Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Jeff Hastings, BrightSign

If you're looking for concrete evidence that the digital signage business is now doing some serious volume, consider the word on this latest Sixteen:Nine podcast from Jeff Hastings, the CEO of BrightSign. His shipping department is packing and moving roughly 1,000 units a day.

Let me repeat that ... a day.

BrightSign designs, builds and markets little purple boxes used by a LOT of network operators as media players. In our chat, Hastings talks about BrightSign’s direct ties to another purple box company in Silicon Valley, Roku, and how that relationship has evolved.

One of the really sharp guys in this industry, Hastings talks about why the company is moving so much product this year, and how it will soon have more than 1 million units deployed. He also talks about where the company and industry are headed.

This was a Skype chat, so you'll hear the odd network hiccup and scratchiness. But it is 99% solid sound.

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Andrew Farah, Density

This week, Sixteen:Nine speaks with Andrew Farah, the CEO and one of the founders of Density, a San Francisco-area start-up that's going at crowd tracking in a different way.

Density puts a small sensor at the doorway or doorways leading into a venue or a targeted area,uses infrared beams to measure anonymous movements as people come and go, and generates real-time and historical data that can be integrated into different devices and systems, like digital signage networks.

The attraction to digital signage network operators is that it can do accurate crowd counting without using camera-based video analytics, which can get expensive and tends to freak out some consumers and privacy advocates.

In simple terms, what it means is an airport could have digital displays that show security screening wait times, based on crowd density, at different screening areas (and load-balance crowds who will likely go to the lines that are faster). It could also be used for things like telling consumers if tables are free at popular restaurants.

Interesting chat. Well worth a listen.

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Florian Rotberg, Invidis

This week I’m speaking with Florian Rotberg, the managing director at the Munich-based digital signage consulting and events firm Invidis. Florian talks about the background of his company, and his impressions of the global digital signage market.

Rotberg goes into detail about the differences between the North American and European/EMEA market, and the challenges American and Canadian companies run into trying to expand across the Atlantic.

We had our chat in a noisier than expected press room in June at InfoComm, just ahead of the Digital Signage Summit he put on there.

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John Wang, IAdea

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

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

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

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Randy Pagnan, RP Visual Solutions

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

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

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

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Vincent Encontre, Intuilab

This week, I am speaking with Vincent Encontre, the CEO of the Toulouse, France-based interactive software firm Intuilab, which has a great product for reducing the time, cost and complications of getting interactive touchscreen projects together.

Encontre talks about the company's roots, servicing companies like Airbus, and how it pivoted into interactive digital. We spend a lot of time talking about the product, which is designed to allow people with zero coding chops to produce and publish slick multi-touch applications. We also talk about the process of building interactive screen experiences, and how to do it well.

We spoke last month in a Las Vegas Convention Center hallway, on the first exhibit hall morning for InfoComm. As with most of my InfoComm interviews (still three more on the way), it gets a little noisy in the background.

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Jennifer Davis, Leyard/Planar

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

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

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

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Rick Cope, NanoLumens

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

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

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

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

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Jeremy Gavin, Screenfeed

Jeremy Gavin, the founder of Screenfeed, sat down with me in an empty conference room at InfoComm earlier this month.

Jeremy runs a Minneapolis company that generates great-looking, ready-made content feeds for digital signage networks. Screenfeed, in many ways, reinvented the whole approach to subscription content - moving the business off scrolling tickers and rolling headlines, to a much more visual, curated approach.

It's been very successful and Screenfeed has network clients around the world. Jeremy walked me through how and why he started Screenfeed, and some interesting new research that shows subscription content attracts viewers and drives recall for digital signage messaging. 

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Randy Dearborn, MGM Resorts International

Randy Dearborn has been running digital signage networks since 1993, starting with a skunkworks set-up at Treasure Island in Las Vegas and building that up to a network that now covers 22,000 screens across the MGM Resorts International portfolio. 

He's that company's Vice President of Multimedia & Guest Technology, which puts him in charge of just about any screen you see inside or outside of an MGM property in Las Vegas and beyond. Randy talks about how he applies technology, and how everything he and his team do is based on data and measurement.

