Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

DCBolt, IMERZA - Water Street Tampa

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED - DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

 

Real estate developers have long used scale models, drawings and photo-realistic visuals to help market their projects, but a massive new urban development in downtown Tampa kicks things up several notches to help lease everything from condos to office space.

 

The marketing center for the Water Street development is selling a $3.5 billion project that covers 56 acres of prime West Coast Florida property. When prospective buyers walk in, the lights come up on a presentation that blends projection mapping, visualized, real-time data and interactive digital signage.

 

The centerpiece is an elevated table that has some 450 3-D printed scale-model building, very specifically illuminated by a halo of a dozen laser projectors.

 

Instead of sales people walking clients through the space, and then heading to a meeting room to talk details, a custom iPad app controls what people see on the model - all drawn from real-time data sets.

 

I spent time recently speaking with Devin and Caitlin Wambolt, the D and C (I assume) in DCBOLT, the solutions provider that did the projection mapping. They were joined by Dorian Vee of IMERZA, which developed the custom program, sitting on top of 3D gaming technology.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

 

All right, so I have three of you on a podcast. I don't think I've done that in the past. We've got folks from DCBolt and Dorian from IMERZA. 

DCBolt’s Caitlin and Devin, can you tell me a bit about the company background and how you got to where you are now in terms of what you're doing?

Caitlin: Sure thing. So back in 2012, we started DCBolt, Devin and I were actually in Chicago. We were both going to 3D animation school, 3D animators nerds met in the classroom. From that point, we did our first project, we started DCBolt but our first project which was a nightclub in Chicago, where we designed a custom projection map stage, we did custom LED all throughout the nightclub. And from that point on, we were like, we're hooked. 

Projection mapping was our baby. And we started getting into more of the custom content aspects of immersive design. Then we slowly found ourselves in Orlando, which is currently where we're based, where we're working with the parts  doing a lot of custom animation, immersive media, things like that. And the rest is history.

Devin: Yeah, and this is Devin from DCBolt. Just to piggyback on that a little bit. My personal history and experience and background leading up to the 3D animation school was working for and with a couple of really key large AV integrators up in the Northeast region. So I essentially was getting my schooling on the world of AV and how systems worked, how to design them on a hardware level, the infrastructure requirements, how to run large projects. 

At the same time, I was using that knowledge and experience to pay for the schooling needed to do the graphic element, learn the programs, learn the 3D world. And then around 2010-2011 is when projection mapping just started on the radar of people who were kind of familiar with both worlds of how projectors work, how to use them, and also how to make some custom graphics. We were able to start connecting dots and we started seeing some really really cool and interesting, one of a kind projects cropping up on the internet and YouTube. And I had actually just moved to Chicago, freshly in, I don't know, my second apartment, maybe I had a bunch of boxes leftover. 

And I was either going to have to break the boxes down, throw them out, or I had just seen this really, really cool. It was actually a facade of a cityscape, projected onto these boxes. I forget exactly what the advertisement was, but it was an advertisement for something. And I remember being very wowed and in awe of this amazing video that I just witnessed on YouTube. And this is back before we had advertisements. This is back in the day and, and so I took the boxes that I had in my living room and I stacked them up in my apartment and I covered them in white paper. And I made my very first attempt at 3D projection mapping just using Photoshop and a projector that I happen to have leftover from a project. One thing led to another and before we knew it...

Caitlin: We were creating content for those boxes.

Devin: Yeah, we were using that project. I brought that project to the school and we started using it for all the different students to make content for. It was just a fun new thing, a new medium that people hadn't experienced yet. So one thing led to another, we ended up doing a couple nightclubs, made a bunch of videos and then eventually made our way down to Florida to help work on Harry Potter World.

Okay, yeah, that technical background is really important. I have run into motion graphic designers who have found their way into digital signage-ish projects, and they're obviously very good at the creative side of things, but they were just completely lost in the woods, when it came to some of the technical things, and particularly going back 9-10 years to the early days of projection mapping, it was really super complicated then.

If you didn't know what you're doing, you'd be total deer in the headlights.

Devin: Yeah, a lot of it was trial and error, and there weren't a lot of tutorials or people out there to reach out to for help. 

Caitlin: No Point cloud.

Devin: But that was the fun of it, really, you know, it was raw. And, you know, shortly thereafter, more and more software started becoming available to help with mesh warping and alignment tools and different things like that, which essentially evolved to the point where we were able to do something like we did in Tampa Bay with Dorian and his team. So the brief answer to your question as a background, DCBolt, we really found ourselves in the niche where we speak the language and can really speak to and understand all of the things that a content media team needs to know in order to do their jobs. But we also speak the language and understand all the variables and different aspects involved with the infrastructure that comes along with making these systems. 

A lot of people go and do a show or go and do an event and it has to be up and running for 6-12 hours and then they can break it down. When we design a system, we want it to be running 6-12 hours a day for up to 10 years. So there's a lot of different variables and redundancies and different things that we take into account as far as what brands that we choose to use and what kind of equipment we use, what's doing the video processing, the routing, the power backups, remote control, all of that comes into play. And then we can also relate all of those technical details to immediate team or to someone like Dorian’s team who has an amazing team of programmers, and they know everything they need to know about the video game world and we were able to converse with them and go back and forth and figure out the common ground of how to make get them what they need to get us what we need, so we can project on this city.

Right, and I would imagine that while you could probably get some gigs here and there in Chicago. If you want steady work with substantial budgets, you really ought to be in a place like Orlando or maybe Las Vegas, something like that, where these are the kinds of shows that as you said, may run for 10 years as opposed to one night for a brand launch or something.

Devin: Definitely and never to take away from those. There's just as much work and effort and talent for creating those productions. You know, it's just from our niche standpoint, we really specialize in installations that are meant to be permanently installed, at least or semi-permanently installed and used on a regular basis. We go for bulletproof design. So that's kind of where we set ourselves apart from most other companies that are similar to us.

Caitlin: We have the experience of the live show world, but we definitely prefer the permanent installation world.

Devin: The integration world, yeah.

So, Dorian tell me about your company.

Dorian: Hi, I'm Dorian Vee. I'm the co-founder and CTO of IMERZA, an experiential software company with primary focuses in the real estate and real estate development world. And our roots actually grew out of an architecture firm. In addition to a merger, we also have a design firm that's based in Sarasota, Florida. That's been around 30+ years and does a wide range of work from master planning through complex urban mixed use stuff. 

And what happened was, a little shy of 10 years ago, we started to look towards interactive, real time 3D tech to really change the decision making process internally. And so we started writing our own software on top of game engines to go through any level of decision you can think of whether it's entitlements and approval decisions or finished selections and things like that. And then we started pulling in all sorts of different data and being able to visualize data in these yet to be physically built environments in the game engine. And what happened was our clients started dragging their potential buyers into our office and ultimately selling million-dollar residences out of our work room, which is, as you can imagine, by no means a residential sales center. 

And it happened enough times that we realize there's obviously something there for sales and marketing. And we set out to build out this platform for both real estate developers but also real estate marketing. And actually, Devin and I met several years ago through a mutual friend in Boston. And he introduced me to Devin and we had in mind, for one of our architecture projects, this badass projection maps experience for this interior courtyard of this building. And we brought Devin down to consult on it and see how we could do it. Unfortunately, the Client ultimately wound up not doing it. But what was interesting on the Tampa project, Devin was approached by strategic property partners to consult. 

