Episodes
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
Marian Sandberg & David Drain, Digital Signage Experience
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
Wednesday Oct 12, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Digital Signage Experience is coming up in four weeks and I suspect a lot of people are very curious about how the long-running show will be rebooted by its new owners Questex.
I certainly am, as I had long thought the old DSE was a dead trade show walking, and that something different was needed.
Is this it? I dunno, and I guess the industry will find out in a few weeks in Las Vegas.
I asked Marian Sandberg, who runs several shows for Questex, and David Drain, who was brought on by Questex to build the programming side of the event, to join me for a chat about what people can expect from a new and different DSE.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hello, thank you for joining me. Maybe the first thing to do is: Marion and David, explain what your roles are at Questex and DSE.
Marian Sandberg: Sure. Thanks so much for having us, Dave. It's really an honor to be with you and your audience and to have an opportunity to talk about this.
I'm Marian. I am the Vice President and market leader for Questex. I oversee the DSE show, which we acquired last year, and we have not presented yet. It'll be presented in November, which is what we're gonna talk about, and I also oversee a show called LDI, which I know you'll have questions about.
And market leaders tend at Questex tend to have two or three or whatever number of shows that they have under their portfolio?
Marian Sandberg: Sure, yeah, that's exactly right, and tend to be in verticals that make sense together, if you will. So I oversee a couple of brands that have to do in some way with technology. We have verticals in hospitality, bars and restaurants so they're clumped together.
Okay, and David?
David Drain: David Drain. I'm the director of event programs for DSE. So DSE is my sole focus at Questex.
And a lot of industry people would know you from your dark past with Net World Alliance and The Digital Signage Association?
David Drain: Yeah, it changed the name to Digital Screen Media Association for a while.
So you've been around the industry forever?
David Drain: Yeah, I have. I attended the first DSE in 2007.
Yeah, that's early. I think the first one was in 2005 or something like that or maybe in 2004.
David Drain: 2004, but I wasn't there.
Yeah. I started in 2005, so I've been going even longer than you.
David Drain: Yeah, you win!
Marian Sandberg: I can beat you both, but not in the digital signage area with our LDI show. I've been with that brand since 2004, so a little one-upsmanship there.
There you go. You must be so proud. Alright. So how is planning going? As we're speaking, it's about four and a half weeks out.
Marian Sandberg: It's going great. We're super excited and when we get to this part of the year, frankly, because this has been more than a year in the making we're just ready to get out there and produce the show. We definitely have in the weeks rolling up still sales to do, and still registrations to bring in. But in terms of producing the show and the things that we know we're gonna offer that's mostly set, right? So we have all these great networking experiences we're excited to put forth, and as we're right across the hall from our LDI show, we're really excited to see the synergies there.
When we acquired this brand, we did a lot of due diligence. We spoke to tons of customers and tons of attendees, so those customers as well, to see what we should keep from the old show and what we should bring back, and I think the number one thing that we heard from people was maintaining the sense of community for the digital signage industry, that it's a dedicated show and that people still wanna come together in that community that maybe isn't addressed by other events. So that's been our number one focus, and we're in the home stretch now.
Yeah, I'd certainly got that impression as well when DSE went down. I thought that it was a show that for many years was in trouble. You could see it in the diminishing numbers and diminishing enthusiasm in a lot of ways. But the overarching thing I heard after it went down was a disappointment because there needed to be some sort of an annual event, at least in North America that really pulled together the industry, so to speak, and was the only thing people were talking about that week versus like an Infocomm or ISE or those kinds of shows, which certainly have digital signage as a component, but it's one component among many endings.
You could bump into people in elevators and see they were going to the same show and realize we have nothing in common other than we're both generally in AV.
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, and I think that was obviously one of our main focuses from the beginning in acquiring the brand is we immediately saw the value we knew of the show and of the market, although no one on our team back then had worked directly in it, and then bringing professionals on who were very much veterans of the market, like Brad Gleason, who joined us very early on, and David, of course, who has been running a curating and will be running a fantastic education and content program.
People have been really supportive of that effort and from the beginning saying, we absolutely want there to be a show in this market, specific to this market and there's a need for it.
Because the old show has had its hair, so to speak, there are things that people loved about it, things they didn't like about it.
I've been referring to this as a DSE reboot that maybe isn't all that fair, but it's what I'm going with, and I'm curious what you think in terms of how would you position the show? Is this DSE 2 or should people go with the idea of don't expect what you saw before?
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, and I think that's a great question because I think we would be really remiss if we did not acknowledge that we are bringing DSE back in a sense, right? We're not gonna abandon everything that DSE was and that we want it to be, and people have asked us for it to be. So we have no intention of reinventing the wheel in that case.
However, from our experience, and again from a lot of the outreach that we did, I think our intention is to put a new spin on it. Now, when you say, reboot, I absolutely agree, and I think that's gonna be maybe a little bit of a challenge for people to get their heads around.
David has said it quite eloquently, we wanna really hold onto the things that people liked and maybe not the things that they didn't. So some of the new things, for example, which I guess we consider new. We know that networking opportunities have always been super important. So now that we're right across the hall from the LDI show, we are really trying to leverage those two audiences without cannibalizing, and I don't think there's a lot of potential to cannibalize those two audiences anyway. We hope to bring in some new people and some new buyers, and we're tracking our registrations very closely, of course, and the kind of demographics that we have. And to date, I checked them just yesterday in preparation for this, of course, half of our registrations have never been to DSE before. Now I'm not talking about LDI people, I'm talking about people registered directly for DSE and as event people, as event producers. That number is super encouraging to us.
Now it could be in the last three years that we've just gotten more people in the industry. We all know that during the pandemic, on both sides of our business, people have left the industry, and people have come into the industry. It's just a natural ebb and flow when you haven't had a show in three years. But that number, even if you expect a lot of new people it is a great statistic for us that there are that many new faces. So we really hope that people coming to the network are gonna meet new people, but like-minded people like your reference before about having that sense of community and people who do similar things. But also that, of course, we want our exhibitors to meet new customers. So that's a really important thing for us.
For the people who don't know LDI, can you explain what it is? I've never actually been myself, even though I've certainly heard of it.
Marian Sandberg: LDI is a 30+ year organization and brand. It is a trade and show conference that addresses what we affectionately refer to as entertainment technology. So that would be basically everything in and around a stage except the performance. So concerts, touring, theatre, even clubs, venues, lighting, sound, staging all that kind of technology that goes around a performance or in a venue, and so a typical exhibitor at LDI would be moving light company, intelligent lighting as it's referred to in that in that sector or consoles. if you were at a concert and you wanna go up to the console guy or gal, ask for the set list, that stuff that's behind that in that pit is stuff that you would see at LDI.
So there's technology and creativity factor there that I think sits well along DSE so maybe there are people who do similar, are somewhat like-minded, but do different things. So I think it'll be interesting to see, who crosses over and comes together,
Yeah, I guess the crossover as you say, more than anything would probably be the backdrop displays that you increasingly see with touring acts and the technology that drives those displays like LED backdrops and transparent or semi-transparent, LED backdrops, all that sort of thing.
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, absolutely, and the sort of persona who would attend LDI could be anything from very creative type, Let's say a creative director for a show, a lighting designer, and then, someone those folks usually tend to be creative and technical, and then we'll have very technical people who are like tech technical directors at a theatre or production manager for a concert tour.
And just like the way that AV and IT are worlds that are converging. The live events world and digital signage are converging to some degree because I spoke on a podcast a few months ago with the guy who does the wow factor stuff at the new arena in Seattle for the NHL team there and he was talking about programming at building not just what you see at the pre-show. It's the whole darn building that's coming together. I suspect that plays into how live events will increasingly be done.
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, it’s interesting, we use the term, experiential, right? And immersive experiences and the thing that I think is so interesting, having come from that LDI world and that entertainment technology world is that, if you go to a theatre it, okay maybe immersive isn't the word, that kind of means something different. But experiential is what entertainment already is, right? You go to the theatre to experience something, you go to a musical or a concert tour, to be in this experience, and over the last few years, the way people are buying materials left and wanting to relish experiences. It's interesting how areas like retail and venue design and even museums are taking a cue from entertainment and that's what experiential really is, right? It's about being entertained more.
So in a way that sort of LDI world has been informing a lot of other businesses in our spaces. So exactly what you're saying is if you're walking down the street and all of a sudden you're seeing all this fabulous screen, that content is trying to draw you in. Cuz it's being paid attention to, cuz you have to work harder to get people's eyeballs these days.
Can we talk a little bit about where you're at in terms of numbers and how they would compare to the old DSE that we know?
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, absolutely, and I'm glad you brought up the reboot. We are thinking of it exactly the same way. So we don't have any intentions of trying to compete with the last 2019 DSE. We've had shows in our portfolio that was a record year and of course, the pandemic happening, we're cautiously optimistic about kind, trying to get back to those numbers. So especially with DSE that hasn't happened in three years, we don't think we're gonna replicate that in any way, and that's fine. Our goal for this show is to be between 4,000 and 5,000 registrations. We're absolutely on pace to hit those numbers. We're really pleased with the way registration has been picking up and people registering for content.
The new certification that Bron Consulting is running for us. It's not new, we've newly added it let me be clear. It's the same certification you all know and love. So yeah, the numbers are really encouraging to us and I think what we're gonna see, I think is gonna be surprising for people in the next four weeks is how much our registration picks up, right before the show, traditionally the last six, to eight weeks of the show or when Red registration really hits, and we saw that from the numbers in 2019 also, right? So when we acquired the brand that's just the way the show paces we're absolutely on pace to hit that 4,000 to 5,000 number.
Is that number unique registrations or is that roll up people from LDI who have opted to come over or whatever?
Marian Sandberg: Nope, that's absolutely DSE distinct registration. For the LDI show in 2019, we had 16,000 people registered for LDI. But like an average for LDI would be 12,000 to 13,000. So the numbers for DSE are unique.
So Potentially you could have a couple thousand or more people drifting over from the other show hall to wandering into DSE, cuz I think you have reciprocity, you can get into one or the other.
Marian Sandberg: Yes, your badge for DSE or LDI can get you into either one or the other as well as there are some great offers and discounts for the conference on either side, which are obviously, paid conferences. But also some of the networking events that are being offered on both sides I think is gonna be really nice benefits. Just an example. LDI has always had great after-hours nightlife offers. With your badge, you can get into a different club each night, and if you don't know, the clubs in Vegas are very expensive, right? It's not like your $10 cover charge to go see a band at your local club. They're very expensive. We have great deals with LDI that we've been able to extend to the DSE audience to go to a club, for example. Your badge gets you into the club, for free, which can save in some cases 70 to 100 dollars a night, and then we have some networking events. There's an on-floor party if you will, a networking reception for LDI that DSE guests will be invited to, and vice versa, LDI people will be invited to the DSE opening reception, and we were really careful, obviously, to not have them overlap or compete with each other.
Cause we want these two to come across the aisle, as it were. So I think that's gonna be interesting to see, and the LDI community, they're curious. They have that tech curiosity and that creative curiosity. So I think it is absolutely reasonable to think we might get a thousand or so people coming across.
So you're at parity or maybe even ahead of, ultimately ahead of what past DSE have done in terms of headcount, and with the spillover from LDI, almost certainly, where I sense that it's not going as swimmingly would be on the exhibitor signup side?
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, we are where we've expected to be. I know that you love to look at the show floor as you should, and when we were in South Hall, when the show was in Southall, before my time, obviously, the show floor looked different. But I think that our expectations for relaunching the show were exactly where we wanted to be.
We had expectations that were in line with, we have amazing exhibitors presenting, and we have over 90 varieties of exhibitor sponsors, people who are gonna be partners and presenting in some way, and I'm not talking about speakers, I'm talking about people on the show floor, and then I think probably in the next few weeks we're gonna see that number go over a hundred. So that's perfectly respectable, and we're proud of those numbers.
Yeah, in certain respects that's a reboot and it's a startup again cuz you're having to win the confidence of vendors who have had a rough couple of years anyways and when DSE went down, I don't know if all of 'em were left whole after that. That's somebody else's story in argument, but yeah it, you couldn't, I would imagine just expect that, hey, all you guys who used to do this, come on back.
Marian Sandberg: Yeah. There's so much more of a story to tell there too, isn't there?
We have to regain some trust. We have to have people, who really loved that event and kind of look at us and say, Who the heck are you guys? Which is all stuff we expected. Early on when one of the first things we did was form an advisory board, and I know that you've reported on that, now.
Probably everybody on our advisory board and really we wanted that input and that help, and that was just kind of part of the research we did from the beginning. What was good, what do we wanna change? And I just think that journey has also included spending a lot of time with customers and there's absolutely our sales team talking to people, 3, 4, 5 times. It's not a slam dunk and that's okay. We didn't expect it to be, We never came in here with. Some kind of ego that we're event producers. So we could just walk into a new industry and take over a brand and do it without thinking about it with our eyes closed.
We're good at producing events. We have a lot of leverage across our company with other verticals that we can look at to draw other buyers that maybe didn't come in from the acquisition, from our regular DSE lists, but we're really excited about presenting to those people. That kind of is where those first-time attendees are coming from.
I'm also curious, you've mentioned the community a number of times and the appetite and aspiration for the industry to get together. If you build an event around attendees, particularly if you're offering a lot of free passes to get into the show proper, then you really have to lean heavily on the exhibitor dollars and sponsor dollars and all that to do it.
So does that become a challenge long term, that you've gotta build up that trade show side of it for this thing to work? Or can it work the way it's positioned right now?
Marian Sandberg: We intend to grow the show? There's no question, and David can talk a little bit about the conference program also but, of course, we need to have a viable business here.
There's no question, and I think also, bringing in the right people and making sure that the audience is there was absolutely paramount for us, especially the first year. If you have the right people in the room and you have the right buyers in the room, the exhibitor's gonna be happy and they're gonna come back.
And I think it's a two-sided coin. You have to keep feeding both of them, right? To make everyone happy. The attendees wanna see certain exhibitors, the exhibitors wanna see more of, X, Y, and Z types of attendees. Yeah, our long-term plan is absolutely to keep growing. And we'll see how that goes. We have some plans we won't I won't reveal yet for next year, but I'm sure we'll wanna talk after the show.
That was one other question I wanted to ask you, Marian, just before we jump over to David on programming and so on: for 2023, is it in November in Las Vegas?
Marian Sandberg: Yes, and I bet you're gonna ask about the Formula One race.
It will be in November, we are gonna move it about a week early. Yeah, we looked at that and thank goodness, being in production, we were hearing from all kinds of production folks about that kind of thing before it was even officially announced.
We were talking to the LVCC about doing it earlier and, we could try to produce something during Formula One, which would just be crazy. But even just for our exhibitors and visitors, we don't want to position the show to make it cost-prohibitive for people even to stay in hotels or have hotels sold out. So just moving it about a week or so earlier is just gonna be the solution.
Yeah, that's gonna be like a CES week or something. Just insane pricing for everything and impossible to get around.
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, exactly.
Good move!
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, thanks.
David, tell me, you're somebody who has been to DSE many times, very familiar with it.
So if people are coming up to you knowing that you're involved now and they're asking, okay, what's different, particularly on the programming and education side, what are you gonna tell them?
David Drain: When I first joined Questex, really my first job was to think about the program and to focus on the conference and the education and the speakers. And so wanted to do that first, and that's, I would say, how we built the program and ort of the exhibitors came later, right? They needed to see what it is you guys are gonna do? What's your plan? And working with Brad and with Marian we looked at the flow of the event and so I think it's got a slightly different flow. There used to be a lot of conference programming before the show happened, and so what you're gonna see this year there is some programming in the morning, just before the show opens. Some, a bit of uninterrupted time during the show floor hours with some on-floor sessions and then ending the day with more sessions.
Really we have three keynotes. I don't know if DSE has done that before. So I think that's different. We will have one each morning. We're very excited about those, of course, Rafiq and Jason Cothern from SoFi Stadium talking about that 5 billion mixed-use development with the stadium and the retail and all that. Having everything from wayfinding to digital menu boards to of course the huge halo infinity screen by Samsung. So I think there's gonna be something there for everybody, and then, Nveen from Google, who you also interviewed for this podcast.
We've got a great lineup and the program came together in three ways. There were things that I developed. There were things that are Association partners like DSF and DPAA and OAAA developed, and then we got session proposals from folks, so we really tried to curate the best agenda that we could and so I think that people will see an increased focus and concentration on the content and the programming, and building on what Marion said earlier, I think just the number of networking events throughout the week and then the crossover with LDI, I think that's what's gonna feel different.
I heard there's a mixer on Wednesday night.
Marian Sandberg: Mixer. I'm so pleased that you're bringing it to our show. So we can't wait to attend and we're registered, so we're showing up.
Good. I'll make the bouncer aware.
One of the things as the education programming curator, person, organizer, whatever you wanna call it, is you, I suspect, have to walk a bit of a tightrope at times, because you have paying sponsors who perhaps have expectations, realistic or unrealistic around what they can say and do on the stage, and you have to balance those needs with the needs of the audience because God knows, maybe not in the most recent versions of DSE, but earlier year versions of it, one hell of a lot of the presentations were just like product pitches by sponsors, and I would sit down, listen for two minutes and I would go and leave, and that's a tough one to manage, isn't it?
David Drain: Yeah, and I've been managing these types of events for a number of years and so I certainly know about how important it is to make sure that it's got an education focused and so when I was building the program, really sponsorship had nothing to do with it. When I was building the conference program, what we determined as the best topics and the best speakers, and the program really came in process of building this show before the exhibitors that there really wasn't that kind of impact. We do have the on-floor sessions, and those are sponsored. We make that clear on the program.
Those are kinda product demos and things, right?
David Drain: They are product demos and even encouraging those speakers, those sponsors to have an education focus so they teach rather than pitch.
Yeah, I always tell people, look, if you just get up there and pitch, people are gonna leave. If you say smart things, you will leave the impression that this guy and or this woman and this company seem to know what they're talking about, so maybe I should have a chat with them after.
David Drain: Yeah, be a thought leader or present a case study, and then people will understand. You'll have an opportunity to tell them what your company does. You don't need to spend all that time going through the features and benefits of your product.
Without trying to put you on the spot, are there one or two sessions that you know that aren't keynotes but are ones that you think are gonna be particularly kick ass and ones that people should have a look at?
Marian Sandberg: You're asking to choose a favorite child. You're asking him to choose a favorite child, Dave.
David Drain: Yeah. There are just a number of great sessions and if you go to our agenda, there is a way to filter by type. So if you're into digital out of home, you can see the programming aimed at that, and I'm excited you know about the session you're moderating and I'm really not blowing smoke here.
Denny Levine came to me and proposed that session, and of course, he put together an all-star panel and people are very interested, obviously with these Vangogh experiences, immersive experiences that have popped up and been very successful around the world. So I think that will be similar, there's another session with Moment Factory and Dimensional Innovations on transforming lobbies into experiences, that's pretty exciting.
Yeah, you got some good people like Jackie Walker who was just like, when I talk to her, I just, I always hang up thinking, that's a smart person. She knows her stuff.
David Drain: Yes, and I listened to her podcast that she did with you and so certainly when she wanted to do a presentation, I'm like, yeah, I will just give you the room. You're gonna do great, and people will walk away with a lot of great information.
All right, so wrapping this up. This has been a great chat. If people are undecided and are on the fence, but hearing this and think, oh, maybe I will go, what do they need to do? Where do they go to find out more about DSE?
Marian Sandberg: Yeah, they can go to digitalsignageexperience.com. As we rebranded also, so it's digitalsignageexperience.com, or if you have any questions, you can certainly just email me, I'd be happy to answer, and my email is msandberg@questex.com. I would love to have your feedback,
I suspect it's ddrain@questex.com, right? I'm smart that way, it had to be something. All right. Thank you so much for spending half an hour with me. That was terrific.
Marian Sandberg: Thanks for having us. We're honored.
David Drain: Thank you, Dave.
Wednesday Sep 14, 2022
Ori Mor, Wi Charge
Wednesday Sep 14, 2022
Wednesday Sep 14, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Anyone who has been on the ops or finance side of digital signage and digital out of home knows how complicated and expensive it can be to realize the simple task of getting power to a screen.
It's a particular challenge in settlings like retail - because store designers, until recently, didn't think much about the need to get power right in the aisles and in merchandising locations.
Battery-powered displays are one answer. Power over ethernet is another. And there's of course the often expensive and possibly unsightly option of running electrical infrastructure - wires and maybe conduit - all the way to the screens and other gear.
Wouldn't it be great if wireless power was a reality?
Turns out ... it is, and one of the companies leading development already has small displays for retail and hospitality that get their power over the air, using ceiling transmitters and receivers built into the screens.
Right now, Wi Charge's screens are just tablet-sized, but that will change.
I get the rundown on wireless power from Ori Mor, who is a co-founder and Chief Business Officer at the Israel company.
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TRANSCRIPT
Ori, thank you very much for joining me. Can you give me a background on what your company does?
Ori Mor: Hi, Dave, happy to be here. We are doing over-the-air wireless power, and over-the-air charging. But when we say over-the-air, we mean a range of 10 meters (30 feet) and not proximity charging, like charging pads.
So this is very different from just those close contact charges where you put your phone down and it does it that way?
Ori Mor: Yes, very different. The phone charging is a type of docking station without wires, but a docking station. You still need to do it on your own, knowing that you are now taking care of charging and the docking station, the pad itself is being wired. We are talking about something that is more close to WiFi for power.
Is this a commercial product or something that's still in R&D?
Ori Mor: It's not in large volume yet, but it's a commercial product. It's deployed in Canada, the US, and Israel, and it's going also to a few locations in Europe and actually at the end of this month, also in Brazil.
And the company is in Israel, correct?
Ori Mor: Yes, the headquarters and R&D are in Israel. Marketing and Sales are mainly in the US, but also in Korea and Europe.
And how long has the company been around?
Ori Mor: 10 years.
Did it start trying to solve this problem or was it something else that found its way into this?
Ori Mor: We started by doing over-the-air wireless power. The main application was charging smartphones, but the technology is capable of powering other devices as well.
I was curious about the application for digital signage. I gather that you have a digital display that you could use in a retail setting, but it's a small display. You're not at a point where you could power a very large display?
Ori Mor: Yes, that is correct. We started with the five-inch display based on demand that we got from prominent retailers and CPGs from across the world who were interested in being able to power devices at the edge of the shelf. Obviously, we can't power 16 displays. So we started with a small display. We are now doing seven-inch and nine-inch as well. But the promise is, as you said, being able to power devices at the edge of the shelf without the hassle of running wires or replacing batteries.
And is that the problem that's being solved here, just simply the unavailability of power, right at a, like a shelf edge?
Ori Mor: Simply put, yes. People do display, people do CMS, and people do Digital advertising in retail space already, but usually, it's limited to very few locations and we are enabling it to be widely spread relatively easily.
And the problem is, in a lot of older retail and older can be like 10 years old, That there just isn't power on the shelves, right?
Ori Mor: Yes, That is correct. The gondolas are moving, The shelves of Heights are changing And as you said, there are in most of the retail locations, there are no wires. Maybe near the wall, but certainly not in the middle of the store.
There's power over ethernet, but I gather that has its limitations in terms of where you wanna put it and the cost of it.
Ori Mor: Power over ethernet is capable of powering displays. The problem is, again, routing it to something that changes with time, usually twice a year or even more, and you need to wire it to every different shelf, which is expensive and cumbersome.
So the setup with this is a transmitter and a receiver?
Ori Mor: A transmitter, and a receiver that is embedded within the display device.
Could you do a retrofit, like a bolt-on receiver?
Ori Mor: Actually, no. The displays are designed by us at this stage because we know how to optimize in terms of power consumption. It's a dedicated development optimized for wireless power.
In the future, I believe that we'd be able to support existing displays but we start with something we can control.
Is the power stable, or is it a bit like WiFi where it can kind of drop momentarily here and there?
Ori Mor: There is always a rechargeable battery in the device. So we charge the device and the device draws its power from the rechargeable battery. So it gets steady power from the battery even if power drops.
Are you restricted with the displays in terms of what you can show, like is it just static images or to run full 30 frames per second video?
Ori Mor: We are doing full videos.
Okay, and was that a mountain you had to climb or was that right out of the gate that would work?
Ori Mor: It was pretty simple. That wasn't the challenge.
With the transmitter, how does that manifest itself? I think it's something that you mount in the ceiling?
Ori Mor: Yes, think of it like a router in the ceiling with a range of 5-10 meters, the transmitter locates client devices and beams a directional infrared beam to the device where the device converts the infrared beam back into electricity.
Does it have to be like a line of sight?
Ori Mor: Yes. Wireless power with meaningful power is the line of site technology. You can do non line of sight using RF, magnetic and even with infrared, but the amount of power that you can deliver with sight will be very low for reasons that I can explain if you wanna dive into.
I probably wouldn't get most of it.
Ori Mor: Oh, you would get it. When you do non line of sight, it means that energy is being spread in the room and you only harvest part of it. It has two drawbacks, a) the amount of power that you draw that you receive is lower because you waste a lot, and b) you fill the environment with unwanted radiation that the regulator and the customer wouldn't want. So if you do choose to do a non line of sight, it's for very low power.
And what are the safety issues?
Ori Mor: We passed all the safety certificates worldwide. FDA in the US, IEC in UL as well. It's approved to be safe under all conditions and that's the claim to fame for the technology we can deliver meaningful power yet it is as safe as your optical mouse.
You're walking around a cafe or something where this is set up and you let's say you work there. Are there any long-term implications of being around this radiation so to speak?
Ori Mor: No. Think of it like it's even safer than your wifi router. The beam is very directional. So outside the beam, there is an absolute zero. It's not a wifi router that sends radiation to every location and only part of it is being harvested or absorbed by your cell phone. The beam that leaves the transmitter, a hundred per cent of it, reaches the receiver, a centimetre away from the beam, and there is an absolute zero, and when you cross the beam, it shuts off automatically,
Hence the need for or the value of having a battery on board?
Ori Mor: Yes.
So how long would that last if somebody put a large chair or something in the way, and it was blocking, would that mean eight hours later, it stops working?
Ori Mor: Yeah. It's a design criterion. We designed it to be able to last a full day on a battery, but you can design it differently. It's a trade-off between the size of the battery and the thickness of the display.
So if you talk about larger displays, a 30-inch display, a 55-inch display, which is quite common in digital signage, at least. How long off are we from that being a possibility?
Ori Mor: That's too big of a question for me. I'll tell you that we are not even trying to target this at this point in time, but I'll give you an example of how technology develops. You probably know that when we started using the internet, we used 2.4 kilobytes or something like that.
I go back to 256K modems, I’m old.
Ori Mor: Yeah, and we are now doing a podcast where I'm sitting on probably 200 megabytes per second. Whether the technology would take us there, we will have to figure it out by seeing.
So this is a matter of time, more than anything else.
Ori Mor: Yes. Time, the economy of scale, components becoming more capable and scaling up performance.
I would assume also that you guys don't wanna be a display manufacturer. You're doing it right now just to demonstrate what's possible, but I'm thinking you'd like to license this to the display guys, as opposed to making your own?
Ori Mor: That is absolutely correct.
Wi Charge is a company that knows how to deliver wireless power and we do that for many different applications. We chose a few to show how it works. There's a big opportunity here in terms of market demand. We chose a few applications, one in commercial, one in smart home, and one in consumer, just to see the market and then to license it to the relevant guys that can do it much better than us.
When do you see that happening?
Ori Mor: We've already had deals that are licensed-based and it's like a domino effect. It's like how penguins jump to the water. They all stand at the edge of the ocean knowing that the food is in the water, but still hesitating and then one jumps in and immediately after a hundred thousand jump in. So by showing the way, we would unlock this domino effect.
There are some Korean university researchers I wrote a piece about last week that were also doing wireless power. Are there any number of initiatives out there doing this?
Ori Mor: Yes, we have seen more and more companies or universities doing wireless power. What they're doing right now, we did 10 years ago, so it's nice that they’re catching up.
We see over-the-air charging happening already and it's happening in different ways with different technologies that allow different value propositions. So you can expect to see more and more of this.
Is your focus right now mostly on B2C (Business to Consumer)?
Ori Mor: No, we are actually doing commercial applications, like the displays. Even the consumer applications that we do, start with commercial settings. It's simply easier for us. Consumer, we are doing very cautiously and very few applications, but actually, before the end of the year, you'd hear announcements about consumer applications from us.
Right, because you've been at CES a number of times and before we turned things on here to record, you mentioned that the company would be back at CES in January.
Ori Mor: Yes. There's another reason why we are doing the display. It expedites the go-to-market. When we can actually do the turnkey product, rather than only the wireless power, we can offer solutions to end customers without hesitations.
It's easy to do it in B2B, but we already have a few consumer applications.
What's getting traction for the product right now, like a particular use case?
Ori Mor: The displays are seeing tremendous, overwhelming demand. The other products that we do are smart door locks, which you probably are not so smart, not because they can't be smart, it's because people are worried, designers, OEMs are worried that if they would add smart functionalities, batteries would run out way too fast and then the end user would be stuck locked outside over a dead battery. So we are unleashing this as well in parallel.
Yeah, it would be the same with those surveillance cameras that people have at their homes, the Nest cameras and so on.
Ori Mor: Exactly. Since they need to go to sleep to preserve their batteries. There's a phrase, I think a professional phrase, which is called the back of the thief. By the time they wake up, the thief is already on the way out.
You mentioned you were seeing tremendous take-up on displays. What's going on there? How are they being used?
Ori Mor: In various ways. Edge shelf displays in retail locations. I'll tell you what I can say and there are a few other things you can publish, we will send you when they go live.
It's the usual thing. The clients don't want you talking about them, right?
Ori Mor: So what I'm disclosing right now are things already out there that are available and in a few weeks there will be other use cases as well and I'll be happy to share them with you, both images and videos. So we are doing table-topping restaurants, this is already out there. We are doing edge shelves in grocery locations. And we are doing other devices for grocery locations, which are quite cool, but I'll wait on how they look till we launch them. We are also doing displays in shopping centres like jewellery and other stuff, it's a display it's so generic, you can put it anywhere. You can wrap it and you have advertising at the point of decision.
And this is not just in Israel?
Ori Mor: No, most of it is outside of Israel. Texas, New York, Michigan, Idaho, Toronto, and Sao Paulo.
I'm sure one of the determining factors out there is the overall cost. What this does in terms of cost versus what you would pay to run conduit, run power or ethernet cabling to a display that way and people would do a spreadsheet exercise and decide, okay, this is less expensive to do it your way.
Ori Mor: Exactly.
What is the cost of a transmitter?
Ori Mor: Oh, you'd have to ask our partners. They're selling the solutions to the end customers, not us.
Okay, but is it hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars?
Ori Mor: Hundreds, not thousands.
And it would install in the ceiling just like you would put in a ceiling light?
Ori Mor: Yes, it takes a few minutes.
For the display, understanding that these are your proprietary displays and you've tweaked them and everything else, but the hardware cost for a receiver, is that something that's also hundreds of dollars?
Ori Mor: No, much less.
It's nominal, so it'd be like another component inside a display?
Ori Mor: Yes.
Does the system also radiate WiFi?
Ori Mor: Yes, the communication with the display is over WiFi, over 3G. So with the end customers, it depends but they can run the content through a CMS on their own, independently.
So in theory would a company that makes WiFi equipment, like routers and so on, could they conceivably add your capability into their product line?
So if I'm a company that makes networking equipment, like Cisco or more B2C stuff, could they add Wi charge capability to their WiFi routers?
Ori Mor: Yes, but I'll explain how. These companies are used to creating infrastructure and delivering connectivity. They can do the same for power, power as a service, not just data as a service. The only difference is that transmitters should be located most of the time on ceilings rather than hidden in the closet, that's the difference, and now the 5G routers are on ceilings for the exact same reason. They are almost in the line of sight.
You mentioned metering. With the energy issues that Europe's facing right now because of Russia, there's a lot of concern around energy consumption, and I wonder whether we're gonna get to a stage where power would be metered for this sort of thing.
Ori Mor: Let me answer this in two ways. Since it's a service, it can be metered. It's an extension of the electricity grid and the same as you paying for watt/hour for electricity, you probably would be paying a watt/hour for wireless electricity, so it's only a natural extension. Regarding power in general and sustainability. What we also discovered is that a single transmitter that we are now shipping saves up to 5000 AA batteries and that's even on our first gen only. So it's probably your and my body weight in batteries saved by each transmitter that we deploy.
Is the transmitter always pushing out energy and therefore the meter's always going or is it more of a demand thing?
Ori Mor: No, it's a demand thing. When there's no demand, it goes to sleep.
All right, interesting. That would be a lot more efficient.
What about distance? You mentioned 10 meters right now. Will that improve, just like the other things?
Ori Mor: We did a test for a government agency for 100 meters successfully. But then we decided that as a company we need to focus. It's either we do indoor for consumers or commercial, or we do outdoor for other types of devices and we chose the short-of-range options.
So the technology can easily do a hundred meters or probably more, and there's actually a company that does that. This is their forte. We chose to focus on the inside.
Okay, but you could, in theory, have advertising displays on a sidewalk, and the same in drive-throughs, a lot of costs involved in trenching and everything else to get power out to the display?
Ori Mor: Oh, there's actually a company that we work with that is considering using our solutions for care pickup and drive tools.
And there would be enough power cuz those are extra bright displays?
Ori Mor: So for them, we are considering making animated e-ink displays. As I said the large displays with LCDs or OLEDs are out of our range at the moment.
So if people wanna know more about Wi Charge, where do they go?
Ori Mor: Website and LinkedIn.
It's www.wi-charge.com
Ori Mor: Yes.
Perfect. All right, Ori, thank you very much for spending some time with me.
Ori Mor: Thank you, Dave. I enjoyed it.
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Paul Ciolino, OptiSigns
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
Wednesday Sep 07, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
It has been nagging at me for the last few months that I didn't know a hell of a lot about OptiSigns, even though the Houston-based company was a main advertiser on Sixteen:Nine.
That's been fixed, having had a great conversation last week with the company's sales director Paul Ciolino.
We got into a whole bunch of things, from the company's roots, how software development bridges the US and Vietnam, and their go-to-market model. OptiSigns is focused on making a product and services available that manage to tick the much-demanded boxes of intuitive and affordable, but also have a lot of sophistication and scalability.
Ciolino works out of New York City, which will help explain why you might hear sirens in the background.
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TRANSCRIPT
Paul, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the background on what OptiSigns is all about? Because I know them, but I don't know much about your company yet.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. Dave, thanks so much for having me. First of all, excited to be here. You're my first podcast ever so it's a wonderful honor for you to have, but OptiSigns is a cloud-based digital signage solution and really the key tenets of OptiSigns signs are: Can we make it a low barrier to entry? Can anybody use it? Is it easy? Is it accessible? Can people deploy on myriad, different platforms or OSs?
And we try to check all those boxes as much as possible while making it all cost-effective.
And the company's based in Houston?
Paul Ciolino: That's right, yep.
How long has the company been around?
Paul Ciolino: So it was founded in 2015, but really the growth started happening within the last three years and we're seeing incredible year-over-year growth now.
Back in 2015, there was already any number of easy-to-use, I don't wanna say entry-level because that kind of diminishes the product, but friendly, price effective, on and on, and I'm curious what prompted the founders to look at the market and go, okay, there's an opportunity here, because, from my perspective, there was a lot of what you've described already out there?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good question. I think when you think about digital signage top-down and you're looking at it with a bird's eye view, there's just a huge TAM there, right?
Even if it is a saturated market, there are hundreds of vendors that do it today. There are a few really big players and there are a few really big players that do it really well. The key differentiator for us is probably just going to be on the usability side of things, and I think that was where, the powers that be, were sitting in a back room somewhere saying, how do we put our footprint on this industry? What can we do to make ourselves stand out and be late adopters of getting into the industry while also being a significant factor?
Yeah, it's an interesting balance that has to be struck in that I've seen a few times promotions for companies who say that we have a very easy-to-use friendly platform and when I've looked at it or other people have looked at it, they said, it's not really all that friendly or easier, or sure, it is friendly, but it doesn't do much.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, I think that's a good point. When we have this conversation internally a lot, and sometimes I talk to our customer base about it, but really the idea behind designing OptiSigns from the ground up with our engineering team and from a product perspective was like taking a look at something like an iPhone, right?
When you purchase an iPhone, you get the iPhone, you take it out of the box, you put a SIM card in it and you just start using it. You've got an iPhone now. So we thought about that with a digital signage lens, and that's where we started putting our plan into motion.
So when you are a new user of the system, how does it work, is it software as a service?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. At our core, we're a software company. We don't do the installation. We don't do hardware sales outside of a couple of pre-configured devices that you can get. Really, what we do focus on is just that UX/UI component. We have 135 native app integrations now, from a simple weather app to Tableau, Power BI and more sophisticated web scripting and an open API, so we run the gamut of what you can do with digital signage.
Is there a particular market that you guys are targeting?
Paul Ciolino: So the nice thing about digital signage is that there's just so much variability in actual implementations. So when we think about targeting somebody specific, we do have our eyes on a couple of industries like logistics right now is something that we're making a big push into. We're also looking into things like healthcare, we've got a pretty good customer base with healthcare already, but we're seeing a lot of organic conversations happen there. So we're like, hey, what do we do? How can we accelerate their growth into this vertical and things like that?
That's interesting because I was waiting for you to say, yeah we're chasing retail and QSR and then I'd be rolling my eyes because everybody and their sister is, but logistics and healthcare, I think that's really smart. They're not all that addressed yet, and I'm curious, what's the ask in logistics, is it for visualizing data like Power BI and Tableau?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times these people are using more bespoke dashboards as well. So when you think about trying to take something out of the box, and then you think about maybe the staff over at one of these logistics companies, let's call it a trucking company or something like that for example, maybe they don't have the bandwidth on the it side of the ball to have somebody spend three weeks creating a custom integration with an API or something like that, which they can do with us. But we offer OptiSigns where you can basically take your internal dashboards that are gated by username and password, and you can script the authentication and the execution of that username and password, and then get to your target resource that way.
Why do they want that? Where are they showing on these screens?
Paul Ciolino: They're showing everything from lead times to rotation schedules to availability to weather, to all kinds of different, increment factors that could be going into either a trucking scenario again, or maybe we've got some type of supply chain issue, and they're doing a full SWOT analysis in their backroom and they have to have all of this real-time data come up as they're planning around the next week, month, quarter, half year, whatever they're gonna do.
So it's really myriad, just like all of our deployments are as well in different verticals, you can use it however you need to.
I find that interesting because so much of the attention in digital signage is around the wow factor, creative like amazing displays and all these things that are going on, and to me the long tail of digital signage is the stuff that you might describe as boring, just like showing KPIs on a screen or giving instructions on what to do when something happens like an alarm trigger or whatever, like that stuff doesn't get anybody's pulse racing, but it's incredibly valuable to the day to day of a company, right?
Paul Ciolino: I think there's been like this large front end push to make signage sexy when I think, at the end of the day, the reason that somebody's gonna go pay for anything in a digital signage space is that they need it and they need specific things to be up on the screen.
I'm not saying you can't make things look sexy with OptiSigns, obviously, you can do that, but at the end of the day, we want people to be able to take anything that they need to have up on their screens and deploy it easily and efficiently without breaking the bank.
You mentioned breaking the bank, your pricing tiers are pretty friendly in that. I think I saw it was $10-12 a month, depending on what you're doing. Is that accurate?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, that's about right, and that's gonna be the starting price, obviously, if people are gonna be looking at growing their business with us and scaling, which is something that we specialize in as well, just making that ease of scaling, something that comes out of the box with us.
It could be anywhere from $10-15 a month per screen, unlimited users, unlimited resources uploaded into the cloud, and all that kind of stuff.
The $10 one gives you a lot of functionality, but as you scale up or tier up, so to speak, you are just adding more capability.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, basically the way you can think about it is, let's say somebody's got maybe they even have a hundred screens or something like that, but they're gonna be putting the same thing on a hundred of their screens. They probably don't need to go into the conversation about creating manual permissions or a brand kit or reporting for their advertisers that are paying for ad space or things like that, so they can live with that standard plan that we have and be happy all day.
They still have access to 95% of the functionality on the platform. It's just gonna be some of those more robust features binding to an IDP or an SSO provider or something like that or creating a monitoring and alerting system where they can enable triggers for different events to go to specific people and make sure that they've got as much uptime as possible.
That's all quite interesting because when I think of the pricing tier that you're at, it's usually small to medium business operators who the company is targeting and they're never talking about data binding or anything like that, it's just about you can put this menu on a screen and you can change it on demand.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head there. We have incredible organic growth within those verticals where you're looking at QSRs gyms, and places like that. But I think the thing that we've been doing really well this year, especially, and especially in the last quarter and a half or so, has been getting into really earnest more of those enterprise deployments, where we're talking about, we've got a GDPR situation in Germany or something like that, and we have facilities on five different continents and we need to make sure that everybody's got the right access and we've got audit logs that they can enable and we really do pair very well with very robust security concerns.
Yeah, that's interesting as well in that I've talked to a few companies who started out targeting the small to medium business market and have migrated to enterprise because of the demands of customers, but also it's just that if you're dealing with the entry level market, you're being beaten up on price and it's not necessarily easy to scale that kind of management of all those different customers.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, and I think that's something that's, again, credit to our engineering team, they make it so easy for people to scale on multiple different levels, whether you're talking about headcount as users within the platform, you're talking about multiple locations, or you're talking about multiple screens within a single location, and it really does just make it very intuitive. We've got our support team as well who's great. I think the CSAT that we talked about in our H1 review was like 94 or something like that, and that's an objective number, I'm not putting a lens on that one, but I think when you think about implementing something new and you're looking at a by process that maybe has 15-20 touchpoints or something like that, you're making a pretty big commitment just from a G&A perspective as a client, and then you think about, okay, is this gonna save my needs for the next year, three years, five years, ten years, and if so, how is that gonna look? What is my hardware, reliability gonna look like and things like that, and we kind of cover all bases.
Is it important when you're dealing with those kinds of pricing tiers to minimize the number of customer touches, make as much of your offer and your software self-service and not have to provide a lot of support and customer contact? Not that you don't wanna talk to your customers, but it's just that if you have a whole bunch of them, that means you need a whole bunch of people to deal with them.
Paul Ciolino: Absolutely. Yeah, so that's again, credit to our engineering team and the way that we laid the bedrock as a company from our founders to be able to build this thing where it is very self-service.
Another thing that we do that a lot of companies these days are moving towards is we've got a support blog, we've got a support site. We've got a ticket creation system, a phone number, and an email. It's very multi-threaded in how people can actually go about getting the help they need, and I think that's something that has allowed us to spend time on growth and not as much time on maintenance, while still providing an exceptional level of service to our customer base.
You've mentioned a lot of growth in the last three years. Why do you think that is? What is it that's resonating?
Paul Ciolino: So at the end of the day, every company's going to have a little bit of this slow out of the gates kind of motion, right? And once you get the feeling for an industry and a customer base, and you have enough conversations and you get enough feedback, all of those things combined into something very powerful, even from a business owner's perspective, where you're like, okay, I can listen to these things and then I can go act on them. And one of the nice things about us is we run a very agile team, a very lean team, and we have the same communication with the same people, a lot of the time, and so that means that we can go ahead and pivot on almost a weekly basis with our roadmap if we need to, and we can effectively release functional app integrations or just things that maybe we don't think about that our users think about.
And I think that level of service that comes from, even the engineering team level, is something that is really hard to achieve in any business in 2022 these days.
And some of the software development's done in Vietnam, right?
Paul Ciolino: That's right. They have a very close working relationship with our founders. They've worked together for a long time. They know how to communicate effectively, and it's really paid dividends for us as a business.
Is that kind of a historical thing? I don't know South Texas all that well, but I believe that there's a pretty big Vietnamese diaspora there that went over there for fishing fleets and everything else, but I suspect there's still a lot of business ties back?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. I can't speak to the geopolitical business ties within the founder's relationship levels. Personally, I've benefited from the influx of the Vietnamese community in Houston via Cajun cuisine, but outside of that, I think it's just something where people have worked together before, I've worked with people and at a few different companies or something like that, and we can talk about anything at the drop of a hat and we can make an effective decision when it needs to be made
How do you sell? Is it just direct to the customer or are you doing things like an affiliate channel or reseller channel?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, so we absolutely do offer that. We have a couple of different options available. We've got an affiliate program to where, maybe you don't wanna spend the time or you don't have the time or the capital or anything else to be able to go and become a reseller, but you have a lot of people that you know in your network that are interested in digital signage.
So we've got that affiliate program. You can make some money off of referring customers to us and it pays out quarterly and things like that, and we try to make it very easy and low maintenance for them to maintain those relationships, and then also generate business for us that are not cold leads at all. They're very warm leads.
The other side of that is gonna be that reseller pro reseller program that you mentioned and that can work in a few different ways. You can package the software, if you need to, you can white label it, and that's not even in our top-level plan, that's in our middle level plan. It's not like we're gate keeping too much here like we really do wanna make this software available to anybody that needs it, and we're doing that in several different ways as well.
You're happy enough to be just operating under the hood and nobody even knows it's OptiSigns?
Paul Ciolino: Absolutely, that's why I'm off camera.
You have an $80 Android stick that you offer as a hardware option. I'm curious how often that comes up as an ask or are they using any number of different platforms out there, because I know you have a web player or that's the foundational player.
Paul Ciolino: So going back to the low barrier to entry that we're going with at OptiSigns. We're OS agnostic. You can deploy Windows or Linux, we've got an ARM Linux. We've got LG commercial grade native app, an Android native app, and Fire TV so you can use a Fire Stick as well. It really doesn't matter how you deploy with us, that is just there as an Option. We don't make any money off of those devices, they're literally just there in case somebody thinks that's the best deployment for them, and if you go to, like Reddit or somewhere third party where there's no Optisign sales lens on it, you can see that these Android players are generally very reliable.
We've had them deployed for, I think over a year and a half now, and we've got over 99% uptime with them. So things like that, providing reliability to our customers and, places like Australia, where it gets super hot over there, maybe there's not the best wifi connection, things like that. Those are really good deployments. I think we've got over 10,000 of our Android sticks that are out right now, and that's just one of our deployments.
Oh really, and are people going down that path because they are price sensitive or they just want like a dumb-down device that they can just stick in?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, I think it's somewhere between those two. Okay. So if you think about it like a Fire Stick, it's gonna be a little bit cumbersome, people can go watch ESPN or something like that on a Fire Stick. If you're looking at something like a Raspberry PI, right now those are incredibly expensive. We do sell those too, just in case that's what people are familiar with and maybe they need more granular security pushes or something like that to their systems..
That's interesting, I've never heard somebody say Raspberry PIs are incredibly expensive, but I know what you're saying. Once you fully get them out, they're not $35, right?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, with supply chain stuff happening right now, they're like $300 or something like that. That's what I've been hearing. We're selling them for $130 on our site, I think, but outside of that, you've got the ability to do something like an Intel NUC, or you can do a Micro PC, or you can have a full-blown computer behind a screen.
When you think about something that marries the functionality of what those things can do without the processing power, because you don't need it, but you also have the reliability that's gonna be above something like a Fire Stick, or if you're just using a web browser version or something like that, I think that's a really nice, happy medium.
One of the devil's advocates arguments around web players for digital signage is: yes, you can get this application running on any number of different kinds of devices, whether they're smart TVs or Fire sticks or whatever it may be, but there's not a lot of device management.
How do you counter that argument?
Paul Ciolino: Honestly, it's not really our job to counter that argument because it's not gonna be our most recommended deployment. We're not gonna sit in front of the University of Central Florida and say, you guys should be using a web browser version for all 360 TVs that you have or something like that. We're gonna tell 'em like, what do you need? Do you have wifi in every area? Do you need an ethernet adapter? Do you need to go to a Raspberry PI? And so we'll have a very consultative conversation with our customer base before we even get into demoing the software. So that's like the first thing that we wanna nail down with our customers: How are you gonna deploy? And let's figure out the reasons why you wanna do that, and not just because, you're used to doing it that way, or you heard it was the best from like Jim down the street.
So you are saying that you have native players as well, or you have web players that have device management?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, so kind of all of the above. So if you wanted to go, like with what's called our managed device route, right? Like you could do something where you get that $80 Android stick, we'll charge you a little bit extra, as long as you have a pro plus package, you're gonna have our version of an Apple Care where we have an MDM, our support team can remote in, they can troubleshoot. You don't have to spend valuable time with your IT professionals or anything like that to go and troubleshoot these sticks. We can do it for you.
So is that your happy place? If a customer goes down that path where obviously you're making a bit more money out of them, but you remove some of the mystery, so to speak because it's a known device.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely, and I think at the end of the day, we're happy if our customers are happy, and that's why we have that consultative approach on the deployment.
Tell me about the app store/library. You mentioned you have a hundred plus apps on there.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah. So we’ve everything from, something like just a native designer app that's within the platform, or something like the Adobe Designer Suite, or like Canva or something like that. Something simple, something that most people that are creating digital signage are gonna need at some point.
How does that work?
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, it's basically a frame within the platform, it is just like an app. It'll take you to a page where you can design from a template, we've got like 700 plus templates out there right now. Everything from menus to employee appreciation to emergency notices, all that kind of stuff, and then you can go ahead and configure each element on the page. You could even do something like pull from a data source where we can map elements within that page to a spreadsheet in Google or Excel, and so for QSRs in particular, this is really beneficial because they can go into a spreadsheet, never have to log into OptiSigns again, once they get the framework of their menu done, they can just change their pricing by changing that spreadsheet.
