Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

Sean Riley, Barvanna

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

There are many, many stories of ad-based digital signage networks starting up in bars and restaurants, but many and perhaps most of those stories have bad endings - because of the high cost of the hardware that needed to go in and the limited ability to manage that tech.

A company called Barvanna is taking a different approach - effectively operating as a free channel on satellite TV receiver boxes. So if a sports bar in the U.S., for example, uses DIRECTV to drive the screens around its seating areas, staff can switch on the Barvanna channel by grabbing the remote and just switching to it. No logins. No software to manage. No dedicated box to tie in to local WiFi.

On the other hand, there's no localization on ads and no ability for local managers to do things like create and run spots for things like drinks specials.

Barvanna co-founder Sean Riley comes out of the broadcast business and gets all of that, stressing his service is not intended as an alternative to what a digital signage platform might do for a bar. It's complementary.

I had a good chat with Riley about his company's business model and footprint, and his team's challenge of making some 300,000 DIRECTV business customers aware that there's a new channel they can switch on to drive conversations in bars, and ideally get patrons to stay for another round or two.

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TRANSCRIPT

Sean, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what Barvanna is all about? 

Sean Riley: Hey, Dave. Thank you for having me. I appreciate you taking the time to chat with me. Barvanna is an out-of-home entertainment network. So the network itself, the content is a combination of trivia questions, conversation starters, and action sports videos. So we do all short-form content. 

Nothing in the network is more than three to five minutes long, for the most part, and if you are at an out-of-home location and you see Barvanna, what you're gonna see is what we call glance-digestible content, and by that I mean you can glance up at Barvanna at any time on any screen, and immediately digest what's happening on the screen. So it could be a trivia question, it could be a conversation starter would you rather, or what would you do if… 

And to break up the text, we also deliver action sports videos in a way that works really well with our customers. We've got a lot of really positive feedback thus far.

So what's the business model? 

Sean Riley: So we are primarily an ad-driven model, right? What that means is that our primary revenue stream, of course, is gonna be in the form of advertising. So we need to find ways to measure the audience that we have in out-of-home, which we can talk about in a few minutes, and deliver a lot of value to advertisers that are interested in reaching these out-of-home consumers.

You know better than I do, Dave, about the out-of-home environment. I have an entertainment background. I spent 25 years in the television business with Fox Sports, with Liberty, Latin America, in the Caribbean, and some time with the Golf Channel, and so my focus is delivering a really top-notch entertainment network that works very well in, out-of-home with or without audio and with respect to the monetization, it's all about delivering tens of millions of impressions every month and showing advertisers that we can get them results. 

Because you come out of the programming side, by the sounds of it, you understand that you can't just put something and run ads and just assume people are gonna watch it?

Sean Riley: Yeah, that's exactly right, and that is, one of our biggest challenges, so our distribution model is a little bit different, right? So you have other out-of-home networks out there that are delivering Android boxes or Apple TV boxes, DirecTV in locations, and delivering networks that way, and that is really easy to measure because you know exactly how many screens you have, you know where they are, and you can do estimates on how many viewers are in each location. 

In our case, because I have a distribution and entertainment background, we've taken a different approach and we're working with distributors. So distributors like Direct TV and other cable and satellite providers, as well as really any distributor that can get us into these homes. I can't really go door to door or deliver boxes to these out-of-home locations. I just don't have the resources at the moment, so we feel a better model is to go through distributors, and so that creates some challenges, right? Our DirecTV agreement, for instance, has us in 300,000 locations. So what that means is that any out-of-home location that is a subscriber to DirecTV for business can access Barvanna just like they would ESPN or the Golf Channel or any other network.

And it's my job to work with our partners like DirecTV to market the channel to let people know that it's on, it's available, on their lineup, in their location. Whether it's a health club and people are working out, or a cart, a service shop, or a bar or a restaurant. That's the biggest challenge is getting people to know it's on, turn it on and then step two is measuring that viewership, and then the final step is monetizing that viewership with advertisers, and so we've done a lot of tests and we've learned a lot about what works and doesn't work in terms of what viewers like, and we're getting a tremendous response thus far and we believe that we can, like I said, deliver tens of millions of impressions every month through that distribution. 

So would this be like when I'm late at night reading and I just want some company and I'll go to Channel 585 on my cable box and it'll be the Fireplace channel? Is it one of the sorts of higher-level channels or a set of channels that you would just select using a remote and off you go?

Sean Riley: That's correct. It's not exactly a fireplace channel, but correct, it is a TV network on the lineup. It's designed to complement ESPN and the Golf Channel and complement regional sports networks that are commonly seen in out-of-home locations.

It's not available on the residential lineup of DirecTV, but it is available to every one of their businesses. Every hotel lobby and every car dealership, health club, bar and restaurant, et cetera. So that's how our model works. Now look, we have the technology, Dave, and we do have a number of customers that take our network directly. We have delivered Android boxes out under the street. There are bars and restaurants that have our network today. We can do more customization with those, but we really believe in the distribution model. You get a lot of benefits from working with a large distributor who can help you market the channel, can give you massive distribution. 

If you think about our competitors, and we don't even look at them as competitors, I'll tell you why in a second. If you think about people like Loop or Upshow or Atmosphere, I think the maximum number of screens for any of these guys you probably know better than I do is less than 25,000 or 30,000. Now I think that's from those that have been publicly announced and when you look at Barvanna, we have 300,000 screens out there. We have 10 times the distribution of our nearest competitors, and so granted, we've gotta get people to turn it on, we've gotta get people to watch. But even if only 10% of our base, of that 300,000, is using us for a few hours a day, that is 30,000 locations right there, times X number of user viewers in each location, and you can see how the impressions at an ad load of 8-12 minutes an hour can add up really quickly, and so that's our approach, and thus far it's we're very confident that we can generate significant ad revenue and deliver great value for advertisers using this model.

So your challenge is less about technology and raising the capital to deploy boxes in all these locations, you've got this big installed base, but you have to drive awareness and then usage based on that awareness, right?

Sean Riley: Yeah, exactly, and that's a battle for sure. It's gonna be a challenge, right? 

So what do you tell them, or what do you tell the bar owners and the restaurant owners like, why use this?

Sean Riley: So at the end of the day, what Barvanna does for any location is it allows the location to have an alternative entertainment option. All these locations naturally already have DirecTV in the example we're talking about and so what happens a lot of times, as Dave, during the day or into the early fringe hours, early evening hours, there aren't any live games in most cases, especially during the week, and even in the summertime, in particular, there are only one or two interesting games that are on. And so Barvanna gives patrons in the bar another entertainment option. It's designed to have something interesting all the time. It helps drive engagement. So it's not exactly a fireplace channel, it's not exactly a background channel. , it's designed to drive engagement, to get people talking. Everyone loves trivia and, at the end of the day, because everyone loves trivia, it is family-friendly, it's fun, and people get it as soon as they see it. 

So once a bar owner or a health club owner turns it on and leaves it on for a little while, they totally get the value because they see people engaging with it. They see people laughing along with some of the, would you rather questions and the engagement that they're receiving thus far. Based on our tests both in the United States and in the Caribbean, we're getting really positive results, and so from our perspective, when we go to a bar owner and we send them a direct mail piece and say, Hey, this channel's available now, check it out. We remind them that it's just another way to enhance the experience in the out-of-home location and that ultimately there's been research that shows that drives repeat business, keeps your customers happy, keeps them engaged longer, increases the dwell time, and again, provide another option because Dave, who wants to watch 16 screens of a talk show on ESPN when the guy is muted? 

So look, I mean ESPN is a great channel, don't get me wrong. ESPN, Golf Channel, regional sports channels, these are fantastic channels that every one of these locations has to have, right? Our theory is you really can't, in particular, if you're in a bar or other out-of-home home locations like a health club, it's really hard to cut the cord. You can't say, I don't need these other channels. You need them, and those are great channels, so we're placing a bet that all these locations will continue to have a package of networks, whether it comes from DirecTV or another cable operator, or even some of the new emerging platforms.

We're convinced that the package that includes sports channels like ESPN sports channels like Fox Sports One, and sports channels like the Golf Channel, will continue to be delivered in these out-of-home locations, and we just wanna be there right alongside them. Man, we just wanna say, look, this is another cool, fun option for people to have when you're not showing games or alongside a game, right?

Are the businesses paying for these channels? Is it an upcharge on their DirecTV subscription or does it just come with it? 

Sean Riley: Barvanna is part of the basic package, so everyone who gets a subscription to DirecTV for business receives Barvanna at no additional charge. 

Okay, and how many channels are there?

Sean Riley: We have one main feed at this point of Barvanna and at some point, we'll be expanding and growing and spinning off various versions of our channels. 

Can you do any kind of localization? 

Sean Riley: Not yet. So when we talk about the challenges, some of the challenges are that we can't tap into programmatic ad networks yet. Like a lot of out-of-home and a lot the fast channels can do today. So it's gonna be up to us to get out there and pound the pavement and get advertisers excited about the impressions that we're delivering. 

We can't regionalize the feeds yet. So I can't provide regionalized advertising. But over time, a lot of these savvy distributors are getting really smart with how they're delivering their content, and it's only a matter of time before we can do some more regionalization that will allow us to do customization. For instance, if we had a betting company like DraftKings that wanted to advertise on Barvanna, which is a perfect advertiser for us, we would be able to essentially serve ads in regional locations, if that makes sense. 

So all the ads you're selling are national ad buys?

Sean Riley: Yep. So we're doing a hundred per cent national ad buys and we have different programming blocks that we think are gonna appeal to advertisers. For instance, on Saturday morning, when you go into a bar or a restaurant to watch the college football games, that day one of Barvanna is showing College football trivia all morning, and so it's a great opportunity for a bar or restaurant to entertain their guests before the game, and the same thing on Sundays, we'll do pro football style trivia every Sunday morning. So if you come into a bar and you're there an hour early, rather than having to watch those muted pregame shows right on some of the networks. And that's okay. If you do at least one or two screens, we'll have a Barvanna on and you and your friends will be able to play along with pro trivia in those locations and it just delivers a great amount of value. It's really fun for the bar and restaurant, and it gets customers engaged and hanging out both before and after the game to play sports trivia along with their friends.

I think you did a deal, going back a little bit, with Radiant, a CMS software company involved in digital signage. That's a little bit different. Is that a different distribution model? 

Sean Riley: It is, yes. Radiant's a slightly different distribution model. Dave, with respect to Radiant, it’s a great company. They're really savvy in terms of getting their software technology out there and we wanted to align with them, with Barvanna, and we look at them as a distributor, right? I don't know the number of screens that they have today, what I do know is that they're out there pitching our network in a slightly different manner than DirecTV does, but at the end of the day, it allows their customers to access Barvanna as part of their portal.

So Radiant provides a tremendous amount of really high-quality options, and these are folks that are looking for display-style menu boards and the traditional, I think display networks, and they love the fact that they can offer some entertainment-style content and so we did one of our first deals with them early on, and we've been really happy with the success they've been having, and in their case, there's a fee for aligning. If you have Radiant, you pay an additional fee to access Barvanna, and we've been pretty successful with that. People really like it, and so that's where some of our feedback is coming from. Radiant customers have reached out to me directly and said, could you do more of this or less of this? Or we love what you're doing and so it's pretty easy to access my information, and so they've been getting some good feedback from them.

Are you working with any other CMS software companies, and if you were to work with them, what do they need to do at their end?

Sean Riley: We aren't yet. Look, as I said, we have our own technology. If there was a location that wanted to access us directly, we can certainly talk to them about doing that.

We haven't focused on really many partnerships yet with other companies, we've spoken to all the companies that you'd imagine with, RockBot and UpShow and Loop and Atmosphere and they're all doing similar entertainment networks in this vein in terms of what Chive TV does with all their action sports and their user-generated videos and what Loop does with their music videos, and so everyone has their own kind of unique offering and look. I don't really look at them as competitors, Dave. I really don't. I don't look at them as a competitor any more than I look at Fox Sports as a competitor, or ESPN as a competitor or in Canada, TSN or Rogers Sports.

And that, I think, our channel is designed to compliment them, and so if a bar's got Chive TV, great, that's fine. They're still gonna have a DirecTV subscription. They need that for all the great stuff that DirecTV delivers, and so if they've got Chive TV on one tv, great, it doesn't mean that they're not gonna take another monitor in the bar restaurant and put Barvanna on. So we don't really see them as competitive. We're offering a complimentary service that ideally is going to deliver value in any out-of-home location, whether it's a hotel lobby or a health club or a spa, you get your haircut or get your car fixed or even in a hospital, hospital waiting room.

So in some cases, going back as Bar TV networks have been around for as long as digital signage has been around and digital out-of-home home the venue operators have said, this is nice to have, but this does nothing for me. I need screens that are going to help me push drinks and appetizers and things like the high-margin items. How do you counteract that or address that? 

Sean Riley: Yeah, that's fair, and I get that and we do hear that, and I think there are solutions out there that are designed to drive food and drink, whether it is your own display network with menu type style, traditional type, advertising, traditional style display networks, I think there's inexpensive software, that you can get off the shelf, that you can create those types of offerings inside your location, and so you're right, in some cases, if I had to go out there and say, look, I'd like every bar or restaurant to pay $80 a month or $100 dollars a month for this service, that would be a tough sell if it was just a network. Now I can customize, I can certainly send that location a box, an Android box with our content on it, and I can customize that location and you could get, and I'll tell you right now, we have gotten over a hundred dollars per location in some instances for customized versions of our channel but if you think about the labour-intensive model that, we think it's way more effective and just as good for really the location to have Barvanna as the network feed, right? The nationwide network feed, and we're constantly making tweaks and changes and we're very cognizant, Dave, about what's going on in the bar, right?

On Halloween, what are you gonna see on Barvanna? You're gonna see six hours, from 5:00 PM till midnight and beyond just creepy, Halloweens type stuff. You're gonna see a little bit of Halloween trivia, but for the most part, we wanna complement what's happening in these out-of-home locations. On St. Patrick's Day, the whole channel just completely converts into a green sea of Ireland and trivia about St. Patrick, and we really try to make sure that we're complimenting what's going on in those out-of-home locations because that's the kind of stuff that really adds value.

And on Halloween, we get so much positive feedback from all the creepy, fun, Frankenstein-style videos that we put on Halloween night because it just adds to the ambience. So during the Super Bowl, a great example, I don't expect bars and restaurants to turn on Barvann on six screens during the Super Bowl. They wanna devote all their screens to the game, and so, during that time, Barvanna will put up something a little bit different. We'll put up some Super Bowl style trivia or some NFL-style trivia that if they wanna turn on at halftime or before or after the game, that really adds to the ambience, right?

So that's the kind of thing we try to do. It's a good question, right? Because this has been tried before. It's a distributor, bars and restaurants kinda shrug and say, nice to have, but wouldn't wanna pay extra for it, and so this is why DirecTV said, look, there are companies out there propagating a cut the cord message. They're saying, you don't need it, you don't need DirecTV, you don't need cable. You can just take our Apple TV box or our Android box, and we have enough “content” on there to satisfy your location, and that's just not the case, and so what DirecTV is saying is, look, we can do that too. We can deliver these types of networks, and so when they found out what I was doing, we talked to them and they and they decided to do an agreement with us. They don't like to work with companies that are trying to undercut them, undermine them, and so we look at ourselves as very friendly to cable and really any distributor, we're very interested in working with them because we think it's a good business model for us, and we get a lot of value from them just as much as they get value from us. They get to deliver a high-quality network that these out-of-home locations seem to like, and we get the benefit of broad distribution combined with some marketing and the ability to generate some advertising revenue.

So this isn't a case where you, as an operator, have to decide, this is gonna be my digital signage solution. I can't use anything else. I'm just gonna go with this. You could in theory have Barvanna, you could have Atmosphere and you could have UpShow running in the same venue at the same time?

Sean Riley: Absolutely, and that's really how we look at it, and that's perfectly fine with us because from our perspective, I think the more entertainment options you can give in these out-of-home locations, I think the better off everybody's gonna be. I think they could let the customers choose what they wanna watch and we would encourage anybody listening, when they go into a bar restaurant, ask them and see if they have DirecTV, and ask them to turn on Barvanna that's part of our business plan, and see how people respond to it and see how bars and restaurants like it and go from there.

There was a variation on this roughly 10 years ago with a company called RMG Networks that no longer exists at least not in the form it was in back then. They did a deal with DirectTV and at that point, I believe they had software that could do things like reverse-L wraparound bars and squeezers and things like that, and I thought at the time, oh, this is interesting. They've got a lot of distribution as you've laid out and everything else, but it didn't really go anywhere. 

Was there any history and understanding of that within DirecTV when you engaged with them? 

Sean Riley: We didn't actually talk about that in particular. One thing we have talked about is interactivity, right? I think there's another company that came out several years ago that really went all in on the technology and they had iPads on the tables, and you could interact with them, with trivia and things that are happening on the screen and we decided not to go that road. We just don't think it's necessary. We think that's a huge tech expense. We didn't feel like when people are in these locations they don't wanna do anything more than really glance up, play a few trivia questions with their friends, have fun with it and go from there.

We'll eventually create some complimentary apps and things, but I think that the networks that have tried this in the past and failed, have invested a lot of money, and all the interactive stuff and made all these promises to their investors about all this great cool interactivity we're gonna do, and we're going to collect all this information from these users, and we're going to get them to play along with all of our trivia, and it's just at the end of the day, when you're at a bar or a restaurant, when you're at a health club, you're on the treadmill, you wanna glance up, be able to have some fun, answer a few trivia questions, maybe goof around with your friends, if you're at a bar. But the idea that you wanna take your phone out or a tablet out and start interacting, I'm not convinced that is something, even for people in their twenties, in their teens and twenties. I just don't think it's something that is as engaging. 

Look, we wanna get people off their phones and engage and entertain and so that's our model, and so I'm not concerned about looks, as I said, I don't expect all 300,000 of these locations to turn Barvanna on, Dave. I think I expect a large percentage as we grow and as people learn about it, to understand the value and leave it on for long periods of time, and as I said, if we get 8-20% usage, we'll be thrilled. We'll deliver great value for DirecTV, we're delivering great value for our advertisers and at the end of the day, customers are gonna have fun. 

And do the restaurant operators get a piece of the action or their piece of the action is that they get a free channel? 

Sean Riley: That's it. It's just another value add from DirecTV that doesn't cost them anything additional. They don't pay for putting it on. Look, there are ads on ESPN, there are ads on the Golf Channel, there are ads on all the channels they deliver, and we want people to look at this as just something that naturally blends in. With the 5 or 10 or 15 other channels that you'll often put on in your location, and frankly, in some cases it is a better option for, say, a doctor's office where you have The View on all morning with muted sound, or you have CNN on, even these days, like news channels that become so polarizing that it's more challenging to put on a news channel these days because people create an opinion of your business based on your news network.

And so DirecTV has said, look, let's give them another option, let's give them an out-of-home channel that's only designed for out-of-home. It's specifically designed to entertain people when they're waiting to get a haircut or when they're about to go into the doctor's office. It's fun, it's entertaining. There's always something interesting on, it's family-friendly, and it's not controversial. It's designed to be used with no audio, and so all those checks, all those boxes, and when their competitors come out when DirecTV competitors come out and they say, cut the cord, take our out-of-home networks, distributors like DirecTV can now say, look, we have a channel just like that guys. We have a channel just like that, go to this channel on DirecTV, it's called Barvanna, check it out, and we're gonna deliver more over time so you don't need to do that. We have those and all the great sports channels. That's how we look at it.

I assume that your business partners, investors, I'm not quite sure how you're funded and backed and so on, but the people who are helping this growth are pretty happy that there's not a big capital cost involved in this? 

Sean Riley: That's fair. There's certainly a fair amount of capital with respect to acquiring sports videos and creating the content and curating the hours of content. There's certainly a fair amount of that, but you're right, I feel really confident with our business model that the numbers work. We're still a pretty small company with less than 10 employees, and we are growing really fast.

There are definitely some costs involved. Technology is also an expense, and because we still have to create a network, we program it full-time, and we still have to have a master control style playout system. In this case, it's cloud-based. We still have to deliver that to DirecTV. We have fibre costs and all that. Not to mention all the content costs. So there's a cost basis. I think it's better than probably most, but at the end of the day, there's still some cost there that we have to contend with.

And as we grow, we look to maybe start launching additional style networks that might work in the residential space and or other networks or DirecTV maybe we do roll out, we're looking at a channel called Easy Vibe TV, which is more of an Atmospheric type channel that you're talking about, where it's more of scenery and calm beach views and things along those lines that might also work out-of-home. So we intend to pitch those networks to our distributors as well and say if you like Barvanna, why don't you go with this type of channel as well for your out-of-home customers, because that seems to be working? 

Would that be the same 300,000 seats, so to speak? 

Sean Riley: Potentially, we would hope. That's what we'd want and look, we talk about DirecTV has 300,000 customers, that's just step one, Dave. Having worked in the cable industry and the entertainment business for as long as I have, we're certainly reaching out and we're talking to at least two other large distributors right now about Barvanna as well.

The idea would be to get Barvanna off the ground, let's see if we can generate some great value for our advertisers, deliver a really high-quality product for DirecTV, and expand it to other distributors if they like it, let's talk to them, let's talk to these locations, let's talk to our distributors, see what else they might be interested in and try to create products that meet their needs.

What's in it for the DirecTVs and the other distributors? Like, why do they wanna do this? Is it just another carrot for getting people to sign up or to retain them? 

Sean Riley: It's for sure a retention model, and there's cord-cutting going on at the residential level, and when I say cord-cutting, sometimes it just means you're cancelling your Comcast subscription and you're signing up for Sling TV or Hulu or YouTube TV. So all you're going to do is come from one package of channels to a different package of channels. You could argue that's not necessarily cutting the cord, you're still getting a great package of channels. But regardless, I think bar owners, and health club owners said, look, I cut the cord at home and now I'm just getting all my stuff from on demand. Could I do that in my business? And in most cases, the answer is no. In most cases, the distributors are still out there providing great packages of channels.

It's too difficult, David, if you're trying to run a sports bar, if you've got an office building or a hotel or lobby and you're trying to find stuff on Netflix and on other subscription services, which are great for all of us, we love those services, but, at the end of the day, it doesn't work for a business. You wanna have a package of channels that you can easily flip through, that when your customers say, I wanna watch the game or they wanna be entertained, you can easily go to networks like that. I believe in the model. I think that's growing, but at the same time, as I mentioned earlier, there are people out there saying, you don't need it, you don't need a cable operator or a satellite provider in your location. Just get rid of that and just take our music video service, and I don't think there's much of a threat right now. I think DirecTV is very well positioned. Even, despite the fact that you hear reports about some other subscribers going down, I think every location that wants to entertain their customers when they come into their location is gonna need a package of channels. That's my theory and my belief and that's why I think Barvanna is gonna continue to succeed really long term. 

Yeah, and certainly my impression of people who run or work in bars and similar kinds of entertainment environments, is they've got five seconds to make a decision and change something on a screen or whatever. They can't be standing there for 10 minutes going down the rabbit hole of what I should put on. So it's gotta work quickly. 

Sean Riley: Yeah, it's a good point. I think DirectTV recognize the value in that, and they've said, look channels are coming to come and go. Who knows what happens with the Sunday ticket package in the US and who knows what happens in Canada with some of the Premier League packages? And so you never know, when these things are gonna go, are they gonna come and go? Are other players gonna pick them up? And so I think smart distributors like DirecTV say, let's put the most entertaining content we can on in the out-of-home space so that if we do have a weakness here and there over time, then we'll be able to show what we're really trying to provide unique, different family-friendly options, entertainment options to retain our customers and to provide a ton of value for them. 

Your website says you have about 8,500 sites right now across the Caribbean and the US. How many do you expect to have, let's say a year from now?

Sean Riley: So we launch DirecTV officially next Monday so that will be the 24th of October, so we're gonna be in 300,000 locations starting on the 24th of October. We have now close to 12,000 locations in the Caribbean. That deal is also through a distributor. A distributor called, Cable and Wireless, which is owned by Liberty Latin America. I don’t if you're familiar with those guys in the Caribbean, but there are a number of countries they deliver us to, and, in their case, they have us in almost every hotel room as well.

I went to St. Lucia recently and I went to my hotel room and I was happy to find that Barvanna was on the channel lineup, so me and my friends hanging out having some rum in the Caribbean as we typically do, and, playing along with would you rather… would you rather be Super Man or Batman? We had a big debate about that. It's really great to see that they're having success. That was because our first launch was across those countries in the Caribbean. We do a different feed down there. 

Dave, the sports fans in the Caribbean are all about cricket, man. They love cricket and in Canada, they love cricket. They love football, of course, meaning soccer. They love track and field, Olympic-style sports because of all the great sprinters that come out of Jamaica and Barbados and Bahamas. So our sports trivia is a different feed in the Caribbean and we focus on all of those sports. We can't really show aside from the Dominican Republic, can't really show baseball trivia in the Caribbean and certain American sports. So we focused on Olympics soccer. Cricket and it's been very well received, and so we, again, it just goes back to being aware and cognizant of what's going on in these locations and what our viewers want and doing our best to serve them and to make it as relevant as possible for anybody who's partying or waiting or dining or having fun with their friends.

All right. This has been great. If people wanna know more about Barvanna, where do they find you online? 

Sean Riley: Yeah. So thanks for taking the time to chat with us. It's been really fun, Dave. I'm glad we had a chance to talk. So you can go to barvanna.com, and we have contact information on there, but we're gonna continue to grow and provide new products. So check back from time to time and you'll see other products that we're rolling out, and if you have suggestions, if you have videos you wanna send us and put us on Barvanna, we're certainly happy to put your videos up. We're certainly happy to take trivia questions and suggestions, and as I said, because we're a small company, I love having access to the viewers and access to bar owners and access to all of our customers so we can really get that feedback and make the channel as engaging and as relevant as possible, and look, you guys are doing great work at 16:9, I read you guys every day and we really appreciate all you're doing in this space. You guys are the experts. I'm still learning this space, Dave, so I'll be probably reaching out to you too, for more advice and feedback, but thanks for having me on, man. I really appreciate it. 

All right thanks again. Have a good one!

Erik DeGiorgi, MediaVue Systems

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

Mediavue Systems has the somewhat unique experience of being a PC manufacturer that started in digital signage, versus any number of companies that had personal or industrial computers with the dimensions, specs and pricing that met the industry's needs and desires at the time.

One hell of a lot has changed in the intervening 15 years, and the Boston-based company has shifted with them. Erik DeGiorgi co-founded the business with his dad Dave. He's now its President and focused on what he says is a major evolution of the company and brand.

His goal is changing industry perceptions about what Mediavue does, to a point that he now talks about the company more as a software shop than a hardware manufacturer.

That's because Mediavue has been steadily developing software tools - most notably for configuration, deployment, remote device management and security. The IT people they work with think much more about uptime and efficient management than they do about the size of the box or, in particular, the price.

I had a great chat with Erik about the roots of his company and where PC hardware and software sit in an industry landscape that now also has options for low-cost smart displays and single-purpose media players.

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TRANSCRIPT

Eric, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown on MediaVue systems? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, sure, Dave, first and foremost, thanks for having me on, and also thanks for the invite next month. Looking forward to seeing you and everybody else at the mixer. Nice to get back to reality there, huh?

No kidding. 

Erik DeGiorgi: But yeah, sure. I'll give you a snapshot. We've been around for about 16 years at this point. So MediaVue was founded in 2007. The initial product we brought to market was now what's called a media player. We started designing and building bespoke hardware for the industry back before there was really a name for it, and so we brought to market our first hardware device, I believe it was probably 2008 when we went to market, and the company's evolved quite a bit over the past 15 years. We initially went to market through our channel relationships with CMS partners.

So back in the day, we were a heavy SCALA house long before the StrataCash acquisition and everything. But we partnered with CMSs. We started to develop operating systems, include that on our devices and embed CMS and try to make it as turnkey as possible. The evolution of the companies really centred around the kind of product innovations and responses to needs in the market. So again, at the very beginning it was, let's build a device that can go and be turned on 24/7, play videos and not break as they all were. Then it was, okay, we fixed that, then how do we create it more turnkey because of all the problems we were encountering? The integration, putting the software in the hardware. Then once we resolved that it became an issue of scalability. So, if you remember back, 10-15 years ago, these large-scale networks would be deployed, but there'd be no network management.

The people would transition, and there'd be no way to know what was in the field. There'd be no way to cope with the problems when they would arise. It was just really an operational nightmare for the system integrators and certainly the end customers that were trying to scale these networks. So we responded to that and built out a robust network management platform. So that really was the kind of pivot point where we moved from being really a hardware company to a software company. So today, fast forward, what we deliver is really a turnkey operating platform. So it's a combination of hardware, it's a combination of our software management tools, support that goes along with that. It's the integration of CMS software. It's audience analytics, whatever you need to design and deploy and manage signage networks in an array of markets, we now have a fairly robust platform that supports that at scale. 

That's interesting that you describe yourself as a software company. I would think most people who know MediaVue would think, they're a hardware company. They make small form-factor PCs for signage.

Erik DeGiorgi: And I may be getting ahead of myself because, as I do, but we are actually poised to go extensive, top to the bottom rebrand of the company right now and teaser come January, the look and feel of MediaVue is gonna be quite different. 

So did you start the company with digital signage in mind or were you doing industrial computing and found your way into it?

Erik DeGiorgi: So David, our CEO was previously, his previous company was actually in display repair. So this was back in the 90s and the early 2000s. When people used to fix things, he was repairing CRTs and was doing that for all the major brands. He had service contracts with Dell and ViewSonic and Mitsubishi. If you bought a PC at Circuit City, you know the service contract would go to him. So he was doing large scale monitor repair, and by virtue of that, he got pulled into the digital signage industry because of early projects, this is 20 years ago, he had the service contract for the display and this was back in the day of, hanging a Dell Optiplex on the back of a screen in a large harness, and those things were failing left and right, and by virtue of having the contract for the display, they asked him if they could fix those, and so he got into that business and then looked at that and said, is there a way to build a better mousetrap here?

And that was the origin story. MediaVue was started, and we went to work on what became our first media player, but it was very much in response, having the exposure to the earliest deployments, seeing the catastrophic failure rates, and then coming up with a solution.

David DeGiorgi is your dad, right? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, you will see a common last name there. He and I sat down and started MediaVue in about 2007. 

Is he still involved? 

Erik DeGiorgi: He is still involved. I've read some of your recent postings and things, there comes a time in life when you maybe step back from some things and focus on some other things and, Dave, will never slow down, don't let me mischaracterize him.

Yeah. He's a bit of a live wire from what I remember of meeting him. 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, he's 110% at all times. But yeah, we certainly work in tandem and have since the outset. 

And you're in the Boston area, right? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yep. Our HQ is just south of Boston, and we've got an international presence. We've got sales teams out in MEA and spread across certainly here domestically. But one of the things that I think is unique, going back to our roots, in hardware, we still have our assembly line in Boston, so since day one and continuing today, I think the majority of what we do is really in the kind of management tool set and all of the software stack and the integration and everything that we do at that level, we still design and assemble hardware, and we do that in the back half of our headquarters and we've got our assembly floor right there along with the front of house.

And how does that resonate with resellers and end users? Is that important to them that it's domestically made? 

Erik DeGiorgi: I don't know if it's there's a Made in USA badge on it, and that's important to me. I think where the value comes from having control over that process. So our assembly line is very adaptable. So we can very quickly respond to the needs of customers. So whether that's a hardware configuration, whether that's a setup and an integration with different software, we can do all of that and make very quick adjustments to our assembly line to accommodate the customer and I think that's where the value is.

Yeah, I'm sure there are people who do wanna buy products made in the USA but I, I tend to think there's probably a lot more who are buying for other reasons and like the idea that there's the support that is in 12 hours away and in Mandarin. 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, absolutely, and the full experience that you get with MediaVue is based domestically, So everything, the account rep you get obviously is regional, you get attached with a Sales, Engineering, and CSE at the beginning, that's a person that's domestically based. That individual works with you through pre-sale. When it converts to a sale, that person maintains the attachment to that account. You have continuity there throughout the lifetime of the deployment, and that's how we differentiate.

Our origins are certainly in hardware, we're doing a lot more now. But we're never gonna be able to compete on cost with some of our OEM competitors out in Asia. There's just absolutely no way. So we have to create a lot of value add. We have to create a lot of it's an experience working with us. It's the whole lifetime of the engagement and the deployment, it's very hands-on, and that's how we've been able to differentiate. 

You describe the old days of Dell Optiplex hanging off the back of monitors and back in 2007, at that time, it was a big deal to come up with a small form factor PC. That doesn't really matter anymore, does it? Cuz everybody is like that. 

Erik DeGiorgi: The playing field has levelled, certainly on the hardware side it's, but it's in form factor, it's in computing power. The value proposition back then was, how many bits and bytes can I put in the smallest form factor and, run my 720p video and, do that successfully, and the playing field is flattened there. It's not as competitive as it was. The computing's kind of caught up. 

I always get a kick out of how many pixels can you actually put on a display before you have to be three inches away from it before you can tell, so it's like hardware is caught up, I think, to the industry's need if that makes sense. So now it really becomes about the value of Integration. How do you successfully roll out a deployment? How do you have that go as seamless as possible, both in the installation and in the ongoing management and maintenance of that network? Because we all know the greatest cost to doing that is getting people in the field, turning wrenches and screwdrivers. So the more you can minimize that ease, the burden for the integration partner. Certainly, that brings value to them as they're reselling things in managed services contracts. It brings value to the end customer because the cost of operating the network in total is far less. So really honing in on the stability, reliability, the scalability of these networks is, I think, more of our present challenge rather than, packing pixels on screens and having more gigabytes of processing power. 

I'm gonna guess that resellers and integrators understand that a lot more than end users.

Erik DeGiorgi: There’s certainly a learning curve. The ones that have been through it and felt the pain know it very well. You have to go through it to see that. We still get opportunities to come across and people will haggle on price and this box is a hundred dollars less than that box or something and we try to educate, we try to help people see the light, if you will, and look at the total cost of ownership of these networks a little bit differently maybe than they are, and it's one of those lessons that you have to learn. 

And I noticed on your product list that your small form factor, I forget the name of it, but it was a small box and it just had a Celeron running in it, and it used to be the case that people would pay a lot of attention to the generation of the processor and everything else and they might think that a Celeron not powerful enough, but they are now, right?

Erik DeGiorgi: Yes, certainly years ago, it was very much spec driven, and it was very important to, gigabytes of this and megabytes of that. Like I was saying before, the technology's kind of caught up to the needs of the industry and there's only so much you're doing. Compute power really is now doing onsite analytics and doing things like real-time decisions and stuff like that, that's pushing thresholds. It's just not as important a factor because there's just enough there. 

When you started it was PCs and PCs, that's what people used for digital signage. There was the odd sort of dedicated player type, like the old digital view boxes, and there were a few others out there. But then smart displays came along, BrightSign bubbled up, and now you have two categories that you're competing with. How do you sell against those? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, so that's a great question. So we're rooted still in that PC tradition, and we do so because we're looking at the life cycles of these deployments and we believe that kind of platform has the required adaptability and scalability where some of these other architectures don't, simply I look at it as, if you're rooted in kind of this PC topology and architecture, it's built to do a lot of things versus doing one thing very specifically if that makes sense. So it has the ability to adapt not just to the initial customer needs, but throughout the lifetime of the deployment, and that's getting into some of the things we're gonna be rolling out first, at the beginning of next year, really rely on that adaptability, that topology.

There are also some big security issues, and it's something that's not discussed in the industry that is very much overlooked when you get into ARM-based products, and I will try not to get too technical here, like smart displays when I say system on a chip and stuff like that, that's a hardware stack, that's a chipset that is licensed and manufactured by any no name, chip house that you've never heard of versus say an Intel, AMD and the major difference from a security perspective is that you need to maintain Operating system, you need to maintain your operating system and have that be updated because a lot of your security, a lot of your threat mitigation comes from having a stable and current operating system.

What happens is when you use these unknown chip manufacturers to develop the SOCs and things like that, they don't maintain driver support for the current operating system updates. So what happens is you are unable to continually update your operating environment because you don't have strong driver support for those chipsets. So in our opinion, that creates significant security vulnerabilities. So it's yet another reason why we maintain the kind of traditional Intel and AMD chipset topology. 

Is it your opinion and perspective, or are you hearing real-world stories talking about that? 

Erik DeGiorgi: I don't hear many people talking about it.

I think it's one of those things like many things in the security world that is just unknown, and it's not something that comes up. So it's a message we're certainly trying to get across. 

So the devil's advocate argument would be if you're not hearing about it, maybe it's not really a thing?

Erik DeGiorgi: Maybe. I can't argue with that but it's not likely. We're a very technical company, so when we all sit around at the lunch table, these are the kinds of conversations we have about vulnerabilities. So we're on the pulse of it may be a little more than others and paying attention to it a little more than others, but yeah I do think it's there, and so it's a combination of that. It's a combination of a kind of being there are inherent limitations, capability, and limitations when it comes to those types of chipsets as well, you're not able to just load any software on it. You're not able to go and connect peripheral devices to it. It doesn't have that degree of adaptability. So it's for all those reasons, we've stayed with the kind of technology stack, the topology that we have. 

My perception, and I'm definitely not a hardware expert or a software expert, is that these days, if you have a simple application like digital menu boards or FIDS displays, those sorts of things you probably don't need a PC for that. But if you're getting into anything, complicated and challenging, and as you say, it needs to evolve and have some malleability to it, you're probably gonna lean towards a PC. Is that a fair perception? 

Erik DeGiorgi: I think it's a fair perception. I think it's consistent too with where we position in the market. There are so many kinds of more simple use cases, I got a menu board and that's up and running. I'm gonna say that with a caveat but I'll get back to that in a second. The majority of digital signage is putting a picture on a screen, right? And that's about as simple as it gets, and we obviously can do that. I don't think our value is in that kind of In that type of use case. 

And you're probably not gonna win on price? 

Erik DeGiorgi: We're certainly not gonna win on price, and we’ve got no problem with it, it's just not our market. We're really focused on how we can be a technology partner for a large-scale enterprise that wants to deploy signage and communications infrastructure as an asset for their organization, and we partner closely with them.

We work with, like I said, all of our software partners on the CMS side, and all our integration partners to put together a technology platform and an implementation program in order to deploy and manage that at scale. That's our sweet spot. Going back to the QSR example, menu boards, I guess you could say are simple, right? You're putting it up there. It doesn't really change much, It's just but then what happens when a menu board goes down? Because that's your business. If you don't have a menu, how are you gonna sell it? It’s where we bring value to say that the application is doing things where you might have content switching. You might have redundancy in those menu boards. So do things with a bit more sophistication to make sure you're managing uptime and maintaining uptime. You can look at something and see it as simple, but at the same time to do it well at scale, there's always increasing layers of complexity.

Yeah that's an interesting point because I think of digital menu boards as being really simplistic applications, but they can go down. So you need that failover and everything else. 

Erik DeGiorgi: There's that, and then it's also a really dirty environment. We’ve done QSRs and gotten devices back that you have to scrape the grease out. Again, there's always more complexity than you see at first glance. 

Is it fair to think that you probably tend to get more involved in projects than other companies that are just basically selling boxes? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Certainly, yeah. That's our value proposition, that's our model.

Our sale is as much our management tool, our ongoing support and service, as much as the device, if you will. We're very hands-on. We're able, again, to be very flexible and adaptable to the customer's needs and that's not just to get the project going. That's the long-term maintenance and management and of course in conjunction with our integrator partners. 

You have something called an Active Network Manager. What is that and why is it needed? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Sure. So that is the name of the management stack of our software that I've been referencing. And so that was designed and built. We started working on that maybe not quite 10 years ago but pretty close, and that was to solve the problem with scalability. As I had mentioned previously, the devices work, and the integration with the CMSs works, but it was very difficult to deploy and manage at scale.

So what that tool enables now, so if you partner with a MediaVue and purchase our product, what you're gonna get is you're gonna get an endpoint. You're gonna get a media player, a device that's gonna have an operating system installed on it that we design specifically for the content management software or other software that's being used and that is maintained. So part of our offering is not just the deployment of that, but we actually have a quarterly update scheme for our entire operating environment. So we will aggregate all the different updates and security patches and everything for the entire software stack, and then we test and validate and then bundle everything. So you don't get that kind of experience where your iPhone updates and all of a sudden your app doesn't work, so we eliminate that as a possibility, and then obviously stay on top of security. So you get that, and then the kind of software that brings all that together is our Active Network Manager, and that enables an installer to plug in the device, push the power button, and then have the network owner, the person that is, is managing the network to see that come up, to register CMS to go and set all of the, whether it's network settings, we that can take control of the display so we can make sure the display is on when it's supposed to be.

All of that comes through an Active Network Manager and that's the toolset that enables it. It's really IT team-focused. So whoever it is, we don't do anything with content. We don't do anything with that. Never have, never will. We're strictly focused on having a robust technology stack and a toolset that enables the IT team to manage effectively. So an Active Network Manager is the heart of all of that, right? And, facilitates a lot of the kinds of a lot of customer interaction with the platform and the user experience that I've been describing. 

So 10 years ago when you started developing that a lot of the CMS companies had either no or pretty thread bear device management capabilities within their software. You had companies like Diversified who had kick-ass device management way, way back then, but a lot of these guys have caught up now. So are these parallel things or can they work together?

Erik DeGiorgi: Yeah, I mean there's certainly management as we're describing it now is considered a necessity, so everybody has got on board. There are certain things baked into the CMS, some certain CMS offerings that have some device management. There are some things that we can do for various CMSs, like I mentioned, registration and plug and play and stuff like that. Yeah, and there are certainly third-party companies, good friends that just have a management platform for anything. So management has become ubiquitous. I think what differentiates what we're doing is we're really looking at it as a total platform. So it's the combination of hardware and software. It's the depth of integration that we're able to do by virtue of owning that entire ecosystem. So it just enables more. You can do more. 

Sparing you all the technical details results in greater stability, greater security, and greater longevity of the network, and that's something that's different as well. We look at a successful network being 5+ years. So if we install the devices, we don't want them to be touched for five years. The current hardware is about 10 years old. It's obviously like iterations of that and it's not the same exact stuff but we have stuff that's been deployed that is the previous generation for 10+ years.

So we look at a 5+ year lifespan. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think industry standards might be like two to three would be considered successful, without any major intervention. But we look at it as for at least five years. We wanna get the stuff out, we wanna manage it, we want it to physically work. We want to have the remote capabilities to make necessary changes without having to deploy people, and I'm careful with my words cuz we're gonna be releasing some stuff that even greater enhances that remote capabilities in the coming months. 

Do you have metrics around fail rates, like people talk about 99.59s and all that sort of thing? 

Erik DeGiorgi: It's funny you bring that up because we exchanged an email about potentially doing an article around that, and yeah so what I proposed and what we're looking at doing is we actually just did a full audit of every intervention last year that we had on the support side, and I think those kinds of numbers and statistics, it's almost cursory. It's just fine, how many .9999 can you put in? It's just, I don't think it really tells the story, and the story that I'm interested in telling and sharing, certainly with the industry is, yeah, the physical devices work. It's the stuff that works. Software is fairly stable, but it's usually like the interaction of things. 

I'm just thinking through the kind of statistics that we pulled from last year. For as many actual hardware issues as there were, there were many more issues with something happening within the operating system, a software bug coming up. It was an interaction between, third-party software that we've integrated onto the devices. It was a failure in setup, in installation. There were so many. 

Or stupid shit like the janitor unplugging the thing. 

Erik DeGiorgi:  Oh, for sure. That happens. That's real life. It's absolutely real life.it's that it's someone going and stacking boxes on the device and having it burn up, you know what I mean? We've seen it all. I hope it doesn't come across that I'm trying to avoid answering your question.