And at the same time, they had approached us for our experiential tech to help them through development decisions. And then when the RFP finally went out, we realized Devin was consulting on it and gave him a call and said, why don't we team up for this? This is just a slam dunk. If we mix what you're doing with what we're doing, it'll be something that's never been done before.

All right. So you guys have referenced the Tampa project, so can you give me information on what that was all about? It's up and running now, correct?

Dorian: That is correct. The Tampa project is a marketing center. It is the marketing center for a multibillion dollar real estate development in downtown Tampa, Florida. The development itself consists of about 56 acres of privately owned real estate downtown. And the company that's doing it is Strategic Property Partners, for which one of the major partners is Jeff Vinik, who is the owner of the Tampa Bay Lightning and their marketing team has seen some cool projection map city stuff done in other cities worldwide. 

They had this idea and they said, “Hey, we want to do something similar to that, but wouldn't it be cool if we could actually just show all of these data sets in real time, whether that be market data, real estate market data, whether that be demographic data, or even traffic data, things like that.” And  nothing like that had been done before in a projection mapping scenario. These were things that we were doing with our technology, just on the game engine side of things. And they wanted to make this the centerpiece of their marketing center. So the concept was that we would 3D print a 16-foot diameter scale model of downtown Tampa, put in all of the buildings they're currently designing, build it modularly so that as their second and third phases get designed, we could then easily replace those buildings. But then projection maps all of this information and data and color and content onto that scale model, while at the same time showing related content on the surrounding video walls to that scale model. 

Devin: Yeah, we did about a three month discovery process with SPP directly just to help define an eyesight and determine what is the map boundary going to be, what section of Tampa is going to be, even just to determine whether it was going to be a square versus a circle, you know, how large is this model going to be in the physical room. And then we worked with them and the architects to work backwards from the physical restrictions of the size and height of the ceilings in the room to essentially design a system and find all the proper lensing that we knew would be able to cover this entire model and all of its intricate little surfaces from 360 degrees. 

Because their goal was to have people to walk all the way around this model, mitigating as much shadow casting as possible. So we went through a three month process discovery for that, and essentially determined the best approach and the most efficient approach for covering the surfaces from all the different angles with the least amount of projectors needed, but enough to give us the level of detail that we needed, while also doing the best to mitigate as many shadows as possible.

Caitlin: Right and it's a fine level of detail.

Devin: A very fine balance between the number of projectors, distance of image throws, lensing selections, and then how we kind of use the mapping software to merge that entire world together from the game engine, which Dorian's team worked on. And then we actually developed some custom bits of software to make the game engine talk directly through the projector mapping software. 

Dorian: One of the other interesting things was that most projection mapped experiences, at least that I've seen, are meant to be viewed at a distance of at least 10 feet away. Whereas this is a table that you sometimes upwards a room full of 50 people are surrounding and are directly on top of and looking at and because of that it had to be a very, very fine detail of these models.

Caitlin: That dual construction of this is really fascinating to me as well because obviously this is a development where things are changing, there are phases that are already on the docket. We're talking about lots of changes. So down to the building, the individual building construction, that was a huge criterion for the client and down to the table being modular. So everything is really designed with room for growth, with room for those changes that we foresee.

Devin: Ties right back into us. We really like doing projects that have a 5-10 year shelf life and we enjoy the challenges that are brought forth by making sure we're designing with the future in mind. As the city evolves and develops physically, you look out the window, you see a new building, well, we are prepared with IMERZA to completely update everything both digitally and physically when it comes to the scale model as well.

Dorian: Yeah, and that's one of the super cool things about real time rendering, and what really gets me excited about it is if this were to be done, with traditional offline rendering and traditional media capabilities, that would have meant, if one of those buildings gets redesigned, which will inevitably happen, all of that content would have had to have been re-rendered. And then, you know, of course paid for and that would have gotten just extremely pricey. And being able to do this and push through all of this content, in real time at runtime was just such an enormous cost savings to the client then what other traditional media companies were proposing.

So when I've seen scale models of new developments, and admittedly I have not had a lot of cause to see many of them, but in my travels, I have bumped into them. They would most typically just be described as a scale model of a set of buildings that may be nested in a larger urban area. 

And you can look at it from different angles and see the ones that are colored differently. And the other ones are kind of beige or whatever so you know these are the new buildings. With the property developers who said that's not enough, we need to do more than this to actively sell, is it about sizzle?

Dorian: It's about telling a story and showing data and showing how Tampa as a city is growing and the movements of people and where Millennials are settling, how the nearby buildings are performing over time both from a rent perspective, but also like an occupancy perspective. 

One of the things that I found pretty interesting and that was a total surprise to me on the data side of things is once we started pulling in these data feeds, and we could then visualize them in a 3D form, not in you know, tabular, Excel sheets and that sort of thing, you start to see things that you wouldn't necessarily have expected, like, naturally, I would have expected that the buildings along the waterfront would have had a higher rent growth year over year. But then when we visualize it on the table, you could see that it actually it's the buildings that are in the downtown core that are actually having higher rent growth. And that's something that you absolutely couldn't do with the traditional scale model. And that was critical for them to be able to get the high priced rents they're looking for.

So when you're doing a sales presentation, in a more typical marketing center, you would take the prospective tenants into this area and show them the scale model and show them some elevations and everything else and then go to a meeting room and then run the Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoint decks that show all the different data components that you want to pitch versus this where, I guess, you could do the whole meeting just around the scale model, right?

Devin: One of the really great benefits of having the entire model and basically the entire section of the city that's being discussed in this gaming environment as well is that this is as close as we can get to an actual hologram going on and in front of them. 

We've also been able to cater very special presentations in different storytelling modes depending on who the viewer is. So if it's a sales meeting versus if there's someone who maybe is interested in buying a condo or something at this top level of the new edition building, versus someone who owns the stadium right there and they want to see... 

You know, Coca Cola comes in and they want to know, how is my branding going to look in the city? Well, you know, the immersive platform, we can upload a Coca Cola logo, and then they can visualize it on the model in front of them and all the renderings everything happens in real time. And you know, so depending on who the viewer is, we have many different modes that the presenter can go through to tell the story and they also have the ability to kind of shoot from the head. If something comes up, they can point at a building on a map and it will highlight directly on the model in front of them. They can drop the viewers almost anywhere and show them the view at certain times of a day and stuff that you just couldn't do in any other kind of working environment.

Caitlin: Right. Isolating floor levels too, and giving them that first person perspective of what it's going to be like to live in this building or what they're going to see. It’s huge and it makes for a really compelling sales tool. 

Dorian: Yeah, and we have just been talking about the super cool part, which is the scale model but as part of the overall deliverable, there are also two touchscreens kiosks that users could navigate this future version of Tampa themselves also in the room, but yeah, just like Devin and Caitlin were saying, it's an incredibly flexible tool for storytelling. 