Do you have to work with your customers to help them figure out what to do?
Paul Ciolino: Absolutely, and that’s within the fee structure that we have, with supporting meetings, and obviously we've got our blog with really good documentation on it as well.
Where are you seeing traction in the marketplace? I know you mentioned healthcare and logistics. Are there particular areas where there seems to be a lot of interest and more of an ask than maybe in the past?
Paul Ciolino: We talked about it earlier actually, but one of the places where we see a ton of room for growth is gonna be in that reseller side. So creating those partnerships and channels. We have a couple of partners where if they need to have somebody do install and maintenance, we can do that as well. We're never gonna be that company that vertically integrates all of that under one umbrella, but we can certainly provide the introductions to those.
We predict that the reseller marketplace is gonna be a significant chunk of our revenue within the next two years.
You also have a mobile app, which I was curious about. Is that a mobile app for control of the screens?
Paul Ciolino: Yep, nail on the head. So that's just gonna be an admin app. You don't want to go on an iPhone 5s and start designing on there for screens that are gonna be much bigger than that.
We tried to keep it pretty myopic with the app deployment. That's just one of those things where somebody's on the go, maybe it's a small business owner, maybe it's somebody in a larger company that is going around and they wanna show something cool to their stakeholders or shareholders or whatever it's gonna be, and they can go ahead and just control it ad hoc as they need it.
Was that something that you developed because a customer was asking for it, or you could just figure out that this is something that would be useful?
Paul Ciolino: I honestly can't speak to the inception of the idea. But I do know the way that we think about things in general and it’s like:
Is there going to be a need for this at some point?cHow much is it gonna cost us from a time money perspective? Is it worth it? And then we just go do it.
You also have an audience analytics add-on, what's that about? And is that something you guys wrote or is it a partner?
Paul Ciolino: No, that is actually a proprietary algorithm that our engineering team has done as well. We're talking about basically three different statistics here. The first one is going to be gender: Is the person looking at the screen male or female or walking by the screen, male or female? The second is going to be dwell time, and that's gonna be, how long is this person in front of the screen for? The third is gonna be attention time and that's how long is this person interacting with the screen for?
And so when you think about reporting, OptiSigns does it really well in a couple of different ways. The first way is going to be like a proof of play reporting where you've got an advertiser, they're paying for a certain ad to be played a certain number of times over a certain period, you can batch those reports, send them out, do whatever you need to do, make sure that everybody's cool. Everything's transparent. Everything's above board.
Same thing with AI reporting, but that's gonna be more in the split testing realm of things, right? Where you design an advertisement or you design a menu or you design something and you want to see how people engage with it when you test different versions of it and so you can basically take August 1 through August 31 on this design, September 1 through September 30 on this design. What does my dwell time look like? What does my attention time look like? How's my split looking? Are males interacting more with this design? Are females interacting more with that design? All that kind of stuff.
The audience analytics stuff using computer vision has been around for probably 15 years, and the challenge in the past was that it was expensive and you had to have additional hardware and everything else, and that kind of ruled out much adoption.
Has that changed? I believe it's $5 a month at MSRP so I suspect at scale it gets cheaper than that, and I'm assuming you're using just simple USB cameras to do the capture.
Paul Ciolino: Yeah, honestly, I think you could probably just pitch this for me at this point, but basically you need any camera that can see, right? It doesn't have to be a fancy camera that can do like 4k or anything like that. You wanna make sure that you're setting it up at the right distance, obviously, you don't want a $20 USB camera trying to find out who’s looking at the screen 50 yards away or something like that.
But outside of that, it really is just plug-and-play. Does it make sense financially for you to go invest the time and the little bit extra money for that to get that kind of feedback for your own purposes or for your client's purposes? If yes, then, it's a great option to have.
Does that change the hardware set-up at all?
I guess what I'm saying is does the $80 Android stick no longer the right device because you've got the extra overhead of the video processing?
Paul Ciolino: Yep, nail on the head again. You're gonna need to do a Linux or a Windows deployment with something like that, just because of the processing power that's needed to be able to effectively communicate that data back to the algorithm.
So just going back to the company, how large is it?
Paul Ciolino: So we're just sub-20 right now so we're a very small shop. We definitely move quickly for sure, and again, just going into that, learned communication that we all have together, makes it really efficient for all of us to get stuff done.
And it's just privately held, self-funded that sort of thing?
Paul Ciolino: Yep, precap and no debt. I asked about shares when I was joining and they said yes, but it'll be very expensive.
So what can we expect out of OptiSigns through the rest of this year and into next year?
Paul Ciolino: I think more the same, we're gonna be obviously focusing on a few different verticals going forward as we identify some customers, as we continue to move internationally, we've got a decent customer base in the EU, UK. We're blowing out into South America at this point a little bit. We do have a decent customer base in Australia as well, and then I've been having conversations with people in places like Somalia and other countries in Africa. So the reach is wide, right? And we've really only tapped that kind of outreach from a marketing perspective, even. We really haven't put a whole lot of dollars into growing our business internationally. It's mostly been organic.
So I think you can see that we're gonna be growing organically again. We're gonna be trying to be more aggressive in the way that we ideate on how we're going to tackle new verticals and things like that as well. But yeah, at the end of the day, we want to continue to make a product that will take any screen and turn it into a digital sign that you can use in any way that you and your team or your clients need to use it.
All right, and they can find the company at optisigns.com?
Paul Ciolino: Yes.
Paul, thank you very much for spending time with me.
Paul Ciolino: Absolutely. Dave, it was a pleasure.
Wednesday Aug 24, 2022
Telmo Silva, ClicData
Wednesday Aug 24, 2022
Wednesday Aug 24, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Integrating data has increasingly climbed the priority list for more ambitious and involved digital signage and digital OOH projects. The big driver for that is how near or real-time data makes what's on-screen automated and triggered, which means more timely, targeted and therefore relevant messaging.
Lots of CMS software companies offer some degree of data integration and on-screen presentation, and we're starting to see some third-party companies that work mainly in digital signage - like Screenfeed - also offering data display toolsets.
We're also now seeing well-established data handling companies making themselves known in this sector, particularly to help make some of the more complicated set-ups both happen and then reliably, and securely, work. ClicData is a software firm based up in the northwest of France, but has clients globally that use its Business Intelligence platform to bring data in from more than 250 sources - into a single, harmonized data warehouse.
I spoke with co-founder and CTO Telmo Silva about Clicdata's roots, how its platform works and how it can be applied in digital signage applications.
Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS
TRANSCRIPT
David: Telmo, thank you very much for joining me. Can you tell me what ClicData is all about?
Telmo Silva: I started ClicData in 2008 as a pharmaceutical-focused data analytics company, and later branched out a little bit into making it a wider-used data analysis, data management and data intelligence tool for all sectors, and hence the name, ClicData from ClicPharma before, and yes, this tool is really the culmination of that learning in the pharmaceutical sector that we thought is applicable to really any sector.
David: Okay. So if I'm sitting here listening to the beginning of this podcast, some people might be wondering, those in digital signage and the AV sector, might be wondering, okay, why am I listening to this? How does it plug into that sector?
Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and it's funny, Dave, because an acquaintance of ours asked me, should we do this podcast? And I said, yes, absolutely, because everything generates data and digital advertising is definitely one of the factors.
You have to know where you're spending your money and what you're requiring and who's looking at things, and one of the first clients we had in the early days was actually a Canadian company out west that had this technology on elevators to take snapshots of peoples and try to recognize their age group and their demographics and as they're playing the videos on the small screen on the elevator, try to figure out what's the retention? Are their eyes moving and moving away from the screen and so forth, and how long do they stay hooked for those short 30-second clips, and things like that? And that was actually my first introduction to digital advertising and a use case for ClicData, a very successful use case, and I was hooked on that.
I was hooked into that so much that where ClicData is based out, which is France, there's a very large history of retail companies here that spent a lot of money on aisle advertising, and they start using those concepts, not only in terms of video and monitoring but also in terms of monitoring the paths of customers through their stores, optimization of aisles and things like that, where to put the digital signs and advertising and so forth, and all that generates a lot of data that you have to make sense of. And this is really well ClicData comes in, right? Those point solutions with digital advertising are part one, but without actually collecting all these from the different stores, and different locations that start making sense of it, it's just data, right? It does not turn into information until you do something with it and that's really where we come in, in trying to bring as much data from the different systems and different points of information really that a company may have, or a client may have and bring that into something that makes sense, that you can aggregate, that you can slice and dice, and then further down the line, then expose that to your customers, and say, okay, this is what you paid for.
David: So you're aggregating and harmonizing and developing insights around the data as opposed to being a collector of data, right? Like you're not doing any of the computer vision or sensor-based work yourself?
Telmo Silva: We do not, but we do have all the necessary connections just with the different systems. Unlike potentially other systems that are very well standardized, each vendor of those displays of those collectors may have their own interfaces, APIs and so forth. They may have their own storage formats and as you use the different systems, your challenge is really to understand, how can I connect to this one now, and how can I extract information that I want out of that. And our connectors are actually quite flexible in that sense where we have fixed connectors for some of those systems, but for others, we have generic connectors that you can kind of configure to tap into that data.
David: Would this be something that might be called middleware?
Telmo Silva: I would say potentially, yes. It depends on your definition of middleware. Ultimately we see business intelligence at least the portion of data analytics and reporting that we offer, as the next step before you feed it back and you go, okay, now I understand the results that I've received here, what improvements are we gonna make? And we start to cycle again, right?
So again as an example, you may start receiving data from certain videos and start saying, okay, this is the demographics and so forth, can I make some adjustments to my campaigns or to my videos or to the sequence of videos that I'm displaying? Again, I'm going back to that video on the elevator concept and optimising that, so it is part of that loop of data collection, data analysis, making decisions based on that data, and then feeding that back into the loop again.
David: When you started the company accessing data from all kinds of different data sources was very complicated and time-consuming, and you had to get all kinds of permissions and all kinds of meetings and phone calls and everything else to work it out.
One of the things that I gather has changed over the last decade or so is that most platforms now have APIs, it's easier to get stuff out of them, and so on. So has your role lessened, or has it increased because they're always changing and there are so many and if you're an independent company, like a digital signage company, a software company, you have to stay on top of that, or you would use a company like ClicData that's spending all their time doing that and making it easy?
Telmo Silva: To answer your first question, it has actually increased, right? Whereas before we would ask a vendor whether that be Facebook or Google and say, our mutual customers have data on your advertising network, right? And again this kind of can expand to any type of data vendor or data collector that we may tap into and before they would basically know it's our data, and the consumers of course start reacting against that, right? Today, If you do not have an API, if all you do is get my data into your system, but not give me anything back in return, then I don't want anything to do with you.
And we've seen backlashes at times with Facebook, Cambridge Analytics and things like that, where those types of sharing are also kinda gone another way rather, but nonetheless, today, if you do not have an API, then you're a second-class citizen on the internet and on the software technology stack. So that is great but an API is still an API. It is a programming interface and it does require some knowledge and it's not a standard. Just because we call it an API does not mean that they'll follow the same standard, it's very well organized, and it’s very well understood. So every API has its nuances, its little quirks and its own way of paging through the amounts of data that it can offer.
And so our role has actually increased due to that, because again, as I was mentioning before our connectors know how to deal with those different variations and those different formats and schemas that the data may be provided with. So in that sense, it's actually increased the need to have a tool, like ClicData, to be able to tap into those APIs and bring it into a format that is easily digestible by any analytics tool, including our own tool.
David: How much is involved, if you wanted to do this yourself and let's say you wanted to Integrate information from four different business system sources or whatever, within your company? Is that something that would take a morning, a month, or a year to do if they weren't using something like ClicData?
Telmo Silva: If they were not using something like ClicData, they obviously need somebody technical, but it would take an extensive amount of time for development, and again, large companies still do that, where they write custom interfaces to bring the data and amalgamate them into one single source of truth. This is where millions of dollars are being spent on data warehousing projects and business intelligence implementations and so forth. So not having a tool like ours definitely would require a good technical team, and again, depending on the sources, potentially database analysts, database experts, SQL developers, API developers, whether they do it in Java or Python or what have you.
And then bringing all that into a data warehouse will definitely take more than just a few days. In my previous life, prior to creating ClicData, that was my bread and butter, and these projects would go on for 3-6 months. With ClicData, if we have the connector that you need or if you can configure your API connector and you have a basic understanding of APIs, you should be able to do that within a day, to connect three or four data sources and start seeing the data flow through into ClicData.
David: So on a project launch basis and certainly on an ongoing operating basis, it sounds like if you're running a spreadsheet model on this and a business argument, it would take a huge amount of cost out of the equation and time, and these are people you don't need to hire?
Telmo Silva: It goes on to just beyond hiring and the people behind it, because, having somebody who can accompany you if you're not an expert or in the technical side, then it may be worth it. But the bottom line is the continuity of it as well. It's okay to build a prototype. It works once but the next day, you don't want to have to do the same thing, right? You don't want to have to copy and paste the data into Excel or out of Excel again and repeat and so forth.
And also, technology is what it is, business evolves as it is, and so you always need these adjustments. It is an investment that you have to make towards being data-centric, being data-focused and to say, I want to build these systems that collect the data on an ongoing basis that I can automate the reporting that can save you time as well in reporting these numbers back to your team or your clients or your management team and all this combines into the ROI that you're looking for, and yes, there is a technical side of it as well that there will be savings, whether it's in consulting or in minimizing, at least the number of times that you involve them, to gain access to your data.
David: If I'm a customer, what am I buying and how am I paying for it? Do you buy an enterprise license or is it software as a service?
Telmo Silva: It is totally software as a service. We do not offer any on-premise installations of software, and this is because we want to be rapid at giving new features, new connectors. Connectors continuously change, and there's new software in the market and we wanna be rapid in making those available. So software as a service is really our model, and what you get when you subscribe to when you get one of these subscriptions, which is monthly or yearly based, is you get basically all the connectors. You get a data warehouse, a database available to you through Microsoft Azure, that's our partner, and you can have your data stored in over eight different regions around the world: US, Ireland, Canada, Germany, France, and a few others, and once you have that data warehouse, that’s your piece of the database there, the data starts flowing through the connectors. Once that is in your data warehouse, then from there you can actually build downstream flows, you can tap into it directly with Excel if you want, or you can use our dashboard tool to start creating dashboards and graphs and charts and tables indicators.
You can share those dashboards with other people. You can publish them to your customers, et cetera, and then you can just automate these things so that it just does that every day or every morning or every hour.
David: Is that the primary output that you would see for digital signage and digital out-of-home home networks, probably more so on the digital signage side, would be data visualizations and dashboards?
Telmo Silva: I think that would potentially be one of the use cases, analyzing the data that's coming through and making decisions based on those as normal reporting and analytics data tools would. The other part of it and some customers of ClicData do this is they just use the collection capabilities of ClicData and the data warehouse to store their data, but then they feed that into other tools of their choice, tools that potentially they wanna do some more advanced machine learning on the data, maybe they want to write their own special code to analyze it, or maybe simply feed another system that requires this data to consume it and so forth.
ClicData is really a multifaceted tool that can be either used just for collection and aggregation of the data or all the way through to data visualization and analytics.
David: Okay, so you would have almost like templates or widgets of some kind that would be able to do develop dynamic charting and things like this based on what you select?
Telmo Silva: Absolutely, much like you would do on a pivot table in Excel, to drag and drop some columns, and the chart starts taking shape with columns, rows and so forth. That's exactly our design, it's very user-friendly as much as we can, we do have a lot of options for styling because not everybody likes the same styles and colors, but in essence, it's very much an Excel-like data visualization tool built into ClicData.
David: If I'm a digital signage CMS software provider and I'm working with, let's say a financial services company and they wanted data visualization, if I wanna put that visualized chart into a schedule, so it shows up on the digital signs around the workplace. Is that an HTML file or how do you get that up on a screen?
Telmo Silva: If you want to embed our dashboards into third-party applications, into screens, we have quite a few customers that have screens around the office, we have a railroad train station system that actually publishes our dashboards on every single station and stops with the schedules and things like that, and their performance, so are they late, etc.
So you can definitely embed that, and it's just simply a URL. You put that inside an iFrame, inside your web page, and the iframe immediately refreshes if the data has been refreshed, so you don't have to do anything, you just have to open it up in a browser, maximize the screen and boom, your dashboard is live and will refresh automatically.
David: Aare there any kind of limitations on how real-time it is or is it just how you wanna set it and how it works at the other end, in terms of data generation?
Telmo Silva: Our schedules have the ability to go on a minute basis to your data sources and pull the data in, however you can use our API, because we too have an API, to push data in, and in that case, the push is up to you. If you wanna send it once per second, you can. These will not be full data loads. These have to be small packets, a few rows, a few hundred rows at a time, potentially.
But you can use our API to bring in real-time data, and again, the same concept, whether we pulled it or you pushed it, everything downstream gets refreshed and gets activated for you.
David: I suspect that's a conversation that you and your sales engineers have at times with resellers and end users, “Sure we could do real-time, but for the application you're talking about, do you really need that, or is every minute or every five minutes fine?”
Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and this is why we stopped our schedule at one minute. Again, you have to be really in a high traffic, high volume situation, and to be able to make a decision in real-time, and that's ultimately the key, right? It really is up to you and there's the cost associated with you developing a push notification to other systems as well.
So it really is up to the customers, but yeah, in some sectors there are times that some folks ask for real-time when in fact, their data doesn't change on a daily basis. Case in point, Facebook, they themselves only refresh their own metrics or expose their own metrics on a much larger time scale. So for us to do real-time with certain systems and certain data sources is just refreshing and using bandwidth for nothing.
David: Do you have to make statements and assurances around privacy of the data or that's not really your issue, whoever's collecting that data or you're gathering that data is the one that's gonna have to worry about that, you're just enabling the use of that data?
Telmo Silva: Even though obviously data privacy and respecting the customer's data is our number one thing, we do have a role to play. If we're talking in Europe, GDPR is a huge thing. Every country has their own protection laws and privacy protection, like the California Data Protection Act. Every country and state and province has their own or has started some type of laws and regulations. Us being a European company, but with customers in North America, we have to be very careful. This is why we're almost the only ones that actually are able to start your data warehouse in any country that you wish in those eight regions that we've mentioned, and that's step number one, but we are a data processor for you. We don't know what your data is, but we are processing your data for you. It's our application, and we are responsible to make sure that there's no external access to it, that if there are court orders, we have to make sure we validate and check them with our customers and so forth.
Luckily that has never happened, but we don't know what your data is. So we are not able to be really responsible for it, but that's part of our terms of service. If you put data that you are not entitled to use or process if you put data that is not legal for you to own, that's the responsibility of our customers, but obviously, we would have a role to play in that in this GDPR system where we are responsible to at least point out or give it out if asked legally, obviously.
David: I assume you get a lot of questions around security as well.
Telmo Silva: Oh, absolutely, and again, this is why we partner with Microsoft Azure. Our expertise is really making the software intelligent, and easy to use, that it processes fast, that we can process thousands and thousands of files and sources and dashboards a day, an hour really, and not really on the physical and digital security of these data warehouses and systems. And this is why we rely on Microsoft Azure severely. We have a strong SLA with them to protect our property and our customer's property, their data.
David: I know almost nothing about the technical side of what your company and others like it would do, but I assume that a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of security is on the Azure side and you take advantage of that and you let them worry about that, but, make sure that you're working according to their policies, right?
Telmo Silva: Absolutely, but it also takes our knowledge to encrypt the data and to make sure that their configuration is set up correctly. I think that is the positive and negative of cloud-based systems, like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. It's so easy these days to just start a server anywhere and start putting data into it. It's much harder to make sure that nobody else has access to it and to make sure that it's protected and so forth. And even within Microsoft, there are some checks and balances there as well. We can’t say, just because it's Microsoft's or Amazon or Google that takes care of your data, we're pawning it off on them, and if something happens, let's go to court.
That's not how it should be handled. There has to be some responsibility on the people using those systems, and how we code the application, and to make sure all the settings are set up correctly. So it is a team effort between the vendors and us, and also our customers to make sure that they're comfortable with the fact that we are ISO certified, SOC certified HIPAA compliant, et cetera. This is time and an investment on our part to make sure that they should not be just for the sake of having a stamp, on your website saying, “We are ISO certified” and that's it. It does take effort from both companies and all parties involved to make sure that the data is secure and private.
David: So Microsoft is a major business partner, but they're also a competitor, through Power BI?
Telmo Silva: That is correct. Power BI, their visualization tool is a competitor to our data visualization module, not necessarily to the whole ClicData platform, and they do an excellent job at it as well.
David: But I assume your company has its share of competitors, right?
Telmo Silva: I believe there's data visualization for every type of business in the world. Power BI, Tableau, ClickView. I don't wanna name more than three, but there are at least three hundred of them, and let's not even go beyond those, let's just talk about Excel, there’s some amazing visualization in Excel and it has been around for years. So there's a lot of great experience, but again, these are tools and they are distinct separate tools, and if you have to load up Excel or Power BI or whatever every day to hit refresh, and then export it out and think about security and access, then that's the downside of these tools. They do a great job for that initial data investigation but are terrible for the ongoing maintenance of it.
So what we say is, whereas we may not be as advanced as some of those tools, potentially. If you're trying to do something very specific that only Power BI can do, maybe we cannot do it. The upside of using our tool is that you don't have to do anything else. The data is there as soon as it's refreshed, the dashboards know that the data is refreshed, it immediately sends emails out to the people that are on the list for receiving this dashboard, and they get it on their mobile app. They get an alert, whatever, right? It's all automated for you.
So if you want to spend less time wasting copying and pasting and using Excel and these tools, then, these are the types of platforms that you need to look for.
David: I assume the other thing is that you stay on top of it because APIs change and data sets change and everything else and if you just had it developed yourself internally or if you outsourced the development, a month later, the schemas and things could change and all of a sudden it doesn't work, right?
Telmo Silva: Absolutely. We see that with the big players obviously, Google, Instagram, Facebook, and others are constantly improving their APIs. Security keeps changing around the world. We're phasing out certain types of security, TLS 1, TLS 2, et cetera, and APIs need the security, they need to be compatible with it. So this is really where most of our customers get their benefits is to say, okay, ClicData is taking care of all that for you, and then make sure that the data keeps coming in, and flowing into your data warehouse.
David: So if I'm a digital signage content management systems software provider, or Perhaps an AV/IT systems integrator who has an ask from clients or wants to incorporate this into their service offers, what's involved?
What are the first questions you have to ask them? Do you support this, do you support that, or are there any really real barriers?
Telmo Silva: We start by looking at their data sources, right? If we can't bring the data, if they're using a very specific format of a very specific system that we cannot gain access to, typically very old ones then we're upfront about it. We say that you're not gonna get this data in, and you're not gonna be able to report it.
David: It's on a mainframe system or something?
Telmo Silva: Mainframe, believe it or not, we can connect to it. It is important for us and believe it or not, there are still a lot of customers, especially in the retail sector that does mainframe, IBM series of servers, those things that we thought don't exist. They exist and they exist in quite a lot of companies. So we still support those. But sometimes it's just very cryptic or the format. I cannot give you an example off the top of my head but we have this, as I mentioned before, a very robust kind of API connecting connector that takes a lot of options, and most of the time we can configure it to fit.
But yeah, if you're a provider of data that pretty much says: I'm not giving you access. I can only give you monthly reports or something like that. Yeah, you can import those reports monthly by hand. Is that something that you really wanna do, et cetera? So we discuss alternate solutions like that.
But yeah, that would be the first step. The second step is what are their objectives? Are they looking for visualization and embedding these dashboards and putting them back to their customer in a self-service mode so they can monitor the success of their campaigns, their ads network, et cetera? Or is this internal use for analytics and so forth? So we discuss those items to make sure that ClicData is the right solution for them, and if all checks out, I think then the next step is just to get a trial account for 15 days and connect a couple of data sources, see what you can build. We have an in-app chat tool that allows them to ask questions as they go along during their trials. Ask your questions, ask how you can do things and get that first initial prototype, and that's a big advantage of being a SaaS product, there's no installation, you lose nothing, right? You don't have to install or return servers. You just get started, start connecting your data and start playing around with your data and start visualizing and prototyping within your team, get success quickly, get motivated quickly as well. That's a big part of it, and from there, you just start your subscription level.
David: What level of skill do you need?
Telmo Silva: To do complex things, you definitely need some SQL sometimes, some function programming, as you do with Excel, we are all different experts in Excel. There are those of us that use Excel just to type in numbers and your basic drag and drop, and that's it. And then there's those that know to do Lookups and they know a few more functions and then there's those that do Macros in Excel, right? There are different skills, and with us, it's the same thing. It really depends on what you need to do and how much your data needs work. So we have our own kind of Excel-like language that they can use, very similar to SQL as well. They can do a lot of things with the data.
We needed to make ClicData very powerful, and very flexible to ensure that we will not be stumped by a specific need or a specific customer request. But at the surface, we also try to make it easy with a strong UI to write those hard-to-write functions behind the scenes through an interface that is a little bit easier to use.
David: So at a minimum, you want somebody who has an interest or a knack for this sort of thing, as opposed to Margaret in Sales and Marketing saying, “Here, you do this!” and she gets the deer and the headlights look?
Telmo Silva: Absolutely. Now you can, if you have, and some customers of ours do this and they split the work of connecting and making the data available versus consuming the data, right?
You have your technical person, the person that knows the data very well to create these kinds of slices and catalogues of data and make them available to the rest of the team, and the team then goes in, either with our dashboard editor or report editor, and does their own dashboards and their own kind of visualizations or with other tools as well. So there are also those splitting of functions that sometimes are important to put in place into a company.
David: ClicData is in Northwest France based in Lille, correct?
Telmo Silva: Yeah, we have three major offices. That is our head office, the engineering office in the north of France. We have one in Toronto, Canada, and we have one in Texas so we're all over the place a little bit.
David: So Europeans are gonna engage through your European offices and Canadians and Americans can find a couple of offices on this side of the pond?
Telmo Silva: That's correct.
David: Where do they find you online?
Telmo Silva: ClicData.com
David: It's important to say there's no “k” in the click. Somebody got to it before you could get the one with the “k”?
Telmo Silva: I believe so, or maybe at that point in time, we wanted to make it very even with four and four, Clic and Data, I'm not sure.
David: Oh, they'll find it. Thank you very much for spending some time with me.
Telmo Silva: Thank you for having me.
Wednesday Aug 10, 2022
Thomas Philippart de Foy, Appspace
Wednesday Aug 10, 2022
Wednesday Aug 10, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Appspace has now been active in this industry for 20 years, and through much of that time the software company was one of the larger players in a crowd of companies all chasing the general business opportunity of digital signage. But in the last few years the company has pivoted, in a big way, to the well-defined vertical of workplace. The company now describes itself as a workplace experience platform for both physical and digital workplaces. Digital signage is still a main component of what Appspace does, but just one of several in a unified platform.
I caught up with Thomas Philippart de Foy, who has been with Appspace for a decade and is now the EVP of Product Innovation. In our chat, we get into what took Appspace down the workplace path, and then how it all works within an organization.
The company has a PILE of users and says its software is in place at roughly 200 of the companies listed in the Fortune 500. But it also offers free accounts to smaller users, drafting off the well-used concept of freemium software - allowing people to try before they buy.
If you are looking at workplace - either as a vendor or as an HR, IT or ops person, listen and learn.
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TRANSCRIPT
Thomas, thank you for joining me. You've been with Appspace for a very long time, right?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Just celebrating 10 years in September!
Oh, okay, and we first met a number of years ago in Dubai, but then you moved to Costa Rica, which was a bit of a pivot, but now you're in Belgium for a holiday, right?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. I relocated to Costa Rica to get closer to the US time zone while still enjoying tropical weather.
You don't get tropical weather in Antwerp or wherever you're in Belgium?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Rarely, once a year in the summer, there's a good day, and then the rest is rainy.
And you don't like that?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Once a year, maybe.
So Appspace, that's a company that's been around for a very long time. When I first got to know Appspace, it was very much a general digital signage CMS platform, you know, “What are you doing? We can help you out!” And you were, at that time I believe, working pretty closely with Cisco, but in the last few years you could, you very much seem to have become a company that's all about workplace experience and digital signage is one of your outputs as opposed to being a pure digital signage company.
Is that a fair assessment?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Absolutely. We're celebrating our 20 years anniversary this month, so such a big milestone, and the firs 15-16 years was really building a cloud-based CMS for digital signage. We had some mission statements. We wanted to be hardware agnostic, OS agnostic. We wanted to be cloud first, and then a few years back, we started expanding our offering and went into the room scheduling worlds, where a lot of other companies were playing, and just added that as a feature.
Then just two years ago, Summer 2020, one of our biggest customers on the West Coast came over to us and said, “Hey, we're looking to return to the office after the pandemic. We need help in providing our users with an app that would allow them to reserve workspaces, comply with security policies and so forth.” And we decided to get onto that journey and build a product, and six months later we launched. So January 2021 and 30 days later, we signed one of the biggest tech companies as a customer, and from there it's been quite a ride.
Did the company go towards workplace because it looked like an opportune vertical to be in, or was it what the customers who you touching or asking for and it pulled you that way?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, in the last 10 years, I spent a lot of time meeting with customers and trying to understand their challenges and see where Appspace could help them. In this scenario, the customer came over and they had a real challenge, which we saw many other companies would have, and there was really no one in the market that had an answer for it two years ago. So we thought that's an opportunity in which we could really put some focus, leverage our existing enterprise grade platform, cloud-first experience and credibility in our large enterprise customer base to just go and expand the use case.
Really, we also see that there is a correlation happening with workplace communication and workplace management. It's not gonna be two different things, it's actually gonna be one, and we thought we could come from our workplace communication expertise and go that direction while probably some more workplace management products would probably start moving towards workplace communication, and there would be a consolidation.
You also acquired a company called Beezy, which was all about the workplace as well, right?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, when we entered workplace management, we also launched our employee app, and from there, we got a lot of requests from customers to focus on employee communication in the app itself, and we met with Beezy, they had a very similar company culture, they had a good size and they had a product which was very modern, very forward looking and built on Microsoft SharePoint, and we thought that would nicely align with our product platform and our vision, so that's been a very fun journey, onboarding them into the Appspace world for the last few months.
Now is Beezy still a brand, or is it that their IP and their capabilities are rolled into Appspace?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: We're rolling them into Appspace step by step. The brands are consolidating under a single brand. Now, it's the Appspace Modern Internet by Beezy, but we are clearly focusing on aligning all the different teams under a single organization, and also the brand and the product will be one.
We definitely don't wanna run two separate products. We've always had that philosophy that with Appspace, it was one platform and features and not multiple point products so we're gonna continue doing that.
There are digital science CMSs that say that the workplace is one of the verticals that they're in, and then there are companies that just do room booking software, and maybe the displays hardware as well, they blend those together. There are hot desk companies and everything else.
I'm thinking, like in a lot of other vertical markets, that the end user really doesn't wanna have to cobble together an overall solution that features all these different components and different companies doing them, they'd rather just have one company doing it all. Is that a fair statement?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yes, and the pandemic has accelerated the need for platforms versus point products.
Pre-pandemic on the workplace management, you had the IWMS to manage all your assets, you had room booking solutions for the room scaling panels, you had visitor management solutions to bring visitors into the office. There were all point products, and then on the workplace comm, you had digital signage that was a point product, you had kiosks often very close to digital signage, and then you had email publishing, you had intranet. All of those were point products as well. I think what we're seeing now is they're unifying on both sides. So you're starting to see vendors who offer room booking, hot desking, visitor management, and then on the other side, you've got companies who are starting to consolidate and acquire, and they're doing digital signage, employee app, intranet, email publishing, and what we're doing is both at the same time, which is probably our biggest unique differentiator.
We believe, if you have an employee app, it's not only about employee communication or workplace management, it's the two combined. So a single app on users' devices versus multiple apps.
And I assume that resonates well with the business communicators and the IT people within a company, because they don't wanna have to deal with all these different logins and back in and out stuff?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: I guess there's two sides to it. There's certainly the administrative side to it, but there's also the user adoption. A big part of the return to the office is implementing new tools for employees to reserve access into a building, reserve a meeting room or a desk, and comply with formalities, that's for sure. But the other side of it is how do you communicate with those employees? How do you let them know what are the new rules in place? What are the new policies? How do you communicate what are the new benefits in the office, the new technology available?
So being able to communicate in the same app that you're actually gonna reserve your workspace, invite your visitors, makes a lot of sense, and I think that's what HR and Corp comms are really liking with our story is that one app will do it all and it will of course integrate with all their backend systems and so forth.
So if I am a business communicator at a large corporation and I want to address these issues, what can you do for them and how does it work?
Are they buying an enterprise license? Is it cloud based or are they installing something on prem, and how does it all come together?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, it's a great question and it's a big one and there's two sides to it. Once again on one side, you've got the admin, the console is fully cloud based, you don't need to install any software on your desktop, and you can start by just going on Appspace.com, create a free account and you get a full featured Appspace environment.
We don't monetize features, we monetize users and devices. So even with a free account, you’ll have all the features of Appspace, but you'll be limited in the number of users that can log into the app and the number of devices that you can register back.
So it’s the whole idea of Freemium?
I just wanted to ask because “free” is intriguing to me. You don't see that very much in digital science anymore, unless it's entry level super limited in what it does and so on, but you're doing free with the idea of onboarding people, getting them used to the system and them realizing, I like this and I'm willing to pay for it?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, so what we think is that in order to be successful with Freemium, you need to have a platform that's really self-service, and I think that's what we focused a lot over the last 10 years is simplifying the product to the point where someone who just goes on our website, creates a free account, in 30 seconds is in the Appspace account, able to register a device, create some awesome content, publish it to the device and it's working, and we were able to do that for digital signage, but then we were able to expand that into all the digital communication channels and also for workplace management.
So we maintained Freemium when a lot of other companies started thinking, “That doesn't work for us, let's go back to a trial account with someone hand holding you.” We don't need that with Appspace, you can get started, and so we have a huge amount of customers that create free accounts every month, and then when they're ready to expend, they just need to click on the link and they get in contact with a Sales rep and they can just either swipe their credit card or work through one of our partners to buy a subscription.
Is that a huge amount of free signups every month? Are there no maintenance until they actually contact a Sales rep and say, “I'm interested in paying for this”?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. They’re touchless most of the time.
We have very large organizations that will have a lot of different free accounts, different departments, different team members who will create free accounts and get started, and then when they're ready to move and they want to do the security assessment and they want to talk contract and large scale deployments, they reach out to us.
So I guess your sales people might look at big tech company, X and see that they have five different free accounts in different departments, and the salesperson could go to them and say, “Guys, you’re using a lot of this now, do you wanna harmonize it?”
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah. Our sales team, for sure, we also have a big marketing organization now. The product is also supported, so when you log into Appspace, you will have certain steps to follow to register a device, create content. It's the system that is holding your hand, not users.
And then along the way, you will have opportunities to get help, to talk to people. You can go to the knowledge center. Our Sales reps are already really there to help customers get to the next level, which makes it nice because when our Account Executives talk to customers, they already have a good understanding of what the customer has been doing with Appspace and they can really jump right into it.
What happens when you have potential new customers who already have some sort of a room booking system and scheduling system, and they like them.
Do you have APIs where you can just continue to work with them or do they have to abandon that and go entirely with Appspace?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: No, so we have open APIs, fully documented and online for every feature of our product. So we're happy to integrate with existing solutions that the customer may have still under contract or they're happy with it. What we're seeing though is very quickly customers consolidate because they see an opportunity for cost savings, for ease of management.
And then, you know the story of a unified platform, if you have an integration with an emergency system or your building management system and the fire alarm goes on, you can broadcast that message to a digital sign, to a visitor management kiosk, to a room scheduling panel inside the room on the video device, and that can be done really easily when you're using a platform. It's much harder to achieve when you're using point products, because you need to integrate each point product with a security system and many don't even support that concept of broadcast.
So what we're seeing is when customers onboard Appspace for one use case, they very quickly start seeing the opportunity to save money, ease operations, and then benefit from the platform features and capabilities.
Are you able to provide analytics?
I've heard about this in the past where you start to get a sense of how a workplace is being used and where people are dwelling and how often rooms actually get booked and how many people are in the rooms, and it helps to size and maybe rethink some of the meeting spaces that a company may have.
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, so analytics and reporting is huge, and it's actually for the two sides of the product: for the workplace communication, understanding how users are interacting with content, whether it's on the app, on their phone, on their desktop, whether it's on a kiosk.
We have this concept of a corporate Netflix. We've had that for yours where users can actually browse content on demand, very much like you browse your video content on Netflix. You do that with the remote control, with a touch panel, whatever the interaction you want to use. We track all of that, and that gives a lot of analytics on how content is being consumed, the success of a campaign and so forth.
And then on the workplace management, we have the analytics of what are the most active users, what type of workspace they book? How long do they sit at a desk? How long do they use a meeting room? If the meeting room for 10 people was booked, but used by two people, we have that data, so you can size your resources accordingly based on demand.
And then you can visualize everything inside Appspace, but we also created integrations into Tableau, into Power BI. So customers can actually export the data and visualize it in their preferred data visualization tool.
And in a workplace, the Power BI and Tableau stuff is interesting. I'm curious, are workplaces now much more sophisticated to where they see digital signage and visual communications as doing a lot more than congratulating somebody on their birthday or their 20th year with the company or whatever it may be. They're getting into visualizing KPIs in real time and that sort of thing?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Oh, yes, for sure. The number of customers that display building analytics when you enter the building, when you get on the first floor, where you can see the floor plan, you can see the heat maps, you can see the air quality, you can see the average temperature of the neighborhood. That certainly is a very common use case nowadays, providing building insights to users on digital signs is becoming really exciting.
I think what we're seeing is a huge opportunity of combining workplace management and workplace communication is when you now have context to where digital signage can help, and you know that in the retail world, there's been a bunch of vendors who've monitored gender, age, ethnicity in order to manage communication campaign to those audience and measure also. In workplace management, you don't really care about age or gender. But what you do care is which user is sitting where, and when you've got a majority of salespeople sitting in a neighborhood, can you actually change the content to relate to those people? And that's been something that we've done a lot over the last year and a half is creating that context of digital signage experience, where even though I'm going back into an office where it's a hot desking hotel, the content still speaks to me, because the system is aware that I'm gonna be sitting there, and I think that's huge, because in those days you used to know exactly where people were sitting so you were planning your content for the sales team based on where people were sitting. Now, the system will automate that process based on the data they get from their workplace management feature.
And they're not using computer vision or things like that? Because when I come in to work at an office, I have to book a specific desk, and that's how you know that I'm there, right?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Either because you're booking a specific desk or you're sitting at a specific desk, and when you're actually sitting, we are able to identify who you are, and therefore dynamically say what's interesting to you is more sales data or more product marketing data, and therefore we mush multiple channels of content together to provide a perfect playlist that matches the audience.
But how do you know I'm at that desk?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's where workplace technology comes, whether it's smart docking stations, whether it's physically connecting into the network and passing the user identity, whether it's those new video devices that we see popping left and right on the desks. It could be when you have a desk puck, which is similar to a room scheduling panel, you arrive and you will scan the QR code with your phone and authenticate and check into a desk and say, this is now my desk. So we have a lot of different tools that allows us to identify the user and therefore to get that data that we need to personalize the workspace environment.
Through the pandemic, particularly in the first months, there was all kinds of discussion about how the workplace was gonna change, because those workplaces were being hollowed out through lockdowns and so on, and there's been all kinds of discussions and debate and everything else, particularly in the last six months or so, is where workplaces have started to repopulate as to whether it really did change all that much, and whether everybody's just working from home or everybody's into a hybrid thing.
You're on the ground, so to speak, you're dealing with companies who are implementing this stuff. What's your sense of what's actually happening?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: I think companies are worried that people are not coming back to the office as quickly as they had hoped they would, and although many companies during the pandemic said that they would not require employees to go back to the office. It's very different two years later, we realize how the workplace culture is important, and having people, if not every day, at least a few days a week, come into the office and meet their teammates and so forth. So we're now seeing a sense of urgency from many customers to find ways to convince people to go back to the office and that comes with offering a new experience, offering new services.
The new experience is making sure that regardless of where I sit in the building, I have the building talking to me, the building is aware that I'm there and being able to personalize that experience, and I think that's where digital signage is playing such a critical role. But then in the employee app, when I'm booking a room or when I'm booking a desk, I may need different types of services, maybe I need different technology, or maybe I want catering services. I should be able to do that from the app and reserve this ahead of time, and we're seeing a lot of demand around those new experiences where employees will get more benefits when they come to the office, not only benefits of a better physical workplace, but also benefits in terms of the services that are offered, and that will incentivize them to come back into the office, and then naturally, as people will come back to the office, they will meet their teammates again, and they will see why it's so important to meet in person, and that will create a dynamic, and at some point I think we'll get back to somewhat a normal situation where most people will go to the office more regularly.
Did the pandemic accelerate something that, from your perspective, was going to happen anyways and just speed it up out of necessity, or were there a lot of companies that weren't really thinking about changing how their workplaces were experienced?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's a great question. I actually think the pandemic gave the opportunity for large organizations to make a cultural change in the workplace that was planned, but maybe seen as a 5-10 years initiative, and they were able to do it in 2 years.
Hot-desking in hotels is an example. We've been talking about hotels and hot-desking for years, but no one was able to implement it. It was such a big cultural change. The pandemic gave the opportunity for companies to take the decision, to reduce real estate and implement hot-desking in hotels, and they had a good reason for that, and for employees, it was like a natural thing that was happening. It would have taken years to get there otherwise. That's why no one was really focusing on the technology for it.
I also think that the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of apps, like Microsoft Teams. Many companies were still using Skype for Business and other tools and they were struggling to unify under a modern app like Microsoft Teams or Slack or WebEx, and this gave them the opportunity to do that, and by doing that, all employees now have one common app on their personal device, whether it's a phone or a desktop, they're able to communicate, chat, exchange files, and we've just launched our embedded app for Teams. So now you have Appspace embedded in Teams, which means users don't need to download a new app to reserve their workspaces or receive team communication. They have all of it inside one app, and I think that's an acceleration that's a result of the pandemic.
We obviously saw how Zoom and Microsoft and WebEx grew from that. That has also helped in the adoption of new technology, like workplace management and employee comms.
Yeah, I was curious about that because if you have all these other workplace tools, the next logical thing to integrate into there would be video conferencing, but that's that's an entirely different business and pretty damn complicated. So the easier path would be to integrate with something like Teams, right?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. I think Teams offer the framework to embed an app fully into Teams, handle the authentication for the user, and then from there, we have so much insights on what the user needs that we're really able to personalize the experience.
The Teams embedded app is a huge win for customers because if you think of a very large service organization with 200,000 desk workers, rolling out a new app for communication and for workplace management is a big challenge. Getting users to download the app or deploying the app to their personal device, enabling user authentication, tracking how users are actually logging in the app. This is no longer a challenge when you are embedded in Teams, because one morning you wake up and on your sidebar, you've got a new button, you click on it and that's where you reserve your workspace, that's where you see your workplace communication, all of it in an app that you were already logging in every morning.
So I'm a CTO at a very large tech company, and if I'm a CTO, the company's going down, but regardless of that, if I'm sitting across from you and I say, “okay, this is interesting, make me comfortable that this is secure.” What do you tell me?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: We obviously work with close to two hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, so we're used to working with very large organizations that have very strict security requirements, and our product (the cloud service) is already approved by IT, by Security and enabled whether it's for digital signage or room booking or visitor for one of the features.
Enabling suddenly to turn on the other features doesn't require any more security assessment because the product has been approved. We also have only one app, whether you are running our app on a system on a chip display, on a kiosk, on an iPad, it's the same app in a different container. And this means that once you have your app approved for one of the use cases, your app is actually approved for all the other use cases. That's again been strengths on our side is trying to keep it single simple platform that allows you to really very quickly scale this across your organization.
One thing that's come up a lot in the last couple years is digital science companies who addressed some of the ideas of remote work by having, in effect, a network screensaver, something that would push out to home based workers and pop messaging on a screen and all that. Are you doing that sort of thing, and if so, is it widely adopted?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, it's a little bit what we started doing five years ago inside meeting rooms on video devices. When the video device is not used for video conferencing, pop up a screensaver and its Appspace, it's running natively on the client and it will display all the important communication. In the case of a meeting room, we're targeting a wider audience.
Now, when you run our UWP app on a Windows device, we obviously know who is the owner of that device, so we're able to personalize the content. Now, I see this as an interesting use case for screensavers. Although I've never seen someone sitting in front of his laptop watching a screensaver as they do a digital sign, drinking a coffee, but I do like the experience of: you're running the Appspace app on the desktop, it's in screensaver mode. When you plug in your laptop in the office or at home, it pops up the experience where as a user, you can say, “Hey, I'm working from home” or “I'm in the office”, and that then trickles into a whole series of events that makes your colleagues, your teammates aware of where you are working from today, are you in the office and so forth.
So screensaver for just pure content playlist, that's really easy to achieve, but I don't know that this is a huge benefit and a huge win, but coupling that with workplace management can be really interesting.
Yeah, I do like the idea of being able to instant message somebody in a way, other than an email, but you're right. If I was working for a large company and I was sitting at home and there was something steadily popping up on the screen telling me about Millie's birthday or Bob's retirement or whatever, I'd be looking very hard to figure out some way to disable it.
Thomas Philippart de Foy: One thing we did though, is we worked with a big law firm in Canada, and the CIO managed to convince the partners to move from a physically assigned office to a hot office, if you will. Very challenging, because lawyers and partners are very conventional. They like their workspace environment. They want their corner office. And what the CIO was able to convince is there would be new sacrifice in the personal experience and to do that, they put in every office, a digital sign, 55 inch display coupled with video or not, depending on the office profile. Outside the office, there is an office scheduling panel.
The partner from home is able to reserve on their Appspace app, “Hey, I need an office from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM and these are the amenities I need.” They reserve that workspace, and when they come into the office, they actually check on the panel outside or on their phone and the digital sign instantly switches to their personal channel. They have potentially their practice news, maybe their preferred sports news, and also their family pictures that they want, and they've just personalized that office with content for the partners and that made them really excited because now they had a big 55 inch display showing their practice news or their family pictures instead of those little frames on the desk that would take the dust.
I think when technology really increases the user experience and doesn't sacrifice anything, I think this works really well as a home office as well. If you have an extra display and you can use that real estate, that makes sense, but let's not be mistaken, people care about themselves primarily, they want information that's relevant to them. If I'm at home, I don't know that I want this birthday of a colleague, but I wouldn't mind having pictures of a year ago from my family and kids that I celebrated, maybe that's more useful for me.
We haven't talked about back of house and all the discussions around being workplace, as it relates to an office, are you doing work in production areas and industrial areas and so on?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah. So if you remember, we acquired a company called The Marlin Company a couple of years ago, and their main focus was industrial. A very large amount of customers in that space, and we've been working a lot with those customers in transitioning from digital signage, which was a normal evolution of printed posters to digital content and focus a lot around safety and workplace wellbeing and so forth to communicate on personal devices.
Now, frontline workers typically don't have a company email address. So how do they log into the app? So we combine digital signage with the employee app. Digital signage will say, “Hey, there's a new employee app. To access the app, scan this QR code!” User scans the QR code on their phone, enters an employee ID and a phone number and a few seconds later, they get a one time password to create their credentials and they are now logged into the same app as the desk workers with different feature sets, but it's the same app, and now they also have the ability to have employee communication, team communication. They can chat, they can react socially and comment on the content the same way anyone else.
This is breaking the barrier between the desk workers and the frontline workers where really the frontline workers who didn't have a lot of the technology stack because they didn't have a company email address, where everyone has a smartphone so why wouldn't they have the same benefits? And that one time password, no email login has been huge win for us and for our customers in making sure every employee is aligned and has access to the same capabilities.
Last question, this conversation flew by. What's the installed footprint for Appspace at this point?
Thomas Philippart de Foy: It's always hard to say because we count users. We evaluate that around 10 million users benefit from Appspace around workplace management and workplace communication today. We have around 2,500 customers, two hundred of the Fortune 500, and deployments that will scale on the screen size between 50 screens and 10,000 screens for a single customer.
And on the user side, our largest deployment is 175,000 users logging into our app to receive team communication or reserve workspaces. So very large deployments. We like to focus on large customers, but with the Marlin acquisition, we were able to really get into the industrial segment where you have a lot of smaller organizations, maybe not always smaller in terms of number of workers, but maybe smaller in terms of number of physical workspaces.
Yeah. All right, this was great. I learned a lot, which is, I guess the point.
Thomas Philippart de Foy: That was great. Thank you so much for giving us the time.
Wednesday Aug 03, 2022
Hans Feil, Etulipa
Wednesday Aug 03, 2022
Wednesday Aug 03, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
E-paper displays are, by far, best known for the little e-readers people use instead of printed books. The core technology used for those readers is what's also being used for things like meeting room displays and updated bus stop schedule signs that run off batteries and, in some cases, solar chargers. But that's all been in black and white and gray. Color displays, and particularly displays that can do full motion graphics and video playback, have largely stayed in the bucket of future technology.
A small Dutch company is well along the path of changing all that - using something called electro-wetting display technology that gets its brightness from the sun, and would be used as low-energy alternatives to big LED video displays used for out of home advertising.
In this podcast, I have a detailed chat with Etulipa founder Hans Feil, whose company is rapidly evolving and maturing the technology, and has a big investment and R&D partner in Daktronics, the big South Dakota-based LED manufacturer. We get into what the technology is and how it works, its differences with other kinds of e-paper, how it sets up, and its benefits.