The complexity of these things, just tells a different story rather than, one out of a thousand failing every year, or even like MBTF, it's not even a really accurate way of analyzing things. I'm hoping that if we collaborate on that, we can share some insights on what is a company that's deployed this hardware and software like this for well over a decade and has tens of thousands of devices that are currently managing, what it actually looks like in the real world? And I'm excited to be able to share that. 

So in January you're gonna do a brand refresh and push a revised proposition out there. How's all that gonna roll out? 

Erik DeGiorgi: Well, with your assistance of course. So I think what we want to do and it is very consistent with what you're saying. Our legacy is that when people think of our company, they think of hardware, what we're doing and what we are, the company we are today is just so different. And it's really that entire ecosystem platform that we've created and we deploy, it's the way we interact with our customers throughout the lifetime of the deployments and the support and everything that we offer. 

How we're going to do it? It's gonna be digital, so the look and feel of the company online is gonna be very different. We're going to be making announcements through all the industry publications. So we've got a hard date right now of January 17th, so we'll see if we make it. But we're hoping to put out a kind of industry-wide blast and when people sit down at their computers on that day, they see something that they haven't before. 

All right. If people wanna know more, where did they find you online? 

Erik DeGiorgi: MediaVueSystems.com 

All right. Eric, thank you so much for taking the time with me. 

Erik DeGiorgi: Dave, thanks for having me on.

Marian Sandberg & David Drain, Digital Signage Experience

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

Digital Signage Experience is coming up in four weeks and I suspect a lot of people are very curious about how the long-running show will be rebooted by its new owners Questex.

I certainly am, as I had long thought the old DSE was a dead trade show walking, and that something different was needed.

Is this it? I dunno, and I guess the industry will find out in a few weeks in Las Vegas.

I asked Marian Sandberg, who runs several shows for Questex, and David Drain, who was brought on by Questex to build the programming side of the event, to join me for a chat about what people can expect from a new and different DSE.

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TRANSCRIPT

Hello, thank you for joining me. Maybe the first thing to do is: Marion and David, explain what your roles are at Questex and DSE. 

Marian Sandberg: Sure. Thanks so much for having us, Dave. It's really an honor to be with you and your audience and to have an opportunity to talk about this. 

I'm Marian. I am the Vice President and market leader for Questex. I oversee the DSE show, which we acquired last year, and we have not presented yet. It'll be presented in November, which is what we're gonna talk about, and I also oversee a show called LDI, which I know you'll have questions about.

And market leaders tend at Questex tend to have two or three or whatever number of shows that they have under their portfolio? 

Marian Sandberg: Sure, yeah, that's exactly right, and tend to be in verticals that make sense together, if you will. So I oversee a couple of brands that have to do in some way with technology. We have verticals in hospitality, bars and restaurants so they're clumped together. 

Okay, and David? 

David Drain: David Drain. I'm the director of event programs for DSE. So DSE is my sole focus at Questex. 

And a lot of industry people would know you from your dark past with Net World Alliance and The Digital Signage Association?

David Drain: Yeah, it changed the name to Digital Screen Media Association for a while.

So you've been around the industry forever? 

David Drain: Yeah, I have. I attended the first DSE in 2007. 

Yeah, that's early. I think the first one was in 2005 or something like that or maybe in 2004.

David Drain: 2004, but I wasn't there. 

Yeah. I started in 2005, so I've been going even longer than you. 

David Drain: Yeah, you win!

Marian Sandberg: I can beat you both, but not in the digital signage area with our LDI show. I've been with that brand since 2004, so a little one-upsmanship there. 

There you go. You must be so proud. Alright. So how is planning going? As we're speaking, it's about four and a half weeks out. 

Marian Sandberg: It's going great. We're super excited and when we get to this part of the year, frankly, because this has been more than a year in the making we're just ready to get out there and produce the show. We definitely have in the weeks rolling up still sales to do, and still registrations to bring in. But in terms of producing the show and the things that we know we're gonna offer that's mostly set, right? So we have all these great networking experiences we're excited to put forth, and as we're right across the hall from our LDI show, we're really excited to see the synergies there.

When we acquired this brand, we did a lot of due diligence. We spoke to tons of customers and tons of attendees, so those customers as well, to see what we should keep from the old show and what we should bring back, and I think the number one thing that we heard from people was maintaining the sense of community for the digital signage industry, that it's a dedicated show and that people still wanna come together in that community that maybe isn't addressed by other events. So that's been our number one focus, and we're in the home stretch now. 

Yeah, I'd certainly got that impression as well when DSE went down. I thought that it was a show that for many years was in trouble. You could see it in the diminishing numbers and diminishing enthusiasm in a lot of ways. But the overarching thing I heard after it went down was a disappointment because there needed to be some sort of an annual event, at least in North America that really pulled together the industry, so to speak, and was the only thing people were talking about that week versus like an Infocomm or ISE or those kinds of shows, which certainly have digital signage as a component, but it's one component among many endings.

You could bump into people in elevators and see they were going to the same show and realize we have nothing in common other than we're both generally in AV. 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, and I think that was obviously one of our main focuses from the beginning in acquiring the brand is we immediately saw the value we knew of the show and of the market, although no one on our team back then had worked directly in it, and then bringing professionals on who were very much veterans of the market, like Brad Gleason, who joined us very early on, and David, of course, who has been running a curating and will be running a fantastic education and content program.

People have been really supportive of that effort and from the beginning saying, we absolutely want there to be a show in this market, specific to this market and there's a need for it. 

Because the old show has had its hair, so to speak, there are things that people loved about it, things they didn't like about it.

I've been referring to this as a DSE reboot that maybe isn't all that fair, but it's what I'm going with, and I'm curious what you think in terms of how would you position the show? Is this DSE 2 or should people go with the idea of don't expect what you saw before?

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, and I think that's a great question because I think we would be really remiss if we did not acknowledge that we are bringing DSE back in a sense, right? We're not gonna abandon everything that DSE was and that we want it to be, and people have asked us for it to be. So we have no intention of reinventing the wheel in that case. 

However, from our experience, and again from a lot of the outreach that we did, I think our intention is to put a new spin on it. Now, when you say, reboot, I absolutely agree, and I think that's gonna be maybe a little bit of a challenge for people to get their heads around.

David has said it quite eloquently, we wanna really hold onto the things that people liked and maybe not the things that they didn't. So some of the new things, for example, which I guess we consider new. We know that networking opportunities have always been super important. So now that we're right across the hall from the LDI show, we are really trying to leverage those two audiences without cannibalizing, and I don't think there's a lot of potential to cannibalize those two audiences anyway. We hope to bring in some new people and some new buyers, and we're tracking our registrations very closely, of course, and the kind of demographics that we have. And to date, I checked them just yesterday in preparation for this, of course, half of our registrations have never been to DSE before. Now I'm not talking about LDI people, I'm talking about people registered directly for DSE and as event people, as event producers. That number is super encouraging to us.

Now it could be in the last three years that we've just gotten more people in the industry. We all know that during the pandemic, on both sides of our business, people have left the industry, and people have come into the industry. It's just a natural ebb and flow when you haven't had a show in three years. But that number, even if you expect a lot of new people it is a great statistic for us that there are that many new faces. So we really hope that people coming to the network are gonna meet new people, but like-minded people like your reference before about having that sense of community and people who do similar things. But also that, of course, we want our exhibitors to meet new customers. So that's a really important thing for us.

For the people who don't know LDI, can you explain what it is? I've never actually been myself, even though I've certainly heard of it.

Marian Sandberg: LDI is a 30+ year organization and brand. It is a trade and show conference that addresses what we affectionately refer to as entertainment technology. So that would be basically everything in and around a stage except the performance. So concerts, touring, theatre, even clubs, venues, lighting, sound, staging all that kind of technology that goes around a performance or in a venue, and so a typical exhibitor at LDI would be moving light company, intelligent lighting as it's referred to in that in that sector or consoles. if you were at a concert and you wanna go up to the console guy or gal, ask for the set list, that stuff that's behind that in that pit is stuff that you would see at LDI.

So there's technology and creativity factor there that I think sits well along DSE so maybe there are people who do similar, are somewhat like-minded, but do different things. So I think it'll be interesting to see, who crosses over and comes together, 

Yeah, I guess the crossover as you say, more than anything would probably be the backdrop displays that you increasingly see with touring acts and the technology that drives those displays like LED backdrops and transparent or semi-transparent, LED backdrops, all that sort of thing.

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, absolutely, and the sort of persona who would attend LDI could be anything from very creative type, Let's say a creative director for a show, a lighting designer, and then, someone those folks usually tend to be creative and technical, and then we'll have very technical people who are like tech technical directors at a theatre or production manager for a concert tour.

And just like the way that AV and IT are worlds that are converging. The live events world and digital signage are converging to some degree because I spoke on a podcast a few months ago with the guy who does the wow factor stuff at the new arena in Seattle for the NHL team there and he was talking about programming at building not just what you see at the pre-show. It's the whole darn building that's coming together. I suspect that plays into how live events will increasingly be done. 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, it’s interesting, we use the term, experiential, right? And immersive experiences and the thing that I think is so interesting, having come from that LDI world and that entertainment technology world is that, if you go to a theatre it, okay maybe immersive isn't the word, that kind of means something different. But experiential is what entertainment already is, right? You go to the theatre to experience something, you go to a musical or a concert tour, to be in this experience, and over the last few years, the way people are buying materials left and wanting to relish experiences. It's interesting how areas like retail and venue design and even museums are taking a cue from entertainment and that's what experiential really is, right? It's about being entertained more. 

So in a way that sort of LDI world has been informing a lot of other businesses in our spaces. So exactly what you're saying is if you're walking down the street and all of a sudden you're seeing all this fabulous screen, that content is trying to draw you in. Cuz it's being paid attention to, cuz you have to work harder to get people's eyeballs these days. 

Can we talk a little bit about where you're at in terms of numbers and how they would compare to the old DSE that we know? 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, absolutely, and I'm glad you brought up the reboot. We are thinking of it exactly the same way. So we don't have any intentions of trying to compete with the last 2019 DSE. We've had shows in our portfolio that was a record year and of course, the pandemic happening, we're cautiously optimistic about kind, trying to get back to those numbers. So especially with DSE that hasn't happened in three years, we don't think we're gonna replicate that in any way, and that's fine. Our goal for this show is to be between 4,000 and 5,000 registrations. We're absolutely on pace to hit those numbers. We're really pleased with the way registration has been picking up and people registering for content.

The new certification that Bron Consulting is running for us. It's not new, we've newly added it let me be clear. It's the same certification you all know and love. So yeah, the numbers are really encouraging to us and I think what we're gonna see, I think is gonna be surprising for people in the next four weeks is how much our registration picks up, right before the show, traditionally the last six, to eight weeks of the show or when Red registration really hits, and we saw that from the numbers in 2019 also, right? So when we acquired the brand that's just the way the show paces we're absolutely on pace to hit that 4,000 to 5,000 number.

Is that number unique registrations or is that roll up people from LDI who have opted to come over or whatever?

Marian Sandberg: Nope, that's absolutely DSE distinct registration. For the LDI show in 2019, we had 16,000 people registered for LDI. But like an average for LDI would be 12,000 to 13,000. So the numbers for DSE are unique. 

So Potentially you could have a couple thousand or more people drifting over from the other show hall to wandering into DSE, cuz I think you have reciprocity, you can get into one or the other. 

Marian Sandberg: Yes, your badge for DSE or LDI can get you into either one or the other as well as there are some great offers and discounts for the conference on either side, which are obviously, paid conferences. But also some of the networking events that are being offered on both sides I think is gonna be really nice benefits. Just an example. LDI has always had great after-hours nightlife offers. With your badge, you can get into a different club each night, and if you don't know, the clubs in Vegas are very expensive, right? It's not like your $10 cover charge to go see a band at your local club. They're very expensive. We have great deals with LDI that we've been able to extend to the DSE audience to go to a club, for example. Your badge gets you into the club, for free, which can save in some cases 70 to 100 dollars a night, and then we have some networking events. There's an on-floor party if you will, a networking reception for LDI that DSE guests will be invited to, and vice versa, LDI people will be invited to the DSE opening reception, and we were really careful, obviously, to not have them overlap or compete with each other.

Cause we want these two to come across the aisle, as it were. So I think that's gonna be interesting to see, and the LDI community, they're curious. They have that tech curiosity and that creative curiosity. So I think it is absolutely reasonable to think we might get a thousand or so people coming across.

So you're at parity or maybe even ahead of, ultimately ahead of what past DSE have done in terms of headcount, and with the spillover from LDI, almost certainly, where I sense that it's not going as swimmingly would be on the exhibitor signup side? 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, we are where we've expected to be. I know that you love to look at the show floor as you should, and when we were in South Hall, when the show was in Southall, before my time, obviously, the show floor looked different. But I think that our expectations for relaunching the show were exactly where we wanted to be.

We had expectations that were in line with, we have amazing exhibitors presenting, and we have over 90 varieties of exhibitor sponsors, people who are gonna be partners and presenting in some way, and I'm not talking about speakers, I'm talking about people on the show floor, and then I think probably in the next few weeks we're gonna see that number go over a hundred. So that's perfectly respectable, and we're proud of those numbers. 

Yeah, in certain respects that's a reboot and it's a startup again cuz you're having to win the confidence of vendors who have had a rough couple of years anyways and when DSE went down, I don't know if all of 'em were left whole after that. That's somebody else's story in argument, but yeah it, you couldn't, I would imagine just expect that, hey, all you guys who used to do this, come on back. 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah. There's so much more of a story to tell there too, isn't there?

We have to regain some trust. We have to have people, who really loved that event and kind of look at us and say, Who the heck are you guys? Which is all stuff we expected. Early on when one of the first things we did was form an advisory board, and I know that you've reported on that, now.

Probably everybody on our advisory board and really we wanted that input and that help, and that was just kind of part of the research we did from the beginning. What was good, what do we wanna change? And I just think that journey has also included spending a lot of time with customers and there's absolutely our sales team talking to people, 3, 4, 5 times. It's not a slam dunk and that's okay. We didn't expect it to be, We never came in here with. Some kind of ego that we're event producers. So we could just walk into a new industry and take over a brand and do it without thinking about it with our eyes closed. 

We're good at producing events. We have a lot of leverage across our company with other verticals that we can look at to draw other buyers that maybe didn't come in from the acquisition, from our regular DSE lists, but we're really excited about presenting to those people. That kind of is where those first-time attendees are coming from.

I'm also curious, you've mentioned the community a number of times and the appetite and aspiration for the industry to get together. If you build an event around attendees, particularly if you're offering a lot of free passes to get into the show proper, then you really have to lean heavily on the exhibitor dollars and sponsor dollars and all that to do it. 

So does that become a challenge long term, that you've gotta build up that trade show side of it for this thing to work? Or can it work the way it's positioned right now? 

Marian Sandberg: We intend to grow the show? There's no question, and David can talk a little bit about the conference program also but, of course, we need to have a viable business here.

There's no question, and I think also, bringing in the right people and making sure that the audience is there was absolutely paramount for us, especially the first year. If you have the right people in the room and you have the right buyers in the room, the exhibitor's gonna be happy and they're gonna come back.

And I think it's a two-sided coin. You have to keep feeding both of them, right? To make everyone happy. The attendees wanna see certain exhibitors, the exhibitors wanna see more of, X, Y, and Z types of attendees. Yeah, our long-term plan is absolutely to keep growing. And we'll see how that goes. We have some plans we won't I won't reveal yet for next year, but I'm sure we'll wanna talk after the show. 

That was one other question I wanted to ask you, Marian, just before we jump over to David on programming and so on: for 2023, is it in November in Las Vegas?

Marian Sandberg: Yes, and I bet you're gonna ask about the Formula One race.

It will be in November, we are gonna move it about a week early. Yeah, we looked at that and thank goodness, being in production, we were hearing from all kinds of production folks about that kind of thing before it was even officially announced.

We were talking to the LVCC about doing it earlier and, we could try to produce something during Formula One, which would just be crazy. But even just for our exhibitors and visitors, we don't want to position the show to make it cost-prohibitive for people even to stay in hotels or have hotels sold out. So just moving it about a week or so earlier is just gonna be the solution. 

Yeah, that's gonna be like a CES week or something. Just insane pricing for everything and impossible to get around. 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, exactly. 

Good move! 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, thanks. 

David, tell me, you're somebody who has been to DSE many times, very familiar with it.

So if people are coming up to you knowing that you're involved now and they're asking, okay, what's different, particularly on the programming and education side, what are you gonna tell them? 

David Drain: When I first joined Questex, really my first job was to think about the program and to focus on the conference and the education and the speakers. And so wanted to do that first, and that's, I would say, how we built the program and ort of the exhibitors came later, right? They needed to see what it is you guys are gonna do? What's your plan? And working with Brad and with Marian we looked at the flow of the event and so I think it's got a slightly different flow. There used to be a lot of conference programming before the show happened, and so what you're gonna see this year there is some programming in the morning, just before the show opens. Some, a bit of uninterrupted time during the show floor hours with some on-floor sessions and then ending the day with more sessions.

Really we have three keynotes. I don't know if DSE has done that before. So I think that's different. We will have one each morning. We're very excited about those, of course, Rafiq and Jason Cothern from SoFi Stadium talking about that 5 billion mixed-use development with the stadium and the retail and all that. Having everything from wayfinding to digital menu boards to of course the huge halo infinity screen by Samsung. So I think there's gonna be something there for everybody, and then, Nveen from Google, who you also interviewed for this podcast.

We've got a great lineup and the program came together in three ways. There were things that I developed. There were things that are Association partners like DSF and DPAA and OAAA developed, and then we got session proposals from folks, so we really tried to curate the best agenda that we could and so I think that people will see an increased focus and concentration on the content and the programming, and building on what Marion said earlier, I think just the number of networking events throughout the week and then the crossover with LDI, I think that's what's gonna feel different.

I heard there's a mixer on Wednesday night. 

Marian Sandberg: Mixer. I'm so pleased that you're bringing it to our show. So we can't wait to attend and we're registered, so we're showing up. 

Good. I'll make the bouncer aware. 

One of the things as the education programming curator, person, organizer, whatever you wanna call it, is you, I suspect, have to walk a bit of a tightrope at times, because you have paying sponsors who perhaps have expectations, realistic or unrealistic around what they can say and do on the stage, and you have to balance those needs with the needs of the audience because God knows, maybe not in the most recent versions of DSE, but earlier year versions of it, one hell of a lot of the presentations were just like product pitches by sponsors, and I would sit down, listen for two minutes and I would go and leave, and that's a tough one to manage, isn't it? 

David Drain: Yeah, and I've been managing these types of events for a number of years and so I certainly know about how important it is to make sure that it's got an education focused and so when I was building the program, really sponsorship had nothing to do with it. When I was building the conference program, what we determined as the best topics and the best speakers, and the program really came in process of building this show before the exhibitors that there really wasn't that kind of impact. We do have the on-floor sessions, and those are sponsored. We make that clear on the program. 

Those are kinda product demos and things, right? 

David Drain: They are product demos and even encouraging those speakers, those sponsors to have an education focus so they teach rather than pitch. 

Yeah, I always tell people, look, if you just get up there and pitch, people are gonna leave. If you say smart things, you will leave the impression that this guy and or this woman and this company seem to know what they're talking about, so maybe I should have a chat with them after. 

David Drain: Yeah, be a thought leader or present a case study, and then people will understand. You'll have an opportunity to tell them what your company does. You don't need to spend all that time going through the features and benefits of your product. 

Without trying to put you on the spot, are there one or two sessions that you know that aren't keynotes but are ones that you think are gonna be particularly kick ass and ones that people should have a look at? 

Marian Sandberg: You're asking to choose a favorite child. You're asking him to choose a favorite child, Dave.

David Drain: Yeah. There are just a number of great sessions and if you go to our agenda, there is a way to filter by type. So if you're into digital out of home, you can see the programming aimed at that, and I'm excited you know about the session you're moderating and I'm really not blowing smoke here.

Denny Levine came to me and proposed that session, and of course, he put together an all-star panel and people are very interested, obviously with these Vangogh experiences, immersive experiences that have popped up and been very successful around the world. So I think that will be similar, there's another session with Moment Factory and Dimensional Innovations on transforming lobbies into experiences, that's pretty exciting. 

Yeah, you got some good people like Jackie Walker who was just like, when I talk to her, I just, I always hang up thinking, that's a smart person. She knows her stuff. 

David Drain: Yes, and I listened to her podcast that she did with you and so certainly when she wanted to do a presentation, I'm like, yeah, I will just give you the room. You're gonna do great, and people will walk away with a lot of great information.

All right, so wrapping this up. This has been a great chat. If people are undecided and are on the fence, but hearing this and think, oh, maybe I will go, what do they need to do? Where do they go to find out more about DSE? 

Marian Sandberg: Yeah, they can go to digitalsignageexperience.com. As we rebranded also, so it's digitalsignageexperience.com, or if you have any questions, you can certainly just email me, I'd be happy to answer, and my email is msandberg@questex.com. I would love to have your feedback, 

I suspect it's ddrain@questex.com, right? I'm smart that way, it had to be something. All right. Thank you so much for spending half an hour with me. That was terrific. 

Marian Sandberg: Thanks for having us. We're honored. 

David Drain: Thank you, Dave.

Ori Mor, Wi Charge

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

Anyone who has been on the ops or finance side of digital signage and digital out of home knows how complicated and expensive it can be to realize the simple task of getting power to a screen.

It's a particular challenge in settlings like retail - because store designers, until recently, didn't think much about the need to get power right in the aisles and in merchandising locations.

Battery-powered displays are one answer. Power over ethernet is another. And there's of course the often expensive and possibly unsightly option of running electrical infrastructure - wires and maybe conduit - all the way to the screens and other gear.

Wouldn't it be great if wireless power was a reality?

Turns out ... it is, and one of the companies leading development already has small displays for retail and hospitality that get their power over the air, using ceiling transmitters and receivers built into the screens.

Right now, Wi Charge's screens are just tablet-sized, but that will change.

I get the rundown on wireless power from Ori Mor, who is a co-founder and Chief Business Officer at the Israel company.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Ori, thank you very much for joining me. Can you give me a background on what your company does?

Ori Mor: Hi, Dave, happy to be here. We are doing over-the-air wireless power, and over-the-air charging. But when we say over-the-air, we mean a range of 10 meters (30 feet) and not proximity charging, like charging pads.

So this is very different from just those close contact charges where you put your phone down and it does it that way? 

Ori Mor: Yes, very different. The phone charging is a type of docking station without wires, but a docking station. You still need to do it on your own, knowing that you are now taking care of charging and the docking station, the pad itself is being wired. We are talking about something that is more close to WiFi for power. 

Is this a commercial product or something that's still in R&D? 

Ori Mor: It's not in large volume yet, but it's a commercial product. It's deployed in Canada, the US, and Israel, and it's going also to a few locations in Europe and actually at the end of this month, also in Brazil.

And the company is in Israel, correct? 

Ori Mor: Yes, the headquarters and R&D are in Israel. Marketing and Sales are mainly in the US, but also in Korea and Europe. 

And how long has the company been around?

Ori Mor: 10 years. 

Did it start trying to solve this problem or was it something else that found its way into this?

Ori Mor: We started by doing over-the-air wireless power. The main application was charging smartphones, but the technology is capable of powering other devices as well. 

I was curious about the application for digital signage. I gather that you have a digital display that you could use in a retail setting, but it's a small display. You're not at a point where you could power a very large display? 

Ori Mor: Yes, that is correct. We started with the five-inch display based on demand that we got from prominent retailers and CPGs from across the world who were interested in being able to power devices at the edge of the shelf. Obviously, we can't power 16 displays. So we started with a small display. We are now doing seven-inch and nine-inch as well. But the promise is, as you said, being able to power devices at the edge of the shelf without the hassle of running wires or replacing batteries.

And is that the problem that's being solved here, just simply the unavailability of power, right at a, like a shelf edge? 

Ori Mor: Simply put, yes. People do display, people do CMS, and people do Digital advertising in retail space already, but usually, it's limited to very few locations and we are enabling it to be widely spread relatively easily. 

And the problem is, in a lot of older retail and older can be like 10 years old, That there just isn't power on the shelves, right? 

Ori Mor: Yes, That is correct. The gondolas are moving, The shelves of Heights are changing And as you said, there are in most of the retail locations, there are no wires. Maybe near the wall, but certainly not in the middle of the store. 

There's power over ethernet, but I gather that has its limitations in terms of where you wanna put it and the cost of it.

Ori Mor: Power over ethernet is capable of powering displays. The problem is, again, routing it to something that changes with time, usually twice a year or even more, and you need to wire it to every different shelf, which is expensive and cumbersome.

So the setup with this is a transmitter and a receiver? 

Ori Mor: A transmitter, and a receiver that is embedded within the display device. 

Could you do a retrofit, like a bolt-on receiver? 

Ori Mor: Actually, no. The displays are designed by us at this stage because we know how to optimize in terms of power consumption. It's a dedicated development optimized for wireless power. 

In the future, I believe that we'd be able to support existing displays but we start with something we can control. 

Is the power stable, or is it a bit like WiFi where it can kind of drop momentarily here and there?

Ori Mor: There is always a rechargeable battery in the device. So we charge the device and the device draws its power from the rechargeable battery. So it gets steady power from the battery even if power drops. 

Are you restricted with the displays in terms of what you can show, like is it just static images or to run full 30 frames per second video?

Ori Mor: We are doing full videos. 

Okay, and was that a mountain you had to climb or was that right out of the gate that would work? 

Ori Mor: It was pretty simple. That wasn't the challenge. 

With the transmitter, how does that manifest itself? I think it's something that you mount in the ceiling?

Ori Mor: Yes, think of it like a router in the ceiling with a range of 5-10 meters, the transmitter locates client devices and beams a directional infrared beam to the device where the device converts the infrared beam back into electricity. 

Does it have to be like a line of sight?

Ori Mor: Yes. Wireless power with meaningful power is the line of site technology. You can do non line of sight using RF, magnetic and even with infrared, but the amount of power that you can deliver with sight will be very low for reasons that I can explain if you wanna dive into. 

I probably wouldn't get most of it.

Ori Mor: Oh, you would get it. When you do non line of sight, it means that energy is being spread in the room and you only harvest part of it. It has two drawbacks, a) the amount of power that you draw that you receive is lower because you waste a lot, and b) you fill the environment with unwanted radiation that the regulator and the customer wouldn't want. So if you do choose to do a non line of sight, it's for very low power. 

And what are the safety issues? 

Ori Mor: We passed all the safety certificates worldwide. FDA in the US, IEC in UL as well. It's approved to be safe under all conditions and that's the claim to fame for the technology we can deliver meaningful power yet it is as safe as your optical mouse. 

You're walking around a cafe or something where this is set up and you let's say you work there. Are there any long-term implications of being around this radiation so to speak? 

Ori Mor: No. Think of it like it's even safer than your wifi router. The beam is very directional. So outside the beam, there is an absolute zero. It's not a wifi router that sends radiation to every location and only part of it is being harvested or absorbed by your cell phone. The beam that leaves the transmitter, a hundred per cent of it, reaches the receiver, a centimetre away from the beam, and there is an absolute zero, and when you cross the beam, it shuts off automatically, 

Hence the need for or the value of having a battery on board?

Ori Mor: Yes.

So how long would that last if somebody put a large chair or something in the way, and it was blocking, would that mean eight hours later, it stops working? 

Ori Mor: Yeah. It's a design criterion. We designed it to be able to last a full day on a battery, but you can design it differently. It's a trade-off between the size of the battery and the thickness of the display. 

So if you talk about larger displays, a 30-inch display, a 55-inch display, which is quite common in digital signage, at least. How long off are we from that being a possibility? 

Ori Mor: That's too big of a question for me. I'll tell you that we are not even trying to target this at this point in time, but I'll give you an example of how technology develops. You probably know that when we started using the internet, we used 2.4 kilobytes or something like that. 

I go back to 256K modems, I’m old. 

Ori Mor: Yeah, and we are now doing a podcast where I'm sitting on probably 200 megabytes per second. Whether the technology would take us there, we will have to figure it out by seeing. 

So this is a matter of time, more than anything else.

Ori Mor: Yes. Time, the economy of scale, components becoming more capable and scaling up performance. 

I would assume also that you guys don't wanna be a display manufacturer. You're doing it right now just to demonstrate what's possible, but I'm thinking you'd like to license this to the display guys, as opposed to making your own? 

Ori Mor: That is absolutely correct.

Wi Charge is a company that knows how to deliver wireless power and we do that for many different applications. We chose a few to show how it works. There's a big opportunity here in terms of market demand. We chose a few applications, one in commercial, one in smart home, and one in consumer, just to see the market and then to license it to the relevant guys that can do it much better than us.

When do you see that happening? 

Ori Mor: We've already had deals that are licensed-based and it's like a domino effect. It's like how penguins jump to the water. They all stand at the edge of the ocean knowing that the food is in the water, but still hesitating and then one jumps in and immediately after a hundred thousand jump in. So by showing the way, we would unlock this domino effect. 

There are some Korean university researchers I wrote a piece about last week that were also doing wireless power. Are there any number of initiatives out there doing this? 

Ori Mor: Yes, we have seen more and more companies or universities doing wireless power. What they're doing right now, we did 10 years ago, so it's nice that they’re catching up. 

We see over-the-air charging happening already and it's happening in different ways with different technologies that allow different value propositions. So you can expect to see more and more of this. 

Is your focus right now mostly on B2C (Business to Consumer)? 

Ori Mor: No, we are actually doing commercial applications, like the displays. Even the consumer applications that we do, start with commercial settings. It's simply easier for us. Consumer, we are doing very cautiously and very few applications, but actually, before the end of the year, you'd hear announcements about consumer applications from us. 

Right, because you've been at CES a number of times and before we turned things on here to record, you mentioned that the company would be back at CES in January.

Ori Mor: Yes. There's another reason why we are doing the display. It expedites the go-to-market. When we can actually do the turnkey product, rather than only the wireless power, we can offer solutions to end customers without hesitations. 

It's easy to do it in B2B, but we already have a few consumer applications.

What's getting traction for the product right now, like a particular use case? 

Ori Mor: The displays are seeing tremendous, overwhelming demand. The other products that we do are smart door locks, which you probably are not so smart, not because they can't be smart, it's because people are worried, designers, OEMs are worried that if they would add smart functionalities, batteries would run out way too fast and then the end user would be stuck locked outside over a dead battery. So we are unleashing this as well in parallel. 

Yeah, it would be the same with those surveillance cameras that people have at their homes, the Nest cameras and so on.

Ori Mor: Exactly. Since they need to go to sleep to preserve their batteries. There's a phrase, I think a professional phrase, which is called the back of the thief. By the time they wake up, the thief is already on the way out. 

You mentioned you were seeing tremendous take-up on displays. What's going on there? How are they being used? 

Ori Mor: In various ways. Edge shelf displays in retail locations. I'll tell you what I can say and there are a few other things you can publish, we will send you when they go live. 

It's the usual thing. The clients don't want you talking about them, right?

Ori Mor: So what I'm disclosing right now are things already out there that are available and in a few weeks there will be other use cases as well and I'll be happy to share them with you, both images and videos. So we are doing table-topping restaurants, this is already out there. We are doing edge shelves in grocery locations. And we are doing other devices for grocery locations, which are quite cool, but I'll wait on how they look till we launch them. We are also doing displays in shopping centres like jewellery and other stuff, it's a display it's so generic, you can put it anywhere. You can wrap it and you have advertising at the point of decision. 

And this is not just in Israel? 

Ori Mor: No, most of it is outside of Israel. Texas, New York, Michigan, Idaho, Toronto, and Sao Paulo.

I'm sure one of the determining factors out there is the overall cost. What this does in terms of cost versus what you would pay to run conduit, run power or ethernet cabling to a display that way and people would do a spreadsheet exercise and decide, okay, this is less expensive to do it your way. 

Ori Mor: Exactly. 

What is the cost of a transmitter? 

Ori Mor: Oh, you'd have to ask our partners. They're selling the solutions to the end customers, not us.

Okay, but is it hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars? 

Ori Mor: Hundreds, not thousands. 

And it would install in the ceiling just like you would put in a ceiling light? 

Ori Mor: Yes, it takes a few minutes. 

For the display, understanding that these are your proprietary displays and you've tweaked them and everything else, but the hardware cost for a receiver, is that something that's also hundreds of dollars? 

Ori Mor: No, much less.

It's nominal, so it'd be like another component inside a display? 

Ori Mor: Yes. 

Does the system also radiate WiFi? 

Ori Mor: Yes, the communication with the display is over WiFi, over 3G. So with the end customers, it depends but they can run the content through a CMS on their own, independently.

So in theory would a company that makes WiFi equipment, like routers and so on, could they conceivably add your capability into their product line? 

So if I'm a company that makes networking equipment, like Cisco or more B2C stuff, could they add Wi charge capability to their WiFi routers?

Ori Mor: Yes, but I'll explain how. These companies are used to creating infrastructure and delivering connectivity. They can do the same for power, power as a service, not just data as a service. The only difference is that transmitters should be located most of the time on ceilings rather than hidden in the closet, that's the difference, and now the 5G routers are on ceilings for the exact same reason. They are almost in the line of sight. 

You mentioned metering. With the energy issues that Europe's facing right now because of Russia, there's a lot of concern around energy consumption, and I wonder whether we're gonna get to a stage where power would be metered for this sort of thing.

Ori Mor: Let me answer this in two ways. Since it's a service, it can be metered. It's an extension of the electricity grid and the same as you paying for watt/hour for electricity, you probably would be paying a watt/hour for wireless electricity, so it's only a natural extension. Regarding power in general and sustainability. What we also discovered is that a single transmitter that we are now shipping saves up to 5000 AA batteries and that's even on our first gen only. So it's probably your and my body weight in batteries saved by each transmitter that we deploy. 

Is the transmitter always pushing out energy and therefore the meter's always going or is it more of a demand thing?

Ori Mor: No, it's a demand thing. When there's no demand, it goes to sleep. 

All right, interesting. That would be a lot more efficient. 

What about distance? You mentioned 10 meters right now. Will that improve, just like the other things? 

Ori Mor: We did a test for a government agency for 100 meters successfully. But then we decided that as a company we need to focus. It's either we do indoor for consumers or commercial, or we do outdoor for other types of devices and we chose the short-of-range options.

So the technology can easily do a hundred meters or probably more, and there's actually a company that does that. This is their forte. We chose to focus on the inside. 

Okay, but you could, in theory, have advertising displays on a sidewalk, and the same in drive-throughs, a lot of costs involved in trenching and everything else to get power out to the display?

Ori Mor: Oh, there's actually a company that we work with that is considering using our solutions for care pickup and drive tools. 

And there would be enough power cuz those are extra bright displays?

Ori Mor: So for them, we are considering making animated e-ink displays. As I said the large displays with LCDs or OLEDs are out of our range at the moment.

So if people wanna know more about Wi Charge, where do they go? 

Ori Mor: Website and LinkedIn. 

It's www.wi-charge.com

Ori Mor: Yes. 

Perfect. All right, Ori, thank you very much for spending some time with me.

Ori Mor: Thank you, Dave. I enjoyed it.

Paul Ciolino, OptiSigns

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

It has been nagging at me for the last few months that I didn't know a hell of a lot about OptiSigns, even though the Houston-based company was a main advertiser on Sixteen:Nine.

That's been fixed, having had a great conversation last week with the company's sales director Paul Ciolino.

We got into a whole bunch of things, from the company's roots, how software development bridges the US and Vietnam, and their go-to-market model. OptiSigns is focused on making a product and services available that manage to tick the much-demanded boxes of intuitive and affordable, but also have a lot of sophistication and scalability.

Ciolino works out of New York City, which will help explain why you might hear sirens in the background.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Paul, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the background on what OptiSigns is all about? Because I know them, but I don't know much about your company yet. 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. Dave, thanks so much for having me. First of all, excited to be here. You're my first podcast ever so it's a wonderful honor for you to have, but OptiSigns is a cloud-based digital signage solution and really the key tenets of OptiSigns signs are: Can we make it a low barrier to entry? Can anybody use it? Is it easy? Is it accessible? Can people deploy on myriad, different platforms or OSs? 

And we try to check all those boxes as much as possible while making it all cost-effective. 

And the company's based in Houston? 

Paul Ciolino: That's right, yep. 

How long has the company been around? 

Paul Ciolino: So it was founded in 2015, but really the growth started happening within the last three years and we're seeing incredible year-over-year growth now. 

Back in 2015, there was already any number of easy-to-use, I don't wanna say entry-level because that kind of diminishes the product, but friendly, price effective, on and on, and I'm curious what prompted the founders to look at the market and go, okay, there's an opportunity here, because, from my perspective, there was a lot of what you've described already out there?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good question. I think when you think about digital signage top-down and you're looking at it with a bird's eye view, there's just a huge TAM there, right?

Even if it is a saturated market, there are hundreds of vendors that do it today. There are a few really big players and there are a few really big players that do it really well. The key differentiator for us is probably just going to be on the usability side of things, and I think that was where, the powers that be, were sitting in a back room somewhere saying, how do we put our footprint on this industry? What can we do to make ourselves stand out and be late adopters of getting into the industry while also being a significant factor? 

Yeah, it's an interesting balance that has to be struck in that I've seen a few times promotions for companies who say that we have a very easy-to-use friendly platform and when I've looked at it or other people have looked at it, they said, it's not really all that friendly or easier, or sure, it is friendly, but it doesn't do much. 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, I think that's a good point. When we have this conversation internally a lot, and sometimes I talk to our customer base about it, but really the idea behind designing OptiSigns from the ground up with our engineering team and from a product perspective was like taking a look at something like an iPhone, right?

When you purchase an iPhone, you get the iPhone, you take it out of the box, you put a SIM card in it and you just start using it. You've got an iPhone now. So we thought about that with a digital signage lens, and that's where we started putting our plan into motion. 

So when you are a new user of the system, how does it work, is it software as a service? 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. At our core, we're a software company. We don't do the installation. We don't do hardware sales outside of a couple of pre-configured devices that you can get. Really, what we do focus on is just that UX/UI component. We have 135 native app integrations now, from a simple weather app to Tableau, Power BI and more sophisticated web scripting and an open API, so we run the gamut of what you can do with digital signage. 

Is there a particular market that you guys are targeting? 

Paul Ciolino: So the nice thing about digital signage is that there's just so much variability in actual implementations. So when we think about targeting somebody specific, we do have our eyes on a couple of industries like logistics right now is something that we're making a big push into. We're also looking into things like healthcare, we've got a pretty good customer base with healthcare already, but we're seeing a lot of organic conversations happen there. So we're like, hey, what do we do? How can we accelerate their growth into this vertical and things like that?

That's interesting because I was waiting for you to say, yeah we're chasing retail and QSR and then I'd be rolling my eyes because everybody and their sister is, but logistics and healthcare, I think that's really smart. They're not all that addressed yet, and I'm curious, what's the ask in logistics, is it for visualizing data like Power BI and Tableau?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of times these people are using more bespoke dashboards as well. So when you think about trying to take something out of the box, and then you think about maybe the staff over at one of these logistics companies, let's call it a trucking company or something like that for example, maybe they don't have the bandwidth on the it side of the ball to have somebody spend three weeks creating a custom integration with an API or something like that, which they can do with us. But we offer OptiSigns where you can basically take your internal dashboards that are gated by username and password, and you can script the authentication and the execution of that username and password, and then get to your target resource that way. 

Why do they want that? Where are they showing on these screens? 

Paul Ciolino: They're showing everything from lead times to rotation schedules to availability to weather, to all kinds of different, increment factors that could be going into either a trucking scenario again, or maybe we've got some type of supply chain issue, and they're doing a full SWOT analysis in their backroom and they have to have all of this real-time data come up as they're planning around the next week, month, quarter, half year, whatever they're gonna do. 

So it's really myriad, just like all of our deployments are as well in different verticals, you can use it however you need to. 

I find that interesting because so much of the attention in digital signage is around the wow factor, creative like amazing displays and all these things that are going on, and to me the long tail of digital signage is the stuff that you might describe as boring, just like showing KPIs on a screen or giving instructions on what to do when something happens like an alarm trigger or whatever, like that stuff doesn't get anybody's pulse racing, but it's incredibly valuable to the day to day of a company, right? 

Paul Ciolino: I think there's been like this large front end push to make signage sexy when I think, at the end of the day, the reason that somebody's gonna go pay for anything in a digital signage space is that they need it and they need specific things to be up on the screen.

I'm not saying you can't make things look sexy with OptiSigns, obviously, you can do that, but at the end of the day, we want people to be able to take anything that they need to have up on their screens and deploy it easily and efficiently without breaking the bank. 

You mentioned breaking the bank, your pricing tiers are pretty friendly in that. I think I saw it was $10-12 a month, depending on what you're doing. Is that accurate?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, that's about right, and that's gonna be the starting price, obviously, if people are gonna be looking at growing their business with us and scaling, which is something that we specialize in as well, just making that ease of scaling, something that comes out of the box with us.

It could be anywhere from $10-15 a month per screen, unlimited users, unlimited resources uploaded into the cloud, and all that kind of stuff. 

The $10 one gives you a lot of functionality, but as you scale up or tier up, so to speak, you are just adding more capability.

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, basically the way you can think about it is, let's say somebody's got maybe they even have a hundred screens or something like that, but they're gonna be putting the same thing on a hundred of their screens. They probably don't need to go into the conversation about creating manual permissions or a brand kit or reporting for their advertisers that are paying for ad space or things like that, so they can live with that standard plan that we have and be happy all day. 

They still have access to 95% of the functionality on the platform. It's just gonna be some of those more robust features binding to an IDP or an SSO provider or something like that or creating a monitoring and alerting system where they can enable triggers for different events to go to specific people and make sure that they've got as much uptime as possible.

That's all quite interesting because when I think of the pricing tier that you're at, it's usually small to medium business operators who the company is targeting and they're never talking about data binding or anything like that, it's just about you can put this menu on a screen and you can change it on demand.

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, and you hit the nail on the head there. We have incredible organic growth within those verticals where you're looking at QSRs gyms, and places like that. But I think the thing that we've been doing really well this year, especially, and especially in the last quarter and a half or so, has been getting into really earnest more of those enterprise deployments, where we're talking about, we've got a GDPR situation in Germany or something like that, and we have facilities on five different continents and we need to make sure that everybody's got the right access and we've got audit logs that they can enable and we really do pair very well with very robust security concerns. 

Yeah, that's interesting as well in that I've talked to a few companies who started out targeting the small to medium business market and have migrated to enterprise because of the demands of customers, but also it's just that if you're dealing with the entry level market, you're being beaten up on price and it's not necessarily easy to scale that kind of management of all those different customers. 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, and I think that's something that's, again, credit to our engineering team, they make it so easy for people to scale on multiple different levels, whether you're talking about headcount as users within the platform, you're talking about multiple locations, or you're talking about multiple screens within a single location, and it really does just make it very intuitive. We've got our support team as well who's great. I think the CSAT that we talked about in our H1 review was like 94 or something like that, and that's an objective number, I'm not putting a lens on that one, but I think when you think about implementing something new and you're looking at a by process that maybe has 15-20 touchpoints or something like that, you're making a pretty big commitment just from a G&A perspective as a client, and then you think about, okay, is this gonna save my needs for the next year, three years, five years, ten years, and if so, how is that gonna look? What is my hardware, reliability gonna look like and things like that, and we kind of cover all bases. 

Is it important when you're dealing with those kinds of pricing tiers to minimize the number of customer touches, make as much of your offer and your software self-service and not have to provide a lot of support and customer contact? Not that you don't wanna talk to your customers, but it's just that if you have a whole bunch of them, that means you need a whole bunch of people to deal with them.

Paul Ciolino: Absolutely. Yeah, so that's again, credit to our engineering team and the way that we laid the bedrock as a company from our founders to be able to build this thing where it is very self-service. 