They do have different teams. They've got a commercial team, that's all they care about, and their focus is commercial leasing. And then they have different real estate agencies that are interested in selling different residences. And then they've got a whole advertising team because obviously the stadium is right there. And we wrote a system that allows them to basically take a package of assets of billboards of digital signage, actual video mp4 files, and drop that into the content management system. And what it will do is, it will automatically ingest all of those assets and apply them to what Devin had mentioned, every specific billboard where it's supposed to go and suck in all of those video assets and do it all on the fly.

And it is controlled just off a tablet?

Dorian: It is off of a custom iPad controller that was written for the project.

So who manages the day-to-day? Obviously, you've mapped the data tables and everything, so that's okay. But as you described, you want to put in assets from Coca Cola or whatever, is that a managed service that you guys or one of your companies does or are the people at the real estate company doing that?

Dorian: We built a whole content management system that they can themselves upload new content to, they can create their own tours where they can say, I want to play this content then I want to see this on the table and I want to see these videos on the screens. So they can arrange all of that themselves. We haven't quite turned that over to them yet. We're still the gatekeepers on it for the first few months. But once everything's totally solidified, we'll turn that over to them and they will be running it on their own.

Devin: And on the systems side we've also built in a bunch of presets on the programming of the actual infrastructure so they can choose lighting presets, audio presets, there's some lighting under the table, they have control of so they can really choose and set select any specific presets they want. That ties back into the video game engine, so when they choose one thing, everything in the room is going to react to it. The lights go down, the sound comes on, the AV system itself integrates seamlessly with it.

Dorian: Yeah, for instance when they are talking about the parks and nearby parks, the soft under lighting glow of the table can turn green and you can hear birds chirping in the audio. It's very subtle, but definitely very effective things, creating that overall immersion and experience.

So how does your client measure that this is working and that the investment in time and money that they put into this is doing a better job?

Dorian: When you see 50 people enter the room and the system is off, everyone comes in, they all surround it. They're all milling about. Everyone's seen the scale model before and then the sales director hits the on button and the lights go dark and that system goes on. And 50 people at once go “whoa!” and start whipping out their phones. It was a pretty good proof of concept for them.

Yeah, sure, but there's a CFO in that company who's going to be saying, okay, that's all very nice, I'm glad people are excited, but is this selling more real estate for me?

Dorian: Yeah, I mean that is something that will get uncovered over time. Obviously, tools like this are going to be required in the near future. That's exactly why IMERZA as a company was created. The need to explain projects more in depth and the time of just being able to sell off a plan is gone. People expect to be able to experience the future and this project is on a whole nother level.

Now six months ago, pre-pandemic, people would have looked at this and said, “okay, this is the future, this is how commercial real estate is going to be sold”, but then pandemic hit and huge swathes of the population started working from home and companies started announcing we're just going to let people work from home forever now and commercial property groups started thinking, “Oh dear god, our leasing rates are going to drop to the floor.” So how does this fit into the “new normal”?

Dorian: Yeah, there's a lot of that going on and it's been pretty interesting on the real estate market to see how the pandemic has affected it. Interestingly, the housing markets actually picked up traction, at least in Florida. With the commercial leasing side really, it's not so much that anything has slowed down, they're just rethinking how you design your elevators and how you design the communal areas. 

We have not seen from our side any bit of slowdown really even on the investment side. Since COVID hit, we've landed six new projects and surprisingly, we totally expected it to slow down but if anything it's picked up. It was absolutely unfortunate for the SPP guys that the month after this amazing marketing center opened, COVID hit and they had to shut it down but they are open again and they're starting to give presentations again. Fortunately, because a lot of these tools were written in software, they could, during that couple months period where they were down, they could give remote presentations to people that couldn't be there in the marketing center. They could still see the content. They just couldn't see it in person.

Go ahead, Caitlin.

Caitlin: I was just gonna say yeah, if nothing else, this pandemic has just given so many people all the time they needed to be more creative and more expressive and creating more immersive experiences that will really sell the idea so I feel like, just like IMERZA, DCBolt really hasn't slowed down and now we're seeing even more interest because people have more time to really put more thought into solutions like these. So just piggybacking off of what Dorian said, I think, yeah, if nothing else, the time has been really helpful for a lot of companies to think up more creative solutions.

Devin: To be completely honest. Having the little break in time actually gave us the time we needed to get a breather. We were pedal to the metal to get the Tampa project done on the timeline we had and so we feel so blessed that we actually had it done and launched before the timeline.

Dorian: Which was a ridiculous timeline by the way. (Laughter)

Devin: I forget the total number of 3D printers but at one point, we had over two hundred 3D printers going at the same time for different locations across the country.

Caitlin: But it was worth it.

Devin: Yeah, it's been a nice breath of fresh air for us. We certainly have many things coming out of this and it doesn't feel like it slowed down, but I'm scared to think of how fast we'd be going right now without the COVID pumping up the brakes. 

I'm just looking for the silver lining but I feel like everything's gonna pick back up. I don't think that this is going to be a permanent new world that we're living in and people are always going to want to continue to develop real estate and come up with new marketing centers and new ways of conveying new ideas. 

Just by that short pre-COVID one month that we had, we saw so many people get excited in ways that they haven't been excited before about real estate and visualizing data even. A lot of times these are boring conversations that people have in conference rooms looking at spreadsheets, and now they're standing around them actually getting excited about a boring topic like restaurant revenues and things like that, that normally people don't care to even discuss but now they can visualize it. They can say, “Oh, that's where my friend lives down that street. There's a great restaurant. There’s a new footpath there” and it's kind of literally stepping outside of the box gaining a new perspective on, in this case, the entire city, and all the people who are city planning, making big decisions, it gives them the opportunity to look at it from a different perspective, literally walk all the way around it if they want to, and discuss it with everybody in the same room. And I don't think that the value in that is ever gonna go away.

Dorian: I think another and it's not related to COVID but more so than the Tampa project, we pushed a lot of technological limits. And there was an enormous amount of innovation that happened on this project both from just the the projection mapping point of view and pushing all of this real time content at the pixel density that we were doing that to just how do you get multiple real time computers with high end GPUs in their frame locked running at 90 frames a second and all of this sort of stuff. 

So there was a heck of a lot of innovation that happened, that, that we can carry through into new projects. And what I do find interesting and some of the conversations that we're having with companies is, you know, just these types of experiences are ones that can be enjoyed by people that are standing 5-6 feet apart and shared, immersive experiences. So I do think we'll actually see a bit more of this type of content, whether it's projected onto a table or outward onto the walls or something like that. These types of experiences, I think, we're gonna see more of them.

Alright guys, thank you very much for your time. I'm sorry to cut you off there but we try to keep it to 30-35 minutes and I'm sure we could have talked for three hours.

Rich Ventura, Sony

If you have been around the digital signage industry for even a little while, you'd know Rich Ventura - the very active board member and then chair of the Digital Signage Federation, and pretty much the front man for NEC Display.

But now, after about 20 years with NEC, he's now at Sony - running its B2B group, which includes digital signage products.

I caught up with Rich last week to talk about the job change, and where Sony sits in the signage and AV ecosystems. We get into Sony's smart displays, where Sony is at with software, and the past, present and future of its gorgeous but big-dollar micro LED displays.

He even drops a hint that maybe we'll see more LED from Sony.

Have a listen ... 

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TRANSCRIPT

So, Rich, good to chat with you. You have moved on. People know you from many, many years at NEC and now you are at Sony. What prompted the move?