Randy is also the current chairman of the Digital Signage Federation, and we talk about where the DSF is at, and where the industry is going.

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Viktor Petersson, Screenly

Viktor Petersson is kind of “the man” when it comes to making digital signage run on a $45 Raspberry Pi mini PC. 

For the last four years, Viktor’s company Screenly has been focused on developing and evolving a signage solution specifically for the Raspberry Pi. In this episode of Sixteen:Nine Podcasts, we talk about why he went with the Pi, the success he's seen  and the kinds of customers who gravitate to Raspberry Pis as a digital signage hardware player. 

Petersson also makes it pretty clear that if you know what you are doing, Raspberry Pi can be a serious, substantial option for digital signage networks.

He was in London when we spoke, and you'll hear the Skype connection get messy for a heartbeat here and there.  

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Stu Armstrong, ComQi

In this episode, I’m speaking with Stu Armstrong, President of the Americas for ComQi, a CMS software and services company with offices in London, New York and Toronto.

Stu talks about the opportunities and challenges of working with the retail sector, and how after many years, signage is getting some serious traction in stores. He also talks about a very different line of business for the company - delivering behind the scenes corporate communications solutions like staff training.

Armstrong is based in New York, but he was up in Toronto recently. ComQi’s R&D offices are a 5 minute drive from 16:9’s world headquarters (spare bedroom in my house), so I popped over, miked him up, and turned on the digital recorder.

Note: I worked for Stu, doing business development, between 2005-2007. Despite that experience, he was still willing to have a chat.

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Neil Willis, Hypersign

Neil Willis is the CEO and founder of Hypersign, a digital signage software company located in Greenville, South Carolina.

In this episode, Neil talks about a long career path that had very humble beginnings - working in the air force in Arkansas and sweeping floors at a big box store on weekends to help pay the family bills. A chance encounter while sweeping up got him out of the service and into IT, and later into ISP services and systems integration. 

Years later, he’s running a very successful CMS and services company heavily focused on working in K-12 schools …  and in healthcare. Neil and I spoke via Skype, and it gets a little scratchy here and there.

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Jason Cremins, Signagelive

Jason Cremins, the founder and CEO of the UK-based firm Signagelive, has been one of the very early adopters of emerging technologies that have really changed how digital signage is pulled together and run - from cloud hosting and distribution, to HTML5, to system on chip displays.

Jason talks about how his still small company is managing explosive growth in the past year, and servicing a global reseller network. He talks about the challenges of a crowded marketplace, the delicate balance of partnering with giant companies like Samsung, LG and Google, and how he sees signage technology and the overall business changing in the next 2 or 3 years.

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Stephen Randall, Monster Media

Stephen Randall is the EVP Social and Mobile at the out of home media firm Monster Media. Randall was doing mobile operating systems before they were ever called smart, as a co-founder of Symbian. He then started LocaModa, which was doing visualizations of user-generated content as far back as 2005, before social media was even a thing.

In this podcast we talk about a lot of things, and spend considerable time exploring the LocaModa patent portfolio that Monster bought and is now working with companies to license. Randall explains how his company is not a troll, but a busy media firm just protecting well-established patents. He explains how the patents applies, and how things will play out for companies that are doing work that infringes on that intellectual property.

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Nanxi Liu, Enplug

Nanxi Liu, the CEO of Enplug, a Los Angeles-based digital signage CMS company she started with a group of new friends after she graduated from Cal-Berkeley ... just four years ago..

Nanxi talks about being a Millennial Asian CEO in an industry mostly run by middle aged white guys, growing a company in a rental house in Belair, and how Enplug now has something akin to franchise offices in places like Nigeria, Slovakia and Australia.

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Bill Dunn, LG MRI

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

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

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Bryan Fairfield, Nanonation

Bryan is the CEO of Nanonation, which delivers digital signage and interactive for a fascinating range of clients - from Louis Vuitton to Harley Davidson to Raising Nebraska, a hands-on learning center celebrating and explaining farm life.

Bryan talks about the rise of interactive in retail and public spaces, tuning their work to the purpose of jobs, and the challenges and benefits of running a thriving tech and media business in Lincoln, Nebraska.  

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