Another thing that we do that a lot of companies these days are moving towards is we've got a support blog, we've got a support site. We've got a ticket creation system, a phone number, and an email. It's very multi-threaded in how people can actually go about getting the help they need, and I think that's something that has allowed us to spend time on growth and not as much time on maintenance, while still providing an exceptional level of service to our customer base. 

You've mentioned a lot of growth in the last three years. Why do you think that is? What is it that's resonating? 

Paul Ciolino: So at the end of the day, every company's going to have a little bit of this slow out of the gates kind of motion, right? And once you get the feeling for an industry and a customer base, and you have enough conversations and you get enough feedback, all of those things combined into something very powerful, even from a business owner's perspective, where you're like, okay, I can listen to these things and then I can go act on them. And one of the nice things about us is we run a very agile team, a very lean team, and we have the same communication with the same people, a lot of the time, and so that means that we can go ahead and pivot on almost a weekly basis with our roadmap if we need to, and we can effectively release functional app integrations or just things that maybe we don't think about that our users think about.

And I think that level of service that comes from, even the engineering team level, is something that is really hard to achieve in any business in 2022 these days. 

And some of the software development's done in Vietnam, right? 

Paul Ciolino: That's right. They have a very close working relationship with our founders. They've worked together for a long time. They know how to communicate effectively, and it's really paid dividends for us as a business. 

Is that kind of a historical thing? I don't know South Texas all that well, but I believe that there's a pretty big Vietnamese diaspora there that went over there for fishing fleets and everything else, but I suspect there's still a lot of business ties back?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely. I can't speak to the geopolitical business ties within the founder's relationship levels. Personally, I've benefited from the influx of the Vietnamese community in Houston via Cajun cuisine, but outside of that, I think it's just something where people have worked together before, I've worked with people and at a few different companies or something like that, and we can talk about anything at the drop of a hat and we can make an effective decision when it needs to be made

How do you sell? Is it just direct to the customer or are you doing things like an affiliate channel or reseller channel?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, so we absolutely do offer that. We have a couple of different options available. We've got an affiliate program to where, maybe you don't wanna spend the time or you don't have the time or the capital or anything else to be able to go and become a reseller, but you have a lot of people that you know in your network that are interested in digital signage.

So we've got that affiliate program. You can make some money off of referring customers to us and it pays out quarterly and things like that, and we try to make it very easy and low maintenance for them to maintain those relationships, and then also generate business for us that are not cold leads at all. They're very warm leads. 

The other side of that is gonna be that reseller pro reseller program that you mentioned and that can work in a few different ways. You can package the software, if you need to, you can white label it, and that's not even in our top-level plan, that's in our middle level plan. It's not like we're gate keeping too much here like we really do wanna make this software available to anybody that needs it, and we're doing that in several different ways as well. 

You're happy enough to be just operating under the hood and nobody even knows it's OptiSigns? 

Paul Ciolino: Absolutely, that's why I'm off camera. 

You have an $80 Android stick that you offer as a hardware option. I'm curious how often that comes up as an ask or are they using any number of different platforms out there, because I know you have a web player or that's the foundational player.

Paul Ciolino: So going back to the low barrier to entry that we're going with at OptiSigns. We're OS agnostic. You can deploy Windows or Linux, we've got an ARM Linux. We've got LG commercial grade native app, an Android native app, and Fire TV so you can use a Fire Stick as well. It really doesn't matter how you deploy with us, that is just there as an Option. We don't make any money off of those devices, they're literally just there in case somebody thinks that's the best deployment for them, and if you go to, like Reddit or somewhere third party where there's no Optisign sales lens on it, you can see that these Android players are generally very reliable. 

We've had them deployed for, I think over a year and a half now, and we've got over 99% uptime with them. So things like that, providing reliability to our customers and, places like Australia, where it gets super hot over there, maybe there's not the best wifi connection, things like that. Those are really good deployments. I think we've got over 10,000 of our Android sticks that are out right now, and that's just one of our deployments.

Oh really, and are people going down that path because they are price sensitive or they just want like a dumb-down device that they can just stick in?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, I think it's somewhere between those two. Okay. So if you think about it like a Fire Stick, it's gonna be a little bit cumbersome, people can go watch ESPN or something like that on a Fire Stick. If you're looking at something like a Raspberry PI, right now those are incredibly expensive. We do sell those too, just in case that's what people are familiar with and maybe they need more granular security pushes or something like that to their systems.. 

That's interesting, I've never heard somebody say Raspberry PIs are incredibly expensive, but I know what you're saying. Once you fully get them out, they're not $35, right? 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, with supply chain stuff happening right now, they're like $300 or something like that. That's what I've been hearing. We're selling them for $130 on our site, I think, but outside of that, you've got the ability to do something like an Intel NUC, or you can do a Micro PC, or you can have a full-blown computer behind a screen.

When you think about something that marries the functionality of what those things can do without the processing power, because you don't need it, but you also have the reliability that's gonna be above something like a Fire Stick, or if you're just using a web browser version or something like that, I think that's a really nice, happy medium. 

One of the devil's advocates arguments around web players for digital signage is: yes, you can get this application running on any number of different kinds of devices, whether they're smart TVs or Fire sticks or whatever it may be, but there's not a lot of device management.

How do you counter that argument? 

Paul Ciolino: Honestly, it's not really our job to counter that argument because it's not gonna be our most recommended deployment. We're not gonna sit in front of the University of Central Florida and say, you guys should be using a web browser version for all 360 TVs that you have or something like that. We're gonna tell 'em like, what do you need? Do you have wifi in every area? Do you need an ethernet adapter? Do you need to go to a Raspberry PI? And so we'll have a very consultative conversation with our customer base before we even get into demoing the software. So that's like the first thing that we wanna nail down with our customers: How are you gonna deploy? And let's figure out the reasons why you wanna do that, and not just because, you're used to doing it that way, or you heard it was the best from like Jim down the street. 

So you are saying that you have native players as well, or you have web players that have device management?

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, so kind of all of the above. So if you wanted to go, like with what's called our managed device route, right? Like you could do something where you get that $80 Android stick, we'll charge you a little bit extra, as long as you have a pro plus package, you're gonna have our version of an Apple Care where we have an MDM, our support team can remote in, they can troubleshoot. You don't have to spend valuable time with your IT professionals or anything like that to go and troubleshoot these sticks. We can do it for you. 

So is that your happy place? If a customer goes down that path where obviously you're making a bit more money out of them, but you remove some of the mystery, so to speak because it's a known device.

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, absolutely, and I think at the end of the day, we're happy if our customers are happy, and that's why we have that consultative approach on the deployment. 

Tell me about the app store/library. You mentioned you have a hundred plus apps on there.

Paul Ciolino: Yeah. So we’ve everything from, something like just a native designer app that's within the platform, or something like the Adobe Designer Suite, or like Canva or something like that. Something simple, something that most people that are creating digital signage are gonna need at some point.

How does that work? 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, it's basically a frame within the platform, it is just like an app. It'll take you to a page where you can design from a template, we've got like 700 plus templates out there right now. Everything from menus to employee appreciation to emergency notices, all that kind of stuff, and then you can go ahead and configure each element on the page. You could even do something like pull from a data source where we can map elements within that page to a spreadsheet in Google or Excel, and so for QSRs in particular, this is really beneficial because they can go into a spreadsheet, never have to log into OptiSigns again, once they get the framework of their menu done, they can just change their pricing by changing that spreadsheet.

Do you have to work with your customers to help them figure out what to do?

Paul Ciolino: Absolutely, and that’s within the fee structure that we have, with supporting meetings, and obviously we've got our blog with really good documentation on it as well.

Where are you seeing traction in the marketplace? I know you mentioned healthcare and logistics. Are there particular areas where there seems to be a lot of interest and more of an ask than maybe in the past? 

Paul Ciolino: We talked about it earlier actually, but one of the places where we see a ton of room for growth is gonna be in that reseller side. So creating those partnerships and channels. We have a couple of partners where if they need to have somebody do install and maintenance, we can do that as well. We're never gonna be that company that vertically integrates all of that under one umbrella, but we can certainly provide the introductions to those.

We predict that the reseller marketplace is gonna be a significant chunk of our revenue within the next two years. 

You also have a mobile app, which I was curious about. Is that a mobile app for control of the screens? 

Paul Ciolino: Yep, nail on the head. So that's just gonna be an admin app. You don't want to go on an iPhone 5s and start designing on there for screens that are gonna be much bigger than that.

We tried to keep it pretty myopic with the app deployment. That's just one of those things where somebody's on the go, maybe it's a small business owner, maybe it's somebody in a larger company that is going around and they wanna show something cool to their stakeholders or shareholders or whatever it's gonna be, and they can go ahead and just control it ad hoc as they need it.

Was that something that you developed because a customer was asking for it, or you could just figure out that this is something that would be useful?

Paul Ciolino: I honestly can't speak to the inception of the idea. But I do know the way that we think about things in general and it’s like: 

Is there going to be a need for this at some point?cHow much is it gonna cost us from a time money perspective? Is it worth it? And then we just go do it. 

You also have an audience analytics add-on, what's that about? And is that something you guys wrote or is it a partner? 

Paul Ciolino: No, that is actually a proprietary algorithm that our engineering team has done as well. We're talking about basically three different statistics here. The first one is going to be gender: Is the person looking at the screen male or female or walking by the screen, male or female? The second is going to be dwell time, and that's gonna be, how long is this person in front of the screen for? The third is gonna be attention time and that's how long is this person interacting with the screen for?

And so when you think about reporting, OptiSigns does it really well in a couple of different ways. The first way is going to be like a proof of play reporting where you've got an advertiser, they're paying for a certain ad to be played a certain number of times over a certain period, you can batch those reports, send them out, do whatever you need to do, make sure that everybody's cool. Everything's transparent. Everything's above board. 

Same thing with AI reporting, but that's gonna be more in the split testing realm of things, right? Where you design an advertisement or you design a menu or you design something and you want to see how people engage with it when you test different versions of it and so you can basically take August 1 through August 31 on this design, September 1 through September 30 on this design. What does my dwell time look like? What does my attention time look like? How's my split looking? Are males interacting more with this design? Are females interacting more with that design? All that kind of stuff.

The audience analytics stuff using computer vision has been around for probably 15 years, and the challenge in the past was that it was expensive and you had to have additional hardware and everything else, and that kind of ruled out much adoption. 

Has that changed? I believe it's $5 a month at MSRP so I suspect at scale it gets cheaper than that, and I'm assuming you're using just simple USB cameras to do the capture. 

Paul Ciolino: Yeah, honestly, I think you could probably just pitch this for me at this point, but basically you need any camera that can see, right? It doesn't have to be a fancy camera that can do like 4k or anything like that. You wanna make sure that you're setting it up at the right distance, obviously, you don't want a $20 USB camera trying to find out who’s looking at the screen 50 yards away or something like that. 

But outside of that, it really is just plug-and-play. Does it make sense financially for you to go invest the time and the little bit extra money for that to get that kind of feedback for your own purposes or for your client's purposes? If yes, then, it's a great option to have. 

Does that change the hardware set-up at all?

I guess what I'm saying is does the $80 Android stick no longer the right device because you've got the extra overhead of the video processing? 

Paul Ciolino: Yep, nail on the head again. You're gonna need to do a Linux or a Windows deployment with something like that, just because of the processing power that's needed to be able to effectively communicate that data back to the algorithm. 

So just going back to the company, how large is it? 

Paul Ciolino:  So we're just sub-20 right now so we're a very small shop. We definitely move quickly for sure, and again, just going into that, learned communication that we all have together, makes it really efficient for all of us to get stuff done.

And it's just privately held, self-funded that sort of thing? 

Paul Ciolino: Yep, precap and no debt. I asked about shares when I was joining and they said yes, but it'll be very expensive. 

So what can we expect out of OptiSigns through the rest of this year and into next year? 

Paul Ciolino: I think more the same, we're gonna be obviously focusing on a few different verticals going forward as we identify some customers, as we continue to move internationally, we've got a decent customer base in the EU, UK. We're blowing out into South America at this point a little bit. We do have a decent customer base in Australia as well, and then I've been having conversations with people in places like Somalia and other countries in Africa. So the reach is wide, right? And we've really only tapped that kind of outreach from a marketing perspective, even. We really haven't put a whole lot of dollars into growing our business internationally. It's mostly been organic. 

So I think you can see that we're gonna be growing organically again. We're gonna be trying to be more aggressive in the way that we ideate on how we're going to tackle new verticals and things like that as well. But yeah, at the end of the day, we want to continue to make a product that will take any screen and turn it into a digital sign that you can use in any way that you and your team or your clients need to use it. 

All right, and they can find the company at optisigns.com? 

Paul Ciolino: Yes.

Paul, thank you very much for spending time with me. 

Paul Ciolino: Absolutely. Dave, it was a pleasure.

Chad Hutson, Dimensional Innovations

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

Experience is one of those terms that's being heavily used and sometimes abused these days, as companies in the digital signage ecosystem talk about what they can do for end-user customers.

Everything, it seems, is somehow experiential or immersive. But what does that really mean and how does it manifest itself in projects that use display technology?

I had a really good chat with Chad Hutson, who very much qualifies as an experience design expert and has the project portfolio behind him to back that up.

He ran a well-respected agency in Chicago called Leviathan, stuck around for a few years after it was acquired, but this past year hooked up with a company that would have been a competitor in the past - Dimensional Innovations.

He's now DI's Chief Strategy Officer, and spends his time working with the DI team and with customers - working a process to understand needs and then develop solutions that deliver on those needs, and realize an experience that can be everything from simple to elaborate.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Chad, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Dimensional Innovations is all about and what your role is there? 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, you bet. We’ll call it DI for short, to make it easier for both of us. DI is an experience design and build firm, based in the US, down in Kansas city, and they are really robust at not only designing and building the physical experiences but all the fixtures that can be built out with the wood shop, metal shop, paint and a giant two-story, high 3d printer, which is pretty amazing, we also use, but also on the digital side, we have deep roots in technology, both in being able to figure out what's the right technology for the experience and then creating the content and the interaction that goes within those experiences as well. 

So I'm the new Chief Strategy Officer, it's a new role at DI, I started about eight months ago with the organization and that role just organically evolved. They were kind enough to say you're making a positive impact and we'd like for you to do a bit more. It's good stuff so far. 

So it sounds like the company bridges a few things like there's some traditional AV integrations side to the business. There are some elements of a creative technology agency, but there's also a fix-your-fabrication kind of company as well. So you're into a whole bunch of things. 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, that's a pretty good encapsulation and it’s a team of about 300 people, so they're not messing around.

And you're up in Chicago, right?

Chad Hutson: That's correct. I'm in Chicago when I sleep at home. I travel around quite a bit, both down in Kansas City and wherever the clients are as well. 

And Kansas City is what, like an eight-hour drive or something like that?

Chad Hutson: From Chicago, that's not too bad. I think like maybe six and a half, but I’m always flying though, always in the air.

You don't wanna drive in the middle of the winter? 

Chad Hutson: No, flying in the middle of winter is already a challenge enough. 

So people are gonna wonder, people who know you that you came from a company that you founded called Leviathan in Chicago, much more of, I would say, a creative technology shop, at least that's the term I use. 

I'm curious, as somebody who founded that company, what compelled you to leave? 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, that was an existential issue, I guess you could say, just trying to debate with myself, what can I do in the future? Yeah, Leviathan is still a great shop, although it's going by a different name. My partners and I sold it to another digital agency called Envoy back in, I think, 2017 and I was happy to stick around for a while. I think it's been close to five years since I decided to stay put and continue to run the organization. 

But I'd say where Levithan was just all about that hybrid of digital and physical experience, Envoy as a larger group, they are versed in everything from e-commerce to branding, and I don’t know, just felt like what I love was maybe not as front and centre as was what Leviathan did, so there is certainly no bad blood whatsoever, it was good to stick around and see it through a lot of great accomplishments there. But DI was always in my side view and they were always staying in touch and said, we'd love to talk about what the future could be. At some point, the stars aligned and that's why I went over to DI. 

That's a decent run anyways. When a founder sticks around, they might stick around for a year or something, so three to five years is pretty good. 

Chad Hutson: I agree, and the cool thing about the DI is, for me personally, it filled that missing gap BECAUSE whenever we were contacted about a digital experience, it could be like a lobby or experience for a theme park, it was always just limited to that digital scope, and it was later in the conversation. 

So with DI, because they are involved in the entire experience from even very early days what is the purpose of this space and what can it serve? Who's gonna be there? What kind of experience do we want them to have, digital and analogue? That's really the reason why I went over there, and I really love it over there. 

Yeah, I wanted to get into that. What is the whole process involved when you engage with a new customer? 

When I have done consulting in the past, the first thing I say to a new client, or even just in the early stages when we're having our first conversation is okay, why do you wanna even be talking and looking at digital? And I suspect these days when people start talking about wanting something experientially designed into our new space, experiential is such a huge catchall and somewhat abused term that you really have to enforce some kind of discipline to figure out what's gonna work here.

Chad Hutson: Yeah, you're absolutely right. The process is really, I don't wanna say it's not much different than any other firms, but we're very curious people, and so we want to ask our clients, what do you envision for the space, who is going to be there? What kind of assets do you already have from a content perspective? What's your technology infrastructure for the rest of the space? We don't want to build something just in a bubble from tech and IT standpoint. So really getting the lay of the land and asking a ton of questions, not just logistic or technology-wise, but more just thematic and just really trying to figure out what they know, and more importantly, what they don't know, so we can help discover what that is. So thinking about that space, we want to have the right purpose and the right functionality. 

So then we get into high-level ideas of what it could be more like rough sketches along with even rough buckets of what budget could look like for those experiences, and they may say that's perfect or, that's a bit rich for us. And then from there, we start to refine those ideas and also refine the pricing and what the technology solutions might be and what the narratives might be from a visual and oral content standpoint, and then we start building it and we never leave our clients high and dry. After we build, we always like to be involved when we can in content refreshes, in support of that experience and yeah, hopefully, continue those relationships for years to come. 

There's a business reason why you wanna stick with the customer and do the content refreshes and so on, but I suspect some of that is just simply that you wanna stick with it because it's your team's baby, so to speak, and you’re enrolled in it.

Chad Hutson: That's right, and since 16:9 has a touch of snark to it, I'll say that we would definitely want to keep the good children but for those who are grown up and ready to leave the nest, we welcome them leaving the nest. So we do try to nurture the right relationships in the right ways.

When you're engaging with new customers, I'm curious, about how often they really know what they want to do. 

Chad Hutson: That is a great question because when we speak with clients, we know that they know their brand better than anyone else. We can't come into that conversation with the assumption that we know them inside and out, that's absolutely not true, but from a guest or user experience standpoint, I feel like we can balance out what they know about themselves. For example, sometimes the conversation leads with technology. “Oh, we absolutely want to use VR here”, or “we want an immersive experience” and as much as we get excited about all those conversations, we also have to say, why do you think you need that? And we want to make sure that is the right solution from a narrative or technology standpoint. So yeah, that's what I have to say about that.

I was curious how often you have customers who are saying, “Yeah, we want a big LED video wall in the lobby”, or we want this particular type of technology and they're just thinking in terms of the wow factor as opposed to what this will actually do.

Chad Hutson: Oh, every time, and I'll also pick on architects a little bit. I think some of the larger architecture firms are definitely getting better, they have their own experience design teams.

The Gensler and so on, they've got people who know that stuff now. 

Chad Hutson: Exactly, but otherwise, depending on who's making the decisions, it is truly based on grandeur, so having the largest screen, “I went to our competitor's lobby and they had a giant screen, and I want ours to be bigger.” 

So sometimes it can be down to that, but I think what is thought of just so little is content strategy, meaning, some folks think about content, what can we put on the screen, but okay, that's great, now what's going to be there tomorrow and the next day, and that can become prohibitively expensive if it's not thought of the right way and how to get the right content there. Some of it can be big and beautiful. I know that what used to be Obscure Digital and now they're I think they've been folded into another organization, but people talk about the Salesforce lobby and still talk about it even now, and it is a beautiful experience, but it is that exact same experience over and over again. So how can that be more dynamic? We'll have those ooh-ah moments, but we need something else to fill the space and not just be a pretty screensaver.

Yeah, I've seen some projects and the narrative is describing the projects after they've been lit up where they're talking about how this changes the whole experience of travel or whatever it may be in a rail station or an airport, and a vast screen or a set of screens with all this very expensive content and so on and I'm thinking if I'm a traveller, what would be a great experience for me is something that says, “Track 14 is this way” because that is what really matters to me, not being uplifted by this amazing content and all that, just show me where the hell the train is. 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, it has to be practical as well as transformative. I feel like if people are travelling, yes, let's get them excited about their destinations, let's give them a moment of surprise and delight but let's be practical about it too, and use elements of wayfinding. Not everything has to be wow, and flutter and fluff on these large screens.

And I suspect it's difficult at times to convey to the client that there's a technology investment here and so on, but you have to keep this refreshed and, you can't just have your quarter-million dollar data visualization piece from some artist and just run that thing forever?

Chad Hutson: You're exactly right. I think I might know the data visualization artist you might be speaking of, whose work I do love, don't get me wrong, but you're absolutely right. 

If a client's investing upwards of half a million or more on a display and they automatically assume, I need $25k to $50k for a video or I'll just use stock footage, that is just a bad investment. There's so much more you can do.  The reason why you have a screen in the first place is to show content, it's not just to have a static piece of wall art hung up. 

Is it now a case when you and your team, as you’re Chief Strategy Officer, I'm sure if there's a whale client, they pull you into it? You mentioned you're travelling a lot, so that's probably why. You immediately start thinking about how digital fits in here or do you try to kind of park that and listen to the client and then think digital would be good here, but maybe not? 

Chad Hutson: Oh, great question. Certainly from my previous roots, thinking through a digital lens has been instinctual somewhat, but since going to DI, it is definitely starting with more of the basics and leaving digital and analogue out of it.

It's more about fact-finding and learning more about who they are and what they want to accomplish, and then the solutions fall from that. So that's been actually a welcome shift that not everything has to be tech-savvy, but I'm a techie at heart, I can still remember coding on a radio shack color computer using BASIC way back in the 80s. So yeah, I'm a geek and I like technology. It's front and centre of my mind a lot of times. 

When you think in terms of experience design, how do you define experience? And I realize that's a big question. 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, that is. So not intended to be a shameless plug, but the thing about DI is that they work across not only pro and collegiate sports organizations, but also larger brands, museums, retail, and entertainment, so theme parks and such, so the experience is different across all those, but I think consistently people want the experience to be intuitive.

I guess some brands don't have a clean brand, but in our opinion, we want the environment to be clean and welcoming and not intimidating. Perhaps if you're going through a frightening exhibit at a Disney park, maybe we do want that to be more thematic and scary, but a good experience just makes you feel something, and I know that some people might roll their eyes and go, oh my gosh, if we're walking through a company's headquarters, do they really want their guests to feel something?

And I would argue, yes, whether it wants someone to buy something, or want them to have moments of surprise and delight, even in a museum, you want them to learn and take that piece of information with you. So the experience, I think initially, no matter what you do or how pretty it is, if you don't feel something that you're not gonna remember that experience and I think that's ultimately what these destinations are about. Do you want folks to remember it, remember you as an organization or tell your friends about the amazing experience you had? So I would say that it is really front and centre, the emotional component. 

But the emotion isn't necessarily “wow” or being bowled over by the scale of a screen or the 3d anamorphic illusion on a screen or whatever, it can be as simple as, “I'm feeling calmer about being in here” because now I know where I'm going” or “I feel better about the meeting I'm about to have with this company” because I'm seeing the company's history on this video wall, it’s explaining everything that they do and I'm thinking, holy shit, these guys are amazing. 

Chad Hutson: Oh, a hundred percent, Dave. I'd say there's a sliding scale of what you want people to feel and we don't always crank that to 11. I think y might need certain degrees of it, like a moment of surprise and delight, in a customer's customer sales centre or in a museum like, oh, wow, I wasn't expecting that, and that's nice, but not everything has to be “whoa” and gigantic and expensive. 

It's adjustable depending on what we need people to take away from that experience. 

Yeah. I just wrote about a project the other day that was in a residential lobby of a building in Boston and it was a pretty small kind of corner wrapped LED that was only 10 feet square or something and I was thinking, okay, that makes sense in that kind of setting, that it's not enough where the residents are thinking well, now I understand why my condo fees are so high, but it's just something that helps give the lobby a bit of a lift, but also has information on there that's useful. 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, isn't that the beauty of display technology? It is dynamic. So it can be so many different things. Sometimes it could be too many things, and so we want to pick the right bitsto have in that space, but it's dynamic and it can be evergreen . 

What about budgets? I imagine, as you were saying in your kind of project scoping and everything, that you're trying to get a sense of what their budget restrictions are, whether they're bottomless or tight, and is it possible to deliver an experience on a pretty modest budget? 

Chad Hutson: Yes, I would say so. There are some simple tips and tricks that can be used. I would say that much like with an artist of any sort or any kind of designer, sometimes working with constraints yields some of the best results, whether you’re out of time, you're out of money and you just really have to become inventive on how to make that work out.

If any clients are listening, I would never want to encourage purposely limiting the budget just to see what kind of brilliance can come from that. But yeah, I've certainly seen some very impactful experiences. It Doesn't necessarily cost a ton, but you can be inventive in how you use those lower cost solutions and make it effective. I think about the analogy of the giant lobby screen, instead of having one giant screen, can we break that up into different sections and pieces so it has an interesting footprint and ne minute, we have content on individual screens and the next we have this larger canvas that is, even though it's broken in pieces, everything works in concert with each other. So value engineering is the mother of invention sometimes. 

I'm thinking of the project in Denver at a Wells Fargo office tower where there was obviously some nod to budget limitations where they did these five or six vertical slats that made it kinda look like you're seeing out through fence slots, and that was a way to have big LED strips that wouldn't cost the same kind of money, and they didn't have to be particularly high rez because you were seeing them at a distance, but that was a way to create visual impact, but not have something like the scoreboard at the Dallas Cowboys stadium.

Chad Hutson: Yes, and I think I know exactly the one you're talking about. They're really tall and narrow as well. But yeah, they are certainly impactful, I would agree.

Do you also have products now at DI? I was looking on the website and it said like you had some package products as opposed to everything just being custom to the client.

Chad Hutson: Yeah. Good eye there, Dave. So there are some products that we have developed and clients say, oh, we really like what you did for this client, could you do something similar? So after doing that a number of times, we just realized we can take some of the best parts of some of these projects and not necessarily repurpose them. But clients oftentimes are saying our budget is limited. What can we do? Can you repurpose this? 

So that is in essence what we have done with a few different things. There's something we call it, coloring wall, which essentially we use gesture sensing technology to let people, oftentimes kids, let's have a low touch, very simple and intuitive experience where they can stand in front of what looks like a giant coloring book page, it's just a white page with black outlines and waving our arms or running past it, and it fills in the color in a very painterly fashion. Once we figured out that we don't have to reinvent the wheel every time, let's take some of these ideas and repurpose them. We can do them, we can replicate them and we always improve upon them, I think every time we do that. 

And you can also reduce some of the cost too because you've already written and everything, right? 

Chad Hutson: I guess we could say we're trying to be benevolent and generous to clients, but we're also trying to make money off of what we have, IP we have created in the past. 

The gestures that you're describing, kids are naturals to interact with those sorts of things and have fun and all that, but I've seen a number of cases where that same sort of gesture technology is designed for brand advertising or experiential. activation, so to speak, and I've wondered, do these really work with adults? 

Chad Hutson: I remember when the Kinect first came out, I think that was around 2011 or so. My team at the previous firm were actually hacking it before there was even an SDK or software developer kit available and I think we were all just amazed by it and assumed this was going to transform how everyone interacts. 

But what we figured out along the way, I know the DI team has this figured out also is that there's no international language, if you will, for gestures. You can wave and say, hello, you can flip a bird, if you're really upset, you can use a right turn or left turn, but I think that with these sorts of gestures, particularly with adults, they're not gonna wave their arms around like a crazy person. 

I can't imagine many CEOs doing that willingly. So we've figured out that we have to keep those gestures very simple. It's more about standing in a place and it triggering content, or as I mentioned with kids that can run and be silly and that can fill that coloring book page very easily, but for the rest, it has to be super intuitive. If you are having someone raise their right hand or raise their left hand to advance an icon or a cursor, then those instructions have to be given in, I don't know, 15 seconds or less and have it figured out instantly. 

It's been my experience that with experience design, that the ones that really work are those where the architect or person who designs the space, the physical look of a space is involved early, so that the screen technology doesn't look like it was added on, it's built in, like it's part of the original design. Is that a fair assessment? 

Chad Hutson: Oh, so fair. Otherwise it's just just another giant rectangle, sitting in a lobby. It stands out, but more like a sore thumb than it does something that's integrated into the architecture. So I'm a big fan of all the involved parties talking as early as possible. 

An architect's thinking we can integrate a screen here, but speak to the technology partner and think about what's the right pixel pitch, viewing angles could be an issue or ambient light. So I feel like the more that all the right people can talk early on, it can be beautifully integrated and it can be the right technology and the right content.

That's one of the ways you can reduce the cost, right? Because if you really think about it, then you can use like LED ribbon strips instead of a giant rectangle that you were describing to have the same kind of impact 

Chad Hutson: Yeah, absolutely, and getting creative with almost a sculptural version of a display. I think I know a lot of people in our industry who talked about the beautiful work for the AT&T Discovery District, and there were many groups that touched that, but there is a sculpture that was fashioned after AT&T logo that's in that space, and it's it's also has embedded LED ribbons similar to what you described and yeah, it makes for an interesting experience and that brand touch is subtle. So kudos to that team on creating a pretty cool experience. 

Yeah, it's like a halo sort of tunnel thing. 

Chad Hutson: That's the one! 

Yeah, that is nice. 

With LED rapidly emerging and evolving, is that kind of the main go to thing now for DI when you're thinking about digital or are you still looking at OLED and LCD and other technologies? 

Chad Hutson: Yeah. Direct view LED is in almost every conversation I feel like just because it is a great technology. This is not a slam on the AV industry, because I know technology can only advance as fast as it's able to. The supply chain is an issue, the pandemic was an issue. So I feel like not that tech has stalled. It's not the case at all, but I feel like advancement has slowed a little bit. 

Definitely LED ribbons, direct view LED, some things that we've been playing with more recently, there's it's more of a smaller format now, but I'm sure that the size is growing. Actually I'm certain, I've seen some larger versions of it, but displays like the looking glass factories, the display looks semi holographic. You can use other gesture sensors for that. So that is a more of a one-to-one experience versus a giant shared experience. But I'm excited about that. Even outside of display technology, seeing what is being done with AI and creating visuals, platforms like Dall-E and Mid Journey, where you can simply type in a prompt and boom multiple versions of what the computer thinks is the right image for you, and I think that's also starting to step into video creation as well. It’s mostly static, but I've seen some early images of video. 

I think that talk about being able to have dynamic content. Data visualization is one thing, but constantly having even photo realistic or having what looks to be an artist creation being done on the fly is pretty amazing.

Yeah, my son is heavily into all that stuff and DALL-E and he was just asking me to give him a prompt and I gave him some crazy prompt, like squirrels playing croquet or something, and 30 seconds later, there it was!

Chad Hutson: It's nuts. I'm gonna try that, squirrels playing croquet, wearing pink tutus in a desert and yeah, I bet it'll give me exactly what we want. 

Yeah, and god knows why, but there you go. 

Is the kind of flexibility that we're seeing now with LED important in that you actually have physically flexible modules, but you also have ribbons and you have LED on film, LED embedded in building glass and so on. Do those open up new opportunities? 

Chad Hutson: Absolutely, they do, Dave. If anything, the first question is: can we do it? And we get excited and then it's a matter of pricing and availability and that's sometimes because it is so new or brightness could be a factor, or the glass has already been specked out and it's a matter of could we retrofit it, and it's just not as feasible, but now that we know those technologies are available at least for future endeavors, we are absolutely thinking about that as often as we can. Maybe it's a little bit of a gear list, but also it could be the right solution for a space.

Clients sometimes say at least, from a large scale perspective, we don't want anything that's going to obstruct views or have something where you can see wires or pieces or parts of the technology, and sometimes that's unavoidable, but I think if we can have the slimmer format of some of these ribbons or the embedded LED into glass, that solves some of that. So we're really excited about the future of those. 

Is there a particular lesson that you've learned through the years that you apply to a lot of work now? 

Chad Hutson: Honestly, if we're talking about an experience that does have a digital component, it is really pretty much what you and I have been harping on a lot in this conversation, which is just bringing the topic of content upfront, before decisions are being made about technology. 

I'm a huge supporter of the AV industry and that beautiful content can't be as inspiring sometimes if it's not on the right kind of display or the right scale either. But I'm thankful for the integrators and other technology folks that I know that always ask the first question of: Yes, you wanna display but why, and what would go on a display and why do you want that, and yes, we're an AV integrator, but you need to have conversations with the architect or your creative agency, whoever it may be, so that's not falling flat because honestly, for, if there's a lesson learned, it's folks in the AV industry. They can be blamed if I spend a million dollars on this giant lobby screen and it doesn't do shit, and that's absolutely not true. If the right content solution is there and the experience that is intended is considered more heavily up front, then everyone looks good in the end. 

Absolutely. All right, Chad, thank you very much for spending some time with me. That was super interesting. 

Chad Hutson: Oh, thanks. It's good to be back on 16:9 and hope to talk again soon.

Telmo Silva, ClicData

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

Integrating data has increasingly climbed the priority list for more ambitious and involved digital signage and digital OOH projects. The big driver for that is how near or real-time data makes what's on-screen automated and triggered, which means more timely, targeted and therefore relevant messaging.

Lots of CMS software companies offer some degree of data integration and on-screen presentation, and we're starting to see some third-party companies that work mainly in digital signage - like Screenfeed - also offering data display toolsets.

We're also now seeing well-established data handling companies making themselves known in this sector, particularly to help make some of the more complicated set-ups both happen and then reliably, and securely, work. ClicData is a software firm based up in the northwest of France, but has clients globally that use its Business Intelligence platform to bring data in from more than 250 sources - into a single, harmonized data warehouse.

I spoke with co-founder and CTO Telmo Silva about Clicdata's roots, how its platform works and how it can be applied in digital signage applications.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

David: Telmo, thank you very much for joining me. Can you tell me what ClicData is all about? 

Telmo Silva: I started ClicData in 2008 as a pharmaceutical-focused data analytics company, and later branched out a little bit into making it a wider-used data analysis, data management and data intelligence tool for all sectors, and hence the name, ClicData from ClicPharma before, and yes, this tool is really the culmination of that learning in the pharmaceutical sector that we thought is applicable to really any sector. 

David: Okay. So if I'm sitting here listening to the beginning of this podcast, some people might be wondering, those in digital signage and the AV sector, might be wondering, okay, why am I listening to this? How does it plug into that sector? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and it's funny, Dave, because an acquaintance of ours asked me, should we do this podcast? And I said, yes, absolutely, because everything generates data and digital advertising is definitely one of the factors. 

You have to know where you're spending your money and what you're requiring and who's looking at things, and one of the first clients we had in the early days was actually a Canadian company out west that had this technology on elevators to take snapshots of peoples and try to recognize their age group and their demographics and as they're playing the videos on the small screen on the elevator, try to figure out what's the retention? Are their eyes moving and moving away from the screen and so forth, and how long do they stay hooked for those short 30-second clips, and things like that? And that was actually my first introduction to digital advertising and a use case for ClicData, a very successful use case, and I was hooked on that. 

I was hooked into that so much that where ClicData is based out, which is France, there's a very large history of retail companies here that spent a lot of money on aisle advertising, and they start using those concepts, not only in terms of video and monitoring but also in terms of monitoring the paths of customers through their stores, optimization of aisles and things like that, where to put the digital signs and advertising and so forth, and all that generates a lot of data that you have to make sense of. And this is really well ClicData comes in, right? Those point solutions with digital advertising are part one, but without actually collecting all these from the different stores, and different locations that start making sense of it, it's just data, right? It does not turn into information until you do something with it and that's really where we come in, in trying to bring as much data from the different systems and different points of information really that a company may have, or a client may have and bring that into something that makes sense, that you can aggregate, that you can slice and dice, and then further down the line, then expose that to your customers, and say, okay, this is what you paid for.

David: So you're aggregating and harmonizing and developing insights around the data as opposed to being a collector of data, right? Like you're not doing any of the computer vision or sensor-based work yourself? 

Telmo Silva: We do not, but we do have all the necessary connections just with the different systems. Unlike potentially other systems that are very well standardized, each vendor of those displays of those collectors may have their own interfaces, APIs and so forth. They may have their own storage formats and as you use the different systems, your challenge is really to understand, how can I connect to this one now, and how can I extract information that I want out of that. And our connectors are actually quite flexible in that sense where we have fixed connectors for some of those systems, but for others, we have generic connectors that you can kind of configure to tap into that data. 

David: Would this be something that might be called middleware?

Telmo Silva: I would say potentially, yes. It depends on your definition of middleware. Ultimately we see business intelligence at least the portion of data analytics and reporting that we offer, as the next step before you feed it back and you go, okay, now I understand the results that I've received here, what improvements are we gonna make? And we start to cycle again, right? 

So again as an example, you may start receiving data from certain videos and start saying, okay, this is the demographics and so forth, can I make some adjustments to my campaigns or to my videos or to the sequence of videos that I'm displaying? Again, I'm going back to that video on the elevator concept and optimising that, so it is part of that loop of data collection, data analysis, making decisions based on that data, and then feeding that back into the loop again.

David: When you started the company accessing data from all kinds of different data sources was very complicated and time-consuming, and you had to get all kinds of permissions and all kinds of meetings and phone calls and everything else to work it out. 

One of the things that I gather has changed over the last decade or so is that most platforms now have APIs, it's easier to get stuff out of them, and so on. So has your role lessened, or has it increased because they're always changing and there are so many and if you're an independent company, like a digital signage company, a software company, you have to stay on top of that, or you would use a company like ClicData that's spending all their time doing that and making it easy?  

Telmo Silva: To answer your first question, it has actually increased, right? Whereas before we would ask a vendor whether that be Facebook or Google and say, our mutual customers have data on your advertising network, right? And again this kind of can expand to any type of data vendor or data collector that we may tap into and before they would basically know it's our data, and the consumers of course start reacting against that, right? Today, If you do not have an API, if all you do is get my data into your system, but not give me anything back in return, then I don't want anything to do with you.

And we've seen backlashes at times with Facebook, Cambridge Analytics and things like that, where those types of sharing are also kinda gone another way rather, but nonetheless, today, if you do not have an API, then you're a second-class citizen on the internet and on the software technology stack. So that is great but an API is still an API. It is a programming interface and it does require some knowledge and it's not a standard. Just because we call it an API does not mean that they'll follow the same standard, it's very well organized, and it’s very well understood. So every API has its nuances, its little quirks and its own way of paging through the amounts of data that it can offer.

And so our role has actually increased due to that, because again, as I was mentioning before our connectors know how to deal with those different variations and those different formats and schemas that the data may be provided with. So in that sense, it's actually increased the need to have a tool, like ClicData, to be able to tap into those APIs and bring it into a format that is easily digestible by any analytics tool, including our own tool.

David: How much is involved, if you wanted to do this yourself and let's say you wanted to Integrate information from four different business system sources or whatever, within your company? Is that something that would take a morning, a month, or a year to do if they weren't using something like ClicData?

Telmo Silva: If they were not using something like ClicData, they obviously need somebody technical, but it would take an extensive amount of time for development, and again, large companies still do that, where they write custom interfaces to bring the data and amalgamate them into one single source of truth. This is where millions of dollars are being spent on data warehousing projects and business intelligence implementations and so forth. So not having a tool like ours definitely would require a good technical team, and again, depending on the sources, potentially database analysts, database experts, SQL developers, API developers, whether they do it in Java or Python or what have you.

And then bringing all that into a data warehouse will definitely take more than just a few days. In my previous life, prior to creating ClicData, that was my bread and butter, and these projects would go on for 3-6 months. With ClicData, if we have the connector that you need or if you can configure your API connector and you have a basic understanding of APIs, you should be able to do that within a day, to connect three or four data sources and start seeing the data flow through into ClicData. 

David: So on a project launch basis and certainly on an ongoing operating basis, it sounds like if you're running a spreadsheet model on this and a business argument, it would take a huge amount of cost out of the equation and time, and these are people you don't need to hire? 

Telmo Silva: It goes on to just beyond hiring and the people behind it, because, having somebody who can accompany you if you're not an expert or in the technical side, then it may be worth it. But the bottom line is the continuity of it as well. It's okay to build a prototype. It works once but the next day, you don't want to have to do the same thing, right? You don't want to have to copy and paste the data into Excel or out of Excel again and repeat and so forth.

And also, technology is what it is, business evolves as it is, and so you always need these adjustments. It is an investment that you have to make towards being data-centric, being data-focused and to say, I want to build these systems that collect the data on an ongoing basis that I can automate the reporting that can save you time as well in reporting these numbers back to your team or your clients or your management team and all this combines into the ROI that you're looking for, and yes, there is a technical side of it as well that there will be savings, whether it's in consulting or in minimizing, at least the number of times that you involve them, to gain access to your data. 

David: If I'm a customer, what am I buying and how am I paying for it? Do you buy an enterprise license or is it software as a service? 

Telmo Silva: It is totally software as a service. We do not offer any on-premise installations of software, and this is because we want to be rapid at giving new features, new connectors. Connectors continuously change, and there's new software in the market and we wanna be rapid in making those available. So software as a service is really our model, and what you get when you subscribe to when you get one of these subscriptions, which is monthly or yearly based, is you get basically all the connectors. You get a data warehouse, a database available to you through Microsoft Azure, that's our partner, and you can have your data stored in over eight different regions around the world: US, Ireland, Canada, Germany, France, and a few others, and once you have that data warehouse, that’s your piece of the database there, the data starts flowing through the connectors. Once that is in your data warehouse, then from there you can actually build downstream flows, you can tap into it directly with Excel if you want, or you can use our dashboard tool to start creating dashboards and graphs and charts and tables indicators. 

You can share those dashboards with other people. You can publish them to your customers, et cetera, and then you can just automate these things so that it just does that every day or every morning or every hour.

David: Is that the primary output that you would see for digital signage and digital out-of-home home networks, probably more so on the digital signage side, would be data visualizations and dashboards? 

Telmo Silva: I think that would potentially be one of the use cases, analyzing the data that's coming through and making decisions based on those as normal reporting and analytics data tools would. The other part of it and some customers of ClicData do this is they just use the collection capabilities of ClicData and the data warehouse to store their data, but then they feed that into other tools of their choice, tools that potentially they wanna do some more advanced machine learning on the data, maybe they want to write their own special code to analyze it, or maybe simply feed another system that requires this data to consume it and so forth.

ClicData is really a multifaceted tool that can be either used just for collection and aggregation of the data or all the way through to data visualization and analytics. 

David: Okay, so you would have almost like templates or widgets of some kind that would be able to do develop dynamic charting and things like this based on what you select?

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, much like you would do on a pivot table in Excel, to drag and drop some columns, and the chart starts taking shape with columns, rows and so forth. That's exactly our design, it's very user-friendly as much as we can, we do have a lot of options for styling because not everybody likes the same styles and colors, but in essence, it's very much an Excel-like data visualization tool built into ClicData.

David: If I'm a digital signage CMS software provider and I'm working with, let's say a financial services company and they wanted data visualization, if I wanna put that visualized chart into a schedule, so it shows up on the digital signs around the workplace. Is that an HTML file or how do you get that up on a screen?

Telmo Silva: If you want to embed our dashboards into third-party applications, into screens, we have quite a few customers that have screens around the office, we have a railroad train station system that actually publishes our dashboards on every single station and stops with the schedules and things like that, and their performance, so are they late, etc. 

So you can definitely embed that, and it's just simply a URL. You put that inside an iFrame, inside your web page, and the iframe immediately refreshes if the data has been refreshed, so you don't have to do anything, you just have to open it up in a browser, maximize the screen and boom, your dashboard is live and will refresh automatically. 