Rich: You know, some people say it was kind of a midlife crisis and I kind of laugh at that. As I've told everybody in the 20 years at NEC, and I love NEC, and I always will and I tell everybody at NEC family, it was an opportunity that just made a lot of sense form my career. It had to be a really, really amazing opportunity for me to move and you know, I looked at the direction Sony wants to go, I looked at the leadership within Sony, I looked at the technology, I looked at all those different things. And it was that really great opportunity. 

And I think it was also that opportunity to give me the ability of driving change even further and adding to my skill set, but you know, going looking at the tech and the direction that Sony wants to go, it was just hard to say no. It was a hard decision to say yes. But it was also a hard decision to say no.

So what is the gig?

Rich: You know, it's basically running and leading our B2B organization. And I hate to say running and leading because it's really, to me, it's more supporting and growing and partnering within the B2B organization with all the people that we have there, to really grow our business. It's for North America. 

So you look within the B2B organization, it's working with our BRAVIA professional displays. We do also have access to some of our consumer products as well, working with our CLED product, which is really just an amazing technology. It's working with our projector group, projector products, an area I've never really worked with before, our PTZ cameras space, our boom mikes. We have Edge analytics, but it's not the type of Edge analytics people are used to hearing me talk about. It's really around distance learning and the classroom. And looking at any of those types of solutions that fit within our pro AV space.

Is broadcast on your portfolio as well?

Rich: No, it's not. That's gonna be a different group in there. But we have kind of that touch and that's what that PTZ camera base is because there's some products that we have that can play in both the AV space but also in the broadcast space.

Right. So, you know, this is a digital signage podcast, so I will tend to talk about that. I'm curious about where Sony is in the context of signage, because Sony has had a product out there in different ways for at least 15 years, and they've kind of been in and out of signage. 

You know, they've had booths at the trade shows, and then they kind of disappeared. And they seem to have software, but maybe they don't. They were the first guys, as far as I know, to do system-on-chip displays. But, you know, Samsung made a lot more noise about it than them and on and on. So, where are they at?

Rich: It's great. I mean, part of the reason or part of my decision criteria to come over here was I did look at the SOC play and what we're doing. And if you look at it, you know, our displays have an SOC chip on it, we're running Android. It's not a Sony operating system, It's an Android operating system. And there was a lot of attractiveness to that and I see this great opportunity within digital signage. I mean you look at how the industry has gone, you've got organizations that have their own operating system, and they're running this closed environment, so to speak, right? 

And then you have organizations that are not running operations. They're just running this massively open environment where you can use these different types of computers and open an operating system. And in Sony, we kind of can go both directions. We have this Android operating system, which is fairly open. But it's designed for our displays. And one of the things I want to look at is how can we capitalize on that and you'd be amazed, or you may not be amazed, but the first week of me joining Sony, so many CMS companies called me saying, “we want to work with Sony.” 

And I said great, let me understand where we're at. To me, I look at digital signage as still a very young industry. I always refer to the industry we're in today as really that fourth industrial revolution. We're focusing on IoT, in an everything's connected device world and digital signage is a massive part of it. Nobody has truly capitalized on that. And so when I came into Sony and had my conversations with leadership and everyone, they said, well, we don't focus that much on digital signage, because there's everybody's doing business in there, and I said actually, they're not. They're not doing it the right way. And I think even with what's happening with COVID, digital signage has taken on this whole different life and this whole opportunity. 

And to me, this is very opportunistic for Sony, and what we can do and I'm having a lot of late night conversations with our team in Japan. I'm talking a lot with our team here. I'm talking to a lot of different software companies and looking at what has been our strategy, so it's here and where do we want to grow? And where do we our strategy being and that's part of my first 30-45 days, laying out what is our strategy. Digital signage has got a massive opportunity for us. There's a lot of upside to it. I think we need to have, I don't want to say open our eyes a little bit differently, but I think we need to look at it a little differently than what we have historically. And I think you're gonna see a lot of really exciting stuff coming from us, both in the near future and long term future around digital signage.

It's a little bit challenging though, because Sony primarily, if you set aside the CLED product, which we'll talk about, but the on the LCD flat panel side, it seems to be increasingly a commodity play and the big Korean guys like LG and Samsung seem to be backing off of it a little bit because it can't compete with China panels.

Rich: Totally and I think you've always known my opinion about value. If you look at what I have shared with the organization in my first week, I have really three core values when looking at our business. Everything we have to do needs to drive value. So if we're delivering a 55-inch LCD, we're delivering a PTZ camera, CLED, whatever it is, there has to be value driven to our customers. 

Well, the way we drive value is really twofold. One is we drive value by being easier to engage and work with, not having complex systems. And you know, some people say, that's what you said when you were at NEC and I go well, I believe in that. I mean, I believe that as an organization, to drive value, we have to be easier to work with. We have to have systems that work very well together that go all the way down to the level of our platforms, where with Android, being able to integrate into that, being able to deploy our product, being able to purchase a product, all those things have to be easier. And that drives value. 

The second aspect of it is solutions focused. And I don't mean taking a monitor mount and a cable and throwing it in a box. Solutions focus, to me, means solving pain points for our customers. We're creating an opportunity for them to impact their business. And so when we look at those three things, our focus is not to sell at the lowest price point, our focus is not to compete at a dollar for dollar. Our focus is really competing at the value, how do we drive that value to our customers? If you look at our product category, we don't have 100 SKUs. What we have though, are very focused SKUs that can work well in the corporate space, well in the education space, work well in the transportation space, the wayfinding space.

Okay, so you don't really, I mean you would take the opportunity if it came along, but the high volume commodity-ish stuff like digital menu boards, that sort of thing where you're just selling large volumes of them isn't really the play. It's going to be more around situations where you need very high quality displays.

Rich: You know me, I'm gonna go after every deal I can, right? I'm gonna be opportunistic, but I also need to maintain and make sure that we're doing it profitably. What I don't want to do is, I don't want to give up quality, I don't want to give up support. I don't want to give all those things that we're known for just so that we can sell, you know, 10,000 displays. 

It's interesting when I've asked our employees, why do people buy Sony? And the answer has been almost identical across the line. It's been around our quality, it's been around our technology, it's been around our reliability, those things that I value very heavily. And so how do we do that? Grow the business, maintain profitability, and really deliver on the value. It's a difficult task, right? And especially as we see more and more of the commoditization happening out there, and, and that's where I'm really challenging the team. And that's where I'm even challenging our partners, from our technology partners and even our channel partners. How do we do that? And where can we become opportunistic to go after the right business and deliver the right solutions and value to our partners?

And right now, is that partners as you describe them, is that a reseller channel partner ecosystem that you primarily sell through?

Rich: Yeah, we are a channel organization. We have very strong relationships with our distribution partners. Our regional integrators are national integrators. We have really strong relationships with them. And I want to find ways to expand that relationship with them and how can we help them grow their business and really take on more of that solution. Not meaning any meaning Sony taking on that solution, but how do we help them take on that ability of growing their capabilities and growing their value add. At the same time though, I'm going to be very opportunistic and see what are the ways that we can help them with differentiation from Sony as well.

Sure. So in the ecosystem, where do you think right now or historically, these channel partners have been kind of jammed up to like, where do they need the help?