The company is still at the advanced R&D stage, but far enough along that it anticipates being in small quantity production next year, through a manufacturing partner in Taiwan.
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TRANSCRIPT
Hans, thank you very much for joining me. Let's just get right to it. What the heck is electro wetting display technology?
Hans Feil: That's a good question. It's what they call reflective display technology. Of course, you probably know about it already, but if people don't know, the introduction that I made is that I say you probably will have an e-reader, many people have e-readers nowadays and it's black and white and a little bit slow, but you can read it outdoors. If you take your iPad outdoor in the sun, it's difficult to read. We have something like your the display on the e-reader, but then with color and it's fast, and that's the that's the difference.
So it's a reflective display technology. It reflects light so there's no back light behind, it doesn't emit light. So if you take our display into the dark, you don't see anything unless you light it up with a back light or front light. So that's for newcomers. If you're a chemist or a physicist or a scientist, I’d probably say it a little bit different, in the sense that what we do is that we manipulates liquids colored oils, and we have a layer colored oils and with little cells with oils and we can make small droplets with it and the size of the droplets we can.
For instance, if you compare to print, many people have ink-jet printers and if they would take a magnifying glass and look at the paper, they're see little cyan, magenta and yellow droplets on the white paper, and what we do is we’re mimicking this printing with cyan, magenta and yellow. So we have a white paper or white reflector, we call it. And we have three layers of glass on top of it with cyan, magenta, and yellow oil and each individual layer, we can switch this oil droplets, making them small or big. And if all the layers are spread, it's black because you don't see anything, all the lights are absorb. And if there are all the droplets are small, white or nearly white and depending on which droplets you switch and can get all the colors of the rainbow, and that's all very low power.
From what I read on your website, unlike traditional, if you wanna call traditional ePaper, what we would know from E-ink displays primarily, this can do 25 frames per second motion, which is quite a bit different because when you see something change on an ePaper screen, it goes nuts for a fraction of a second as it reorganizes itself.
Hans Feil: Yes, and in our case, it doesn't really reorganize, droplets just become big or small and it goes very fast.
Was that a big step to get to the point where you could change them that quickly or is that kind of inherent in the technology design?
Hans Feil: It comes automatically with the technology. It has never been slow.
And with ePaper, and I'm certainly not banging on Eink, but they spent 20+ years advancing their color displays and they'll put out press releases saying we now have more color support than we used to but basically it's been a very long road to get 'em to full color.
You're saying you've got full color gamut right now?
Hans Feil: Yes, but also in our case, it was a very long long route too. The first paper of Rob Hayes and Johan Feenstra from Phillips Research was from 2003, so 19 years ago, this nature paper, where they're first showing to the world electro wetting display, or at least the concept and some examples. So that's 19 years ago and since then we are working very hard on progressing technology, making better making it possible to manufacture displays and so forth. So it's also a very long route.
So what's the tie, if there is one to Phillips?
Hans Feil: Right now, there is no tie except that we are located here in Eindhoven, what they call High Tech Campus, Eindhoven and it used to be the same campus, but smaller from Phillips Research in the old days. So the technology originally, the effect of switching oil droppers, was initially invented here a few hundreds of meters a away from the place where I'm standing now.
Am I remembering correctly that you have a background with Phillips as well?
Hans Feil: That's correct, yeah. I worked what they call the Phillips Research Labs since 1988 in various functions, but mostly quite scientific work in the old days, when it was a very scientific lab. And then I worked for a number of years in battery technology, lithium polymer batteries, and by the end of the 90s, and I got in touch of the guys who started this electro wetting displays, I think in 2004, so I'm 18 years active in electro wetting displays already.
So like you said, it has been a bit of a road then?
Hans Feil: Yes, sure.
When did Etulipa start?
Hans Feil: I’ll share a bit of history. At Phillips, when we were working on electro wetting display technology, we did a spinoff called Liquavista, you may have heard the name. It was early 2006 and a little bit prior to that, there was interest from the German automotive mirror manufacturer, a very big one, who wanted to see if this technology could be used for rear view auto dimming mirrors, and at that time it looked very promising.
In fact, after co-founding Liquavista, half a year later, together with an old colleague, I cofounded Miortech and Miortech was dedicated to use this electro wedding display technology for rearview mirrors. So by the end of 2006, we started this company, Miortech, trying to make the mirrors. Turned out to be that technology was not as fast as we hoped so there was a lot of development work to do. We really had to go back to the drawing table. In fact, we found out that there was a better way of making electro wetting displays with a different architecture that solved most of the initial problems. We patented that and then we started making prototypes of this mirrors, but basically it was a little bit too late, the market evolved and these automotive companies didn't want to really want it anymore.
But also in fact, if you're trying to make a mirror with small oil droplets or small cells, there's also always some light scattering from this droplets and so we could never get this mirrors fully free from haze. It was always a little bit of haze, so it was not good enough. So by the end of 2012, so it was almost 10 years ago, we said these mirrors are no good. It's a display technology. We have our own patented way of making electro wetting displays, maybe there are display companies who are interested in, for instance, licensing this technology, the way that we make the devices. Turns out to be not so easy, but at some point of time, we were asked, “Can't you make outdoor display with this technology?” And in fact, that's the sweet spot of electro wetting display.
If you really want to have bright, reflective colors, you need CMY, the stack of cyan, magenta, yellow. Just black and white display plus color filters is just not bright enough because you are throwing away two third of the light and so for reflective, you need CMY, and this stack has always a certain thickness because of the glass thickness, which also mean that it limits the the pixel density that you can reach. The rule of thumb is that the the thickness of the stack, CMY is roughly in the same range as the pixel size. And for outdoor displays, if you have a 10 millimeter pixels that's pretty good, that's pretty high resolution already.
So we made a few samples with CMY, very simple samples. And we went along to outdoor display companies, including Daktronics at the time, it was 2013 or 2014 or something like that and we showed it to the folks at Daktronics and they liked it. So they said this looks promising, of course, it was very early days, we just had samples. But since then, we have worked together with Daktronics. They became a shareholder, supporting us all the way, step by step from small displays to black and white displays to full color displays that we have right now. So the story started in 2013, when we stopped the mirrors and said, okay, we need to move to outdoor displays with this, and I think it was a good bet.
Did you find yourself going in the direction of outdoor displays because of market size or was it more the case of a company in Daktronics that specializes in large format, outdoor displays, was interested in it and therefore you had an automatic market partner?
Hans Feil: No, the funny thing is, when we were still at Phillips and we were looking for what kind of markets we would first do with Liquavista, with the technology. I did some research on different markets and I found out that outdoor display markets was in the sweet spot of the technology. But then, and we are talking about 2005 or something like that, the venture capitalist who invested in Liquavista really want to go in mobile displays. So it was at a time when Nokia was still big and the market was growing so reflective displays for cell phones was the automatic market and we put aside the outdoor display at that time.
So talking about my first PowerPoints I had and spreadsheet about market sizes for electro wedding displays for outdoor was already in 2005, so I had it always in my back of the minds and I had presentations ready when we made the switch. That's the reason why we visited Daktronics and a few others. So we didn't make the move to outward display just because of Daktronics, we had chosen for outdoor displays and it just fits with Daktronics.
So just like LED displays, the kind that are manufactured by Daktronics primarily, these displays have a pixel pitch, correct?
Hans Feil: Correct.
So there's a gap between each pixel basically?
Hans Feil:. Yes, they're point sources, sort of.
And right now it's 10 millimeters, which in LED terms would sometimes be referred to as P10 or something, but I'm reading that you anticipate that you can get it down to 2.5mm?
Hans Feil: Yes, that's correct. We already have made samples with TFT back planes with 2.5mm pixel pitch. So right now we have P10, so that are the first displays that we're making but the next stop would be 2.5 millimeter and also larger tiles.
At P10, that's very competitive with conventional billboards that you would see on the side of a road and up above a building, that sort of thing. 2.5 means you could have it as a sidewalk level display that somebody would be able to view quite nicely from say 10 feet away?
Hans Feil: Yes, exactly, like bus stops, sidewalks and that kinda stuff.
Yeah. Do you have to get even tighter than that, and is it possible if you wanted to do print and bus schedules and things like that?
Hans Feil: If we want to go to smaller pixel sizes, what's needed is somewhat thinner glass. So right now, the glass that we use is 0.5 millimeter and we have a stack of number of pieces of glass but if you go glass that’s 0.2 millimeter or 0.3 millimeter, we can go to pixel sizes of 1 or 1.5 millimeter.
Is that something that's possible, or it's not even developed yet by the glass manufacturers?
Hans Feil: Oh no, the glass is there. There's even thinner. Basically, we do it step by step, but the glass is there.
So this isn't a wish, it's just a when?
Hans Feil: Yeah, exactly. There are many things that are a when.
These units are, again, similar in certain respects to LED displays in terms of they have cabinets or tiles, and they stack together?
Hans Feil: Correct.
What are the sizes of these tiles, and are there limitations as to how many you can put together or is it modular and it can be as big as you want?
Hans Feil: It's modular. The the tiles that we have right now are roughly 10 inch, and we have six tiles in one panel. That's how we build the displays that we have here in our backyard. And the next step with 2.5 millimeter, we're looking for 21 inch tiles so there'll be bigger tiles and smaller pitch, but there are no limits in how big you can make the displays of it. It's just metal scaling up the electronics and it's all modular.
With the video support, I read that right now you're demonstrating animations and not full color video. Is there a reason for that or is just a matter that that's what makes sense right now?
Hans Feil: Yeah, that it's mostly electronics development. There are two parts to this, one is the uniformity of the tiles. We are constantly improving the uniformity so the gray scales and the gray scale definitions become better and better, so that's what's needed, and the electronics development is a separate thing since we have to see how fast we can make the electronics work with the number of gray levels we have. Right now, it's designed with 7 bits color so you can have 128 droplet sizes per color, which for reflective is very much, to be honest, the uniformity is not so good that we can really make this one on the 128 droplet sizes very precise. It's a little bit less but that's all about scaling up the electronics.
In the advertising world, generally speaking for digital out-of-home advertising, they're not using full motion anyways, except for spectaculars in Times Square and those big wrap arounds and so on. There's one heck of a lot of deployed stock that is just digital posters basically?
Hans Feil: Yeah, for example, along freeways, you're not allowed to do any animation and so on.
So as long as you can address full color and have the clarity that people want, they're happy?
Hans Feil: Yeah, with the first display out here, it was a test for us to see what's the color space that we can see, what's the impression that we have, and so far we are quite happy.
In fact, all the visitors that come along, many of them do not have very high expectations because they don't know what to expect with reflective colors and the the veterans, so to say, who have seen reflective displays before, they know when colors are dull. But everybody was surprised when they walk outdoor and see what we have in terms of color and brightness. People are amazed.
I believe I saw that these displays can handle 15,000 lumens, that's the maximum brightness?
Hans Feil: To be honest, we didn't measure it exactly yet. That really depends on how much sun comes on it. It scales perfectly with the with the amount of sunshine in the environment. It's like when you have newspaper, I don't have to tell you, of course, that newspaper in the bright sun is very bright but because your eyes are accommodated to the brightness of the environment, you don't do not really notice that it's so bright and that's the same with our display.
In fact, here’s a funny story, the cameraman who made his shots for the video clip that we have, he was he was used to taking shots of video or display and he suddenly realizes that he didn't have to adjust all his systems when the sun goes behind the cloud, the display didn’t become less bright because the trees and the grass, et cetera, also became less bright. It was then when he realized, okay this is different from what I've seen so far because LED displays are brighter compared to the surroundings all the time.
Yeah. It's wildly different, it's the opposite of outdoor LCDs, which are the primary things used for display totems to advertise street furniture, that kind of thing. They're always battling the sun, they've gotta be at least 2500 nits to eve overpower glare and so on, and you're saying, the brighter it is, the better it's gonna get?
Hans Feil: Oh yeah, it's fine. But also, today's very gray weather here and I've been there with visitors when it was raining in and it still looked pretty good. It's only when it's getting really dark, likewhen the sun goes down, then you really notice. But it's the same with your eReader. At some point of time, you realize, okay, now I do not see enough contrast anymore, I have to switch on my back light or front light or whatever you have.
That backlight or front light, whatever it may be, that's running off of a battery that's charged by solar collectors, right?
Hans Feil: Yeah, that's correct.
So you can be completely autonomous from electrical power grid, but is there enough power out of that battery to do cellular connectivity for updates?
Hans Feil: Yes, sure. In fact, the trailer that we have out here, that was designed to have an LED display mounted on it, so that there's a little bit big battery, but it's one solar panel, a lead acid batteries in this trailer. In fact, we have never charged this one, never. Previously we had a black and white display on it and with our color display, the power consumption of our display is so low, we don't need to charge it.
One thing I noticed in the reference photos is that the units have seams. It reminds me of 5-10 years ago when the LCD manufacturers every year would come up with some definition or description of even narrower bezel or seams in between the displays, and when LED came along, that got of a lot interest just because the seams went away, and people who were designing spaces were saying, okay, I wanna use LED instead, because there are no seams.
Are you getting any pushback about that about the seams that exist and will those with time go away?
Hans Feil: Pushback is a big word, but people do notice the seams, and although the seam here that we have here is smaller than the width of one pixel, so if you walk to the display, of course you see the seam, and we prefer to have narrow seams or no seams, but you can see the seams. If you walk away, they become less noticeable, and if you cannot discriminate between individual pixels anymore, then the seams are also becoming very thin or hardly visible.
With LED display, if you walk toward the display, at some point of time, you can see the individual LEDs, right? The image breaks down and it become little light dots. And in our case, you start noticing the seam more and more. If you're really standing in front of it, of course you’ll see many seams, but when you walk away on to say 30-50 feet for P10 pixel then it's hardly noticeable anymore. But again, of course, everybody wants to have thinner seams or no seams. So we have a program working on that to get them thinner, less noticeable. And also in future, when we go to larger tiles, seams will become thin.
We had a big outdoor advertiser here in Holland who who used our 100 square meters screens with P10 pixels, and said that this solution would be good, and not to worry about the seams very much because for 100 square meter display, you're standing 50 meters away or even more, and you won’t see the seams anymore.
Where's the product at, are you now shipping or is it still in R&D?
Hans Feil: No, we are now in the testing phase. So we have it out here in the backyard. The next display will be made and shipped to South Dakota for evaluating by Daktronics and their customers. By the end of the year, we are targeting to have a production capacity with our partner, URT in Taiwan, for 50 square meters per year, which isstill not much, but it's doable. And then early next year, we think the first display will be used by first customers here in the region because turns out there are parties that connected to us that have been waiting for low power display for many years but they couldn't go anywhere because the only thing that they had was LED, right? And now they have this option which some of them were looking for it for many years already.
We have a client who, every two years, was making calculations about power consumption of the display and every two years he was disappointed that it was never low enough, and now suddenly he got in touch with us and said, this is what I need. So he’ll probably use a number of our displays in the first half of next year.
Are the upfront costs for this going to be higher than that for the upfront cost of conventional LED displays for the same footprint and are the savings more on the backend because you're not using power?
Hans Feil: Yeah, that's correct. Right now, we are making them in small quantities So the price is not really reflecting how it can be. But indeed, there is a huge savings in situations where people have to make a connection to the grid, which can take months before they can get a connection, and it’s also very often very expensive. We had one small, black and white display in a New York City bus stop, it turns out to be that the solution with our displays in that bus stop with a solar panel and a battery was 30% cheaper than the original version with LED displays, which were connected to the grid.
This connection to the grid and all the work that, that goes along it and permits and so forth, make it very expensive. So even when there was a battery added and a solar panel added, and our display was more expensive than the LED one, it was much cheaper to have reflective displays. It was also new for us at that time.
So going forward into 2023, if I am a outdoor media company in, let's say Australia, and I want to buy this, am I going to be buying it through Daktronics, or will you be licensing this more broadly than that?
Hans Feil: Most likely through Daktronics. Probably the first smaller smaller display here in the region, we will install ourselves because that's more convenient, it's nearby, et cetera. But once this becomes bigger and more mature, it's our goal, our business plan that we will be creating the panels and Daktronics will make displays with those panels and sell them worldwide.
And as you scale up maybe the existing manufacturer in Taiwan who right now might be a contract manufacturer doing small lots, you would figure it out from there what kind of manufacturing capacity you’d need?
Hans Feil: Yeah. So for now that they have enough capacity, there should be no problem.
We are open for talks, the whole consortium of URT, Daktronics and ourselves, if there are any other major display company who says, okay, I also want to adopt electro wetting displays, because we always believe if we want to make this successful, we should not really keep it all for ourselves.
And there's lots of money to be made,-without a lot of grief-in licensing.
Hans Feil: Yeah, we're open to do anything that's reasonable. But there are many in fact, maybe all the major display companies that at some point of time tried making electro wetting displays and did R&D but they found it very difficult and stopped with it.
We have our own technology, what we call second generation technology with different approach and we solved all those problems that were there with the first generation electro wetting displays. It has taken some time, but it's worked quite well now.
I'm looking forward to seeing it at some point, somewhere. I hope I don't have to go to South Dakota in the middle of the winter, but you never know.
Hans Feil: Well, you could also come here, but I'm not sure if you are in Europe anytime soon.
Yeah, well, Eindhoven has a better football team than Brookings South Dakota, so that would be a better trip for me.
Anyway, thank you very much for spending some time with me.
Hans Feil: Yeah, I'm very glad that I got opportunity from you to talk about this. And I hope you can watch our display anytime soon, either here or in the US somewhere. Seeing is believing, in fact, and reflective is just different.
Yeah. I completely buy into the idea that it's one of those things that it's interesting to read and to hear about in a podcast, but to walk up and see it is where you're gonna close the deal.
Hans Feil: Yeah, exactly.
All right, thanks again.
Hans Feil: Thank you very much, and hope to see you soon.
Wednesday Jul 27, 2022
PJ Thelen, RoveIQ
Wednesday Jul 27, 2022
Wednesday Jul 27, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
When PJ Thelen talks about the company's software and hardware, he focuses almost entirely on the experiences they enable and deliver, as opposed to the features and specs of the technology.
It's refreshing, because a lot of the conversation and marketing around outdoor displays for directories, wayfinding and advertising has been - at least in recent years - about how they were more than just screens, but smart city devices that did a variety of things, including WiFi connectivity and IoT sensors. Thelen went so far as rebranding the company he now runs from smartLINK to RoveIQ - getting away from the heavily-used smart moniker and emphasizing how Rove speaks to enabling people to navigate a space with intelligent - the IQ bit - guidance.
The company has a CMS, sophisticated mapping, an ad server and analytics capabilities all designed to help people find their way around big places. The early adopters have been commercial properties - like mixed-use lifestyle developments. In many to most cases, those are wayfinding directories with mapping, supported by advertising.
But Thelen sees a lot of possibilities working with large-footprint healthcare, helping people find their way around sprawling medical campuses. There would be physical screens providing guidance, but in his vision, RoveIQ guides people from the time they park in a hospital garage all the way to a specific building, floor and waiting room.
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TRANSCRIPT
Peter, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what RoveIQ is all about?
Peter (PJ) Thelen: RoveIQ really emphasizes smart kiosks and wayfinding software solutions.
We just rebranded our organization from smartLINK to RoveIQ and Dave, a big reason for that was we wanted to make sure our new name is better aligned with the solutions that we bring to market and the value that we provide for both our customers and partners. Now the word Rove, it's the whole idea of wandering, discovering, et cetera but the IQ element is to do it in an intelligent fashion. So you have a very efficient and enjoyable experience.
So if somebody listening to this is trying to visualize what you do, the visual that would immediately spring to mind would be a display totem outside in a public plaza or something like that with directory or mapping, correct?
Peter Thelen: Yeah, without a doubt. So I always use the analogy, Dave, to pretend that you're going to a place for the first time. You're not quite sure where you are or what is around you so you leverage the hardware and our software to understand what is available and then ultimately leveraging either the kiosk experience or the mobile experience allows you to essentially get to where you want to go leveraging a Blue Dot scenario, which obviously is our wayfinding software.
Blue Dot scenario, what do you mean by that, or is that just the name of the software itself?
Peter Thelen: No, that's just the analogy I use Dave, where if you think about where you are and let's just say, hypothetically, you want to go to a restaurant, the dots correlate to the path that you need to take to go from where you are to where you ultimately want to go.
The old name, smartLINK, connoted the whole idea of smart cities and that there were all kinds of companies coming up with smart city kiosks in the last decade or so, and I don't necessarily see a lot of traction for those sorts of things. Is that kind of driving this as well? What if you better focus on the whole idea of guiding people, as opposed to saying this is this station that will do all these other things to help cities become smarter?
Peter Thelen: Yeah, we took a step back. RoveIQ is a software company. It just so happens that it needs a hardware platform to promote the value that we drive on a day in and day out basis.
In our minds, smart was widely used. It didn't necessarily correlate to exactly what we do today and where we're going tomorrow. From a search engine optimization perspective, it was tough just because there's so many smart this and smart that. As RoveIQ continues to grow, we're growing more and more into other verticals beyond just the smart city. So the bottom line is that we wanted a name that more appropriately aligned with who we are and what we're doing on a day in and day out basis, and it just made sense.
It was a great exercise. It was about a six month long exercise with a phenomenal local company here called Brand Fuel, and we're very happy with the results.
There seem to be two kinds of threads of these kinds of outdoor street furniture displays. There are those shopping malls and community business districts, that sort of thing put in to help people find their way around intelligently, and then there are those that are there primarily as advertising. “Oh, by the way, there's also a directory” or “there's also some sort of a lookup thing” but it exists for advertising. Do you go down one path or the other, or do you serve both?
Peter Thelen: Yeah, that's a great question, and we definitely serve both, but there is no doubt that the emphasis of our software is around creating experiences. Experiences that a visitor or a resident is wanting to have, or is not expecting, and ultimately has, which generates this great feeling.
Our software, which we consider a platform. It is a content management solution. It has the ability to be an ad server, which allows you to download and upload ads as well as schedule ads, then it has this third element around data analytics and reporting. So we feel like we have some of the best software out there. But there is no doubt at the end of the day, we're trying to promote more experiences as compared to just ads.
But a big part of the ROI from a customer perspective is that digital out-of-home ad opportunity, and post COVID that's growing significantly, which is creating great opportunities.
And ultimately, regardless of the venue and the scenario, something's gotta pay for the thing, right, so that's why advertising tends to come into play?
Peter Thelen: Yeah. We always say there's hard and soft ROI in terms of your investment in RoveIQ. The soft is the experiences that both the customer, the resident, the visitor, incurs on a per visit basis, and how do you measure that? Secondly, it is the digital out-of-home ads based on whatever DMA that property or the city resides in that correlates to how big of an opportunity that is, and then the third element, which in my mind is still fairly immature, but it's becoming more relevant and more mature each and every day is this whole idea of how do you leverage the data?
Whether it's the touch analytics, whether it's the video analytics and then the ability to potentially incorporate both WiFi and mobile, and then what do you use to do with that data to do something of value with it.
You mentioned experience, how do you define and characterize experience?
The experience can be what you see on the screen, what it looks like and everything else, or the experience can be, “that was easy. I found what I was looking for quickly, and that was a great experience” because now I can go in and experience whatever public plaza or mall or attraction that I'm at?
Peter Thelen: At the end of the day, people want to be informed, they want to be educated, they want to gain access to information in a very quick and inefficient manner, and ultimately, they want to.
We're designing our software where when you approach a kiosk and you start to interact, you can get off of it in less than 40 seconds and feel really happy about the experience and you're on your way, and you feel like you're on your way in an intelligent way. I always use the analogy, Dave, if you come to a property or a city for the first time, you're gonna be inclined to use our software. We at, RoveIQ wanna make sure every time you visit that city or that particular property, regardless if you know where you are and what is around you, because of your previous experience, you want to, once again, interact with our software, it causes you to want to come back, and if you're coming back, that means we're doing our job and adding great value to the customer, the property, etc.
So if you're doing your job, this is where repeat visitors tend to migrate to like Moss to a light. They just know, “I'll start here to help me find what I'm looking for”?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and our new brand promise is this whole idea of enriching lives through intelligent software designed to move humans, then we elaborate saying both physically and emotionally, and that emotional element is probably the most important.
So where does your company start and where does it stop in terms of services and technology that you provide?
Peter Thelen: So knowing that we're a software company that ultimately needs a digital display to add value and differentiate, we're providing a fully integrated solution to a customer, which obviously includes the hardware, the related installation, the software, and then the ongoing maintenance. To do all of those things, you need to wrap it in a bow from a project management perspective, and then ultimately you're bringing this data element and this advertising element as part of the overall solution as well so the customer looks at you as a one stop shop.
So we have that ability today. Now, obviously, we leverage partners where that is their core business to add the ultimate value and aspects of the overall solution. But hopefully that's transparent to the customer.
Yeah, I'm guessing that you guys would be happy as clams if you could just be a software company and not have to worry, or really even think about hardware and just provide the specs that it needs to run on this sort of thing, but as you say, people want one stop shopping, they want turnkey.
Peter Thelen: Yep, but that does bring up a good point. Before I got here in May of 2021, we were predominantly dependent on hardware. Of course, in the last 14 months we've made phenomenal strides in promoting mobile-only solutions. So if you think about something as simple as a smart city or a mixed use real estate, yes, you're walking up to a kiosk, but as you exit that kiosk, you can scan or text to phone, to basically take that exact same experience from the kiosk with you on your mobile device, you don't have to download anything, it is considered a web app and off you go.
We're also offering mobile-only solutions which are cool. As we penetrate colleges and universities and healthcare, we're not dependent on that hardware. You can get the benefits of our software, just leveraging your mobile device which has been pretty exciting to see and we look at that as a high growth vertical.
So in theory, let's say on a university campus, you could walk up to a support column in a building and there'd be a QR code on there with a message that says. “Having trouble finding your way? Scan this!” and it'll launch your app and off you go?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct.
How do you make money off of that then?
Peter Thelen: Well, that's all our software. If you think about it, the theme you're probably hearing from me is, we're a software company, and every time we're providing value around our software, there is a fee for that subscription base , it's monthly and it's based on the opportunity.
So in a conventional setup where you are providing display hardware, you would have a play out license for that display, but with the university campus or something like that, if you're not using physical displays, you would just have some sort of a site license for the campus?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct.
Okay. That makes sense then. I'm curious about wayfinding. Mapping for big public displays has been around, I'd say at least a decade, maybe 15 years, and like everything it's evolved, and I saw on your website, one of the things you talk about is three-dimensional wayfinding.
Over the years, what has your company found in terms of what resonates with end users? Do they care about certain things like it being three-dimensional or do they just want something that's very intuitive and quick?
Peter Thelen: I've concluded it's all the above. I think users today are smarter than ever. They have a very high expectation in terms of the experience that they're aspiring to have. So they want everything. There's a lot of wayfinding solutions out there. So we always think to ourselves, what makes ours better than the next, and knowing that we emphasize experiences, how do we really promote a better experience as it pertains to that whole wayfinding experience?
So not everybody does 3D, most only do 2D. The whole idea of interactive is a big deal, and we obviously wanna promote that fairly aggressively, but the one thing that we're really emphasizing, Dave, is this idea of hyperlocal. Do we capture all elements of a property? So when an individual starts their journey, leveraging our software, it's a great experience. They very clearly know where they're going, they can visualize the surrounding environment and as they're going, there's no fear and uncertainty or doubt about where they're ultimately going to get to, because there's a high degree of confidence in that.
The hyperlocal is a very important element to our solution. It could be as simple as a bench, it could be a tree, it could be the look and feel of the building. Our UI/UX team does a phenomenal job of configuring the property on a per deal basis to make sure it looks and feels just like that property actually is.
So some of the areas you're in like Port Orlando in Orlando, or Miami Design District and so on, if a shopping or mixed use outdoor district like that approaches you guys and says we want to do this. What is involved? You were talking about the UX design and everything. Do they go on site or how do they put this together?
Peter Thelen: Yeah, it's a lot of different elements, which makes it fun and exciting, but ultimately it starts with a site survey, where we walk the property with the respective owners. We identify those high traffic areas. We understand the goals from the owner in terms of what they really want from this hardware and software. You have to define the advertising opportunity as part of the whole digital out-of-home. Sometimes it's a great opportunity, sometimes it's just an average opportunity and in some instances, based on the location of the property, it might not exist at all. Then the last element is this whole idea of data.
Data is becoming more valuable like I referenced earlier. Each owner wants different types of data sets that's important to them. So as part of the onboarding, we define those data elements. But as we leave that site survey, you're taking all these pieces to the puzzle and assembling them into this picture that correlates to ultimately what they want which is a combination of hardware and software that are strategically placed throughout the property. We've built out the software in terms of the configuration so the experience as you approach the digital display looks and feels just like the property.
I always use the analogy, picture your iPhone. When you open up your iPhone, you have the various apps on the first page. That's no different than what we do for a customer as part of the configuration process, and then we build out the maps. Take into consideration that hyperlocal, 3D concepts
It is the core goal and aspiration simply to ensure that people who visit a venue like Port Orlando or whatever, to just not be lost and frustrated, or is it a little more sophisticated and evolved in the case of trying to influence where they might go?
Peter Thelen: I'm chuckling a little bit because it's both. If you think about the whole idea of moving people physically and emotionally, the physical aspect is the wayfinding, and that is the emphasis of our software, but we're one of the first in industries to roll out augmented reality selfie. I was at the Avalon property outside Atlanta, Georgia last week, and I sat on the property for three hours, Dave and I watched people interact with our software, and 70% of the people were leveraging the selfie and having an absolute blast with it in terms of what filter to use, how many people to incorporate into the selfie picture. I watched them scan or text to phone and I watched them walk away giggling, because they were so happy with the experience.
Okay. So this is walking in front of a totem, there's a camera, it's capturing your image in front of the camera and then you're overlaying it like mouse ears or whatever?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I would say think of Snapchat filters, that's the exact experience that we're promoting, leveraging our software.
Is that all just about the experience? Like I did this at this location and it's going to brand it and say I was at Avalon, and I did this fun thing and it's cascading out to that person's followers and therefore it's helping the Avalon brand?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and then the other side of that, and I'll just use an example of coupons. Think about the whole dynamic of a property wanting to potentially push more and more of the visitors to select locations or select stores, think about the whole idea of, I'm at Avalon for the first time, where is Lululemon? I used the software to understand where Lululemon is from a wayfinding perspective, Lululemon then offers me hypothetically a 10% coupon for today's spend, I scan that QR code, I work my way to Lululemon, I obviously make my purchase, I go to the POS as part of my payment process and I get 10% off my total order.
Lululemon's ecstatic that our technology drove people to their store, but the visitors were ecstatic because they got 10% off that they weren't expecting, everybody's happy. Those are the ideal scenarios. So the next time that family comes to Avalon, they're gonna be very inclined to leverage our software to understand what other coupons are out there.
That's got traceability too, right?
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct.
Yeah, and is that happening very often, people using it?
Peter Thelen: The answer is yes, and it's happening more and more every day. RoveIQ has only been around since 2016, it was started by two individuals that also had another company. So you could make an argument, it really was a hobby.
I came here in May of last year. We had very talented people, it just needed more direction and more leaders, and we're adding new features every single day to our software to once again, heighten the whole idea of creating more and more experiences.
. Did you know much about this space when you came into it?
Peter Thelen: Yeah, I did a little, I do adapt to be dangerous, but I ran an IT solutions company for 19 years. I spent my last two years at an organization called Kroger, a rather large grocery store where I ran a division called Sunrise Technology, and that was all about leveraging technology that Kroger developed in house and realized that it worked, and the ask from me was to take that technology and sell it to the global retail world.
The emphasis of that technology was digital shelves inside a grocery store. So I took that same experience, in that case, it was a digital shelf. In our RoveIQ world, it's a digital display, but the elements of the solution were very similar: data, advertising and experiences.
I noticed in the press release announcing the name change that you also made a reference to healthcare software that was coming and I thought that's interesting, so what was that all about and is it now live?
Peter Thelen: I've had so much fun with the team and healthcare customers working on this new concept and it's going great. The premise is fairly simple. If you think about the average experience today, where you have to go to a healthcare facility tomorrow, and these healthcare facilities continue to get bigger and bigger, which from a patient perspective, creates a lot of apprehension and anxiety around, where do I park, what entrance do I go in, and how do I ultimately get to the department that I'm needing to go to?
So leveraging our legacy software, we have made tweaks where we are now integrating into their Epic and/or Cerner, where essentially a patient gets a text the day of their visit and that text takes them from their current location to the correct parking garage via car, then transfers to foot from the parking garage to the correct entrance, and then continues from the front entrance to the actual department. All leveraging a mobile device and obviously our software on that mobile device, and needless to say, it's addressing a rather large problem in healthcare that we believe with confidence we can solve and we're pretty excited about it.
Now, where does it stand? We're in pilots as we sit here today, which means we're learning every single day with a set of customers, and needless to say, our goal is to go live with many customers as we enter 2023.
That's an interesting one because an awful lot of big healthcare complexes started off as one building and ended up being eighteen buildings and they're all joined together and it's confusing as hell to find your way around, and I can certainly respect the idea of something that can say: go out this door, go down this hallway, go up three levels, then turn right and left, and eventually you're gonna find your way there because without it, you might have to leave super early because you know you're gonna get lost.
Peter Thelen: Completely agree, and if you think about the idea of hyperlocal and our legacy software with these enhancements, we can promote this unbelievable experience where you always feel like you know where you're going and where you need to go to ultimately reach your destination. And from a customer experience perspective, these healthcare entities that we're working with today, that's one of their big issues.
People need to feel good about where they need to go and how to go about getting there.
Do you address language as well?
Peter Thelen: The answer is yes. Now our current pilots, they have not asked for that, Dave, but the bottom line is, our software has that capability.
Yeah. I asked because years ago I had a meeting with a hospital in Toronto and it was in a very multicultural area of Toronto, and they had a roster of staff and volunteers who just handled all the different languages that came to the reception desk, asking where the Pediatric Clinic was or whatever, and they would have to call people and say, we need somebody who speaks Lithuanian or Tagalog or whatever it may be, and it was this monumental challenge.
I suggested at the time that you might wanna look at some sort of interactive directory that you select your language first, and then it takes you where you need to go that way, and they said that's interesting, but they wanted to just do the wow factor, I can't do stuff in their public areas instead, and they're like, oh, okay, that's not gonna solve any problems, but fill your boots.
Peter Thelen: Yeah, the bottom line is you wanna make sure you have software that can cover the population. The healthcare entities we're working with are defining that population. Needless to say, we're making sure our software can perform, and since it's our own proprietary software, the sky's the limit in terms of the capability and potential.
Yeah, I could certainly see what you're describing is working well on university campuses as well, particularly for night courses and part-time students who aren't familiar with where they're going and really the same thing in airports.
Peter Thelen: The airports for us, Dave, have been a tough market. It's so competitive, there's a fair amount of rather large players. Don't get me wrong, we focus on airports, but that's not necessarily where we have generated the most success today.
Airports are also pretty conditioned to media companies coming in and saying, we'll put this in for free.
Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I can play that game all day, every day. I can play, it's just a matter of, can I compete?
Yeah, you're not gonna win too often when the other guy's saying, we'll put it in free for you.
Peter Thelen: You know that's the dynamic we deal with every day on a per deal basis. Based on the perceived digital out-of-home advertising opportunity, that can create a free experience or that unfortunately you have to pay for, it has to generate the corresponding value. So those are the discussions we have.
I'm guessing the majority of the opportunities that you run into and close are in some way bolstered by advertising, and there aren't that many that are purely just an informational display?
Peter Thelen: It's interesting, we've had a phenomenal 2022 and the characteristics of each deal really are so different, especially as it pertains to advertising, and there is no doubt when advertising can generate that ROI on its own, it makes it a very easy decision for a customer. But when that's not the case, then it correlates to what are the other value elements and is that important to our property? And we're seeing that increase more and more, which has been exciting, because obviously that's creating great opportunities for us.
But there's no doubt, advertising is a big play here and at the end of the day, we're trying to do everything within our means to bring the best solution forward around advertising to optimize that ROI from a customer perspective.
You mentioned programmatic in your press release. So are you working with the many programmatic companies out there? I don't even wanna rattle 'em all off, cuz there's so many and I'm so confused by it.
Peter Thelen: Yeah. So our software, because it's this platform and has this ad server capability, it integrates into programmatic partners, and we're constantly looking at the appropriate programmatic partners and then obviously incorporating those into our solution.
So yeah, that's a big opportunity. This whole idea of unused inventory, how can it be sold in an automated fashion? These programmatic partners make it very easy to fill a high volume, usually obviously lower revenue elements, but still important from a customer perspective.
The company itself, is it private or are you publicly traded?
Peter Thelen: No, it's private. It resides here in Northern Kentucky, right outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The emphasis today is within the United States, although we're always looking at growth outside of the US, but it's a fairly small company, but it's doing some really exciting and fun things.
How many folks do you have working there?
Peter Thelen: So we have 12 people today. I'm trying to grow that by an incremental three between now and year end. We have about 25-30 unique customers across five verticals: smart cities, mixed use real estate or lifestyle centers, we call it entertainment, but the emphasis really there is sports arenas, and then college universities, like we talked about earlier and healthcare. We're heavily focused on five verticals.
All right. So if people wanna know more about RoveIQ, where do they find you?
Peter Thelen: Our new website is RoveIQ.com, which in the last three weeks has gotten a lot of attention, which is pretty exciting. But they can also email me, which is pretty simple: pj@RoveIQ.com, and you have my commitment that I'll respond and give it the appropriate attention.
All right this was great. Congratulations on growing the company the way you have.
Peter Thelen:. Dave, I really appreciate your time. I appreciate your support. You do great work and thanks for giving RoveIQ an opportunity to talk about what we do on a day in day out basis.
Wednesday Jul 20, 2022
Rosemary Valenti, Outdoor Solutions Group
Wednesday Jul 20, 2022
Wednesday Jul 20, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
New York City is a massive out of home media environment, but much of the attention gets directed to the giant LED boards in Times Square, when there all kinds of other interesting and high opportunity environments that also generate a LOT of eyeballs ... like the ferries across the Hudson River.
Outdoor Solutions Group has many, many years under its belt doing static advertising on the ferries that take commuters back and forth from New Jersey - from wraps on boats and shuttle buses to ad posters and big banners in the ferry terminals.
The company had been slow-walking its digital plans for a variety of reasons, but when COVID hit, the company decided it was time to start converting some of that printed stock to digital. Part of that was triggered by the simple observation that as the economy and riders started coming back from lockdowns, digital interest and buys were coming back faster.
I spoke with Rosemary Valenti, who has spent a long career in New York OOH media circles and fully took over the business when her husband died a few years ago, after a long scrap with cancer. She now has a son helping her out, and partnerships with established digital partners in Broadsign, Pearl Media and TSItouch.
In this podcast, we get into why Valenti's firm took the digital plunge, its challenges and benefits, and her plans to convert more of the print positions to quickly refreshed digital displays.
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TRANSCRIPT
Rosemary Valenti: I'm Rosemary Valenti. I'm the CEO of an Outdoor Solutions Group in New York, and I've been in this out-of-home world for a very long time. I started this company with my husband, Mark Valenti in 1996, but we were both in the out-of-home world prior to that, we were in companies that are now considered outfront media.
And your son's still involved in the business, right?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, Matthew was an infant when I started OSG, and then by the time he was 15 we had him, as a courier almost, going in, dropping off mail, that's how he earned his allowance, did some inside of the ferry postings and he was an intern, he was great. He learned a lot of the business and now he is Vice President of Outdoor Solutions Group.
Nice, and you've run it on your own since you lost your husband?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, in 2018, we unfortunately lost Mark to cancer. I took over the helm, but Mark and I did this for years. I had a backseat for a while, and he was more in the forefront when the kids were little, and then I would in those say 10 years, we were just in tandem running it pretty much, and then when he got sick, we needed a little help, and then after that, I just started to run it and then Matthew had some experience at Clear Channel Outdoor for a little bit, and then came in and joined forces with me and is instrumental in everything that we do together. He's great.
Good. It's nice to have him involved, I guess.
Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, even my other son has posted things. It was a family affair for a while. But that's not my other son's career path. But we do all participate in this.
Your environment is transit, and particularly the ferries, along the New York waterways, correct?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, New York Waterway Ferries are our business partner, and they specialize in ferrying people from New Jersey waterfront properties or New Jersey over to Manhattan, and then we have locations in Midtown and Brookfield Place, and it was static for a long time, and then we decided to introduce the digital, which we needed to do, especially after COVID.
We got shut down for a little while in COVID, and had to rebuild it from the ground up, basically. So we had a lot of entertainment, a lot of Broadway, so we lost everything, and also New York Waterway had only essential service for a few months, and so they were shut down, and so we slowly have come back just like many transit systems, but in New York we were hit hard so it took us a long time to get this back up and we're there now. But we took a hard look at the company and we saw digital coming back faster and bouncing back faster than any kind of traditional transit, so we implemented converting some of our traditional, basically if you wanna call theem street furniture, but they’re six foot by four foot, that's what we pulled out in some of the terminals, and we put in a 75 inch Samsung QMRs which really is helpful to have, you can send creative right from the office desk.
Yeah, really. So why do you think digital was coming back faster than static?
Rosemary Valenti: I think people wanted cancellation clauses, there were less production fees. You could easily take something in and out, you can change creative. They were a lot of people who were speaking to the public about COVID through out-of-home and we didn't have that in the beginning. We didn't have that opportunity, but you saw advertisers doing messaging about COVID, and then saying, we're back and all different things. But we were shut down and so when we were coming back, we wanted to make sure we had something like that and what Waterway also wanted that, they have their own spot, they can alk to their customers through us because we put them inside the ferry terminals, and we also put them inside the ferries themselves.
Yeah. So you have various terminals, they're like small airport terminals with concourses and you've got what used to be light boxes are now digital, and then you've got, I think portrait displays that you've got on the actual ferries?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, we did everything portrait display. So our in wall in the ferry terminals, which is really in the waiting areas and some of the pathways that they walk through to get into and then to get onto the slips. Those are 75 inch portraits, and then in one of the areas we have like maybe a 55 inch where some of the seating is facing, and then when they get into the ferries, they're 43 inch and they're right at the entrance and exit door. So you come into the lower level of the ferry and that's where our screens are, everything's portrait. We figured one piece of creativity is easier.
We're trying to do a two minute uninterrupted loop through the whole system, so an advertiser gets the entire system, which then can give them 90% of the ridership almost, if you think about that, they're in the highest traffic ferries, and then they're at the terminals. Right now, on the New Jersey side, in Port Imperial / Weehawken, and in Midtown and in these ferries, that's our phase one. We intend on putting in some more digital. We just have to do it in phases.
You're also still recovering from COVID, right? Not health wise, but business wise.
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, that's why we're doing it in phases. But much of the ridership is back and it's a little bit different. It used to be more Monday to Friday. Now they're seeing those as many people on a weekend, then there might be a Tuesday probably because of split work weeks, right? So I think people are taking advantage of this city more because they don't have to go every day to work.
Our partners, New York Waterways, they're seeing almost a steady flow back in, it’s just different for them, which is great.
Is the ferry ridership profile a bit different from what you would see on Long Island rail, or particularly the subway?
Rosemary Valenti: Definitely different from the subway. I would say it's an affluent audience. So I would say maybe more a Metro North that goes up to Westchester and somewhat like a Long Island railroad. We have a very affluent and high education especially there's people that live on the waterfront. So some of those waterfront areas in New Jersey have all been built up into these million dollar apartments, so it's really becoming a beautiful area. They have a beautiful skyline view, and then what Waterway did is once they land in Midtown, they provide a complimentary bus service to go Midtown down 34th street, 42nd, 50th. You take your route and they make it, basically from home to the office so you can circumvent subways, you can circumvent everything, they call it door to door, and it's a complimentary bus.
So those are the buses that we wrap. They have a fleet of buses along with the fleet of ferries and then downtown Brookfield place area and Wall Street, it's all pedestrian, you walk to your offices from there, cuz it's much closer. So they don't have to take mass transit really.
And I would assume that if I think about being on New York subways, that a great many of the ads are for English as a second language courses and career colleges and things like that, I'm guessing that you're getting different kinds of brands who are advertising on your screens?
Rosemary Valenti: I would say that the subways have a mix of different types of advertisers, but we're getting high end real estate, we've been getting some alcohol brands, we had HubSpot where they wrapped a ferry and they went onto the digital and they wrapped a bus. So that's a CRM. So we're getting certain things like that, and Broadway have come back. We have Disney's Lion King and Aladdin, and we're getting more interest in that sector again. But, we had lost a lot of that so that's coming back and we just got Fire Islands, Hulu. So they did like a partial ferry wrap, but they also got onto the digital and obviously streaming is like digital. So that's great, and they had done a big pride event here. So we had sponsors of that pride event and then they were also on our ferries and the ferries were chartered to get to that pride event in Governor's island. It was called pride island. Yeah, there's different types of advertisers that we would get high end real estate that they might not get in the subway.
I'm guessing that long before you decided to start the conversion over to digital, you were getting banged on by no end of display and software companies to make that conversion quicker. What was holding you back?
Rosemary Valenti: Strategy, trying to figure out exactly what to do because there were options. Do we do a big spectacular, do we do LED instead of the screens, so we really wanted to figure out where should we go? And as we looked at our own dioramas on our walls, right at eye level, and we said, it make perfect sense to update these into digital because they're sitting on benches next to them, they're buying tickets next to them, they're walking past them when they're trying to get to the bathrooms. They're all in the area, in the ferry terminals that make the most sense, and inside the ferries, it was absolutely an easy decision to just put these right at the entryways. So you come in, you sit down and you face our screens.
Is it technically challenging to put them in something like a ferry becaused of the salt air and everything else?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, we worked with TSI Touch and they gave us these anti-glare screens and protective coverings, so we needed to work on a design with that. Even in the ferry terminals, they have a wall of glass that you are sitting in and there's a wall of glass facing the Hudson river. So we needed anti-glare. We wanted to make sure they were protected with tempered glass because people do roll their suitcases sometimes. So we needed to get all these components factored, like what do we need in this to put this in?
And then TSI Touch actually supplied us with them once we told 'em what we were looking for, and then we had to deal with the design of our ferry terminals. So in Midtown, there was a lot of steel. So they helped us fabricate the enclosures that kind of go with the flow and looked somewhat like the enclosures we had on a more updated version of the enclosures, and same with the Port Imperial / Weehawken, we did a a black covering so it looked like a giant iPhone. But we had that kind of color on the walls prior. So they were instrumental in helping us with the design and they also made sure that the heat could escape. There's all these elements that you have to do when you have to put these in, then you have computers in the walls, and I would say that when you talk about inside the ferries, we have had to get to a cradle poin because there's no LTE. So you had to figure out how to get the LTE across the Hudson and back every 20 minutes, and there is electrical issues on ferries, just like in trucks.
Yes, they call it dirty power!
Rosemary Valenti: Dirty power! That's exactly what they call it. Yeah, we had to work with Marine electricians to make sure we had the right surges or something that may deal with a low power instead of a high power. So that's some stuff I didn't understand, but now I understand.
The good news is, you had your baptism in fire. So if you can put screens with everything involved on a bouncing, rocking ferry, going across the Hudson, putting them in a static, enclosed building like a ferry terminal should be a walk in the park?
Rosemary Valenti: Yeah. That's why we did the ferry terminals first. Yes, we had to learn about the ferries and deal with ferry operations and you know, they're using these vehicles, you gotta take them outta service for us to install them. It's not as easy, but they're very helpful and they wanted this and we work well together, but I didn't understand a lot of Marine things, and I've heard terminology that I never understood, like “give her a splash” and that means a ferry going back into the water.
And then for software, we use Broadsign for content and programmatic because that's something that everybody's taking advantage of and we wanted to get involved in that as well. So Broadsign educates you, they have the support staff, they teach you everything, and they're fabulous to work with. So we're really getting dynamic advertising.
I would imagine that's another baptism in fire you had. If you're been doing static advertising for 20 plus years, to all of a sudden wade into this Labyrinth, I would almost call it the programmatic world, must have been bewildering, cuz I try to write about it and I'm bewildered.
Rosemary Valenti: It is. I think that's why I think my husband was even approached prior to that and didn't wanna do it in the beginning. He saw a lot of companies like that start and then maybe fail. So we waited quite some time, but my son was at Clear Channel and he was selling Times Square billboards and things like that so he understood digital more than I did. So he was a great asset for that, and then we partnered with Pearl Media last year, and they also helped us understand this and they helped strategize with us and we ended up using one of their guys who branched off on his own Daniel, Oak city Integrations is his company and he helped us with the software and guided us in the implementation of all of this.
Okay, so you do media sales through Pearl and you also get backed up through programmatic buys?
Rosemary Valenti: We have a rep deal with Pearl Media, so they help us with the advertising as well as ourselves, and programmatic goes through Broadsign, and that makes that side very easy. So yeah, that's how we are getting an influx in sales between OSG's staff and then Pearl’s sales staff.
Because you are in terminals and ticketed environments, people go through turnstiles or something like that, I would assume you've got a pretty reliable one traffic and impressions count, and you wouldn't have to rely so much on venue analytics?
Rosemary Valenti: We joined Geopath and they rated not only our buses on the streets, but our dioramas that were existing and then our digital, it was switched out to digital. So we worked with Geopath and we have over 2 million monthly impressions per advertiser, because there's a lot of signs in there. We launched with 27 screens. So because we were rated first with Geopath as static and then converted existing things, it was pretty easy for them to help us. We explained that it was 15 second spots within a two minute loop and they could easily do the conversion and help us with that. All advertisers look for the audited so we give audited impressions.