David: Aare there any kind of limitations on how real-time it is or is it just how you wanna set it and how it works at the other end, in terms of data generation? 

Telmo Silva: Our schedules have the ability to go on a minute basis to your data sources and pull the data in, however you can use our API, because we too have an API, to push data in, and in that case, the push is up to you. If you wanna send it once per second, you can. These will not be full data loads. These have to be small packets, a few rows, a few hundred rows at a time, potentially. 

But you can use our API to bring in real-time data, and again, the same concept, whether we pulled it or you pushed it, everything downstream gets refreshed and gets activated for you.

David: I suspect that's a conversation that you and your sales engineers have at times with resellers and end users, “Sure we could do real-time, but for the application you're talking about, do you really need that, or is every minute or every five minutes fine?” 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, and this is why we stopped our schedule at one minute. Again, you have to be really in a high traffic, high volume situation, and to be able to make a decision in real-time, and that's ultimately the key, right? It really is up to you and there's the cost associated with you developing a push notification to other systems as well.

So it really is up to the customers, but yeah, in some sectors there are times that some folks ask for real-time when in fact, their data doesn't change on a daily basis. Case in point, Facebook, they themselves only refresh their own metrics or expose their own metrics on a much larger time scale. So for us to do real-time with certain systems and certain data sources is just refreshing and using bandwidth for nothing. 

David: Do you have to make statements and assurances around privacy of the data or that's not really your issue, whoever's collecting that data or you're gathering that data is the one that's gonna have to worry about that, you're just enabling the use of that data? 

Telmo Silva: Even though obviously data privacy and respecting the customer's data is our number one thing, we do have a role to play. If we're talking in Europe, GDPR is a huge thing. Every country has their own protection laws and privacy protection, like the California Data Protection Act. Every country and state and province has their own or has started some type of laws and regulations.  Us being a European company, but with customers in North America, we have to be very careful. This is why we're almost the only ones that actually are able to start your data warehouse in any country that you wish in those eight regions that we've mentioned, and that's step number one, but we are a data processor for you. We don't know what your data is, but we are processing your data for you. It's our application, and we are responsible to make sure that there's no external access to it, that if there are court orders, we have to make sure we validate and check them with our customers and so forth. 

Luckily that has never happened, but we don't know what your data is. So we are not able to be really responsible for it, but that's part of our terms of service. If you put data that you are not entitled to use or process if you put data that is not legal for you to own, that's the responsibility of our customers, but obviously, we would have a role to play in that in this GDPR system where we are responsible to at least point out or give it out if asked legally, obviously. 

David: I assume you get a lot of questions around security as well.

Telmo Silva: Oh, absolutely, and again, this is why we partner with Microsoft Azure. Our expertise is really making the software intelligent, and easy to use, that it processes fast, that we can process thousands and thousands of files and sources and dashboards a day, an hour really, and not really on the physical and digital security of these data warehouses and systems. And this is why we rely on Microsoft Azure severely. We have a strong SLA with them to protect our property and our customer's property, their data. 

David: I know almost nothing about the technical side of what your company and others like it would do, but I assume that a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of security is on the Azure side and you take advantage of that and you let them worry about that, but, make sure that you're working according to their policies, right? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely, but it also takes our knowledge to encrypt the data and to make sure that their configuration is set up correctly. I think that is the positive and negative of cloud-based systems, like Google, Amazon and Microsoft. It's so easy these days to just start a server anywhere and start putting data into it. It's much harder to make sure that nobody else has access to it and to make sure that it's protected and so forth. And even within Microsoft, there are some checks and balances there as well. We can’t say, just because it's Microsoft's or Amazon or Google that takes care of your data, we're pawning it off on them, and if something happens, let's go to court.

That's not how it should be handled. There has to be some responsibility on the people using those systems, and how we code the application, and to make sure all the settings are set up correctly. So it is a team effort between the vendors and us, and also our customers to make sure that they're comfortable with the fact that we are ISO certified, SOC certified HIPAA compliant, et cetera. This is time and an investment on our part to make sure that they should not be just for the sake of having a stamp, on your website saying, “We are ISO certified” and that's it. It does take effort from both companies and all parties involved to make sure that the data is secure and private. 

David: So Microsoft is a major business partner, but they're also a competitor, through Power BI?

Telmo Silva: That is correct. Power BI, their visualization tool is a competitor to our data visualization module, not necessarily to the whole ClicData platform, and they do an excellent job at it as well. 

David: But I assume your company has its share of competitors, right?

Telmo Silva: I believe there's data visualization for every type of business in the world. Power BI, Tableau, ClickView. I don't wanna name more than three, but there are at least three hundred of them, and let's not even go beyond those, let's just talk about Excel, there’s some amazing visualization in Excel and it has been around for years. So there's a lot of great experience, but again, these are tools and they are distinct separate tools, and if you have to load up Excel or Power BI or whatever every day to hit refresh, and then export it out and think about security and access, then that's the downside of these tools. They do a great job for that initial data investigation but are terrible for the ongoing maintenance of it. 

So what we say is, whereas we may not be as advanced as some of those tools, potentially. If you're trying to do something very specific that only Power BI can do, maybe we cannot do it. The upside of using our tool is that you don't have to do anything else. The data is there as soon as it's refreshed, the dashboards know that the data is refreshed, it immediately sends emails out to the people that are on the list for receiving this dashboard, and they get it on their mobile app. They get an alert, whatever, right? It's all automated for you. 

So if you want to spend less time wasting copying and pasting and using Excel and these tools, then, these are the types of platforms that you need to look for. 

David: I assume the other thing is that you stay on top of it because APIs change and data sets change and everything else and if you just had it developed yourself internally or if you outsourced the development, a month later, the schemas and things could change and all of a sudden it doesn't work, right? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely. We see that with the big players obviously, Google, Instagram, Facebook, and others are constantly improving their APIs. Security keeps changing around the world. We're phasing out certain types of security, TLS 1, TLS 2, et cetera, and APIs need the security, they need to be compatible with it. So this is really where most of our customers get their benefits is to say, okay, ClicData is taking care of all that for you, and then make sure that the data keeps coming in, and flowing into your data warehouse. 

David: So if I'm a digital signage content management systems software provider, or Perhaps an AV/IT systems integrator who has an ask from clients or wants to incorporate this into their service offers, what's involved?

What are the first questions you have to ask them? Do you support this, do you support that, or are there any really real barriers? 

Telmo Silva: We start by looking at their data sources, right? If we can't bring the data, if they're using a very specific format of a very specific system that we cannot gain access to, typically very old ones then we're upfront about it. We say that you're not gonna get this data in, and you're not gonna be able to report it.

David: It's on a mainframe system or something?

Telmo Silva: Mainframe, believe it or not, we can connect to it. It is important for us and believe it or not, there are still a lot of customers, especially in the retail sector that does mainframe, IBM series of servers, those things that we thought don't exist. They exist and they exist in quite a lot of companies. So we still support those. But sometimes it's just very cryptic or the format. I cannot give you an example off the top of my head but we have this, as I mentioned before, a very robust kind of API connecting connector that takes a lot of options, and most of the time we can configure it to fit.

But yeah, if you're a provider of data that pretty much says: I'm not giving you access. I can only give you monthly reports or something like that. Yeah, you can import those reports monthly by hand. Is that something that you really wanna do, et cetera? So we discuss alternate solutions like that.

But yeah, that would be the first step. The second step is what are their objectives? Are they looking for visualization and embedding these dashboards and putting them back to their customer in a self-service mode so they can monitor the success of their campaigns, their ads network, et cetera? Or is this internal use for analytics and so forth? So we discuss those items to make sure that ClicData is the right solution for them, and if all checks out, I think then the next step is just to get a trial account for 15 days and connect a couple of data sources, see what you can build. We have an in-app chat tool that allows them to ask questions as they go along during their trials. Ask your questions, ask how you can do things and get that first initial prototype, and that's a big advantage of being a SaaS product, there's no installation, you lose nothing, right? You don't have to install or return servers. You just get started, start connecting your data and start playing around with your data and start visualizing and prototyping within your team, get success quickly, get motivated quickly as well. That's a big part of it, and from there, you just start your subscription level.

David: What level of skill do you need? 

Telmo Silva: To do complex things, you definitely need some SQL sometimes, some function programming, as you do with Excel, we are all different experts in Excel. There are those of us that use Excel just to type in numbers and your basic drag and drop, and that's it. And then there's those that know to do Lookups and they know a few more functions and then there's those that do Macros in Excel, right? There are different skills, and with us, it's the same thing. It really depends on what you need to do and how much your data needs work. So we have our own kind of Excel-like language that they can use, very similar to SQL as well. They can do a lot of things with the data. 

We needed to make ClicData very powerful, and very flexible to ensure that we will not be stumped by a specific need or a specific customer request. But at the surface, we also try to make it easy with a strong UI to write those hard-to-write functions behind the scenes through an interface that is a little bit easier to use.

David: So at a minimum, you want somebody who has an interest or a knack for this sort of thing, as opposed to Margaret in Sales and Marketing saying, “Here, you do this!” and she gets the deer and the headlights look? 

Telmo Silva: Absolutely. Now you can, if you have, and some customers of ours do this and they split the work of connecting and making the data available versus consuming the data, right? 

You have your technical person, the person that knows the data very well to create these kinds of slices and catalogues of data and make them available to the rest of the team, and the team then goes in, either with our dashboard editor or report editor, and does their own dashboards and their own kind of visualizations or with other tools as well. So there are also those splitting of functions that sometimes are important to put in place into a company.

David: ClicData is in Northwest France based in Lille, correct? 

Telmo Silva: Yeah, we have three major offices. That is our head office, the engineering office in the north of France. We have one in Toronto, Canada, and we have one in Texas so we're all over the place a little bit.

David: So Europeans are gonna engage through your European offices and Canadians and Americans can find a couple of offices on this side of the pond? 

Telmo Silva: That's correct. 

David: Where do they find you online?

Telmo Silva: ClicData.com 

David: It's important to say there's no “k” in the click. Somebody got to it before you could get the one with the “k”? 

Telmo Silva: I believe so, or maybe at that point in time, we wanted to make it very even with four and four, Clic and Data, I'm not sure.

David: Oh, they'll find it. Thank you very much for spending some time with me. 

Telmo Silva: Thank you for having me.

Tom Goddard, World Out Of Home Organization (WOO)

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

The World Out Of Home Organization has been around for decades, but under a French acronym that didn't mean a lot to much of the world. The non-profit changed its name from FEPE International to its new handle a few years ago, and has never looked back.

It now has members from all over the globe - with outdoor advertising companies of all sizes and stripes signing on to benefit from lobbying, networking, policy discussions, standardization, research and education.

The organization also does a heavily attended global conference each year, as well as at least a couple of regional versions in APAC and the Middle East.

I had a great chat with out of home media veteran Tom Goddard, a London-based Irishman who gives his time and experience as the organization's President and Executive Chairman.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Tom, thank you for joining me. Where are you today? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, nice to be here, David. I'm in sunny London. We're having a Mediterranean type of summer, which is a hit and miss here, but we're having a lovely summer at the moment and I'm right in Hyde Park, so I'm looking into the park and all the joggers. So it's a lovely spot, it's about 28 degrees, so pretty cool. 

Hopefully you have air conditioning! 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, but I hate using it. I've had to use it a bit lately, but yes, I do. 

So you are the head of the World Out of Home Organization? Can you give me the background on yourself and what that organization is all about?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, of course, David. For my sins, I'm President of the World Out of Home Organization, it's an honorary reposition and the World Out of Home Organization is a not-for-profit body and its purpose is the same now as it was when it was set up 63 years ago. It's really to drive sector growth. 

When the organization was set up in 1959 by Jacques Dauphin who was one of the pioneers of French outdoor media alongside JCDecaux, it was originally called FEPE which is short in French for  Federation European Publicite Exterieur, and in later years, it expanded outside that footprint and became a truly global organization. So in 2018, we decided to rebrand as the World Out of Home Organization, which we launched the following year at our Dubai Congress, which happened just before the pandemic, and so we're now the World Out of Home Organization, but we are 63 years old. 

Yeah, I have known a few people who would make reference to FEPE all the time, like Sheldon Silverman when I was in meetings with him, and I didn't know what he was going on about, but when the name was changed, I was like, “Oh, now I get it!” It’s a more universal name.

Tom Goddard: Yeah. It's very plain and it says what it does. 

With regards to your background, are you a media owner guy or an agency guy or something else?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, I'm a media owner guy. I come from the media owner side and I've had a long career on the media owner side, all the way from a small company started in Ireland to running the International division of CBS Outdoors, as it was then called. More recently I was the chairman of Ocean Outdoor in the UK, which is one of the leading digital out-of-home companies in the premium sector.

Are you still active, or are you still working? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, I'm still pretty active. I just stepped down from Ocean, just about a year and a half ago, but but I have also got a business called, Out of Home Capital, which I've set up with with eight other very experienced out-of-home professionals, and it's a global advisory business that helps all sectors of the out-of-home ecosystem to achieve their strategic plans. So I'm busy with that alongside my active work in the World Out of Home Organization. 

Out of Home Capital, is that also a funding entity or purely advisory?

Tom Goddard: It's mainly advisory, but we do have access to capital sources, and we do advise, for example, out-of-home media owners who are perhaps getting ready for a sale or getting ready for an IPO, we do advise them on how to go about preparing for that and also we have sources that we can recommend in terms of of capital investment.

Is that a going concern that keeps you busy or is it one of those things that's a little little bit of peaks and valleys, where a project comes up and you're all busy and then there's not much going on and you can relax and then something else comes up.?

Tom Goddard: We set it up a couple of years ago and within two weeks we had our first project, which was a New York Bank making an investment, needing a due diligence report, and since then we've been steadily busy, including working for a large private equity operator who were examining the potential sale of Clear Channel’s European assets, and we have three European city projects at the moment where we're advising European cities on their out-of-home strategy and on their smart city strategy. 

So it's really getting traction now, David, and when we set it up, we wondered how it would go, but everybody seems to tell us that there was a gap in the market, there was a need for this global advisory business and that seems to be the case. 

I did a lot of consulting for a bunch of years now. Now, I'm just focused on Sixteen:Nine, but I would get emails and phone calls from people asking about whether I could do advisory on digital out-of-home and I would just flat out tell them that there are other people out there who know a hell of a lot more about that particular side of the business than I do, and I would point them that way, because it's just not my thing. 

And we’ll talk about it later, but I’m eternally confused by the whole programmatic business. I understand it at a macro level, but boy, it's complicated. 

Tom Goddard: Absolutely, but if you get any more referrals, just send them my way.

But interestingly there are not a lot of advisory units out there who really have the depth of experience needed. For example, we're just in the process of advising a large Asian media player who wants to get a tall hold in Times Square in New York, so you can get things like that along with major retailers who are looking to maximize their digital assets in their supermall.

So there aren't many companies that have the ability to assess the audience value and also know about the aesthetics and the environment. 

So how global is the World Out of Home Organization at this point, are you covering every continent and how many members do you have?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, it's really taken off in the last few years, particularly since we rebranded, David, it's amazing what that has done, but we now have over 150 members worldwide. That's mainly large out-of-home media owners like Lamar, OUTFRONT in the US, and then JCDecaux in Europe, Out of Home media in Australia, Phoenix Metropolitan in China, and we also have lots of national out-of-home trade bodies, like the OAAA in the US and FAW in Germany, Outsmart in the UK and the Outdoor Trade Association in Japan. 

The other good thing about our organization is we also admit service providers in the out-of-home sector like Daktronics and BroadSign in the US are members and most of the ad tech providers like View and Hivestack and Vista are members, and of course all the major BD buying agencies as well, Kinetic Talent and Rapport. So we totally embraced the entire 37 billion out-of-home ecosystem. 

So if you want to be a member or you're considering being a member, it's not really the case where you go, do I join World Out of Home, or do OAAA or whatever, you can be a member of all of them, and it's not a conflict, and you're not choosing sides? 

Tom Goddard: No, in fact the World Out of Home Organization is an international global body whereas the trade associations like Outsmart in the UK and the OAAA in the US are mainly national associations, and what we do is we connect with them and help to amplify the work they're doing and also help them to develop standards and best practices. So it's an entirely complimentary thing that you would join. 

And also you would join it to be a part of a sort of a sharing and learning platform and to get access to our extensive database and active networking forum, and of course you get favorable discount rates to all our events. Somebody said to me recently that our annual Congress is really now a must attend event. 

Is that the big thing, the resources and the conferences and so on? Are those kinds of the main motivators for joining? 

Tom Goddard: They used to be, David. We used to very heavily rely on our annual Congress which is highly attended by the senior people in out-of-home. But we are now doing our annual event, we had one recently in Toronto and next year's is in Lisbon in June, but we're doing two fairly major regional events. We've got one coming up actually in October in Southeast Asia for APAC and that's based in Kuala Lumpur, and we've got one coming up in February in Dubai covering the MENA region. 

So the events are a big attraction, but there's a lot more to the organization now, including monthly global Zoom calls with members, webinars and lots of other stuff that's going on throughout the year.  

Is it a case where you have media companies, particularly those who cover multiple companies competing in many respects, but this is a forum where they can collaborate and share ideas and the competition goes away for at least a little bit? 

Tom Goddard: That's a very astute question, David, and that's the tightrope all trade associations walk and what we do is we try to focus as hard as possible on sector growth and all the things that contribute to sector growth. And what you get is fierce competition locally at national level, between out-of-home media operators, both at the media owner and the media agency level. But there are lots of areas where it makes sense to collaborate and cooperate at association level to drive the sector because there is hard evidence now that a 1% sector growth is five times more valuable to your bottom line than a 1% growth within the silo.

So when you talk about the sector, are you talking at a macro level about out-of-home or digital out-of-home? 

Tom Goddard: I'm talking about out-of-home at a macro level, and don't forget that, 63% of global revenues still come through the classic out-of-home channel or static, as I think you call it in the US, but that is obviously tipping year by year in favor of digital.

Some markets are at 80% digital and other markets are a lot less than that. I never foresee a situation where the market will be all digital. But I think the majority will be digital, but there will still be great work to be done with classic billboards, doing directional work for the likes of McDonald's and other big retail operators. 

Yeah, there's any number of instances where I've seen digital in play and thought that wasn't necessary, it was almost like they did it because it's digital, that makes it shinier and newer and more attractive and a poster, a printed stock would've been just fine. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah. I guess because of the capital investment required, out-of-home media owners are pretty cany when it comes to the ones that need to be digitized. It's usually a very high value site. Sean Reilly at Lamar has a statistic that shows something like 4% of his inventory produced 27% of his revenues. Forgive me if I haven't got the numbers right, but we are moving into an era now where less is more. So I think you'll see a rationalization of out-of-home inventory around the world, but it will be higher value and more digital.

Yeah, I'm curious if your organization has a role in mentoring a lot of the startups that come along? These are the companies that want to put screens on everything, I just wrote last week about a company in London that's putting them on delivery scooters, and I tend to roll my eyes on a lot of these new kinds of efforts, but I thought that one was actually pretty spot on given the way London works and everything else, but there are so many dreamers out there that think they can put a screen anywhere and it's the road to riches route for them. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, as we would say in Ireland, David, “God bless them!”

We would say, “Fill your boots!”

Tom Goddard: The simple fact is you put multiple screens where there is a huge audience, and on the back of delivery bikers is not exactly the place to get a return on that investment. But I think that there's always gonna be left field entrepreneurs coming into the industry. 

Where you see the big changes is with the high value sites around the world, and of course, lots of advertisers are cleverly using trophies or marquee digital sites on their social media as well. Most people who buy space in Times Square or Piccadilly Circus in London get wonderfully extended coverage and amplification on social media. So I think, in terms of dynamic content, in terms of the fact that involving memory and encoding digital motion really scores very high in those areas. 

So is that part of the reason why you're seeing like lights, particularly in Asia, you're seeing a lot of these, anamorphic collusion types of creative that they are hoping will also get picked in social media and so on, so it's extending the reach?

Tom Goddard: Absolutely, David, this is a really very exciting new innovation and Ocean calls it deep screen, and there are various sorts of versions of it.

What we're finding, which is very exciting in our sector is that there's two levels of creativity, the traditional great ideas that the great creatives come up with as well, and then there's the great creative technical applications, and what you've just described, that is a great example of the attention getting the ability of these deep screen ads and they just go viral on social media. 

Yeah, I've found that there's only been a few campaigns that have somehow rather threaded the needle between really interesting visuals but actually an effective ad. There have been ones where I'm trying to figure out okay, who is even the brand for this, but once in a while you see the ones where they've managed to achieve both.

Tom Goddard: Yeah, the people who invest in these types of locations also use them as part of their annual reports in their own collateral material, they use them in their websites. They get tremendous mileage out of them. 

Most of the great creative directors of our times always say, if you can get it right  on a poster, on an outdoor ad, you get it right on all media, that's as true today as it ever was. 

Because it's short and sweet and to the point, right?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you've gotta get the message across swiftly and you've gotta be entertaining. 

Yeah, I try to emphasize in my past life with consulting clients, that this is not a storytelling medium, it's a glance medium. You've gotta get your message across really quickly and somehow resonate with them. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you're dead right. 

One of the challenges through the years, particularly in the early years of digital out-of-home was getting acceptance from media planners and buyers, that they would understand the medium, that the level of measurement was good enough to mirror what was happening online and elsewhere, and it wasn't just guesswork about audiences. Is that a hurdle that's now being cleared? 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, very much, and of course the research is very robust now, in terms of the work that digital out-of-home does. 

At a broader level, David, we are now in a global media market that's all about screens, and of all the legacy media, out-of-home has converged best with the digital era, and is regarded really as text friends, so I think we now are an integral part of the digital screen world and there's a terrific amount of research to back that up.

We recently spent a year updating and distributing the audience measurement guidelines, because it didn't include digital in the previous version, and it now fully includes the digital part of our medium, so we're well covered there. 

Is it possible to have global standards or is there just too many differences region to region or even country by country?

Tom Goddard: No, it absolutely is possible to have global standards, and that document, which is a 100+ page document put together by Neil Eddleston and Gideon Adey, two of the accepted global gurus on audience measurement, that has received tremendous endorsement from organizations who are all consulted in the process. 

You can have a model that fits most markets that is adjustable for the physical state of the local market and the level of maturity in that market. But yes, the important thing is to try and have an accepted level of research across all the markets so that the CMOs are talking the same language when they're buying out-of-home.

I know you're not a hardcore technology guy, but I have to ask about LED just from the lens of LED has opened up the opportunity to get beyond standardized billboard shapes and standardized kinds of locations, so you're now seeing the sides of entire buildings, including the Burj in Dubai being lined with LE  lighting that at a great distance can look like an ad.

Are we heading to a time where it's going to be like a few of the movies out there, like Children of Men or Blade Runner, where there are billboards on the sides of buildings and blimps and everything else? 

Tom Goddard: I think we're there now, David, certainly in China. If you go to Shanghai, it will blow your mind, and what's great is that there was a time when out-of-home media owners didn't have the greatest relationship with municipalities in cities, but cities now and out-of-home media owners are working collaboratively to integrate great digital treatments in the fabric of the cities and to connect with the smart city technology.

I think most mayors in the world now would regard large format, digital media and small format, on street furniture units to make a statement that this is a progressive city, this is a city that's moving fast in the digital age, so I think we're there. I think you can do nonstandard formats, particularly on super premium, as we see, and even now, we see some incredible treatments, with groups of drones being brought in for special occasions, so digital out-of-home is really, as I said, of all the legacy media, it has embraced technology best, and I think is really well equipped. Because when we started this organization, when our forebears started this organization, it was for the same reason which was to drive sector growth. But then, the big tech guys came in with television and later color television and now out-of-home is competing against the tech giants that are preeminent in digital marketing and in digital media. 

So we have to move along with that, and that's what we're doing, and this is why digital out-of-home is the second fastest growth medium in all of media . 

Is it part of your organization's charge to demystify or simplify some of the enabling technology, because I'm somebody who's been involved in the industry at various levels for more than 20 years and I struggle mightily to understand everything going on with programmatic, and if I'm having trouble, I suspect a lot of other people are. 

Tom Goddard: Yeah, you’re dead right. I've been banging on about this at various conferences. I think what we have is that programmatic is really simply computer-to-computer trading between SSPs (supply side platforms) and DSPs (demand side platforms) and it's gotten a bit complicated in out-of-home because we've added multiple layers on top of that, such as data stacks, real-time bidding capability, dynamic content, etc, and all these additions are meant to enhance the process and make it even more targeted and precise, but you're right, they also increase the complexity as well. 

We often have programmatic panels at our conferences and I appeal to the panelists to speak English and stop talking in all their tech language and we are getting better, but I would have to admit, David, I think it's unnecessarily complicated, or we make it unnecessary complicated, and certainly that's something we need to work on.

Yeah, I wonder if some of it simply has to do with all the different vendors, almost inventing terms so that they can differentiate themselves from a bunch of other companies that are doing roughly the same thing? 

Tom Goddard: Yes,. I think this gets back to my overriding point: our real competitors are not the other outdoor companies, our real competitor is at sector-level. So the more standards we have, the less complicated it is for media planners and CMOs to look at the medium and buy the medium, the faster the sector will grow. 

You and I are absolutely aligned on that, and it's something that we work on constantly. 

In terms of the overall organization, if you had to identify what your main sort of challenge or thing that you wanna accomplish in the next couple of years, what would that be?

Tom Goddard: Yeah, fortunately, David, in out-of-home, there are way more opportunities than challenges at the moment, but the ones that are in my mind that need more attention are audience measurement and sustainability.

We still have huge deserts, huge markets, and regions around the world that either lack or have suboptimal audience measurement systems, such as China, India, Southeast Asia, Latin America, and again, getting back to my point that if we can all get up to speed in terms of industry standard and languages, you know, I was down at the WFA, the world Federation of Advertisers Congress in Athens a couple of months ago, and listening to the brilliant CMOs talking on the platform there, and they look at things globally and they move around a lot, so it's very important for us to get all those markets that don't have audience measured, and we're introducing ourselves an initiative following our 100+ page guideline book called “Measure the World” to encourage those markets, to put the investment in through their national associations.

And then of course, the second thing is sustainability, which is a big challenge for every company and every citizen. 

Yes, and I guess the other one that is steadily coming up is security and network security and locking down your billboards and your digital posters. 

Tom Goddard: How do you mean? 

In terms of not getting hacked!

Tom Goddard: To be honest with you, David, it's a very rare occurrence, but it does get a lot of publicity when it happens and it's usually from a novelty point of view. I saw something a couple of days ago that was rather amusing, but it's very rare and our security levels are very high and that's why it's very rare. So I don't see that as an issue. 

Yeah, I think the mainstream media companies certainly understand it. It's the smaller kind of entrepreneurial operators who are trying to cut corners and then they discover, “oh, we shouldn't have cut that corner.” 

Tom Goddard: That's right. 

So if I'm an organization that is listening to this and thinking, I wanna know more, I perhaps want to join the World Out of Home Organization. How do they find you? 

Tom Goddard: As I said, the World Out of Home Organization is a not-for-profit organization. Our board of directors, which is like a who's who from the out-of-home media owners association, all give their time voluntarily to the organization. Its only function is to improve and promote out-of-home globally, and to drive sector growth. 

The membership fees are pretty nominal and the value that you get from the association makes it a no brainer. So you just log on to our website and there's a place there where you fill out the application form and join, and we are enjoying a very steady growth of new members at the moment. But it's not just about getting membership fees to cover the basic cost of running the organization, it's about learning and sharing, and everybody, as I said in Toronto, at the Congress, whether you are big or small and you have a story to tell, we do a weekly newsletter and everybody has a chance to tell their story in that.

So from my point of view, but of course I would say this anyway, David, it's a no brainer to join the World Out of Home Organization. You are doing only good. 

It's worldooh.org, correct? 

Tom Goddard: Correct! 

All right, that was terrific. Thank you for spending some time with me.

Tom Goddard: It was a great pleasure and I hope this nice weather continues, and let’s chat again sometime to see how much progress we've made.

Absolutely.

Thomas Philippart de Foy, Appspace

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

Appspace has now been active in this industry for 20 years, and through much of that time the software company was one of the larger players in a crowd of companies all chasing the general business opportunity of digital signage. But in the last few years the company has pivoted, in a big way, to the well-defined vertical of workplace. The company now describes itself as a workplace experience platform for both physical and digital workplaces. Digital signage is still a main component of what Appspace does, but just one of several in a unified platform.

I caught up with Thomas Philippart de Foy, who has been with Appspace for a decade and is now the EVP of Product Innovation. In our chat, we get into what took Appspace down the workplace path, and then how it all works within an organization.

The company has a PILE of users and says its software is in place at roughly 200 of the companies listed in the Fortune 500. But it also offers free accounts to smaller users, drafting off the well-used concept of freemium software - allowing people to try before they buy.

If you are looking at workplace - either as a vendor or as an HR, IT or ops person, listen and learn.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Thomas, thank you for joining me. You've been with Appspace for a very long time, right? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Just celebrating 10 years in September! 

Oh, okay, and we first met a number of years ago in Dubai, but then you moved to Costa Rica, which was a bit of a pivot, but now you're in Belgium for a holiday, right?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. I relocated to Costa Rica to get closer to the US time zone while still enjoying tropical weather.

You don't get tropical weather in Antwerp or wherever you're in Belgium? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Rarely, once a year in the summer, there's a good day, and then the rest is rainy. 

And you don't like that? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Once a year, maybe. 

So Appspace, that's a company that's been around for a very long time. When I first got to know Appspace, it was very much a general digital signage CMS platform, you know, “What are you doing? We can help you out!” And you were, at that time I believe, working pretty closely with Cisco, but in the last few years you could, you very much seem to have become a company that's all about workplace experience and digital signage is one of your outputs as opposed to being a pure digital signage company. 

Is that a fair assessment? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Absolutely. We're celebrating our 20 years anniversary this month, so such a big milestone, and the firs 15-16 years was really building a cloud-based CMS for digital signage. We had some mission statements. We wanted to be hardware agnostic, OS agnostic. We wanted to be cloud first, and then a few years back, we started expanding our offering and went into the room scheduling worlds, where a lot of other companies were playing, and just added that as a feature.

Then just two years ago, Summer 2020, one of our biggest customers on the West Coast came over to us and said, “Hey, we're looking to return to the office after the pandemic. We need help in providing our users with an app that would allow them to reserve workspaces, comply with security policies and so forth.” And we decided to get onto that journey and build a product, and six months later we launched. So January 2021 and 30 days later, we signed one of the biggest tech companies as a customer, and from there it's been quite a ride. 

Did the company go towards workplace because it looked like an opportune vertical to be in, or was it what the customers who you touching or asking for and it pulled you that way?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, in the last 10 years, I spent a lot of time meeting with customers and trying to understand their challenges and see where Appspace could help them. In this scenario, the customer came over and they had a real challenge, which we saw many other companies would have, and there was really no one in the market that had an answer for it two years ago. So we thought that's an opportunity in which we could really put some focus, leverage our existing enterprise grade platform, cloud-first experience and credibility in our large enterprise customer base to just go and expand the use case. 

Really, we also see that there is a correlation happening with workplace communication and workplace management. It's not gonna be two different things, it's actually gonna be one, and we thought we could come from our workplace communication expertise and go that direction while probably some more workplace management products would probably start moving towards workplace communication, and there would be a consolidation.

You also acquired a company called Beezy, which was all about the workplace as well, right? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, when we entered workplace management, we also launched our employee app, and from there, we got a lot of requests from customers to focus on employee communication in the app itself, and we met with Beezy, they had a very similar company culture, they had a good size and they had a product which was very modern, very forward looking and built on Microsoft SharePoint, and we thought that would nicely align with our product platform and our vision, so that's been a very fun journey, onboarding them into the Appspace world for the last few months. 

Now is Beezy still a brand, or is it that their IP and their capabilities are rolled into Appspace? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: We're rolling them into Appspace step by step. The brands are consolidating under a single brand. Now, it's the Appspace Modern Internet by Beezy, but we are clearly focusing on aligning all the different teams under a single organization, and also the brand and the product will be one. 

We definitely don't wanna run two separate products. We've always had that philosophy that with Appspace, it was one platform and features and not multiple point products so we're gonna continue doing that. 

There are digital science CMSs that say that the workplace is one of the verticals that they're in, and then there are companies that just do room booking software, and maybe the displays hardware as well, they blend those together. There are hot desk companies and everything else.

I'm thinking, like in a lot of other vertical markets, that the end user really doesn't wanna have to cobble together an overall solution that features all these different components and different companies doing them, they'd rather just have one company doing it all. Is that a fair statement?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yes, and the pandemic has accelerated the need for platforms versus point products. 

Pre-pandemic on the workplace management, you had the IWMS to manage all your assets, you had room booking solutions for the room scaling panels, you had visitor management solutions to bring visitors into the office. There were all point products, and then on the workplace comm, you had digital signage that was a point product, you had kiosks often very close to digital signage, and then you had email publishing, you had intranet. All of those were point products as well. I think what we're seeing now is they're unifying on both sides. So you're starting to see vendors who offer room booking, hot desking, visitor management, and then on the other side, you've got companies who are starting to consolidate and acquire, and they're doing digital signage, employee app, intranet, email publishing, and what we're doing is both at the same time, which is probably our biggest unique differentiator.

We believe, if you have an employee app, it's not only about employee communication or workplace management, it's the two combined. So a single app on users' devices versus multiple apps.

And I assume that resonates well with the business communicators and the IT people within a company, because they don't wanna have to deal with all these different logins and back in and out stuff? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: I guess there's two sides to it. There's certainly the administrative side to it, but there's also the user adoption. A big part of the return to the office is implementing new tools for employees to reserve access into a building, reserve a meeting room or a desk, and comply with formalities, that's for sure. But the other side of it is how do you communicate with those employees? How do you let them know what are the new rules in place? What are the new policies? How do you communicate what are the new benefits in the office, the new technology available? 

So being able to communicate in the same app that you're actually gonna reserve your workspace, invite your visitors, makes a lot of sense, and I think that's what HR and Corp comms are really liking with our story is that one app will do it all and it will of course integrate with all their backend systems and so forth.

So if I am a business communicator at a large corporation and I want to address these issues, what can you do for them and how does it work? 

Are they buying an enterprise license? Is it cloud based or are they installing something on prem, and how does it all come together?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, it's a great question and it's a big one and there's two sides to it. Once again on one side, you've got the admin, the console is fully cloud based, you don't need to install any software on your desktop, and you can start by just going on Appspace.com, create a free account and you get a full featured Appspace environment.

We don't monetize features, we monetize users and devices. So even with a free account, you’ll have all the features of Appspace, but you'll be limited in the number of users that can log into the app and the number of devices that you can register back.

So it’s the whole idea of Freemium? 

I just wanted to ask because “free” is intriguing to me. You don't see that very much in digital science anymore, unless it's entry level super limited in what it does and so on, but you're doing free with the idea of onboarding people, getting them used to the system and them realizing, I like this and I'm willing to pay for it? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, so what we think is that in order to be successful with Freemium, you need to have a platform that's really self-service, and I think that's what we focused a lot over the last 10 years is simplifying the product to the point where someone who just goes on our website, creates a free account, in 30 seconds is in the Appspace account, able to register a device, create some awesome content, publish it to the device and it's working, and we were able to do that for digital signage, but then we were able to expand that into all the digital communication channels and also for workplace management. 

So we maintained Freemium when a lot of other companies started thinking, “That doesn't work for us, let's go back to a trial account with someone hand holding you.” We don't need that with Appspace, you can get started, and so we have a huge amount of customers that create free accounts every month, and then when they're ready to expend, they just need to click on the link and they get in contact with a Sales rep and they can just either swipe their credit card or work through one of our partners to buy a subscription.

Is that a huge amount of free signups every month? Are there no maintenance until they actually contact a Sales rep and say, “I'm interested in paying for this”? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. They’re touchless most of the time. 

We have very large organizations that will have a lot of different free accounts, different departments, different team members who will create free accounts and get started, and then when they're ready to move and they want to do the security assessment and they want to talk contract and large scale deployments, they reach out to us. 

So I guess your sales people might look at big tech company, X and see that they have five different free accounts in different departments, and the salesperson could go to them and say, “Guys, you’re using a lot of this now, do you wanna harmonize it?” 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah. Our sales team, for sure, we also have a big marketing organization now. The product is also supported, so when you log into Appspace, you will have certain steps to follow to register a device, create content. It's the system that is holding your hand, not users.

And then along the way, you will have opportunities to get help, to talk to people. You can go to the knowledge center. Our Sales reps are already really there to help customers get to the next level, which makes it nice because when our Account Executives talk to customers, they already have a good understanding of what the customer has been doing with Appspace and they can really jump right into it. 

What happens when you have potential new customers who already have some sort of a room booking system and scheduling system, and they like them. 

Do you have APIs where you can just continue to work with them or do they have to abandon that and go entirely with Appspace?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: No, so we have open APIs, fully documented and online for every feature of our product. So we're happy to integrate with existing solutions that the customer may have still under contract or they're happy with it. What we're seeing though is very quickly customers consolidate because they see an opportunity for cost savings, for ease of management.

And then, you know the story of a unified platform, if you have an integration with an emergency system or your building management system and the fire alarm goes on, you can broadcast that message to a digital sign, to a visitor management kiosk, to a room scheduling panel inside the room on the video device, and that can be done really easily when you're using a platform. It's much harder to achieve when you're using point products, because you need to integrate each point product with a security system and many don't even support that concept of broadcast. 

So what we're seeing is when customers onboard Appspace for one use case, they very quickly start seeing the opportunity to save money, ease operations, and then benefit from the platform features and capabilities. 

Are you able to provide analytics? 

I've heard about this in the past where you start to get a sense of how a workplace is being used and where people are dwelling and how often rooms actually get booked and how many people are in the rooms, and it helps to size and maybe rethink some of the meeting spaces that a company may have.

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, so analytics and reporting is huge, and it's actually for the two sides of the product: for the workplace communication, understanding how users are interacting with content, whether it's on the app, on their phone, on their desktop, whether it's on a kiosk. 

We have this concept of a corporate Netflix. We've had that for yours where users can actually browse content on demand, very much like you browse your video content on Netflix. You do that with the remote control, with a touch panel, whatever the interaction you want to use. We track all of that, and that gives a lot of analytics on how content is being consumed, the success of a campaign and so forth.

And then on the workplace management, we have the analytics of what are the most active users, what type of workspace they book? How long do they sit at a desk? How long do they use a meeting room? If the meeting room for 10 people was booked, but used by two people, we have that data, so you can size your resources accordingly based on demand. 

And then you can visualize everything inside Appspace, but we also created integrations into Tableau, into Power BI. So customers can actually export the data and visualize it in their preferred data visualization tool. 

And in a workplace, the Power BI and Tableau stuff is interesting. I'm curious, are workplaces now much more sophisticated to where they see digital signage and visual communications as doing a lot more than congratulating somebody on their birthday or their 20th year with the company or whatever it may be. They're getting into visualizing KPIs in real time and that sort of thing?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Oh, yes, for sure. The number of customers that display building analytics when you enter the building, when you get on the first floor, where you can see the floor plan, you can see the heat maps, you can see the air quality, you can see the average temperature of the neighborhood. That certainly is a very common use case nowadays, providing building insights to users on digital signs is becoming really exciting. 

I think what we're seeing is a huge opportunity of combining workplace management and workplace communication is when you now have context to where digital signage can help, and you know that in the retail world, there's been a bunch of vendors who've monitored gender, age, ethnicity in order to manage communication campaign to those audience and measure also. In workplace management, you don't really care about age or gender. But what you do care is which user is sitting where, and when you've got a majority of salespeople sitting in a neighborhood, can you actually change the content to relate to those people? And that's been something that we've done a lot over the last year and a half is creating that context of digital signage experience, where even though I'm going back into an office where it's a hot desking hotel, the content still speaks to me, because the system is aware that I'm gonna be sitting there, and I think that's huge, because in those days you used to know exactly where people were sitting so you were planning your content for the sales team based on where people were sitting. Now, the system will automate that process based on the data they get from their workplace management feature.

And they're not using computer vision or things like that? Because when I come in to work at an office, I have to book a specific desk, and that's how you know that I'm there, right? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Either because you're booking a specific desk or you're sitting at a specific desk, and when you're actually sitting, we are able to identify who you are, and therefore dynamically say what's interesting to you is more sales data or more product marketing data, and therefore we mush multiple channels of content together to provide a perfect playlist that matches the audience. 

But how do you know I'm at that desk? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's where workplace technology comes, whether it's smart docking stations, whether it's physically connecting into the network and passing the user identity, whether it's those new video devices that we see popping left and right on the desks. It could be when you have a desk puck, which is similar to a room scheduling panel, you arrive and you will scan the QR code with your phone and authenticate and check into a desk and say, this is now my desk. So we have a lot of different tools that allows us to identify the user and therefore to get that data that we need to personalize the workspace environment. 

Through the pandemic, particularly in the first months, there was all kinds of discussion about how the workplace was gonna change, because those workplaces were being hollowed out through lockdowns and so on, and there's been all kinds of discussions and debate and everything else, particularly in the last six months or so, is where workplaces have started to repopulate as to whether it really did change all that much, and whether everybody's just working from home or everybody's into a hybrid thing. 

You're on the ground, so to speak, you're dealing with companies who are implementing this stuff. What's your sense of what's actually happening? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: I think companies are worried that people are not coming back to the office as quickly as they had hoped they would, and although many companies during the pandemic said that they would not require employees to go back to the office. It's very different two years later, we realize how the workplace culture is important, and having people, if not every day, at least a few days a week, come into the office and meet their teammates and so forth. So we're now seeing a sense of urgency from many customers to find ways to convince people to go back to the office and that comes with offering a new experience, offering new services. 

The new experience is making sure that regardless of where I sit in the building, I have the building talking to me, the building is aware that I'm there and being able to personalize that experience, and I think that's where digital signage is playing such a critical role. But then in the employee app, when I'm booking a room or when I'm booking a desk, I may need different types of services, maybe I need different technology, or maybe I want catering services. I should be able to do that from the app and reserve this ahead of time, and we're seeing a lot of demand around those new experiences where employees will get more benefits when they come to the office, not only benefits of a better physical workplace, but also benefits in terms of the services that are offered, and that will incentivize them to come back into the office, and then naturally, as people will come back to the office, they will meet their teammates again, and they will see why it's so important to meet in person, and that will create a dynamic, and at some point I think we'll get back to somewhat a normal situation where most people will go to the office more regularly.

Did the pandemic accelerate something that, from your perspective, was going to happen anyways and just speed it up out of necessity, or were there a lot of companies that weren't really thinking about changing how their workplaces were experienced? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's a great question. I actually think the pandemic gave the opportunity for large organizations to make a cultural change in the workplace that was planned, but maybe seen as a 5-10 years initiative, and they were able to do it in 2 years. 

Hot-desking in hotels is an example. We've been talking about hotels and hot-desking for years, but no one was able to implement it. It was such a big cultural change. The pandemic gave the opportunity for companies to take the decision, to reduce real estate and implement hot-desking in hotels, and they had a good reason for that, and for employees, it was like a natural thing that was happening. It would have taken years to get there otherwise. That's why no one was really focusing on the technology for it. 

I also think that the pandemic has accelerated the adoption of apps, like Microsoft Teams. Many companies were still using Skype for Business and other tools and they were struggling to unify under a modern app like Microsoft Teams or Slack or WebEx, and this gave them the opportunity to do that, and by doing that, all employees now have one common app on their personal device, whether it's a phone or a desktop, they're able to communicate, chat, exchange files, and we've just launched our embedded app for Teams. So now you have Appspace embedded in Teams, which means users don't need to download a new app to reserve their workspaces or receive team communication. They have all of it inside one app, and I think that's an acceleration that's a result of the pandemic. 