Rich: It'd be easy for me to say well, they need XYZ, but I think they're all different. Every one of these channel partners, really out of necessity and opportunity have really differentiated themselves. Some have the most amazing content creation organizations. Some of them have amazing installation capabilities and service. That's really where integrators have always cut their teeth, it's been around integration services. Some of them have just amazing levels of partnerships. So it's really looking at every level with them, where can we help them? 

And I'll use a really easy example, there's a partner that I had a call with in my first week as one of our channel partners, and they cut their teeth and broadcast an audio, that's where they've always focused their attention. And digital signage is a new realm for them. And so as we were talking through and I asked him, you know, who do you partner with, who have you talked to and stuff like that? We started talking about organizations that are out there, from a software perspective. And the knowledge base that we have is very valuable to them. And so the fact that we can help steer them and look at who are the right types of companies to work with, or as you verticalized, who are the right players in different vertical markets, that becomes very valuable. 

So now how do I use that to our advantage? And that's the million dollar question. And I think as I work with the sales organization and our marketing organization, looking at who we have worked with, and where we've seen those values and create, to me really a tear of manufacturer partners, like you know, it's our friends, it's our family, and it's our blood. Friends are those that we know each other, we work well together, right? Family is where we start getting that stickiness where we have some integrations together or we have ease, you know, I go back to the ease of use and the value. Blood is really where solutions come in and where our products are integrated with one another. 

And that's new for Sony and I think as we grow the business, it’s not going to be today, it's not gonna be tomorrow, it's going to happen over a period of time. That's where we start driving and helping that value with that integration channel.

What do you think of the whole work-from-home thing and the realization amongst a lot of companies that, “Hey, maybe we don't need this big office tower or five floors and an office tower. We can have one floor and everybody else just works from home”. What that's going to mean for things like workplace communications and this idea that this was one of the next big frontiers for signage in particular that you can sell them all this stuff, because of the need to communicate in white collar environments?

Rich: So the selfish, opportunistic salesperson in me hates it, because it reduces my opportunity to sell. I love having a million tons of the top offices out there because I can sell a lot of products. The realist in me sees this as an opportunity to differentiate and drive value, whether it's, you know, I go back to the Android player and the fact that we have simple solution for signage, and being able to get that to a company so that they can do simple, whether it's information to their employees about COVID, and information about status and information about things going on in their business. 

I think it's also going to be opportunistic and challenging for us as manufacturers to look at. What are other ways that we communicate, right? Is it putting higher brightness displays in windows so that people can be communicated to? Is there going to be this growth within the out of home community? And are they going to have a different type of need with direct view LEDs? It's all those things. One of the things I also see is, it's a challenging opportunity from a technology perspective. 

I go back to this being that industrial revolution around IoT. How do we deliver our tech that doesn't require somebody to physically touch the monitor? How do we derive solutions that allow our customers to remotely monitor, manage and deploy their technology? Where they do have offices, and maybe they don't have an employee in every single location? It's all those things, I think are going to be a play for us. I've worked from home for many years. I mean, I carried a bag for NEC, right? So you look at my first 10 years at NEC, I worked from home, then I worked at an office, and now I'm back to working at home. So, I'm used to it. It's definitely creating a new dynamic for employees. The engagement has to be different. We have to engage with our employees a lot different, we have to make sure that they feel engaged. I've seen some of these digital signage software companies like Signagelive, for example, building out platforms that allow them to engage at the employee level to their laptops. I think when we're looking at what's going on today, I think it's gonna really drive creativity and innovation. And it's gonna be really interesting, it’s gonna be fun to see how companies do innovate and drive engagement now.

So when I go to trade shows, when those things still happened, I would walk through, let's say the last one was ISC, I walked through the big Sony booth and I would see a lot of information about a product, I think, it was called TEOS, which seemed to be primarily office based, digital room signs, that sort of thing, but I got a sense that there was a digital signage component to it, but you also have some sort of a signage-CMS product that maybe comes out of India or I'm not quite sure where from really, what are those things?

Rich: I'm still learning. (Laughter)

TEOS is really an interesting platform. I'm learning a lot about it. I got to spend some time last week with our team in Europe to understand it. To me, TEOS is like this office management, automation, communication platform. And it's a platform, it's not a piece of software. And I know that it’s critical to understand that it's a platform, and it's allowing us to look at, you know, room management and schedule management and there's a digital signage element to it, but it's not like if I were to rank like the top 10 features to it and functionalities, it's not in that top five, because there's a lot of other things behind it. 

It's a module. 

Rich: It is. It's not a standalone “I'm going to deploy this for my digital signage and that's all I'm gonna do”, that's not what it's for. And so I'm really learning a lot about it. There's some really cool capabilities with it. But it's not something I would go and deploy in a retailer, for example. This is more for an office workspace environment. And you know, I'm definitely learning a lot about it. I think there's some really cool capabilities in it. And you know, knowing my background when I'm working with software teams, I of course, start asking a million questions and blow their minds a little bit, but I think there's some really cool things about it. The digital signage element you're talking about is something else that I haven't had a chance to go learn and spend my time on yet, but from what I see it, it's very simplistic. It's something that you can do within our environment. 

What I will say is, there's a necessity for it. As we all talk about, you know, that early SMB, that single screen environment that you don't make your money on. But do I think it's the silver bullet? I think you know me well enough to know that I've never considered any digital signage software package to be a silver bullet, you know, one package can’t do  everything for everyone. So, I'm gonna reserve judgment till I've gotten to really see it and play with it, right? But it's exciting to see that people are thinking about ways that we can deliver value. Everything goes back to my conversation around value.

Yeah, whenever you have your own CMS, it becomes this delicate little dance of what is it for, does it compete with your software partners and all that sort of thing. I don't think any of the software partners who started calling you would be too worried about a totally entry level onesie-twosie kind of thing. 

But I've chatted quite a bit with Samsung and Magicinfo through the years and they're now at a point where they have a full-time Product Manager and they're taking it very seriously, but you know, that starts to get really foreign in terms of the partner ecosystem that they have on the software side.

Rich: Yeah, I look at it as an opportunity. Hire as many product managers as you can, please. I look at it as an opportunity where we can partner with companies. I think you've known me long enough, and those in the industry have known me long enough, I take partnerships very seriously. And they're a path to growth. And if I can have thousands of people out there pushing and talking about the Sony brand, that's very valuable to me. 

I've had a lot of people go to me and say, “You were at NEC all those years and you guys are one of the top dogs, why go to Sony?” And I say because Sony's a top dog too, you just don't realize it yet. And I think we've been quiet. I think everybody knows me well enough to know I'm not shy. I bleed my brand. I bleed my company. I told everybody on the team on day one, I've got your back. And my job here is to help us grow and really put us in that position that we're going to be the top dog and I look at those opportunities with the products we have today, the partnerships and you know, the one product we haven't talked about yet is CLED, I mean, I'm blown away by what that product can do. It is an absolutely beautiful technology. I know you and I have talked about it. When we first saw it, you first saw it, we talked about it in interviews, and you've asked me what's my opinion of the CLED product, I said it's pretty amazing looking. I don't know anything about it yet, but it's pretty cool looking.

