chief Marketing Officer for Leyard and also the VP of Marketing and Product Strategy for Planar, which is now owned by Leyard. So she’s one busy puppy these days.

Jennifer grabbed us a meeting space on the exhibit floor at InfoComm last month, and we spent a half-hour talking about the LED display business, and what it has been like transitioning from a small company based in gloriously weird Portland to being part of a giant LED display company based in Beijing.

We finished off talking about the near absence of women in this business, particularly in senior roles, and what might change that.

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Rick Cope, NanoLumens

In this episode, I’m speaking with Rick Cope, the founder and CEO of NanoLumens, which makes and markets its own line of unique indoor and outdoor LED displays from its facilities in Atlanta.

Rick has a really interesting background, coming out of the US Marines, working for DARPA, making electric cars 20 years ago, and then getting into areas like fuel cells and battery charging systems.

Rick talks about how NanoLumens got started, how his business has grown very crowded, and how he plans to go after overseas companies he believes are violating NanoLumens' patents.  He also talks about the stinger missile he has in his office.

We did this interview on the floor at InfoComm, which is why it’s so noisy. That’s his wife Karen Robinson laughing and yakking in the background. She’s EVP for Strategy at the company.

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Bill Dunn, LG MRI

Bill Dunn is the founder and CEO of LG MRI, a suburban Atlanta company focused on producing ultra-reliable, long-lasting outdoor LCD displays. You can see LG MRI product on urban sidewalks, attached to bus shelters and placed around busy outdoor areas like shopping centers and campuses.

Dunn, an engineer to the core, talks about his company’s military and aerospace roots, his expansion into new markets like fast food, and the staffing, processes and equipment applied to every job and product. All outdoor displays, he’ll reinforce, are not created equal.

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