We obviously saw how Zoom and Microsoft and WebEx grew from that. That has also helped in the adoption of new technology, like workplace management and employee comms. 

Yeah, I was curious about that because if you have all these other workplace tools, the next logical thing to integrate into there would be video conferencing, but that's that's an entirely different business and pretty damn complicated. So the easier path would be to integrate with something like Teams, right?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That's correct. I think Teams offer the framework to embed an app fully into Teams, handle the authentication for the user, and then from there, we have so much insights on what the user needs that we're really able to personalize the experience.

The Teams embedded app is a huge win for customers because if you think of a very large service organization with 200,000 desk workers, rolling out a new app for communication and for workplace management is a big challenge. Getting users to download the app or deploying the app to their personal device, enabling user authentication, tracking how users are actually logging in the app. This is no longer a challenge when you are embedded in Teams, because one morning you wake up and on your sidebar, you've got a new button, you click on it and that's where you reserve your workspace, that's where you see your workplace communication, all of it in an app that you were already logging in every morning. 

So I'm a CTO at a very large tech company, and if I'm a CTO, the company's going down, but regardless of that, if I'm sitting across from you and I say, “okay, this is interesting, make me comfortable that this is secure.” What do you tell me? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: We obviously work with close to two hundred of the Fortune 500 companies, so we're used to working with very large organizations that have very strict security requirements, and our product (the cloud service) is already approved by IT, by Security and enabled whether it's for digital signage or room booking or visitor for one of the features. 

Enabling suddenly to turn on the other features doesn't require any more security assessment because the product has been approved. We also have only one app, whether you are running our app on a system on a chip display, on a kiosk, on an iPad, it's the same app in a different container. And this means that once you have your app approved for one of the use cases, your app is actually approved for all the other use cases. That's again been strengths on our side is trying to keep it single simple platform that allows you to really very quickly scale this across your organization.

One thing that's come up a lot in the last couple years is digital science companies who addressed some of the ideas of remote work by having, in effect, a network screensaver, something that would push out to home based workers and pop messaging on a screen and all that. Are you doing that sort of thing, and if so, is it widely adopted? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah, it's a little bit what we started doing five years ago inside meeting rooms on video devices. When the video device is not used for video conferencing, pop up a screensaver and its Appspace, it's running natively on the client and it will display all the important communication. In the case of a meeting room, we're targeting a wider audience. 

Now, when you run our UWP app on a Windows device, we obviously know who is the owner of that device, so we're able to personalize the content. Now, I see this as an interesting use case for screensavers. Although I've never seen someone sitting in front of his laptop watching a screensaver as they do a digital sign, drinking a coffee, but I do like the experience of: you're running the Appspace app on the desktop, it's in screensaver mode. When you plug in your laptop in the office or at home, it pops up the experience where as a user, you can say, “Hey, I'm working from home” or “I'm in the office”, and that then trickles into a whole series of events that makes your colleagues, your teammates aware of where you are working from today, are you in the office and so forth. 

So screensaver for just pure content playlist, that's really easy to achieve, but I don't know that this is a huge benefit and a huge win, but coupling that with workplace management can be really interesting.

Yeah, I do like the idea of being able to instant message somebody in a way, other than an email, but you're right. If I was working for a large company and I was sitting at home and there was something steadily popping up on the screen telling me about Millie's birthday or Bob's retirement or whatever, I'd be looking very hard to figure out some way to disable it. 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: One thing we did though, is we worked with a big law firm in Canada, and the CIO managed to convince the partners to move from a physically assigned office to a hot office, if you will. Very challenging, because lawyers and partners are very conventional. They like their workspace environment. They want their corner office. And what the CIO was able to convince is there would be new sacrifice in the personal experience and to do that, they put in every office, a digital sign, 55 inch display coupled with video or not, depending on the office profile. Outside the office, there is an office scheduling panel. 

The partner from home is able to reserve on their Appspace app, “Hey, I need an office from 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM and these are the amenities I need.” They reserve that workspace, and when they come into the office, they actually check on the panel outside or on their phone and the digital sign instantly switches to their personal channel. They have potentially their practice news, maybe their preferred sports news, and also their family pictures that they want, and they've just personalized that office with content for the partners and that made them really excited because now they had a big 55 inch display showing their practice news or their family pictures instead of those little frames on the desk that would take the dust.

I think when technology really increases the user experience and doesn't sacrifice anything, I think this works really well as a home office as well. If you have an extra display and you can use that real estate, that makes sense, but let's not be mistaken, people care about themselves primarily, they want information that's relevant to them. If I'm at home, I don't know that I want this birthday of a colleague, but I wouldn't mind having pictures of a year ago from my family and kids that I celebrated, maybe that's more useful for me. 

We haven't talked about back of house and all the discussions around being workplace, as it relates to an office, are you doing work in production areas and industrial areas and so on?

Thomas Philippart de Foy: Yeah. So if you remember, we acquired a company called The Marlin Company a couple of years ago, and their main focus was industrial. A very large amount of customers in that space, and we've been working a lot with those customers in transitioning from digital signage, which was a normal evolution of printed posters to digital content and focus a lot around safety and workplace wellbeing and so forth to communicate on personal devices. 

Now, frontline workers typically don't have a company email address. So how do they log into the app? So we combine digital signage with the employee app. Digital signage will say, “Hey, there's a new employee app. To access the app, scan this QR code!” User scans the QR code on their phone, enters an employee ID and a phone number and a few seconds later, they get a one time password to create their credentials and they are now logged into the same app as the desk workers with different feature sets, but it's the same app, and now they also have the ability to have employee communication, team communication. They can chat, they can react socially and comment on the content the same way anyone else. 

This is breaking the barrier between the desk workers and the frontline workers where really the frontline workers who didn't have a lot of the technology stack because they didn't have a company email address, where everyone has a smartphone so why wouldn't they have the same benefits? And that one time password, no email login has been huge win for us and for our customers in making sure every employee is aligned and has access to the same capabilities. 

Last question, this conversation flew by. What's the installed footprint for Appspace at this point? 

Thomas Philippart de Foy: It's always hard to say because we count users. We evaluate that around 10 million users benefit from Appspace around workplace management and workplace communication today. We have around 2,500 customers, two hundred of the Fortune 500, and deployments that will scale on the screen size between 50 screens and 10,000 screens for a single customer.

And on the user side, our largest deployment is 175,000 users logging into our app to receive team communication or reserve workspaces. So very large deployments. We like to focus on large customers, but with the Marlin acquisition, we were able to really get into the industrial segment where you have a lot of smaller organizations, maybe not always smaller in terms of number of workers, but maybe smaller in terms of number of physical workspaces.

Yeah. All right, this was great. I learned a lot, which is, I guess the point.

Thomas Philippart de Foy: That was great. Thank you so much for giving us the time. 

Hans Feil, Etulipa

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

E-paper displays are, by far, best known for the little e-readers people use instead of printed books. The core technology used for those readers is what's also being used for things like meeting room displays and updated bus stop schedule signs that run off batteries and, in some cases, solar chargers. But that's all been in black and white and gray. Color displays, and particularly displays that can do full motion graphics and video playback, have largely stayed in the bucket of future technology.

A small Dutch company is well along the path of changing all that - using something called electro-wetting display technology that gets its brightness from the sun, and would be used as low-energy alternatives to big LED video displays used for out of home advertising.

In this podcast, I have a detailed chat with Etulipa founder Hans Feil, whose company is rapidly evolving and maturing the technology, and has a big investment and R&D partner in Daktronics, the big South Dakota-based LED manufacturer. We get into what the technology is and how it works, its differences with other kinds of e-paper, how it sets up, and its benefits.

The company is still at the advanced R&D stage, but far enough along that it anticipates being in small quantity production next year, through a manufacturing partner in Taiwan.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Hans, thank you very much for joining me. Let's just get right to it. What the heck is electro wetting display technology? 

Hans Feil: That's a good question. It's what they call reflective display technology. Of course, you probably know about it already, but if people don't know, the introduction that I made is that I say you probably will have an e-reader, many people have e-readers nowadays and it's black and white and a little bit slow, but you can read it outdoors. If you take your iPad outdoor in the sun, it's difficult to read. We have something like your the display on the e-reader, but then with color and it's fast, and that's the that's the difference.

So it's a reflective display technology. It reflects light so there's no back light behind, it doesn't emit light. So if you take our display into the dark, you don't see anything unless you light it up with a back light or front light. So that's for newcomers. If you're a chemist or a physicist or a scientist, I’d probably say it a little bit different, in the sense that what we do is that we manipulates liquids colored oils, and we have a layer colored oils and with little cells with oils and we can make small droplets with it and the size of the droplets we can. 

For instance, if you compare to print, many people have ink-jet printers and if they would take a magnifying glass and look at the paper, they're see little cyan, magenta and yellow droplets on the white paper, and what we do is we’re mimicking this printing with cyan, magenta and yellow. So we have a white paper or white reflector, we call it. And we have three layers of glass on top of it with cyan, magenta, and yellow oil and each individual layer, we can switch this oil droplets, making them small or big. And if all the layers are spread, it's black because you don't see anything, all the lights are absorb. And if there are all the droplets are small, white or nearly white and depending on which droplets you switch and can get all the colors of the rainbow, and that's all very low power. 

From what I read on your website, unlike traditional, if you wanna call traditional ePaper, what we would know from E-ink displays primarily, this can do 25 frames per second motion, which is quite a bit different because when you see something change on an ePaper screen, it goes nuts for a fraction of a second as it reorganizes itself. 

Hans Feil: Yes, and in our case, it doesn't really reorganize, droplets just become big or small and it goes very fast. 

Was that a big step to get to the point where you could change them that quickly or is that kind of inherent in the technology design? 

Hans Feil: It comes automatically with the technology. It has never been slow. 

And with ePaper, and I'm certainly not banging on Eink, but they spent 20+ years advancing their color displays and they'll put out press releases saying we now have more color support than we used to but basically it's been a very long road to get 'em to full color. 

You're saying you've got full color gamut right now? 

Hans Feil: Yes, but also in our case, it was a very long long route too. The first paper of Rob Hayes and Johan Feenstra from Phillips Research was from 2003, so 19 years ago, this nature paper, where they're first showing to the world electro wetting display, or at least the concept and some examples. So that's 19 years ago and since then we are working very hard on progressing technology, making better making it possible to manufacture displays and so forth. So it's also a very long route. 

So what's the tie, if there is one to Phillips? 

Hans Feil: Right now, there is no tie except that we are located here in Eindhoven, what they call High Tech Campus, Eindhoven and it used to be the same campus, but smaller from Phillips Research in the old days. So the technology originally, the effect of switching oil droppers, was initially invented here a few hundreds of meters a away from the place where I'm standing now. 

Am I remembering correctly that you have a background with Phillips as well?

Hans Feil: That's correct, yeah. I worked what they call the Phillips Research Labs since 1988 in various functions, but mostly quite scientific work in the old days, when it was a very scientific lab. And then I worked for a number of years in battery technology, lithium polymer batteries, and by the end of the 90s, and I got in touch of the guys who started this electro wetting displays, I think in 2004, so I'm 18 years active in electro wetting displays already. 

So like you said, it has been a bit of a road then? 

Hans Feil: Yes, sure.  

When did Etulipa start? 

Hans Feil: I’ll share a bit of history. At Phillips, when we were working on electro wetting display technology, we did a spinoff called Liquavista, you may have heard the name. It was early 2006 and a little bit prior to that, there was interest from the German automotive mirror manufacturer, a very big one, who wanted to see if this technology could be used for rear view auto dimming mirrors, and at that time it looked very promising.

In fact, after co-founding Liquavista, half a year later, together with an old colleague, I cofounded Miortech and Miortech was dedicated to use this electro wedding display technology for rearview mirrors. So by the end of 2006, we started this company, Miortech, trying to make the mirrors. Turned out to be that technology was not as fast as we hoped so there was a lot of development work to do. We really had to go back to the drawing table. In fact, we found out that there was a better way of making electro wetting displays with a different architecture that solved most of the initial problems. We patented that and then we started making prototypes of this mirrors, but basically it was a little bit too late, the market evolved and these automotive companies didn't want to really want it anymore. 

But also in fact, if you're trying to make a mirror with small oil droplets or small cells, there's also always some light scattering from this droplets and so we could never get this mirrors fully free from haze. It was always a little bit of haze, so it was not good enough. So by the end of 2012, so it was almost 10 years ago, we said these mirrors are no good. It's a display technology. We have our own patented way of making electro wetting displays, maybe there are display companies who are interested in, for instance, licensing this technology, the way that we make the devices. Turns out to be not so easy, but at some point of time, we were asked, “Can't you make outdoor display with this technology?” And in fact, that's the sweet spot of electro wetting display. 

If you really want to have bright, reflective colors, you need CMY, the stack of cyan, magenta, yellow. Just black and white display plus color filters is just not bright enough because you are throwing away two third of the light and so for reflective, you need CMY, and this stack has always a certain thickness because of the glass thickness, which also mean that it limits the the pixel density that you can reach. The rule of thumb is that the the thickness of the stack, CMY is roughly in the same range as the pixel size. And for outdoor displays, if you have a 10 millimeter pixels that's pretty good, that's pretty high resolution already. 

So we made a few samples with CMY, very simple samples. And we went along to outdoor display companies, including Daktronics at the time, it was 2013 or 2014 or something like that and we showed it to the folks at Daktronics and they liked it. So they said this looks promising, of course, it was very early days, we just had samples. But since then, we have worked together with Daktronics. They became a shareholder, supporting us all the way, step by step from small displays to black and white displays to full color displays that we have right now. So the story started in 2013, when we stopped the mirrors and said, okay, we need to move to outdoor displays with this, and I think it was a good bet. 

Did you find yourself going in the direction of outdoor displays because of market size or was it more the case of a company in Daktronics that specializes in large format, outdoor displays, was interested in it and therefore you had an automatic market partner? 

Hans Feil: No, the funny thing is, when we were still at Phillips and we were looking for what kind of markets we would first do with Liquavista, with the technology. I did some research on different markets and I found out that outdoor display markets was in the sweet spot of the technology. But then, and we are talking about 2005 or something like that, the venture capitalist who invested in Liquavista really want to go in mobile displays. So it was at a time when Nokia was still big and the market was growing so reflective displays for cell phones was the automatic market and we put aside the outdoor display at that time. 

So talking about my first PowerPoints I had and spreadsheet about market sizes for electro wedding displays for outdoor was already in 2005, so I had it always in my back of the minds and I had presentations ready when we made the switch. That's the reason why we visited Daktronics and a few others. So we didn't make the move to outward display just because of Daktronics, we had chosen for outdoor displays and it just fits with Daktronics. 

So just like LED displays, the kind that are manufactured by Daktronics primarily, these displays have a pixel pitch, correct?

Hans Feil: Correct. 

So there's a gap between each pixel basically? 

Hans Feil:. Yes, they're point sources, sort of. 

And right now it's 10 millimeters, which in  LED terms would sometimes be referred to as P10 or something, but I'm reading that you anticipate that you can get it down to 2.5mm? 

Hans Feil: Yes, that's correct. We already have made samples with TFT back planes with 2.5mm pixel pitch. So right now we have P10, so that are the first displays that we're making but the next stop would be 2.5 millimeter and also larger tiles. 

At P10, that's very competitive with conventional billboards that you would see on the side of a road and up above a building, that sort of thing. 2.5 means you could have it as a sidewalk level display that somebody would be able to view quite nicely from say 10 feet away?

Hans Feil: Yes, exactly, like bus stops, sidewalks and that kinda stuff. 

Yeah. Do you have to get even tighter than that, and is it possible if you wanted to do print and bus schedules and things like that? 

Hans Feil: If we want to go to smaller pixel sizes, what's needed is somewhat thinner glass. So right now, the glass that we use is 0.5 millimeter and we have a stack of number of pieces of glass but if you go glass that’s 0.2 millimeter or 0.3 millimeter, we can go to pixel sizes of 1 or 1.5 millimeter. 

Is that something that's possible, or it's not even developed yet by the glass manufacturers?

Hans Feil: Oh no, the glass is there. There's even thinner. Basically, we do it step by step, but the glass is there. 

So this isn't a wish, it's just a when? 

Hans Feil: Yeah, exactly. There are many things that are a when. 

These units are, again, similar in certain respects to LED displays in terms of they have cabinets or tiles, and they stack together?

Hans Feil: Correct. 

What are the sizes of these tiles, and are there limitations as to how many you can put together or is it modular and it can be as big as you want?

Hans Feil: It's modular. The the tiles that we have right now are roughly 10 inch, and we have six tiles in one panel. That's how we build the displays that we have here in our backyard. And the next step with 2.5 millimeter, we're looking for 21 inch tiles so there'll be bigger tiles and smaller pitch, but there are no limits in how big you can make the displays of it. It's just metal scaling up the electronics and it's all modular. 

With the video support, I read that right now you're demonstrating animations and not full color video. Is there a reason for that or is just a matter that that's what makes sense right now? 

Hans Feil: Yeah, that it's mostly electronics development. There are two parts to this, one is the uniformity of the tiles. We are constantly improving the uniformity so the gray scales and the gray scale definitions become better and better, so that's what's needed, and the electronics development is a separate thing since we have to see how fast we can make the electronics work with the number of gray levels we have. Right now, it's designed with 7 bits color so you can have 128 droplet sizes per color, which for reflective is very much, to be honest, the uniformity is not so good that we can really make this one on the 128 droplet sizes very precise. It's a little bit less but that's all about scaling up the electronics. 

In the advertising world, generally speaking for digital out-of-home advertising, they're not using full motion anyways, except for spectaculars in Times Square and those big wrap arounds and so on. There's one heck of a lot of deployed stock that is just digital posters basically?

Hans Feil: Yeah, for example, along freeways, you're not allowed to do any animation and so on. 

So as long as you can address full color and have the clarity that people want, they're happy? 

Hans Feil: Yeah, with the first display out here, it was a test for us to see what's the color space that we can see, what's the impression that we have, and so far we are quite happy. 

In fact, all the visitors that come along, many of them do not have very high expectations because they don't know what to expect with reflective colors and the the veterans, so to say, who have seen reflective displays before, they know when colors are dull. But everybody was surprised when they walk outdoor and see what we have in terms of color and brightness. People are amazed. 

I believe I saw that these displays can handle 15,000 lumens, that's the maximum brightness? 

Hans Feil: To be honest, we didn't measure it exactly yet. That really depends on how much sun comes on it. It scales perfectly with the with the amount of sunshine in the environment. It's like when you have newspaper, I don't have to tell you, of course, that newspaper in the bright sun is very bright but because your eyes are accommodated to the brightness of the environment, you don't do not really notice that it's so bright and that's the same with our display. 

In fact, here’s a funny story, the cameraman who made his shots for the video clip that we have, he was he was used to taking shots of video or display and he suddenly realizes that he didn't have to adjust all his systems when the sun goes behind the cloud, the display didn’t become less bright because the trees and the grass, et cetera, also became less bright. It was then when he realized, okay this is different from what I've seen so far because LED displays are brighter compared to the surroundings all the time.

Yeah. It's wildly different, it's the opposite of outdoor LCDs, which are the primary things used for display totems to advertise street furniture, that kind of thing. They're always battling the sun, they've gotta be at least 2500 nits to eve overpower glare and so on, and you're saying, the brighter it is, the better it's gonna get?

Hans Feil: Oh yeah, it's fine. But also, today's very gray weather here and I've been there with visitors when it was raining in and it still looked pretty good. It's only when it's getting really dark, likewhen the sun goes down, then you really notice. But it's the same with your eReader. At some point of time, you realize, okay, now I do not see enough contrast anymore, I have to switch on my back light or front light or whatever you have. 

That backlight or front light, whatever it may be, that's running off of a battery that's charged by solar collectors, right?

Hans Feil: Yeah, that's correct. 

So you can be completely autonomous from electrical power grid, but is there enough power out of that battery to do cellular connectivity for updates? 

Hans Feil: Yes, sure. In fact, the trailer that we have out here, that was designed to have an LED display mounted on it, so that there's a little bit big battery, but it's one solar panel, a lead acid batteries in this trailer. In fact, we have never charged this one, never. Previously we had a black and white display on it and with our color display, the power consumption of our display is so low, we don't need to charge it.

One thing I noticed in the reference photos is that the units have seams. It reminds me of 5-10 years ago when the LCD manufacturers every year would come up with some definition or description of even narrower bezel or seams in between the displays, and when LED came along, that got of a lot interest just because the seams went away, and people who were designing spaces were saying, okay, I wanna use LED instead, because there are no seams.

Are you getting any pushback about that about the seams that exist and will those with time go away? 

Hans Feil: Pushback is a big word, but people do notice the seams, and although the seam here that we have here is smaller than the width of one pixel, so if you walk to the display, of course you see the seam, and we prefer to have narrow seams or no seams, but you can see the seams. If you walk away, they become less noticeable, and if you cannot discriminate between individual pixels anymore, then the seams are also becoming very thin or hardly visible.

With LED display, if you walk toward the display, at some point of time, you can see the individual LEDs, right? The image breaks down and it become little light dots. And in our case, you start noticing the seam more and more. If you're really standing in front of it, of course you’ll see many seams, but when you walk away on to say 30-50 feet for P10 pixel then it's hardly noticeable anymore. But again, of course, everybody wants to have thinner seams or no seams. So we have a program working on that to get them thinner, less noticeable. And also in future, when we go to larger tiles, seams will become thin. 

We had a big outdoor advertiser here in Holland who who used our 100 square meters screens with P10 pixels, and said that this solution would be good, and not to worry about the seams very much because for 100 square meter display, you're standing 50 meters away or even more, and you won’t see the seams anymore. 

Where's the product at, are you now shipping or is it still in R&D? 

Hans Feil: No, we are now in the testing phase. So we have it out here in the backyard. The next display will be made and shipped to South Dakota for evaluating by Daktronics and their customers. By the end of the year, we are targeting to have a production capacity with our partner, URT in Taiwan, for 50 square meters per year, which isstill not much, but it's doable. And then early next year, we think the first display will be used by first customers here in the region because turns out there are parties that connected to us that have been waiting for low power display for many years but they couldn't go anywhere because the only thing that they had was LED, right? And now they have this option which some of them were looking for it for many years already. 

We have a client who, every two years, was making calculations about power consumption of the display and every two years he was disappointed that it was never low enough, and now suddenly he got in touch with us and said, this is what I need. So he’ll probably use a number of our displays in the first half of next year. 

Are the upfront costs for this going to be higher than that for the upfront cost of conventional LED displays for the same footprint and are the savings more on the backend because you're not using power?

Hans Feil: Yeah, that's correct. Right now, we are making them in small quantities So the price is not really reflecting how it can be. But indeed, there is a huge savings in situations where people have to make a connection to the grid, which can take months before they can get a connection, and it’s also very often very expensive. We had one small, black and white display in a New York City bus stop, it turns out to be that the solution with our displays in that bus stop with a solar panel and a battery was 30% cheaper than the original version with LED displays, which were connected to the grid. 

This connection to the grid and all the work that, that goes along it and permits and so forth, make it very expensive. So even when there was a battery added and a solar panel added, and our display was more expensive than the LED one, it was much cheaper to have reflective displays. It was also new for us at that time. 

So going forward into 2023, if I am a outdoor media company in, let's say Australia, and I want to buy this, am I going to be buying it through Daktronics, or will you be licensing this more broadly than that? 

Hans Feil: Most likely through Daktronics. Probably the first smaller smaller display here in the region, we will install ourselves because that's more convenient, it's nearby, et cetera. But once this becomes bigger and more mature, it's our goal, our business plan that we will be creating the panels and Daktronics will make displays with those panels and sell them worldwide.

And as you scale up maybe the existing manufacturer in Taiwan who right now might be a contract manufacturer doing small lots, you would figure it out from there what kind of manufacturing capacity you’d need? 

Hans Feil: Yeah. So for now that they have enough capacity, there should be no problem.

We are open for talks, the whole consortium of URT, Daktronics and ourselves, if there are any other major display company who says, okay, I also want to adopt electro wetting displays, because we always believe if we want to make this successful, we should not really keep it all for ourselves.

And there's lots of money to be made,-without a lot of grief-in licensing.

Hans Feil: Yeah, we're open to do anything that's reasonable. But there are many in fact, maybe all the major display companies that at some point of time tried making electro wetting displays and did R&D but they found it very difficult and stopped with it. 

We have our own technology, what we call second generation technology with different approach and we solved all those problems that were there with the first generation electro wetting displays. It has taken some time, but it's worked quite well now.

I'm looking forward to seeing it at some point, somewhere. I hope I don't have to go to South Dakota in the middle of the winter, but you never know. 

Hans Feil: Well, you could also come here, but I'm not sure if you are in Europe anytime soon. 

Yeah, well, Eindhoven has a better football team than Brookings South Dakota, so that would be a better trip for me. 

Anyway, thank you very much for spending some time with me.

Hans Feil: Yeah, I'm very glad that I got opportunity from you to talk about this. And I hope you can watch our display anytime soon, either here or in the US somewhere. Seeing is believing, in fact, and reflective is just different. 

Yeah. I completely buy into the idea that it's one of those things that it's interesting to read and to hear about in a podcast, but to walk up and see it is where you're gonna close the deal.

Hans Feil: Yeah, exactly. 

All right, thanks again.

Hans Feil: Thank you very much, and hope to see you soon.

PJ Thelen, RoveIQ

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

When PJ Thelen talks about the company's software and hardware, he focuses almost entirely on the experiences they enable and deliver, as opposed to the features and specs of the technology.

It's refreshing, because a lot of the conversation and marketing around outdoor displays for directories, wayfinding and advertising has been - at least in recent years - about how they were more than just screens, but smart city devices that did a variety of things, including WiFi connectivity and IoT sensors. Thelen went so far as rebranding the company he now runs from smartLINK to RoveIQ - getting away from the heavily-used smart moniker and emphasizing how Rove speaks to enabling people to navigate a space with intelligent - the IQ bit - guidance.

The company has a CMS, sophisticated mapping, an ad server and analytics capabilities all designed to help people find their way around big places. The early adopters have been commercial properties - like mixed-use lifestyle developments. In many to most cases, those are wayfinding directories with mapping, supported by advertising.

But Thelen sees a lot of possibilities working with large-footprint healthcare, helping people find their way around sprawling medical campuses. There would be physical screens providing guidance, but in his vision, RoveIQ guides people from the time they park in a hospital garage all the way to a specific building, floor and waiting room.

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TRANSCRIPT

Peter, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what RoveIQ is all about? 

Peter (PJ) Thelen: RoveIQ really emphasizes smart kiosks and wayfinding software solutions. 

We just rebranded our organization from smartLINK to RoveIQ and Dave, a big reason for that was we wanted to make sure our new name is better aligned with the solutions that we bring to market and the value that we provide for both our customers and partners. Now the word Rove, it's the whole idea of wandering, discovering, et cetera but the IQ element is to do it in an intelligent fashion. So you have a very efficient and enjoyable experience.

So if somebody listening to this is trying to visualize what you do, the visual that would immediately spring to mind would be a display totem outside in a public plaza or something like that with directory or mapping, correct? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, without a doubt. So I always use the analogy, Dave, to pretend that you're going to a place for the first time. You're not quite sure where you are or what is around you so you leverage the hardware and our software to understand what is available and then ultimately leveraging either the kiosk experience or the mobile experience allows you to essentially get to where you want to go leveraging a Blue Dot scenario, which obviously is our wayfinding software.

Blue Dot scenario, what do you mean by that, or is that just the name of the software itself? 

Peter Thelen: No, that's just the analogy I use Dave, where if you think about where you are and let's just say, hypothetically, you want to go to a restaurant, the dots correlate to the path that you need to take to go from where you are to where you ultimately want to go.

The old name, smartLINK, connoted the whole idea of smart cities and that there were all kinds of companies coming up with smart city kiosks in the last decade or so, and I don't necessarily see a lot of traction for those sorts of things. Is that kind of driving this as well? What if you better focus on the whole idea of guiding people, as opposed to saying this is this station that will do all these other things to help cities become smarter? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, we took a step back. RoveIQ is a software company. It just so happens that it needs a hardware platform to promote the value that we drive on a day in and day out basis.

In our minds, smart was widely used. It didn't necessarily correlate to exactly what we do today and where we're going tomorrow. From a search engine optimization perspective, it was tough just because there's so many smart this and smart that. As RoveIQ continues to grow, we're growing more and more into other verticals beyond just the smart city. So the bottom line is that we wanted a name that more appropriately aligned with who we are and what we're doing on a day in and day out basis, and it just made sense. 

It was a great exercise. It was about a six month long exercise with a phenomenal local company here called Brand Fuel, and we're very happy with the results.

There seem to be two kinds of threads of these kinds of outdoor street furniture displays. There are those shopping malls and community business districts, that sort of thing put in to help people find their way around intelligently, and then there are those that are there primarily as advertising. “Oh, by the way, there's also a directory” or “there's also some sort of a lookup thing” but it exists for advertising. Do you go down one path or the other, or do you serve both? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, that's a great question, and we definitely serve both, but there is no doubt that the emphasis of our software is around creating experiences. Experiences that a visitor or a resident is wanting to have, or is not expecting, and ultimately has, which generates this great feeling. 

Our software, which we consider a platform. It is a content management solution. It has the ability to be an ad server, which allows you to download and upload ads as well as schedule ads, then it has this third element around data analytics and reporting. So we feel like we have some of the best software out there. But there is no doubt at the end of the day, we're trying to promote more experiences as compared to just ads. 

But a big part of the ROI from a customer perspective is that digital out-of-home ad opportunity, and post COVID that's growing significantly, which is creating great opportunities. 

And ultimately, regardless of the venue and the scenario, something's gotta pay for the thing, right, so that's why advertising tends to come into play? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah. We always say there's hard and soft ROI in terms of your investment in RoveIQ. The soft is the experiences that both the customer, the resident, the visitor, incurs on a per visit basis, and how do you measure that? Secondly, it is the digital out-of-home ads based on whatever DMA that property or the city resides in that correlates to how big of an opportunity that is, and then the third element, which in my mind is still fairly immature, but it's becoming more relevant and more mature each and every day is this whole idea of how do you leverage the data? 

Whether it's the touch analytics, whether it's the video analytics and then the ability to potentially incorporate both WiFi and mobile, and then what do you use to do with that data to do something of value with it. 

You mentioned experience, how do you define and characterize experience? 

The experience can be what you see on the screen, what it looks like and everything else, or the experience can be, “that was easy. I found what I was looking for quickly, and that was a great experience” because now I can go in and experience whatever public plaza or mall or attraction that I'm at? 

Peter Thelen: At the end of the day, people want to be informed, they want to be educated, they want to gain access to information in a very quick and inefficient manner, and ultimately, they want to. 

We're designing our software where when you approach a kiosk and you start to interact, you can get off of it in less than 40 seconds and feel really happy about the experience and you're on your way, and you feel like you're on your way in an intelligent way. I always use the analogy, Dave, if you come to a property or a city for the first time, you're gonna be inclined to use our software. We at, RoveIQ wanna make sure every time you visit that city or that particular property, regardless if you know where you are and what is around you, because of your previous experience, you want to, once again, interact with our software, it causes you to want to come back, and if you're coming back, that means we're doing our job and adding great value to the customer, the property, etc. 

So if you're doing your job, this is where repeat visitors tend to migrate to like Moss to a light. They just know, “I'll start here to help me find what I'm looking for”?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and our new brand promise is this whole idea of enriching lives through intelligent software designed to move humans, then we elaborate saying both physically and emotionally, and that emotional element is probably the most important. 

So where does your company start and where does it stop in terms of services and technology that you provide?

Peter Thelen: So knowing that we're a software company that ultimately needs a digital display to add value and differentiate, we're providing a fully integrated solution to a customer, which obviously includes the hardware, the related installation, the software, and then the ongoing maintenance. To do all of those things, you need to wrap it in a bow from a project management perspective, and then ultimately you're bringing this data element and this advertising element as part of the overall solution as well so the customer looks at you as a one stop shop. 

So we have that ability today. Now, obviously, we leverage partners where that is their core business to add the ultimate value and aspects of the overall solution. But hopefully that's transparent to the customer. 

Yeah, I'm guessing that you guys would be happy as clams if you could just be a software company and not have to worry, or really even think about hardware and just provide the specs that it needs to run on this sort of thing, but as you say, people want one stop shopping, they want turnkey. 

Peter Thelen: Yep, but that does bring up a good point. Before I got here in May of 2021, we were predominantly dependent on hardware. Of course, in the last 14 months we've made phenomenal strides in promoting mobile-only solutions. So if you think about something as simple as a smart city or a mixed use real estate, yes, you're walking up to a kiosk, but as you exit that kiosk, you can scan or text to phone, to basically take that exact same experience from the kiosk with you on your mobile device, you don't have to download anything, it is considered a web app and off you go.

We're also offering mobile-only solutions which are cool. As we penetrate colleges and universities and healthcare, we're not dependent on that hardware. You can get the benefits of our software, just leveraging your mobile device which has been pretty exciting to see and we look at that as a high growth vertical. 

So in theory, let's say on a university campus, you could walk up to a support column in a building and there'd be a QR code on there with a message that says. “Having trouble finding your way? Scan this!” and it'll launch your app and off you go? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. 

How do you make money off of that then? 

Peter Thelen: Well, that's all our software. If you think about it, the theme you're probably hearing from me is, we're a software company, and every time we're providing value around our software, there is a fee for that subscription base , it's monthly and it's based on the opportunity. 

So in a conventional setup where you are providing display hardware, you would have a play out license for that display, but with the university campus or something like that, if you're not using physical displays, you would just have some sort of a site license for the campus?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct.

Okay. That makes sense then. I'm curious about wayfinding. Mapping for big public displays has been around, I'd say at least a decade, maybe 15 years, and like everything it's evolved, and I saw on your website, one of the things you talk about is three-dimensional wayfinding. 

Over the years, what has your company found in terms of what resonates with end users? Do they care about certain things like it being three-dimensional or do they just want something that's very intuitive and quick? 

Peter Thelen: I've concluded it's all the above. I think users today are smarter than ever. They have a very high expectation in terms of the experience that they're aspiring to have. So they want everything. There's a lot of wayfinding solutions out there. So we always think to ourselves, what makes ours better than the next, and knowing that we emphasize experiences, how do we really promote a better experience as it pertains to that whole wayfinding experience? 

So not everybody does 3D, most only do 2D. The whole idea of interactive is a big deal, and we obviously wanna promote that fairly aggressively, but the one thing that we're really emphasizing, Dave, is this idea of hyperlocal. Do we capture all elements of a property? So when an individual starts their journey, leveraging our software, it's a great experience. They very clearly know where they're going, they can visualize the surrounding environment and as they're going, there's no fear and uncertainty or doubt about where they're ultimately going to get to, because there's a high degree of confidence in that.

The hyperlocal is a very important element to our solution. It could be as simple as a bench, it could be a tree, it could be the look and feel of the building. Our UI/UX team does a phenomenal job of configuring the property on a per deal basis to make sure it looks and feels just like that property actually is.

So some of the areas you're in like Port Orlando in Orlando, or Miami Design District and so on, if a shopping or mixed use outdoor district like that approaches you guys and says we want to do this. What is involved? You were talking about the UX design and everything. Do they go on site or how do they put this together? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, it's a lot of different elements, which makes it fun and exciting, but ultimately it starts with a site survey, where we walk the property with the respective owners. We identify those high traffic areas. We understand the goals from the owner in terms of what they really want from this hardware and software. You have to define the advertising opportunity as part of the whole digital out-of-home. Sometimes it's a great opportunity, sometimes it's just an average opportunity and in some instances, based on the location of the property, it might not exist at all. Then the last element is this whole idea of data. 

Data is becoming more valuable like I referenced earlier. Each owner wants different types of data sets that's important to them. So as part of the onboarding, we define those data elements. But as we leave that site survey, you're taking all these pieces to the puzzle and assembling them into this picture that correlates to ultimately what they want which is a combination of hardware and software that are strategically placed throughout the property. We've built out the software in terms of the configuration so the experience as you approach the digital display looks and feels just like the property. 

I always use the analogy, picture your iPhone. When you open up your iPhone, you have the various apps on the first page. That's no different than what we do for a customer as part of the configuration process, and then we build out the maps. Take into consideration that hyperlocal, 3D concepts 

It is the core goal and aspiration simply to ensure that people who visit a venue like Port Orlando or whatever, to just not be lost and frustrated, or is it a little more sophisticated and evolved in the case of trying to influence where they might go?

Peter Thelen: I'm chuckling a little bit because it's both. If you think about the whole idea of moving people physically and emotionally, the physical aspect is the wayfinding, and that is the emphasis of our software, but we're one of the first in industries to roll out augmented reality selfie. I was at the Avalon property outside Atlanta, Georgia last week, and I sat on the property for three hours, Dave and I watched people interact with our software, and 70% of the people were leveraging the selfie and having an absolute blast with it in terms of what filter to use, how many people to incorporate into the selfie picture. I watched them scan or text to phone and I watched them walk away giggling, because they were so happy with the experience. 

Okay. So this is walking in front of a totem, there's a camera, it's capturing your image in front of the camera and then you're overlaying it like mouse ears or whatever?

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I would say think of Snapchat filters, that's the exact experience that we're promoting, leveraging our software. 

Is that all just about the experience? Like I did this at this location and it's going to brand it and say I was at Avalon, and I did this fun thing and it's cascading out to that person's followers and therefore it's helping the Avalon brand? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct, and then the other side of that, and I'll just use an example of coupons. Think about the whole dynamic of a property wanting to potentially push more and more of the visitors to select locations or select stores, think about the whole idea of, I'm at Avalon for the first time, where is Lululemon? I used the software to understand where Lululemon is from a wayfinding perspective, Lululemon then offers me hypothetically a 10% coupon for today's spend, I scan that QR code, I work my way to Lululemon, I obviously make my purchase, I go to the POS as part of my payment process and I get 10% off my total order.

Lululemon's ecstatic that our technology drove people to their store, but the visitors were ecstatic because they got 10% off that they weren't expecting, everybody's happy. Those are the ideal scenarios. So the next time that family comes to Avalon, they're gonna be very inclined to leverage our software to understand what other coupons are out there.

That's got traceability too, right? 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. 

Yeah, and is that happening very often, people using it?

Peter Thelen: The answer is yes, and it's happening more and more every day. RoveIQ has only been around since 2016, it was started by two individuals that also had another company. So you could make an argument, it really was a hobby.

I came here in May of last year. We had very talented people, it just needed more direction and more leaders, and we're adding new features every single day to our software to once again, heighten the whole idea of creating more and more experiences.

. Did you know much about this space when you came into it? 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, I did a little, I do adapt to be dangerous, but I ran an IT solutions company for 19 years. I spent my last two years at an organization called Kroger, a rather large grocery store where I ran a division called Sunrise Technology, and that was all about leveraging technology that Kroger developed in house and realized that it worked, and the ask from me was to take that technology and sell it to the global retail world. 

The emphasis of that technology was digital shelves inside a grocery store. So I took that same experience, in that case, it was a digital shelf. In our RoveIQ world, it's a digital display, but the elements of the solution were very similar: data, advertising and experiences. 

I noticed in the press release announcing the name change that you also made a reference to healthcare software that was coming and I thought that's interesting, so what was that all about and is it now live? 

Peter Thelen: I've had so much fun with the team and healthcare customers working on this new concept and it's going great. The premise is fairly simple. If you think about the average experience today, where you have to go to a healthcare facility tomorrow, and these healthcare facilities continue to get bigger and bigger, which from a patient perspective, creates a lot of apprehension and anxiety around, where do I park, what entrance do I go in, and how do I ultimately get to the department that I'm needing to go to? 

So leveraging our legacy software, we have made tweaks where we are now integrating into their Epic and/or Cerner, where essentially a patient gets a text the day of their visit and that text takes them from their current location to the correct parking garage via car, then transfers to foot from the parking garage to the correct entrance, and then continues from the front entrance to the actual department. All leveraging a mobile device and obviously our software on that mobile device, and needless to say, it's addressing a rather large problem in healthcare that we believe with confidence we can solve and we're pretty excited about it. 

Now, where does it stand? We're in pilots as we sit here today, which means we're learning every single day with a set of customers, and needless to say, our goal is to go live with many customers as we enter 2023. 

That's an interesting one because an awful lot of big healthcare complexes started off as one building and ended up being eighteen buildings and they're all joined together and it's confusing as hell to find your way around, and I can certainly respect the idea of something that can say: go out this door, go down this hallway, go up three levels, then turn right and left, and eventually you're gonna find your way there because without it, you might have to leave super early because you know you're gonna get lost. 

Peter Thelen: Completely agree, and if you think about the idea of hyperlocal and our legacy software with these enhancements, we can promote this unbelievable experience where you always feel like you know where you're going and where you need to go to ultimately reach your destination. And from a customer experience perspective, these healthcare entities that we're working with today, that's one of their big issues. 

People need to feel good about where they need to go and how to go about getting there. 

Do you address language as well?

Peter Thelen: The answer is yes. Now our current pilots, they have not asked for that, Dave, but the bottom line is, our software has that capability. 

Yeah. I asked because years ago I had a meeting with a hospital in Toronto and it was in a very multicultural area of Toronto, and they had a roster of staff and volunteers who just handled all the different languages that came to the reception desk, asking where the Pediatric Clinic was or whatever, and they would have to call people and say, we need somebody who speaks Lithuanian or Tagalog or whatever it may be, and it was this monumental challenge. 

I suggested at the time that you might wanna look at some sort of interactive directory that you select your language first, and then it takes you where you need to go that way, and they said that's interesting, but they wanted to just do the wow factor, I can't do stuff in their public areas instead, and they're like, oh, okay, that's not gonna solve any problems, but fill your boots. 

Peter Thelen: Yeah, the bottom line is you wanna make sure you have software that can cover the population. The healthcare entities we're working with are defining that population. Needless to say, we're making sure our software can perform, and since it's our own proprietary software, the sky's the limit in terms of the capability and potential. 

Yeah, I could certainly see what you're describing is working well on university campuses as well, particularly for night courses and part-time students who aren't familiar with where they're going and really the same thing in airports.

Peter Thelen: The airports for us, Dave, have been a tough market. It's so competitive, there's a fair amount of rather large players. Don't get me wrong, we focus on airports, but that's not necessarily where we have generated the most success today.

Airports are also pretty conditioned to media companies coming in and saying, we'll put this in for free. 

Peter Thelen: That's a hundred percent correct. I can play that game all day, every day. I can play, it's just a matter of, can I compete? 

Yeah, you're not gonna win too often when the other guy's saying, we'll put it in free for you.

Peter Thelen: You know that's the dynamic we deal with every day on a per deal basis. Based on the perceived digital out-of-home advertising opportunity, that can create a free experience or that unfortunately you have to pay for, it has to generate the corresponding value. So those are the discussions we have. 

I'm guessing the majority of the opportunities that you run into and close are in some way bolstered by advertising, and there aren't that many that are purely just an informational display?

Peter Thelen: It's interesting, we've had a phenomenal 2022 and the characteristics of each deal really are so different, especially as it pertains to advertising, and there is no doubt when advertising can generate that ROI on its own, it makes it a very easy decision for a customer. But when that's not the case, then it correlates to what are the other value elements and is that important to our property? And we're seeing that increase more and more, which has been exciting, because obviously that's creating great opportunities for us. 

But there's no doubt, advertising is a big play here and at the end of the day, we're trying to do everything within our means to bring the best solution forward around advertising to optimize that ROI from a customer perspective.

You mentioned programmatic in your press release. So are you working with the many programmatic companies out there? I don't even wanna rattle 'em all off, cuz there's so many and I'm so confused by it. 

Peter Thelen: Yeah. So our software, because it's this platform and has this ad server capability, it integrates into programmatic partners, and we're constantly looking at the appropriate programmatic partners and then obviously incorporating those into our solution. 