The one thing I would ask about CLED and if people listening don't know what it is, it's Sony's micro LED product which has been around about four or five years. Now yes, it looks amazing. I've stood really close to it and tried to figure out what was going on. And over the years I've learned more about what micro LED is. The one thing that I wondered about is that it seems to be the same product that it was three, four years ago when it first came out and in LED, everything's evolving so quickly. I wonder where is it now? Is it on Gen 3, and I just don't understand that.

Rich: Well, why fix anything if you made perfection day one? (Laughter)

I'm just kidding. I think we are evolving, right? I think where CLED is today and where we want to take it, you're going to see we will evolve it, right? One of the things I really dive deeply into and it's been an interesting experience, I think, for my business team, is really understanding all of our products whether it’s CLED, it’s BRAVIA to PTZ, you can have a list of it and having these calls with the product management team here, but also our team in Japan, and that's challenging. I’m like okay, what are we going to do? How do we grow this business? How are we positioning ourselves against the competition in the industry? 

You know, going back to my three things earlier about value, simplicity and solutions, what are we doing? And I think you're going to see a lot of really cool stuff. I can't go into depth about it at all, but I can tell you, there's a lot of cool stuff that we're working on and looking at. That being said, we've got some really, really amazing projects that are deploying the CLED product and the clarity of the product, the uniformity of the product, the technology behind it, is exactly what they need for those applications. And It's not a utilitarian product at all.

No. I mean, I've seen it in the wild Now a couple of times. And just like in the trade shows being really impressed the one thing that worried me a little bit was the glossy finish that it has on it, seems to pick up reflection.

Rich:  No, it does. And that's, like I said the applications are very explicit for how it's being used. You know, I've seen some I've seen pictures of some of the deployments that we've done. And I go, “Aha, that makes sense to me.” That makes sense on where it goes and why it goes in this application. It's really a technology you need to really dive in to understand. It's not like a traditional LED at all. And I'm still learning it. I mean, I've had nine meetings just specifically around CLED, and I still have a million questions everytime I get on the phone. So I'm excited about what it can do and how we can position it better in the market or how we currently position it, but how we continue to position it in the market.

Yeah, I think it'll be important for people to understand the price points and how the technology is evolving. Because when that thing first came out, making a micro led of that scale would have been enormously expensive, just because the manufacturing technology wasn't there. But, you know, micro LED is, I want to say it's becoming commonplace, but it's pretty widely adopted now. So, I would assume that you can do a hell of a lot more and you'll make it more relatable price wise to more potential buyers. Yeah.

Rich: Yeah and that happens, you know, we always talk about technology at that tech curve, right? So you're the early adopters all the way through to the late adopters, and technology follows that curve, right? So even if you’re the early adopters, you don't have a lot of volume, you don't have the technology to drive things. Because it's new. It's a new idea. And it takes a while to happen. But I think that's where I challenge our team. When I tell them I say our team, I am talking about everybody: our sales organization, our marketing organization, our development team, is how do we drive forward where that product, that platform is the right product, right platform for the marketplace and where it needs to go, but also fits the right applications and use cases. So like I said, I think you'll see a lot of opportunity coming out of us with the CLED product.

It's interesting that even today, you still have any number of people referring to any big outdoor LED board as a Jumbotron, which was a Sony product that came and went. But really the only Sony direct-view LED product I know of is the CLED. Are there any plans to expand? Or is that just such a crowded market and you'll stay with this premium product, and that'll be it?

Rich: All I can say is keep your eyes and ears open.

Yeah. Well that makes sense. I mean, you know, wherever it's going, it's hard not to have a range of products to suit different needs particularly in the business market. 

One other thing I'm curious about is, is it an advantage to you or does it feel more comfortable in the fact that you spent 20 years working for a Japanese company already, so you understand the business culture? Because I would imagine somebody who's spent all their time working just, with North American manufacturers or whatever going and starting to work with a Japanese business culture might be quite a shift for them.

Rich: So, it's an advantage and a disadvantage. It's an advantage because I've gotten to really learn so much, especially as I say, in the last three or four years of my career in NEC. I really spent a lot of time with our Japanese tema and I got to learn how they work and how we as an organization can work better with them and communicate better. 

I think I always have to remind everybody that English is not their first language, right? And so as we share information with our team in Japan, they may be speaking to us in English, but they're also computing this in their heads in Japanese to make sure they understand. So it's very critical that we communicate and we're very open and transparent with one another. That was the first thing. 

The second thing is that I also can understand where their needs are, and you know, they're not asking questions to be difficult, they're not doing things that way. They truly want to understand, they truly want to be there with us and support us and so I've got that, and that's been an awesome experience that I've had coming into this. 

Where it's not an advantage is I've got 20 years experience working with NEC and how they operate. Now I have a new organization. So I have a new vocabulary, I have a new chain of command, I have all those new things to learn, which is actually exciting. As I have told a lot of people, everybody's been going, “How's it going so far? Your week three!” and I go, yeah, just as excited as I was in week one. And they laugh go, well it’s only been two weeks, and I go, yeah, but you don't understand, I'm excited and I think even my people are seeing that as I talk with them and even with the Japanese, it's exciting. It's such an exciting opportunity and I hope that I can transfer that excitement within the organization. So I see a lot of value in my history of working with the Japanese and going to work with Japanese organizations because I do have a history and I do have an understanding of how we work best with one another.

Well, this has been great. It's great in a couple standpoints first, just catching up. But second, I've struggled to find the right person on the business side to talk to at Sony for many, many years. And now I have someone! 

Rich: (Laughter) Well, it's funny, Dave. I was talking with Allison in our marketing, social media Group, and I was actually talking with some of our product managers and business managers yesterday. And one of the things that I told him is that we need to be more present. We need to be more out there in the industry, whether it's just social media, whether it's speaking, training, it's education. And those who know me well know that is something I really value heavily, right? And if not me, I don't need to be the person doing it. And I really want to empower our organization to be more present in the industry. Because I look at it from a couple ways, one is it builds value. The second is it builds those bridges between our organizations, but also it shows just how much we can do and all that drives sales and all that drives relationships and everything else. 

So, I'm excited because it kind of feels they have a little bit of a blank canvas to work with. But you know, if we sit down a year from now, and we talk about all the things that we did in this first year and, you know, let's do that, let's talk in a year from now, let's talk about how much Sony's changed. And I think the statement you just made, I hope I never hear that again, because I think you guys will see us more present in the industry. You'll see us more present in the technology. You're gonna see us out there more. And I'm really excited about seeing that happen.

All right, Rich, thanks for your time.

Rich: As always, thank you for inviting me and I look forward to continuing to have these conversations with everybody.

Probably virtually. (Laughter)

Rich: I do look forward to the day that I can actually travel and see some of our customers and partners and face to face again.

Yeah, me too.

Michael Schneider, Gensler (from InfoComm Connected 2020)

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED - DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

I was kinda sorta off last week and did not record a new interview, but I have this audio track from a recent online event that's well worth sharing.

The pandemic shifted InfoComm 2020 from Las Vegas to online last month, and one of many educational sessions held at InfoComm Connected was about experiential design.

I was the host, and my guest was Michael Schneider of the giant global design firm Gensler. I've known Michael for a few years, first at ESI Design and now at the New York City offices of Gensler, where he runs the Media Architecture team.