And are you with other associations as well?
Rosemary Valenti: We worked for the buses, which are static, with Street Metrics and they helped audit those, and OAAA is somebody we belong to but that's just a membership organization. They had done a study once on one of our ferries, which was all state. So we've seen those studies. But they're a good source.
Do you think you could have stayed as just analog or now that you've gone the digital route it makes sense?
Rosemary Valenti: We knew we needed to go digital, we didn't wanna stay analog. We wanted to be updated. It’s just that my husband's health was a problem, and so it held us back the 17 months he was sick, so it held us back. But then, when COVID hit, we knew we needed to convert.
And now that you've done it, you talked about the quick turn on being able to change ads and things like that. Have you been able to assess the ROI value of it? Like you've done it and it makes sense?
Rosemary Valenti: Yes, it makes sense. It happened faster than I thought, some of the return on investment, which is great. So we're seeing the digital take off and people really like it. Like I said, they can just send you a file, we can push play.
We've even had like the Yankees come in for two day stints and then two day stints, like when they first open season and then a bobblehead thing. So those short term campaigns we could never have done with static so it really helps.
Yeah, I would assume with the static thing, particularly if you're gonna replace a bunch of light box posters with new print ones that don't turn that quickly, it's like numerous days, at least?
Rosemary Valenti: You mean just to post?
Well, if somebody says, “I would like to do this” then the creative's gotta be done, and then it's gotta be printed, then it's gotta be sent to the site, then somebody's gotta switch it out and everything else, it doesn't happen in half an hour.
Rosemary Valenti: Right. You need an install team, you need to print them. Your print could take a few days for us, say a regular diorama, which is six foot by four foot, but it could take several days to print a bus or a ferry and it takes over a day to wrap a bus. It takes a day to wrap a bus and a ferry. It could be one day if it's good weather, but with the ferries you're dealing with weather conditions.
But the combination, they're starting to like the combination because you get to hundred percent share a voice with your static, and then you get this digital where you can change creative. We've had the cannabis expo run with us. They had four different creatives on the walls that were running, simultaneously and then they gave us some static. So the combination, they knew they were always gonna be there, and the diorama sat down in Brookfield place, but they were part of a loop inside the ferries so they were getting on the wall and in the ferries as well as some traditional and that combination is really nice.
There was a company that didn't last, maybe it was COVID, but I think it was more about regulations, that was floating an LED display on a barge on a river. I can't remember whether it was the East River or the Hudson.
Rosemary Valenti: It was on the Hudson. They they made it illegal. I think it still may exist out in Florida or something, but…
Yeah, I think they’re in Miami.
Rosemary Valenti: It was removed because it was interrupting the Hudson river view for one of those people that paid a lot of money to have that view, and this light is flashing in your giant windows, they all contacted the mayor and the governor and they got that removed. I think, to them, it was unsightly. It was very bright. In their offices, you could see it going up and down. That's why ours is static, it's static on the ferries, it's not something that's lit up like that. It's still a fabulous 84 foot long message on the ferries, but to put the digital on the water and then flash it up into both waterfront sides of the river when these people, I think, pay all this money to have a waterfront view, but imagine just putting your kid to sleep or something, and then you these lights are flashing in the window. I can't even imagine all the things that they were hearing, but they did force them out of New York.
Yeah, I was just curious because if you are doing static, doing basically vehicle wraps, but on a ferry, if you could do that with LED that was permanently there and just changed the file, even if it wasn't flashing, it was just solid, that would be very efficient and maybe have an ROI down the road, but then you might face the same heat.
Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, that's not something that we're interested in. I would imagine some of those screens have to use generators, which could make things even louder, or you're on the waterfront, you're bumping around, but it probably is taxing. Think about if it's a generator that has to use gas and now you've got this whole diesel/fuel issue right now going on with how much everything is, but I think that it's too invasive, the digital going inside the waterfronts, their views.
I think there's too many voices saying we don't want this.
How competitive is the media environment in New York? I know it has been like that for a very long time, but I'm curious because there's just so many different ways that people are putting advertising on.
Rosemary Valenti: I would say it's very competitive because you have traditional billboards going down the West side highway, you have all the transits, you have the subways, you have buses. So we're all fighting for the budgets. But we are the only ferry wrap program but there is digital inside of some of the other ferries that run around, but all out-of-home in Manhattan is competitive. We're all looking for an edge.
Yeah, and they're all coming out of COVID, just the way you guys are as well, right?
Rosemary Valenti: We're all coming along. I think I think we're pretty much back. We're one of the top markets, right? So if we're gonna be anywhere, it's nice to be here because we have a lot of people, but I would say that I'm seeing that people are contacting me daily to ask me about my rates and my business and that's a plus because we did go a while in COVID when it was deafening.
Are you looking to expand or is it more about building out the digital side of the portfolio you already have?
Rosemary Valenti: We are looking to expand on the digital inside of our terminals more and we're partnered with Pearl so we're strategizing if there's other opportunities. They have some good stuff too. So they're right i near where we are so it offers this great synergy.
We're looking to expand. We buy again, we still wanna, we still have a little bit more phase to build out just with New York waterway.
All right. It was a pleasure to speak with you.
Rosemary Valenti: It was great to speak with you too. I appreciate it.
All right. Thanks for your time.
Wednesday Jul 13, 2022
Johannes Troger, Ameria
Wednesday Jul 13, 2022
Wednesday Jul 13, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Health safety concerns that become top of mind for the whole planet back in March 2020 led to a lot of assumptions that the interactive display business was going to go touchless, with screens managed by mid-air sensors or perhaps by voice.
That only kinda sorta played out, as touchscreen companies did just fine through the pandemic. Staffing shortages and a desire to minimize staff to customer contacts led to widespread adoption of self-service screens used to order food and buy tickets.
But a German company that specializes in touchless technology suggests while consumers will use touchscreens to specifically get and do things in faster and easier ways, situations in which the screens are more about experience and discovery are going touch-free. Ameria argues that when a screen experience is opt-in, consumers are happier if they don't have to touch the screen - for health safety reasons and also because of the age-old worry about the cleanliness of the people who used the screen before them.
Based in Heidelberg but selling globally, Ameria is focused on the software that create, enables and delivers touch-free experiences using optical sensors. I had an interesting chat with Johannes Troger, who runs business development for the company.
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TRANSCRIPT
Johannes, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Ameria is all about?
Johannes Troger: Yes, thank you, Dave, for having me, and sure, I can give you a little rundown. So Ameria is originally a software company coming from software project development, and a few years back, we went into the brick and mortar retail space providing interactive solutions. We are all about bringing a great experience to the customer, and started providing a lot of touch free or touchless solutions to customers.
So this is one of the things we are doing, and we are also providing a cloud platform behind that to manage all the solutions, to bring out the contents and to collect the data.
And you're based in Heidelberg, Germany?
Johannes Troger: That is correct. We're based in Heidelberg, Germany. We're founded here a few years back, actually by a couple of students from Heidelberg University who met there and found that there was a big market for software development, and yeah, that's how it got started, and then after a few changes, we arrived at where we are at now.
Are the students still involved or has it kind of evolved from there?
Johannes Troger: So one of them is. He’s our CEO, and the other one left a few years back, but one of the founders is still heading the company and is still our visionary behind everything we do.
Okay, and you're a private company, but you have outside investment?
Johannes Troger: Yes, we are a private company. It's still mainly owned by the founder and his family, but we have some outside investors. So the biggest part actually goes to a crowd investing group. It's a German platform called Companisto and we did a few rounds with them, which was a really great way for us to do it because it allowed a lot of people who also come from the industry to invest, and they didn't have to go in with large amounts but they really became our marketing and PR crowd and then we have a few larger investors also involved, but it's mainly in a family office space.
And what's your role with the company?
Johannes Troger: So I'm really heading the business development and partner development part of the business, so on the one hand, I'm a lot out there. Now again, out there at trade fairs and conventions and so on, talking to potential customers, also working with a lot of our partners and also still have some accounts which I started developing when I started at the company, and where I'm still involved in projects, which is always really good because from once in a while to see what's actually happening out there, that's really good.
We met at Infocomm in Las Vegas two-three weeks ago, and I'm curious: was this kind of a first foray into the US to start to build out that market or have you been active in it for some time?
Johannes Troger: In the past, we had some projects in North America, but they were mainly driven by customers from Europe who we supported in projects with their companies in North America. So really Infocomm was the first foray we did into North America, also talking to potential customers there, to potential partners and getting a feel of the American market.
How would you describe the state of the business? Are you out there with active installations and everything else, or are you just building things up?
Johannes Troger: So we are out there with active installations. They're usually not at a large scale yet, so we're talking about a lot of pilots and a lot of small scale installations. So it's about at this stage of the business, and I think we are on the verge of the first bigger rollouts with the Touch Free technology.
And is that the lead product now, Touchfree?
Johannes Troger: Exactly. That's what we've been focusing on in the last two to three years. We actually had some touchless solutions already before the pandemic, and we used them mainly in retail for promotional campaigns. We used them at trade fairs for companies who wanted to basically get more attention to their booth. But it was a niche product. It worked really well in what it was supposed to do but people didn't really see the need beyond that, and so with the pandemic hitting, a lot of companies realized that there are some companies out there in the market who are already doing solutions like this, and they came to us and based on their needs and requirements, and based on our experience and ideas, we started pushing those solutions, developing new options and re-augmenting our portfolio where it was needed. So that became really the focus.
It's interesting, when the pandemic first hit, the conventional wisdom was that this was the end for physical touch screens, nobody was gonna use one ever again because of the contagions on the screen and the inability to keep them clean and so on, keep them disinfected, so to speak.
What kind of played out is, touch screens actually had a pretty good couple of years through the pandemic because it was determined that separating one to one human contacts was safer using touch screens, even if you did have to wipe them down or do that sort of thing. So self-service became a big deal. So I'm curious because I thought that, okay, a lot of this is now gonna go to touchless and voice, but it didn't, but what did you experience?
Johannes Troger: So what we experienced is that, pretty much as you described that at the start, a lot of companies believed that the day of the touch screen was over and what we experienced over the course of the pandemic is that, there is a kind of big divide between solutions which are, I would say more process based. So you mentioned self order kiosks, for example, in the QSR space, and then on the other hand, there are more experience based solutions which are more geared towards marketing and inspiring customers and so on, and so with those process based use cases, we really see that touch screens are big in business and I think it’s kind of got the, “You still have got to get where you're going” thing behind it, right? So people really want their food, and as you mentioned, it feels safer to do it via the screen than to stand in front of a person at the counter.
So people use it and it's quite funny because even before that everyone could see all the studies about how dirty they were and how people were not washing their hands, and so on. We don't want to get into those kinds of unpleasant things, but it was pretty clear before that, but it didn't stop people before that, but when you see on the other hand use cases where companies try to bring an experience to their customers, inspire them, acquaint them with probably new products they have or with new services they're offering, there, we see that touch screens are not working at all. So if people don't understand what they're getting out of it, they're not gonna start interacting with a touch screen.
So they'll opt in when they're hungry or they need a transit ticket or whatever, but if it's for discovery of new products and promotions or accessorizing an outfit, they are less likely to want to touch something?
Johannes Troger: Exactly!
Okay, interesting. So one of the challenges that I've seen with touchless, and it goes back to the days when people were using Kinect sensors, gesture sensors, and so on, there was a learning curve and there was a problem with accuracy, and I'm wondering where that is at now?
Johannes Troger: Obviously, the technology has developed a lot, and I think the way it has developed this much more on the software side. So really the side from which we are coming, because we are not creating our own hardware sensors, we are really hardware agnostic in that.
So I think there are really some different things that happened. For one, the Kinect really worked based on creating a full body model, what is called the skeleton of the body and then tracked different joints and different points of the body, and that always meant there was some latency in it, and that always meant that you had to keep the interface with really large buttons and so on because it wasn't very precise.
And you're asking people to perform!
Johannes Troger: Exactly, and you usually have a certain distance from the screen and they have to make really big movements. So this was actually really the first solution we offered and we saw that it worked really well in any environment where people were in a kind of playful mood anyway, or where a lot of kids were involved and so on. So this worked really well or where you really wouldn't ask, People not to perform too much in front of the screen, but they still had a good experience, and so what we do now, for one, you're much closer to the screen so you can really work with an interface that you could also use on a touch screen. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's advisable to just display a website, right? Because even with touch, you wouldn’t just use a normal website, you would probably make the buttons larger and so on. But it's precise enough now that after a bit of learning, you can actually even interact with a website without any trouble. So this precision problem, it's really a thing of the past.
What we also do is that we give users basically visual cues, so they get a sort of cursor where we have a dot and a circle around it, and then they know, okay, if they move closer in and the two merge, then that's when they do the click and they get a click sound. So it has become more intuitive, more precise, but at the same time, you can also help people to ease into it, and then regarding that whole latency problem, here we are really working with a combination. So it's not only about modeling the hand, but it's also about taking a lot of other parameters, like distance to the screen and so on and tracking objects in this kind of 3D space that we create and that really allows you to interact very fast.
So I assume the UX design is super important, like the workflow and that you've learned a lot through the years?
Johannes Troger: Yeah, absolutely, I think that's next to the technology and to making it really precise on the software side, that's really the key point and that's also why we realized pretty early that we had to be involved in that process, at least at the start.
So, we really pass on our experience with that to agencies of our customers, we are really involved in the whole design process, and obviously it's about a lot of things, I think some of the things also have to be considered when you talk about touch screens which you use in a public space, obviously the size of buttons and the positioning, so position them in places where it's comfortable for people to reach and things like that, and a lot of those things, once you look at it, they seem pretty obvious but they're not that obvious when you're designing it, and when you're in the middle of the process.
Do you have to tell people up front on the screen, so to speak, that you don't need to touch this, or is it intuitive enough that as you reach to touch it, it’s gonna blink and give you a signal that, yeah you've done your action already?
Johannes Troger: So we've been experimenting with a lot of different ways to make people aware, starting from not making them aware at all and just letting them find out themselves. But what we do a lot of the time is that we give them little hints, little popups and so on when they touch the screen that they don't have to, in a nice way, and that it's basically a nice service to them that they don't have to touch the screen, but what we also do is that they still activate the button, even if they touch, right? So I think that's important because we don't wanna punish anyone for probably not getting it a few times.
At Infocomm, we had an app where the hint said in German, please don't touch or you don't have to touch. But it said it in German, and I was always joking. We do it wherever we are in the world. We do it in German because German is such a nice language for ordering people around. At the beginning we experimented with things like, if you touch the whole screen turned like flashing red and you would get MC Hammer’s Don't Touch This song and stuff like this. But what worked is, and we have tried a few apps where the concept or the idea behind it is that people, not in a straightforward tutorial get made aware of it or get taught to do anything, but that they explore it for themselves and are drawn into this by realizing, oh I'm moving my hand in front of the screen and something is happening.
So for example, we have one case where it's all about recipe inspiration in grocery stores and there you get drawn in by some audio visual cues to look at the screen, and then if you start moving your hand in front of it, and if you're about 20 centimeters or 15 centimeters away from it, there's this wooden cooking spoon on the screen, which starts moving with your hand, and so almost by accident, you realize, oh, I don't have to touch, and I'm still doing something, and we also do this with start buttons, which follow around your hand when you move it in front of the screen. And so this kind of accidental realization that, this is a touch free solution that is working really well, and that's what we can see in our data, and when we talk to users, which we routinely do, they usually say that's probably the most satisfying moment that they feel when they found out for themselves that this is something new.
When you install something, is there an adoption period where you can see at first there's lots of people physically touching the screen, but maybe a month later as you get repeat users, they get it?
Johannes Troger: So it's probably not so much an adoption period over the whole group of users. What we see is that typically a larger proportion of the users get it right away. So what we do is we basically track all the movements that happen in this kind of 3D space in front of the screen, and we use this to also tweak our algorithms and to work on that, and we also track how many of those little messages pop up when people are actually touching the screen, and so at one point when we were checking the numbers, we thought, okay, there's a hell of a lot of those messages, and we realized that they were restricted to very few sessions. So it seems that few people who don't get it, they really don't get it but the majority of people get it pretty much right away.
And this is optical sensing, right? So it's like those old leap motion, little chocolate bar kinds of size things that create this physical space in front of a screen?
Johannes Troger: Yeah, exactly. So we usually work with multiple sensors so that we can attach them on the screen, so in a kind of kiosks solution, they're built into that, but we also provide little boxes, which you can click on the sides of just a normal, old, passive screen that you have, and they basically from both sides, create this field and this multiple, camera approach also allows us to scale up in the number of cameras, which also allows us to, for example, in the retail solutions add a third camera, which is looking out and basically scanning the surroundings so that we can react to people walking past with the content in some audio visual ways.
So is there a little bit of AI and machine learning happening?
Johannes Troger: There is actually quite a lot of that happening, especially in the tweaking of the algorithms in regards to precision and to making it more intuitive, so one of the things on the roadmap is to use that to also be able to react to the way someone is interacting, so that after a couple of clicks we understand is this a power user, is it a regular user or is it a first time user? And then we can react in terms of the guidance that we give, and in that, there's quite a bit of machine learning involved.
You said you're a software company first and foremost, but you do sell hardware. Are you selling, kind of display totems that have this technology embedded in it? Because it's just simpler to have a full package, as opposed to saying, “We can do this part now go find the other part”?
Johannes Troger: Yeah. This is what we do, obviously in the early stages, and it's different for different use cases, right? So, for example, if it's about retail, we have partners who built the kiosk Systems, there's obviously a number of providers out there who custom build the kiosk to do what the customer wants, sometimes there's more involved. So it could be like a printer to be added to print out the recipes or some card reader which would be included. So that's where we work with the experts, but we can basically then deliver it end to end.
I guess what we're planning when we get to larger numbers, this kind of partner ecosystem is obviously gonna grow and what we are also working on is to also have basically this kind of retrofit model we can use the screens you already have and just have an upgrade path.
So it sounds like you do hardware because you have to in the early days, but ideally you're behind the curtain, so to speak, enabling other hardware manufacturers and solution providers to make this happen?
Johannes Troger: That's really the goal, yes.
But you gotta get from here to there first, right?
Johannes Troger: That's always when you bring in something new and when we were talking about the content and about designing the the UI and so on, I think if you bring out something new, you are always required to do much more than what you probably consider the core of your business, and of your innovative capabilities. I mean, if you do passive digital signage or you shoot a TV commercial or something, they're out there. There are thousands of agencies who understand the channel, who understand how it works and who can tell any customer perfectly how it works. But when you come to some new channel, which it really is, then there is no agency out there who has a whole desk full of best practices, and that's what we are seeing a lot of the time.
For example, with one customer, we were working on a solution, which is placed in petrol stations, and before that they had passive screens there and they obviously have what they do online, which is the only stuff they know how to do interactively, and so somewhere in between that, we had to find a way where the brand’s people said, yeah, that's fine, that's along our guidelines because they didn't have guidelines for that channel. So it's really about developing concepts for a whole new channel, and that's the same really with the hardware. So we talk to the hardware producers, to the kiosk producers and manufacturers, and we discuss with them how to best mount the sensors and how to bring it together.
So yeah, that's the fate of anyone who brings in an innovation, but I have to say, it's also the fun of it, right? Because it allows you to not only see this very narrow field in the value chain, but to also learn and understand about many other areas and become a more rounded business person for that.
Is it just the software that creates this field and does motion capture and all that? I believe you've got composer software that allows the end user to fully design the experience that their customers or their users are gonna see?
Johannes Troger: Exactly. We have a cloud software suite also behind that, so part of that is a composer software, which allows you to build the content. So you basically just upload the assets and activate them, and the other part is the, it's called the CX manager, the connected experience manager, and that really takes care of all the content distribution scheduling but also taking in the data that is created because other than a touch screen, we also have a lot of data that tracks what happens before someone starts interacting with that outward looking camera, ao we know how many people walk past, stop to look at the screen and so on, and it's really for monitoring the hardware, and it's really a system we started building a few years back and it's really geared towards being a central hub for all sorts of different interactive customer experience solutions that you have out there. So it also runs augmented reality car configurators which we did for a customer. It also runs beacon systems and mobile apps for customers.
So the idea is really everything that you bring out there for your customer experience or for creating customer experience can be run via that centrally.
Interesting. I noticed on your website that you referenced beacons and I thought there's a technology that had its moment and didn't seem to get much in terms of broad ranged adoption, but you're using them. How are you using them?
Johannes Troger: So, with beacons, it's use case where is really in the automobile industry, and It works in a way that the beacons are placed in the cars, and then if you have the manufacturer app you can step next to the car, and it displays all the facts about the configuration and about the car you're standing in front of
On a smartphone or…?
Johannes Troger: Yeah, on a smartphone.
So the idea behind that is really to provide information and then to allow people to take this information, and for example, then include it into their own configuration that they probably have done online and that they have stored in the app, and so that there really is a kind of exchange between the physical experience of the showroom and the digital experience they probably started at home.
If somebody stops you and says, who's your big client? What's that reference case that you like to talk about? What is that?
Johannes Troger: So, in automotive, the most work we have done is with Porsche, so for a long time they were our largest client and they were the most innovative ones really when it came to how to deliver more experience or more digital experience to their customers. In retail and consumer goods, the longstanding client and the most innovative one, and the one we were able to try and learn the most with this is definitely LEGO, and I think one part of that was really that they obviously understood the kind of playfulness of it right from the start, and what we are seeing is that really the retailers themselves that's something that really only has happened for the last two or three years.
I think, five years ago, a lot of the retailers still felt okay, the whole digital stuff in brick and mortar, that's mostly gadgets and let's just hang up a couple of screens and that's fine, if they even did that, but now for the last two or three years even in grocery, retail and so on, I'm hearing a lot of managers saying, okay, we know that we have to move and we know that we have to do a lot to be ready for the future, and I think the exciting thing at the moment is that other than, if you wanna build an online shop, there are a lot of people out there who can tell you that's how you build an online shop, but when you come to digital in the brick and mortar space, there's no one who can tell you those are the two or three recipes, that's how you build it, and that's it, right?
So probably passive digital signage is about the only thing that people by now know how it works, and you can find someone who does it for you and executes it nicely, and that's fine. But anything beyond that, it's still a lot of trial and error of finding out what is it really, what the customers want? What do they need? How can we attract them to use something?
All right, this was great. If people wanna know more about the company, how do they find that out? Where do they go online?
Johannes Troger: Obviously, the first point is our website, so it's www.ameria.com
Okay, perfect. All right, thanks again for spending the time with me.
Johannes Troger: Thank you, Dave. Thank you for a really interesting half-hour with you.
Wednesday Jul 06, 2022
Alex Epshteyn, Zignage
Wednesday Jul 06, 2022
Wednesday Jul 06, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
If a company wants to hang its business hat on the proposition that it is very good at visualizing real-time data to screens, it helps to have a big, very familiar client that heavily uses that sort of thing.
A small New York City start-up called Zignage has that in the New York Stock Exchange - providing and maintaining a platform that shows the numbers and trends charting on screens around the hyper-kinetic trading floor in Wall Street.
The company grew out of an NYU media lab and spent its first few years working mostly behind the curtains, developing signage and data-handling capabilities to software firms and end-user clients. But a few years ago, the company made the decision to develop a brand and start selling its data-centric capabilities directly to end-users.
I had a great chat with Alex Epshteyn, the CEO and Founder of the company, about how it got started, where its headed, who it all serves, and how there can be a huge gulf between software shops that can take a number from a shared data table somewhere, and running mission-critical, hyper-secure visualizations on a stock exchange floor.
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TRANSCRIPT
Alex, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Zignage is all about, how they started and how long you've been around?
Alex Epshteyn: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Dave. Zignage started in 2009 formally, and we started at the NYU Incubator while I was doing my graduate work at the Media Lab in NYU and suffice to say the company was more interesting than the graduate works. So I started doing that, even though I'm from the east coast and this doesn't typically happen, it kinda happened here. So initially, conceptually, we were gonna get into the digital out home space and we were gonna build an auction backend that people can bid for spots on digital signs. So kinda a slightly novel idea, especially in digital signage and we couldn't do a big enough raise, and then we found a number of these sort of remnant advertising platforms coming into the market and we decided, since I have a pretty good little black book of enterprise clients, and we built the platform to about 50% at that point, in mid to end of 2009, let's try our hand at some enterprise folks, and what ended up happening is a trajectory that basically pushed us for about eight years, which is we built a middleware and a toolkit, essentially our own toolkit, that enabled us to build very quickly CMSs and builds and anything related to that, data bindings for third party systems like CRM systems and CRP systems, a variety of backends essentially, and we essentially entered OEM space.
So we built products for other companies. Some of them were large, some of them were small. We had a tremendous amount of NDAs and non-competes, as you can imagine. These companies would not like you to advertise your own stuff while you were building it for them and typically we would have maybe one or two of these customers at the same time. So from 2009 to about 2017, maybe a little bit later even, we basically did work for third parties and we built a lot of different solutions, and around 2018, we decided that we were gonna attempt to productize. That means, essentially build our own, front facing, become a brand, and move away from a pure sort of project solution, even though we had a product in there. But it was a product for us, not so much for the end customer and to get into the market and so we did, and in the meanwhile we had two direct customers during almost all the time.
NYU was one. We had a number of schools at NYU that we were able to pitch, and successfully had running, so NYU Law School, NYU Engineering School, where I was a student and then NYSE where we initially partnered Thomson Reuters. So Thomson Reuters did the data and, most of the application stack actually, and what we provided is a device management framework and advanced players to run the WebGL and all the other things that they needed to run for the New York Stock Exchange. This was under the NYSE-Euronext regime, which has since been bought by the Intercontinental Exchange. This was in 2017, which was a formative year for us. As I mentioned, NYSE under the new ownership came to us and said, “Look, Thomson Reuters is relatively expensive and essentially they're reselling us their data, how about you guys take on their responsibility?” You get nine months to replicate and you get this support contract that basically takes over for them, at a discount for them but it was a nice option for us.
We took on the challenge. Because we were able in these intermittent years we built up so much experience and know how to deal with realtime sources, realtime data sources, and WebGL specifically to make things pretty bulletproof whereas perhaps some other HTML5 technology that is fairly popular in digital signage would is maybe not robust or maybe not as performant. So we took that toolkit and applied it to over essentially at the New York Stock Exchange and took the contract over and successfully we did that. So at the New York Stock Exchange today, they're actually running two separate solutions from us. They have our more standard on print solution for their marketing group and then they have a much more customized, almost like an OEM version for their trading real time data, which are now classed as a number of financial data widgets.
So if I'm at the NYSE and I'm looking down on the floor, or I'm walking around the floor with all the guys with the funny jackets and everything, those various dashboard screens that I see with all the pricing indicators and everything else, that's all being driven by you?
Alex Epshteyn: That is correct. So everything essentially above the workstation level, everywhere above the trader level, if you just look up above the 5’8” level from the ground, you’ll basically be looking at our solutions. It actually is a full gambit of our capabilities. We have synchronized video, real time widgets for financial data consumption, charting types of things and a lot of different ticker technologies that we've custom built and some of our generic ones, and streaming as well.
The only other company that works with us at the site is Haivision, so they provide the backend system and supplementary streaming solutions. So we consume their feeds and also feed them.
They’re a video distribution company?
Alex Epshteyn: That's right. So we're actually partnered with them. So they're one of our partners in space. We like working with them, they are a nice Canadian company to say the least and I know some of the original folks that sort of constituted the company and they have grown as a company tremendously through the years. So we really like working with them.
Yeah, this must have been a really big holy shit moment for you guys when you got that deal because it's not like winning a hundred locations QSR chain or something, this is the New York Stock Exchange. It's on the TV every day with endless photos and everything else, and it's mission critical. Like you can't say, oh, we're just doing a software update and we'll be back in 10 minutes?
Alex Epshteyn: Indeed, and the escalations we get are pretty hardcore. We have just a few minutes to get things going, and philosophically, we try to blend some aspects of redundancy with a lot of resiliency because redundancy itself, some folks who deal with these sorts of mission critical situations, could itself present its own set of problems, right? So you want the system, the platform itself to be as resilient or high availability as possible to use a term out of the server space.
So yeah, it was a huge thing for us and ultimately, we specialized in a lot of financial services and non-retail banking is a more generic category or an area we do very well in and we work with some integrators in the space that are known for it as well in terms of channel. Currently our CTO is actually the chief architect of the Thompson Reuter solution. He came on board with us a year ago, a year and a half ago as a full time hire. He was a consultant for many years after Thomson Reuters got customization space, and he worked with us for a long time and then finally our CTO to do other stuff, and Steve came on board. So we're very well positioned for this work.
So for your company, if you had to do an elevator pitch saying what all you do, what do you rattle off for them?
Alex Epshteyn: I think what we would do is, as you mentioned, mission critical type of usages, whichever vertical, right? We've done things with SCADA. We've done things in transportation that I wish I was at liberty to say, maybe soon, and it doesn't have to just be financial data. It could be sports feeds. It could be building services, things of that sort that are critical for the use. That's one of our specialty points.
The other is, I would say, while we're very happy to have relationships with a number of hardware companies, we still have really some high end hardware that we field. So what we do is, for very demanding applications, not necessarily mission critical ones, but those overlap obviously, we provide a full-stack solution, and these players, we're getting into the realm of show control type of players, really beefy and professional level graphics capabilities. So we do sell those. Those are fully our stack, and this way we can guarantee basically the solution as opposed to having us do a certain portion system integrated to another and so forth.
The last thing I would say is while we still support some level of OEM work, we currently have two customers that we work with. Our business model changed a bit in the last three years of supporting them. We have our standard SaaS business and in some cases we modified it for on-prem. So it's already flexible, but we also have a platform as a service offering to really support those OEM customers. So it's a lot less expensive in volume, very scalable, and I would say those are the things that really make us stand out. It's real time data, data visualization, full-stack solution with hardware to do very difficult things often, and finally, configuration where people assume real, ad-hocs customization. There's an assumption there, right? If you're doing something very bespoke, the assumption there is that it's gonna be insanely expensive and take a long time to build and that's true if you haven't built two dozen variants of it and you don’t have a toolkit to basically assemble it from parts like a LEGO set, which we do.
I would assume that your calling card when you go in to talk to opportunities, when you can say, yeah, we do the New York Stock Exchange, we do all the data handling on that, and you could imagine it's more than a little bit secure and mission critically oriented. I suspect that makes the target customers feel pretty comfy?
Alex Epshteyn: It does, and even before them, it makes consultants who put us on the bid lists and generally are interested in finding parties that can actually fulfill the scope, call us. So we don't really advertise much, and that's gonna change, I think, maybe next year. We're gonna do maybe a marketing splash at some point next year.
Right now, it's all word of mouth, and we do get a lot of calls. There's a lot of projects we actually pass on because they're not in our sweet spot and they're distractions, but the projects that we do take on are often difficult. We even do work in retail, as I mentioned to you, and the types of deals we take in are always really heavy data integration, visualization, where they are very automated workflows, there's almost no humans involved where the humans are basically special events, and then the system essentially corrects for automation again.
Yeah, I've been writing about data visualization for 6-7 years now, and when I started writing about it, it was pretty rare and beyond FIDS displays and things like that but it's now pretty standard. I'm curious because you guys are obviously super deep and experienced in that area, when you see all the other software companies saying, yeah, we do real time data, we can do realtime data handling, we can integrate, we have APIs and this and that.
When you get into a conversation with a prospect, how do you distinguish what you do versus other companies who say, yeah we do all that too, cuz I suspect it's different?
Alex Epshteyn: It is. One of the first things we've put on a table is that we can mostly guarantee our resolution time SLA, nobody else can pretty much. Most people will be aggressive, pick up the phone and work the problem, but the way that our stuff is built, we can fix the problem. We can guarantee fixing the problem within a certain period of time. Now it's not inexpensive, sometimes it's actually affordable for a lot of types of businesses where a fully custom solution would not be.
The other one is that most data visualization takes a lot of shortcuts, it really leverages, not to get too deep in technicalities unless you want me to, basically JavaScript and CSS, the mainstay of HTML5. But all of our data visualizations are built in WebGL. It's like the difference between driving a car on the road and driving a bullet train on tracks, right? There's no interruptions to the bullet train. It'll just go and it'll be on schedule. There's no interruptions. There's no jitter. There's no movement. That sort of paradigm. So we like to guarantee behavior of our data visualization, especially dynamic like charting or graphing libraries that we use and implement. It's actually extremely difficult to build something that you would think is easy like a ticker or crawler.
Whatever data that's feeding it, I’m sure we both have probably seen a lot of instances where it stutters, it has problems, it doesn't refresh on time and doesn't deal well with different fonts and whatnot. That's just not true of our solution. Our solution is, I would say, cutting edge on dynamic data visualization.
So for an end user or for an integrator, they have to educate themselves that just because a company says they can do real time data doesn't mean they can really do it. That means they might be able to reflect a number that's in a data table and show it on a screen, and that's quite a bit different from what you're talking about.
Alex Epshteyn: It is and maybe the third aspect is most of the companies we work with already have accounts with the big data warehouse places like Refinitive, IBS, and a number of others, so we already are super familiar with these back ends. In fact, we have things that monitor the APIs. We routinely do a lot of monitoring of real time or just dynamic sources. So this is a huge value add in the industry, and I wish more providers would do that because ultimately, if you are a data fed platform, it's up to you to tell the customer something's failing on the back end because they won't know, they'll assume all sorts of things, but you need to critically have the tools inside to tell what's going on, and if you build it out in a smart way, you can also alert the right people at the right time that something's happening and to look into it. So you can be proactive about it. That's the third item, I’d say.
They also change like the schemas and everything without telling people, right?
Alex Epshteyn: That's true. But it's a super exciting space. Once you have the core technology built out. You could really do a lot, in terms of, consuming this kind of data and I think generally, signage, we're in a slightly privileged position regarding this, but I think there's a move into industry towards generative and procedural content away from more Codec-heavy content. Although, there's obviously gonna be overlap for many years for both.
We certainly support Codec playback in a variety of ways, synchronized, on different players and so forth, and there's nice innovations like AV1 coming onto the market nowadays. But you could do so much more with generative dynamic content, it's a big difference. For instance, we had a client that wanted us to expose much more of the controllability of a layout, standard design tool inside of our platform. Now, typically we would not wanna do that because there's some nice tools on the market like Premiere, like After Effects, real tools that they generally use. But the problem that certain customers power users I would say are having is they don't wanna have to export an After Effects file and have it encoded in something, that's time, that's sometimes money because they do it externally because they don’t have a kit on-prem, or in the cloud.
So what we've done is basically have a simpler version of something like Adobe Premiere or After Effects that lets them make quick changes in some key framing or some transitory effects and they don't have to put the whole thing into a codec. So that seemed to really resonate with certain power users that we have and directionally, it's the area that we'd like to innovate in.
Is it important to make a distinction between generative data for business applications and generative data for artwork? Because I see a lot of video walls out there that are set and forget. They're driven by generative data and it's just these abstract visuals that are swirl and kind of bloom and everything else, but that's very different from, I think what you're talking about, which is what on the screen in terms of charting or what appears is based on what the data is influencing, it's it's shaping what appears?
Alex Epshteyn: That’s correct. A lot of general data is canned, right? It's almost like a video basically, and some experts, some design shops typically would change it for you, and it becomes evergreen content, day two, three, and day four. What we try to do is something a little bit different and we work with some really nice design companies as well. So just to be completely clear, we don't do the design ourselves. We typically either partner with a company that's really good at it. Sometimes the company brings us into the opportunity, right?
The consultant can also spec us to partner with somebody or the end client may have relationships with companies that do this very well. But, I would say the formulation, the recipe for this kind of thing, to make it dynamic is a few things, and that's where this sort of generative content becomes more like a Zignage type of problem, as opposed to something that you could hire a design house to basically build for you, right?
One is that you could update content even if the filters or the generative piece is running. Separately you might be able to in CMS have the tools to change the filters of the generative option, just as I explained prior, and finally have trigger conditions. We do mostly casting, right? There are some great companies in space. I think they're very good at that kinda stuff. They do a lot of smart interactive signage. We do a little bit of that, but we mostly do narrowcasting. So in our world trigger conditions come from some sort of backend system. It could be a calendaring system, it could be something smarter, right? Where it's not just a boolean condition. It could be a multivariable that basically has to click off a list of things that can happen. And that's really where we can add a lot of value and it overlaps with the kinda work we do with the New York Stock Exchange. We generally term it as business logic So we really do some smart business logic and I think it's actually, there's a lot of growth in that area once we apply modern sort of machine learning to it to make it extensible to go further.
But with that kind of approach you have an ability to modify a piece of content continuously, right? It's a living piece of generative content, even if it's not dynamically fed with financial data sources, or sports data sources.
I haven't seen your user experience, but I'm guessing people listening to this are thinking, this is really interesting, but I'd be terrified to try to use this software. What’s it actually like?
Alex Epshteyn: You’re not gonna be terrified because we are one of the proponents of nearly or fully automated systems. So often what we do for non-power users is to give a build out to the software that our customers use, and then everything is essentially this business logic that I'm describing to you.
It’s kinda like a headless CMS?
Alex Epshteyn: It's like a headless CMS for the non-power users. For the power users that really like their tools like Adobe, or you could just use a Dropbox or some sort of hotfolder mechanism. We're also partnered with a number of DAM solutions. There's a lot of workflow that happens in digital asset management solutions, including tag based workflows.
We do a lot of tag based workflows nowadays, where we consume the tags that are done in a DAM, and essentially they find their way onto the right players at the right time, and on the flip side, we do have a standard suite. It's actually going through a major overhaul at the end of the year, what we call Z Cast 6. It does have a number of these power tools. But our CMS generally follows a certain idea. It was popular for a while and it's hard to execute unless you have our kinds of customers, which is what we call an additive UX. So it's the opposite of something like Microsoft Office, right where you have a billion features and there's a long learning curve if you wanna learn everything.
What we do is really try to identify the user story behind what needs to be done. We create the access controls that really expose certain parts of the CMS, and even within the same context, add or remove tools as needed. That creates a situation where there's almost really minimal training. I think one of the biggest problems we're trying to solve for our direct customers, or channel customers is the attrition that happens in major enterprises for users of digital signage, right? Like one of the biggest problems we face even in huge banks is the fact that digital signage is consigned to a webmaster subcategory. Like they manage the CMS that's published on their portal, and then somebody in that team or a few people in that team handles digital signage as well. So that's historically been a problem for our whole industry, and what we're trying to tackle is kinda remove both the friction of adoption and also try to give them the tools that they need, and if they use tools, bridge those tools, that's our philosophy on that end.
So what's the structure of your company? Are you a private company?
Alex Epshteyn: We are a private company. We're an LLC in New York, and we're about 20 people. Most of our development used to take place until very recently in Ukraine because one of my partners and I from there originally. So as this topic is in the news, unfortunately, forget about our team. The fact is cities in the eastern part of Ukraine are partially destroyed but luckily a lot of the folks that we would use are in the Western part of Ukraine now, and we continue to use them but not all of them unfortunately.
So you're having to manage your way through that along with other things, right?
Alex Epshteyn: We did, and they're very talented folks. We have worked on so many projects.
Yeah, it's interesting. I was trading LinkedIn messages with another company and he was talking about operating out of Odessa and they're still like opening QSRs and things like that and putting in menu boards.
Alex Epshteyn: Good for them. That's exactly what they should do.
Yeah, and I was thinking, boy, all the other challenges you have out there, like supply chain and everything else, layer in a hot war on top of that. Good lord.
Alex Epshteyn: Our problems are very small compared to the real problems in Ukraine and the world. But it's a small world. You sort of face these things as they come.
Well, hopefully someway or other, it gets resolved. I'm not quite sure how, but this was great. Can you let people know where they can find your company online?
Alex Epshteyn: Sure. It's Zignage.com
So signage with a Z on the front?
Alex Epshteyn: Correct. The last word is Zignage. You find me on LinkedIn, Alex Epshteyn. That's where mostly we do our sort of minimum branding that we do.
All right, but we'll be looking for more later in the year, right?
Alex Epshteyn: Absolutely. We're excited to make some announcements in the transportation space, some more in the financial industry and some more in retail.
All right. Great to hear it's going well for you. Thanks so much for spending the time with me.
Alex Epshteyn: Thank you, Dave. My pleasure.
Wednesday Jun 22, 2022
Naveen Viswanatha, Google
Wednesday Jun 22, 2022
Wednesday Jun 22, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
The prevailing impression of Google and digital signage is that the tech giant came briefly into the sector a few years ago, made some noise, and then quietly left. But the reality is that the tech giant has continued to be active in digital signage, and there are numerous screen networks out there running on Chrome OS devices through different CMS software vendors.
Then there's Android, the Google-developed operating system used on a pile of smart displays and separate play-out boxes.
But now Google is again getting visibly active in the digital signage and related kiosk ecosystem, extending an existing program called Chrome Enterprise Recommended to software vendors who use Chrome OS. It's also introduced a Chrome OS device management license, for narrow-purpose uses like screens and kiosks, that works out to just a touch more than a couple of bucks a month. And there's Flex, an application that can extend the life of a Windows box by running Chrome, and enable screen networks using a blend of playback hardware.
I think a lot of the early interest in Google, back in 2015, was with the relatively low prices of the software and hardware. These days, it likely has more to do with scale, manageability and security.
I spoke with Naveen Viswanatha, Google's product lead on Chrome OS.
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TRANSCRIPT
Naveen, thank you for joining me. What's your role at Google?
Naveen Viswanatha: Hey, thanks for having me. I am the Chrome OS Product Lead for our solution areas and our solution areas include virtualization, contact center, and very recently we've beefed up our kiosk and digital signage solution area.
Are you at the main campus out in Silicon Valley?
Naveen Viswanatha: I am, indeed. Yeah, right here in the heart of the main campus in Mountain View.
How long have you been with Google?
Naveen Viswanatha: I have been with Google for 16 years but I haven't been spending the whole time in Chrome OS. I've been using Chrome OS for about 7 years, I believe.
So you're almost a lifer in Google terms?
Naveen Viswanatha: I guess so, it seems like that.
I'm gonna talk about Chrome OS. Can you give me a sense of the installed base globally for Chrome OS? I don't need like today's number, but just like … it's many millions, right?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah. We don't break out specific details, but yeah it's in the millions and that kind of spans, I would say across three broad areas. Education is one area. So students and student Chromebooks and boxes. Consumer, and then Enterprise and, within Enterprise, that's where my focus is in the solution space. So yeah, that's how we look at the overall market, but yeah it's seen a tremendous amount of growth, especially in the last several years.
Yeah, the pandemic really put a push on Chrome for Education, right?
Naveen Viswanatha: It did. I would actually say that it increased an already healthy appetite for Chrome devices within the education space. I actually used to be part of the education team, and we went from devices that were primarily purchased by schools and districts to devices that were now starting to see adoption in the home and that was the kind of recent trend that we saw over the course of the pandemic is really devices being used in the home, remote for delivery of curriculum.
Would that be driven in part by just the simple fact that the kids are learning at home now, and the parents are seeing the Chromebooks and thinking, okay these are perfectly workable laptops?
Naveen Viswanatha: That's entirely right, and in addition to that, some of the unique capabilities allow students to use their education profiles. So the same profile that they use on their Chromebooks at school, they can log into a personal Chromebook at home and all of their data, all of their bookmarks, their applications, everything is synced to them pretty uniquely.
And so, that ability of having this kind of floating cloud profile was another reason that it became really easy to simply adopt Chrome devices at home.
Okay, so on the enterprise side, you know, this is a digital signage podcast so we talk about digital signage. I assume that relative to education and to consumer, the percentage of the installed basis for digital signs of kiosk would be still pretty small, right?
Naveen Viswanatha: It's smaller. It's growing though, and in fact, I would actually say that we saw a lot of acceleration, arguably more acceleration broadly in the Enterprise space, over the pandemic in terms of growth, relative to the other verticals I was talking about, and a lot of that had to do with unique capabilities of Chrome that aligned really well with some of the challenges that businesses had during the pandemic to really maintain business continuity, whether that was remote work or whether that was increased concerns around security, data protection due to being remote.
These are all things that Chrome OS was really designed for, and so over the course of the pandemic, we saw a huge acceleration in these trends, and as a result Chrome OS was really the platform and endpoint of choice for many organizations.
When I wrote last week about the announcement that, of the the recommended track for kiosk in digital signage. I said that Google made a big splash in the digital signage space in 2015. They took a big booty in the middle of the primary trade show for the industry and had all kinds of people looking at that booth and going, “oh, interesting, these guys are involved. I wonder what that means and will they take over and so on…” and it didn't really happen, there would be suggestions that Google got into the space and then got out of the space but what I wrote was basically, maybe they stepped back a little bit visibly, but they've continued to be in the digital signage and kiosk space and have a pretty decent footprint that isn't known.
Is that a fair statement?
Naveen Viswanatha: I think that is a fair characterization and I'm glad you brought that up because, as we've seen the trend over the course of the last couple of years, some of the trends that I was talking about with regards to the pandemic, those trends around moving to cloud and web are significant. Those trends in moving to remote and hybrid work are significant, increased data protection and controls are significant, and that primarily those three things really accrue primarily to end user computing so Chrome books and Chrome boxes used by employees.
But in addition to that, I think this kind of ties back to your point, we did see a lot of interesting trends as people started moving back into physical spaces. So increased expectations from customers for self-service options, increased expectations from employees for more engaging physical environments when they do return to the office, and these kinds of latter two trends are unique to kiosk and digital signage. So that's where we started really leaning more into this business that we have had for some time, as you mentioned, but really on the backs of what our customers and our partners were doing and what we're seeing as broader trends, we really wanted to lean into this area and really help drive more growth and drive more value into the overall ecosystem znd so recently we have really beefed up our efforts around kiosks and digital signage.
You know, when you work in a very niche industry like digital signage, you have this distorted idea that it's actually a pretty big industry, but in the the overall scheme of things, it's tiny, and I wondered if Google, going back a few years, looked at digital signage and continued to look at it and thought this is interesting stuff.
Signage and kiosks, it's got some possibilities, but it's so small compared to education. How much focus have you put on it?
Naveen Viswanatha: I think that's a fair question. The reality, I think is that we have always maintained that we want to be an enterprise computing platform, or commercial, basically anything that requires a business or an organization or an NGO or a government to purchase devices and be the primary buyer. So it's a very broad space, and over the last several years, we have endeavored to really beef up our capabilities around end user computing. That was somewhat timed coincidentally with the pandemic. So that was an area of focus for us starting in 2018-19, really to emphasize these focuses on these solution areas, as I was mentioning, to really go after distinct sections of the enterprise market, and then very recently, starting to invest in kiosk and digital signage because we're starting to see additional trends driving that and those trends being lined up with ChromeOS capabilities.
So I wouldn't say it was due to the size of the market in particular. I think it's just in terms of when we think about our overall strategy and where we saw our customers really taking the platform, we wanted to really lean into those areas, and so that's really been the main driver is trying to meet our customers where they are, and identify areas that have a strong product market fit in the enterprise space and you see that as a reflection of the key solution areas that we're investing in, including kiosks and signage now.
So when Google as a company takes an interest in something like this, how does that manifest itself in real terms? Is there like a dedicated team or is this one market that a broader Chrome OS team pays attention to and puts some work into?
Naveen Viswanatha: That's a really good question. So I keep referring to these solution areas and maybe it'll help a little bit because I think that'll help frame the answer to your question a bit more to talk about what these solution areas are.
A few years ago we started looking at where we were seeing product market fit and where we were seeing our customers adopt Chrome OS beyond education, and really noticed that to deliver a robust solution built on top of this platform, you really needed to have an end to end solution that customers and organizations knew was just gonna work and work really well, and so what that meant was there's really four components to these solution areas. So there's underlying features and capabilities of the operating system itself, so security, APIs, core functionality that the operating system provides, even for enterprises, things that are unique to the solution areas and I can list off a few new features and capabilities that we have as an example that are unique to the kiosk and signage solution area but that's another part of that.
The second component is around management. So how can these solutions areas and their administrators and the folks that manage these solutions, manage the platform easily? And then there's an ecosystem component to this too, and this is really what I think rounds out our notion of a solution area. An ecosystem includes devices so endpoints and OEMs, as well as peripherals and then ISV partners. So solution providers that actually build their products on top of Chrome OS and we ensure that they're optimized and integrated into the operating system. So that's what constitutes a solution area, and as we saw increased focus and investment in those solution areas, we started really orienting our teams to deliver against that.
On the product and engineering side and the UX side within Google, that means that we still rely on broad platform capabilities that you think of more as foundational layers, but increasingly we have teams that are focused on delivering features capabilities, management capabilities, specific to solution areas. And we'll talk a little bit about that or what we did for the kiosk, and then in addition to that, we really started focusing our partner teams on the partners, both the devices, peripherals, as well as ISV partners that we wanted to work with to really bring these solutions to life, and so there's increasing focus around these areas and we're really organizing ourselves across the stack to really deliver towards these solutions.
So you have this Chrome enterprise recommended track for “kiosk and digital signage”. When I saw that, I wasn't familiar with it and I thought, okay, they've created this, but in doing a little bit of digging, it looks like you have Chrome enterprise recommended tracks in other areas already. So this is something you already do and you've added digital signs and kiosks?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, that's exactly right. The solution tracks that you saw prior to the recent announcement for the kiosk track were really built around the end user computing growth that we were seeing in the last several years that I was alluding to earlier, and very recently, last week we announced the kiosk and signage Chrome enterprise recommended solution track, and so nine partners that we worked with, their solutions are validated, they're optimized, they're integrated into Chrome OS. That means that our partner engineering teams have worked with these organizations to ensure that everything that they build on our platform works. They are regression tests every release that comes out. So we're really tightly working with these organizations, and we only expect, especially in the kiosk and signage space, this category to grow over the coming quarters and years.