So yeah, that's a big opportunity. This whole idea of unused inventory, how can it be sold in an automated fashion? These programmatic partners make it very easy to fill a high volume, usually obviously lower revenue elements, but still important from a customer perspective. 

The company itself, is it private or are you publicly traded? 

Peter Thelen: No, it's private. It resides here in Northern Kentucky, right outside Cincinnati, Ohio. The emphasis today is within the United States, although we're always looking at growth outside of the US, but it's a fairly small company, but it's doing some really exciting and fun things.

How many folks do you have working there? 

Peter Thelen: So we have 12 people today. I'm trying to grow that by an incremental three between now and year end. We have about 25-30 unique customers across five verticals: smart cities, mixed use real estate or lifestyle centers, we call it entertainment, but the emphasis really there is sports arenas, and then college universities, like we talked about earlier and healthcare. We're heavily focused on five verticals. 

All right. So if people wanna know more about RoveIQ, where do they find you? 

Peter Thelen: Our new website is RoveIQ.com, which in the last three weeks has gotten a lot of attention, which is pretty exciting. But they can also email me, which is pretty simple: pj@RoveIQ.com, and you have my commitment that I'll respond and give it the appropriate attention. 

All right this was great. Congratulations on growing the company the way you have.

Peter Thelen:. Dave, I really appreciate your time. I appreciate your support. You do great work and thanks for giving RoveIQ an opportunity to talk about what we do on a day in day out basis.

Rosemary Valenti, Outdoor Solutions Group

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

New York City is a massive out of home media environment, but much of the attention gets directed to the giant LED boards in Times Square, when there all kinds of other interesting and high opportunity environments that also generate a LOT of eyeballs ... like the ferries across the Hudson River.

Outdoor Solutions Group has many, many years under its belt doing static advertising on the ferries that take commuters back and forth from New Jersey - from wraps on boats and shuttle buses to ad posters and big banners in the ferry terminals.

The company had been slow-walking its digital plans for a variety of reasons, but when COVID hit, the company decided it was time to start converting some of that printed stock to digital. Part of that was triggered by the simple observation that as the economy and riders started coming back from lockdowns, digital interest and buys were coming back faster.

I spoke with Rosemary Valenti, who has spent a long career in New York OOH media circles and fully took over the business when her husband died a few years ago, after a long scrap with cancer. She now has a son helping her out, and partnerships with established digital partners in Broadsign, Pearl Media and TSItouch.

In this podcast, we get into why Valenti's firm took the digital plunge, its challenges and benefits, and her plans to convert more of the print positions to quickly refreshed digital displays.

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TRANSCRIPT

Rosemary Valenti: I'm Rosemary Valenti. I'm the CEO of an Outdoor Solutions Group in New York, and I've been in this out-of-home world for a very long time. I started this company with my husband, Mark Valenti in 1996, but we were both in the out-of-home world prior to that, we were in companies that are now considered outfront media.

And your son's still involved in the business, right? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, Matthew was an infant when I started OSG, and then by the time he was 15 we had him, as a courier almost, going in, dropping off mail, that's how he earned his allowance, did some inside of the ferry postings and he was an intern, he was great. He learned a lot of the business and now he is Vice President of Outdoor Solutions Group. 

Nice, and you've run it on your own since you lost your husband? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, in 2018, we unfortunately lost Mark to cancer. I took over the helm, but Mark and I did this for years. I had a backseat for a while, and he was more in the forefront when the kids were little, and then I would in those say 10 years, we were just in tandem running it pretty much, and then when he got sick, we needed a little help, and then after that, I just started to run it and then Matthew had some experience at Clear Channel Outdoor for a little bit, and then came in and joined forces with me and is instrumental in everything that we do together. He's great. 

Good. It's nice to have him involved, I guess. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, even my other son has posted things. It was a family affair for a while. But that's not my other son's career path. But we do all participate in this. 

Your environment is transit, and particularly the ferries, along the New York waterways, correct? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, New York Waterway Ferries are our business partner, and they specialize in ferrying people from New Jersey waterfront properties or New Jersey over to Manhattan, and then we have locations in Midtown and Brookfield Place, and it was static for a long time, and then we decided to introduce the digital, which we needed to do, especially after COVID. 

We got shut down for a little while in COVID, and had to rebuild it from the ground up, basically. So we had a lot of entertainment, a lot of Broadway, so we lost everything, and also New York Waterway had only essential service for a few months, and so they were shut down, and so we slowly have come back just like many transit systems, but in New York we were hit hard so it took us a long time to get this back up and we're there now. But we took a hard look at the company and we saw digital coming back faster and bouncing back faster than any kind of traditional transit, so we implemented converting some of our traditional, basically if you wanna call theem street furniture, but they’re six foot by four foot, that's what we pulled out in some of the terminals, and we put in a 75 inch Samsung QMRs which really is helpful to have, you can send creative right from the office desk. 

Yeah, really. So why do you think digital was coming back faster than static?

Rosemary Valenti: I think people wanted cancellation clauses, there were less production fees. You could easily take something in and out, you can change creative. They were a lot of people who were speaking to the public about COVID through out-of-home and we didn't have that in the beginning. We didn't have that opportunity, but you saw advertisers doing messaging about COVID, and then saying, we're back and all different things. But we were shut down and so when we were coming back, we wanted to make sure we had something like that and what Waterway also wanted that, they have their own spot, they can alk to their customers through us because we put them inside the ferry terminals, and we also put them inside the ferries themselves. 

Yeah. So you have various terminals, they're like small airport terminals with concourses and you've got what used to be light boxes are now digital, and then you've got, I think portrait displays that you've got on the actual ferries? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, we did everything portrait display. So our in wall in the ferry terminals, which is really in the waiting areas and some of the pathways that they walk through to get into and then to get onto the slips. Those are 75 inch portraits, and then in one of the areas we have like maybe a 55 inch where some of the seating is facing, and then when they get into the ferries, they're 43 inch and they're right at the entrance and exit door. So you come into the lower level of the ferry and that's where our screens are, everything's portrait. We figured one piece of creativity is easier. 

We're trying to do a two minute uninterrupted loop through the whole system, so an advertiser gets the entire system, which then can give them 90% of the ridership almost, if you think about that, they're in the highest traffic ferries, and then they're at the terminals. Right now, on the New Jersey side, in Port Imperial / Weehawken, and in Midtown and in these ferries, that's our phase one. We intend on putting in some more digital. We just have to do it in phases. 

You're also still recovering from COVID, right? Not health wise, but business wise. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, that's why we're doing it in phases. But much of the ridership is back and it's a little bit different. It used to be more Monday to Friday. Now they're seeing those as many people on a weekend, then there might be a Tuesday probably because of split work weeks, right? So I think people are taking advantage of this city more because they don't have to go every day to work. 

Our partners, New York Waterways, they're seeing almost a steady flow back in, it’s just different for them, which is great.

Is the ferry ridership profile a bit different from what you would see on Long Island rail, or particularly the subway? 

Rosemary Valenti: Definitely different from the subway. I would say it's an affluent audience. So I would say maybe more a Metro North that goes up to Westchester and somewhat like a Long Island railroad. We have a very affluent and high education especially there's people that live on the waterfront. So some of those waterfront areas in New Jersey have all been built up into these million dollar apartments, so it's really becoming a beautiful area. They have a beautiful skyline view, and then what Waterway did is once they land in Midtown, they provide a complimentary bus service to go Midtown down 34th street, 42nd, 50th. You take your route and they make it, basically from home to the office so you can circumvent subways, you can circumvent everything, they call it door to door, and it's a complimentary bus. 

So those are the buses that we wrap. They have a fleet of buses along with the fleet of ferries and then downtown Brookfield place area and Wall Street, it's all pedestrian, you walk to your offices from there, cuz it's much closer. So they don't have to take mass transit really. 

And I would assume that if I think about being on New York subways, that a great many of the ads are for English as a second language courses and career colleges and things like that, I'm guessing that you're getting different kinds of brands who are advertising on your screens?

Rosemary Valenti: I would say that the subways have a mix of different types of advertisers, but we're getting high end real estate, we've been getting some alcohol brands, we had HubSpot where they wrapped a ferry and they went onto the digital and they wrapped a bus. So that's a CRM. So we're getting certain things like that, and Broadway have come back. We have Disney's Lion King and Aladdin, and we're getting more interest in that sector again. But, we had lost a lot of that so that's coming back and we just got Fire Islands, Hulu. So they did like a partial ferry wrap, but they also got onto the digital and obviously streaming is like digital. So that's great, and they had done a big pride event here. So we had sponsors of that pride event and then they were also on our ferries and the ferries were chartered to get to that pride event in Governor's island. It was called pride island. Yeah, there's different types of advertisers that we would get high end real estate that they might not get in the subway. 

I'm guessing that long before you decided to start the conversion over to digital, you were getting banged on by no end of display and software companies to make that conversion quicker. What was holding you back? 

Rosemary Valenti: Strategy, trying to figure out exactly what to do because there were options. Do we do a big spectacular, do we do LED instead of the screens, so we really wanted to figure out where should we go? And as we looked at our own dioramas on our walls, right at eye level, and we said, it make perfect sense to update these into digital because they're sitting on benches next to them, they're buying tickets next to them, they're walking past them when they're trying to get to the bathrooms. They're all in the area, in the ferry terminals that make the most sense, and inside the ferries, it was absolutely an easy decision to just put these right at the entryways. So you come in, you sit down and you face our screens. 

Is it technically challenging to put them in something like a ferry becaused of the salt air and everything else?

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, actually, we worked with TSI Touch and they gave us these anti-glare screens and protective coverings, so we needed to work on a design with that. Even in the ferry terminals, they have a wall of glass that you are sitting in and there's a wall of glass facing the Hudson river. So we needed anti-glare. We wanted to make sure they were protected with tempered glass because people do roll their suitcases sometimes. So we needed to get all these components factored, like what do we need in this to put this in? 

And then TSI Touch actually supplied us with them once we told 'em what we were looking for, and then we had to deal with the design of our ferry terminals. So in Midtown, there was a lot of steel. So they helped us fabricate the enclosures that kind of go with the flow and looked somewhat like the enclosures we had on a more updated version of the enclosures, and same with the Port Imperial / Weehawken, we did a a black covering so it looked like a giant iPhone. But we had that kind of color on the walls prior. So they were instrumental in helping us with the design and they also made sure that the heat could escape. There's all these elements that you have to do when you have to put these in, then you have computers in the walls, and I would say that when you talk about inside the ferries, we have had to get to a cradle poin because there's no LTE. So you had to figure out how to get the LTE across the Hudson and back every 20 minutes, and there is electrical issues on ferries, just like in trucks. 

Yes, they call it dirty power!

Rosemary Valenti: Dirty power! That's exactly what they call it. Yeah, we had to work with Marine electricians to make sure we had the right surges or something that may deal with a low power instead of a high power. So that's some stuff I didn't understand, but now I understand. 

The good news is, you had your baptism in fire. So if you can put screens with everything involved on a bouncing, rocking ferry, going across the Hudson, putting them in a static, enclosed building like a ferry terminal should be a walk in the park?

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah. That's why we did the ferry terminals first. Yes, we had to learn about the ferries and deal with ferry operations and you know, they're using these vehicles, you gotta take them outta service for us to install them. It's not as easy, but they're very helpful and they wanted this and we work well together, but I didn't understand a lot of Marine things, and I've heard terminology that I never understood, like “give her a splash” and that means a ferry going back into the water. 

And then for software, we use Broadsign for content and programmatic because that's something that everybody's taking advantage of and we wanted to get involved in that as well. So Broadsign educates you, they have the support staff, they teach you everything, and they're fabulous to work with. So we're really getting dynamic advertising.

I would imagine that's another baptism in fire you had. If you're been doing static advertising for 20 plus years, to all of a sudden wade into this Labyrinth, I would almost call it the programmatic world, must have been bewildering, cuz I try to write about it and I'm bewildered.

Rosemary Valenti: It is. I think that's why I think my husband was even approached prior to that and didn't wanna do it in the beginning. He saw a lot of companies like that start and then maybe fail. So we waited quite some time, but my son was at Clear Channel and he was selling Times Square billboards and things like that so he understood digital more than I did. So he was a great asset for that, and then we partnered with Pearl Media last year, and they also helped us understand this and they helped strategize with us and we ended up using one of their guys who branched off on his own Daniel, Oak city Integrations is his company and he helped us with the software and guided us in the implementation of all of this.

Okay, so you do media sales through Pearl and you also get backed up through programmatic buys?

Rosemary Valenti: We have a rep deal with Pearl Media, so they help us with the advertising as well as ourselves, and programmatic goes through Broadsign, and that makes that side very easy. So yeah, that's how we are getting an influx in sales between OSG's staff and then Pearl’s sales staff.

Because you are in terminals and ticketed environments, people go through turnstiles or something like that, I would assume you've got a pretty reliable one traffic and impressions count, and you wouldn't have to rely so much on venue analytics?

Rosemary Valenti: We joined Geopath and they rated not only our buses on the streets, but our dioramas that were existing and then our digital, it was switched out to digital. So we worked with Geopath and we have over 2 million monthly impressions per advertiser, because there's a lot of signs in there. We launched with 27 screens. So because we were rated first with Geopath as static and then converted existing things, it was pretty easy for them to help us. We explained that it was 15 second spots within a two minute loop and they could easily do the conversion and help us with that. All advertisers look for the audited so we give audited impressions. 

And are you with other associations as well?  

Rosemary Valenti: We worked for the buses, which are static, with Street Metrics and they helped audit those, and OAAA is somebody we belong to but that's just a membership organization. They had done a study once on one of our ferries, which was all state. So we've seen those studies. But  they're a good source. 

Do you think you could have stayed as just analog or now that you've gone the digital route it makes sense? 

Rosemary Valenti: We knew we needed to go digital, we didn't wanna stay analog. We wanted to be updated. It’s just that my husband's health was a problem, and so it held us back the 17 months he was sick, so it held us back. But then, when COVID hit, we knew we needed to convert. 

And now that you've done it, you talked about the quick turn on being able to change ads and things like that. Have you been able to assess the ROI value of it? Like you've done it and it makes sense? 

Rosemary Valenti: Yes, it makes sense. It happened faster than I thought, some of the return on investment, which is great. So we're seeing the digital take off and people really like it. Like I said, they can just send you a file, we can push play. 

We've even had like the Yankees come in for two day stints and then two day stints, like when they first open season and then a bobblehead thing. So those short term campaigns we could never have done with static so it really helps. 

Yeah, I would assume with the static thing, particularly if you're gonna replace a bunch of light box posters with new print ones that don't turn that quickly, it's like numerous days, at least? 

Rosemary Valenti: You mean just to post?

Well, if somebody says, “I would like to do this” then the creative's gotta be done, and then it's gotta be printed, then it's gotta be sent to the site, then somebody's gotta switch it out and everything else, it doesn't happen in half an hour. 

Rosemary Valenti: Right. You need an install team, you need to print them. Your print could take a few days for us, say a regular diorama, which is six foot by four foot, but it could take several days to print a bus or a ferry and it takes over a day to wrap a bus. It takes a day to wrap a bus and a ferry. It could be one day if it's good weather, but with the ferries you're dealing with weather conditions.

But the combination, they're starting to like the combination because you get to hundred percent share a voice with your static, and then you get this digital where you can change creative. We've had the cannabis expo run with us. They had four different creatives on the walls that were running, simultaneously and then they gave us some static. So the combination, they knew they were always gonna be there, and the diorama sat down in Brookfield place, but they were part of a loop inside the ferries so they were getting on the wall and in the ferries as well as some traditional and that combination is really nice. 

There was a company that didn't last, maybe it was COVID, but I think it was more about regulations, that was floating an LED display on a barge on a river. I can't remember whether it was the East River or the Hudson. 

Rosemary Valenti: It was on the Hudson. They they made it illegal. I think it still may exist out in Florida or something, but… 

Yeah, I think they’re in Miami.

Rosemary Valenti: It was removed because it was interrupting the Hudson river view for one of those people that paid a lot of money to have that view, and this light is flashing in your giant windows, they all contacted the mayor and the governor and they got that removed. I think, to them, it was unsightly. It was very bright. In their offices, you could see it going up and down. That's why ours is static, it's static on the ferries, it's not something that's lit up like that. It's still a fabulous 84 foot long message on the ferries, but to put the digital on the water and then flash it up into both waterfront sides of the river when these people, I think, pay all this money to have a waterfront view, but imagine just putting your kid to sleep or something, and then you these lights are flashing in the window. I can't even imagine all the things that they were hearing, but they did force them out of New York.

Yeah, I was just curious because if you are doing static, doing basically vehicle wraps, but on a ferry, if you could do that with LED that was permanently there and just changed the file, even if it wasn't flashing, it was just solid, that would be very efficient and maybe have an ROI down the road, but then you might face the same heat. 

Rosemary Valenti: Yeah, that's not something that we're interested in. I would imagine some of those screens have to use generators, which could make things even louder, or you're on the waterfront, you're bumping around, but it probably is taxing. Think about if it's a generator that has to use gas and now you've got this whole diesel/fuel issue right now going on with how much everything is, but I think that it's too invasive, the digital going inside the waterfronts, their views. 

I think there's too many voices saying we don't want this. 

How competitive is the media environment in New York? I know it has been like that for a very long time, but I'm curious because there's just so many different ways that people are putting advertising on. 

Rosemary Valenti: I would say it's very competitive because you have traditional billboards going down the West side highway, you have all the transits, you have the subways, you have buses. So we're all fighting for the budgets. But we are the only ferry wrap program but there is digital inside of some of the other ferries that run around, but all out-of-home in Manhattan is competitive. We're all looking for an edge.

Yeah, and they're all coming out of COVID, just the way you guys are as well, right? 

Rosemary Valenti: We're all coming along. I think I think we're pretty much back. We're one of the top markets, right? So if we're gonna be anywhere, it's nice to be here because we have a lot of people, but I would say that I'm seeing that people are contacting me daily to ask me about my rates and my business and that's a plus because we did go a while in COVID when it was deafening. 

Are you looking to expand or is it more about building out the digital side of the portfolio you already have? 

Rosemary Valenti: We are looking to expand on the digital inside of our terminals more and we're partnered with Pearl so we're strategizing if there's other opportunities. They have some good stuff too. So they're right i near where we are so it offers this great synergy. 

We're looking to expand. We buy again, we still wanna, we still have a little bit more phase to build out just with New York waterway. 

All right. It was a pleasure to speak with you.

Rosemary Valenti: It was great to speak with you too. I appreciate it. 

All right. Thanks for your time. 

 

Johannes Troger, Ameria

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

Health safety concerns that become top of mind for the whole planet back in March 2020 led to a lot of assumptions that the interactive display business was going to go touchless, with screens managed by mid-air sensors or perhaps by voice.

That only kinda sorta played out, as touchscreen companies did just fine through the pandemic. Staffing shortages and a desire to minimize staff to customer contacts led to widespread adoption of self-service screens used to order food and buy tickets.

But a German company that specializes in touchless technology suggests while consumers will use touchscreens to specifically get and do things in faster and easier ways, situations in which the screens are more about experience and discovery are going touch-free. Ameria argues that when a screen experience is opt-in, consumers are happier if they don't have to touch the screen - for health safety reasons and also because of the age-old worry about the cleanliness of the people who used the screen before them.

Based in Heidelberg but selling globally, Ameria is focused on the software that create, enables and delivers touch-free experiences using optical sensors. I had an interesting chat with Johannes Troger, who runs business development for the company.

 

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TRANSCRIPT

Johannes, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Ameria is all about? 

Johannes Troger: Yes, thank you, Dave, for having me, and sure, I can give you a little rundown. So Ameria is originally a software company coming from software project development, and a few years back, we went into the brick and mortar retail space providing interactive solutions. We are all about bringing a great experience to the customer, and started providing a lot of touch free or touchless solutions to customers. 

So this is one of the things we are doing, and we are also providing a cloud platform behind that to manage all the solutions, to bring out the contents and to collect the data.

And you're based in Heidelberg, Germany? 

Johannes Troger: That is correct. We're based in Heidelberg, Germany. We're founded here a few years back, actually by a couple of students from Heidelberg University who met there and found that there was a big market for software development, and yeah, that's how it got started, and then after a few changes, we arrived at where we are at now.

Are the students still involved or has it kind of evolved from there? 

Johannes Troger: So one of them is. He’s our CEO, and the other one left a few years back, but one of the founders is still heading the company and is still our visionary behind everything we do.

Okay, and you're a private company, but you have outside investment?

Johannes Troger: Yes, we are a private company. It's still mainly owned by the founder and his family, but we have some outside investors. So the biggest part actually goes to a crowd investing group. It's a German platform called Companisto and we did a few rounds with them, which was a really great way for us to do it because it allowed a lot of people who also come from the industry to invest, and they didn't have to go in with large amounts but they really became our marketing and PR crowd and then we have a few larger investors also involved, but it's mainly in a family office space. 

And what's your role with the company? 

Johannes Troger: So I'm really heading the business development and partner development part of the business, so on the one hand, I'm a lot out there. Now again, out there at trade fairs and conventions and so on, talking to potential customers, also working with a lot of our partners and also still have some accounts which I started developing when I started at the company, and where I'm still involved in projects, which is always really good because from once in a while to see what's actually happening out there, that's really good.

We met at Infocomm in Las Vegas two-three weeks ago, and I'm curious: was this kind of a first foray into the US to start to build out that market or have you been active in it for some time? 

Johannes Troger: In the past, we had some projects in North America, but they were mainly driven by customers from Europe who we supported in projects with their companies in North America. So really Infocomm was the first foray we did into North America, also talking to potential customers there, to potential partners and getting a feel of the American market.

How would you describe the state of the business? Are you out there with active installations and everything else, or are you just building things up? 

Johannes Troger: So we are out there with active installations. They're usually not at a large scale yet, so we're talking about a lot of pilots and a lot of small scale installations. So it's about at this stage of the business, and I think we are on the verge of the first bigger rollouts with the Touch Free technology. 

And is that the lead product now, Touchfree?

Johannes Troger: Exactly. That's what we've been focusing on in the last two to three years. We actually had some touchless solutions already before the pandemic, and we used them mainly in retail for promotional campaigns. We used them at trade fairs for companies who wanted to basically get more attention to their booth. But it was a niche product. It worked really well in what it was supposed to do but people didn't really see the need beyond that, and so with the pandemic hitting, a lot of companies realized that there are some companies out there in the market who are already doing solutions like this, and they came to us and based on their needs and requirements, and based on our experience and ideas, we started pushing those solutions, developing new options and re-augmenting our portfolio where it was needed. So that became really the focus.

It's interesting, when the pandemic first hit, the conventional wisdom was that this was the end for physical touch screens, nobody was gonna use one ever again because of the contagions on the screen and the inability to keep them clean and so on, keep them disinfected, so to speak.

What kind of played out is, touch screens actually had a pretty good couple of years through the pandemic because it was determined that separating one to one human contacts was safer using touch screens, even if you did have to wipe them down or do that sort of thing. So self-service became a big deal. So I'm curious because I thought that, okay, a lot of this is now gonna go to touchless and voice, but it didn't, but what did you experience? 

Johannes Troger: So what we experienced is that, pretty much as you described that at the start, a lot of companies believed that the day of the touch screen was over and what we experienced over the course of the pandemic is that, there is a kind of big divide between solutions which are, I would say more process based. So you mentioned self order kiosks, for example, in the QSR space, and then on the other hand, there are more experience based solutions which are more geared towards marketing and inspiring customers and so on, and so with those process based use cases, we really see that touch screens are big in business and I think it’s kind of got the, “You still have got to get where you're going” thing behind it, right? So people really want their food, and as you mentioned, it feels safer to do it via the screen than to stand in front of a person at the counter. 

So people use it and it's quite funny because even before that everyone could see all the studies about how dirty they were and how people were not washing their hands, and so on. We don't want to get into those kinds of unpleasant things, but it was pretty clear before that, but it didn't stop people before that, but when you see on the other hand use cases where companies try to bring an experience to their customers, inspire them, acquaint them with probably new products they have or with new services they're offering, there, we see that touch screens are not working at all. So if people don't understand what they're getting out of it, they're not gonna start interacting with a touch screen.

So they'll opt in when they're hungry or they need a transit ticket or whatever, but if it's for discovery of new products and promotions or accessorizing an outfit, they are less likely to want to touch something?

Johannes Troger: Exactly!

Okay, interesting. So one of the challenges that I've seen with touchless, and it goes back to the days when people were using Kinect sensors, gesture sensors, and so on, there was a learning curve and there was a problem with accuracy, and I'm wondering where that is at now?

Johannes Troger: Obviously, the technology has developed a lot, and I think the way it has developed this much more on the software side. So really the side from which we are coming, because we are not creating our own hardware sensors, we are really hardware agnostic in that. 

So I think there are really some different things that happened. For one, the Kinect really worked based on creating a full body model, what is called the skeleton of the body and then tracked different joints and different points of the body, and that always meant there was some latency in it, and that always meant that you had to keep the interface with really large buttons and so on because it wasn't very precise. 

And you're asking people to perform!

Johannes Troger: Exactly, and you usually have a certain distance from the screen and they have to make really big movements. So this was actually really the first solution we offered and we saw that it worked really well in any environment where people were in a kind of playful mood anyway, or where a lot of kids were involved and so on. So this worked really well or where you really wouldn't ask, People not to perform too much in front of the screen, but they still had a good experience, and so what we do now, for one, you're much closer to the screen so you can really work with an interface that you could also use on a touch screen. I wouldn't go as far as to say that it's advisable to just display a website, right? Because even with touch, you wouldn’t just use a normal website, you would probably make the buttons larger and so on. But it's precise enough now that after a bit of learning, you can actually even interact with a website without any trouble. So this precision problem, it's really a thing of the past. 

What we also do is that we give users basically visual cues, so they get a sort of cursor where we have a dot and a circle around it, and then they know, okay, if they move closer in and the two merge, then that's when they do the click and they get a click sound. So it has become more intuitive, more precise, but at the same time, you can also help people to ease into it, and then regarding that whole latency problem, here we are really working with a combination. So it's not only about modeling the hand, but it's also about taking a lot of other parameters, like distance to the screen and so on and tracking objects in this kind of 3D space that we create and that really allows you to interact very fast.

So I assume the UX design is super important, like the workflow and that you've learned a lot through the years? 

Johannes Troger: Yeah, absolutely, I think that's next to the technology and to making it really precise on the software side, that's really the key point and that's also why we realized pretty early that we had to be involved in that process, at least at the start. 

So, we really pass on our experience with that to agencies of our customers, we are really involved in the whole design process, and obviously it's about a lot of things, I think some of the things also have to be considered when you talk about touch screens which you use in a public space, obviously the size of buttons and the positioning, so position them in places where it's comfortable for people to reach and things like that, and a lot of those things, once you look at it, they seem pretty obvious but they're not that obvious when you're designing it, and when you're in the middle of the process. 

Do you have to tell people up front on the screen, so to speak, that you don't need to touch this, or is it intuitive enough that as you reach to touch it, it’s gonna blink and give you a signal that, yeah you've done your action already?

Johannes Troger: So we've been experimenting with a lot of different ways to make people aware, starting from not making them aware at all and just letting them find out themselves. But what we do a lot of the time is that we give them little hints, little popups and so on when they touch the screen that they don't have to, in a nice way, and that it's basically a nice service to them that they don't have to touch the screen, but what we also do is that they still activate the button, even if they touch, right? So I think that's important because we don't wanna punish anyone for probably not getting it a few times. 

At Infocomm, we had an app where the hint said in German, please don't touch or you don't have to touch. But it said it in German, and I was always joking. We do it wherever we are in the world. We do it in German because German is such a nice language for ordering people around. At the beginning we experimented with things like, if you touch the whole screen turned like flashing red and you would get MC Hammer’s Don't Touch This song and stuff like this. But what worked is, and we have tried a few apps where the concept or the idea behind it is that people, not in a straightforward tutorial get made aware of it or get taught to do anything, but that they explore it for themselves and are drawn into this by realizing, oh I'm moving my hand in front of the screen and something is happening.

So for example, we have one case where it's all about recipe inspiration in grocery stores and there you get drawn in by some audio visual cues to look at the screen, and then if you start moving your hand in front of it, and if you're about 20 centimeters or 15 centimeters away from it, there's this wooden cooking spoon on the screen, which starts moving with your hand, and so almost by accident, you realize, oh, I don't have to touch, and I'm still doing something, and we also do this with start buttons, which follow around your hand when you move it in front of the screen. And so this kind of accidental realization that, this is a touch free solution that is working really well, and that's what we can see in our data, and when we talk to users, which we routinely do, they usually say that's probably the most satisfying moment that they feel when they found out for themselves that this is something new.

When you install something, is there an adoption period where you can see at first there's lots of people physically touching the screen, but maybe a month later as you get repeat users, they get it? 

Johannes Troger: So it's probably not so much an adoption period over the whole group of users. What we see is that typically a larger proportion of the users get it right away. So what we do is we basically track all the movements that happen in this kind of 3D space in front of the screen, and we use this to also tweak our algorithms and to work on that, and we also track how many of those little messages pop up when people are actually touching the screen, and so at one point when we were checking the numbers, we thought, okay, there's a hell of a lot of those messages, and we realized that they were restricted to very few sessions. So it seems that few people who don't get it, they really don't get it but the majority of people get it pretty much right away. 

And this is optical sensing, right? So it's like those old leap motion, little chocolate bar kinds of size things that create this physical space in front of a screen?

Johannes Troger: Yeah, exactly. So we usually work with multiple sensors so that we can attach them on the screen, so in a kind of kiosks solution, they're built into that, but we also provide little boxes, which you can click on the sides of just a normal, old, passive screen that you have, and they basically from both sides, create this field and this multiple, camera approach also allows us to scale up in the number of cameras, which also allows us to, for example, in the retail solutions add a third camera, which is looking out and basically scanning the surroundings so that we can react to people walking past with the content in some audio visual ways.

So is there a little bit of AI and machine learning happening? 

Johannes Troger: There is actually quite a lot of that happening, especially in the tweaking of the algorithms in regards to precision and to making it more intuitive, so one of the things on the roadmap is to use that to also be able to react to the way someone is interacting, so that after a couple of clicks we understand is this a power user, is it a regular user or is it a first time user? And then we can react in terms of the guidance that we give, and in that, there's quite a bit of machine learning involved. 

You said you're a software company first and foremost, but you do sell hardware. Are you selling, kind of display totems that have this technology embedded in it? Because it's just simpler to have a full package, as opposed to saying, “We can do this part now go find the other part”? 

Johannes Troger: Yeah. This is what we do, obviously in the early stages, and it's different for different use cases, right? So, for example, if it's about retail, we have partners who built the kiosk Systems, there's obviously a number of providers out there who custom build the kiosk to do what the customer wants, sometimes there's more involved. So it could be like a printer to be added to print out the recipes or some card reader which would be included. So that's where we work with the experts, but we can basically then deliver it end to end. 

I guess what we're planning when we get to larger numbers, this kind of partner ecosystem is obviously gonna grow and what we are also working on is to also have basically this kind of retrofit model we can use the screens you already have and just have an upgrade path.

So it sounds like you do hardware because you have to in the early days, but ideally you're behind the curtain, so to speak, enabling other hardware manufacturers and solution providers to make this happen? 

Johannes Troger: That's really the goal, yes.

But you gotta get from here to there first, right?

Johannes Troger: That's always when you bring in something new and when we were talking about the content and about designing the the UI and so on, I think if you bring out something new, you are always required to do much more than what you probably consider the core of your business, and of your innovative capabilities. I mean, if you do passive digital signage or you shoot a TV commercial or something, they're out there. There are thousands of agencies who understand the channel, who understand how it works and who can tell any customer perfectly how it works. But when you come to some new channel, which it really is, then there is no agency out there who has a whole desk full of best practices, and that's what we are seeing a lot of the time. 

For example, with one customer, we were working on a solution, which is placed in petrol stations, and before that they had passive screens there and they obviously have what they do online, which is the only stuff they know how to do interactively, and so somewhere in between that, we had to find a way where the brand’s people said, yeah, that's fine, that's along our guidelines because they didn't have guidelines for that channel. So it's really about developing concepts for a whole new channel, and that's the same really with the hardware. So we talk to the hardware producers, to the kiosk producers and manufacturers, and we discuss with them how to best mount the sensors and how to bring it together.

So yeah, that's the fate of anyone who brings in an innovation, but I have to say, it's also the fun of it, right? Because it allows you to not only see this very narrow field in the value chain, but to also learn and understand about many other areas and become a more rounded business person for that. 

Is it just the software that creates this field and does motion capture and all that? I believe you've got composer software that allows the end user to fully design the experience that their customers or their users are gonna see? 

Johannes Troger: Exactly. We have a cloud software suite also behind that, so part of that is a composer software, which allows you to build the content. So you basically just upload the assets and activate them, and the other part is the, it's called the CX manager, the connected experience manager, and that really takes care of all the content distribution scheduling but also taking in the data that is created because other than a touch screen, we also have a lot of data that tracks what happens before someone starts interacting with that outward looking camera, ao we know how many people walk past, stop to look at the screen and so on, and it's really for monitoring the hardware, and it's really a system we started building a few years back and it's really geared towards being a central hub for all sorts of different interactive customer experience solutions that you have out there. So it also runs augmented reality car configurators which we did for a customer. It also runs beacon systems and mobile apps for customers. 

So the idea is really everything that you bring out there for your customer experience or for creating customer experience can be run via that centrally.

Interesting. I noticed on your website that you referenced beacons and I thought there's a technology that had its moment and didn't seem to get much in terms of broad ranged adoption, but you're using them. How are you using them? 

Johannes Troger: So, with beacons, it's use case where is really in the automobile industry, and It works in a way that the beacons are placed in the cars, and then if you have the manufacturer app you can step next to the car, and it displays all the facts about the configuration and about the car you're standing in front of

On a smartphone or…? 

Johannes Troger: Yeah, on a smartphone.

So the idea behind that is really to provide information and then to allow people to take this information, and for example, then include it into their own configuration that they probably have done online and that they have stored in the app, and so that there really is a kind of exchange between the physical experience of the showroom and the digital experience they probably started at home. 

If somebody stops you and says, who's your big client? What's that reference case that you like to talk about? What is that? 

Johannes Troger: So, in automotive, the most work we have done is with Porsche, so for a long time they were our largest client and they were the most innovative ones really when it came to how to deliver more experience or more digital experience to their customers. In retail and consumer goods, the longstanding client and the most innovative one, and the one we were able to try and learn the most with this is definitely LEGO, and I think one part of that was really that they obviously understood the kind of playfulness of it right from the start, and what we are seeing is that really the retailers themselves that's something that really only has happened for the last two or three years.

I think, five years ago, a lot of the retailers still felt okay, the whole digital stuff in brick and mortar, that's mostly gadgets and let's just hang up a couple of screens and that's fine, if they even did that, but now for the last two or three years even in grocery, retail and so on, I'm hearing a lot of managers saying, okay, we know that we have to move and we know that we have to do a lot to be ready for the future, and I think the exciting thing at the moment is that other than, if you wanna build an online shop, there are a lot of people out there who can tell you that's how you build an online shop, but when you come to digital in the brick and mortar space, there's no one who can tell you those are the two or three recipes, that's how you build it, and that's it, right?

So probably passive digital signage is about the only thing that people by now know how it works, and you can find someone who does it for you and executes it nicely, and that's fine. But anything beyond that, it's still a lot of trial and error of finding out what is it really, what the customers want? What do they need? How can we attract them to use something? 

All right, this was great. If people wanna know more about the company, how do they find that out? Where do they go online? 

Johannes Troger: Obviously, the first point is our website, so it's www.ameria.com

Okay, perfect. All right, thanks again for spending the time with me. 

Johannes Troger: Thank you, Dave. Thank you for a really interesting half-hour with you. 

Alex Epshteyn, Zignage

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

If a company wants to hang its business hat on the proposition that it is very good at visualizing real-time data to screens, it helps to have a big, very familiar client that heavily uses that sort of thing.

A small New York City start-up called Zignage has that in the New York Stock Exchange - providing and maintaining a platform that shows the numbers and trends charting on screens around the hyper-kinetic trading floor in Wall Street.

The company grew out of an NYU media lab and spent its first few years working mostly behind the curtains, developing signage and data-handling capabilities to software firms and end-user clients. But a few years ago, the company made the decision to develop a brand and start selling its data-centric capabilities directly to end-users.

I had a great chat with Alex Epshteyn, the CEO and Founder of the company, about how it got started, where its headed, who it all serves, and how there can be a huge gulf between software shops that can take a number from a shared data table somewhere, and running mission-critical, hyper-secure visualizations on a stock exchange floor.

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TRANSCRIPT

Alex, thank you for joining me. Can you give me a rundown on what Zignage is all about, how they started and how long you've been around? 

Alex Epshteyn: Absolutely. Thank you for having me, Dave. Zignage started in 2009 formally, and we started at the NYU Incubator while I was doing my graduate work at the Media Lab in NYU and suffice to say the company was more interesting than the graduate works. So I started doing that, even though I'm from the east coast and this doesn't typically happen, it kinda happened here. So initially, conceptually, we were gonna get into the digital out home space and we were gonna build an auction backend that people can bid for spots on digital signs. So kinda a slightly novel idea, especially in digital signage and we couldn't do a big enough raise, and then we found a number of these sort of remnant advertising platforms coming into the market and we decided, since I have a pretty good little black book of enterprise clients, and we built the platform to about 50% at that point, in mid to end of 2009, let's try our hand at some enterprise folks, and what ended up happening is a trajectory that basically pushed us for about eight years, which is we built a middleware and a toolkit, essentially our own toolkit, that enabled us to build very quickly CMSs and builds and anything related to that, data bindings for third party systems like CRM systems and CRP systems, a variety of backends essentially, and we essentially entered OEM space.

So we built products for other companies. Some of them were large, some of them were small. We had a tremendous amount of NDAs and non-competes, as you can imagine. These companies would not like you to advertise your own stuff while you were building it for them and typically we would have maybe one or two of these customers at the same time. So from 2009 to about 2017, maybe a little bit later even, we basically did work for third parties and we built a lot of different solutions, and around 2018, we decided that we were gonna attempt to productize. That means, essentially build our own, front facing, become a brand, and move away from a pure sort of project solution, even though we had a product in there. But it was a product for us, not so much for the end customer and to get into the market and so we did, and in the meanwhile we had two direct customers during almost all the time.

NYU was one. We had a number of schools at NYU that we were able to pitch, and successfully had running, so NYU Law School, NYU Engineering School, where I was a student and then NYSE where we initially partnered Thomson Reuters. So Thomson Reuters did the data and, most of the application stack actually, and what we provided is a device management framework and advanced players to run the WebGL and all the other things that they needed to run for the New York Stock Exchange. This was under the NYSE-Euronext regime, which has since been bought by the Intercontinental Exchange. This was in 2017, which was a formative year for us. As I mentioned, NYSE under the new ownership came to us and said, “Look, Thomson Reuters is relatively expensive and essentially they're reselling us their data, how about you guys take on their responsibility?” You get nine months to replicate and you get this support contract that basically takes over for them, at a discount for them but it was a nice option for us. 

We took on the challenge. Because we were able  in these intermittent years we built up so much experience and know how to deal with realtime sources, realtime data sources, and WebGL specifically to make things pretty bulletproof whereas perhaps some other HTML5 technology that is fairly popular in digital signage would is maybe not robust or maybe not as performant. So we took that toolkit and applied it to over essentially at the New York Stock Exchange and took the contract over and successfully we did that. So at the New York Stock Exchange today, they're actually running two separate solutions from us. They have our more standard on print solution for their marketing group and then they have a much more customized, almost like an OEM version for their trading real time data, which are now classed as a number of financial data widgets. 

So if I'm at the NYSE and I'm looking down on the floor, or I'm walking around the floor with all the guys with the funny jackets and everything, those various dashboard screens that I see with all the pricing indicators and everything else, that's all being driven by you?

Alex Epshteyn: That is correct. So everything essentially above the workstation level, everywhere above the trader level, if you just look up above the 5’8” level from the ground, you’ll basically be looking at our solutions. It actually is a full gambit of our capabilities. We have synchronized video, real time widgets for financial data consumption, charting types of things and a lot of different ticker technologies that we've custom built and some of our generic ones, and streaming as well.

The only other company that works with us at the site is Haivision, so they provide the backend system and supplementary streaming solutions. So we consume their feeds and also feed them. 

They’re a video distribution company? 

Alex Epshteyn: That's right. So we're actually partnered with them. So they're one of our partners in space. We like working with them, they are a nice Canadian company to say the least and I know some of the original folks that sort of constituted the company and they have grown as a company tremendously through the years. So we really like working with them. 

Yeah, this must have been a really big holy shit moment for you guys when you got that deal because it's not like winning a hundred locations QSR chain or something, this is the New York Stock Exchange. It's on the TV every day with endless photos and everything else, and it's mission critical. Like you can't say, oh, we're just doing a software update and we'll be back in 10 minutes?

Alex Epshteyn: Indeed, and the escalations we get are pretty hardcore. We have just a few minutes to get things going, and philosophically, we try to blend some aspects of redundancy with a lot of resiliency because redundancy itself, some folks who deal with these sorts of mission critical situations, could itself present its own set of problems, right? So you want the system, the platform itself to be as resilient or high availability as possible to use a term out of the server space. 

So yeah, it was a huge thing for us and ultimately, we specialized in a lot of financial services and non-retail banking is a more generic category or an area we do very well in and we work with some integrators in the space that are known for it as well in terms of channel. Currently our CTO is actually the chief architect of the Thompson Reuter solution. He came on board with us a year ago, a year and a half ago as a full time hire. He was a consultant for many years after Thomson Reuters got customization space, and he worked with us for a long time and then finally our CTO to do other stuff, and Steve came on board. So we're very well positioned for this work. 

So for your company, if you had to do an elevator pitch saying what all you do, what do you rattle off for them?

Alex Epshteyn: I think what we would do is, as you mentioned, mission critical type of usages, whichever vertical, right? We've done things with SCADA. We've done things in transportation that I wish I was at liberty to say, maybe soon, and it doesn't have to just be financial data. It could be sports feeds. It could be building services, things of that sort that are critical for the use. That's one of our specialty points. 

The other is, I would say, while we're very happy to have relationships with a number of hardware companies, we still have really some high end hardware that we field. So what we do is, for very demanding applications, not necessarily mission critical ones, but those overlap obviously, we provide a full-stack solution, and these players, we're getting into the realm of show control type of players, really beefy and professional level graphics capabilities. So we do sell those. Those are fully our stack, and this way we can guarantee basically the solution as opposed to having us do a certain portion system integrated to another and so forth. 

The last thing I would say is while we still support some level of OEM work, we currently have two customers that we work with. Our business model changed a bit in the last three years of supporting them. We have our standard SaaS business and in some cases we modified it for on-prem. So it's already flexible, but we also have a platform as a service offering to really support those OEM customers. So it's a lot less expensive in volume, very scalable, and I would say those are the things that really make us stand out. It's real time data, data visualization, full-stack solution with hardware to do very difficult things often, and finally, configuration where people assume real, ad-hocs customization. There's an assumption there, right? If you're doing something very bespoke, the assumption there is that it's gonna be insanely expensive and take a long time to build and that's true if you haven't built two dozen variants of it and you don’t have a toolkit to basically assemble it from parts like a LEGO set, which we do.

I would assume that your calling card when you go in to talk to opportunities, when you can say, yeah, we do the New York Stock Exchange, we do all the data handling on that, and you could imagine it's more than a little bit secure and mission critically oriented. I suspect that makes the target customers feel pretty comfy?

Alex Epshteyn: It does, and even before them, it makes consultants who put us on the bid lists and generally are interested in finding parties that can actually fulfill the scope, call us. So we don't really advertise much, and that's gonna change, I think, maybe next year. We're gonna do maybe a marketing splash at some point next year. 