The session was called Designing Contact-Free Building Experiences, and was a chat about how the global health care crisis is forcing a re-think of using and navigating public and commercial building spaces.

Where much of the experience in big buildings lately has been about Wow Factor, health safety and utility are now in the mix.

The session was a video call, with a chat recorded ahead of time and then live Q&A. About 20 minutes in, you will hear the tech jump in with a few questions.

I'll have a fresh podcast, with transcription, next week.

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Frank Olea, Olea Kiosks

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED - DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT

I love kiosks when they serve a real purpose - making it faster, better and easier to do something.

Olea Kiosks does just that - making high-utility but also good looking kiosks that exist to make something easier - like speeding you through an airport or checking in at a hotel or health care facility.

The company started decades ago as a moonlighting woodwork shop, through Frank Olea's grandfather. It grew into a thriving business doing a ton of work on trade show exhibits. Over time, those exhibits added more and more technology, and gave Olea a lot of direct experience with electronics and software.

Now the company is squarely in the kiosk business - with standard lines and a fair amount of custom work.

Olea grew up in the family business and eventually took over as CEO. We spoke recently about what his company is doing, the challenges presented by a pandemic, and how even when touching things can seem scary, a kiosk makes more sense than one to one contact with people you don't know are healthy or contagious.

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Jeff Rushton, Media Resources

Some LED display manufacturers have made a mark in the digital signage and digital out of home industries by making a lot of noise and having splashy booths at trade shows.

Media Resources has taken a very different approach - plugging along pretty quietly and building up a solid book of business in the US and Canada that's based on its technology and end-to-end experience.

The company has an unlikely home base in leafy, very upscale Oakville, Ontario, which is in the immediate orbit of Toronto. It started many years ago as a pure sign company, and has used decades of experience in all the engineering, paperwork and politicking of putting up billboards as a distinct advantage.

LED is now 60 per cent of what Media Resources does, and that's growing.

I spoke with CEO Jeff Rushton. We get into the state of the business and why he's investing heavily in an automated manufacturing facility in Canada, doing work that's normally offshored to Taiwan or China. Lots of companies do design and final assembly over here, but get components built in Asia. Rushton's will be doing the whole nine yards in Oakville. 

We also talk about SITELINE, which is described as Light Trespass Mitigation technology. What it does is hugely reduce light pollution from roadside billboards - so nearby homes aren't flooded in light and media companies get their new billboards approved by local authorities. 

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Advocates For Connected Experiences: Industry Panel - Re-opening For Business

This is a special version of the 16:9 podcast - the audio from a recent online call put on by the new Advocates For Connected Experiences, focused on the challenges of getting people back to work, and what that means for connected experiences and technology.

The chat, done on a Zoom video call, features senior folks from several organizations, talking about what's changed, what's going on now, and how technologies are being applied. I was the moderator.

On the call, you'll hear from:
- Kim Sarubbi, ACE
- Joe' Lloyd, AVIXA
- Trent Oliver, Themed Entertainment Association
- Debbie Hauss, Retail Touchpoints
- Cybelle Jones, SEGD
- Bryan Meszaros, SEGD
- Kym Frank, Geopath
- David Drain, ICX Association
- Beth Warren from CRI

I didn't have time to buff this up with the audio leveled, etc, etc, so you may have to monkey with your volume controls. But it is a good chat that's well worth a listen. 

Warning - it is 60 minutes or so, but you can always listen to half and come back to it later.

 

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Panel: AVIXA Digital Signage Power Hour On Access Controls In Pandemic Times

The trade association AVIXA is running a series of digital signage "Power Hours" that are designed much more as roundtable discussions than webinars.

I've been moderating them, and while they are available for playback on demand via AVIXA's YouTube channel, it's a conversation that works well as just audio.

This session was on the new demands out there for technology-driven access controls, and messaging for retailers and other venue operators who are slowly re-opening to a new normal.

I stripped out the presentation the guys from Invidis did at the front end of the hour, since they do refer to visuals. This is the conversation, which featured:

• Beth Warren from CRI
• Jay Leedy from Diversified
• Ben Reynolds from Stratacache
• Chuck Lewis from Palmer Digital Group
• Florian Rotberg and Stefan Schieker from invidis.

 

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Paul Harris, Aurora Multimedia

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced a wave of new or re-marketed products intended to address one of the many new problems businesses face in re-opening and bring people through their doors each day.

My email inbox is filled each morning with pitches from Chinese manufacturers selling screens that also have sanitizer dispensers, and smartphone-sized gadgets, with cameras, that do quick body temperature scans that are intended to flag people who may be running fevers, and therefore may be carriers of the coronavirus.

A lot of these products look, and are, the same, and it would be impossible to keep up with all the options and sellers. But I was intrigued by a New Jersey AV tech company, Aurora Multimedia, that came out recently with a solution that seems a bit more substantial. It was designed from the start to integrate and work with other building systems, as well as offer alternative uses beyond this pandemic.

Aurora has versions of a temperature check screen that are as large as 21.5-inches, and they have the company's versatile control system in behind it.

I spoke with Paul Harris, Aurora's CEO, about the thinking behind the product, and how it is turning out to be something of a saviour for some AV reseller partners who were struggling to stay relevant with their pre-pandemic products and services.

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Rick Mills, Creative Realities, Inc (CRI)

Creative Realities is a solutions provider heavily focused on retail, an industry that has been pretty much shuttered in the United States and everywhere other than Sweden because of COVID-19.

These are rough times for store operators for the people who run them, the people who work in them, and the industries that support retail, like digital signage.

While CRI's CEO Rick Mills agrees it's a dark period, he also has a lot of optimism - particularly for the retailers who have the fundamentals to be around when doors are allowed open again, and for service providers who have the tools and know-how to help address what will be new norms.

Mills and I chatted last week about what CRI is doing, as well as about new pandemic-focused tools like thermal sensing screens that his company has started marketing. We spoke, as well, about his company's outlook, including thoughts of acquiring one or several of the companies who are competitors right now, but might not come out of this situation in one piece.

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Florian Rotberg, Stefan Schieger - Invidis Consulting

Florian Rotberg and Stefan Schieker of Munich's Invidis Consulting have been active in the digital signage market since 2006, mainly focused on Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Their work spans everything from straight-up consulting for vendors and end-users to organizing and running industry conferences in Europe and globally.

That puts them in steady touch with a lot of people, and gives them a solid perspective on what's going on and what's changing.

One of the things Invidis has been doing in presentations is a regular look at the impacts and implications on vertical markets of COVID-19, and what that means for digital signage companies.

We talk about that in this new podcast, as well as dig into some suddenly red-hot marketplace requirements like sidewalk displays and access control technologies. 

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Kim Sarubbi, Advocates For Connected Experiences (ACE)

There are a lot of special interest member organizations out there, all focused on the things they do as businesses, but also on the trends and market forces that affect them.

There is a hell of a lot of crossover when it comes to things like customer experience, but historically, there's been very little crossover between these special interest organizations.

In simple terms, an issue that's important to a digital signage network operator can be important, as well, to an advertising company and to a location-based marketer. Privacy issues is a prime example of that.