And this whole validation process, is that to keep your engineers sane or is it in certain respects, a marketing tool to say this is kind of Google approved and Google validated?
Naveen Viswanatha: It's a bit of both actually. We actually go through and test these solutions within our own test labs, and then these providers also will be testing their solutions with every Chrome OS release, and as a result of that, we badge these providers, these ISV partners of ours, and that badge effectively denotes that level of confidence for any organization that's going to adopt an end to end solution.
Some of the companies that are involved in this are pretty small in relative terms. Are they getting involved, to use a term a colleague of mine used to use, “to bask in reflected glory that we're working with Google” or have they made a business decision based on the technology that this is where things are going and we wanna get ahead of it?
Naveen Viswanatha: I've spoken to many of these partners and really a lot of it boils down to their alignment either from a business or technology standpoint that they want to really align their solutions with a platform that they feel is going to help them scale their business. These are organizations that are typically developing web-based applications that are lightweight, robust and work well on Chrome as a web-based operating system.
Security is a big concern for them, and I think it's a growing concern in the signage space. We've spoken to many customers having concerns about their screens taken over. If you have more and more screens in your physical spaces, your brand and your operations are potentially at risk, and so a lot of these partners kind of align to that element of Chrome, and I think the simplicity in being able to remotely manage devices, that's another area that these partners have really embraced and benefited from.
So I think it's really around looking at what technology and platform they want to align with and that's where we've started our conversations with them and as you mentioned they represent a specific segment of the market, and I think over the coming quarters and years, we're really looking to add more partners to our kiosk and signage Chrome enterprise recommended track.
I got a sense back in 2015 that when the first iteration of this came out and you had a whole bunch of partners really quickly that a lot of the energy and interest around Chrome devices was, here's low cost management software and relatively low cost playback hardware versus the PCs that were out in the market then and it was just at a point when you were starting to see set top boxes and things like that being used.
I sense that's changed, that the partner marketplace is a lot more sophisticated, and as you've alluded to, they're looking more at things like security and ease of management?
Naveen Viswanatha: A hundred percent, that is absolutely right. The kiosk and signage landscape has shifted dramatically, I think, in the last, 18 to 24 months really, kind of emerging out of the pandemic as well, and I think it was shifting before and then I think what happened was that a lot of physical spaces started really being underutilized during the early part of the pandemic, but then that really set customer expectations and business expectations a lot around how they can be use technology to really digitally transform their businesses, and so as people started moving back into physical spaces, customers started moving back into physical spaces, it came with a fervor that I think has really accelerated some interesting opportunities in the signage space.
Opportunities and threats too, as you mentioned, security and data protection and these things are becoming more and more of a concern. Updating, if you have more screens and more kiosks in your physical space, the kind of traditional operating systems that were being used, don't lend themselves well to that, right? They don't lend themselves well to being updated, being patched, being managed remotely. I think we've all seen blue screens in airports and different types of signs before. That's becoming more and more challenging, just the reliability and remote management.
So as these trends are starting to really put pressure on a lot of businesses, that's where Chrome OS is starting to really be considered more and more as a robust platform that can really help accelerate the next phase of digital transformation in these physical spaces.
I get the argument for Windows and the bloatware and the crap on there and the updates you can't control and all those sorts of things. It's less of an issue with Linux but there's still an issue?
Naveen Viswanatha: Linux is an interesting platform. We don't see it too much ourselves but I think one of the challenges with Linux has to do with that it can do anything you really want it to, but in order to get it, to do what you want, it takes a lot of tuning, a lot of configuration, a lot of setup, and so I think you'll be spending the cost as an organization on either building up the technical capacity and knowing how to do that and really piecemealing a solution together, and at some point you're probably gonna ask yourself, is it worth it for our business to really become a Linux expert for our digital signage and kiosk strategy? Is that really core to driving the customer experience or should we rely on a platform like Chrome OS to give us a lot of that as part of its core capability?
And if you're using something like Chrome OS as a software firm, is there less demand to have in-house expertise around an operating system, if you're using something like Chrome versus Linux?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, I would say that's one of the common benefits that we've seen. Recently I spoke to a retailer abroad in Asia, and they were saying that they saw an 80% reduction in staff having to focus on updates and management of the platform, and I asked the question because I wasn't sure if they said 80% or 18% because 80% sounded really startling and in fact they said no 80%, and now these individuals, they're effectively being focused on higher order capabilities with higher order needs within the organization rather than just going out and servicing screens and devices that needed to be updated, they're focusing more on higher value business objectives.
And so absolutely, I think this is one of the areas where businesses need to ask themselves is this core, or is it context? It means core to obviously incorporate digital signage and service options within your business, but is it core for your organization to understand exactly how an operating system is gonna work?
One of the arguments that a very successful company in the digital signage space called BrightSign makes … they are spin out of Roku and the CEO is saying that one of the reasons there's a lot of attraction to our hardware is we don't really have an operating system. It's our own proprietary operating system. So there's nothing to really hack. There's nothing you can do with it.
I understand the risk with Windows and to a lesser degree with Linux are, and I know you do harden Chrome, but what are there ways in? And if there are, please explain them to me. (Laughter)
Naveen Viswanatha: That's actually one of the areas that I think we have a very strong track record around, and I will add that systems will get compromised over time, and unless you have a security team, a large robust security team, actively monitoring and ensuring that exploits and vulnerabilities are gonna be patched consistently, that turnaround time needs to be very quick, and that's exactly what we do on the Chrome OS side, and I think you can look at our track record. We have zero ransomware attacks ever reported on Chrome OS.
It's also another component that if you double click into the security piece of Chrome OS, it’s really baked into the operating system. Many other operating systems out there will think about security as a bolt on afterthought. It's core to exactly how Chrome OS works. I'll give you a couple of examples.
Executables are blocked from running on the operating system, they're just blocked. And so that's a huge vector of vulnerability that is just removed entirely. Timely security updates, like I was talking about before. We have the ability to roll out updates on a four week cycle. Even if you're part of our long term stable channel so organizations that don't choose to get four week updates on the operating system, they wanna actually get six month updates instead, even if you're on that six month long term stable support channel, we will still roll out critical security updates to you. So you get the best of both worlds, right? And again, we have a whole team of people that are watching and monitoring what kind of vulnerabilities are out there on a consistent basis, and I'll mention one more thing really quickly and that is that the operating system files are kept in a complete, separate partition, so they can't be modified at all. So let’s say with kiosk, your app is hacked in some way, or there's a vulnerability in the application that you're building, the operating system itself is hardened and entirely isolated from the application session itself.
It's just a handful of things to think about. I think any chief information security officer or CIO or organization that's really looking at security needs to evaluate it broadly, and we have a lot of great material that can tell you beyond what I've said here. Why Chrome OS is a very hardened and safe operation.
I suspect you've also learned a lot through the years too. I know that some of the companies who were early on with Google using Chrome OS, they were frustrated by new versions that would break their software, and I think you got to a point pretty quickly where you started to pin the OS versions and a company could stay on that until they're ready to move to the next one instead of being auto-updated.
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, and we have learned a lot over the last several years, and you bring up a good point. One of the design principles that we really try to anchor on, when you think about what a business wants, they want predictability and control. They wanna know when things are gonna change, they wanna have the control to be able to initiate those changes.
Even if we have this release train rolling out great new updates, security updates, new features. As a business, you want to be able to throttle that, and yeah, we have a number of different controls that have allowed organizations to do that. A long term stable and support channel, which I mentioned expands the actual stable channel that the operating system is on for six months. So that was a big one that we announced earlier this year. But in addition to that, the ability to, like you said, pin different application versions and be able to know exactly when you wanna roll those out, there's a number of other controls that allow you to better understand how you're gonna update your fleet.
So tell me about Flex.
Naveen Viswanatha: Ah, we're super excited about Flex. So that was one of the three big announcements we had around CER. The first one was the Chrome enterprise recommended solution track that you alluded to earlier. The second one was a brand new SKU that's focused specifically on kiosks and digital signage, and we can get to that in a moment too, and the third one was the incorporation of Flex.
So Flex is something that we announced earlier this year and what it allows organizations to do is install Chrome OS on any device they already have. So if you have an existing investment, say in Windows devices, they're aging, you're not sure when you're gonna refresh them, maybe you wanna refresh part of them but you wanna get the benefits of Chrome OS, the security, the built in updates, everything we've been talking about thus far, remote management, you can now install Chrome OS Flex on those devices and get all of the benefits from Chrome OS.
So we've seen that as a really interesting opportunity in the kiosk space as many customers are starting to use that as an. Chrome OS. So they'll maybe extend the life of their existing infrastructure for a couple of years, and then we'll see them roll onto Chrome devices in the future, but we've also seen organizations look at Chrome OS Flex as a way to really tailor what they want in terms of device capabilities for their signage solutions based on the breadth of different hardware and endpoints that exist out there today.
So for example, if you wanted an existing device that is not a Chrome OS device, either based on the aesthetics of it, based on the form factor or performance, is it ruggedized, fanless, et cetera. You can look at that and say I wanna use that device. It's not a Chrome OS device, but with Flex now, I can transform that into a Chrome OS device and incorporate it into my overall device strategy.
So why can you extend your life? Is that because it's a leaner application and strips out a lot of stuff?
Naveen Viswanatha: It's because we're able to really look at the hardware and separate the hardware from the software, and so rather than relying on Microsoft's operating system support and when that's gonna be EOLd (end of lifed) or when the device itself be becomes EOLd, Chrome OS Flex allows us to effectively say, look, that's an end point and we're gonna separate the software and the operating system from the actual device components. As an organization there creates an abstraction layer for you to utilize Flex as a way to extend the life of that infrastructure.
I assume you could also run a blended network as well, so that you could have Chrome OS devices and re refurbed windows or reclaimed windows devices as Flex devices and run concurrently. You don't have to have a network, that's just all pure Chrome OS devices.
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and that's what we're starting to see with many of our customers who will start with Chrome OS flex, but then they’ll say … a lot of organizations, especially larger organizations, they don't necessarily have one device on one operating system or one endpoint or one operating system, they have a plethora of them and these devices might be on different refresh and end of life cycle.
So when there might be one coming up, say, at the end of next year, Chrome OS Flex is a great way to evaluate Chrome OS capabilities. Most of the time customers overwhelmingly are happy with Chrome OS and start using that as an onboarding mechanism for other Chrome devices or then rolling out Flex to other parts of their fleet that might be the end of lifting and subsequent years. And so during that time, they will have, like you said, a hybrid model of Chrome OS devices, as well as Flex devices, and you can absolutely manage those through the single pane of glass, like via the partner pane of glass, one of the nine partners that we just announced, or even our own admin console.
You mentioned a new SKU. What is that?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah we're very excited about that. The new SKU is called the kiosk and signage upgrade, and what it does is it unlocks all of the signage capabilities that an organization wants, but none of anything else that you need. And what I mean by that is that Chrome OS is an operating system that serves end user computing, as well as signage. On the end user computing side, you need capabilities to manage users, user profiles, logins, different types of login modalities. But on the signage side, you don't really need that, right? Even if there's end user interaction, there's a lot of user modes and user capabilities that are not part of that overall management…
Because it's a dumb end point in a hell of a lot of cases?
Naveen Viswanatha: I wouldn't use the word dumb, but because it's a highly focused endpoint, and as a result of that, we tailored a SKU which is $25 per device per year. So that's half off, two bucks a month basically, enterprise SKU, and for that, you get this 50% off SKU and very focused functionality, still gives you all the security, all the device controls, cloud management, reporting and insights. You just don't get the user controls that you get with the Chrome enterprise upgrade SKU, and that's the full SKU.
But if you did want those user controls, for whatever reason it may be, could you use those? And could you run a blended network with both kinds of licenses?
Naveen Viswanatha: Absolutely and we have a lot of customers that that, that are doing exactly
One thing that came up a few years ago and there was some buzz around it, but I don't know where it went. There was chatter that Android, which is pretty widely used in digital signage as well, was going to converge with Chrome OS and it was going to be the same thing that didn't really happen or did I miss it?
Naveen Viswanatha: No, it didn't happen. I've been on the team for seven years, so I'm not sure if what you're referring to is before my time, but we do have Android and Chrome OS as a company, two operating systems that serve different parts of the overall market.
Now you're right that there is going to be some overlap. We see Android in the signage space. We see Android focusing a little bit more on mobile kiosk type of use cases. So a customer associate in a store walking around with a tablet style device, so things along those lines, whereas Chrome OS feels like it's a bit more focused on fixed facility types of infrastructure, and that's how we see the segmentation today. And we obviously worked very closely with the Android team.
Over time I think, as things evolve somewhat organically, if there are opportunities to bring these two capabilities or two operating systems together, that's something that we will consider but today we see a pretty natural segmentation.
One thing I will add is that you were talking about managing a blended environment. With the Chrome OS capabilities and Android management capabilities, many organizations are managing both Chrome OS and Android endpoints through their universal endpoint management solutions. So that is a way that these two solutions can coexist even today.
This has been great. I could have talked for at least an hour or more, but we committed to a certain time window, so I should honor it. The last question I wanted to ask is just very simply if software companies and solution providers wanna get involved, or at least look into this how do they start?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, so you can go to our website. We have a lot of great information on our website. For customers, we have a wayfinding guide. We have information about the different solutions that we have for kiosk in terms of both devices that they can use at as endpoints, as well as peripherals that they can also utilize.
On the partner side, on the solution provider side gets in contact with our business development team. I know we are actively looking at working with more and more partners. I mentioned earlier that we listed nine and that's just a starting point, and what we've seen is that on the solution provider and ISV side, as you scale out globally, there are a lot of kinds of localized partners that do a lot of work in different regions, and so we expect this area to really build out significantly over the coming years. So get in touch with our BD team and our business development team, and be happy to work with you, figure out ways to incorporate you into our Chrome enterprise recommended program.
As you dug into this, were you surprised by how many CMS software companies are out there?
Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, I absolutely was. Especially considering where we were just five years ago or so. It seems like this has been one of the areas where we've seen a lot of hyper specialization and hyper localization. So unlike other solution categories like contact center, as an example, you tend to have a number of global players and then a few localized players within each market.
In this particular arena, in kiosks and digital signage, it feels very different because you look at APAC. I can't even talk about APAC as a market because each country, and sometimes even within countries, different specializations with retail versus employee spaces and workspaces has created a huge ecosystem around kiosks and signage. So yes, long answer in terms of in terms of your original question, but absolutely.
That's good for me because a crowded market means there's more to write about and talk about. (Laughter)
Well, thank you very much for spending some time with me!
Naveen Viswanatha: Thank you, and appreciate the time and opportunity, and I look forward to talking to you again at some point.
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Denys Lavigne, Oasis Immersion
Wednesday May 25, 2022
Wednesday May 25, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
One of the best things about projection mapping technology is its ability to completely fill a big space with immersive visuals. The resulting experiences can be good enough to become paid attractions.
There are now dedicated, ticketed venues devoted to immersive, projection-mapped experiences around the world, and one of the best is Oasis Immersion, a venue in downtown Montreal that was dreamed up by a guy who'll be very familiar to the digital signage community - Denys Lavigne.
He started and ran Arsenal Media for many years - building up a creative shop that most years would all but sweep the digital signage awards programs it entered. Arsenal was ultimately acquired by the display technology firm Christie, and Lavigne continued working for them for about four years, before deciding to step away and chase a new dream.
That's been a real journey. I had lunch with him years ago, in New York, when he laid out the rough concept for me. I did a walk-through of the venue back in 2019, when it was just a set of darkened rooms, months off from opening. Then COVID hit, and the launch plans were derailed by lockdowns. The concept and business clawed its way through the pandemic, and Oasis is open and thriving with experiences designed to both amaze and inspire.
I had a terrific catch-up chat recently with Denys.
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TRANSCRIPT
Denys, can you tell me what Oasis is all about?
Denys Lavigne: Oasis Immersion is an immersive destination that was launched on February 25th, 2021 in Montreal. It's within the Montreal convention center, and it's really part of this new trend of immersion as a destination, similar to places like the Cathédrale in Paris, the Team Lab project in Tokyo have actually quite a few. So it's really based on projection and audio, it's a 25,000 square foot space structured in three galleries. There's a cafe bar, there's a boutique and there are two additional experiential areas. So I'm really proud of this project.
And this is right in the heart of Montreal, right?
Denys Lavigne: Right in the heart of Montreal, the Montreal convention center is located between the old Montreal area and the cultural district and the business district. So it's within an area called the international district which bridges to many strategic areas within the city.
And this is, if I'm remembering correctly, because I've walked through this space with you, it was an old loading dock or something for the convention center?
Denys Lavigne: It was actually before a bus station, and it was transformed into a potential future exhibit area but the project never really came through so it was actually used as just a storage facility, and because of its location within the convention center, it wasn't necessarily easy to use as a rental space, because most of the other areas' rental rooms and conference space are on the upper floors. So it became a no man's land, and when I was made aware that this area was just sitting there, I thought this could be a great place for this project. I had the immersive destination project in mind for a while, and this was the perfect timing and the perfect location to do it.
Yeah, you're right across from some pretty good hotels and not far away from some other ones and obviously it's a convention center, so there's a ton of people flowing through there. It's on a subway line on and on. So it seems kind of perfect.
Denys Lavigne: Absolutely. For us, the location in terms of the site itself was really important, and the other interesting aspect about the location, it helps us to diversify the business model around the project. So we do have, of course a more B2C angle with the immersive exhibits that we present to the audience, but we also have a B2B angle where the space can be privatized for different type of events and used as a another option in terms of the rental for spaces so it works out really well from so many angles.
This is one of these “experiences” where you're going to walk in and with projection mapping, you're just going to be totally immersed in whatever the theme is for that particular exhibition?
Denys Lavigne: Yes, so there's a lot of different definitions about what is an immersive experience these days. I think VR industry will very often refer to these types of experiences as immersive experiences, and it is in a certain way. The way I define a real immersive experience is about stepping into this other world that is dynamic and putting the visitor in the middle of the story of the experience itself and the experience evolves and there's a total immersion from an audio and video perspective.
So yes, it's the type of experience where you walk around, it's similar to a museum and that really helped us in terms of finally being able to open because initially the project was scheduled to open early June of 2020 and of course, we all know what happened, and we were able to reopen a bit sooner than some other cultural destinations because of the fact that people walked around the space like a museum. There's no time limit. There is no official start to the show. You do have to buy a ticket to arrive at a certain time so that we can manage the traffic flow and limit waiting time at the entrance, but it's really like a very free experience in terms of the way that you want to experience, the duration, and yes, you walk into every room and there's 360 projections on the floors, and of course spatialized audio in every room, which is a really important thing that is often underestimated in terms of its importance within an immersive experience.
This has been quite a journey for you. As you mentioned, you plan to be open in Q2 2020, but then COVID hit but this is actually something that's been in the works for what, two or three years prior to that?
Denys Lavigne: I was actually made aware of the site in the summer of 2018 and then the development process started from there. So yes, there was a process to it, and of course the pandemic added another layer of complexity to putting this project together. The past two years have been quite difficult, but we're turning the corner and fortunately, it's a good time to offer the audience this type of experience. I think there's a lot of interest and these experiences can be so powerful, and I think if we continue to do a good job from a quality of experience perspective, then we have the feeling that the audience is listening, the audience is interested and it's looking good for the future.
We had to go through this process to put the project together and roll through the difficulties of the pandemic. But now, things are stabilizing and we're looking forward to build for the future.
When we talked about this well before you launched, you put a big premium on wanting to have very much thematically curated expositions that were built around an idea, as opposed to just having generative data artists put something up on these big canvases and make it flow and ooze and do whatever it was going to do. You want it to talk about particular topics like space, and so on.
Denys Lavigne: Yeah, specific topics, but also specific topics at the right time, and I think that speaks to the kind of the heritage that I have coming into the immersive world through the world of digital signage and having been exposed to the different types of projects where the essence of it is to show the right message, at the right place, at the right time and that mindset carried through this project, and for us, one of the interesting aspects was to look at building a curated programming that was relevant to present at a certain moment in time so the here and now angle for us is quite important, and how it connects through not necessarily the news of the day, but the bigger picture trends of the moment.
So this is how we approach our programming, allowing us to go in different directions. But staying relevant in terms of the timing of it, and also staying aligned with our DNA about using this media to share an optimistic perspective of life and use this media in a way that will inspire people, that will give them something that will stay within them after the exhibit hopefully, and just provide an uplifting perspective. This is really at the heart of this Oasis project, because the immersive media can be such a powerful experience that for us, the notion that it had to be relevant at that moment in time and provide a positive influence to our visitors was really important because both me and my co-founder and a dear friend, we're big fans of rays and multimedia performances, and I think one thing that we noticed over time is that there was very often a lack of connection with the times, this lack of sometimes emotion, that it was visual exploration just to explore, and sometimes it was really interesting, but we thought that a curated approach that was both relevant and inspirational, and that touched people was where we wanted to be and how we wanted to use the media.
Have you developed a sense that the aspiration to strike an emotion with the people who are visiting, that's working? Are you getting feedback that this was more than just visually interesting to them?
Denys Lavigne: Absolutely, and it's been so rewarding to get that feedback from the audience. We often see people in rooms that are very touched, that actually show emotions. We have feedback on our social media. Artists get direct email and visitors share directly with the artists what they went through and the emotions, and now we're absolutely where we want to be, and we want to continue to build on that.
We actually, as part of the process of getting better as a creative group and understanding the media, which is still quite a young media. We launched an initiative called the Direct French Translation, and we worked with a startup company that uses biometric tools to measure the impact of experiences from an emotional and cognitive perspective, and we did a preliminary phase last fall as part of our Unwind exhibits and the preliminary results are actually quite positive. So we have the declarative piece, feedback from the audience, feedback on social media and on surveys and direct messages to the artists are quite positive, but now we also have a data driven piece that starts to show, starts to establish that the people are reacting in a good way and we now have preliminary patterns, biometric patternss to support it.
If I went to Oasis immersion right now, what would be the shows that I'd see?
Denys Lavigne: So we recently launched our Spring/Summer programming, and there were a few elements that we launched. The first one is that we activated the notion of having multiple shows playing at the same time. So we currently have two choices of exhibits that visitors can choose from. Officially, we launched a large interactive floor in our main room, which is to my knowledge, one of the largest permanent interactive floors in North America. We pre-launched it in February, but officially launched it as part of the spring/summer programming. We currently have two exhibits, the Recharger/Unwind, which is a sensory experience in the world of generative arts, but structured as a wellness experience. We're extending that show because it's been a big success for us. The show was originally launched last fall, but since there was still interest we're continuing with that. But our new main show is called Van Gogh distortion, and this is the first time that we are doing an exhibit featuring a painter and it's really about acknowledging the world phenomena that has come out of this union of the medium of immersion, and the world of painters and Van Gigh was a key figure in that movement, and we did it.
We produced a show that is aligned with the spirits of Oasis that goes along in terms of the positive, inspirational angle, but also best practices in terms of how we feel a show like that needs to be produced because we all have seen some of these shows around the world, and some of them, I feel lack depth in terms of the experience itself. The way that we work with the painter, artwork and create a powerful, immersive experience where we actually put the people in the middle of the experience and that we use sound in a good way. For us, the painters shows we would have liked to see more around the world, and again it's an acknowledgement of that global phenomenon that has emerged from this union between immersion and painting.
So in essence there's a big public demand. The feet are going through these places where they have these touring exhibitions for Van Gogh or whoever it is, and you could ignore it, or you could surrender to it to some degree, and build something that you think really does the job well, as opposed to just very large projections of still paintings?
Denys Lavigne: Yeah, you're right. We just acknowledged that there was a phenomenon. We acknowledged that there was interest, and I think one of the great aspects about this is that it has helped expose this new type of entertainment to a very large audience, and as the industry evolves, I think the expectations in terms of the quality, in terms of the element of surprise, people have more and more expectations.
So we felt it was the right time to push the boundaries with these types of shows, and we felt Van Gogh was the main painter that activated this movement, and in terms of the timing, we also thought it was really interesting because one of Van Gigh's strengths is about showing, sharing the emotion and in the smaller things of life, of our immediate world of nature. He brought emotions to things that we take for granted and we felt there was also an interesting link with what we went through over the past two years, being isolated and the pandemic, and just how we've reconnected to our immediate world nature, other people, the way that we view these elements and the role that they have in our lives, we thought that the timing of this from this angle was also really interesting to show and made it more relevant to focus on Van Gogh for this project.
And I guess it's something of a gateway drug as well that you could get people come to your venue to see this who, if you just had the other show on, might be a little too out there for their unfamiliar minds, but if they even get them in to see this they'll go, “Oh, that was really interesting. I'll come back!”
Denys Lavigne: Yep, there was definitely an aspect of, we're still a new destination within Montreal, and I think it's part of the process to ensure that we get known to a larger audience, and there was a bit of that for sure, in our decision. But the main thing was about the here and now angle, the phenomena, and we've already done a good job building an audience that is really grand public, and even for Recharge/Unwind exhibit that features generative art, it's actually quite surprising and quite satisfying to see that we have people from all ages attended it and it's much more balanced than what we expected, and I think this speaks to the interest of people and this new type of entertainment, and we want to continue to build on that for sure.
What are the creative demands involved in this? Can you say for the Recharge/Unwind material, can you say to a generative data artist, “here's the resolution, here's what you're working with, go!” Or do you have to train them?
Denys Lavigne: We do train some people, because again it's still an emerging media. It's not like there are thousands and thousands of destinations similar to ours in the world right now. So the pool of expertise is limited, but it exists, and yes, part of the briefing is similar to more of a traditional digital signage content, or experiential media experience. There are technical specifications and are parts of the brief and there are also creative specifications that are shared with the artists.
So Oasis immersion is not only just an operator of a site because of my background and my interests, we've also put together an internal creative team that works on developing the curating approach and the creative alignment for our projects. Each artist is informed about, what is the intent? What is the big picture of the exhibit? What is the expectation, in terms of his content and the role his content will play within the sequence, the journey that we want to create for our audience? So we are quite specific about that. And in terms of the artists, we usually select artists that we feel are the best fit for the type of content that we want to achieve. Most of the time these artists are experienced, but we've also worked with emerging artists. You know in our first exhibit we developed an experience with a young YouTuber who had, when I told him that we were going to develop an immersive experience together, you said what's an immersive experience and his expertise was really about just producing video. He was 21 years old, a kid that had really good talent as a director, as a storytelling artist but we felt that he could produce something that would be a bit more powerful, a bit more complex. We supported him and so we see our role also as supporting artists and that's why we have an experience team internally to play that role, and sometimes, the type of relationship we have with different artists varies with their expertise. But we certainly see that part of our role within the industry is to ensure that we have more and more people that understand the realities of creating powerful experiences for this type of media so that the industry can grow in the long term.
Do you see business applications for this? We've seen in the digital signage world, all kinds of corporate lobbies, all the way to airports adding immersive elements to it so that there's an entire lobby that's surrounded by LED or other ones that are using projection, if it's dark enough and so on.
Do you see the time when the sort of work and thinking that you're doing for a destination could be applied to something that's a venue like a building lobby?
Denys Lavigne: There's probably an extension that could happen. The fact that I'm here doing this project is a cycle of the work that I've done in the past for immersive lobbies and different types of experiential installation, and this has led me to do this project. I think it could work the other way around. As soon as you have digital assets, you can basically do whatever you want. I think then it becomes about, what's the type of experience and for what audience, but for example, we do have B2B applications within Oasis immersion, and I could see a client who has privatized the space and created a custom experience for the people that will attend the event. I could certainly see a client using these assets, repurposing them to create a spin-off and adapted version for another space for sure.
I think we will eventually get to that because the logic of return on investment or return on experience willlikely lead to that but there will definitely be adjustments in terms of the storytelling, the nature of the experience because of the way that people will consume the experience.So when you are totally immersed within a space, from a storytelling perspective, you can go at it from a certain angle. If it's just a lobby experience and there are other things happening and you have different objectives, then there's going to have to be a certain storytelling adaptation.
You've alluded two or three times to your background. For those people who are listening and don't know who you are, could you tell the story of Arsenal Media?
Denys Lavigne: Sure. So I founded Arsenal Media in 1999, I believe, and I created the agency initially as a content marketing agency, and when we started, we were actually doing custom publishing, so doing branded magazines for clients, at that moment, it was a big trend. And then we evolved into creating content for the web, because the initial internet revolution was really driven by programming companies, but there were not a lot of design and content companies, and so we extended our expertise to content marketing on the web, and eventually we were exposed to digital signage and we completely transited our operation and focused on digital signage because we felt that was the ideal platform where we could merge creativity and technology and building a relationship and providing value for the audience.
The reason why I started the company as a content marketing agency is because I always thought. you could build a more meaningful and long-term relationship with the consumer if you actually provided value versus just a commercial advertising. Traditional commercial advertising will deliver a certain type of result and certainly has its role within the bigger picture of marketing strategies, but always felt that the content marketing actually provided something useful, either from an information perspective or quality of experience perspective, there was something that the consumer had in return. So that was the foundation of it and when we were exposed to digital signage, it was similar to the internet in the sense that they were not a lot of creative companies at the beginning, and we saw this as a great opportunity and started to focus on digital signage right until 2014, when the agency was acquired by Christie digital and we joined the Christie company. I was there for four years. I led the experiential project division and we did projects all over the world.
For me, personally and professionally, this was such an inspirational time. I have so many good souvenirs, so many great learnings and great projects, and it allowed me to continue to push further on the experiential side and eventually led me to focusing on immersion, to really focus on the experiential side of it. But it's the sum of these experiences and learnings, and I'm really proud of my digital signage roots to a certain extent because it helped me understand context and sharing the right message at the right time, what that meant, and adding an experiential feel and understanding the impact of architecture within the space and the configuration and how people moved within the space. So all of these were great learnings that allowed me to do this project.
The part that you humbly left out is that you guys werewere sweeping the awards, Arsenal Media won a whole pile of awards for creative through the years.
Denys Lavigne: Yeah, we were so fortunate to get the support of the industry, and I think that speaks to the commitment of our team who try to contribute positively to this media, and that's how we approached it, bringing value to the consumer and trying to raise the bar in terms of best practices from a quality of design and relevancy, and I believe in the media and I think it deserved from us as creatives and strategists that we put our best foot forward every time, and we always were in this evolving mode of, how can we do better and how can we push the boundaries, and how can we make this media more efficient for our clients? I think the support that we've got and the accolades from the industry speak to my team's commitment to achieve that and we are quite proud of the results, and again, the accolades that we've received from the industry.
Ten or fifteen years ago you were doing conferences in Montreal and very politely yelling at people, “it's the content, stupid” that in the industry at that time was still and for a long time after it still focused on technology, as opposed to what's actually on the displays. Is it heartening now that you're somewhat detached directly from the direct digital signage industry to see the amount of really kick ass content that you're now finding on screens?
Denys Lavigne: Absolutely. There's great content. I think the aspect that I'm most proud to see the industry do now is just being more smart in the way that we plan for these projects, the way that we set up displays, the way that we think about the media from a business perspective, architectural perspective, the integration of this media with the rest of the marketing ecosystem, the rest of the brand ecosystem. So I'm really proud to see where the industry is at, in terms of the level of refinement of the work in general because yes, the quality of the content is really important but through my time in digital signage, I think quickly we realized that it was also about the strategy itself and the right selection of equipment for the right context, and how the media wasn't just this extra terrestrial piece within the marketing or branding ecosystem of the clients. But it actually played a role and was connected and made sense and how it was used.
So the integrated marketing or branding approach that I see now, the quality of the executions from architectural perspective and content perspective is really impressive to see, and I'm proud to see where the industry is at today.
All right. That's a great place to leave it. Congratulations on Oasis Immersion and great to catch up with you.
Denys Lavigne: Thank you, Dave. Always a pleasure.
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Geoff Bessin, Intuiface
Tuesday May 10, 2022
Tuesday May 10, 2022
NOTE - Podcasts normally come out on Wednesdays, but as a favor to Intuiface - which is at this week's ISE trade show in Spain - I moved it up a day to coincide with the show's opening day ...
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
One of the big trends in the software world is the whole idea of no code development - the premise that both programmers and mere mortals can create applications without getting their typing fingers dirty and brains fried doing traditional computer programming.
The proposition is that no code development platforms can cut out a lot of time and cost associated with pulling applications together, and also deal with the reality that good programmers are in high demand and therefore scarce.
The French software firm Intuiface is in the interesting position of having offered a no code platform long before no code was a discussion point, so the folks there are a great resource for discussing the implications for the digital signage and interactive display market.
I spoke with Geoff Bessin, the CMO and main voice for Intuiface, about the distinctions between no code and low code development platforms, and how they differ from the simple drag and drop, what you see is what you get user interfaces that are common in digital signage content management systems. We also dig into the benefits, the limitations, and more than anything, why you should know and care about no code.
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TRANSCRIPT
Geoff, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown first on what Intuiface is all about?
Geoff Bessin: Will do, Dave, thank you for having me. So Intuiface is a no-code platform dedicated to the creation of interactive digital content. That includes digital signage, but really it can anything in the venue. It could be a museum exhibition, could be a sales pitch for a movie sales team, could be anything at a trade show, something in a real estate office, et cetera. So you create it, you deploy it, you can do analytics with it. It’s all good.
And the company is based in France, correct?
Geoff Bessin: We are headquartered in a town called Labège, which is right outside Toulouse in France. Although I'm not, but it's funny, my name is Geoffrey Besson, so both my first and last name look French. So people always assume it's French, but that’s not the case. I'm in Boston.
Can you speak a lick of French?
Geoff Bessin: Oui. Yes.
Good for you! I wanted to talk about no-code software, cause you guys have been no-code before people were even using that term and no-code is one of these trends, just like headless CMS, that seems to be bubbling up and maybe people don't understand a lot about it yet.
Geoff Bessin: Yeah, you could go back to the 80s and find things like HyperCard where you were enabling non-developers to create an application of some sorts. So it goes back a long way, but in terms of a movement, generating notice, gaining investment and having companies spend money on it, it's only been the past few years.
I can tell you that statistics are now saying that the market size, the amount of money being spent on no-code software used to create apps is almost $14 billion. It's a lot of money being pumped into these apps. And in fact, more than 65% of apps are now created using no-code tools. So more than 50%, more than half of apps are being built with no-code software. It is the predominant means of delivering applications these days.
What's the distinction between no-code and low-code, because I've heard both terms.
Geoff Bessin: There's no formal distinction. You can't point at it and go, “Oh, this one’s no-code” like you just went over the line. But the idea is that with low-code, there are back doors. There are means to enhance, to extend, to facilitate integration that might involve a little bit of coding. Even that coding could be simplified based on maybe either a scripting language that is native to the tool or a public scripting language like Ruby.
Whereas no-code is just 100%, you're not going to see code anywhere, and so you are in a way limited to the sandbox provided by the no-code platform, what it is you're able to deliver is limited by what you can piece together with the Lego blocks of that platform. no-code gives you those little back doors to branch yourself out.
So what does it mean for development? Does it distance or mediate the need for application developers completely, and just any old end-user can produce an application without having to engage developers or is it more something that accelerates the development process and just gets some cost and time out of the way?
Geoff Bessin: I think that question brings us to who's doing it, and why are they doing it? As I mentioned, no-code has exploded recently, and it is due to a set of developments that have driven application development to what is now called the “citizen developer.”
Trends such as a shortage of developers, it's not that we're trying to get rid of them. It's that there’s not enough. I saw one statistic that back in 2020, there were 1.2 million unfilled developer jobs in the United States, just the US but 1.2 million developer jobs unfilled in the US and colleges and universities were only cranking out about 400,000 developers. There's a shortage. So it's not that we don't want them, we don't have them. What do you do about that? There was also COVID, which has greatly accelerated investment in these no-code platforms, because everything moved online, and when everything moved online, everything needed to be digitized and companies realized we have to move now but we don't have enough resources, so how the heck are we going to digitize these things?
And then there's also tangential, but influential, the fact that even in our own home, we're not coders, but we are programmers. If I'm working with my Nest thermostat, that's programming. I just got a puppy and they have these apps that you can then program to see how many steps they've taken and how much water they drink, that's programming, and the digital native is used to controlling their environment digitally. There are tools out there that enable them to realize their ideas as an application, and somebody has to build it because there's not enough developers to go around. That's what really kicked the no-code market in the butt.
What we're seeing subsequently is that the developer shortage is being filled by these citizen developers producing applications, maybe for personal use, maybe for internal employee use, maybe for customer us, it depends. Those developers are now being transitioned to work on larger projects, more intricate projects. They have more time arguably to focus on the big tickets stuff that still needs the hardcore development, offloading their responsibility from the simpler things that can now be handled by that citizen developer.
Are there trade offs that you have to accept, to use no-code instead of just doing your own thing?
Geoff Bessin: Certainly. There are obvious advantages, there's speed and there's costs benefits. There's a big productivity boost, but of course there's trade offs. I like this notion of Legos. You have these prebuilt blocks and this is a finite number of block options that you can combine in an infinite number of ways. At the end of the day, you're still limited to those blocks, right? And so if I'm using a no-code platform and I need a block that doesn't exist, I'm stuck.
Now, I suppose if it's a low-code platform, depending on what I need to achieve,okay, maybe I can put something together if I have the skill, maybe I don't, but if I don't have the skill or if the opportunity with the platform doesn't exist, I am limited, and I think that might be the fundamental challenge is what can I do? What can I realize? Cause recognize that a lot of these platforms are built to be generic, to address sort of breadth, not always depth, and so that can be a challenge. You are also, of course, relying on them to be responsible for performance and reliability. You are handing over that duty, that responsibility to the provider, the no-code platform. I hope they're doing a good job. Because it's out of my hands, I can't control that, and so those are the big risks: can I achieve exactly what I want or am I making compromises? Am I achieving the level of performance? My ability to deploy? My ability to collect data analytics? My ability to manage that deployment?
There's 150-200 platforms across the spectrum offering no-code and low-code options. You might be making some compromises on the way, certainly are, but as I shared with you, 65% of apps are now built with no-code platforms. So companies have decided it's worth the risk.
What's the distinction between no-code and what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) user interfaces?
Geoff Bessin: No-code, I think it's more of a connotation, not a denotation. I think you could argue that a lot of no-code platforms are WYSIWYG. Intuiface is a no-code platform, it's a drag and drop tool. It's a WYSIWYG. The connotation of WYSIWYG, it could be for a developer. It could be for anybody of any skill set. So it's more of a generic catchall for applications enabled to create other applications by dragging components and you can see what they look like at design time and development time.
No-code connotes the non-developer, the citizen developer that you don't have coding skills and you're not expected to have those skills. So I think that's it.
You sent me a white paper that kind of goes into this and you're making the argument that while no-code is out there, it's exploding and growing and everything else, there's really no application, I think you called it a ‘no-code blind spot’ in terms of in-venue applications. What do you mean by that?
Geoff Bessin: So let's define in-venue because that is exactly our contention. In-venue is an encapsulation of any digital deployment out of the home. It could be digital signage, could be all those things I mentioned with Intuiface as well, the museum exhibition, the sales presentation, real estate office, et cetera. It is out of the home. It is not my phone though. It is not my PC. I'm not browsing the web at home. I'm out of my home, I'm in a venue and there is some digital content trying to communicate to educate, to promote, to sell to me.
That domain has been, I think with the exception of Intuiface, untouched by the no-code movement. For sure, if you look at the landscape of companies delivering solutions to address the needs of the citizen developer, there is nothing out there addressing these in-venue deployments. It's all about web and mobile apps and some websites, that's it. So if you want to create digital signage, if you want to create that museum exhibition, the sales pitch, there is no option out there now, and which brings us David, I know you're going to want to ask this, which is, will, aren't all digital signage platforms, no-code? Which is great question, Dave, by the way...
You are a psychic!
Geoff Bessin: That's a yes, but, it is absolutely true that you don't write code, but there are certain expectations of a no-code platform that the traditional digital signage CMS cannot fulfill, and it's interesting if I take a step back, really by definition, it has always been the non-developer on the digital signage side, hasn’t it? You buy a platform, there's a CMS, the user of the content management system is the content person. They're not coding anything. They're working with the CMS, they're assigning content to zones and they're day partying. By definition from day one, digital signage was always a non-developer domain, whereas web and mobile apps and these sorts of things were always the developer domain.
The no-code movement was, “Hey, this complicated stuff, we gotta make it simpler. We need the citizen developer involved.” So they brought no-code to the domain that started with developers, which I think is one of the explanations for why it didn't really come over to the in-venue side yet, because it was always non-coder users, but there are certain expectations of the no-code platform, that is not really in scope of the platform delivering in-venue content. A simple example, just to give you one would be the notion of context. To react to the user, react to the environment, in real time in that context, and do something as a result that is inherently this notion of logic. If this, then that. That's coding, right? It's got the whiff of coding and how do you do that? And there's a list of things we can discuss about what makes in-venue unique. But it requires the accommodation of additional concerns that are beyond the scope of what a traditional CMS does and that no other no-code platform does across the no-code spectrum.
I guess what you're saying in certain respects is you can develop a playlist, do all the basic functionality of a digital sign, you can target content and everything else, but the moment you get into a request to do something different, that's interactive, that as you say, maybe responds to triggers and so on, that gets a lot more complicated, and at that point you're putting in, if you're an end user, you're putting in a request to your reseller or to the software company directly saying, can you do this? And they'll say, yes, we can, but it's going to take this amount of time, this amount of money and, we can't get this to you for six months cause it's off of our roadmap or whatever… Is that one of the arguments you'd make?
Geoff Bessin: I would say that for sure. You see, a lot of companies have libraries. Here's our template library, here’s our plugin library, here's our integration library. Oh, you want something we don't have? We can build that for you. Here's the cost. Here's how long it's going to take. That's one example.
I can tell you that from a Intuiface perspective, we don't have any libraries. We haven't really prebuilt anything. Our paradigm is to enable integration with any web service, to create any UI, to integrate with any content management system, to have that ubiquity, which means that we don't have to build anything for our clients. The customer can do that. But it also means that, well, you better have a good idea and you better need to know what you. Because you're starting with a tabula rasa, but yes, that is certainly one good example of how you fulfill these sort of unique needs you might have thought about. I'll give you another example, which is retail point of sale. How would you build that thing? To me, that qualifies as an in-venue application. That's in the venue, right? I can order through a website, but do I want to put a website on a kiosk? It's a different domain. It's a different paradigm. It has different design requirements, different expectations, different issues about security, about being able to run potentially offline. But having to work with peripherals, having hyper-local context dependence, there are all of these concerns that will impact that user experience in the venue that may not be relevant or at all to a web experience. If I want to build that thing, how much flexibility am I going to have? Now there are companies like Grubber, which are pretty much pre-built everything, right? All you do is you push your menu into their back office system, and you're good to go. You just have to hope it does exactly what it is you want because you're constrained within the confines of what they offer for design, with the offer for business process, what they offer in terms of context, awareness, and reaction and if you need to make any kind of changes, you're dependent on them to make those changes, and that has a cost and a time penalty to it.
What kind of skillsets do you realistically need to use a no-code particularly in the context of Intuiface? I'm assuming the proposition is anybody can sit down, but you still have to plan out, you have to have some methodical thinking about what you want to do with what the decision tree is on all that stuff, right?
Geoff Bessin: You do, and that gives me an opportunity to give you just a brief history of Intuiface because we were never a no-code company, that wasn't how we were oriented. The company was actually founded back in 2002. It was founded by a couple of PhDs with expertise in touch technology. And from day one, it was about bringing user experiences to a lot of it was, believe it or not, the defense industry, but also retail, touch-driven user experiences for something, to accomplish something. The company was always about the user experience.
At the end of the day, as great as your touch technology might be, nobody cares if it's not usable. If it doesn't make it easy to achieve some goal, and so Intuiface, when it was born it was all about the user experience, and in fact, most of its early hires were focused on that, on how to make something intuitive and that where the company name comes from, an intuitive interface. To make intuitive user experiences that we're driven by interaction like touch. What happened was we were servicing all of these organizations, again, a lot of defense, Intuiface is headquartered just outside the Toulouse, as i mentioned. So you have the big aerospace and defense industry located in Toulouse like Airbus. So a lot of those clients, but also retail, commerce. Focused on user experience, and it was hard to scale the business because you had this deep technical dependency underneath because it's driven by touch and we’re going back 15 years, so expensive hardware, challenging technology, and at the same time, trying to come up with these really intuitive user interfaces, it was a challenge, and we decided internally, I say we, but I wasn't here yet. Intuiface decided internally that we need to come up with something that can accelerate our ability to deliver good user experiences on top of this touch technology.
The company builds something called Intuikit, it was used internally by user experience experts, designers, and people good at aesthetics, people good at thinking about the customer. They were not developers. Ultimately, we decided this thing called Intuikit is pretty awesome, maybe that's our business, and so we're. It's a short story about how the software platform Intuiface was born. We were always about the user experience. It is our expectation that our users are experts in the users, creating intuitive interfaces, not In having any necessary knowledge about development. So that is our expectation, and that's what we think is appropriate. You need to be creative. You need to understand the user. You need to understand the domain. You don't have to worry about the platform you're building it on. That should not be your problem. You should be all about solving the customer's problem.
I realize you work with a bunch of industries, but a lot of your activity is in digital signage. If I am an end-user and I'm using ACME digital signage software, can I use the Intuiface with it? Does it plug into it or are there restrictions? Do you have to go through door number one or door number two, you can't use both doors?
Geoff Bessin: Probably, you can't do. Typically the content management system used by the DS platform is proprietary. It's a closed system. It doesn't have a published API. So we couldn't read from it. Intuiface conversely has its own runtime as well. We can run side by side. In fact, on Windows, we have the ability to run side by side with other applications, we have had customers who are not ready to transition off their existing DS investment. So they were sort of a cohabitating interactive Intuiface based content at one part of the screen and traditional DS content and others were cohabitating that screen. But normally no, that wouldn't be how one would do it.
Certainly Intuiface is positioned around interactivity. We believe that by definition, once you introduce interactivity and the need to be responsive and context, and to accommodate not just touch, but sensors and voice and computer vision, when you need to account for all of these things, you need to be very good at that if-when, right? And that notion of conditional responses to events which are completely typically outside the realm of the traditional DS platform. That's where we start, and then clients can decide, do I want these Intuiface to co-exist with this DS platform? Or do we need to make some sort of transition.
If I'm an end-user and I start with Intuiface and have a series of interactive screens that are doing some sort of functionality, whatever it may be and then I decide, I want to also have an expanding network of “dumb screens” that are just running traditional digital signage content in some sort of a sequence. Can you do that too?
Geoff Bessin: Sure, the content doesn't know it’s in a dumb playlist, right? The content is fine. Certainly you can do that. The Intuiface was born, solving the interactive problem. And it's interesting, Dave, because in the early days of selling our platform, digital signage was something else. You didn’t touch signage. So our communication to the marketplace was not interactive signage. There wasn't such a thing. There was interactive content for kiosks. That was the world when we first walked in, you were touching something such as a table or a kiosk. There were touch screens, very expensive touch screens. You could be bound on a wall, never a perceptive pixel from a million years ago. Like those CNN screens and that sort of thing. You spend $2,500, you can have a touchscreen, but bylarge, it was kiosks and that sort of thing.
What happened was that they had this largely commoditized, digital signage space, hundreds of companies offering traditional digital signage and customers had iPhones in their pocket and they had iPads at home, and they started thinking about interactivity. They see the voting coverage on CNN and people tapping screens. So can you do that? That's why we started getting questions about traditional digital signage. Can you fulfill that as well? We were like yeah, we can, and over the years we developed additional capability to accommodate it.
The paradigm is still different. We don't have a traditional notion of a playlist for example, but you can create a playlist within Intuiface. We're using our Lego blocks, not just to build interactive content, but non-interactive content as well. You can do both.
So it was something you could do, but it's not your focus?
Geoff Bessin: I would say, we’res interactive first, but the traditional broadcast signage, and I don't mean this in a judgy way, it's not typically that complicated. So if it is a playlist of stuff, images, videos, documents, it's very easily done, but people very rarely come to us, Dave, with traditional first. They're coming to us because they need to solve an interactive need, and oh, by the way, long-term you can transition to traditional content as well.
I agree that, the conventional side of digital signage, the meat potatoes, run this stuff at this time and these locations and all that is commoditized and pretty simple, and I always say that the complicated stuff is behind the scenes, the device management, the API integrations and all that sort of stuff. Are you at a level now where you can provide the building blocks, the Lego blocks to do the interactive piece, but also enable the end user to monitor and remotely manage all that?
Geoff Bessin: We do offer that, and in fact we offer both of what you mentioned, cause you also mentioned the API integration, we can accommodate that as well.
On the device management side, certainly we have an awareness of the devices in the field and you can set up notifications if things are going wrong, that sort of thing, you can see what's running on those devices. On certain platforms, you can remotely update on runtime, that sort of thing. We're not averse to working with a device and platform management options, to collaborate with them in a deployment, but we do offer some of that. And with API integration, we've actually offered for six years. It's been a long time and it's one of those things, Dave, where, as I said, we weren’t born with no-code. We were born worried about user experience and we realized we looked in the mirror and wen, oh, we're actually no-code.