Right now, it's all word of mouth, and we do get a lot of calls. There's a lot of projects we actually pass on because they're not in our sweet spot and they're distractions, but the projects that we do take on are often difficult. We even do work in retail, as I mentioned to you, and the types of deals we take in are always really heavy data integration, visualization, where they are very automated workflows, there's almost no humans involved where the humans are basically special events, and then the system essentially corrects for automation again. 

Yeah, I've been writing about data visualization for 6-7 years now, and when I started writing about it, it was pretty rare and beyond FIDS displays and things like that but it's now pretty standard. I'm curious because you guys are obviously super deep and experienced in that area, when you see all the other software companies saying, yeah, we do real time data, we can do realtime data handling, we can integrate, we have APIs and this and that. 

When you get into a conversation with a prospect, how do you distinguish what you do versus other companies who say, yeah we do all that too, cuz I suspect it's different? 

Alex Epshteyn: It is. One of the first things we've put on a table is that we can mostly guarantee our resolution time SLA, nobody else can pretty much. Most people will be aggressive, pick up the phone and work the problem, but the way that our stuff is built, we can fix the problem. We can guarantee fixing the problem within a certain period of time. Now it's not inexpensive, sometimes it's actually affordable for a lot of types of businesses where a fully custom solution would not be. 

The other one is that most data visualization takes a lot of shortcuts, it really leverages, not to get too deep in technicalities unless you want me to, basically JavaScript and CSS, the mainstay of HTML5. But all of our data visualizations are built in WebGL. It's like the difference between driving a car on the road and driving a bullet train on tracks, right? There's no interruptions to the bullet train. It'll just go and it'll be on schedule. There's no interruptions. There's no jitter. There's no movement. That sort of paradigm. So we like to guarantee behavior of our data visualization, especially dynamic like charting or graphing libraries that we use and implement. It's actually extremely difficult to build something that you would think is easy like a ticker or crawler. 

Whatever data that's feeding it, I’m sure we both have probably seen a lot of instances where it stutters, it has problems, it doesn't refresh on time and doesn't deal well with different fonts and whatnot. That's just not true of our solution. Our solution is, I would say, cutting edge on dynamic data visualization. 

So for an end user or for an integrator, they have to educate themselves that just because a company says they can do real time data doesn't mean they can really do it. That means they might be able to reflect a number that's in a data table and show it on a screen, and that's quite a bit different from what you're talking about. 

Alex Epshteyn: It is and maybe the third aspect is most of the companies we work with already have accounts with the big data warehouse places like Refinitive, IBS, and a number of others, so we already are super familiar with these back ends. In fact, we have things that monitor the APIs. We routinely do a lot of monitoring of real time or just dynamic sources. So this is a huge value add in the industry, and I wish more providers would do that because ultimately, if you are a data fed platform, it's up to you to tell the customer something's failing on the back end because they won't know, they'll assume all sorts of things, but you need to critically have the tools inside to tell what's going on, and if you build it out in a smart way, you can also alert the right people at the right time that something's happening and to look into it. So you can be proactive about it. That's the third item, I’d say. 

They also change like the schemas and everything without telling people, right?

Alex Epshteyn: That's true. But it's a super exciting space. Once you have the core technology built out. You could really do a lot, in terms of, consuming this kind of data and I think generally, signage, we're in a slightly privileged position regarding this, but I think there's a move into industry towards generative and procedural content away from more Codec-heavy content. Although, there's obviously gonna be overlap for many years for both.

We certainly support Codec playback in a variety of ways, synchronized, on different players and so forth, and there's nice innovations like AV1 coming onto the market nowadays. But you could do so much more with generative dynamic content, it's a big difference. For instance, we had a client that wanted us to expose much more of the controllability of a layout, standard design tool inside of our platform. Now, typically we would not wanna do that because there's some nice tools on the market like Premiere, like After Effects, real tools that they generally use. But the problem that certain customers power users I would say are having is they don't wanna have to export an After Effects file and have it encoded in something, that's time, that's sometimes money because they do it externally because they don’t have a kit on-prem, or in the cloud. 

So what we've done is basically have a simpler version of something like Adobe Premiere or After Effects that lets them make quick changes in some key framing or some transitory effects and they don't have to put the whole thing into a codec. So that seemed to really resonate with certain power users that we have and directionally, it's the area that we'd like to innovate in.

Is it important to make a distinction between generative data for business applications and generative data for artwork? Because I see a lot of video walls out there that are set and forget. They're driven by generative data and it's just these abstract visuals that are swirl and kind of bloom and everything else, but that's very different from, I think what you're talking about, which is what on the screen in terms of charting or what appears is based on what the data is influencing, it's it's shaping what appears? 

Alex Epshteyn: That’s correct. A lot of general data is canned, right? It's almost like a video basically, and some experts, some design shops typically would change it for you, and it becomes evergreen content, day two, three, and day four. What we try to do is something a little bit different and we work with some really nice design companies as well. So just to be completely clear, we don't do the design ourselves. We typically either partner with a company that's really good at it. Sometimes the company brings us into the opportunity, right? 

The consultant can also spec us to partner with somebody or the end client may have relationships with companies that do this very well. But, I would say the formulation, the recipe for this kind of thing, to make it dynamic is a few things, and that's where this sort of generative content becomes more like a Zignage type of problem, as opposed to something that you could hire a design house to basically build for you, right?

One is that you could update content even if the filters or the generative piece is running. Separately you might be able to in CMS have the tools to change the filters of the generative option, just as I explained prior, and finally have trigger conditions. We do mostly casting, right? There are some great companies in space. I think they're very good at that kinda stuff. They do a lot of smart interactive signage. We do a little bit of that, but we mostly do narrowcasting. So in our world trigger conditions come from some sort of backend system. It could be a calendaring system, it could be something smarter, right? Where it's not just a boolean condition. It could be a multivariable that basically has to click off a list of things that can happen. And that's really where we can add a lot of value and it overlaps with the kinda work we do with the New York Stock Exchange. We generally term it as business logic So we really do some smart business logic and I think it's actually, there's a lot of growth in that area once we apply modern sort of machine learning to it to make it extensible to go further. 

But with that kind of approach you have an ability to modify a piece of content continuously, right? It's a living piece of generative content, even if it's not dynamically fed with financial data sources, or sports data sources. 

I haven't seen your user experience, but I'm guessing people listening to this are thinking, this is really interesting, but I'd be terrified to try to use this software. What’s it actually like?

Alex Epshteyn: You’re not gonna be terrified because we are one of the proponents of nearly or fully automated systems. So often what we do for non-power users is to give a build out to the software that our customers use, and then everything is essentially this business logic that I'm describing to you. 

It’s kinda like a headless CMS?

Alex Epshteyn: It's like a headless CMS for the non-power users. For the power users that really like their tools like Adobe, or you could just use a Dropbox or some sort of hotfolder mechanism. We're also partnered with a number of DAM solutions. There's a lot of workflow that happens in digital asset management solutions, including tag based workflows. 

We do a lot of tag based workflows nowadays, where we consume the tags that are done in a DAM, and essentially they find their way onto the right players at the right time, and on the flip side, we do have a standard suite. It's actually going through a major overhaul at the end of the year, what we call Z Cast 6. It does have a number of these power tools. But our CMS generally follows a certain idea. It was popular for a while and it's hard to execute unless you have our kinds of customers, which is what we call an additive UX. So it's the opposite of something like Microsoft Office, right where you have a billion features and there's a long learning curve if you wanna learn everything.

What we do is really try to identify the user story behind what needs to be done. We create the access controls that really expose certain parts of the CMS, and even within the same context, add or remove tools as needed. That creates a situation where there's almost really minimal training. I think one of the biggest problems we're trying to solve for our direct customers, or channel customers is the attrition that happens in major enterprises for users of digital signage, right? Like one of the biggest problems we face even in huge banks is the fact that digital signage is consigned to a webmaster subcategory. Like they manage the CMS that's published on their portal, and then somebody in that team or a few people in that team handles digital signage as well. So that's historically been a problem for our whole industry, and what we're trying to tackle is kinda remove both the friction of adoption and also try to give them the tools that they need, and if they use tools, bridge those tools, that's our philosophy on that end.

So what's the structure of your company? Are you a private company? 

Alex Epshteyn: We are a private company. We're an LLC in New York, and we're about 20 people. Most of our development used to take place until very recently in Ukraine because one of my partners and I from there originally. So as this topic is in the news, unfortunately, forget about our team. The fact is cities in the eastern part of Ukraine are partially destroyed but luckily a lot of the folks that we would use are in the Western part of Ukraine now, and we continue to use them but not all of them unfortunately.

So you're having to manage your way through that along with other things, right? 

Alex Epshteyn: We did, and they're very talented folks. We have worked on so many projects. 

Yeah, it's interesting. I was trading LinkedIn messages with another company and he was talking about operating out of Odessa and they're still like opening QSRs and things like that and putting in menu boards. 

Alex Epshteyn: Good for them. That's exactly what they should do. 

Yeah, and I was thinking, boy, all the other challenges you have out there, like supply chain and everything else, layer in a hot war on top of that. Good lord.

Alex Epshteyn: Our problems are very small compared to the real problems in Ukraine and the world. But it's a small world. You sort of face these things as they come. 

Well, hopefully someway or other, it gets resolved. I'm not quite sure how, but this was great. Can you let people know where they can find your company online? 

Alex Epshteyn: Sure. It's Zignage.com 

So signage with a Z on the front? 

Alex Epshteyn: Correct. The last word is Zignage. You find me on LinkedIn, Alex Epshteyn. That's where mostly we do our sort of minimum branding that we do. 

All right, but we'll be looking for more later in the year, right? 

Alex Epshteyn: Absolutely. We're excited to make some announcements in the transportation space, some more in the financial industry and some more in retail.

All right. Great to hear it's going well for you. Thanks so much for spending the time with me.

Alex Epshteyn: Thank you, Dave. My pleasure.

Naveen Viswanatha, Google

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

The prevailing impression of Google and digital signage is that the tech giant came briefly into the sector a few years ago, made some noise, and then quietly left. But the reality is that the tech giant has continued to be active in digital signage, and there are numerous screen  networks out there running on Chrome OS devices through different CMS software vendors.

Then there's Android, the Google-developed operating system used on a pile of smart displays and separate play-out boxes.

But now Google is again getting visibly active in the digital signage and related kiosk ecosystem, extending an existing program called Chrome Enterprise Recommended to software vendors who use Chrome OS. It's also introduced a Chrome OS device management license,  for narrow-purpose uses like screens and kiosks, that works out to just a touch more than a couple of bucks a month. And there's Flex, an application that can extend the life of a Windows box by running Chrome, and enable screen networks using a blend of playback hardware.

I think a lot of the early interest in Google, back in 2015, was with the relatively low prices of the software and hardware. These days, it likely has more to do with scale, manageability and security.

I spoke with Naveen Viswanatha, Google's product lead on Chrome OS.

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TRANSCRIPT

Naveen, thank you for joining me. What's your role at Google? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Hey, thanks for having me. I am the Chrome OS Product Lead for our solution areas and our solution areas include virtualization, contact center, and very recently we've beefed up our kiosk and digital signage solution area. 

Are you at the main campus out in Silicon Valley? 

Naveen Viswanatha: I am, indeed. Yeah, right here in the heart of the main campus in Mountain View.

How long have you been with Google?

Naveen Viswanatha: I have been with Google for 16 years but I haven't been spending the whole time in Chrome OS. I've been using Chrome OS for about 7 years, I believe.

So you're almost a lifer in Google terms? 

Naveen Viswanatha: I guess so, it seems like that. 

I'm gonna talk about Chrome OS. Can you give me a sense of the installed base globally for Chrome OS? I don't need like today's number, but just like … it's many millions, right? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah. We don't break out specific details, but yeah it's in the millions and that kind of spans, I would say across three broad areas. Education is one area. So students and student Chromebooks and boxes. Consumer, and then Enterprise and, within Enterprise, that's where my focus is in the solution space. So yeah, that's how we look at the overall market, but yeah it's seen a tremendous amount of growth, especially in the last several years.

Yeah, the pandemic really put a push on Chrome for Education, right? 

Naveen Viswanatha: It did. I would actually say that it increased an already healthy appetite for Chrome devices within the education space. I actually used to be part of the education team, and we went from devices that were primarily purchased by schools and districts to devices that were now starting to see adoption in the home and that was the kind of recent trend that we saw over the course of the pandemic is really devices being used in the home, remote for delivery of curriculum. 

Would that be driven in part by just the simple fact that the kids are learning at home now, and the parents are seeing the Chromebooks and thinking, okay these are perfectly workable laptops?

Naveen Viswanatha: That's entirely right, and in addition to that, some of the unique capabilities allow students to use their education profiles. So the same profile that they use on their Chromebooks at school, they can log into a personal Chromebook at home and all of their data, all of their bookmarks, their applications, everything is synced to them pretty uniquely.

And so, that ability of having this kind of floating cloud profile was another reason that it became really easy to simply adopt Chrome devices at home. 

Okay, so on the enterprise side, you know, this is a digital signage podcast so we talk about digital signage. I assume that relative to education and to consumer, the percentage of the installed basis for digital signs of kiosk would be still pretty small, right? 

Naveen Viswanatha: It's smaller. It's growing though, and in fact, I would actually say that we saw a lot of acceleration, arguably more acceleration broadly in the Enterprise space, over the pandemic in terms of growth, relative to the other verticals I was talking about, and a lot of that had to do with unique capabilities of Chrome that aligned really well with some of the challenges that businesses had during the pandemic to really maintain business continuity, whether that was remote work or whether that was increased concerns around security, data protection due to being remote. 

These are all things that Chrome OS was really designed for, and so over the course of the pandemic, we saw a huge acceleration in these trends, and as a result Chrome OS was really the platform and endpoint of choice for many organizations.

When I wrote last week about the announcement that, of the the recommended track for kiosk in digital signage. I said that Google made a big splash in the digital signage space in 2015. They took a big booty in the middle of the primary trade show for the industry and had all kinds of people looking at that booth and going, “oh, interesting, these guys are involved. I wonder what that means and will they take over and so on…” and it didn't really happen, there would be suggestions that Google got into the space and then got out of the space but what I wrote was basically, maybe they stepped back a little bit visibly, but they've continued to be in the digital signage and kiosk space and have a pretty decent footprint that isn't known. 

Is that a fair statement? 

Naveen Viswanatha: I think that is a fair characterization and I'm glad you brought that up because, as we've seen the trend over the course of the last couple of years, some of the trends that I was talking about with regards to the pandemic, those trends around moving to cloud and web are significant. Those trends in moving to remote and hybrid work are significant, increased data protection and controls are significant, and that primarily those three things really accrue primarily to end user computing so Chrome books and Chrome boxes used by employees. 

But in addition to that, I think this kind of ties back to your point, we did see a lot of interesting trends as people started moving back into physical spaces. So increased expectations from customers for self-service options, increased expectations from employees for more engaging physical environments when they do return to the office, and these kinds of latter two trends are unique to kiosk and digital signage. So that's where we started really leaning more into this business that we have had for some time, as you mentioned, but really on the backs of what our customers and our partners were doing and what we're seeing as broader trends, we really wanted to lean into this area and really help drive more growth and drive more value into the overall ecosystem znd so recently we have really beefed up our efforts around kiosks and digital signage. 

You know, when you work in a very niche industry like digital signage, you have this distorted idea that it's actually a pretty big industry, but in the the overall scheme of things, it's tiny, and I wondered if Google, going back a few years, looked at digital signage and continued to look at it and thought this is interesting stuff. 

Signage and kiosks, it's got some possibilities, but it's so small compared to education. How much focus have you put on it?

Naveen Viswanatha: I think that's a fair question. The reality, I think is that we have always maintained that we want to be an enterprise computing platform, or commercial, basically anything that requires a business or an organization or an NGO or a government to purchase devices and be the primary buyer. So it's a very broad space, and over the last several years, we have endeavored to really beef up our capabilities around end user computing. That was somewhat timed coincidentally with the pandemic. So that was an area of focus for us starting in 2018-19, really to emphasize these focuses on these solution areas, as I was mentioning, to really go after distinct sections of the enterprise market, and then very recently, starting to invest in kiosk and digital signage because we're starting to see additional trends driving that and those trends being lined up with ChromeOS capabilities.

So I wouldn't say it was due to the size of the market in particular. I think it's just in terms of when we think about our overall strategy and where we saw our customers really taking the platform, we wanted to really lean into those areas, and so that's really been the main driver is trying to meet our customers where they are, and identify areas that have a strong product market fit in the enterprise space and you see that as a reflection of the key solution areas that we're investing in, including kiosks and signage now. 

So when Google as a company takes an interest in something like this, how does that manifest itself in real terms? Is there like a dedicated team or is this one market that a broader Chrome OS team pays attention to and puts some work into?

Naveen Viswanatha: That's a really good question. So I keep referring to these solution areas and maybe it'll help a little bit because I think that'll help frame the answer to your question a bit more to talk about what these solution areas are. 

A few years ago we started looking at where we were seeing product market fit and where we were seeing our customers adopt Chrome OS beyond education, and really noticed that to deliver a robust solution built on top of this platform, you really needed to have an end to end solution that customers and organizations knew was just gonna work and work really well, and so what that meant was there's really four components to these solution areas. So there's underlying features and capabilities of the operating system itself, so security, APIs, core functionality that the operating system provides, even for enterprises, things that are unique to the solution areas and I can list off a few new features and capabilities that we have as an example that are unique to the kiosk and signage solution area but that's another part of that. 

The second component is around management. So how can these solutions areas and their administrators and the folks that manage these solutions, manage the platform easily? And then there's an ecosystem component to this too, and this is really what I think rounds out our notion of a solution area. An ecosystem includes devices so endpoints and OEMs, as well as peripherals and then ISV partners. So solution providers that actually build their products on top of Chrome OS and we ensure that they're optimized and integrated into the operating system. So that's what constitutes a solution area, and as we saw increased focus and investment in those solution areas, we started really orienting our teams to deliver against that. 

On the product and engineering side and the UX side within Google, that means that we still rely on broad platform capabilities that you think of more as foundational layers, but increasingly we have teams that are focused on delivering features capabilities, management capabilities, specific to solution areas. And we'll talk a little bit about that or what we did for the kiosk, and then in addition to that, we really started focusing our partner teams on the partners, both the devices, peripherals, as well as ISV partners that we wanted to work with to really bring these solutions to life, and so there's increasing focus around these areas and we're really organizing ourselves across the stack to really deliver towards these solutions.

So you have this Chrome enterprise recommended track for “kiosk and digital signage”. When I saw that, I wasn't familiar with it and I thought, okay, they've created this, but in doing a little bit of digging, it looks like you have Chrome enterprise recommended tracks in other areas already. So this is something you already do and you've added digital signs and kiosks? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, that's exactly right. The solution tracks that you saw prior to the recent announcement for the kiosk track were really built around the end user computing growth that we were seeing in the last several years that I was alluding to earlier, and very recently, last week we announced the kiosk and signage Chrome enterprise recommended solution track, and so nine partners that we worked with, their solutions are validated, they're optimized, they're integrated into Chrome OS. That means that our partner engineering teams have worked with these organizations to ensure that everything that they build on our platform works. They are regression tests every release that comes out. So we're really tightly working with these organizations, and we only expect, especially in the kiosk and signage space, this category to grow over the coming quarters and years. 

And this whole validation process, is that to keep your engineers sane or is it in certain respects, a marketing tool to say this is kind of Google approved and Google validated?

Naveen Viswanatha: It's a bit of both actually. We actually go through and test these solutions within our own test labs, and then these providers also will be testing their solutions with every Chrome OS release, and as a result of that, we badge these providers, these ISV partners of ours, and that badge effectively denotes that level of confidence for any organization that's going to adopt an end to end solution.

Some of the companies that are involved in this are pretty small in relative terms. Are they getting involved, to use a term a colleague of mine used to use, “to bask in reflected glory that we're working with Google” or have they made a business decision based on the technology that this is where things are going and we wanna get ahead of it?

Naveen Viswanatha: I've spoken to many of these partners and really a lot of it boils down to their alignment either from a business or technology standpoint that they want to really align their solutions with a platform that they feel is going to help them scale their business. These are organizations that are typically developing web-based applications that are lightweight, robust and work well on Chrome as a web-based operating system.

Security is a big concern for them, and I think it's a growing concern in the signage space. We've spoken to many customers having concerns about their screens taken over. If you have more and more screens in your physical spaces, your brand and your operations are potentially at risk, and so a lot of these partners kind of align to that element of Chrome, and I think the simplicity in being able to remotely manage devices, that's another area that these partners have really embraced and benefited from. 

So I think it's really around looking at what technology and platform they want to align with and that's where we've started our conversations with them and as you mentioned they represent a specific segment of the market, and I think over the coming quarters and years, we're really looking to add more partners to our kiosk and signage Chrome enterprise recommended track.

I got a sense back in 2015 that when the first iteration of this came out and you had a whole bunch of partners really quickly that a lot of the energy and interest around Chrome devices was, here's low cost management software and relatively low cost playback hardware versus the PCs that were out in the market then and it was just at a point when you were starting to see set top boxes and things like that being used. 

I sense that's changed, that the partner marketplace is a lot more sophisticated, and as you've alluded to, they're looking more at things like security and ease of management? 

Naveen Viswanatha: A hundred percent, that is absolutely right. The kiosk and signage landscape has shifted dramatically, I think, in the last, 18 to 24 months really, kind of emerging out of the pandemic as well, and I think it was shifting before and then I think what happened was that a lot of physical spaces started really being underutilized during the early part of the pandemic, but then that really set customer expectations and business expectations a lot around how they can be use technology to really digitally transform their businesses, and so as people started moving back into physical spaces, customers started moving back into physical spaces, it came with a fervor that I think has really accelerated some interesting opportunities in the signage space.

Opportunities and threats too, as you mentioned, security and data protection and these things are becoming more and more of a concern. Updating, if you have more screens and more kiosks in your physical space, the kind of traditional operating systems that were being used, don't lend themselves well to that, right? They don't lend themselves well to being updated, being patched, being managed remotely. I think we've all seen blue screens in airports and different types of signs before. That's becoming more and more challenging, just the reliability and remote management. 

So as these trends are starting to really put pressure on a lot of businesses, that's where Chrome OS is starting to really be considered more and more as a robust platform that can really help accelerate the next phase of digital transformation in these physical spaces.

I get the argument for Windows and the bloatware and the crap on there and the updates you can't control and all those sorts of things. It's less of an issue with Linux but there's still an issue? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Linux is an interesting platform. We don't see it too much ourselves but I think one of the challenges with Linux has to do with that it can do anything you really want it to, but in order to get it, to do what you want, it takes a lot of tuning, a lot of configuration, a lot of setup, and so I think you'll be spending the cost as an organization on either building up the technical capacity and knowing how to do that and really piecemealing a solution together, and at some point you're probably gonna ask yourself, is it worth it for our business to really become a Linux expert for our digital signage and kiosk strategy? Is that really core to driving the customer experience or should we rely on a platform like Chrome OS to give us a lot of that as part of its core capability? 

 

And if you're using something like Chrome OS as a software firm, is there less demand to have in-house expertise around an operating system, if you're using something like Chrome versus Linux? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, I would say that's one of the common benefits that we've seen. Recently I spoke to a retailer abroad in Asia, and they were saying that they saw an 80% reduction in staff having to focus on updates and management of the platform, and I asked the question because I wasn't sure if they said 80% or 18% because 80% sounded really startling and in fact they said no 80%, and now these individuals, they're effectively being focused on higher order capabilities with higher order needs within the organization rather than just going out and servicing screens and devices that needed to be updated, they're focusing more on higher value business objectives.

And so absolutely, I think this is one of the areas where businesses need to ask themselves is this core, or is it context? It means core to obviously incorporate digital signage and service options within your business, but is it core for your organization to understand exactly how an operating system is gonna work?

One of the arguments that a very successful company in the digital signage space called BrightSign makes … they are spin out of Roku and the CEO is saying that one of the reasons there's a lot of attraction to our hardware is we don't really have an operating system. It's our own proprietary operating system. So there's nothing to really hack. There's nothing you can do with it. 

I understand the risk with Windows and to a lesser degree with Linux are, and I know you do harden Chrome, but what are there ways in? And if there are, please explain them to me. (Laughter)

Naveen Viswanatha: That's actually one of the areas that I think we have a very strong track record around, and I will add that systems will get compromised over time, and unless you have a security team, a large robust security team, actively monitoring and ensuring that exploits and vulnerabilities are gonna be patched consistently, that turnaround time needs to be very quick, and that's exactly what we do on the Chrome OS side, and I think you can look at our track record. We have zero ransomware attacks ever reported on Chrome OS. 

It's also another component that if you double click into the security piece of Chrome OS, it’s really baked into the operating system. Many other operating systems out there will think about security as a bolt on afterthought. It's core to exactly how Chrome OS works. I'll give you a couple of examples. 

Executables are blocked from running on the operating system, they're just blocked. And so that's a huge vector of vulnerability that is just removed entirely. Timely security updates, like I was talking about before. We have the ability to roll out updates on a four week cycle. Even if you're part of our long term stable channel so organizations that don't choose to get four week updates on the operating system, they wanna actually get six month updates instead, even if you're on that six month long term stable support channel, we will still roll out critical security updates to you. So you get the best of both worlds, right? And again, we have a whole team of people that are watching and monitoring what kind of vulnerabilities are out there on a consistent basis, and I'll mention one more thing really quickly and that is that the operating system files are kept in a complete, separate partition, so they can't be modified at all. So let’s say with kiosk, your app is hacked in some way, or there's a vulnerability in the application that you're building, the operating system itself is hardened and entirely isolated from the application session itself.

It's just a handful of things to think about.  I think any chief information security officer or CIO or organization that's really looking at security needs to evaluate it broadly, and we have a lot of great material that can tell you beyond what I've said here. Why Chrome OS is a very hardened and safe operation.

I suspect you've also learned a lot through the years too. I know that some of the companies who were early on with Google using Chrome OS, they were frustrated by new versions that would break their software, and I think you got to a point pretty quickly where you started to pin the OS versions and a company could stay on that until they're ready to move to the next one instead of being auto-updated. 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, and we have learned a lot over the last several years, and you bring up a good point. One of the design principles that we really try to anchor on, when you think about what a business wants, they want predictability and control. They wanna know when things are gonna change, they wanna have the control to be able to initiate those changes. 

Even if we have this release train rolling out great new updates, security updates, new features. As a business, you want to be able to throttle that, and yeah, we have a number of different controls that have allowed organizations to do that. A long term stable and support channel, which I mentioned expands the actual stable channel that the operating system is on for six months. So that was a big one that we announced earlier this year. But in addition to that, the ability to, like you said, pin different application versions and be able to know exactly when you wanna roll those out, there's a number of other controls that allow you to better understand how you're gonna update your fleet. 

So tell me about Flex. 

Naveen Viswanatha: Ah, we're super excited about Flex. So that was one of the three big announcements we had around CER. The first one was the Chrome enterprise recommended solution track that you alluded to earlier. The second one was a brand new SKU that's focused specifically on kiosks and digital signage, and we can get to that in a moment too, and the third one was the incorporation of Flex. 

So Flex is something that we announced earlier this year and what it allows organizations to do is install Chrome OS on any device they already have. So if you have an existing investment, say in Windows devices, they're aging, you're not sure when you're gonna refresh them, maybe you wanna refresh part of them but you wanna get the benefits of Chrome OS, the security, the built in updates, everything we've been talking about thus far, remote management, you can now install Chrome OS Flex on those devices and get all of the benefits from Chrome OS.

So we've seen that as a really interesting opportunity in the kiosk space as many customers are starting to use that as an. Chrome OS. So they'll maybe extend the life of their existing infrastructure for a couple of years, and then we'll see them roll onto Chrome devices in the future, but we've also seen organizations look at Chrome OS Flex as a way to really tailor what they want in terms of device capabilities for their signage solutions based on the breadth of different hardware and endpoints that exist out there today.

So for example, if you wanted an existing device that is not a Chrome OS device, either based on the aesthetics of it, based on the form factor or performance, is it ruggedized, fanless, et cetera. You can look at that and say I wanna use that device. It's not a Chrome OS device, but with Flex now, I can transform that into a Chrome OS device and incorporate it into my overall device strategy.

So why can you extend your life? Is that because it's a leaner application and strips out a lot of stuff?

Naveen Viswanatha: It's because we're able to really look at the hardware and separate the hardware from the software, and so rather than relying on Microsoft's operating system support and when that's gonna be EOLd (end of lifed) or when the device itself be becomes EOLd, Chrome OS Flex allows us to effectively say, look, that's an end point and we're gonna separate the software and the operating system from the actual device components. As an organization there creates an abstraction layer for you to utilize Flex as a way to extend the life of that infrastructure. 

I assume you could also run a blended network as well, so that you could have Chrome OS devices and re refurbed windows or reclaimed windows devices as Flex devices and run concurrently. You don't have to have a network, that's just all pure Chrome OS devices. 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and that's what we're starting to see with many of our customers who will start with Chrome OS flex, but then they’ll say … a lot of organizations, especially larger organizations, they don't necessarily have one device on one operating system or one endpoint or one operating system, they have a plethora of them and these devices might be on different refresh and end of life cycle. 

So when there might be one coming up, say, at the end of next year, Chrome OS Flex is a great way to evaluate Chrome OS capabilities. Most of the time customers overwhelmingly are happy with Chrome OS and start using that as an onboarding mechanism for other Chrome devices or then rolling out Flex to other parts of their fleet that might be the end of lifting and subsequent years. And so during that time, they will have, like you said, a hybrid model of Chrome OS devices, as well as Flex devices, and you can absolutely manage those through the single pane of glass, like via the partner pane of glass, one of the nine partners that we just announced, or even our own admin console.

You mentioned a new SKU. What is that? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah we're very excited about that. The new SKU is called the kiosk and signage upgrade, and what it does is it unlocks all of the signage capabilities that an organization wants, but none of anything else that you need. And what I mean by that is that Chrome OS is an operating system that serves end user computing, as well as signage. On the end user computing side, you need capabilities to manage users, user profiles, logins, different types of login modalities. But on the signage side, you don't really need that, right? Even if there's end user interaction, there's a lot of user modes and user capabilities that are not part of that overall management…

Because it's a dumb end point in a hell of a lot of cases? 

Naveen Viswanatha: I wouldn't use the word dumb, but because it's a highly focused endpoint, and as a result of that, we tailored a SKU which is $25 per device per year. So that's half off, two bucks a month basically, enterprise SKU, and for that, you get this 50% off SKU and very focused functionality, still gives you all the security, all the device controls, cloud management, reporting and insights. You just don't get the user controls that you get with the Chrome enterprise upgrade SKU, and that's the full SKU. 

But if you did want those user controls, for whatever reason it may be, could you use those? And could you run a blended network with both kinds of licenses? 

Naveen Viswanatha: Absolutely and we have a lot of customers that that, that are doing exactly 

One thing that came up a few years ago and there was some buzz around it, but I don't know where it went. There was chatter that Android, which is pretty widely used in digital signage as well, was going to converge with Chrome OS and it was going to be the same thing that didn't really happen or did I miss it? 

Naveen Viswanatha: No, it didn't happen. I've been on the team for seven years, so I'm not sure if what you're referring to is before my time, but we do have Android and Chrome OS as a company, two operating systems that serve different parts of the overall market.

Now you're right that there is going to be some overlap. We see Android in the signage space. We see Android focusing a little bit more on mobile kiosk type of use cases. So a customer associate in a store walking around with a tablet style device, so things along those lines, whereas Chrome OS feels like it's a bit more focused on fixed facility types of infrastructure, and that's how we see the segmentation today. And we obviously worked very closely with the Android team. 

Over time I think, as things evolve somewhat organically, if there are opportunities to bring these two capabilities or two operating systems together, that's something that we will consider but today we see a pretty natural segmentation.

One thing I will add is that you were talking about managing a blended environment. With the Chrome OS capabilities and Android management capabilities, many organizations are managing both Chrome OS and Android endpoints through their universal endpoint management solutions. So that is a way that these two solutions can coexist even today. 

This has been great. I could have talked for at least an hour or more, but we committed to a certain time window, so I should honor it. The last question I wanted to ask is just very simply if software companies and solution providers wanna get involved, or at least look into this how do they start?

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, so you can go to our website. We have a lot of great information on our website. For customers, we have a wayfinding guide. We have information about the different solutions that we have for kiosk in terms of both devices that they can use at as endpoints, as well as peripherals that they can also utilize. 

On the partner side, on the solution provider side gets in contact with our business development team. I know we are actively looking at working with more and more partners. I mentioned earlier that we listed nine and that's just a starting point, and what we've seen is that on the solution provider and ISV side, as you scale out globally, there are a lot of kinds of localized partners that do a lot of work in different regions, and so we expect this area to really build out significantly over the coming years. So get in touch with our BD team and our business development team, and be happy to work with you, figure out ways to incorporate you into our Chrome enterprise recommended program.

As you dug into this, were you surprised by how many CMS software companies are out there?  

Naveen Viswanatha: Yeah, I absolutely was. Especially considering where we were just five years ago or so. It seems like this has been one of the areas where we've seen a lot of hyper specialization and hyper localization. So unlike other solution categories like contact center, as an example, you tend to have a number of global players and then a few localized players within each market. 

In this particular arena, in kiosks and digital signage, it feels very different because you look at APAC. I can't even talk about APAC as a market because each country, and sometimes even within countries, different specializations with retail versus employee spaces and workspaces has created a huge ecosystem around kiosks and signage. So yes, long answer in terms of in terms of your original question, but absolutely. 

That's good for me because a crowded market means there's more to write about and talk about. (Laughter)

Well, thank you very much for spending some time with me!

Naveen Viswanatha: Thank you, and appreciate the time and opportunity, and I look forward to talking to you again at some point. 

Jeremy Gavin, Screenfeed

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

Screenfeed has, for many years, been one of the primary players in subscription content for digital signage - offering great-looking, fully-automated infotainment feeds that help populate the schedules of screens and get viewers looking again and again.

Now the Minneapolis company is introducing a new service that's a direct play on the no code software movement. Screenfeed Connect is an online toolset that allows users - whether they have developer chops or not - to easily and quickly integrate data sources into fully customizable HTML5 designs and layouts.

The product of two years and 30,000 developer hours, Connect grew out of the frustration of custom content project pitches going nowhere because the clients didn't have the budget. Screenfeed, for example, might need to charge $7,000 to reflect the time needed to develop a finished, automated template, but the client might have a budget for $700.

By putting Connect together, Screenfeed now has a platform that plays to the whole notion of economies of scale. So maybe that $7,000 job could be done for around $700.

I spoke with Screenfeed founder Jeremy Gavin about the roots of Connect, and how it will be available to see and try out this week on the show floor at InfoComm.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Jeremy, thank you for joining me for those who don't know what Screenfeed is all about, and I can't imagine there's a lot of those, but nonetheless give me the skinny on what your company does and how long you've been around?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah. Thanks for having me, and happy to share what Screenfeed is up to.

We started as a service. I started the company in 1999, I believe. We really didn't transition to what is now Screenfeed until 2008. So we've been doing this for Screenfeed, which typically has been known as the provider of infotainment content or data feeds. Like we call it dynamic rich content, that's ready-made. It's been a lot of fun building that. We serve content to over 175,000 screens around the globe, and all types of CMS and on many different types of digital signage networks. So it's been fun to see the industry grow over the last 14 years because we've been involved in a lot of people's networks, making sure everything under the network is running and that the screens are working. We just get to provide them great content that feeds their screens, keeps them fresh, and the purpose to use our content is really, in most cases, it is to get people to watch the screen longer or get them to turn their head and look at it in the first place.

You may have some messages, it could be employee messages, it could be advertisements that you want people to see on the screen, that's maybe the purpose of the screen. But in an exchange you might want to provide them something like news or weather or sports scores to gain their attention, and in some cases, it is to inform them whether it's alerts, weather alerts or traffic. There is some utility to the content that we provide, as well.

And you guys have done some research that kind of validates the whole idea of injecting things like infotainment into schedules that would otherwise just be a series of promotional messages or workplace messages or whatever it may be, that actually does have a positive impact that it does get people to keep looking and remember the next thing that comes up on the screen, right?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Certainly when we started we were going off of a gut feeling that, Hey, we should put something on the screens. And truth be told, a lot of our customers probably have said that we need to check a content box. So what can we get that is easy and updates to my screens.

So it's not the same all the time. So you'll get some use from that, just to say, let's just keep our screen updated with something new. But fortunately, we've had opportunities to work with customers who wanted to think smarter about it and say, Hey, is this actually helping? And we worked with a large national bank, for example, did a number of studies on a lot of our products to see what would help them  deliver the message that they want to deliver.

And I can't give the exact details from which company and that type of thing, but generally the assumption was if we play weather, will the marketing piece that we run after the weather be seen more? And so when they did in-person testing a large thing over three months, they came back to say what was the highest recall piece. And it happened to be weather, but of their marketing pieces. The marketing piece that ran after the weather was recalled at a 40% higher rate than all the other messages. So they've said the same thing with our traffic and our sports scores, and it's been fun to see that have an impact for them.

And certainly that could be the case for all of our customers. 

At InfoComm this week, you are launching something called Connect, which is a pretty big leap forward for you guys. 

Jeremy Gavin: It is.

It's been something we've been working on for about two years and and actually came out of some frustration that I had at a couple of levels. I was at a speed dating show in London, maybe I don't know, three, four years ago and actually canceled. So I'm not going to go. I don't think they need the infotainment for the people I was going to meet with, but I said, I'm going to go anyway and I'm going to see if they don't need what I have to offer.

We're content people, what can we offer them? And so I flew over there and it was a miserable two days, not really selling anything, and I was just devastated. I'm like, wow, what's going on here? But we have always known that, we sell infotainment, we're a slice of the content pie, and I, so I came back home thinking we just need to be a bigger part of the content by the way.

We've been doing this for 10 years or eight years. We're experts in this. We know how to deliver dynamic data, how to make it look great on a screen, and so I decided we just wanted to say yes to more projects. So really and this is where Screenfeed is at, not only outside of the connection are we're just wanting to say yes to mark on projects.

We want to be the content people that people think of when they need dynamic content because we're good at it. So we decided, Hey, we need to put out a lot more products that use people's own data. They've been coming to us to license data. But we had a lot of requests during our time saying, Hey, can you offer this look community events feature?

Can you allow us to put our events there? Or we’ve got company news. In addition to the news that we're subscribing you, can we do that? And we've got involved in a lot of custom projects and there was one particular project where I felt like there was this great opportunity, this really cool shaped screen in Vegas for this bar.

And they wanted some sports scores as well as their own news and some other things, and what they want to do is really cool. And so we gave him a quote because we've got lots of great front end HTML developers, and it was going to be like $7,500, and that was us trying to keep it small because there's this one bar, what are they going to spend for that?

And, they said, no, and I was frustrated and I thought we need a better answer for that. So we built a tool that allows us to do a project like that, for hundreds, projects that used to take a developer and a designer three weeks now can take a day. It's built too. Basically it's a no code use trendy term solution that builds HTML content apps that integrate with your data.

So that could be the case of a weekly sales leader board. It could be a menu board. It could be a progress bar. I don't like to give out all the samples because. The cool thing about it is it's not just a bunch of templates. It's literally a tool that allows you to create an app. So that's connected and we've been working on it for two years and I'm happy to tell you more about it.

How does it work in terms of if I am an end-user or a reseller, am I subscribing to something? Am I paying for the functionality one? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, that's great. So connect, initially we're going to be offering it for free throughout the whole summer. Yeah. We want people to see, that's true. That's obviously valuable for us to see what apps people would use.

It's what the use-cases are, and in the end it's a tool to get a project from A to Z, and that's what it is. We don't want people to see it as a design tool. It's not another Canva that has data integration. It really does cut down projects time from A to Z. But when we do offer it, certainly it will be licensed similar to how we license our Screenfeed content, which is a license per player, a small monthly cost per player.

And then for Screenfeed, actually, we're launching a new pricing model to simplify things for us next week as well. So essentially you'll be able to purchase a license for all of our infotainment apps. So you don't have to decide what you want. You can change any time. Or if you really want to, you can just purchase one one app like a local community or calendar feed. And the same thing with connect apps, I get a license per player and with one license you can create as many apps as you want on your screen. So you could have 10 of our apps running in your playlist, or if you really only have a need for one app such as a welcome screen, you can just pay for one license.

So the pricing I'll be setting over the summer, but it will be very similar to our Screenfeed pricing now, which scales down the more licenses you have. So we have networks with one screen, and we have networks with 30,000 screens, and we make it affordable for them. 

And I think you said you put in 30,000 hours of developer time into this?

Jeremy Gavin: We did. Yeah, pretty much our COVID was spent building this. We did start beforehand. I got back from that show, I think in 2019, and we started saying, Hey, we got that. What else are we going to do? What's next for Screenfeed? And so we spent a few months trying to determine what that was, and when COVID hit, we just said, "Hey, yeah, let's do it." At that time, honestly I thought we'd build this thing in six months, and I thought the pandemic would be over in six months. So it really wasn't related to the pandemic. It's just, at that time we just started it, and said," Hey, let's get this done." And so from a team perspective, we expected to launch a minimally viable product early on.

But there's just so much this can do, and we just kept wanting to add more. So we had a little scope-creep. But honestly, I'm really proud of what we have and it's a very usable tool right now. In fact, we are already using it for customers now.

It's nice that I'm coming to InfoComm, which will be the first trade show with it.  

So the premise here is no code software. If I am the digital signage person in charge of, let's say, a regional savings and loan with, 20 branches or something like that, and I want to put financial data  that's not just market data, I could go into your tool set, and do this myself, regardless of whether I have any skill sets around database tables or HTML5 coding or anything like that. Right?

Jeremy Gavin: So in that use case, they might want to be showing their own rates. They might want to didn't be showing the bankers that you're working with and rotate that.

I'll give you a little story. So I'm involved in a girls' fastpitch club, and we have our own training facility ... and this is just my own use case for this. We had four different teams of girls that didn't really know each other a whole lot. They played on different teams, but during the winter, they're working out together at this training facility, and so we wanted them to learn about each other, very similar to what you might do with employees. And we had schedules, we had a number of things we wanted to push out. Of course, I wanted to put a bunch of screens in there. So I did that, and to get done what I wanted to do on the screens I had access to developers and designers on my team, but it would have taken a lot of their time.

And I can't say, Hey, let's take a bunch of time on my developers on Screenfeed for this use. So I delayed and delayed it, it would have taken probably four to six weeks, but once I had the first version of Connect built, I sent out a form just using JotForm to all the players and said, "Hey, fill out this form. What your goals are this summer? Who is a teammate you appreciate and why? what's your favorite ice cream? That kind of stuff. And with that data, I was able to make four apps within two hours ... one that showed, "Hey here's my pet, and here's a picture of me." "Here's me and here's my teammate that I appreciate, and why." "Here is our calendar, and our training calendar schedule countdown to the state tournament."

So I made a playlist there one morning, and I was able to do that. The key was I was able to do that myself, and I made it look the way I wanted.

There's a lot of template tools out there. But with Connect, you can start with a blank canvas. You can just start adding things onto the canvas and design it. You can connect to any data source currently that delivers XML, JSON, either Google Sheets, Microsoft Excel, and the CSV files. We'll be adding a lot more connections to Salesforce and Shopify and everything else you can think of.

So those data connections are already pre-built. It's just easy to use the data that you already have. So as long as you have data, this is a tool for people who want to display that data. If you don't have a data source, you can also just add your data and then connect. And so there's a great data management tool there.

Some other use cases, for example, would be that we have worked with a mall in New York and they want to display a featured offering for their tenants. This happened during COVID. They wanted to do some things to help them, and it was a lot of work. We were doing this manually for them, where they'd say they'd contact these stores, try to find out what they wanted to emphasize, and by the time they get the information, their deals are almost over. So now they just send out an email link to a form that's secure. They log in, they just tell them what their offer is. They upload an image. It goes to the mall manager,  who then has an approval process within Connect to approve, and then that gets rotated into the template that was built in Connect, and automatically delivers it. So now the managers of that mall, the only requirement they've got after sending that link out is just to approve messages. And they're done. They don't have to manage anything else. Our system takes care of the rest. So it's really a workflow tool, in addition to a design tool.