A new organization called Advocates for Connected Experiences - or ACE - has bubbled up in recent weeks with the goal of getting different organizations collaborating on these kinds of common interests. It's not a member organization you'd join, but more of a working group.

I spoke with Kim Sarubbi, who stuck up her hand and said she'd pull ACE together. She gives the back-story, and tells me what ACE is doing, and where she could use help in what is, right now, totally a volunteer effort. 

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Remi Del Mar, Epson

For a bunch of years, projection seemed like one of these digital signage technologies that had seen its day.

But that's changed in the last two or three years, and if you follow the industry and go to trade shows, you're seeing more projection product and applications.

The big reason is lasers, which last way, way longer than the lamps that were used for many years in projectors.

The big projection guys like Christie, Barco and NEC have a range of suitcase-sized products that get used for big budget events, but another company more historically known for office products has made a strong and interesting expansion into digital signage and visual experiences.

Epson has a variety of projectors that can be applied to signage jobs, but the one that has got most of the attention lately is the LightScene. It looks entirely different from boxy projectors - instead looking very much like the spotlights you see hanging from track systems in shops and galleries. It changes the whole idea of projection in key markets like retail and museums.

I spoke with Remi Del Mar, the LA-based product manager who runs Epson's LightScene team.

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Sean Wargo, AVIXA

AVIXA, the trade association for the pro AV industry, has started doing a weekly impact survey with members in North America and internationally - as a way of understanding how hard the pandemic is hitting business, and the collective point of view on what is happening, and will happen.

As you might imagine, things don't look so hot. Sales are down, and revenues with them. Jobs are being furloughed or ended. And even businesses that would, in theory, be rocking - like video conferencing - are struggling with supply chain issues.

But it's not all doom and gloom, and even in rough times, good things can happen.

Sean Wargo, AVIXA's Senior Director of Market Intelligence, runs the impact surveys. He was kind enough to take some time the other day to walk through what he is hearing, and also what AVIXA is doing with and for its members.

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Chris Riegel, STRATACACHE (2020)

These are some of the oddest, craziest, scariest moments many of us have ever experienced.

If you're sick, you'll hopefully recover quickly.

But the global economy is now very much under the weather, so to speak, and it is not at all clear when it will get better. Businesses are shuttered and many won't open again, or if they do, they'll probably come back in a different way.

The digital signage and digital out of home sectors are hit just like everything else, and this virus is going to take out companies the way it is indiscriminately taking out 100s and 1,000s of people.

I wanted to spend some of  the next few episodes talking to smart industry people about what they're hearing and seeing, as well as what they're doing.

First up is Chris Riegel, who runs what is now the STRATACACHE Group of Companies. We've spoken in the past, but I wanted to speak with Chris because he's very smart, well-travelled and connected, and always has an ear to the ground.

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Mark McDermott, ScreenCloud

ScreenCloud has been around for five years now - a pure software startup that aimed to bring web technology fully into digital signage.

Now the London-based company has roughly 100 staffers in the UK, US and Thailand, and is evolving from having an SMB focus into servicing enterprise business.

I've spoken to co-founder Mark McDermott in the past for this podcast, but I wanted to catch up for a couple of reasons.

First, I wanted to know why such a relatively young platform was completely re-architected recently.

But I also wanted to dig into some thoughts from Mark I saw online about workplace communications and digital signage more generally, in a time when a pandemic has left on-premises screens unseen, and many to most workers doing their jobs at home.

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Stefan Thorarinson, Pristine Screen

At the best of times, using an interactive screen can be a slightly dodgy experience because of the presence of dirt, grime, bacterial build-up and other stuff you really don't even want to think about.

But in this new age we're living in - hopefully temporary, but who knows - touching an interactive surface that's already been used by dozens or scores of others that day could put you in a hospital bed, or coffin.

One of the counter-measures to the risk of transmission of contagions like COVID-19 is the regular cleaning of that screen, not to mention hand-washing or sanitizing after an interactive session.

Given everything that's been going on - and having walked to the self-serve checkout at my local grocery and thought, "Hmmm, how do I do this safely ... " - it's useful to get some insight from a business that's all about clean screens.

Toronto-based Stefan Thorarinson runs North American Ops and Sales for Pristine-Screen, a UK-based company that's specifically in the business of cleaning and protecting digital signage and digital out of home screens.

We chatted about how a global pandemic has raised awareness and attention for keeping screens clean, and what operators should be doing, and not doing.

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Tina Williams, Greater Toronto Airports Authority

Airports are very different places from when I started my working life, and technology has done a lot to not only change travel experiences, but also help monetize what are, often, very busy public places.

The Greater Toronto Airports Authority runs that city's Pearson Airport. It is the busiest airport in Canada, with some 50 million passengers going through the two terminals each year.

Tina Williams runs the media and partnerships programs at Pearson, which is increasingly using technology for everything from fixed, standardized ad positions to very customized, elaborate brand activations that mix mediums. In one case, an automaker's brand messaging starts with projection mapping and video walls in the parking garage and extends all the way to a micro showroom across from the airport's busiest gate.

I've known Tina for a bunch of years, extending back to when she did similar work at Canada's busiest shopping mall. We spoke last week at an airport that, at times, has felt like a second home for me.

We grabbed a room at an Air Canada lounge, which is why it's got a bit of an echo.

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Jim Wickenhiser, SiliconCore

Trying to develop and maintain an understanding of the direct view LED industry is a challenge even for industry veterans.

There's a lot of different tech, a lot of jargon, and a lot of liberal interpretations of what something really is. One company's miniLED may be the next company's microLED.

One of the most well-established manufacturers in LED displays is Silicon Valley-based SiliconCore, which is known for very high quality, fine pixel pitch displays.

Jim Wickenhiser, the company's Senior VP of Strategic Initiatives, kindly agreed to walk me through the different types of LED out there, as well as go into some detail about what makes his company's displays different. 

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Bob O'Brien, Display Supply Chain Consultants

There is very little that's simple about the display industry - whether it's on the consumer or commercial side.

At first glance, it would seem to be all about the electronics, but a flat panel display, in particular, involves a lot of specialty glass and chemical compounds. What gets pulled together for a digital signage display may originate in multiple factories from multiple companies in multiple countries.

A consulting firm called Display Supply Chain Consultants (or DSCC) is in the business of making sense of it all, and relaying that expertise to the manufacturing ecosystem. DSCC does consulting, produces reports and stages business conferences.

I spoke with DSCC Co-Founder and President Bob O'Brien about emerging technology, as well as the impacts being seen by the COVID-19 outbreak. Time will tell, but for now, O'Brien says the impact on commercial display production and availability looks pretty negligible.

It gets a little technical at times, but listen and learn.

 

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George Clopp, RMG Networks

RMG Networks has been doing workplace communications and employee engagement since the days the Dallas company was known as Symon Communications.

There have been some interesting twists and turns in the story of RMG - like a curious spell as a digital out of home media company that ALSO did the legacy Symon stuff. But the management team is now squarely focused on the high opportunity workplace vertical.

I had a great chat with George Clopp, the Chief Technology Officer for RMG, about where the company is at, the evolution of its Korbyt CMS, and how what it does differs in the marketplace.

Among the particularly interesting things - content decisions that are determined and automated, using machine learning, or AI. Have a listen.

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