We've been offering a software called API Explorer. You can automatically create an integration, an integration with a web API without writing code And it is a real time integration reading from writing to that web API. It could be a back office system, ERP application, CRM application could be a database wrapped in an API, could be a device on the internet of things, all of these options can be integrated with a running Intuiface experienced by a non-developer, using API Explorer. So we've offered that for some time.
We now have our own CMS but you don't have to use it. Our original value prop is to use whatever you want. We have API Explorer, you can plug into whatever you want. We have now introduced our own because depending on the scenario and the requirements of the project, it just makes better sense to use ours. But we still have customers that would rather use that other thing, or Dave, they’re integrated with the ERP application. They're building a retail point of sale application with Intuiface, and they have integrated with the ERP system, they need to work with the API and you can do that.
Who would you describe as your kind of core end-users, core customers?
Geoff Bessin: I would say 50 to 60% of our customers are agencies and integrators. So we can discuss with the actual user might be, but I would say more than half of our installed base are agencies and integrators with their own clients. And there is a spectrum of reasons why they're using Intuiface. Some of them, they don't have the development skill, but they want to offer interactivity. Others have men and women on the bench with the skill, but they don't have the scale. That's the problem with people is that they can work on one thing at a time.
And what we find is that a lot of the integrators in particular will be taking Intuiface so they can scale. They can take on a larger volume of maybe small and mid-sized projects that they can do with Intuiface, and then put the men and women on the bench onto the bigger high value projects. We find that customers are saving 80% of time and 60% of costs versus customer that don’t use Intuiface. So it's very easy for them, and it's an easy pitch. Conceptually, if you can build an interactive application, doing exactly what you want with a no-code platform is probably cheaper and faster than if I wrote code, so it's an easy idea to wallow and it is what our customers experience. So that's what you'll find. I would say the majority 60%-55% agencies and integrators, the rest are the small and midsize museums, schools, retailers, sales offices, marketing, and sales teams, they want to do it themselves.
And do they want to do it themselves because of cost or control?
Geoff Bessin: Often it's because of cost. They have ambition or they've been bitten, Dave, where they have outsourced it. You don't see this going in, but you meet an agency. You tell them what you want, they agree and deliver something in two months that doesn’t resemble what you wanted, so you ask for revisions, and this cycle continues while you pay for the time. It's not an agile process, and again, I'm not casting aspersions at the agency, they are our customers. But their sales pitch is we use Intuiface so we can deliver what you want faster than the other guys that do exactly what you want, and by the way, if you don't like the work we did, you can take it with you.
If I pay an agency to write custom code and I'll be dissatisfied, I'm starting from zero with another agency. So you have that kind of portability benefit as well. So yes, a lot of the small and midsize, it's budget driven or based on their experience, they have limited budgets. They outsourced it, and they were just satisfied. We do have the occasional large enterprise. They want to have maybe an interactive sales pitch. So the marketing and sales team is driving the creation of the collateral, hiring a developer to make. I could use PowerPoint. Why am I hiring? It's hard to justify this pay developers to code a sales pitch, I can just use PowerPoint. Hold on a second, here's this thing called Intuiface. I can build an interactive sales pitch for my Salesforce. I'm still using the tool. I'm the creative team on the marketing sales team. But I'm creating something that is far more novel and engaging than a PowerPoint.
When the pandemic hit, I speculated and I'm sure many people speculated that this was going to be a difficult time for people who were in the touch and interactive business. What happened instead is that touch actually went up in demand and self service applications became very much a big development initiative. Have you seen that happening in the last couple of years?
Geoff Bessin: We have, and then ultimately it turns out people are more afraid of other people than touch screens. And our business has rebounded quite well. What we were hoping for, and it seems to be the case is that demand didn't drop. It got stuck behind a wall. There was a dam and the demand was building behind the dam, and you couldn't open the dam cause nobody was out of the house and the waters were rising, people are finally out of the house, and you opened up the floodgates. So we're seeing a really nice rebound that is complimented, not just by the building interest anyway, but the kind of renewed interest in facilitating a non-human interaction, which sounds horrible culturally, in their place of business or what have you.
And again, it's not just touch. Yes, I think probably most people would rather take a little Purell. They're fine with that, but still some people are not, and maybe they can use their mobile phone or scan a QR code.
But it's also a labor issue. It's harder to hire people and if you can use self service, then you don't have to worry so much about staffing.
Geoff Bessin: There's that whole other thing too which is the cost of staffing and training and enabling and equipping and there's that as well. So for sure, there is certainly a perceived increase in interest, and interactivity of any kind and Intuiface has always been focused on any kind of interactivity, not just touch, and certainly this ability to use my mobile phone to interact with content is an increasingly interesting example, using gestures to interact, using voice to interact. So I'm not touching but I'm still working with technology directly rather than mediating through somebody else. So all of that is going on.
Last question: you guys have certainly in the last few years had a presence at ISE and at other trade shows, what are you doing in the next few weeks and months? Is Intuiface going to be something that people can walk up and get demos for?
Geoff Bessin: We will be at ISE, so that'll be our first trade show in however many years we'll be there. So you and I are speaking on April 26th and that's why I say in just a couple of weeks, we will be there with a booth, and we certainly hope we'll see others there.
We used to actually have our user conference in parallel with ISE, in-person and the pandemic put the kibosh on that. We've done virtual user conferences every year since then, and we like that because you don't have to travel, and so our user conference will be forever more be virtual. We actually have our user conference in three weeks that people are welcome to join. It's free, it'll be online, but we plan to be at ISE. We plan to be a DSE in the US and I think it's now November, and we'll be participating when your colleagues at Avitas are running DSE in parallel and ISE will be participating in that as well. So we're starting. We're treating this as back to normal. It's interesting, Dave working on my travel plans, flying into Spain. But you can’t just get on a plane, you need to jump through certain things because of COVID. But it looks as of today, they're not even requiring masks onsite. That doesn't seem to be a requirement. Just the honor system that you are vaccinated or recovered and we'll see how that goes, but we're excited to be there. We'll have a big booth and about eight of us, we'll have a lot of people there.
And where can people find Intuiface online?
Geoff Bessin: Dave, thank you for asking, Intuiface.com. They can also just contact us. You are listening to Jeff Besson. You can just email me bessin@intuiface.com.
The product can be tried for free, Dave. No credit card required. People can poke at it and see if what we're saying is true.
All right, thank you.
Geoff Bessin: Dave. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Wednesday May 04, 2022
Justin Lachovsky, Telecine
Wednesday May 04, 2022
Wednesday May 04, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
When I first heard the longtime digital signage solutions company Telecine was getting into subscription content for screens, my first reaction was "Hmmm ... pretty crowded and established market to shoehorn into ..."
Then I got the details, and the logic and applicability were a lot more apparent.
The Montreal company has set up three very customizable sets of pre-packaged feeds that would run in parallel with the products already out there, as opposed to being alternatives.
There's a weather feed that's all about context, like one letting runners know if this a good day to put in some mileage.
There's a banking industry feed that solves a big pain point of developing messaging that is fully compliant with finance regulations.
And there's an interesting air quality feed that marries on-screen content with a small, included device that does real-time air monitoring in buildings.
I spoke with Justin Lachovsky, Telecine's Director of Sales & Marketing, about the new services. We also talk at the start about how the company has adjusted to the sudden loss last year of its much-loved and respected founder, James Fine.
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TRANSCRIPT
Justin, thank you for joining me. Let's get something out of the way right away, because you guys, and the digital signage world in general, had a big shock last year when your founder, James Fein unexpectedly passed away. How have you guys adjusted to that? What have you done and how are things?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. Definitely a huge shock and something that we're still battling through, of course, something that shocking doesn't go away easily. But we've luckily had the opportunity to really just continue focusing on what we do best and that's helping our clients with producing excellent digital signage content for their networks, and frankly, that's I think something that James really would've wanted us to do.
So we're all really holding onto his memory in that regard of just doing everything that we can to continue pushing forward his vision, obviously, it was a shock. It's a tough loss, but he's really laid the groundwork for our management team to step up now and help just continue pushing forward all the great stuff that we do here at Telecine.
Yeah. One of the new things I learned is that he set you guys up with a succession plan so the shift wasn't that difficult.
Justin Lachovsky: No, and you know that's something that some folks might not know, but for the last, I'd say six plus years just before I joined Telecine, James had been doing about six months sailing sabbaticals across the world and some management oversight in that regard, but most of the day-to-day operations and client management stuff was handled by our management team so while it's a deep loss and obviously we're still deeply upset by the loss of James, he put this company in a perfect position for us to continue going forward, and I'm very grateful for that.
Yeah. It was fun to hear how he would be in the south Pacific with Chantal sailing and he would get on a sat phone and call in.
Justin Lachovsky: Yes. I can't tell you how many conference calls I've had with James, where he's like, “I'm in the middle of the water. There's no land in sight, but somehow I'm able to jump on a phone and talk to you all the way back in Montreal.” It's very cool to see how far technology has come.
So we've done a podcast in the past, it was with James, miss him a lot, but for those people who don't know what Telecine is about, could you just give a kind of a quick rundown of what you guys do? What's your focus on?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, Telecine is a 35 year old media and software company. We've been doing digital signage, I think since before digital signage was even really an industry and really our main focus is to help our clients solve their communications challenges and using digital signages, that medium, to help deliver effective communications to their audience, and we do this by leveraging all sorts of cool content pieces, dynamic data sources, and then just internal databases of information that these corporations have that they don't leverage enough to create that all encompassing communications platform. It's not just email, it's not just social. It uses your screens to effectively communicate that message, and we do that with them by helping produce really nice digital signage content.
You being services based through the years, you don't sell specific pieces of software, you don't manufacture displays or anything else. So services are in your DNA, but I found it interesting that you guys have added on subscription content capabilities.
I think of a handful of companies like ScreenFeed who sponsors this podcast that do that sort of thing, but you've got into it, but it's not the same sort of thing, right?
Justin Lachovsky: No, and that's right. We work with the ScreenFeed guys all the time and all of the other providers within the digital signage space. We couldn't do what we do without their support and the things that they provide to the industry. But we did notice an opportunity for us to help end users with providing our services from the high end production of digital signage content and finding a way to offer them ready-to-go content without the high production costs that sometimes involve these larger projects. So it's something that actually James coined as “prêt à partir” content, which in English just means ready-to-go content.
So what have you done? What are you offering?
Justin Lachovsky: We've launched three new product lines in the last quarter. The three products are Fin Facts, AQ (Air Quality) and Lifestyle. All three of these products are HTML5 based so totally software agnostic, they'll work with any digital signage system, which is really what our main focus was in developing these, and the other thing that's interesting too, is they all have specific use cases, but it's a friendly piece of content. You don't have to worry about anything negative popping up there. They're friendly, that's the term I'll use for them.
Yeah I found it interesting for the financial one that you guys are providing, that could be quite complicated and labor intensive to figure out what are those messages that are relevant to banks and what are those messages that can be used and your work around was just using the content from the FDIC so that it's already vetted and approved and not going to get anyone into trouble by using it.
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, that's exactly it. As you're aware, we do offer our services quite a bit in the financial space, retail banks, insurance brokerage firms, stuff like that. So I actually had this idea while talking to a client about three years ago. Every time we had to produce a piece of content for them, it had to get run through their compliance department, and had to have some FDIC disclosure on it, and I said, why can't we just take information that the FDIC already puts out there. We know that it's a trusted source and find a way to create a compelling database of banking facts. S
o that's exactly what we did. We went right to FDIC, started sourcing facts right off their website, and we came up with Fin Facts, which is this fun, engaging and informative database of digital signage content which, like I said, works great for banking environments, behind the teller desk, all that area is FDIC approved and not only does it, I think, works just for the banking space, but any sort of corporate office as well.
By providing these factoids to their staff, the message that they're conveying is, we don't just care about, offering you corporate information and telling you about what the company is doing, but we care about your financial wellbeing. So we've taken this information from the FDIC and said, look, this is topical. It applies to everybody, everybody's got to do banking. So for me, it was just a cool way of saying to, end users in the audience that we don't just care about delivering messages for messaging sake, we care about your financial wellbeing as well.
I'm going to assume the FDIC was quite happy that they have a new distribution channel for this information.
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, absolutely, and that's the really cool thing about the program is, there's three steps to the way that the content is shown. There is the fact page, so we'll tell you the topic of what we're talking about. So for example, like mortgage planning tips. One page with a nice little factoid. The second page gives you a use case, and then the final page actually gives you a QR code where it'll link you back directly to the FDIC website where this information was sourced from, and actually what we're doing with one of our banking clients is we're using that QR code to actually measure audience attention. So it gives us that additional layer aside from just providing information.
We're giving the banks and other clients the opportunity to capture information and say, okay, you know how many people are actually looking at this stuff.
The capability is there so if somebody snaps the QR code with their phone, it hits a specific target URL, and you get the analytics off that to say that in the past month, X number of people hit this target URL?
Justin Lachovsky: That is exactly correct.
So if I'm a financial institution in the United States and I want to use this and I'm using Brand X CMS, it's just a matter of scheduling a URL into a playlist and off you go?
Justin Lachovsky: That's exactly it.
And you subscribe to it, right?
Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. So we're in the process of figuring out the best way to deliver that to clients but right now, if you subscribe to the product, you'll be able to select from a list of topics ranging from youth savings to mortgage tips and general savings, credit cards. You'll be able to select those topics. We'll provide you with a URL that will deliver all that content directly into your CMS.
Is it tailorable, customizable? So in other words, you've got regional savings and loans in Oklahoma, and they want to use Oklahoma state orange because that's their corporate colors. Can you change the background of that?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, of course, that was really what our intentions were with building it. The way that we've done it is, well, we love to do custom content. So even with our product offering, it was important for us to offer that customizability and flexibility for clients, as opposed to just saying, this is what you get. You have the full capability to changing the colors, fonts as well as any integrations or logos or other branding elements that are needed.
You and I are both in Canada. So, if you had a Canadian bank that you're working with FDIC stuff stuff, there's probably lots of elements of that crosses borders quite nicely, but you can't brand it as FDIC. So what happens if I'm the Royal Bank and I come to you and say, we want to use this too, but we need Canadian stuff?
Justin Lachovsky: I'm glad you asked that question because we're actually in the process right now of doing a Canadian version. In Canada, we have the CDIC, which is a governing body similar to the FDIC. So we’re in the process of doing a similar approach with CDIC information to offer that to Canadian clients as well, and as part of that roll out, we're also looking to provide some interesting quizzes using both the FDIC and CDIC information, so you'll have a database of FDIC facts, a database of CDIC facts, and then coming soon, we'll also have a database of quizzes from both databases.
So that's now available? Have you onboarded some customers already or you're just starting to spread the word?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So it was launched a week ago, but we've already had a client who was beta testing this for us for about six months now and we've just gotten the go ahead to roll this out to all of their branches.
I'm going to assume that the people who work at banks of varying sizes in the United States, who are charged with feeding the content beast all week and all month long are probably pretty happy that this sort of stuff will become available to them.
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, they are. They're actually quite thrilled. One of the things that we encounter often, especially with financial clients, is they're hyper concerned about safe content, and that was really our approach to this is that FDIC is a safe, trusted resource and it delivers that way for digital signage content. So it's exactly what you said. These bankers are quite happy that they now have a safe resource that they can display in their bank branches without any hesitation.
Yeah, because if you're running news feeds and those are pretty carefully curated anyways, but I suspect if I asked the ScreenFeed folks or some of the other companies, they would say, you wouldn't believe what upsets people, and I could imagine, like the Oscars thing, where Will Smith alpped Chris Rock, that's a story that got a lot of attention, but there's probably some bank and some customers that say, “I don't like that there. I'm offended by that. Take it off!”
Justin Lachovsky: Absolutely. I've lived through that experience a couple of times. So I'm happy now that we can offer something where I can deliver it to a client with peace of mind, that that kind of scenario won’t occur.
How does it work in terms of scale? Do you just subscribe to the service or do you subscribe per media player?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So the way that it runs, it's a similar model to the way the other folks have run it. It's a per player subscription, obviously, depending on the size of the network and the amount of facts that people are looking for, there is some flexibility there, but it is a typical per player pricing model at the moment.
And because it's HTML, this stuff you're harvesting from FDIC, so I guess in most respects you would say it's canned, it's already done, but because it's HTML, can you update on the fly if things do change?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, we do have a process in place to continually monitor the FDIC website so that if things change, we're able to make those changes to our content, but also, they add more and more articles over time so we're looking to continue growing the database, but also make those amendments if they are needed.
Okay, so that's the financial one. You said there's a lifestyle one and an air quality one as well, am I right?
Justin Lachovsky: That's right. So obviously folks have become hyper aware about health and wellness over the last couple of years. I know that I have that for sure. So one of the cool things that we did was develop this set of lifestyle content that really speaks to activities. At this point, seeing the weather forecast in digital signage is fairly common to put it mildly, and everybody's got weather in their pocket these days.
So what I wanted to do, and the rest of the team wanted to do is find a way that we can contextualize that a little bit more. Like you said, it's so easy to get a three-day forecast, but let's say you're going into a bank one day, or you're going into the office one day, and you know you've got something going on this afternoon. You're supposed to go golfing with a couple of teams. What we've done is using the backend for weather information, we've developed a set of indexes that will tell you about activity-based information, whether it's appropriate to do that or not on a given day. As an example, I was talking about golf. So we have a golf index that'll tell you, based on relative humidity, the weather outside. It'll provide you with an index saying, is it a good day to go golfing? Yes/No, and then there's a forecast that's associated with that, but that also comes with a handful of other data points, things about driving difficulty, pollen in the air. You have dry skin today. This one was my favorite, hair frizz. Fairly straight hair, but you never know what humidity can do that kind of thing. So really what our goal there was just to add that additional context to the weather by saying, “It is probably a good day for you to stay inside. Don't go outside” or “Don't go golfing today. Maybe pick tomorrow”
So it was really important to just help boost people's awareness for those activities as we're going in and out of places more. For the longest time, these outdoor activities were our saving grace and he was the thing we were only able to do for close to two years. So I thought it was a great way to just have a set and forget the piece of content in your signage system that goes with the weather, but also works in just a variety of places. From banking to retail, to corporate, everybody's out and about doing activities to that these days. That was our goal.
I'm assuming apart from the financial facts one, which was pretty straight forward, that this would be much more of a challenge to visualize and for people to look at and immediately get it because you can't just write out, “This isn't the best day to go golf”?
Justin Lachovsky: That's exactly correct.
So what we did is we used the same approach that most people do for weather. Most people can quickly look at a digital signage screen and get a quick understanding of, okay, this is the location I'm at, this is the high and low for the day, and this is what the forecast looks like for the rest of the week. So we use that same visual approach for this, where you'll have, again, I'll use the golf index. It'll tell you the golf index for Los Angeles, California. It'll tell you what the current weather is, but also on a scale from 1-10 what the quality of golfing would be that day.
So if you look at the screen, you get the current weather forecast, you'll get a three to five day forecast that'll tell you from 1-10 what the next few days of golfing quality looks like.
So your suggestion would be that this can run in tandem with the more “conventional” weather stuff that might be on a digital signage network?
Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. One thing I've noticed is a lot of these digital signage screens where the use cases effective for this piece of content is, retail banks, stores, those are places where people are either in the process of doing an activity or going between activities. So for me, it felt like the best possible place to put this information because people are, like I said, either going to do something or on their way back from doing something. So that seems to be the best place to deliver this information to them.
So could you also handle customer requests? I was just talking to a guy a couple of days ago, who lives in Syracuse, New York, and that's on the wrong side of lake Ontario, so lake effect country, and he was saying they had a pretty good winter for snow. They had four feet less than normal. So I'm wondering in terms of a lake effect or tune up your snowblower warning or something.
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. I think we have 10 indices right now, if I'm correct, but it is something that's continuing to grow as customer requests come up and they're like, I'd to know if it's a good day to mow my lawn. These sorts of things come up all the time, so we'll continue growing that library for sure.
And then the other one that I believe you're working on or have released, has to do with air quality and is very much sensors-driven?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, air quality is another interesting one. Again, folks have become hyper aware of their health and wellness and that obviously speaks to air quality. So what we've done is we've got an air quality sensor, which is a very small, low profile, little sensor. It looks like one of those air diffusers that you would just buy and have your oils diffusing on your desk, and what it does is it measures a handful of different parameters, things like the indoor temperature, humidity, air pressure, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, ozone, and what it does is it sucks in all this information, and we deliver a dashboard of varying levels of what these parameters are at, and then we've come up with our own measure of taking it all in and delivering an air quality index.
So it'll tell you, based on the information that I just mentioned, what the level of air quality is in a given space.
So there's hardware associated with it?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, that’s correct, but it's all done through subscription. So you subscribe to the product, you get the air sensor with it and we deliver the dashboard at the same time. So there's no need to purchase any large hardware, it's just the sensor that comes with the subscription of the content.
And is it a smart setup? Let's say the sensor reads that carbon monoxide levels are higher than what is safe, would it trigger something on the screen?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So that's a custom piece that we work on with clients, obviously on a case to cases basis, but yes, we've done things like when you've got certain levels of high carbon monoxide, we can have a different kind of graphic trigger on screen, just letting people know this. It really came down to wanting to show more transparency on the health of our clients' spaces. We work with a lot of folks in the corporate environment. We've got clients that are corporate real estate landlords. So it spawned out of a request that we got early on in the pandemic. Somebody said, I'd love to know what our air quality is like so our staff feels comfortable working in space during the pandemic, but also in the future.
When the return to office stuff comes into play, we'd love to continue reporting that, and in fact, we did a project with a client out in California, they're a large real estate client. They were actively going after a well building certification and what that is, it's similar to a lead building certification, but it's focused more around the health of the building itself. One of the very pertinent aspects of that certification was providing information on air quality. So we were able to integrate these air sensors into, I think they've got six floors in their space, and we reported that on the digital signage screens, which allowed them to go and get a platinum well building certification, which is quite unique because there are only one of three buildings in all of California that have this certification right now.
So it becomes almost a leaseholder retention sort of thing, saying, “Hey, here's in visual terms how “well” a building we are”?
Justin Lachovsky: That’s exactly it.
With those displays, is it the sort of thing that runs in a content schedule or do they tend to allocate one or multiple displays or screens that are just showing that?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, we've seen both use cases. We've got some customers that just want it mixed in with their regularly scheduled content. But we've got other clients that actually just have a straight reporting dashboard. You walk into their lobby and right on the lobby desk where you would typically go to sign in if you were a guest visitor, it would just tell you right off the bat, this is what the air quality is like, and I think that it gives, like I mentioned, the staff a peace of mind, but also visitors coming to this space because that's certainly coming back. It gives those visitors peace of mind that they're in a healthy space.
So for larger buildings and particularly newer ones, I suspect that they're using Honeywell, or some big giant company that has HVAC systems and monitoring and everything else, and probably has APIs that you could tap into to also get that kind of information. Do you do that or is it just simpler to use this little device?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, and that's actually something we've been doing long before the pandemic happened and these air sensors came into play. That's our bread and butter. Telecine, loves to get their hands on APIs and data and figure out a cool creative way to display that. So yes, we definitely integrate with those types of sources for customers.
Okay. So the device that you guys make available is the little hurdle for those companies to say we don't actually have those APIs, or that would be a son of a gun to pull all that together, so just use this?
Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. It depends on the customer space, obviously new buildings, it's a lot easier to get that stuff available to us than it is abuilding that's been around for 15+ years. Sometimes to avoid the hurdle of waiting six months for a customer to figure out who their HPAC provider is, who owns the contract, where can I get the data from? We wanted to offer this cost-effective sensor and display package that is very easy to just get in front of a customer in a variety of spaces.
So you've done these three services, is that it? Or is there other stuff on the horizon that you don't have to give me the details, but are you done?
Justin Lachovsky: We're never done. There's always something on the horizon. We've got a couple of really interesting projects coming up. I can't share those with you yet but as we continue to firm up those details, I look forward to jumping back on a podcast with you and sharing them.
So we're all hopefully coming out of a crazy two and a quarter year, how have things gone now, setting aside the shock of losing James?
Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. Things have gone really well. One thing that Telecine does really great is client retention. A lot of our clients are getting close to a decade of working with us. It's really important for us to just focus on the customer experience and that's what I think we've done really well in the last couple of years, as we've all experienced challenges with the pandemics our clients have as well. So our focus really has just been helping them in any way possible, and focusing on that communications message through digital.
All right. So if people who are listening to this want to find out more, how do they find you and how do they find this particular set of products?
Justin Lachovsky: We've got a product website for all of them. You can find them under our main website, telecine.com. If you have any questions I'm always available, you can just reach me at justin@telecine.com and we've got those product websites just listed on our main website. You'll be able to find all the information.
All right, Justin. Great to catch up with you.
Justin Lachovsky: You as well, Dave, thanks so much.
Wednesday Apr 27, 2022
Jimmy Hunt, Spectrio
Wednesday Apr 27, 2022
Wednesday Apr 27, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Spectrio has been around the digital signage and on-premise media spaces for a bunch of years, growing both organically and through acquisitions, and increasingly making digital signage the main focus of the Tampa-area company.
I've known of the company for a long time, but REALLY came to know some of its people in the past year, when we got into discussions about Sixteen:Nine being acquired by Spectrio. That happened, and this podcast and publication are now part of Spectrio.
But my business partners have been fantastic about letting me continue to just do my thing, and make my own editorial decisions. I've wanted to do a podcast for a long, long time with Spectrio, way before this happened. We finally managed to make it work ... in a conversation here with Jimmy Hunt, who is the VP of Channel Sales for the company, working out of Dallas.
We had a great conversation digging into how the company's partner channel was formalized last fall and how it now works for Spectrio. We also get into what Hunt and his people are seeing and hearing in the end-user and reseller marketplace, notably how customers are now tending to fully understand and value the importance of well-executed and relevant content.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jimmy Hunt, thank you for joining me. Can you give me an idea of what your role is at Spectrio?
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. My role is VP, Channel Sales and Business Development.
Specific to the channel or overall?
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, so my main focus is within the channel. I handle all of the indirect sales, so resellers, channel sales, the sales and the account management side, all roll up to me.
Okay. So you're nurturing a ton of partners?
Jimmy Hunt: A ton, yeah, and it's been very interesting to develop a good blend across media publishers, AV, IT, and the agency space.
You've formally launched the reseller program back in November, but I'm guessing that you had resellers prior to that?
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, so I've been in the reseller space for about 15 years. My sole focus has been selling through the channel. Our methodology is pretty straightforward and simple. It's one-to-one-to-many. Previous to Spectrio, I focused mainly on the media and publisher world. So dealing with some of the largest media companies in the country across TV, radio, print, and digital. So we had a program in place yet, but it was great in Q3/Q4 to really formalize that and make it applicable to Spectrio moving forward, as well as the other industries, such as AV, IT, manufacturers, distributors, et cetera.
How many partners do you have it at this point?
Jimmy Hunt: So we are roughly over about 120. Prior to that announcement, we had about 60-65 meaningful partners. So we've doubled since then. It's been a busy Q4 and a busy Q1, but it's been great, really doubling down on the things that are working, and we've seen a lot of excitement across space.
I was curious about your qualification of meaningful. I have seen lots of partner pages on websites of companies where I'm looking at their partners and thinking, "I wonder if they even really know each other?"
Jimmy Hunt: That's a really good point. So for us, I always tell my team that we only win when our partners win. So if we're going to be a vendor and we're going to sit on the sideline, then expect for for that partnership to not be meaningful. So when I say meaningful, we really dig in with our partners. We try to position ourselves as true thought leaders to be consultants, to be advisors about our partnerships, but overall the space in general.
We have to make sure that we can not only address the day to day, week to week, month to month, but also help steer our partners and educate them on what's happening in the industry, and a lot of times, it's really just connecting other partners together. Maybe it's a product or service that we may not even sell or be interested in, but if we know partner X over here does this very well, and they're good people, we like working with them, then we'll connect them with a partner Y.
So this is a lot more than preferential pricing, or wholesale pricing, or whatever you want to call it. You're doing buddy-calling. You're doing support and training and all those sorts of things?
Jimmy Hunt: Oh yeah. A 100 percent. Again, the only way we win is when our partners win. So we have to make sure that they understand the products and services from a training perspective, from a server's perspective and workflow perspective, really understanding again, from the very first conversation to delivery of signage or whatever the product may be, that we at least have a hand in that. And there's some partners that want us to be super hands on, have things white labeled, and there's some that say, “Hey, we're going to sharpen the spear. We just want you to support us.”
The good thing about our leadership and the way we built the partner program is that we can cater to any type of scenario, right? So whether we're working with a global distributor or a local agency, we can find a way to dig in and be flexible and fluid to help their goals, and really it's at the end of the day it's understanding what benefits them, how can our product and services and moreover our partnership benefit our partner.
And when you're doing that, there's obviously a lot of digital signage CMS and solutions options on the market. How do you distinguish what Spectrio brings to the table versus the other guys?
Jimmy Hunt: It's three main things, especially in my role. Number one, it starts with that partnership. To be quite honest, when we're talking to new AV, IT resellers or anyone in the reseller space, we actually rarely lead with a product or service. We lead with our ability to be a good partner, and so everything you said earlier, all the training, all the collateral, certifications, et cetera. That's really what we lead with. And I've found that there's a lack of that partner support, partner management. So that means applying as an account executive on a particular partnership and everything under the sun there.
I'd say secondly, what I'm listening to more and more is content. I think Spectrio is really primed right now to set ourselves apart by not just providing a great software and a great service through digital signage, but then taking it a step further and saying what's going to be on the screen and asking that simple question. Do you have a strategy to showcase the highest quality video content or static imagery possible? And sometimes it's, yes, we have a strategy, but a lot of times it's no, and they haven't even really thought about it. They may have an internal marketing team. They may have an agency. Doesn't really matter to us. We can again work and fit into their strategy. So we're finding right now, one of the biggest things that's setting Spectrio apart is our ability to produce video content for digital signage and really for the partner itself and their clients at scale.
Dave, we're producing upwards of, I'd say 7,500 to 10,000 pieces of content a month for partners all over the world, and again, that's my background. A lot of the folks come from the reseller space at Spectrio, they come from digital signage background, but I come from a media and content background. So being able to blend those two has been really fun and really exciting, and I think third, to answer your question is, as you're aware, we've acquired a lot of different platforms, right? So now we have what we believe is the best in breed to say, okay this piece of this functionality really applies to this industry and this vertical with these types of clients versus just saying, Hey, we have one platform, use it or lose it. We can really customize our strategy and our solution to go across the board and help many different industries in many different verticals.
Yeah, I'm guessing that's a bit of a challenge in that, through acquisition, you've acquired a number of CMS companies that have different variations on the same thing, and how you sort out which is best for each. It must be helpful to say, let's build this around content and not worry about features and specs so much. Let's think about what's the best platform for that need is?
Jimmy Hunt: Exactly, and we have a lot of experience, first of all, for C-suite across the board is really specific and careful about who we're going after from an acquisition standpoint and they have made some really amazing choices, and allowing us to really highlight and compliment what we're doing today without being extremely disruptive and/or taking a 180. I would say, second, especially in my role in the Channel/BD world, it's really about leading the sales conversation with discovery, going back to that core value of what are your pain points, what are your roadblocks for you as a partner, but more specifically, and probably more importantly, for your clients, right? Whether it's working with the AV/IT reseller that focuses specifically in the finance category or whether it's a media company that has 25,000 automotive clients, it's really taking a step back and understanding how we can help you get from point A to point B and then from there that helps determine which platform and what pieces, and what pieces of the functionality we can apply to best help that partner.
So who's doing the discovery? Because you could have salespeople and channel salespeople who have pipelines to fill, they've got quotas to hit and they don't necessarily think of themselves as content and strategy consultants.
Jimmy Hunt: That's a great question. It's a unique blend between marketing, product and sales. Through some of our acquisitions, we've just obtained some of the absolute best, most brilliant brightest folks in the space, I'll speak about one specifically, Christian Armstrong came from Industry Weapon. Now he's been doing it for 16 years, and he manages our two largest partnerships, as well as our largest clients through those partnerships. So he has a unique role where he has taken on as a sales engineer as well as a product specialist role, and then we bring in our VP of Product who's just another wonderful hire from a couple of years ago, a guy named Brandon Mullins, who's just a genius.
He runs all of our product and BD efforts. So having him really scope out from the get-go, “Okay this is something that is viable for the Spectrio. This is a good target”, and then really once we do that, we really try to capture that and productize it. Now, every partner industry's different, but although we are flexible, we still like to put things in a “box” and then scale. For me, it's all about scale and volume. So it's finding the partners that have a lot of endpoints, a lot of clients that we can then go after, and a partner and produce a high volume of revenue as well as endpoints.
That's interesting because I would imagine some of the industry perception of Spectrio is, there's a company that's been growing through acquisition, they're acquiring IP and they're acquiring customers, but I don't know how many people think in terms of, they're acquiring human talent, as you just described.
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah. So I think that's honestly one of my biggest missions this year is to get the Spectrio name and the vision and our methodology out in space. I think you're right, Spectrio is sometimes seen as a big or a growing company that's growing through acquisitions, and we are, obviously, but we have really focused on getting the right people, and I think that allows us to do both. Having Christian, having Brandon and some others as well on board allows us to grow the right way. Even the folks from the ABN acquisition, they are surprising me, and in a good way, every single week. Just how they went to market, obviously focusing on the automotive industry, but how they went to market was different from how Industry Weapon went to market and very different from how I went to market. But we're trying to find the commonalities both from a strategy standpoint, and then also finding the right people to take what they've done in the past, tweak it for a future focus and really grow the partnerships that way.
What is the size of the company at this point?
Jimmy Hunt: We're a little over 400 people and growing. We have a headquarters in Tampa. I'm based in Dallas, Texas, and we have people all over, but a big population in that Tampa, Miami, Florida region, as well as Charlotte, North Carolina.
Oh, okay, and the Charlotte office, that was one of your acquisitions, going back 3-4 years, right?
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, the Charlotte offices mostly consist of sales, management and there's a handful of marketing folks there as well.
Are you active in other countries?
Jimmy Hunt: We are, yeah. So we are international, I would say a majority of our focus is US and Canada but we are active in other countries. It depends really on how we want to grow our international presence. It will be very specific and strategic and we'll most likely go through resellers and partners. Obviously, it's one of the easiest ways to get traction their fast.
But there are, I guess there's 30 million plus SMEs or small to medium size businesses across the US so there's plenty to have here. But some of our acquisitions in Canada have been very interesting and allowed us to have a different perspective and to really see growth there, as well.
Yeah, you bought Screenscape about a year and a half ago, two years?
Jimmy Hunt: Correct. Yeah, and talking about a couple of guys that have stayed on. One of my top top sellers that stayed on lives in Canada and really took on that whole channel market himself and has just done very, very well.
In terms of vertical markets, where are you guys seeing growth?
Jimmy Hunt: So I'll start with my team, and then I'll talk about the Spectrio at large, but really from our focus, again, from the channel side, we're are targeting resellers and channel partners in three main categories, and so that's media and agency, TV, radio, print, digital, etc.
Second and probably our largest and fastest growing is AV/IT. So that's where all the big players are and again, through the acquisitions, I would say we work with 60% to 70% of the top players in that space, but there's a whole bunch that we can also go after and then the third is an interesting mix, and these are more true partners than they are resellers, and that's every one from manufacturers of screens, mounts, et cetera. So think of Sony, LG, et cetera, all the way to a Brightsign and more of that player manufacturers. And those have been really interesting for me because it makes so much sense, right? If someone is out there securing deals and lots of endpoints selling their hardware, and they can have the conversation to say have you thought about a CMS provider? Have you thought about the software piece? That's where we've seen a lot of growth, and those partnerships were fun, right? Because like I said, it's less of a sale. It's more of a true value out of saying, okay, we have this 2,000 location retail chain that we're trying to chase, and we know that they need hardware, but they're also gonna need software. So let’s introduce the Spectrio folks at the right time.
So that's our chase from an industry perspective. From a vertical perspective, it's probably what you would imagine, it's healthcare, QSR, retail, automotive, higher education. For me, personally, higher ed has been super fun. I'm actually having a blast with that, just because I'm talking about an industry that could really use most of our services. You go on site to a big university or college campus. You can say their auditoriums and their stadiums and basketball arenas that have tons of screens that also need high quality content and as well as wayfinding capabilities for the campus itself. So it's been really fun trying to dig into that vertical more.
They can be messy though, can't they? The higher ed, because you have individual schools that have their own IT departments.
Jimmy Hunt: Oh my goodness, you're absolutely right. Not only that. It's the schools, it's also the athletic departments, and a lot of the build-outs of the various buildings and infrastructure are all different, right? As you know, you would have one part of the campus be renovated a year ago, and the other one hasn't been touched in 25 years. That's why having the product and sales engineers alongside with me pitching those types of clients has been crucial, and also just understanding what their needs are now versus what will be their needs in two or three years.
There's been endless discussion about how the IT & AV worlds are converging and they ought to be best friends forever and so on. I would say it's only been in the last couple of years when you've really started to see that happen. I was intrigued by Diversified bringing on a new CEO and their founder is not stepping away at all, he's going to be very reactive, but much more mentoring, but their new CEO comes out of IT Services. So they absolutely see where the future is.
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, so without having specific details on why they did that, I think overall, that is going to be the trend we're going to see, and it's not just IT. I think you could slot in content there. I would not be surprised if there's some big changes in the C-suite across the various resellers, bringing in people that have strong content backgrounds as well as IT, I think we're going to see more of a blend, right?
We're getting to the position where it's almost annoying, I can't go anywhere without looking at screens, and I was in the airport yesterday. I probably sat in and it was technically my day off. I was visiting my family in DC and my team was like, please stop texting us. But I was in the airport just taking videos at the bar, at the restaurant or in the Concourse and all these different types of functionality and services and I think it's becoming so apparent and just consumptions and consumer behavior is really going to help drive this blend of, okay, AV actually needs more of a lock step with IT as well as content. So I'm not surprised by that move at all, and I think it's probably gonna work very well for them.
Yeah. It's interesting that in the last little bit, I haven't seen anybody stand up at a conference or publish something that says, “content is king”, which was an eye-roller for a whole bunch of time. But now it seems to be baked in there that people get it, that this is not about the screens, it's not about the software. It's about what's on the display and you've got to get that right.
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, David, I think that's absolutely right. I would even take it a step further. I think a lot of times, what I'm hearing is it's all about what's on the screen, but moreover, what story can you tell? And that kind of goes back to the “Mad Men” days of advertising, what story are you going to help that brand tell? It's actually really fun and exciting to see. You could see it come full circle with a new type of media, right? Signage is relatively new. I know it's not new, per se, but in terms of TV and radio, I think digital signage on site is a little bit different, and I think it's been really refreshing to hear people across the board, whether it's this type of industry or that, saying what story can you help us tell?
Because, in my opinion, I think that is the real value. Because it's not just pushing an ad, it's not just having a menu board. It's what story can you tell, which will then inflict some type of behavior or feeling for the consumers, and if we do that well, then you're going to see all the good things such as higher retention rates, probably higher sales at point of sale, et cetera.
When you're talking to particularly the IT Services people who lead with that sort of thing, what are the questions they're asking and how are they sorting through who they want to partner with? Because I'm guessing things like security come up as being quite important to them.
Jimmy Hunt: Oh, so I would say security is number one. I would say scale and not just scale within, again, there’s scale in a campus. There's also, if it's a multi location franchise that has locations all over the world or all over the country, can you reproduce this in 500 different cities? I think that in itself is a challenge. I think the installation piece and the survey piece is super important. Again, going back to the infrastructure of how something is built, whether it's a a financial service, it's going to be different than a college campus and that will be different than an attorney's office. So having the ability to not just be pigeonholed to one vertical is super important for us.
And do you have to, particular running channels, be careful about how you are establishing what your lane is and how you stay in it? Because there are lots of software and solutions companies out there who describe what they do as turnkey. “We can do the deployment, we can do the framing and consulting. We can do whatever you need us to do.” But if you have partners, that's what they want they do.
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, I guess that's been one of the positive challenges and roadblocks that we've had with growth. We start to have a little bit of growth in a particular industry or vertical with a certain reseller type, then you want to pursue that, but it all has to run in parallel to the overall goals, objective of Spectrio. So I would say, outside of my world, we're pretty aligned and locked in.
I would say with the channel and the resellers, first and foremost, we will always want to lead with being a software company. We want to provide the best CMS. But I think to your point, understanding where we can be flexible and be more fluid with particular partner requests or types, and it could be anything from, how we receive the orders. It can be that simple. It could be, “Hey, we have a certain CRM or some type of software tool that we use to capture orders and send out orders or, billing, et cetera.” But it's being very careful about how we move forward. I think, again, that when we first started the channel partner program officially in Q3, we still have more of a shotgun approach, and that was purposeful. That was a strategy that I wanted to pursue at first, just make sure I was covering all my bases to understand that we didn't leave anything out, and from then that focus has been more and more narrow.
So now we are hyper-focused on providing the best partnership experience to AV/IT, media and agencies, as well as those hardware providers.
Spectrio started out as doing stuff like music on hold, when people used landline phones and things like that, and in-store music, all those sorts of things, and those still exist within the company. Are they helpful in rounding out the offer for some of the jobs to try to do particularly in retail?
Jimmy Hunt: Yeah, absolutely. So I'll answer that in two ways. First a 100 percent, we were started as this in-store on-hold music and messaging company and that allowed us to scale and scale quickly, and then it is still a really big part of our business today, especially when COVID hit it was hard for us to pick up the phone and try to sell signage when a lot of locations were closed, but there were certain products and services such as the on-hold that went through the roof, and it was because everyone was picking up the phone and trying to figure out if their local pharmacy was open or if their favorite restaurant had changed business hours, and people really trying to take advantage of that, saying, "Okay this is one way that we can actually continue to communicate, update our clients with some type of messaging."
But then I think now, to your point, yes, a 100 percent, if we can offer a more holistic solution, a full suite of services to our partners and to their clients, we absolutely do and I think taking a look at the broader partner world, the ones that are consuming multiple products are the ones that are staying longer, that have lower churn, that have higher ASP, that have higher overall MRR with us, and it just makes sense again, and that kind of goes back to how we started this.
Let's start the conversation with discovery. Let's understand what the pain points are and though signage may be the sharp end of the spear, what typically happens if we're being a good partner, if we're providing that training and collateral, not just sometimes, but all of our products and services. At some point, I bet we'll have a shot at selling in music or selling in content or selling in WiFi. That's been a charge from day one is let's win the business with what makes the most sense, which is 99% of the time signage. But also having the ability to go, what are you doing for music? And isn't that a pain point, and then really trying to find the commonalities between our products and services.
Yeah, and I assume your resellers and your end user customers are happy as clams if they ask that question, can you do in-store audio too and you say, yeah, we can, because if you don't, they have to go out and find another vendor.
Jimmy Hunt: Oh, yeah. You're a 100 percent correct there and it's been interesting talking to some of these some of the leaders in the space. Most of our conversations is around signage, but it's always interesting to see their perspective and to hear their delight saying, hey, obviously we're going to keep the conversations around players and signage, but oh, by the way this client or reseller is asking about music, can you also provide?
And from my perspective, again, it goes back to being a good partner, but what it does for our partners is it allows them product and vendor consolidation, which sounds just like a simple thing on paper, but it's really not because every vendor a partner brings on, that's typically another individual, another workflow, another billing unit, another escalation point, and so if we can help our resellers and their clients consolidate their vendors, that's sometimes is enough just to win the business. Then obviously the second thing that we really lean on in terms of multiple products and services is product diversification. So again, partnering with Spectrio allows, let's say just a typical AV/IT reseller to go, okay we can give you a signage, we can give you software. But now we can also provide you with music. We can now also provide you with content, and that was a big play for me in the media space, because you think others in the space, they started obviously selling just radio, just TV, just print, but over the years have gone digital and, having that digital component can encompass a lot of different things. So having us provide one or multiple products or services allows our partners just an easier path to success.
Last question: we're now starting to do trade shows again. Finally, I've actually got airplane tickets to a trade show for the first time in two-plus years. Where will people in the signage industry be able to find you guys in the next few months?
Jimmy Hunt: We've been very active. Again, it's been a challenge across the industry. I think people are starting to get more and more in tune and okay with getting back on the road, rightfully so. It was a devastating, challenging time for everyone and every single industry for two years, and it still is. So we've been super-active. I would say future focus, we will be at DSE. We'll be at InfoComm, and then we are in the very near term, there’s a media event out in LA called Localogy, and I'll be speaking on that. I'll be speaking on a panel about content and digital signage and how to bridge the gap between the two, and it's interesting, that is typically a media publisher conference, but we've actually invited a lot of our friends over at Sony and Brightsign.
My selfish goal is to help blend these two industries saying, these are some of the largest media companies in the world, and I selfishly want them to be in tune with digital signage, and here are some of the brightest and sharpest individuals in the AV/IT digital signage space, let's actually step out and blend the two. So I'm very excited about that. We'll have a presence at several more, but I'd say InfoComm, DSE and Localogy are the three that we're going to really double down on and we hope to see everyone there.
Absolutely. All right, Jimmy, thank you so much for taking some time with me.
Jimmy Hunt: Dave, thank you so much. This has been great. Being a fan of it for so long and now hopping onboard has been great.
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Ryan Taylor, Delta Airlines
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
Wednesday Apr 20, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Airports and airlines were early adopters of digital signage technology and the whole idea of data-driven messaging - using screens to tell travellers about arrival and departure times, and the status of flights and boarding at gates.
But digital signage is becoming central to communications not only for passengers, but also for staff.
A huge upgrade of Delta Airlines facilities and passenger experience officially opens today at LAX, with the focal point a 250-foot-long horizontal LED ribbon behind the check-in and bag-loading areas at Delta's relocated and renovated terminal. Similar work is being done by Delta for another busy airport in bad need of sprucing up, LaGuardia in New York.
I had a chance to speak with Ryan Taylor, who is managing the digital signage side of these projects for Delta. We get into the thinking behind them, and how they'll be used, but we also have a broader chat about other ways digital signage is being used in airports by Delta. You have maybe heard of FIDS and GIDS displays, but did you know about RIDS and even SQUIDs?
Listen and learn!
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TRANSCRIPT
Ryan, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what your role is at Delta Airlines and how that's evolved?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Dave. So my role now is exclusively digital signage. So I run a lot of the digital signage that you may or may not see. Some of our stuff is in the airports and increasingly so now, but a lot of our stuff that I do is the back of the house employee communications. We do a lot of dashboarding and other things. So yeah, I am full time digital signage for Delta Airlines right now.
Wow, is there like a department or are you the guy, the one person?
Ryan Taylor: Our team is growing, so it's me and a couple of other people and a whole lot of people that support us tangentially, of course.
But right now there are several other teams that do digital signage. Most of what you see in the gate areas is another team, and then like I said, my responsibilities are some of the airport areas and then mostly back of house. So right now I manage a network of about little less than 1800 screens somewhere in that range.
Oh, wow, and does that include back of house and workplace and so on?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so a lot of the employee communication stuff. So we're in break rooms where employees congregate, lobby areas and then of course there's a lot of dashboarding that we do for various groups to help them navigate the operations and specific things to their work groups. We're very data intensive, so it's not all the nice, pretty pictures. Some of it's just pulling data from various systems and giving people and work groups the information they need to do their jobs effectively.
Where are you hived out of, the IT group?
Ryan Taylor: That's correct. Yeah. So I'm IT and so we manage the infrastructure, the software and build the experiences for customers, whether they're internal or our actual customers.
It's interesting because when you talk about data, you could make the argument that airports were probably the first venues that really adopted the idea of data integration, and they've been doing FIDS displays and GIDS displays for 20+ years.
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, and you can imagine that an airline generates a lot of data, right? And data has a how's the shelf life, especially in real-time 24/7 operation, getting that data to people that need it is critical and making sure your flight is not delayed and it's on time and it's going where it needs to go, and everybody that needs to be on it is on it, and so yeah, we do pride ourselves on playing a really active role in putting that data in the hands of people that need it.
I like to think of the dashboards that we do, they're really heads up displays. The ramp people that load the bags and service the plane and everything, we have our RIDS displays out there for them that give them a whole lot of data on that flight, you know, they don't have access to computers. So having a display on the ramp that shows where that flight's going, how many bags left to be loaded on, how many passengers. All that data that helps the operation run is really front and center for them and has a really positive impact on how the airline operates. So something that we're really proud of.
Yeah, that's interesting. Being a consumer passenger, I'm sitting on the plane or I'm sitting in the gate and all that, the only screens I ever see in those areas are big, almost analog LED displays that just say, which gate, or maybe it says, 867 BOS, cause the flight's going to Boston or something. But, as you're describing, there's more displays that we would never see that are mission critical to the folks trying to get the plane out on time.
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so you can actually see these RIDS displays if you're in one of our larger hubs. Sometimes they're a little hard to see from the window seat, but they are there and we're pushing a whole lot of information to them. A lot of the data probably doesn't mean much to a passenger, you know, just looking at it but it means a whole lot to the ramp guys and even the pilots rely on it even though they have different systems, it's so visible that they become Kind of integral to the operation, which is great. It's a great place to be when the stuff that you're doing is that valuable.
Is that a new application or have those always been there and I just didn't know about them?
Ryan Taylor: They've been there for a couple of years now. They're about maybe two years old, so pretty new, and I can send you some pictures if you're interested in seeing them, but they're really a cool success story. They do serve a very vital role in the operation.
Yeah, it was going to be my next question: you've had two years of these in action, have you been able to measure the impact and assess the impact of them?
Ryan Taylor: That's a very good question, and it's one that I wish I had more data on.
I believe we know that they are having a positive impact. It's a source of frustration for me, because I would love to get more data on the before and after, on everything we do really. I don't know if everybody's plates are already so full that going through and coming through the data and gathering it is just another task that people don't feel is necessary at this point, but everything from the employee communication side of things, I've always wanted to do before and after survey to see how better informed they are after we put these screens in their break rooms even, do they know more about what the company's direction is and things like that.
We do signage in the Sky Clubs, these are actually iPads that are on the bars that show the drinks that are on offer the premium drinks. We know that they do have an upsell effect in that the bars that have them do sell more premium drinks, we just don't have the hard data to back it up because we can't get anybody to provide it for us. So it's things like that. But yeah, I would love to be able to point to some positive ROI stories because it's always hard digital signage, right? Because sometimes it's not readily apparent. Unfortunately, we don't get that much information.
But anecdotally, and just inherently, you would know that down on the ramps and all that, just simply enabling the workers to know where they're at, what the status is, how much time they have, how many more bags to go or whatever, must be huge for them?
Ryan Taylor: It is. Yeah, we know from talking to them and from the leadership, and just from the investment they've made in it. These went from a, like everything, it starts out as a small POC, and once they see the value, they either hit the gas or they hit the brakes and they hit the gas on those RIDS very quickly. We went from pretty much 0 to 200 of those deployments and in about six months.
So they're maybe not standardizing on them, but they're becoming a fairly normal sort of piece of the landscape?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, in the airline world, we have leeway to put these in some of our larger hubs where we have more of a presence and in some cases, we're not allowed to put them in a common use environment, but we have in pretty much all our largest hubs, which is great to see.
Yeah, I guess in airport terms, there are airports where you have gate licenses to be there, but there are other airports, like obviously Hartsfield in Atlanta and Salt lake City where you have your own terminal and everything else, right?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. If we're the terminal operator, we basically have pretty much free reign to do what we want in terms of the technology and everything else that we put on, and like in a smaller station where we only have a couple of flights or a handful of flights, or we're sharing gates with other airlines, that's obviously not as easy to do.
Digital signage and airports have been around for a long time. Obviously there have been two main activities, there have been the flight information displays and the gate information displays that are traveler focused and are just saying, “This flight's going here at this time at this gate and so on”, and then a fair amount of new digital signage has gone in from media companies, but it seems in the last 2-4 years that airports are really, and airlines are making an investment in kitting out the pre-security areas, doing things at check-in and elsewhere, using digital signage that gives them a lot more flexibility and the ability to do messaging and everything else and I was intrigued, and the reason we connected was the work that's going on at LAX. Could you explain that?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So this is probably the most exciting thing that I've ever been involved with in my work life, so we do the LIDS and everything airport digital signage needs, your flight information displays, so FIDS or LIDS, as you mentioned. So really LIDS have traditionally been just a single screen behind the counter where you show, checking in the main cabin or this is for sky priority, segmentations. When they started redoing the LA airport, we kinda got involved with our corporate real estate partners, ACS, which is the airport customer service team that runs the gate counters and everything and we wanted to do something that was different that allowed for more than just your normal screen behind the counter.
And that's where we started talking with NanoLumens about putting it in a digital back wall that was continuous using direct LED technology, and it grew from there. So as far as we know, this is the largest single back wall in any airport in the United States. I know Orlando has a much longer one, but it's individual LCDs.
Yeah, it's a whole bunch of tile narrow bezel LCDs.
Ryan Taylor: Right, so this is the longest, continuous one that we're aware of. So we're going to claim it. We're going to say, we have it, but yeah, it’s 250 feet long. So beyond just the normal, for main cabinet or oversize baggage, this allows us to put a whole lot more information, and branding. The whole idea was to create this wall that had a calming effect in the airport. An airport can be a very chaotic and sometimes intimidating place, like LAX can be daunting. So this gives us a whole new avenue to promote the brand, but really inform and maybe change the mood a little bit in that check-in process.
So what you'll see is an addition to the LIDS information, we'll have flight information, so there's actually FIDS embedded in there. There's an innovative new meter for the sky club to tell you how busy the club is before you even set foot behind security. So you can play on, “Hey, the club is busy. There are two clubs, so you can choose between them.” So that's a really cool data point on there, but just the imagery and the videos that we'll be playing behind it will kind of have a sense of calm. It all works together on this really huge, beautiful back wall that stretches the entire length of the ticket counter, which is pretty impressive. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and we're really excited.
The really cool thing about it is there will be a sister to this wall coming online very soon in LaGuardia, and it will be the next one to get it when they open up in early June.
These are two terminals that could badly use any sprucing up they can get, right?
Ryan Taylor: Absolutely, yeah. If you've ever flown out of either one of them, you’d know how much they needed investment and it is a big investment and we're happy to be a part of it.
So with the 250 foot wide LED ribbon, are you running a single piece of content at times across the whole swath of it or is it segmented?
Ryan Taylor: It'll be segmented and most of that, I guess from the user end, it'll look like it's one piece of content. It's actually two PCs running the wall. So there are two PCs that split the wall in half. So one side is driven by one PC, it's actually a 4k resolution. So everything's being reassembled onto the wall and in that linear fashion, but it will look like one piece of content.
The only reason why we don't have one continuous landscape shot would be just because it doesn't exist. We couldn't find anything longer than 4k width to put up there.
So you'd have to come up with custom creative and maybe somewhere down the road, you do that, but to get going this'll do just fine?
Ryan Taylor: Yep, absolutely.
And the LAX job, it was previewed recently, but it's not actually live yet, right?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So LAX is going to open April 20th, that’s when passengers will start being directed to use that space over the old terminal to check in and that one will be renovated for another airline that I believe. But yeah, that will be our new home, terminal three in LA come April 20th.
This is why you're going back and forth a lot between Atlanta and LA?
Ryan Taylor: That is, yeah. We had a media event a while ago. As you can imagine, there's still a lot of last minute details to take care of. So we're just making sure that all the I’s are dotted, T's crossed and ready to go for April 20th.
In terms of the LED wall itself, did you have to do some testing and everything else around what pixel pitch was going to work for viewability? These are not just ads and not just visuals, you've got to have text on there. I would assume you have to be pretty careful to make sure the legibility is there so that people aren't wondering, does that say 130 or 730?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, this was definitely a learning curve for us. This was our first foray into using the LED technology and you mentioned the pixel pitch, which is spot on. I think we're using 2.5 millimeters on this wall, so there is some trade-off right? The resolution is pretty good, especially when you're standing at a distance.
Customers will be about 10 to 12 feet away from this when they're actually at the check-in counter talking to an agent. So you have some distance, but it is still relatively close. We did a lot of testing on the legibility. When we're actually putting data out there, it's really good. Some of the images, depending on how fine they got, tended to not be as clear. So where we could, we defaulted to actually printing and texts from the software instead of putting up an image.
I'm curious if what you're doing will extend into the automated baggage loading areas. I don’t know the technical term for that is, but one of your rival airlines that rhymes with United, in Denver, had a new area open up recently where those conveyors or whatever, where you do your own bag tagging, and then you drop them on a conveyor and they go into something, they were using LED walls there to segment the different stations and say, this one's open, this one's closed or whatever, or this is for a business class, all that sort of thing. Are you doing that or looking at it?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so, there's an express baggage lobby in Atlanta, and I believe there's one coming or already in Detroit. We did a pilot because of the layout of the one in not Atlanta. There's four kiosks for the self tag bag drop. So we did use some sensors to feed a digital display that was in the queuing area that would show you which one is occupied and which one is available.
Unfortunately it didn't really pan out. It was either too sensitive or not sensitive enough because it was basically looking at an area in front of the kiosk to tell somebody was standing in front of it and if they moved out of that fence off the virtual area, if we set it too sensitive, as they're moving around with their bag, it was flickering, between open, closed, occupied, and then if it wasn't, if we dial down the sensitivity, then it was somebody would leave and for too long it would look like somebody was still there. So we abandoned that aspect of it, but our screens are still there explaining the process and wayfinding and directionally, where you go after you drop the bag off.
Yeah, I assume in airports, just like in retail, particularly given what's happening in the last couple of years that I've been saying a lot that digital signage is even more important than prior to the pandemic, because there's more of an emphasis than ever on self-service, more technologies being introduced and whether it's frictionless shopping or whatever in retail, you need screens that explain, “This is what you do. This is how you do it. This is where you go”, all those things.
So I'm assuming that the journey that starts at check-in, you guys are thinking about the full journey, all the way to the boarding ramp for passengers and using digital signage to guide them.
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. I think you nailed it. You really do have to look at the whole experience from a passenger perspective, from curbside to a baggage claim and on, so there is a lot of emphasis and there's a whole team that does look at that experience, not just from a digital signage perspective, but from every aspect of that traveler's journey and so we're partnered with them to make sure that we're aligned with how we want that passenger to experience Delta and digital signage is a key part of that.
I guess it's one thing when Delta owns the terminal or has blanket rights to it or whatever, versus ones where you're a tenant in it, how difficult is it to coordinate with all the different systems and displays and data sources and everything else that may be in like a secondary, I'm pulling one out of the air here, let's say Kansas city, Missouri, or something like that, where maybe you're not a hub but there are all these systems that you need to work with?
Ryan Taylor: That's a good question. I don't know that I have an answer for that because I haven't really had to deal with that piece. Generally, we are brought in after they've already sorted those kinds of details out.
Yeah. I was supposed that regardless of whether new digital signage is in there, they've always had flight information displays and that sort of thing?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, and I don't really do the FIDS, but I know that some airports, they like to use their own FIDS and their own data feeds and then, areas like Atlanta those are FIDS, they're managed by us so and obviously we're just showing our flights there because you're on our concourse.
So it definitely depends on what the airport wants or allows us to do, versus you know I think in our view, we would want to have all our stuff, be owned and operated by Delta.
In the sky clubs, the frequent fire lounges, are you doing anything beyond FIDS display?
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So in the sky clubs, we specifically manage our team on the outside, the ladder boards, affectionately called the SKIDS for sky club information displays.
I've learned about RIDS and SKIDS today.
Ryan Taylor: Oh I'll tell you all about it, we've got more “ids” coming. LaGuardia is getting SQUIDS.
Okay. I have to ask what that is.
Ryan Taylor: SQUIDS is security and queue information displays.In LaGuardia, there'll be these freestanding totems that will let the passengers know that this line is for general boarding. This one is for precheck, so that segmentation. So those will be actually very cool. They are about 12 feet tall, and they're kind of, I call them monoliths, because they're triangular shaped and they'll have LED screens on two sides of them. They're very striking. They're going to be a really cool different looking digital signage, right? Not your normal 16:9, and not to bring up your brand, I do feel like there's going to be a lot more digital science that comes out, especially with the LED technology that breaks that mold of the ratio, which I think is great because it's become so ubiquitous.
I’m definitely going off on a tangent here, but I think the challenge, especially in an airport environment is there is a proliferation of screens. If you're looking in the gate area, there's so many screens hanging down for your attention and if we could rethink that and figure out a way to make it less cluttered and clean up the gate area, I think that would help with some of the chaos of visual stimulation that you can become bombarded with.
Yeah. I think that the chaos and reducing that has gotta be the biggest goal of any of this sort of stuff in something like an airport, and I really appreciated it when I think it was Orlando airport, they started using flat panel displays at the TSA screening areas, that would say, this line is for business class and so on, and if things changed and a new aligned open up or whatever, the screens would automatically reflect that, and just anything like that operationally that makes the journey a little easier and a little less irritating, I think is amazing.
Ryan Taylor: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I think there's a lot that can be done to inform but also, make it just a little more palatable. I think one of the dangers with digital signage is it's easier than ever to put up a screen. The cost has come down and especially with these large format LED screens, even in your city cityscape, you're running the risk of saturation to the point, I mean, I don't think it's there yet, but in certain places that can be where you're creating that future mystic Blade Runner scenario, where there's a screen on every building and you're just overwhelmed with stuff.
So we definitely have to be thoughtful on how we deploy and what we're putting on there and is it useful, right? Is it serving its purpose? Or are we just adding to the clutter and teaching people not to look at these things? Cause that's what you don't want to do.
Yeah. I think that's the great example of why airport digital signage is so good because of all those “ids” and they all have a point except maybe the advertising, which I know you guys don't do, but all those other ones serve some express purpose.
Ryan Taylor: Yes.
All right, Ryan, this was terrific. I learned a lot today, including about SQUIDS.
Ryan Taylor: Yeah. If you ever get to New York, I'd love to show you around and if you're ever in Atlanta, we can host you here if you're interested. There's a lot of stuff we're proud of and we can show you the RIDS, we can show you SQUIDS.
There’s nothing more exciting than going to LaGuardia.
Ryan Taylor: I know, right? By the way, our back walls are affectionately called BFLIDS, which stands for Big Friendly LIDS. You can choose another word for friendly features, but that's how we refer to them.
I'll have to start coming out with my own “ids”.
Ryan Taylor: You can get creative with them.
All right, Ryan. Thanks again.
Ryan Taylor: Thanks, Dave. It was good talking to you.
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Peter Livesey, Esprit Digital (2022)
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
Wednesday Apr 13, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Esprit Digital has been making and supporting custom display solutions for 20 years from facilities north of London, but the company recently took the interesting step of investing in their own manufacturing in China and expanding from LCD into LED.
The company has built up a reputation for putting together displays - from screens that line subway escalators to sidewalk totems - that manage to look sleek, but also have mission-critical reliability. Esprit has, for example, a major, longtime customer in the giant Westfield shopping center chain, and also works with big OOH media companies and retail brands.
I was intrigued by news that Esprit was getting into LED displays - a market that's even more crowded than digital signage software - so I arranged a catch-up interview with owner Peter Livesey. I learned his angle is all about custom, or as Brits like him say, bespoke.
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TRANSCRIPT
Peter, thank you for joining me. We’ve done a podcast in the past, but that was, I don’t know, in 1977 or something like that, so things have probably changed. Can you give me a background on what Espirit Digital is all about and really what the last couple of years has been like? Cause it's been a little bit nutty.
Peter Livesey: To say the least. I think it was 1975 actually, but we won’t split hairs about that.
So you were in your forties then, I think?
Peter Livesey: Ooh, are we going to spar straight away? There are a lot of questions there. First of all, It's great to be back because I think that's where we are now and I think we, as an industry, as a world, are starting to come back to where we were a couple of years ago and we're still here, Espirit Digital, we're still going. We are stronger than ever.
It's our 20th anniversary this month. So we're very proud of that. We're going to be doing some things to mark that and the reason we're stronger than ever considering our traditional customer base effectively shut up shop and put everything on pause for the most part for the last two years for all the reasons we know, is because we did a strategic pivot.
We brought a technology called InstaScan, which allowed people to get into buildings and get into public spaces, it took the temperature, and it worked really well. It was a cheap, lightweight item, could be wall-mounted or freestanding. Anyway, we sold thousands of them, made them all here just north of London and distributed them around the world to people like Costco and it was a good one. That's probably not the main reason we're still here, but it certainly helped us.
It's interesting because in Q2 2020, I saw no end of press releases from companies saying we're selling these things now, and I did not see a lot of indication that there was a lot of take-up, but you're saying it, it went great.
Peter Livesey: Yeah, absolutely. Particularly in the US, we did a lot of little big chains over there and it worked very well.
Yeah, I probably just haven't seen them cause I've been locked in my room for two years now.
Peter Livesey: In that igloo of yours, I know. Now we're back to what we really love, which is screen integration and our key verticals as ever digital out of home being number one, screens that generate money tend to tend to be the most interesting for us because everyone wants to push the envelope with every new project. So they always want new toys in the box and new sizes and new applications, and it's great for our R&D team.
So your company would primarily be known for digital display totems, whether they're interactive or “static” in terms of not being interactive, but they're running video and all that stuff for street furniture, for shopping malls, that sort of thing, is that pretty accurate?
Peter Livesey: Historically, it's always been malls, metros and airports inside and outside. It doesn't have to be totems or kiosks or pods as we call them, it could be any shape screen. As long as it's a professional solution that requires a player and some other toys, whether you talk to it by interacting, with touch screen or with gestures, or now with voice, we have a lovely voice platform where you can talk to screens and they can answer you and give you all kinds of information live, particularly for wayfinding, that's an excellent application.
It doesn't really matter how you talk to them and what CMS you use, all of that is secondary. What's important to us is we design and build hardware solutions for, as I say, digital out of home smart cities and laterally in the last few years, retail, and that's one of the things we're going to come onto because retail screens, I think, it's set to be a boom. It's already now on every architect and design drawings, they've got screens built in. So regardless of where the retail is, if it's in a high street or an airport, it makes no difference. Screens are a big part of the mix, and as I say, there's never been a better time to talk to your customers. They've been gone for a while. You've got online eating your lunch. It's definitely time to fight back with a much nicer experience in store and screens is a great way of starting, put a screen in your window, put the content, nice people come in, welcome them, maybe with a screen or a series of screens, and then have, partner sales screens dotted around the store to give people more micro information where wherever they want to go while they're waiting for shop assistants to either catch up or to find out their query.
The last time I was at a trade show of any size was ISC more than two years ago now, and I believe I bumped into you there, but one of my takeaways from that trade show was: I was amazed by how many companies in Europe had these indoor and outdoor display totems. So they all had variations on roughly the same thing. How do you compete in that market? How do you set yourself apart from them?
Peter Livesey: How do we set ourselves apart? We think we make the most reliable and the best looking kit on the market. It's highly stylized. For instance, the new totem we've just put into the Westfield mall of the Netherlands is a good example. They're sleek, black. They have beautiful ambient light displays down the side strips. They're double-sided 75, and literally if you had them in your home, you would think it was a beautiful addition, and they're in a high-end mall, Westfield's first kind of digital transformation mall on mainland Europe. And, by all accounts, it adds to the overall appeal of the mall. It enhances Westfield's brand, enhances it, and then the ad company, they can sell on a beautiful looking totem.
So we set ourselves apart by being competitively priced or being the best designed unit and it being reliable and reliabilities is key. You can't put stuff out that is going to go wrong in the first six months you can't. So our track record, starting with the London underground, where we had thousands of screens on the escalators in the early two thousands. They were there for 15 years, our stuff that we've put into Westfield around the world, Australia, we're still looking after 600-700 units in America now on a daily basis. These things have been in for, probably since 2016 and by and large, the fault rate is so low on them, and that is because we use quality components inside a sensibly laid out solution that for me, looks and feels better on the inside than it does on the outside.
There seems to be two streams of activity. There are the companies that are designing indoor and outdoor display totems that they're focused on almost making it a commodity, knocking them out with a kind of a standard shape and everything else and putting in a commercial display and saying, here you go, versus what you're saying. It almost sounds like you have to, in certain respects, re-engineer a display and really think through everything if you want them to work happily in the field for many years.
Peter Livesey: Totally. That’s exactly it. No one else, I don't believe, in the world knows as much about the actual screen and the panel itself than our guys that are in our building and they know what's going to make those screens last and last, whether they're inside in In a nice cushy mall in a city or they're outside in a desert in Saudi as we've done them or outside Metro in Oslo where it's freezing cold, no one knows how to make those screens work 24/7/365 for 5 to 10 years, and that's something that, as you say, will set us apart.
What is actually harder, is it Oslo or Riyadh?
Peter Livesey: Any temperature extreme. We've dealt with them all, and then sometimes you get both in one place. In Oslo, it's freezing cold for 10 months a year, it's properly freezing, but for two months a year, it's really warm. So you have to have the technology to be able to cope with that, and we've got it and we can prove it. We've got probably 20,000 of these kiosks out there around the world. We're still doing remote and physical support on all the ones in America. We've just delivered a new double-sided outdoor 65-inch kiosk for an upscale mall in Austin, Texas and that follows hard on the heels of one that we did in NoHo in LA. So these are highly stylized, external, full sunlight, full out solutions that we don't expect to see again for 10 years and that's the thing.
So you can compete on price and volume, or you can compete on reliability and design, and obviously that the latter is more fruitful in probably many ways.
Peter Livesey: Yeah, listen, we're not a maintenance business per se. We support our kits around the world. But we're interested in making solutions that don't go wrong. So if you have a maintenance contract, which effectively is your insurance, if they get vandalized or there is a problem, someone's there too, within the SLA terms to make sure it gets fixed and we have SLAs of 4 hours sometimes, mostly 24 or 48 hours. But that's not what drives our business, our business is all about reliability and yeah, we can compete on all those other elements and really the custom thing is the reason we're having this catch-up today because the custom thing is what's driving us into looking at our own brand of LED and this is why we've called it Lumos, which has got some Latin connotation lighting or something, but anyway, it's a nice name. We like it, and it's exciting because, historically obviously, we've supplied LEDs for many years from every manufacturer out there that's worth anything.
We've put up some really huge LEDs because our skillset is that we can design and build the solution that goes around it, all of the substructure, and we can put things up in hostile environments and make sure that they last. Where there was the big hole was in custom LEDs, and LEDs that just had a price advantage, it also had a reliability to match anything that's out, and Lumos has got that. We've got an enormous range. We are bulleted into a factory in Shenzhen that we now control, and it's a fully automated factory where literally the planets have lined up because I think it's the right thing to have made this move for Espirit because we've got a huge customer base. We're in 32 countries around the world now, and all the tenders that are coming out for kind of the big stuff, the smart cities and the digital out of home tend to have a LED element and LCD kiosk elements together. They're not doing them separately like they always used to, and it makes a lot of sense now for them to go to a one stop shop, tf they're happy with the service they get from Espirit.
I was curious about LED from the point of view of things like street furniture and the totems and other types of LCD products that you've done, as LED pixel pitches have improved and prices have come down, I've long wondered whether companies such as yours would start to transition from what can be highly engineered, needy, so to speak LCD displays into LED displays are going to typically last longer and probably need less engineering to keep them running, wherever they are.
Did you see the market going that way or do you think there's always going to be a demand for LCD because of the resolution and clarity and everything else that you get from it?
Peter Livesey: That's a great question. I've got some micro LED 0.8 downstairs, and it's very hard to tell the difference. At the moment, historically LED has always been for distance viewing and LCD has been for up close and personal, and that's the broad differential, and that's merging into a gray area now where we can use LED in a lot more situations and that will improve and that will carry on evolving.
I think it is a stable technology and we can offer a 10 years warranty from the manufacturer. We can now make it bespoke, everything's designed in the UK here and the factory just makes everything and we either distribute them direct from China to the customer and we either work to do the installation together, we're doing a fabulous one at the moment for the world cup in Qatar. Can't really mention it, but it's this unbelievable hotel that is, I don't know, six or seven, whatever it is, it's the most expensive being built. And the atrium is going to have bespoke tiles as an art installation. So you're going to walk into this atrium, you're gonna look up and there's going to be an enormous comb of LEDs. So every tile will have a mirror, its own mirror, and there's hundreds of tiles and hundreds of mirrors and they form what we think is the world's largest kaleidoscope, and all the FIFA are going to go like, how did that happen?
So that kind of thing, it just wasn't possible a few years ago. It's just that you couldn't do bespoke like that, and now it's absolutely possible. In the last couple of years, we've had this on our radar for a long time. So we haven't launched it officially,but the list of the brands that we are currently using, and I mentioned retail, we're talking about Valentino, Jimmy Choo, Dolce Gabbana, Fendi, Armani. The fact that they've prepared to use, effectively a new brand is a huge endorsement. It really is something that came out of an interesting idea that we've actually made happen, and I think we have got a real chance in the marketplace because it’s got lots of things going for it and it does what it says.
When you talk about bespoke, or as we say over here, custom, what's the demand there? Because obviously there are a lot of LED manufacturers and they're all doing LED cabinets that are squares or rectangles more often, and you put them together and you can derive all kinds of shapes, then there are the companies who want stuff that can wrap around columns and so on. So what's the custom demand that you're getting?
Peter Livesey: So there's three verticals that I see and that is screens that make money, which we know all about, screens that give out information, which we also know all about, and then screens for art, and where those things are emerging, that's where the custom element comes in, where you've got an odd shape like in Westfield, in the Netherlands, we had to build a specific LED because where they wanted to put it out the front door of the mall, there was a residential set of flats and they couldn't get the zoning approved because this enormous residential block made an official complaint saying this thing's going to be too bright and it's going to affect our lives and all the rest of it. So we built a special louver that meant that they would never see it. So the lights, the light source, streamed towards the tracks, and obviously it's got sensors, so it goes up and down, depending on the ambient light. That's the easy part: it's been around forever, but the whole part was having these louvers that directed the light away from the flat. So there's a very simple example of a kind of bespoke LED.
So if you just had a big billboard shaped sign that somebody wanted in a shopping mall, they could buy that from hundreds of different companies and just tile together, 40 or a hundred or whatever LED cabinets, and off you go, but in your case, you're dealing with demands. You can do those, I assume, but you've got customers saying, yeah, we need this to be curved, or we need this to do this special thing?
Peter Livesey: Absolutely. We've got a lot of advertising customers in the middle east, that you may or may not have heard of, and they have put up our kiosks and now they're starting to put up our LEDs as well in some really fun environments. So Lumos now is in places like Morocco, Jordan we just put one up in Baghdad. Would you believe in Iraq? There's no way that now is going to be priced out of having an LED built.
Baghdad?
Peter Livesey: No, you didn't expect to be talking about that today, did you?
No, probably not. I'm curious about your decision to invest in a factory in Shenzhen because there would have to be all kinds of contract manufacturers over there who would do the work for you and no end of companies, who would a white label product for you? So why make the capital investment yourself?
Peter Livesey: Control. If I said anything else, I'd be lying. It needs to be just us. It needs to be the standard that we want. We've got our own people on the ground there, as I say, we do all the designs here, and yeah, it needs to be just us. Market is growing year on year, someone just announced a $25 million investment into their manufacturing capability, and they're absolutely right.
I'm not going to say it's going to explode exponentially, but it's certainly going to grow in a decent way because it works.
And that growth comes amidst, I've heard descriptions that there are literally thousands of LED companies in China, understanding that the vast majority of them just serve the domestic market, but it's not like there's a scarcity of competition out there for you.
Peter Livesey: When I was 24, I had a factory in China, it wasn't even in Shenzhen, it was miles inland, making red full color LED tickets that we used to put into shop windows. My brand was called Color Cell. So I know a lot about Chinese manufacturing, particularly in the LED world, and yes, you're right. There are thousands of facilities. So you've got to know what you're doing is a bit of a minefield out there. But I think we have the experience or I certainly have and the setup that we've got now will allow us to grow a lot and very quickly, and I think we are already starting to see the brand with all the majors. Certainly the retail clients and digital out of home aren't spending as much money, obviously because of COVID but I had lunch with one of the CEOs of one of the biggest outdoors in Europe then he said, we're very close to 2019.
I know he's got a kind of a job to keep spirits up and stuff, and I really believed him when he said that, and I think anecdotally, everybody's coming back, everyone's going to be in Toronto for the world out of home. Then ISE and then there's other events later in the year. So I think we're getting there. We're getting back to where we all were. It's just been weird not doing any kind of business trips for two years.
Is there more and more demand to do something special and different when you're doing something like a big LED display where it's not enough anymore to just be large and be this particularly large rectangle sitting on a wall or whatever?
Peter Livesey: For a lot of applications, no. It literally just has to do that. It has to look good and it has to work for the warranty period, and that is the primary function, but there's so many other factors involved. You've been to some of the facilities and you know that if you put the wrong diode or even the wrong wire, or use low grade stuff, yeah, you're going to make the cheapest solution. But are the colors going to be any good, is the contrast going to be any good? Is the brightness going to be any good in six months in a year in five years? No, it just can’t be. We're talking about electronics here.
So you've got to weigh up. What's your budget? What do you want to achieve? If you just want to start your business off and just get noticed and then upgrade it in six months or two years then, yeah, you can go for a low grade option. If you're a serious player, who's got networks out there that you want to lose and sweat for 10 years, then you've got to pay that extra 10% upfront and get all the benefits down the line.
Is it a steady job to educate the buyers? I would assume the big established digital home media networks have lots of experience with this. You don't have to explain to them the importance of reliability and quality components and so on, but there's always a new subset of buyers that come along, are you always having to educate?
Peter Livesey: Okay. So this side of the pond, JCDecaux probably the biggest dogs, they'll have super experienced buyers who know all about quality and what they want to achieve with any given network that they're going to put in. So it's less about an educational thing and more about keeping them up to date with any technological advances they don't necessarily know about and just talking them through, and they know that we're a highly experienced operator, who knows what we're doing. So those kinds of conversations are valuable.
New entrants or a kind of second tier players, it's slightly different. There's a lot more hand holding the newer the entrant to the market is, and in some cases like when we did Westfield America, for instance, for the LCD network and for all the malls over there, their philosophy was look, we've been chosen to do all the kiosk network, indoor and outdoor therefore, we're going to take their advice on everything from screen size, to brightness, to surrounds, to glass, to PC, to absolutely everything, and then if any of them go wrong, it's their fault. They got to sort it out, and that's worked really well for them.
You mentioned kiosks. I'm curious what the public and buyer demand is now for interactive displays. I've written a number of times about how, when the pandemic first broke out, I was wondering what this was going to mean for touchscreens? Is anybody going to use them anymore? And over time, we learned that the risk wasn't all that great there and this is an aerosol problem more than anything else, and touchscreen demand actually went up, did you see that as well?
Peter Livesey: Slightly. Back in 2012, there was a big thing called SARS in the far east, which had this kind of bird flu connotation, and the Japanese were in particular telling the world they're never going to touch, they're never going to share screens in a public place and demand just fell off over in that part of the world, and this time we had the same rumors with COVID that we wouldn't be using touch screens for our wayfinding, for any other interactivity in store. We're not seeing that at all, we're still seeing demand for touch. But as I mentioned earlier, we've got two other good option gestures where you'd point your finger and you zoom in and out with your finger. That's now using a camera triangulation technology, which is just some fun and it's not difficult to achieve, and then voice, voice is a good one. Why not? Now, we've got reliable. The dialect was always the problem. I don't know if you ever had a sat nav where you couldn't talk because you spoke in Canadian and the sat nav only understood Welsh. But do you know what I mean?
It's an endless problem for me.
Peter Livesey: Yeah. But now we're over that.
So what is coming up for Espirit Digital in the next year or so that you're obviously going to be expanding Lumos?
Peter Livesey: We've now got a team in America on the ground. So instead of running projects from the UK and running sales from the UK, we have a new head of sales, Simon Joseph, who ran sales for Trans Lux in the past, and he was an ex sky TV employee over here in Europe, and he's also experienced in LED and he's got a little team that is now making some good progress in the sports area for stadiums and arenas. And yeah, he's got a big sale for a hotel in Dallas that's going to be going live later in the year on the PGA. I think it's the 18th hole of the PGA hotel, but I can't announce it yet, but it's a big one there. So he's got his hands full because I think America is still, it's going to be probably the biggest market for LED over the next five years and that team will grow organically. Likewise, we've got a new team in Scandinavia, and those guys are doing some great stuff over there and yeah, we want to get bigger, and I think that will happen.
And when you say you want to get bigger, what's the size and state of the company right now? You're privately held, how many folks do you have now?
Peter Livesey: There's 35 in the UK office. We've got consulting partners out in the Middle East in particular, which is a very strong market for us, and these people around the world, as I say, business development, then I think we're probably going to double it in the next two to three years, but it will depend on the uptake on Lumos largely, and also how quickly do you sell out of home spring bank? Because the biggest networks fare revenue generating screens. There's no doubt about it, and if you're going to put out, I don't know, five hundred or a thousand in the city, there's only a handful of players on the planet that can fulfill those needs, and we're one of them.
So as they come back, we'll win our fair share of those, and we'll have to gear up accordingly. The company is in good shape. As you say, it is privately held at the moment. It's all about getting the growth strategy right, having the right products and the right people, and one mantra that we live by is that it's much easier to get into Espirit Digital than it is to get out of it. Most of my people, I don't know if you read recently our director, James Welder, he's just done 15 years, and our projects directors on 13, that kind of level, almost everyone's been here for at least a decade, and these are all department heads who run lots of people and have the most experience, some of them in the whole industry.
Yeah. Employee retention is always a pretty good indicator of things.
Peter Livesey: Yeah. I like to think so. We are on a happy ship and we've got knowledge in the building. So when clients come down, we've turned this whole factory set up in Stevenage into a bit of a bit of a showroom. So you can come in, you can see all the different outdoor resolutions, you can look across the industrial park and see all these already lined up and then all the indoor ones are in here.
We want to get as many people coming over and having a look. We had probably our first visit from a US distributor and they came in and I think they liked what they saw and it all makes a lot of sense, and talking to people who are passionate, know about this stuff and who don't cut corners, who will say no? We will say, no, you really don't want to have that glass for that application. I know you want to save money, but if you just hear us out, this is the way to go. This is the right PC. This is the right panel to use on the LCD. We're completely agnostic. We work with all the main panel manufacturers and we choose the right one for that application at that time and for your budget.
All right, Peter, a pleasure to catch up with you.
Peter Livesey: Yeah, likewise, Dave, you keep well, and no doubt, I'll be seeing you at various events this year for the first time in ages and we'll have a beer.
Yes, like I said, I haven't really traveled at all since Amsterdam more than two years ago. So it'll be almost weird to go to an airport, but thanks again!
Peter Livesey: Thank you.
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Jonathan Labbee, SACO Technologies
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
Wednesday Apr 06, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
Montreal's SACO Technologies doesn't have anywhere near the mindshare of the largest LED display manufacturers in the pro AV industry, but it's nonetheless the supplier behind some of the biggest and most interesting display jobs lighting up these days.
That is SACO's LED light stick technology cladding the world's tallest building - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai - and turning it into a colossal media display that can do everything from mood lighting and still images to motion ads for movies, like this recent spot for the new Batman blockbuster.
While the other major players in big direct view LED displays work with pro AV consultants and integrators, and media owners, SACO engages with architects and building engineers to fully integrate active, addressable LED lighting into the facades of buildings and, in some cases, the overall structure of the building. For example, the home grounds of the new MLS team in Cincinnati designed active, changeable lighting into the entire stadium exterior, as opposed to bolting a big conventional display to its side.
That huge low rez LED display on the top of SoFi Stadium in LA - where the Super Bowl was just held - that's SACO, too.
The back-story of SACO is super-interesting and super-different. The company's roots are in supplying the blinking indicator lights you'd see in old school control rooms, like the walls in power plants. Back in the mid-90s, one of SACO's founders wondered if the colored LEDs could be put together and controlled to create a video display. A small reference design proved the concept, and within a couple of years, SACO was providing a massive version as a digital backdrop for U2's PopMart tour.
That led to more concert tours, and by the mid-2000s, the company was also a major player for large format stadium and arena displays.
These days, much of SACO's work is custom and specialized, and not the kind of work suited to the more mainstream, high-volume LED guys.
I had a really interesting chat about SACO with Co-CEO Jonathan Labbee.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jonathan, thank you for joining me. Can you describe what SACO as a company does and how long has the company been at it?
Jonathan Labbee: Yes, absolutely. SACO was founded 1987 by the Jalbout brothers, Fred and Bassam Jalbout, and originally started off as a company that specialized in nuclear controlled room equipment. So SACO actually stands for Systems Automation Control, a very far cry from what we're doing today, but essentially if you’ve watched a Steven Seagal movie and you see these big control room panels on these oil rigs and all that kind of stuff, that's the type of stuff that SACO used to do. And in those panels are a lot of little tiny blinking indicator lights, and some other control equipment that SACO used to manufacture, and eventually they started experimenting with LED technology, and one of the brothers, Bassam, came up with the idea of creating a display using these solid state lights.
At the time it was only red and green and eventually was working with one of the premier LED manufacturers still to this day, and when they invented the blue LED, they provided that to the team back in Montreal, and essentially created the very first video display on earth. It was a small little sample. It was maybe like a one foot by two foot sample. It was quite small, but it was able to demonstrate the capabilities of putting up an image and eventually a moving image, and this caught the eye of certain advertising companies and more importantly at the time a rock band, and we got a challenge from the band U2 to create this 50 foot by 150 foot wide video stage, a backdrop to replace Sony jumbotron that they were planning on putting on PopMart. And we took up the challenge, designed and built this thing and deployed it with success on the PopMart tour, started in Las Vegas, and then we toured with U2, essentially showing off these new capabilities.
This was in 1997.
Wow. So that first reference design that you talked about, was that 97 or a little bit before then obviously?
Jonathan Labbee: The reference design was in 93, that's when the blue LED was invented. We had, at that time, already created a red, green display as a prototype. But then eventually we did build a red, green and blue version. So an RGB version, a full color version and I think we met the band maybe like the end of 1994.
That’s quite a transition from doing a control room to working with Bono.
Jonathan Labbee: It completely changed the company. At the time we called the technology, smart vision. We did a tour with success and picked up a bunch of other bands and then eventually started doing permanent installations, like the Baltimore Ravens stadium and Washington Arena and so on.
And then if we fast forward a little bit, we end up in 1999 when we built the very first NASDAQ screen in Times Square.
So the sort of curved one with the knockouts for all the windows, that's you guys?
Jonathan Labbee: That's us, and that's actually a really interesting story. Already making a curve was going to be a big deal, no one had ever seen a curved video screen of that magnitude, and then we had gotten the project. It was a full display at the time, and then the client, NASDAQ came to us and told us that the main tenant in the building was no longer willing to have their windows covered. So we created his knockouts and everybody was worried about how it would look, I guess it would look odd with these holes in it. With a little bit of convincing, everybody went with it, and the very first piece of content that we put on there for testing was Pac-Man.
Which makes sense, because it would work around the hole.
Jonathan Labbee: Exactly.
Interesting. So you started out doing, I guess, almost like mesh LED curtains, and then the NASDAQ's display was quasi conventional LED cabinets, although albeit a little bit curved and all that, and in the past seven years, really, all these other LED companies have come on the market with their own cabinets on all that and you guys haven't really stayed in the conventional LED cabinet business. You've gone in other directions, right?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that's correct. We still have some “standard” type products. Although they're really more there to support some of the iconic projects that we're doing, and some of the more complex projects that we're doing.
So for example, if we have a client that wants to do this kind of nighttime identity thing on their building, that highlights the architecture, and so on, like some of the projects like FC Cincinnati, in some cases, they may require some video screens down at the bottom on the marquee or inside and stuff like that and so we do have offerings to be able to support them with it.
So is a lot of what you do custom then?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. I would say most of what we're doing today is highly customized, not full custom, but highly customized, and there's a difference there, in the sense that our product is really the technology itself and then how we package it is the customized portion of it for the client.
A lot of the reason that you get attention, I gather at least, is that unlike the vast majority of the companies who are selling “conventional LED products”, they're working with AV integrators, whereas you guys, by the looks of it, at least tend to work with architects.
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that's a very good observation. So our main drive is really with architects. We have seven architects on staff here at SACO. We have mechanical engineers, of course, electronics engineers, but also structural engineers. So when we go into a project and usually the earlier, the better, because we're able to detail down to the level of the building and at the same time, we're able to influence how things get integrated, because we know how we can make things.
We're able to work with the architects to integrate the product in the building facade or wherever it's supposed to go where it looks integrated and not bolted on, and that subtle difference makes all the difference in the world.
It also makes a difference in terms of the engineering, right? Because even though the individual light rods probably aren't all that heavy, if you have thousands of them, it adds weight to a building, right?
Jonathan Labbee: It does, and so if we were to come on, say after a building's already up, we would normally be adding not just a product but we'll be adding, like the bracketing and whatever else that we're doing. If we're there early enough in the early stage, maybe the extrusion for the window will be designed differently to accommodate the product.
So there's some savings in terms of weight and potential costs, but also the final look is very different.
Going back in the past decade or so, you started to see signature buildings in a landscape that would be lit at night for different purposes. They might have a certain kind of baseline set of colors that they use. But if like right now there would be buildings that are in blue and yellow because of the situation Ukraine has.
That seemed to be the way things were being done for quite some time now, but with the Burj in Dubai, that's more than just a sort of ambient lighting. It's a media facade. Was there a moment when it changed and you're able to do that or has that always been possible and it just hadn't been done?
Jonathan Labbee: We've always been able to do that. I think that the market and the clients, as they evolve and they see things and they have ideas and then we start exploring ideas with the clients, then I think that's truly when things get revealed, right?
So we may have the capability to do something, but then you also need to get the client that has a vision that allows that to happen.
Okay. So with the Burj, the world's tallest building, at least I think it still is, but with that one, you've got your product on at least one side of the building. Is it just on the one side kind of facing the mall and all that, and that goes from top to bottom, was it built in or was it added after the fact?
Jonathan Labbee: So this was added after the fact, and actually what happened there is that the client had tried something, they had acquired some products, I don't know exactly where and had put it up. So they had this idea of wanting to do this. I believe it was a DMX based system. It did what it was supposed to do, but the problem is that I don't believe that it lasted as long as they needed it to. So a year and a half in or something, we connected with them and then we designed for them a system that would fully integrate with the fin, we have these really beautiful stainless steel fins on the building. That's what gives it shine during the day.
So we wanted to respect that, but it was also the perfect area to attach these things. So we designed this kind of fin, like a nose piece for the fin that integrated the product, all the cabling and everything, and then we installed that at the end of 2007.
Okay. So with that building, as huge as it is, you can actually do a full motion ad, like the recent one for the new Batman movie from street level, all the way to the top, right?
Jonathan Labbee: Oh, absolutely. Everything that we do is basically either a full video screen or a deconstructed video screen, and in the case of Burj Khalifa, it is what we would refer to as a deconstructed video screen. So it has a twenty five millimeter pixel on the height, but then a meter and a half on the width. So it goes in between the windows and obviously with distance and so on, your brain is able to put the image together.
It's interesting, in the past four or five years with LED marketing, it's all been about finding pitch pixel pitch, and it's 0.9 versus 1.2, and oh my God, 1.2 is awful by comparison, and you're talking about a meter and a half pixel pitch.
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. Everything has to do with distance and contrast, at the end of the day it can be broken down as that. It's in the distance and contrast.
So what's involved in putting up something like that? God knows, I wouldn't want to be one of the technicians who told me to go up to the 110th floor and go outside and put this on.
Jonathan Labbee: It's a really interesting process and much like other projects that we've done, it was the first time that we were doing something. Like this and by like this, I mean, at that height with no cranes and difficult to access and so on, the building itself is almost a kilometer tall. Everything is done with rope access people.
And then the other complexity that comes into play is time. So between when we got the contract and we turned the screen on, It was seven months. So that's not a lot of time to design a new product. We actually had to design a new product for this project, did the engineering, the testing validation, certifications. So essentially what we did is, we had our factory in Montreal. We design and manufacture everything in Montreal by the way, and then we replicated a portion of our factory in Dubai, and we did a lot of final assembly and insulation within the extrusion pieces and so on, and the cabling, everything we did there in Dubai.
The client was very instrumental in helping us set up all of that capability there, and then we just staged everything everywhere that we could in every empty space of the building, and then started deploying these via rope access team, and obviously part of it is a hotel, part of it is are residences. So you are very limited in the amount of time that you can spend. At night, you can’t be in front of the hotel portion, during the day, you can't be in front of the residences. So we needed to plan across a whole building how to get these things in place.
And is it set up in such a way that if you're in one of these residences, you don't see the light emitting from these fins that it's just pointing out?
Jonathan Labbee: Correct, so you have no idea if you're inside the residence that there's actually lighting on the building.
Which is a problem for some of the media facades I've seen that are just mesh LEDs because you're now looking through this grid system to see outside. You’ve still got your view, but it's compromised.
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly, and that's actually one of the reasons why the horizontal pixel pitch had to remain at one and a half meters was because we didn't want, nor our client, didn't want anything in front of the windows.
These media facades on buildings seem to be a thing certainly in China, but I'm starting to wonder when we'll start to see more of them in North America. Are you seeing the demand there to do this?
Jonathan Labbee: Yes, absolutely. Although things have shifted, I think that with the introduction of the Burj, FC Cincinnati, SoFi Stadium on the roof, I think clients and architects are realizing that a media facade doesn't need to be just a rectangular or square video that takes up all their front real estate. They're starting to look at it more as a way to enhance the architecture that can also do media, and being able to prove that you don't have to have the same pixel pitch on the vertical and horizontal. You can do different things and it just makes it more unique and interesting to the building while you're still communicating the message that you want to from the advertiser or from whatever you're trying to communicate.
Is it your control system as well for the software that's driving it?
Jonathan Labbee: So we do everything up to the video processor. So the video processor, what takes a signal and then we work with a variety of companies like Disguise or Seventh Sense depending on the type of project. But anything that has a very complex geometry, we usually work with this Disguise.
Yeah, you're not going to get a setting out of the box for a client or a building.
Jonathan Labbee: No, not all, however, our team does produce all of the 3d coordinates for the software to understand it. So you don’t have to have a human sitting there trying to figure out the map, because we already have the map created with a tool set that allows us to take the map and turn it into the coordinates for the systems that we work with.
So mapping a building is actually fairly simple, and if you were to change something or you had to adjust something in your final drawing sets, you can just re-upload that file to the server, and the server will change the pathways for the video image.
image. Now, when you're working with a giant scale surface like that, because the pixels are a meter and a half apart, at least in that job, does that limit the amount of light that's coming out?
One of the things I wonder about with city bylaws and all that is, if you tried to do something like this on a building in New York or Montreal, what would be the citizen reaction? Would they say, “We can't tolerate this. It's going to blind us. It’s going to feel like a tanning salon in our house”?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, actually a very valid point. We went through that exercise just recently with a client, and that really becomes more about being a responsible corporate citizen. That onus falls on the client, but also on us to provide the tool set to their client for that. But again, if you remember what I was talking about contrast earlier, if something's too bright anyway, then I'm sure you've driven on the highway and seen digital signs for where their brightness wasn't turned down at night and it hurts your eyes. So I bet you don't remember the ad that was on that screen because your brain was too busy hurting.
So in any case, to be able to show off the very best of that building and what you're trying to show, you have to have the right level of contrast. So if it's very bright outside, obviously it could be just light pollution, then you'd want to pump up the power, but if you don't have a lot of competing lights, you would want to j, drop the power down and then the brightness. So we can do it in a few ways. Obviously we can set levels based on time of day and with light sensors and so on which we do for several clients, or there's just just bypass where the client can select it or at night it's just that level.
The Burj is a special case, but if there were other tall buildings in major cities that wanted to do this sort of thing, would they be looking to do it as a media model or do they see it as a way to distinguish their building with ambient lighting that's interesting to look at?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, that really depends on the client. I think that some clients go in with the idea of wanting to create a media building. So if you look at the Hard Rock hotel, for example, like the Guitar hotel in Hollywood, Florida, their intent was clear of what you want it to do. It is media focused from the very beginning.
Some of our other clients, I'm thinking of one of the embassies that we did in New York, for example, originally started off as a way to highlight the building. So there was more kind of a highlight on the edge of the building. But when they saw us testing, they realized, wow, I think there's more capability here, and I think that each client goes through a level of evolution on how to utilize the product.
And I guess there's a delicate balance that they have to reach as well that you were saying earlier, you can be good corporate citizens and do something visually interesting with your building, but then you can cross the line and start selling mortgage broker services
Jonathan Labbee: You could do that or you could strobe and there's a lot of things that you could do that you wouldn't necessarily want to do and some of the clients, obviously we have some very sophisticated clients that have a media strategy for that, and they have a team, but some of the other clients just want to do something beautiful, and when that happens, we have a division inside of SACO called the Media Collective, with a Creative Director and so on, and we usually put together a base package for them, just to be able to kinda understand how to utilize your building.
Is the Media Collective in-house designers, or is it a collective of people who have the skill sets and experience to work with your technology?
Jonathan Labbee: So we have some animators in-house but the whole reason we have a media collective is really to build a collective of external firms that we work with because we actually get a lot of work through design firms. So we don't want to end up competing with them so if we do end up having a project that requires some content, Burj was a perfect example. In the beginning, we built a bunch of content for them. So we directed the whole thing, but we had, I think, six firms that worked with us to provide different flavors.
When you have a specialized project, somebody like another Montreal company, Moment Factory might come to you guys and say, “Hey, we need to do something on this monumental surface. Can you help us?”
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, correct. Actually Moment Factory, there are several projects where we've collaborated together. One of them being the AT&T project in Texas. We have our product inside of the A looking thing.
Yeah, that kind of a spherical walkway thing that kind of leads you to the building? That's a very cool project. So when you are working with these different companies, are they coming to you directly or does it tend to come through an architect?
Jonathan Labbee: No, when we're working with these with design firms, they’ll usually either contact us or again, vice versa, if we have a media request, we'll contact them.
There are any number I would imagine of companies out there that have LED light sticks that can do kind of mood lighting for a building. Do you compete with them or their control systems really meant to like, change this block to blue and change this block to yellow so we can have the Ukrainian flag?
Jonathan Labbee: I would say that in certain times, we'll see them on projects, but those companies are usually DMX based, whereas we're video based and there's a really big difference there in the overall approach and also in the ability to display color and bitrate and stuff like that. So just coming from a video background, the type of clients that usually seek us out, or that we seek out have a vision for media, not just for lighting.
Do they also come to you because of the scale that you've done these ginormous projects?
Jonathan Labbee: Absolutely, because you also have to be game to do this. These challenges are filled with unknowns, and I think that the team at SACO thrive on them.
Yeah, I'm sure there are all kinds of companies who, if they were approached to do some of these large scale projects, they'd go, sure, and then they'd go back to the engineering team and look at each other and go, okay, now what?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah. We've had a few instances where, let's call them competitors, in certain spaces that got a project and had no idea how to do it and they came to us and we worked with them. It's a small industry, so we're friendly with everybody,
You mentioned earlier the idea of shape and you worked with FC Cincinnati on this new MLS stadium, right? Could you describe that?
Jonathan Labbee: The working part or the project part?
The stadium is a curved kind of bowl thing, and the whole outside of it is a bit like the Bayern Munich stadium in that you could eliminate the whole thing.
Jonathan Labbee: Yes, exactly. Here the architect is Populous, a company with whom we worked with in the past, and we have a very good working relationship there. So when they took over that project, I believe it was with a different architect prior, and they came up with this kind of vision of these angled fins where you could see through the building and so on, they created this very light structure which at night needed to be highlighted.
So when they brought us on board to start taking a look at the designs and giving our ideas and stuff like that, obviously it made a lot of sense to highlight the edge of that. The product is very much recessed inside of the fin. So it's completely invisible during the day or when it's not on, and I guess there were several ideas there, but I guess one of the guiding principles there is that it needs to be integrated and needed to highlight the architecture at night and keep that sense of emotion like that whole stadium has this static motion to it. So based on that, we ended up designing a solution for it, and also created the base content for the client and it's been highly efficient for the client.
Is it actually less costly to do it the way you're describing as opposed to doing like a full LED mesh curtain and all that, just because there's less hardware, fewer LED diodes and so on, or it does balance out because this is custom engineering?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, I think I think maybe it balances out. It's probably overall it's maybe a little cheaper because you're integrating early but that only happens if you're integrating early, if you're retrofitting, it's usually it usually balances. But the big thing that it does though, is that it does become unique to that property.
When you just start adding video screens, and again, I'm a big fan of video screens. That's what we do for a living. But video screens, like what we refer to as traditional video screens, have their place. But on a building, it just ends up looking like advertising, if you just put it up a building, right? So if you really want to enhance the building and kind of blend art and media, I think that's a highly effective way of getting your message across because then there's no mistake in if someone takes their Instagram shot or whatever, there's no mistake in where that is.
And I'm sure that you spend the time with the clients, for them to understand, look, this is low resolution. This is in a lot of cases meant to be seen from a hundred meters away or further away. If you want to put pricing propositions on the screen, that's probably not going to work, but logos and things like that's going to work well.
Jonathan Labbee: Yep. Exactly. And again and as you approach the building or as you approach a property or as you're walking through a property, your experience is going to change. So that video element will now become more of a lighting interesting kind of ambient element, but then you'll have something else in the Causeway or whatever with maybe that has a tighter pixel pitch or something to just continue that whole experience as you walk through the property.
Do you strictly work with outdoor products or are you doing anything indoor?
Jonathan Labbee: Oh no, we do lots of indoor stuff.
Is that more conventional, like LED modules, cabinets, that sort of thing?
Jonathan Labbee: Yes, actually, in its construction, I would say yes but in its deployment oftentimes it's different. We did this art piece, which is actually a media piece with Jenny Holzer, which sits inside of the Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia, and there are custom tiles that are 6.32 millimeter pixel pitch at the exact 8 inches wide, and they needed to fit in between these wood slabs on the ceiling and the entire ceiling has video strips going right through it, right through the escalator and everything.
Oh, so is this tied in with the big LED wall it's already in the lobby there?
Jonathan Labbee: The LED wall is in the other building.
Gotcha. The other building is fantastic, what they've done there.
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly. So we'll also deploy, like we have a project right now going on, I can't really say what it is yet, but it has a bunch of really high res stuff, and these kinds of monuments in a curved fashion, all interactive. So high res video screen type stuff that we do a lot, and we do a lot of touring also. All tier one, so the Paul McCartney's of the world and Lady Gaga's utilize a lot of SACO equipment on their tours.
And these again, would be stuff that you can put up and take down pretty quickly. They're lightweight and there's a pastor, so you can see it and behind it, all that?
Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, exactly. So what we do for touring is actually use our frames called Fast Frames and they're very fast to set up and rugged. And, in touring speed is extremely important because time is money there, as you're loading and unloading, others are waiting on you. So we came up with this system that's very fast.
I'll give you an example. When we came up with this new product called the S series. One of our very first clients was Bruno Mars, and this is obviously through some partners, rental partners, and it was a 50 foot wide video screen by 20 feet tall and that took 13 minutes and 13 seconds to set up, from the carts to image on. We actually made t-shirts that said 13:13.
Yeah. That's a good thing. Cause somebody's going to ask, what does that mean? And then you're immediately pitching,
Jonathan Labbee: Well, exactly, and also touring does allow us to have a customer base there that is always hungry for the latest in things. Although we have more standard products there that can do their main elements, we'll build a lot of custom stuff for touring as well, and so on the Taylor Swift tour, for example, we had a bunch of 12 millimeters and some 9 millimeters, but because the thing went up like a half pipe in certain areas. We designed these custom triangular tiles to fill in the gap to provide a monolithic look and so on.
So we have clients that are willing to try new things there, and then we take all of that knowledge and then we apply it to our more permanent projects afterwards.
You're obviously pretty well known in the live events community and I guess in architectural design, not really in the digital signage or LED display community or at least the conventional side of that. Does that matter, or are you quite happy with just stealthily building up your business?
Jonathan Labbee: Very good question. I would say that in the beginning more, more on like the 2000s stuff, we were doing a lot of arenas and stadiums, like the traditional center hongs or ribbon boards, we were heavily heavily involved there. But when so many companies came out with offerings, there were some differentiators of course, between what we offered and what other people offer, but the cost just kept getting driven down and down, and all of a sudden, you're now operating in a commodity based business.
That's not where we necessarily like to be, we're innovators at heart, so we like to focus on areas where our talents can be fully exploited, and so as soon as you introduce a little bit of complexity and there's a lot of clients that want something complex and context could be something as simple as a curve, an angle, a shape, an installation, we ended up finding ourselves almost alone.
Yeah. Interesting. I know there's a big project that you're not able to talk about yet but I'm sure maybe we'll get back together in a year or so when you're allowed to talk about this thing running and it's amazing, and unfortunately we can't talk about it at the moment.
Jonathan Labbee: No, but I'll be happy to speak with you when we can.
Absolutely. All right. Thank you very much for spending some time with me. That was terrific.
Jonathan Labbee: It was a pleasure.
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
Jonny Greco, Seattle Kraken
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
Wednesday Mar 30, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
The spectacle of pro sports used to be almost entirely about what happened on the playing surface, but these days it's also about the venue and the technology and creative used to create memorable and shareable experiences.
If you are paying $75 a ticket, and $12 per beer, there should perhaps be more entertainment than someone belting out national anthems.
The Seattle Kraken are a new team in the National Hockey League, based out of one of the most tech-adept cities in the world, in a brand new arena that has digital screens everywhere. There are 224 LED displays at Climate Pledge Arena, populated with content specifically geared to the game day experience of hockey fans.
I had a terrific chat with Jonny Greco, the very exciteable Senior VP of Entertainment and Experience for the Kraken. We spoke about what fans see before and during games, the thinking behind the creative, and the technology used at the venue.
We also get into his mindset and insights drawn from years and years of delivering experiences - including the over-the-top world of WWE pro wrestling and the mother of all pre-match experiences - the knights and swords opener to Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey games.
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TRANSCRIPT
Jonny. Thank you for joining me. I wanted to read out a description so listeners can get their heads around everything that's going on with your gig. There are 224 LED displays at Climate Pledge Arena, which has more than 28,000 square feet of digital signs. There are 173 displays outside the main seating bowl. So you have one hell of a lot of screens to operate.
Jonny Greco: That's a good intro. You've got all these amazing world-class tools. You get them during a pandemic while the arena is being built. You're about to start a brand new franchise, and now what, where do we go?
So super excited. Unbelievable honor to be here. I truly think we're just scratching the surface with all of this incredible technology and you'll hear me a lot as a theme as we chat here, and I'm so thankful to be on your podcast, but “story over sexy”. We can have the most expensive toys and all these phenomenal, shiny lights but if you don’t create a compelling story and a narrative that pulls people in doesn't really matter. So I'm always threading that line of technology and the art, where they fuse together to find that really happy galvanization of spirit.
Yeah. I think creative direction is so important. I get press releases every day about the next giant LED display at a sports venue and in a lot of cases, it's a 100 meters/yards along and this big and everything else, they don't talk at all about what's on there and it's just this big ass display and so what?
Jonny Greco: They put up color bars and say, “It's cool. Look at it!”
So with all those displays, does your gig extend out into the concourses, or are you just talking about the game experience once you get into the seating bowl?
Jonny Greco: That's a thoughtful question because I think traditionally as we know, game presentation, whether you're juniors, minor league, collegiate, major league sports, game presentations is kind of on the football field, the music, the mascot maybe the cheerleaders, maybe your promotional team the intermission performances or concerts, but everything that lives in the bowl. And I think holistically game presentation has turned into less of a presentation and more of an experience over the last few years especially, and we're looking at this holistic approach: you can't just be in the bowl to hear the song, or oh, they just scored.
You need to know about this on the entire campus that might be your home base. You should know something happened in my opinion, in the parking lot, as you're walking in, you should know about it whether you're on Twitter as you're looking at it as you're going up the escalator, if you're in line to get a burger. The screen displays should have your goal animation going if you score a goal and you create this kind of connected experience as we roll and again, as you teed it up 28,000 square feet of lead on a 74 acre campus, there are a lot of screens to cover. So you have to do it thoughtfully, then you have to balance the wayfinding and the marketing, and then just the straight energy game presentation, for that moment, while promoting other events that are coming. So there's a lot to juggle and like I said, we're just dipping our toes in the water. So we learn a lot every day and sometimes we get it really right. Sometimes we miss and sometimes we're like, oh yeah, we forgot about that. So we're excited about the evolution game in/game out, event in/event out here in Seattle.
So I have not been to a Kraken game. It's a bit of a drive for me, given where I live. What's the game day experience? As you described, if you're out in the parking lot, or you get off the Monorail. So where do you start seeing the stuff that you're controlling and influencing?
Jonny Greco: Yeah, I think we have a really connected organization as far as the storytelling of our brand, right? Like early that day, the team had a morning skate. There's going to be content on all of our social channels that's going to tell a little bit of the story of that night. We've got our own app where it's going to talk to you about traffic. It's going to give you your ORCA card so you're able to take that Monorail that you speak about to be able to get in, to help mitigate the traffic.
So the game day experience is, you could argue, it starts before the game day, but the day of the morning when you're getting messages, you're hearing about what's going on. You're finding out what, what's the strategy going into the game as we play, and it also just ramps up as you get near the puck, things that you had just mentioned that Monorail experience, which you know is a mile or two away, we have an audio file with our broadcasters welcoming fans onto the Monorail, right? We've got this armory sort of indoor space that we activate with our promo team, our icebreakers and our C squad. And, we've got video screens there and we're doing trivia. We're welcoming people in the most hospitable way we can to just thank them for being a part of this. It's not just, once you sit in your seat and you have your beer at the game that you're connected to the Seattle Kraken Climate Pledge Arena, it is way more extensive than that and that's something we're continuously working on because yes, the screens all over that campus are helping you find your way or teach you about what's coming. But we also just want to completely engage with our audience all the time, so they get excited. They know what's going on there. They're being educated about the process, particularly as this building opens, but we can continuously inform our fans to illuminate their experience when we can.
Now is part of that because going to a sports event now is expensive? For the ticket, for the concessions, for everything. In my days when I would go to a Calgary Flames game, when I lived out west, the game day experience was getting through the gate, grabbing a beer, sitting down, and then the entertainment was somebody singing “O Canada”, and then the game was on and that's it.
Modern pro sports is like a total spectacle, right?
Jonny Greco: I think it's changed a lot. And don’t do a disservice to O’ Canada. It's a heck of an Anthem. I love it. But I do think humanity looks at experiences differently than we ever have before. It's always evolving. You can go back 20 years and what the experience was about, it was exactly what you explained and that even upwards of 10-15 years ago, it was that, and now people want more bang for their buck, whatever they're paying for tickets or beers or snacks and concessions, time is our most valuable, precious resource and we're understanding that more than ever over the last couple of years.
So when we have this time, how we spend it is so important to us. So we need to make sure that we're being thoughtful in creating that experience that connects people with the brand, with the team, with the game. But in my opinion it also protects you from maybe a game where the Flames at the Saddledome don't play very well at night and they lose 5-0, but they still had a great experience and they're telling their friends about it. And even though they have, we've done our jobs in creating that fun. Let's just call it. I go to a game cause I want to have fun for a few hours and I still had fun even though some of the things we couldn't control didn't go our way. I think that's just what fans in general are coming to experience regardless of the costs.
It's that way, if you're going to Disney world, if you're going to a Jazz club or you go to the beach like you want to make sure that you have as much of an engaging experience as you can. It's definitely part of the consciousness of us as humans nowadays, for sure.
You came to this gig, having done a whole bunch of what looked like pretty interesting gigs that are mainly in sports. The three that hit me were live event production for pro wrestling and video direction for curling at the Olympics in Vancouver, a little different for pro wrestling, and then the big one was working for the Las Vegas Golden Knights.
Is the spectacle that is the openers of the Vegas Knights games with the, with all that hoo ha going on, ts that you, did you do that?
Jonny Greco: Yeah. Some people would definitely call it hoo ha. I think, yes, I was a part of and we had a hell of a time. Hell of a great leadership who saw vision and put entertainment at the forefront of the experience and then just knowing you were in Vegas, like you were going to do it a little bit different, right? You were just allowed, you had a different kind of permission to get a little wild that fit the region. On brand, in a style that fits the team, and then, you start winning games. There's a lot more permission you have to fail and try different things because people just are in a better mood. People like to win. That's been around for a long time.
So yeah, I think that list, you just mentioned it. It is a funny list when you go Curling to WWE wrestling, shout out to Halifax. I've been there. We did a show there. I loved it. Absolutely beautiful. But, and then, Vegas and Seattle, the truth is though, the more different opportunities I get blessed to be on and be a part of the more projects and teammates I get to like to collaborate with and contribute to the more I realize just how similar there is to all of it, right? Curling again, what we were talking about, it's an experience you're enjoying, you may love the sport. You may never have seen it before, but you want it to be at the Olympics, but you're going to love the music. You're going to love the natural inherent drama of sport. You may not be a WWE fan, but you probably know who Hulk Hogan is. There's elements where we're all connected in these experiences, and the truth is we all love good. Stories have been around for thousands and thousands of years, and it may be the story within a song, maybe a story in the written form of a book. It may be a micro story of the kiss cam within 30 other promotions at a game in St. Louis that you see, but they're stories inherently every day that we see, and if you can share them in a certain way and you can make your good guys bad guys compelling then all of a sudden people are pulled into it and they care about the story, then they care about, again, whether it's a pro wrestler, a pro curler or a pro hockey player they're all characters in the ensemble, of the show, the entertainment of the film, of the movie, of the story that we want to be a part of.
Did the work that you were involved in with the Las Vegas Golden Knights, the NHL team there, was that what got you up to Seattle? Did the Seattle people go, “Yeah, we want that”?
Jonny Greco: I think, like all of us. we’re on these journeys and paths and, I was doing some research on you as I was prepping for this podcast and, it said you had a boss back in the day. The Internet's just a fad. It's not going to last, but you are somebody who was like, no, I see where this is headed and sometimes you gotta just have the guts to do something that isn't necessarily what people expect or see, and one of my favorite quotes of all time is from Henry Ford with cars, and he went on to obviously do pretty well for himself, but he was asked at one point, your clients, your people buying this and the thing was, he says, if I would have asked people what they wanted versus just doing my own thing, “if I would have asked people what they wanted, they would've said they wanted a faster horse” and I love that because it's a little bit about sometimes we need to show people or expose people to things that they don't know they want, they don't know they're going to love this, and if we talk about it, we may talk ourselves out of it. Cause it sounds crazy because it's never been done cause it won't work and all those reasons, yes, that may be the case, but if we can suspend their own disbelief a little bit and just go for it sometimes and be willing to fail because you're going to, I think you get really unique opportunities. So Vegas, an amazing opportunity built off of relationships from previous jobs, the team president there is a great friend and just an awesome human being. I used to work with him back in the Cleveland Cavaliers days when we were working with LeBron James a million years ago, and you stay connected to these people. It was a recipe of pretty interesting elements when we got to Vegas, it worked out well and I've been given some pretty neat opportunities since then, but I do think the opportunities come from more of the relationships then, and your last gig matters. It really does, but I do think it's the body of work as you continue on, and I had actually gone from Vegas to Madison Square Garden to go work for the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers, which was unbelievable to be at Mecca, but I'd only done it for nine months before the Seattle opportunity came and there was a pandemic that happened as well. So there were a lot of variables, whereas what's the right move right now, creatively for my family and everything else.
So it was only a cup of coffee in New York, but I've had a few really neat opportunities and I've been able to meet and connect with some really interesting people through Vegas, and even before that with WWE and some of the other opportunities as well.
Yeah, and I must have been pretty cool to effectively have a blank slate that like Madison Square Gardens is a pretty old arena, I don't know how old it is, 40 years or something, and there's only so much you can do in terms of LED displays and new technology there versus Seattle is tech central and they went to town with it.
Jonny Greco: Yeah, they did, and that's a really good point. You've got these beautiful venues and arenas all over the world and you don't really want to mess with them like Wrigley field, you probably should only go so far with how much led you put there. Fenway, same idea. Like it would almost be a disservice to the history of the game in that space.
I think in Seattle, it was really unique, and at the time, what I had read was it was the most LED in any arena, on the planet, and that probably changes every five minutes. But I know a few months ago that was the case. But they had the opportunity cause it was a brand new arena, in this beautiful city that is this transcendent science technology, medical, you think of Amazon, Boeing, Microsoft, all of these companies, Starbucks, these companies that are out here that have these pioneers of creativity and technology, it was very fitting out here. But I think you learn a little, in the hockey term, original programming that is innovative, super unique, but then also honors the original six, right? Honor the tradition knows whose great grandpas were here playing the game and what they loved and trying to fuse it together, and I think depending on the city you're in, if you're in Boston, it's going to be a lot different than if you're in Arizona, like how you ratio those two elements.
But again, whether you have one screen or you have 344 screens, make sure you're putting up content. That's interesting. Otherwise people are going to walk right past and they're not going to notice it anyway.
Yeah. That's one of the things that struck me about what you're up to or what the, what your team's up to is, I've been in a number of new build or renovated arenas in the last few years when we were still doing things like getting on airplanes, and in those cases, they're putting in big LED video walls and everything else, but it was all about commerce.
It was about running different sponsor messages. If it was an NBA game versus an NHL game, it was about efficiency and so on, and what I'm seeing with what's being done at Climate Pledge is it's about the experience and it's about setting the tone. So you've got like this giant aquarium and things like that, can you describe what people can see?
Jonny Greco: Sure. Yeah, and I think it's interesting, Dave, when you talk about just the philosophy of other venues. Like you go to the arena formerly known as Staples Center in Los Angeles, they need the digital signage to help with some of their changeovers, right? Like I've been there when they had an LA Kings game that afternoon, and then an LA Clippers game that night, like they needed to switch from black and white design to red and blue within a few hours,completely transforming the arena, and nothing can make that process quicker than like the digital signage abilities.
So like you said, not even a few years ago. It was signage. It was sponsorship, and it was like, put the logo here and buy a hot dog or whatever else. But now they're trying to connect it to just, again, more of like where you're being sold, but it sure doesn't feel like being sold. I feel like I'm watching something really cool and threading it into the show, and it was a big part of our own storytelling as you entered the Climate Pledge Arena with this grandiose atrium space that we have, where we were like, one of our taglines for the Kraken is, ”Welcome to the deep” right?
It's the deep fear, fear of the deep, we’re in the deep, right? That's where the Kraken lives, this mythical beast. And, the arena itself is subterranean, it's underground. To do this insane over billion dollar arena build, they literally lifted the historic roof from 1962, took everything else out of it and rebuilt this insanely beautiful arena underneath, and then put the roof back on. To do that, you had to go underneath as well. So as we looked at the layout of the arena, and as we looked at these video screens, part of this really cool grandiose entrance, as you come in, you get to go down these massive escalators with these huge video LED screens, video screens through Daktronics and we said we could put a Pepsi logo on there, but that's not again, that's just a big logo. That's not innovative. There's not a story. It doesn't necessarily make me thirsty. But instead we have the support from our leadership to let's create an atmosphere and what we thought of it's like, all right, you're going down underground. We're going to the deep, we're seeing the Kraken which is an underwater creature. We're in Seattle. Let's dig deep, and as you go down the escalator, let's go underwater. Let's see an Orca that's indigenous to space. Let's see the type of rock formations that you would see at the base of the Puget sound. Let's build out a space to give people again, that kind of experience, and it almost feels like you're like the Atlanta aquarium or something as you go, and you're like, oh, there's a seal. There's a sea lion going by so it was neat that we had that sort of support, and then instead of just a founding partner logo, splattered all over the place, we have a school of fish swimming by as it goes past the Amazon logo, or the Alaska airlines logo. So it's a thoughtful way of fusing the two together where it's like, of course we have incredible partners that we want to honor and showcase, but we also have their support to create this experience that just felt a lot more elegant than even in previous worlds I've been a part of it, it's just not slapping it on there. It's much more of a collaboration and integration of brand fusion together to help it feel just more like an experience than me just looking at a sign.
Yeah, I'm guessing you've fought this verbal battle a few times with the specialty leasing people and other folks who say yeah, this immersive entertainment stuff is awesome, but I need this Pepsi logo on here or this other logo?
Jonny Greco: Yeah, I think we all have. I think it's one of our biggest opportunities as people in the sports entertainment production world to lock arms with your corporate partnership side of things, because it does bring in a lot of revenue and it does bring in great brand awareness. It does bring in great relationships long-term that help a business work, but you don't want it to just be all or nothing. You don't want it to always be black and white. There's this really neat fusion of gray that you can find that kind of everyone can be aligned on, and it goes back to the point we were making before about, let's show you how this works. It's not always the most quantifiable, but there is a feeling when something just lands well and it's not a perfect science, and again we make plenty of mistakes on our journeys and our professional careers for sure but it is fun when you're in a supportive place that nurtures creativity, nurtures storytelling and lets you try some things sometimes.
We know we did some things pretty well here, but we also know we've got a lot of places to grow and develop and keep evolving because everyone's chasing, everyone's trying to do a great job together. So let's lift each other up and inspire one another.
Does the job touch some of the purely commercial aspects of digital signage? I know in some arenas, if somebody scores a goal, and I think you talked a little bit about this before, the concession displays that are showing a beer is $500 or whatever they cost now, it'll go to a replay of the goal and then go back to the beer menu or whatever. Are you doing that?
Jonny Greco: Yeah we're not doing it as well as we'd like yet, but we had some recent meetings about this to do a really thorough walk arounds in the arena itself because when you start and open up a brand new arena this quickly in a pandemic, a lot of is it let's just get it going. Let's get it working, and literally as we're doing this conversation, we just got some decimators to help us with some of our delays on our LED screens on the back wall of our press bridge. Because our fans in that area, this super unique area, they don't have a complete line of sight to our video screens are twins as we call them. So they have these LED screens with our program out, which is awesome, except it's, I don't know what the time is, Two to three second delay on some things, and we all know if you're a little bit late to the joke or the punchline or the goal, it's a little bit less of a connected experience.
So there's constant little technical elevation we're trying to find a more comprehensive experience for people. But I do think we have ways to go. As far as we score a goal that lights up everywhere, that underwater space currently, when we score a goal, that's not being lit up with our goal animation and cutting cameras and stuff, but we know that's where we want to go to just create that moment where even if you're not in the bowl for a second, you feel what just happened? Cause there's not many cooler moments in sports entertainment than that horn going off crowd going nuts, and if you can be a part of it, somehow we want to include everyone. But you know what, when you walk out of the bathroom oh, what just happened? No one wants to be the last one to the dance floor. So we want to help everyone feel like they're the first.
Is there some sort of a show control system that's running all this? What are you using?
Jonny Greco: Yeah, so we work with Daktronics and I'll say this right away. 15 people way smarter than me on the technology side that I work with, that could go a lot further into this, but it is show control for all of our ribbons and Daktronics video screens. And then we're using Triple Play for all of our IP TV needs, and that's run through our incredible group from the Climate Pledge Arena side, because they're doing more than just the Kraken games. They have events all the time, a hundred percent.
So if you're using Daktronics, for that, as you add more stuff, you just go back to them?
Jonny Greco: I think, with technology, you're always looking for, I don't want to say the best, but who helps us tell our story? Who helps us create that experience? Daktronics have been incredible partners and they have a whole lot of their product all over the place and they understand that this is this crown jewel space for their own product as well. So it's just been a really good relationship as far as, Hey, this isn't working or would we be able to develop this? And they're on it. They want this to succeed because they're great partners and we want to keep pushing the envelope, but obviously trying to always see what's out there. Daktronics does a ton of things, but obviously we're working with Ross in our switches and acuity expressions. We got Dreamcatcher for our replay systems. Like you're going to try to grab a whole bunch of different tools and you just want the best tools to create the best kind of narrative that you can and it's rarely going to be just one thing, right?
There's not a one-stop shop for many things. That's where we are right now, but always looking to evolve what you have, right?
How many people are working on this?
Jonny Greco: Ee call it Entertainment experience and production on the Seattle Kraken side, and for that group, which is creating a lot of the social content, we are creating elements like ice projection and half a million dollar shot promotions and, commercial spots and B-roll and everything else. There's 15 of us in that group. So that's on the Kraken inside. So that's your show callers, your scripters we're working closely with corporate partnerships, you're working with your promo teams, and so that group of 15 is split into two. As far as the game presentation side, that entertainment experience, but then also just that content and production side as well, which ranges from creating because we are a brand new team, videos for human resources or maybe working and this is really common in pro sports, working on like a free agent video project that’s super secretive or whatever they like.
So you're creating the very forward facing stuff, but you're also doing a lot behind the scenes, and when you have no library to pull from last year, oh, remember Dave, last year when this happened, we didn't have that. So that's another role that we talked to a lot of people about, and they were, if you can get it, get that archivist role, get that digital asset management person role in your space. So that's something we're working diligently on. We have a person who's phenomenal and we're testing the waters, working on this and then we'll look to be implementing this, over the summer. But just to build that archive, because, season one happens, but really quickly, you're celebrating your 10th anniversary and remember game six, when that thing happened, you want to have that you want to have those things properly logged and an archived for us and or for the next people who come into this incredible role.
Yeah. I hadn't thought about that. I guess you've got to do like the player video pieces where, they're smiling and then they do the arm, the cross arms, and don't mess with me look and all that stuff, you gotta have all that, right?
Jonny Greco: Gladiator shots. Yeah, absolutely, and some of that stuff becomes evergreen, so you can shoot it once and use it for a few years, and some of the stuff, as guys get traded or retire, goes away but they may someday have their Jersey retired here. They may just come back, right? You want to use some of those elements. I learned a lot of that at Madison Square garden. It was interesting how they had archived up until this point, and even there they would admit it themselves. We could do a better job with our digital asset management. We're one year in or half a year in, right like between all those seasons, you're like a hundred years in. So that's a lot of games you've literally filmed. I remember working at the Cleveland Cavaliers, it was the same idea. We had all of this craziness going on with Betamax and 16 millimeter film, and we had to transfer all of that content as DVDs were coming around and then, it's like these video files, is that going to last? So when you have to go back and grandfather in content, that's a much heavier lift, so we're trying to mitigate that as much as we can.
Yeah, it's interesting. Technically, it used to be a lot harder to pull off what you're doing now, but the flip side of that is there's a lot more that you have to produce than in the old days.
Jonny Greco: Absolutely. You're putting out so much content and you're trying to individualize something on Instagram versus Twitter versus LinkedIn versus in arena versus the app, and that's something like strategy-wise, I think, everyone's working on, how are we unique and original but also how are we creating content that can be used in multiple ways, because you don't need to create, oh we have “Mark Giordano, legendary hockey player, tomorrow night's going to be us honoring his 1000th game, the silver sticks ceremony,” it's really cool.
Do you need a different sort of acknowledgement or graphic on every single one of those channels or do you keep it very brand centric with a look and then you figure out whatever the content design look needs to be to fit that scale, and then you go from there. So it's a pretty subjective space, but you're always trying. With the narrative and story in mind first, you're trying to work smarter, not harder cause we all work hard, we know that, but there's a lot of content to create, and once you start, you don't want to pull back. You want to only add to it.
So we started out of the gate with a lot. We know we have a lot more stories to tell. We know we can engage Seattle and Kraken fans in such a different way and further it, and like you said, scratching the surface. We've started, but now we've got to keep rising.
Is the pregame show the big job, the one that sucks up most of the time?
Jonny Greco: Yeah, I think depending on the organization, it can be a little bit different here. It was a big part of the show. We ran into a couple of bumps along the way, just again, with the arena opening, supply chain issues, not being able to load some of our beautiful set pieces for the opening night. And it was honestly one of the more frustrating moments for a lot of us because we weren't able to physically. But we got there and come the new year, we were in place and it's emotional and it does take a lot of our focus and attention, but as cool as the moment is, it can get cooler and we're excited to evolve it and grow it, and now that we have all the pieces in place, take that next iteration up another level.
Yeah, that was going to be my last question. Now that you've got yourself grounded there and sorted out all the technology and the folks and know what everybody's good at and the drill, what's coming?
Jonny Greco: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of exciting things that I'm not going to tell you about right now, my friend, but starting a new franchise, just because I've been super lucky or super crazy, probably both to have done this now a couple of times, I think you got to look at being a part of a new organization much more than just like a few games or a season. I think to really get your footing and your steps, right? For every part of the business it's two to three years easy. It's not a one-year thing. So there's a lot that we dreamed up a year ago that just wasn't able to come to fruition this year for a million great reasons but as you get into actually activating right pre op mode versus operating mode, very different for us, right? The red light goes on, lights, camera, action. You see how people handle it, you see how the equipment functions, you see what you dreamed up while we were in Zoom calls saying, Hey, what would be cool is a camera that does this and does this well now we're using those said cameras and we're like, oh, what else would be cool. So you want to lock arms. You want to step on each other's shoulders and jump higher on some of these things, and some of the things that you envision just didn't really land the way you had expected for a few different reasons.
And in my case, I know sometimes I just dilute myself a little bit because I get so excited about so many things and I don't keep it concentrated on just a few big ones, and I also like to test and learn. So I like to throw a lot against the wall, and it's like ooh, that was great. Oh, that was terrible. Ooh, that's workable. Oh, that was terrible. I would rather cast that super wide net and work off of that, then be like all my eggs in one basket, and whether it works or not, I'm like I don't want one basket, I want 14 baskets, and that's a philosophical difference, probably organization to organization, sport to sport that, just personally, that's the way I like to function. It's not right or wrong, but it's definitely the way I look forward to evolving in this season too, because there's a lot of stuff that we have ready to go that intentionally we're holding back, like it's ready to go, but we're going to wait. We're going to wait, and plan to do that over the summer, to do that in season two, which generally I don't have that level of patience. I get so excited. I'm like, let's do it. Let's get everybody excited.
But I do think the chess game, the slow play, sometimes it's really thoughtful and strategic and it just, it helps with the pacing of the whole experience. If you do think of that brand launch, not just the day the logo comes out, not just your opening night, not just your first season, it's something we're building upon it and creating an equity with it's a nuanced art, I think over the next couple of years that we're going to be working on.
This was a lot of fun. I appreciate you taking the time with me.
Jonny Greco: Oh, Dave, thank you so much for asking. Anytime you want to chat about this kind of stuff. I would love to be a guest. It's an honor to be on the 16:9 podcast and really happy to share some energy with you.
That's great. Thank you.
Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
Fred D’Alessandro & Eric Hutto, Diversified
Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
Wednesday Mar 23, 2022
The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT
New Jersey-based Diversified has grown into one of the world's largest AV integration companies, and certainly among the most active in digital signage.
The company was started almost 30 years ago by Fred D'Alessandro, who just recently announced he was shifting his role in Diversified to make way for a new CEO. He's still going to be very much involved, but says former Unisys executive Eric Hutto is now very much in charge of the company.
The two of them kindly set aside some time recently to talk about that big news, and what's ahead for Diversified. Among many things, we get into the steady convergence of AV and IT.
Fred also relates a story I'd not heard before, about how and why Diversified got started, which funnily traces to a job he didn't want at the Home Shopping Network.
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TRANSCRIPT
Fred and Eric, thank you for joining me. Fred, congratulations on your decision to slow down and Eric, welcome to pro AV!
Eric Hutto: Thank you.
Fred D'Alessandro: Thank you. I don't know about slowing down, but thank you.
Is this a transition that's about to happen or it's been underway for a while and you're now just talking about it?
Fred D'Alessandro: No, it's been under way and it has happened. So yeah, Eric is the new Diversified CEO and I couldn't be happier to have him on the team. Absolutely great move by us, and I'll say it by myself as well.
You finally did something right!
Fred D'Alessandro: Exactly, only took 29 years.
So why now?
Fred D'Alessandro: A lot of good reasons. I've been blessed to start Diversified in 1993, really as a startup, it's a garage story and to have the opportunity to lead it for 29 years, create a $1 billion organization, I think the first ever in our industry, which is, absolutely exciting and just a real honor, we have an army of industry expertise in the organization. But what the organization doesn't have is somebody with Eric's leadership at this level, when you're trying to build an organization that has a clear path to being a multi-billion dollar organization. So from,the strategy, from the vision, from the operations, how to, I would say, continue to exceed our client's expectations and our employees development, it's the right time and it’s the right team and the right place. So yeah, thrilled.
Coming out of COVID, we're financially sound. So now's the time.
So this is not just you deciding, you know what, I want to go down to Boca Raton and lawn bowling?
Fred D'Alessandro: No, I'm a young 63 year old, so I have a lot of energy. But you know what I feel why my value at this point in time for the organization can be used in other areas. I think strategic accounts and clients that I've known for years, employee mentorship, development, things that, again, I know that I'm really good at and I know Eric's really good at taking a financially sound organization, and I've said this in the past it's not so much about how big we are, it's just really continuing to be the best as we get bigger, and that's really important.
To me, as a founder, again it's about being unselfish and doing what's right for our customers, doing what's right for our employees, and Eric is the right guy to do that for us. So I'm excited.
So sometimes when a company is founded by a particular person who's still there and when they maybe not step aside, but step back into another role, it could be a bit of a balancing act to say, “No, you need to go talk to Eric about that.” How are you going to work that out?
Fred D'Alessandro: Yeah look, there's no ego in this organization.
I've met people there.
Fred D'Alessandro: There's no ego at the leadership level, let’s say that and I will be the first to say that, I am here in a different role, I've made that very clear over the past week to all the employees and that Eric is going to make the decisions on the strategy, the operating model, so the vision is going forward. I'm going to help him as a chairman of our Diversified board of directors. So from that perspective, I'll listen to Eric, I'll challenge him. But at the end of the day, he's going to make those decisions. And if somebody comes to me, I'm pointing them to Eric.
I said this again and again last week, I am very content with the role and making the decision to do this, and really to bring Eric on. We're fortunate to just think sometimes you need luck, and hard work brings that, but yeah, Eric's are going to be great for this role and I really feel he's going to take us to the next level and take our clients to the next level.
Was there somebody you knew or was this kind of a headhunter thing?
Fred D'Alessandro: So we did a search. Fortunately, the timing worked out so it happened rather quickly. I've spent the last month with Eric, spending a couple of days here and there just to get to know the person and to see how Eric would fit in the organization, and like I said, in many ways, I felt like his skills and tone were similar to mine, but his expertise and where he's been through his career, it's hard to beat. Like I said, it was a pretty easy decision on my part at the end of the day, after spending, like I said, the last month with Eric.
It's interesting. The pro AV community, particularly people like Gary Kayye, have been going on and on for some time now about how pro AV and IT are converging and pro AV people need to be thinking about this. So to bring somebody on as CEO who comes from pure IT services seems a really sharp move and something that had to be done in a lot of ways.
Fred D'Alessandro: I would agree with you. I think it is converging. It's been converging, it is more an IT managed services play in a lot of ways. And again, Eric’s expertise is spot on, and we have, like I said, we have an army of AV knowledge and expertise. There's no shortage of that at Diversified. Now it's just bringing that all together with everything else that's happening and training.
Eric, you come from Unisys IT services and consulting and so on. I'm curious from your background, were you hearing the same thing, but on the flip side that IT people need to be more aware of video delivery and AV in general, in terms of their overall practice?
Eric Hutto: Yeah, I think, the pandemic simply heightened it. We all got sent home. So if you think about the audio video, quality of calls and the ability to keep things running right, it is a bit different now and I think that forced people to get more educated, appreciate more of the components that go into it versus just servers and storage in clouds and I think it has merged the IT industry over 30 years and has just been completely collapsing all the stacks of technology, and now its technology product gets out and it gets software updated and it lasts for lot longer than it used to because it can be updated.
And I think that's where we're headed with this, I think of it as experiential experiences that we're going to be having in these environments. We're going to have to come together. The morning show can't be broadcast in the afternoon because you went down because of your cloud or your server or you were hacked. So I do think it is the natural progression to take all the sophistication that Fred and team have built around how to create a great experience in a stadium. But now we move just beyond that, to what's coming into the stadium, and how do we keep that under control? Because bandwidth and those things affect the quality of the experience.
I think of Diversified in deployment integration, traditional pro AV roles, but I know you also do services. Do you see Diversified getting more and more into the services and consulting side of the business?
Eric Hutto: Absolutely. Where we're headed with this digital world, It's all about design thinking. Now I do think that one thing that is core to Diversified that I've seen already is the ability to sit down and really design and layout to an outcome. Where we do that is in big, large, complex things. Not to say that we don't do that in Google Rooms and so forth. Now that's going to have to get a bit more sophisticated, right? As we bring cloud, bring security, bring software-defined networks into the conversation.
I think I was reading the other day just to get up to speed on what's happening in the business. They say that by 2030, there'll be another $10 billion invested in stadiums. So they're not standing still. It's not a place of slowness. It's speeding up, but it's going to speed up in a software platform as a service model, and people are going to be able to really track and see what's happening almost at the seat level, if you can imagine that at, in a stadium, when they're having a concert of what and how they move sound around. I think it's going to be all software and it is going to be really important.
I come at this from the angle of digital signage. So that's always what I'm thinking about and less so about some of the more traditional sides of IT and AV collaboration and that sort of thing. I've always thought of Diversified in the sense of the last decade or so as among the big integrators, the one that by far was paying the most attention to and most active in digital signage.
Fred, do you still see it that way or the other guy is coming on and realizing, “Hey, we need to do more in this area”?
Fred D'Alessandro: No, I would agree. I think, look, it's still a key business unit for us that drives a lot of value to our customers, and I think continuing to innovate. That is most important, especially in these kinds of markets.
So large network deployments, content creation is an experiential piece to what that digital signage is going to do for the eyeballs that are looking at it. So it continues to really be a focus for us and it is growing. Coming out of the pandemic, we have large opportunities to grow even bigger in that area.
One of your main competitors now has an experience design group for, big, wow factor, corporate office, campuses and things like that. You guys have always worked with the Gensler's and the ESI Design, that sort of thing, and stayed in your lane. Is it important to do what you're good at, but let the experienced people do what they're good at as opposed to compete with them?
Fred D'Alessandro: Look, that's always been my philosophy. Best in class, usually at the end of the day wins the day. When you're trying to create that total solution and you don't quite have the best people on your staff, it's usually not a good outcome for the client and that's what it's really about.
What is what's best for the client? I think our approach is the best.
The IT services business, and I guess to some degree, the AV services business has grown because you have enterprise level customers of all different stripes and sizes. I gather, saying, “We want to do what we're good at. So can you guys take this other stuff on for us?”
Are you seeing that and seeing growth in that area of being turnkey for a lot of these kinds of projects?
Fred D'Alessandro: It usually goes in cycles, but I do think that clients are realizing, especially on a global scale to have a single partner that could provide various solution sets that we have, and I think Diversified is the only company in the world, honestly, that has the portfolio of offerings, and then it's managing for the clients, all these different technology platforms and services and we've seen a tremendous uptick in that requirement and the ask of clients, the technology, even though a user base often feels easier to use, the behind the scenes, the back end and all that stuff, it's complicated, and so many customers don't have the staff that can actually operate or maintain the technology. So that's a big growth area for us, for sure.
Eric Hutto: One of the things that I've learned over 16 years in IT services is that it is a relationship, and that relationship is trusted and you don't get to be a trusted partner advisor if you’re making decisions that are oriented towards yourself, and I think Fred's right, it's always been outcome-based, and I do think that it gets hard to be the best at every single component of the solution, because it's so complicated these days. There's so many things that you have to consider.
I absolutely would and I have always leveraged specialty partnerships where they bring it. Even Apple doesn't necessarily do all their own gooey work for their applications and what we interface with because they're very good at what they do, and I do think that's exactly how we'll look at this going forward. Will we need to have some knowledge, onsite with us that understand cloud or security? Absolutely, you always want that, but we'll use strong partnerships in areas where people are really specialized to get the best outcome for the client.
Yeah. It would be difficult for you guys to hire on the level of creative to compete with the guys who you instead partner with?
Eric Hutto: Right, and that talent wants a place to grow, and we're not a creative company by core, even though it's something that we can do.
Yeah, you go into the kitchen to have your lunch and you end up talking to somebody who's a sales engineer and you can talk about football or baseball or whatever, but not so much about the core discipline.
Fred D'Alessandro: Yeah, and we're a company of scale. So again, you can't have one person that understands it and believe that you have an end to end solution, which is quite the story in many cases.
Eric Hutto: Yeah, and just the IT industry skills are going to evolve in our company. If you go back 15 years, you had storage people and server people and network people. You don't really have that as much anymore. They're still out there, but it's all converged and so integrated that we all have different types of enterprise, and I would imagine it will evolve as this stuff converges, as things merge, as we get more platform oriented software that helps us extend our services and capabilities of the people who will need, will grow into a different skill set.
Security has been obviously a huge component of IT services. Fred, have you started to see that becoming a demand on the AV side as well?
Fred D'Alessandro: It absolutely is a demand. As all the AV equipment, digital signage players have touched the network, it is absolutely a vulnerable point for IT. So yes, the bottom line is it's been going on and it's just every day gets more and more.y scrutinized and restricted. So you have to have that skill.
French. You mentioned that 29 years ago, this was a garage story. I don't think I've ever heard that, how the company got started?
Fred D'Alessandro: I'm a broadcast engineer by trade. I was working in the New York, New Jersey area for the station I worked for, I was blessed to be able to work in many different departments. So I got a well-rounded education for my first seven years of employment there and the home shopping network purchased our TV station when they started up, and it was a decision between going to work for the home shopping network and I'd taken a shot at going out there in the world and doing it on your own, and that's literally what happened.
I was like, “Let's go. Let's try to make something happen,” and yeah, and so again, we went everywhere up to 300 television towers, replacing antennas to studios. So yeah, absolutely whatever dirty work we could get, we did.
Wow, I had not heard of the home shopping network thing. I was like, do I want to spend the next 10 years sticking an ice pick in my eyes or move on?
Fred D'Alessandro: So that's why I say, things happen for a reason. I'm a true believer in that.
So today what's the scale of the company? You're much more than just a US company now and there's a lot of bodies, much more so even than 10 years ago.
Fred D'Alessandro: Now, our revenue is around a billion dollars. We have around 2,700+ employees worldwide. We have 52 offices, 35 of those are in the US, the rest are overseas. All our offices are sales, integration, and service. So they're not just sales offices. We build and service out of those locations, and about 80% of our revenue is out of the US and about 20% is currently overseas and growing and our latest international operation opened up in Bangalore, India and it is really exciting.
That's a big road trip!
Fred D'Alessandro: Yes, it is. But when I look at all the players in the industry, what I'll say is by far Diversified has invested the most internally to be a global organization. We use partners but our goal is really to be our own entity and work through the rest of the world, and provide our customers with a consistent and standard experience.
Have you been going to other countries because you see North America as somewhat capped out or crowded in terms of competition versus other markets, or is it just that there's a lot of growth potential in India?
Fred D'Alessandro: The view of this and the strategy has always been to be where our customers are. So it really had nothing to do with North America being saturated and there's no more business. There's a lot of business here going forward, but those customers that we work with and touch our global customers.
So if you want to service them the right way and the best you need to be where they are and so that's been our strategy today.
Is that a demand, when you're working, as you say, with a global customer, like a Fortune 100 kind of company where they want to roll in multiple countries and in the old days, you'd have to say we can do it here, and we'll see who we can find to do this in France and see if we can find to do this in Japan and so on?
Fred D'Alessandro: Yeah we want to make it easy for them to do business Diversified. So that's a saying that we've had in a company a long time: make it easy for our customers to do business with us, and so being able to work and have established entities in these various countries, you're able to buy in the country, you're able to transact in the country for them, and you just avoid a lot of the inefficiencies that you get when you're trying to do things from just the US.
Eric Hutto: Just like a lot of companies in IT, you get taken to places by clients, right? So you have to be able to operate where their clients took you. Over time, I think as Fred alluded to, we're going to have our competencies and our direct associates, if you will, but there'll be markets that we're choosing to be in because we see the growth in versus we got taken there by client, but we will always have the ability through partnerships and other relationships to service a client wherever they need to be.
I think that's the balance of, direct labor, indirect labor, having more of a variable bottle. It allows you to stay extremely nimble and flexible, but at the same time where you have decided to be in a market, that is where your associates are.
Has most of the growth that you've seen both domestically and internationally being through acquisition, or are you going into some markets and just opening up as Diversified and starting to hire and do sales?
Fred D'Alessandro: I would say all our expansion has been strategic. We've absolutely never just gone in and said, we hope there's business there and that we're going to sell. So I think Eric's point is very true, you look at what opportunities are in the country, and who our global clients are and where they are. So when you put those two together, you have a really large opportunity.
Eric Hutto: In my initial, what solid 14 days, Fred, what I have seen in talking with, and I've talked to surprisingly, quite a few people. That's just how I work and learn, I start at the frontline and work backwards. We are growing a lot and mainly from relationships we have because we're tried and true, and we've always done great quality work.
So I see a lot of organic growth really in this year, Fred, I would say because we've learned how to, really get in with a client and understand the problems and solve them and they continue to consume more from us, and as our portfolio expands and we're able to do other things besides just to your point earlier about integration and putting things in, we just continue to create a stickiness with our clients and create the value.
Where do you guys see the opportunity over the next couple of years as we get out of this mess with COVID?
Fred D'Alessandro: What I'll say is, I see a tremendous amount of opportunity with, like you said, returning to work is one, which obviously is the collaboration and that piece of it. I think when you look at how digital signage, how media, how IT are all stitching together these disparate technologies into one experience, for, I think our customers, their employees, their customers, is what is really exciting and the opportunity that I think with the pandemic brought a lot of new thinking into our organization about how we can help our customers, not just during a pandemic, but long after and make what we design, what we create, what we install and maintain more valuable than it was in the past. So there's a big opportunity in all these stitching together.
Did you learn things out of the pandemic as well?
I saw a lot of investments, a lot of marketing of products that were pandemic-specific like thermal sensors, temperature scanners, alternatives to touch screens and so on, and while there was a lot of noise around it, I didn't see a lot of commercial take-up of them.
Fred D'Alessandro: Yeah, I would agree. I think that at the end of the day, some of those were needed at the time, but, I don't think there's a future for a lot of these products. As I said, when you think to the core of what companies need to do, their employees need to collaborate. Those types of tools I think, we'll continue to add value.
When you think about streaming and media and virtual events, those will, I think, continue. So there are a number of things that I think the new workplace and a workforce will embrace, and I think it will add efficiency and it will be a better outcome for all.
Eric Hutto: It also gives us a chance to help companies rethink their work environment. Because even when I was at Unisys, we didn't have everybody coming back to the office yet, but as they start to come back, what kind of office is it, right? And really what people need is collaborative spaces where they can come, engage, connect, get things done, and then move on.
But I think that's a huge opportunity for us to, again, help them think through the design of what it is they want to achieve with their associate base when they do come back.
A lot of what I've seen around the workplace has been so focused on the front of house, so to speak, the white collar areas, the offices, and not that much about the production floors, the warehouses and all those sorts of things. Have you seen more understanding of that as an opportunity and a need?
Fred D'Alessandro: We see a lot of digital signage, IP TV opportunities in the warehouse workplaces, because corporate communications is key. I mean we have Rachel on the phone here with us, but I think that's one of the things that you learned, especially during a pandemic of how important communication is. So I think companies going forward will need to step up their game, to make sure that everybody is connected because everybody is now always in the office or in the warehouse these days.
So it's important, but that's where I see digital signage, corporate communications, IP TV really being the leader and that's what we do really well. That's an area we've been doing extremely well in.
So just the last question, what's been the reception around the industry to the news that you're taking on a different role and Eric stepping in?
Fred D'Alessandro: Well, from my perspective I'll say, look, everybody's congratulated me.
Are they saying, “Oh, thank God”?
Fred D'Alessandro: Exactly, to some degree. People are happy that I'm not going anywhere that I'm still around. But again, as I've made clear, Eric has the football now and I'm here to support him and I'm here to support the organization and our clients. So yeah, it's been really positive, very rewarding. I'm humbled by a lot of the emails and phone calls.
Well, congratulations to both of you and a pleasure chatting with you.
Eric Hutto: Thanks, I appreciate it.
Fred D'Alessandro: Thank you.