Is there some sort of fault tolerance in place? I know I can remember back to the early days when companies were introducing Twitter visualization. So you can take the Twitter feed and show it on the screen. But Twitter kept changing its API and it didn't work, and I guess the same thing happened with some other social media channels. Do you have something that's doing data checking or whatever, to make sure that these data sources are still structured properly? Or do you have somebody who has to stay on top of it? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yes, absolutely. So when a new data connection is created first we have to ask, in a lot of cases, say for a Google Sheet, we have to have authenticated access to get that, unless they've made it public. We also asked for permission to cache that data securely on our servers.

We'll be able to opt out of that if they don't want to. But that allows us, if a connection breaks - Twitter and Instagram are pretty famous for that, where they just asked you to re-authenticate and they won't read your data. Or if someone's got a Google Sheet and someone in the office, that's the data source for the screen, but all of a sudden they make some changes that break it.

We have a stored last created version of that, and then we send an email notification saying, "Hey, we've got a problem. You might want to fix it. In the meantime, we'll use the last data that we have." Then there's another control that allows you to decide how long that bad data can be used. 

So that's a way for us to manage that and make sure that the screen is not impacted and then there's also some fallback messages you could apply in the template so that, "Hey, if the data's not there, display this message instead."

I spoke with Intuiface two or three weeks ago. They do interactive software and have been doing no code before people were using that phrase. And Geoff Bessin talked about how part of the rationale was this would enable developers to do things much more quickly. So something that might've taken two weeks to put together, they could maybe do in a morning or something more like that. Is that kind of the same case here? And is that your target end user - more the solutions providers than actual end-users?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, I think there'll be a solution for both, but we see a lot of opportunity with solution providers because it allows them to say yes to more things. You mentioned earlier, we put 30,000 man hours into this, over those couple of years, and we did that, and most of those hours mean we've done work that now you don't have to do.

So an integrator who we work with a lot in a lot, we have a reseller program for Screenfeed. So we work with a lot of integrators to resell infotainment content, and they would bring us a lot of these custom projects, where "Hey, we need this to be customized. Maybe the content that we're offering needs to be customized to the brand of the user, or a new custom HTML project.

And they would generally have to have us bid it, and then they would resell our services. But in this case and most of the cases, honestly, they don't want to get into content. They want to provide a total solution, but they don't want to deal with content, and with Connect, now they really don't have to have the web development skills to be able to do HTML5. It's hard for them to hire that type of work. But with this they could sell that as a service that's valuable to the customer and then use Connect to be able to quickly create an app ... and the customer doesn't necessarily need to know that they used Connect.

They're just delivering a beautiful HTML5 content solution that taps into their data, and they can do that within a few hours. We do have a number of templates that people can start with. Again they're not just templates that are stuck the way they are there. We call them examples. You can really use them to plug in some data, and if you like the way they look, great. But you can completely customize it by taking the things out, and adding things in. And that will empower those solutions providers who want to say yes to their customers. "Yes, I can take care of your issue." And have an easy way to do it.

And the other benefit is we're here to help when they have troubles, and if they want to hire us to just implement it, we're saying yes to that. So we're going to be here to help them deliver whatever it is they need to deliver to their customer, as it relates to content. 

You mentioned the bar in Las Vegas and how there was a custom job opportunity there, and they said no, because of the cost. Was that happening a lot where you could do custom work, but the price point just didn't work for these guys and with Connect, now you've got something that's scalable, that you built an infrastructure and platform around it and therefore you can dramatically lower the costs, right?

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, absolutely. Just yesterday, I had a call with a customer we used to do a lot of custom work for, and it was pretty typical that when they needed something, and they had a bigger budget, they could do $5000-$8,000 on a typical job. For example, in this case, they needed four different views of data, and it was a data source, we hadn't worked with yet. So I would have charged, I think it's still a good rate at 8,000 bucks for four different uses of data. We usually say it would have taken four to six weeks. But I'd let them know, Hey, we've got this tool now called Connect, and I'd like to try it out for this. It'll take us about a week and I'll quote it at $1600. So that's just a real life situation, where I'm going to be able to deliver for this customer now, I might have a reseller that maybe is using Connect, might say I know that customer has got an $8,000 budget. Maybe they could sell it for $6,000 and they just make more profit. It does allow us and our partners to say Yes to more people who just want to put their calendar on the screen, or they just have some data source, their weekly rates or their featured products that they want to have on their screen, and our tool makes that easy. 

Does this allow you to do some things  ... like you've always had standard things like sports news and sports scores and that sort of thing, and they've been built around the Associated Press or  other news data feeds ... could you conceivably have a junior hockey league (as you're in Minnesota) that could do sports scores and visualizations, just using scores from the league that would never be on the AP feed or something like that. But you could make it look like that?

Jeremy Gavin: Yes, absolutely. Yeah. That's a great point, and that kind of goes back to people in the past that asked us, "Hey, how can we get our content on there. A lot of reasons for people to come to Screenfeed are because It looks good and they know it works. We've been in this business for a long time. So we know what it takes, like "Hey, this particular piece of software, you want to do something in a different way. Here are just best practices and how to get HTML animation to work well to tap into data."

The beauty of this is you are not limited to the data sources we provided. As long as they have a source for data, or they're willing to create one, let's say it's easy to use Google Sheets or come right into Connect, and you can create your own columns and everything, and put your data right in there.

And you could assign a user permission for one person, whose job is to update that content, and then it pops up on all your screens. So yeah, the junior hockey clubs in Minnesota certainly could use this to populate from their schedules or their stats, that type of thing. As long as they've got a data source or we'll put it in ... this will work well for them.

So I'm using any number of different CMS software platforms out there. Let's say using. I don't know, Stratacache, or Scala or Spectrio ... what's involved, how do you integrate this? Is it just an HTML5 file that goes into a schedule?

Jeremy Gavin: Our Screenfeed content can be delivered either via HTML and just as a web page, we can deliver it as images as well, over a Media RSS, or just a direct URL. So depending on your software, there is some people want to make sure they can download in cache, at the player level, and so they prefer images. We're also working with other software providers to say, "Hey, how can we manage the  ability for it to run offline as well," and so that is another angle from a screen play perspective that we are already speaking with other software providers about. So how do we integrate this into what they're doing?

Now some software providers have some design tools or some templates that this maybe does overlap a little bit with. But we think we've taken a completely different approach, and certainly for software companies that do not have a design tool in their software, this will have the ability for them to white label the Connect solution, so they could integrate Connect right into their software. The end result is we want to enable the customers who use the software to be able to just say, "Hey, this is what I want to do and have a way to be able to execute."

Is it fair to say that if you are an end-user or a CMS software provider, that's already been working with Screenfeed using its infotainment feeds, that there's nothing technically different about integrating this?

Jeremy Gavin: With Screenfeed, we've been adding a lot more of the ability to customize our feed. So you can change colors and fonts, and we call our feed configuration pages. So a lot of people who are used to using Screenfeed, they're gone in and they've made a bunch of choices and picked some styles. And then they end up with a URL, and with that URL, they go in and they schedule it in their software and it just handles automatic updates. So they can set it and forget it.

Same experience here with Connect. They just can start with one of our templates and modify it, or they can create an app from scratch, and in the end, they're going to end up with a URL that they'll be able to schedule in their software.

And then some of the settings, for example, within Connect, can be things like "How often should this data update?" That may be, "Hey, it only updates every day or maybe it's every hour, maybe it's every two minutes." There's other controls in Connect too, such as triggers. "If this number is lower than this, then show this other product."

Or "If This Then That" opportunities that you can take care of with HTML5, and take advantage of the data that's in that. In the end, we're focused on data-driven content. So there's a lot of tools within Connect that you can configure with triggers or moderation. Bbut at the end of the day, you're going to get a URL that you can schedule in your playlist, and it'll run with all the smarts that you assigned.

Yeah, so you can, depending on what you do, whatever the case may be, you can maximize the relevance of what you're putting up on the screen. 

Jeremy Gavin: That's the power of data-driven content, and that's what we've been working on for over a decade, and is how to use that content. So to us, as you can imagine, this opens up a lot of different possibilities for us to provide some more interesting solutions than maybe just this straightforward work. 

We're not doing a lot of triggering, and although we have had people trigger ads and different things with weather or traffic conditions with their own data, there's a lot that goes they're going to want to go into that. It's going to be fun. That's one of the reasons over the summer that we're not introducing a cost because we want to see how people can use this solution to create various apps that maybe we haven't even thought of.

You've been doing this as you've mentioned for a decade or more, and I would say a decade ago, people like you and me and some others have been yelling from the rooftops, "It's the content stupid," and it's been very difficult to get people to respect that what's on the screen is more important than what's driving the screen? What's your sense of the state of the industry right now in terms of the understanding of the importance of content and creativity? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, definitely. When I got into the industry I came from a company that was in website design and content development. And I saw this, at the time, just being run by a lot of AV guys, I would say. There weren't even a lot of web technologies, and I thought, "Hey, yeah, people are gonna spend a lot of money on screens, that cost a lot more then, media players also cost a lot more, and I knew people were spending a lot of money ... and I thought, but once all these screens got in and the've spent all that money, they're probably going to want to leverage it, and then start spending money on content. Some people got that right away, but honestly, it took awhile. But this year, and I'm telling this to my team, I've had so many more conversations, particularly with software providers who want to partner ... where they're finding that when they're selling their service against other CMS companies, they have similar features. So they're now saying, some have invested more in content and that's a differentiator, and so they're asking, "Hey, how can we use content to provide more of a total solution or to have that advantage. But yeah, the number of people early on, like the early DSE days, we'd see people who would say "Hey, I've got my media player picked, I've got my streams, I got a rollout partner. I got everything ready. I got it. We're launching this thing two weeks ago, but we don't know what we're going to put on it for content." And that was just a theme that a lot of us, I'm sure you heard a lot of it back then. Certainly people have gotten a lot smarter, and so that's a benefit for Screenfeed.

And part of the reason why I invested two years of time for our company to double down and provide more content is that I just think people are smarter. They want smarter content. The way I look at what we're offering is this is not a solution if you just need to create a graphic. You can use Canva or Adobe Photoshop, or a lot of other tools. This is a tool for smarter content. Projects that maybe people said no to just because of the time or costs, not because of the idea. It was a great idea. We want those ideas to be able to be executed. 

So if someone is at InfoComm and they want to know more, where will they find you on the trade show floor? And will they be able to get demos? 

Jeremy Gavin: Yeah, we'll be in the digital signage pavilion at booth N1167, and we'll have the ability to give you either a quick summary of what Connect is. And, we'll also have screens and laptops there just to show you actual demos. It's very easy to use, and by the time people are listening to this, you'll be able to go to our website, and you'll just be able to create an account and start using Connect right away. You won't need a credit card or anything, just start using it and start trying to tap into different data sources.

And even though we are offering it for free, it still comes with full support. So it's not a situation where you're just kind of on your own. Come see us at booth N1167, and you can get a demo there at InfoComm. And if you're not at InfoComm, just so you can pop to our website and request a demo.

I think it does help to get at least a 15-20 minute rundown on what it is, just to level-set someone, and they'll have a better chance of figuring out how it can help them. 

Alright. It was great to catch up with you. It'll be great to get a demo at InfoComm of this, and I just wanted to personally thank you for all the support through the years of Sixteen:Nine. You proactively came to me when I said I was going to start a podcast, and said, "I want to sponsor it" ... and you've been a sponsor of the publication for a very long time, and it's much appreciated. 

Jeremy Gavin: That's been great for me. I know when I got into the industry, this was a great source and that was the case for a lot of people. It's almost like a little, it's a source that everybody goes to. Anytime I hire someone, that's part of our onboarding process, to subscribe to your blog. It's fantastic, and the industry has benefited from your previous life as a reporter ... and so thanks for all that you've done to kinda help each other share our stories with each other.

All right, hopefully we will see each other in Las Vegas. If they let me across the border. I have to remember how to do things like wear adult clothes. 

Jeremy Gavin: Look forward to that. 

Alright. Take care. 

Jeremy Gavin: Thanks, Dave.

 

Denys Lavigne, Oasis Immersion

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

One of the best things about projection mapping technology is its ability to completely fill a big space with immersive visuals. The resulting experiences can be good enough to become paid attractions.

There are now dedicated, ticketed venues devoted to immersive, projection-mapped experiences around the world, and one of the best is Oasis Immersion, a venue in downtown Montreal that was dreamed up by a guy who'll be very familiar to the digital signage community - Denys Lavigne.

He started and ran Arsenal Media for many years - building up a creative shop that most years would all but sweep the digital signage awards programs it entered. Arsenal was ultimately acquired by the display technology firm Christie, and Lavigne continued working for them for about four years, before deciding to step away and chase a new dream.

That's been a real journey. I had lunch with him years ago, in New York, when he laid out the rough concept for me. I did a walk-through of the venue back in 2019, when it was just a set of darkened rooms, months off from opening. Then COVID hit, and the launch plans were derailed by lockdowns. The concept and business clawed its way through the pandemic, and Oasis is open and thriving with experiences designed to both amaze and inspire.

I had a terrific catch-up chat recently with Denys.

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TRANSCRIPT

Denys, can you tell me what Oasis is all about? 

Denys Lavigne: Oasis Immersion is an immersive destination that was launched on February 25th, 2021 in Montreal. It's within the Montreal convention center, and it's really part of this new trend of immersion as a destination, similar to places like the Cathédrale in Paris, the Team Lab project in Tokyo have actually quite a few. So it's really based on projection and audio, it's a 25,000 square foot space structured in three galleries. There's a cafe bar, there's a boutique and there are two additional experiential areas. So I'm really proud of this project.

And this is right in the heart of Montreal, right?

Denys Lavigne: Right in the heart of Montreal, the Montreal convention center is located between the old Montreal area and the cultural district and the business district. So it's within an area called the international district which bridges to many strategic areas within the city.

And this is, if I'm remembering correctly, because I've walked through this space with you, it was an old loading dock or something for the convention center? 

Denys Lavigne: It was actually before a bus station, and it was transformed into a potential future exhibit area but the project never really came through so it was actually used as just a storage facility, and because of its location within the convention center, it wasn't necessarily easy to use as a rental space, because most of the other areas' rental rooms and conference space are on the upper floors. So it became a no man's land, and when I was made aware that this area was just sitting there, I thought this could be a great place for this project. I had the immersive destination project in mind for a while, and this was the perfect timing and the perfect location to do it. 

Yeah, you're right across from some pretty good hotels and not far away from some other ones and obviously it's a convention center, so there's a ton of people flowing through there. It's on a subway line on and on. So it seems kind of perfect. 

Denys Lavigne: Absolutely. For us, the location in terms of the site itself was really important, and the other interesting aspect about the location, it helps us to diversify the business model around the project. So we do have, of course a more B2C angle with the immersive exhibits that we present to the audience, but we also have a B2B angle where the space can be privatized for different type of events and used as a another option in terms of the rental for spaces so it works out really well from so many angles.

This is one of these “experiences” where you're going to walk in and with projection mapping, you're just going to be totally immersed in whatever the theme is for that particular exhibition? 

Denys Lavigne: Yes, so there's a lot of different definitions about what is an immersive experience these days. I think VR industry will very often refer to these types of experiences as immersive experiences, and it is in a certain way. The way I define a real immersive experience is about stepping into this other world that is dynamic and putting the visitor in the middle of the story of the experience itself and the experience evolves and there's a total immersion from an audio and video perspective. 

So yes, it's the type of experience where you walk around, it's similar to a museum and that really helped us in terms of finally being able to open because initially the project was scheduled to open early June of 2020 and of course, we all know what happened, and we were able to reopen a bit sooner than some other cultural destinations because of the fact that people walked around the space like a museum. There's no time limit. There is no official start to the show. You do have to buy a ticket to arrive at a certain time so that we can manage the traffic flow and limit waiting time at the entrance, but it's really like a very free experience in terms of the way that you want to experience, the duration, and yes, you walk into every room and there's 360 projections on the floors, and of course spatialized audio in every room, which is a really important thing that is often underestimated in terms of its importance within an immersive experience.

This has been quite a journey for you. As you mentioned, you plan to be open in Q2 2020, but then COVID hit but this is actually something that's been in the works for what, two or three years prior to that? 

Denys Lavigne: I was actually made aware of the site in the summer of 2018 and then the development process started from there. So yes, there was a process to it, and of course the pandemic added another layer of complexity to putting this project together. The past two years have been quite difficult, but we're turning the corner and fortunately, it's a good time to offer the audience this type of experience. I think there's a lot of interest and these experiences can be so powerful, and I think if we continue to do a good job from a quality of experience perspective, then we have the feeling that the audience is listening, the audience is interested and it's looking good for the future. 

We had to go through this process to put the project together and roll through the difficulties of the pandemic. But now, things are stabilizing and we're looking forward to build for the future.

When we talked about this well before you launched, you put a big premium on wanting to have very much thematically curated expositions that were built around an idea, as opposed to just having generative data artists put something up on these big canvases and make it flow and ooze and do whatever it was going to do. You want it to talk about particular topics like space, and so on. 

Denys Lavigne: Yeah, specific topics, but also specific topics at the right time, and I think that speaks to the kind of the heritage that I have coming into the immersive world through the world of digital signage and having been exposed to the different types of projects where the essence of it is to show the right message, at the right place, at the right time and that mindset carried through this project, and for us, one of the interesting aspects was to look at building a curated programming that was relevant to present at a certain moment in time so the here and now angle for us is quite important, and how it connects through not necessarily the news of the day, but the bigger picture trends of the moment. 

So this is how we approach our programming, allowing us to go in different directions. But staying relevant in terms of the timing of it, and also staying aligned with our DNA about using this media to share an optimistic perspective of life and use this media in a way that will inspire people, that will give them something that will stay within them after the exhibit hopefully, and just provide an uplifting perspective. This is really at the heart of this Oasis project, because the immersive media can be such a powerful experience that for us, the notion that it had to be relevant at that moment in time and provide a positive influence to our visitors was really important because both me and my co-founder and a dear friend, we're big fans of rays and multimedia performances, and I think one thing that we noticed over time is that there was very often a lack of connection with the times, this lack of sometimes emotion, that it was visual exploration just to explore, and sometimes it was really interesting, but we thought that a curated approach that was both relevant and inspirational, and that touched people was where we wanted to be and how we wanted to use the media. 

Have you developed a sense that the aspiration to strike an emotion with the people who are visiting, that's working? Are you getting feedback that this was more than just visually interesting to them? 

Denys Lavigne: Absolutely, and it's been so rewarding to get that feedback from the audience. We often see people in rooms that are very touched, that actually show emotions. We have feedback on our social media. Artists get direct email and visitors share directly with the artists what they went through and the emotions, and now we're absolutely where we want to be, and we want to continue to build on that. 

We actually, as part of the process of getting better as a creative group and understanding the media, which is still quite a young media. We launched an initiative called the Direct French Translation, and we worked with a startup company that uses biometric tools to measure the impact of experiences from an emotional and cognitive perspective, and we did a preliminary phase last fall as part of our Unwind exhibits and the preliminary results are actually quite positive. So we have the declarative piece, feedback from the audience, feedback on social media and on surveys and direct messages to the artists are quite positive, but now we also have a data driven piece that starts to show, starts to establish that the people are reacting in a good way and we now have preliminary patterns, biometric patternss to support it. 

If I went to Oasis immersion right now, what would be the shows that I'd see? 

Denys Lavigne: So we recently launched our Spring/Summer programming, and there were a few elements that we launched. The first one is that we activated the notion of having multiple shows playing at the same time. So we currently have two choices of exhibits that visitors can choose from. Officially, we launched a large interactive floor in our main room, which is to my knowledge, one of the largest permanent interactive floors in North America. We pre-launched it in February, but officially launched it as part of the spring/summer programming. We currently have two exhibits, the Recharger/Unwind, which is a sensory experience in the world of generative arts, but structured as a wellness experience. We're extending that show because it's been a big success for us. The show was originally launched last fall, but since there was still interest we're continuing with that. But our new main show is called Van Gogh distortion, and this is the first time that we are doing an exhibit featuring a painter and it's really about acknowledging the world phenomena that has come out of this union of the medium of immersion, and the world of painters and Van Gigh was a key figure in that movement, and we did it. 

We produced a show that is aligned with the spirits of Oasis that goes along in terms of the positive, inspirational angle, but also best practices in terms of how we feel a show like that needs to be produced because we all have seen some of these shows around the world, and some of them, I feel lack depth in terms of the experience itself. The way that we work with the painter, artwork and create a powerful, immersive experience where we actually put the people in the middle of the experience and that we use sound in a good way. For us, the painters shows we would have liked to see more around the world, and again it's an acknowledgement of that global phenomenon that has emerged from this union between immersion and painting. 

So in essence there's a big public demand. The feet are going through these places where they have these touring exhibitions for Van Gogh or whoever it is, and you could ignore it, or you could surrender to it to some degree, and build something that you think really does the job well, as opposed to just very large projections of still paintings?

Denys Lavigne: Yeah, you're right. We just acknowledged that there was a phenomenon. We acknowledged that there was interest, and I think one of the great aspects about this is that it has helped expose this new type of entertainment to a very large audience, and as the industry evolves, I think the expectations in terms of the quality, in terms of the element of surprise, people have more and more expectations.

So we felt it was the right time to push the boundaries with these types of shows, and we felt Van Gogh was the main painter that activated this movement, and in terms of the timing, we also thought it was really interesting because one of Van Gigh's strengths is about showing, sharing the emotion and in the smaller things of life, of our immediate world of nature. He brought emotions to things that we take for granted and we felt there was also an interesting link with what we went through over the past two years, being isolated and the pandemic, and just how we've reconnected to our immediate world nature, other people, the way that we view these elements and the role that they have in our lives, we thought that the timing of this from this angle was also really interesting to show and made it more relevant to focus on Van Gogh for this project.

And I guess it's something of a gateway drug as well that you could get people come to your venue to see this who, if you just had the other show on, might be a little too out there for their unfamiliar minds, but if they even get them in to see this they'll go, “Oh, that was really interesting. I'll come back!” 

Denys Lavigne: Yep, there was definitely an aspect of, we're still a new destination within Montreal, and I think it's part of the process to ensure that we get known to a larger audience, and there was a bit of that for sure, in our decision. But the main thing was about the here and now angle, the phenomena, and we've already done a good job building an audience that is really grand public, and even for Recharge/Unwind exhibit that features generative art, it's actually quite surprising and quite satisfying to see that we have people from all ages attended it and it's much more balanced than what we expected, and I think this speaks to the interest of people and this new type of entertainment, and we want to continue to build on that for sure. 

What are the creative demands involved in this? Can you say for the Recharge/Unwind material, can you say to a generative data artist, “here's the resolution, here's what you're working with, go!” Or do you have to train them? 

Denys Lavigne: We do train some people, because again it's still an emerging media. It's not like there are thousands and thousands of destinations similar to ours in the world right now. So the pool of expertise is limited, but it exists, and yes, part of the briefing is similar to more of a traditional digital signage content, or experiential media experience. There are technical specifications and are parts of the brief and there are also creative specifications that are shared with the artists. 

So Oasis immersion is not only just an operator of a site because of my background and my interests, we've also put together an internal creative team that works on developing the curating approach and the creative alignment for our projects. Each artist is informed about, what is the intent? What is the big picture of the exhibit? What is the expectation, in terms of his content and the role his content will play within the sequence, the journey that we want to create for our audience? So we are quite specific about that.  And in terms of the artists, we usually select artists that we feel are the best fit for the type of content that we want to achieve. Most of the time these artists are experienced, but we've also worked with emerging artists. You know in our first exhibit we developed an experience with a young YouTuber who had, when I told him that we were going to develop an immersive experience together, you said what's an immersive experience and his expertise was really about just producing video. He was 21 years old, a kid that had really good talent as a director, as a storytelling artist but we felt that he could produce something that would be a bit more powerful, a bit more complex. We supported him and so we see our role also as supporting artists and that's why we have an experience team internally to play that role, and sometimes, the type of relationship we have with different artists varies with their expertise. But we certainly see that part of our role within the industry is to ensure that we have more and more people that understand the realities of creating powerful experiences for this type of media so that the industry can grow in the long term.

Do you see business applications for this? We've seen in the digital signage world, all kinds of corporate lobbies, all the way to airports adding immersive elements to it so that there's an entire lobby that's surrounded by LED or other ones that are using projection, if it's dark enough and so on. 

Do you see the time when the sort of work and thinking that you're doing for a destination could be applied to something that's a venue like a building lobby?

Denys Lavigne: There's probably an extension that could happen. The fact that I'm here doing this project is a cycle of the work that I've done in the past for immersive lobbies and different types of experiential installation, and this has led me to do this project. I think it could work the other way around. As soon as you have digital assets, you can basically do whatever you want. I think then it becomes about, what's the type of experience and for what audience, but for example, we do have B2B applications within Oasis immersion, and I could see a client who has privatized the space and created a custom experience for the people that will attend the event. I could certainly see a client using these assets, repurposing them to create a spin-off and adapted version for another space for sure. 

I think we will eventually get to that because the logic of return on investment or return on experience willlikely lead to that but there will definitely be adjustments in terms of the storytelling, the nature of the experience because of the way that people will consume the experience.So when you are totally immersed within a space, from a storytelling perspective, you can go at it from a certain angle. If it's just a lobby experience and there are other things happening and you have different objectives, then there's going to have to be a certain storytelling adaptation. 

You've alluded two or three times to your background. For those people who are listening and don't know who you are, could you tell the story of Arsenal Media? 

Denys Lavigne: Sure. So I founded Arsenal Media in 1999, I believe, and I created the agency initially as a content marketing agency, and when we started, we were actually doing custom publishing, so doing branded magazines for clients, at that moment, it was a big trend. And then we evolved into creating content for the web, because the initial internet revolution was really driven by programming companies, but there were not a lot of design and content companies, and so we extended our expertise to content marketing on the web, and eventually we were exposed to digital signage and we completely transited our operation and focused on digital signage because we felt that was the ideal platform where we could merge creativity and technology and building a relationship and providing value for the audience. 

The reason why I started the company as a content marketing agency is because I always thought. you could build a more meaningful and long-term relationship with the consumer if you actually provided value versus just a commercial advertising. Traditional commercial advertising will deliver a certain type of result and certainly has its role within the bigger picture of marketing strategies, but always felt that the content marketing actually provided something useful, either from an information perspective or quality of experience perspective, there was something that the consumer had in return. So that was the foundation of it and when we were exposed to digital signage, it was similar to the internet in the sense that they were not a lot of creative companies at the beginning, and we saw this as a great opportunity and started to focus on digital signage right until 2014, when the agency was acquired by Christie digital and we joined the Christie company. I was there for four years. I led the experiential project division and we did projects all over the world. 

For me, personally and professionally, this was such an inspirational time. I have so many good souvenirs, so many great learnings and great projects, and it allowed me to continue to push further on the experiential side and eventually led me to focusing on immersion, to really focus on the experiential side of it. But it's the sum of these experiences and learnings, and I'm really proud of my digital signage roots to a certain extent because it helped me understand context and sharing the right message at the right time, what that meant, and adding an experiential feel and understanding the impact of architecture within the space and the configuration and how people moved within the space. So all of these were great learnings that allowed me to do this project. 

The part that you humbly left out is that you guys werewere sweeping the awards, Arsenal Media won a whole pile of awards for creative through the years.

Denys Lavigne: Yeah, we were so fortunate to get the support of the industry, and I think that speaks to the commitment of our team who try to contribute positively to this media, and that's how we approached it, bringing value to the consumer and trying to raise the bar in terms of best practices from a quality of design and relevancy, and I believe in the media and I think it deserved from us as creatives and strategists that we put our best foot forward every time, and we always were in this evolving mode of, how can we do better and how can we push the boundaries, and how can we make this media more efficient for our clients? I think the support that we've got and the accolades from the industry speak to my team's commitment to achieve that and we are quite proud of the results, and again, the accolades that we've received from the industry. 

Ten or fifteen years ago you were doing conferences in Montreal and very politely yelling at people, “it's the content, stupid” that in the industry at that time was still and for a long time after it still focused on technology, as opposed to what's actually on the displays. Is it heartening now that you're somewhat detached directly from the direct digital signage industry to see the amount of really kick ass content that you're now finding on screens?

Denys Lavigne: Absolutely. There's great content. I think the aspect that I'm most proud to see the industry do now is just being more smart in the way that we plan for these projects, the way that we set up displays, the way that we think about the media from a business perspective, architectural perspective, the integration of this media with the rest of the marketing ecosystem, the rest of the brand ecosystem. So I'm really proud to see where the industry is at, in terms of the level of refinement of the work in general because yes, the quality of the content is really important but through my time in digital signage, I think quickly we realized that it was also about the strategy itself and the right selection of equipment for the right context, and how the media wasn't just this extra terrestrial piece within the marketing or branding ecosystem of the clients. But it actually played a role and was connected and made sense and how it was used. 

So the integrated marketing or branding approach that I see now, the quality of the executions from architectural perspective and content perspective is really impressive to see, and I'm proud to see where the industry is at today. 

All right. That's a great place to leave it. Congratulations on Oasis Immersion and great to catch up with you. 

Denys Lavigne: Thank you, Dave. Always a pleasure.

Jeremy Jacobs, Enlighten

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

The cannabis retailing industry is interesting in a whole bunch of ways. It is a unique vertical market with an absolutely screaming need for digital signage and interactive technologies.

While longtime recreational users may know their stuff, as US states and Canadian provinces have legalized, there's a whole bunch of new users coming in with needs that have more to do with sleep problems or arthritic joints. They walk into dispensaries and are confronted with products and options that are somewhat or entirely unfamiliar, so screens that promote and explain are very helpful and relevant.

The dispensary business is also interesting because the industry has its own overcrowded ecosystem of payments and management systems that need to somehow be tied together.

The largest player in cannabis digital signage is the Bowling Green, Kentucky firm Enlighten, which is in some 1,200 dispensaries in the United States,

I had a fun conversation with Enlighten founder Jeremy Jacobs, who found his way into digital signage when the clean energy business he was running went south in the late 2000s recession. He pivoted into screens in businesses, and menu displays for restaurants led to an opportunity to branch into cannabis retail. He's a super-smart, interesting guy more signage people should know about.

Enjoy.

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TRANSCRIPT

Jeremy, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown on what your company does? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, absolutely, Dave. Enlighten is the only real omni-channel company within the cannabis vertical particularly, and by omni-channel, we affect the customer journey throughout that entire customer journey. We have a product real quickly called AdSuite that targets people in a digital environment, whether it be mobile, Roku or even desktop computers based upon audience segmentation data we have, to know those are known cannabis consumers. And then we have our SmartHub product, which is an in-store product which is why we're here today, digital signage, kiosk related, and that product helps to upscale the customers that were brought in from the marketing from AdSuite.

And this could be on menu boards, this can be on information displays, this can be on tablets, any number of things, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so SmartHub is really unique. Even if you zoom out of the cannabis vertical and just look broadly at the digital signage industry, SmartHub is an extremely unique product that we created. It manages kiosks, it manages digital signage, all sorts of menus, feature boards, order queue systems, break room TVs, where the audience has shifted from a consumer to the actual employee. It uses extremely advanced logic and filtering with the point of sale data that it's consuming to make these things and even has an e-commerce component to it.

So really the way to think about it is that SmartHub is an extremely robust merchandising platform that manages all of your consumer facing surfaces, whether that surface is a passive screen, an interactive screen, like a kiosk or even the webpage where someone would come to purchase and make an order on your website.

And the cannabis industry is its own unique ecosystem, right? There's POS companies that only do cannabis business, and so on? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, I would say there's no true word than cannabis is its own individual ecosystem. So as a veteran, not been in the industry quite as long as you but since 2008, I've seen a lot of things and cannabis extremely unique. So it does have all of its own tech stack companies for the most part. There are a few companies, Microsoft Dynamics makes a sort of a POS system that's been modified for cannabis. But outside, I'll see a Square every now and then, but for the most part 99.99% of all point of sales systems at a digital signage company would integrate with are extremely cannabis specific and they all compete for what is roughly 8,500 retail clients across just short of 40 states, and so to talk about the uniqueness, even in more depth, not only are the stacks different in cannabis than they would be outside of that, but all the individual laws and rules that apply very literally from state to state. So you even have state variances. 

Why would so many companies decide, “I want to be in a space that's changing constantly and not all that big and in the grand scheme of what retail is”?

Jeremy Jacobs: That's a great question. I think what your question was alluding to, there's the TAM, the total addressable market. You look at restaurants and there's literally hundreds of thousands of them, and I would argue there's barely as many POS companies in restaurants as there is inside of cannabis. And I think it's a couple of things. From an emotional standpoint, this is “the green rush” right? Any cannabis advocate that for the last hundred years that it's been illegal has felt violated by the error, has seensocial injustice from that. I believe there's an emotional component why a lot of these companies are there, a lot of these leaders are there. Second, there's a power vacuum that gets field when no one wants to go somewhere. So when you take a look at the cannabis industry, none of these major POS companies that we're referring to, none of them had any interest at all whatsoever in getting involved in cannabis. So the result of that is someone has to, and then the third prong, I think of this little fork here is that there is a green rush. The Anheuser Bushes of the world are about to be made of cannabis. There's very unique transactions, very unique audiences, and there's a lot of money to be made there. There's a lot of value and you can see companies that are in the space that make tech. 

If you look on the internet, Weed Maps is probably the largest one, listed on the NASDAQ billion plus dollar company, recently Dutchie has made some announcements for billion plus dollar companies as well. So fortunes are being made even though the total addressable market is small.

Yeah, I've always thought that the cannabis dispensary business was a particularly interesting one for digital signage, because unlike most retail where you walk into an apparel retailer, you know what you're looking for, clothes, I need a shirt or whatever. It's pretty obvious. 

But if I walk into a cannabis dispensary, I'm pretty much lost. I don't know what I'm even looking at and all these different strains of flowers and buds and this and that. It is like Mars to me. But, and I suspect a lot of people walk in like that who maybe aren't recreational users, but want it to help them sleep or calm them down or whatever purpose they have for it?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, and so to drill into that observation you've made is really there's two kinds of consumers that very quickly develop in cannabis. There's the customer that you just described, which is a new customer, and there's a lot of those, because again, cannabis was technically illegal for about a hundred years. And so there's a huge amount of new customers that don't know anything, and so there's a massive educational vacuum there, and that's actually, Enlighten really started as we recognize that, and so we created an in-store digital out of home, a television network that runs ads for brands and things of that nature, endemic or non-endemic. We've got clients like Door Dash or Vans shoes or FX networks and their cannabis shows, but the content that's on that network is educationally driven specifically to satisfy that lack of education that you just talked about, and then on the other end of that spectrum, there are these clients that very much know what they want and precisely what they're looking for and those particular clients aren't looking for that same experience. They're looking for, digital menus that can be sorted based upon terpenes are based upon cannabinoid profiles so the highest THC value, they're looking for is express checkout kiosks, so they don't have to have an interaction. 

So uniqueness of the cannabis dispensary from a digital signage perspective is you have to create digital environments that satisfy both of those polar opposites. 

I gather when you were talking about omni-channel that it's really important or helpful to a company playing in this space to be able to serve multiple needs and to integrate with the other technologies that are part of the ecosystem. If you just did digital signage, it's a walled garden thing where you're going to get much better reception for many users, whereas you can provide multiple components, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: Oh, absolutely. I've been in a lot of industries. The restaurant space was the first one. I was really into digital signage. Sysco Foods started slinging my digital menus for me, and like things 2009 and their 30 different offices and so I got to see a lot of things there. But in the first week in cannabis, eight years ago, the word integrate came up like 40 different times within an hour, and so I've never seen an industry that's so demanding of integrations. Like for example, you walk into a restaurant and any number of restaurants and you look over by the hostess stand and there's the DoorDash tablet, and there's a GrubHub tablet, and there's a Postmates tablet and there's all these tablets. And so the hostess is watching these orders come in and then they're putting them in their POS system.

That would never fly in the cannabis industry, like it's a demanded integration by these people, and so if you're going to create an integration engine, you're going to want to make it have more points of influence than just a TV menu, you're going to need to provide that e-commerce plug and you're going to need to provide those kiosks. You're going to want to link up with their customer data for targeting those customers, on their mobile devices. You're exactly right, if you're going to be relevant in cannabis, your stack better be serious because they're trying to reduce that vendor set to if they could just one, nobody does all of it, but they want to reduce that number to the smallest possible.

Is that in part, because it's a younger buyer audience who understands technology more and didn't grow up in kind of old style restaurants or whatever, where there were all these different systems? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Interesting thing you said there,t because it's a younger buyer, so that was very true eight years ago. But at this point, that is not the truth at this juncture. So just a few years ago, I think it was two and a half years ago, the fastest growing segment of users shifted from 20 year olds to middle-aged mothers and it was the fastest growing audience, and then over the last few years, what has really been the fastest growing audience has actually been elderly people. It seems like they're starting to come to grips with, “Hey, I have pains and aches and cannabis is actually the solution”, and so it's a big growing segment. 

But I think the answer to the question that you did ask is why is there this desire for a consolidation of a tech stack more than anything. 

Yeah, I was thinking more of the operators that tend to be younger. Maybe that's not the case? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Same thing at this point, it's not the case now, it's weird. So it was the case before, a hundred percent because who was willing to take that risk to get in the weed business, and so a hundred percent, but now I'm sitting in meetings with digital officers and marketing officers from Abercrombie and Apple, and they came from big organizations and so it's a very changing landscape. 

But at the end of the day, I think that some of them are young, so yes, to your answer, very good observation. Second is the ones that aren't young are professionals, and they're used to dealing with that. But thirdly, I think for both of them, the demand of tech stack is necessary because the regulations and the data that they have to send back to the state agencies and authorities and all of those sorts of things and the compliance they have to undergo is worse than any other industry ever. Like they're under so much scrutiny and you could lose your license at the drop of a hat, and so they want less to deal with so they can focus more on staying in business. 

Does that touch on your platform and what you do? Do you have to have a Nevada version of it and a Colorado version and I forget where else it's legal, California, obviously. But do you have to pass them out state by state or is it pretty uniform?

Jeremy Jacobs: Great question. So the technology itself is the same across all the states. AdSuite is AdSuite and SmartHub is SmartHub, but there are definitely nuances. So let me give you a couple of interesting examples in the state of Pennsylvania, you're not allowed to put anything up on a screen from a digital signage perspective, unless absolutely it has been medically proven. And so it needs to come from a doctor or some position, a medical authority, and in Alaska, for example, they don't believe anything has ever been proven by a doctor or medical authority and so you can't put anything up that even closely resembles a recommendation. So there's two polar opposites. So from a content perspective, I gotta watch those things.

From an advertising perspective. Some states, even though it's cannabis, won't let you show pictures of weed in the advertisements. Go figure that out. How do you advertise weed without showing weed? You can't show people consuming the product in a lot of states with advertisements. So there's another nuance, and then a third nuance is like in Pennsylvania, what I'm able to put on a digital menu is very specific and I cannot put any imagery into one thing, and I have to, I'm required to put certain testing results, similar to the way in the restaurant industry. Now everybody went digital whenever they were required to put the calorie count for these items, and that's when you saw this massive uprising in digital cause they got to replace all this stuff anyway, might as well go to the screen, and in Pennsylvania, I got to put things like that, testing results. 

What's the content that seems to be required across all the different dispensaries, kind of the money messages that need to be there, and the operators want to have up there?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so from a TV menu perspective. We'll start with our that's the most largely adopted digital signage product ever and so the TV menu, what's necessary is the name of the products, the type of the product, the weight of the product, the price, the product, but really importantly, people want to know about cannabinoid profiles, is this high or low in THC? The psychoactive ingredient that gives you the feeling of a high, is it higher, lower in CBD, which is the non-psychoactive ingredient that really focuses a lot on pain, arthritis and inflammation and things of that nature, muscle pain. So consumers sort of demand that, operators want to provide that.

And from an educational perspective, if you're talking about a different digital signage product and just more like digital signage, we're producing educational videos, the demand really is around education of what are these different terpenes, what are these different cannabinoids, these little things inside of the cannabis that creates different effect for each strain, like this one makes me sleepy, this one makes me energetic, this one's great for back pain, and so that's the demand from a regulatory standpoint of pretty much the only uniform thing that I can't really do is show anything that's cartoonish that might want to lure children into the store. 

There was a big problem with packaging for edibles for a while there, right?

Jeremy Jacobs: It was, they've got sour patch kids on the box, and the first versions of edibles were very kid friendly because they took kids candies and made them, and now that's pretty much been regulated out. So the same thing, that same sort of concern with the packaging that you pointed out with edibles is also a concern in digital signage and even digital advertising. So if I'm targeting a mobile phone, even though I'm targeting a known cannabis consumer, just stay away from anything that might be alluring to children.

So if I'm a customer of Enlighten, is it a SaaS platform that I am using?. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, so the two products are different. The SmartHub is the in-store signage, kiosk, kind of technology that manages all of that and talks to your POS system. That is definitely a SaaS product. As far as pricing models, there's been a lot of those in digital signage, our kiosk system is one price for your entire store and use as many as you want. Our signage model is the same as anyone else's, per node. SaaS model on our AdSuite product, though that is a SaaS product, if you will, it's a piece of software that gains you access to those audiences on our DOH network and in stores, as well as, digital Roku devices, mobile devices, desktop computers but that's driven just like any other digital advertising model would be external on a cost per impression basis.

What's the footprint for your company at this point?

Jeremy Jacobs: So we've reached a really interesting crossroads, very few companies in cannabis have ever got over that thousand mark. Right now, I would estimate we're in probably roughly 1200 dispensaries, somewhere thereabouts and then have several hundred other clients that are brands and so forth so our footprint reaches to about 1500 or so clients, big number and a TAM of 8,500, if you look at it that way. 

And this is an industry that like more and more states seem to be coming on stream, or at least there's a push to bring them on stream. So it's not like it's a finite market right now?

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah. So that's part of the growth. When we're assessing growth, there's a couple ways to look at it. One is how we can get more money out of the existing customers and that's to offer premium versions of our products, additional services that might be out there that we could focus on. But also there's just the overall growth of the entire market itself, and there's a couple of phases of that. The first phase is for the state to go medical. So now, they can be a client of ours. But typically, we find the greatest traction in the states once they go recreational because what happens is their revenue growth is astronomical. 

People don't appear to want to go to get a medical license nearly as easily as just walking in a dispensary. So whenever they go recreational, they buy a lot of other products from us and really focus on that retail environment and creating a magical experience for those recreational customers. So really there's two phases, medical, and then recreational. But right now you're looking at cannabis in almost 40 states at a medical level roughly 10 or so at a recreational level. I’m averaging there, the number changes. I haven't kept track of it in a minute, but to give you an idea of growth, there's about 10-12 to go to medical and then there's the vast majority or 80 plus percent that are not yet recreational. So a lot of growth in them. 

Are you up in Canada as well? 

Jeremy Jacobs: We are. So it's a lot of challenges working inside cannabis, anybody's ever nailed internationally. You have to have your own bank accounts, your incorporations, your teams up there. It's hard to import hardware products, and as a company, we do also provide the hardware. So that has its own challenges, but we do operate in Canada. We've got some systems in Puerto Rico, which is a US territory.  Jamaica, we send some things too. We have some plans we're brewing up. Spain has a pretty good sized cannabis market and so we're looking internationally there because the challenge is the same. People don't understand cannabis, they need education. That's the same worldwide. It's been illegal globally, for a hundred years. 

How did you get into it? You mentioned that your first foray into digital signage was restaurants for Sysco, how did you end up in this? 

Jeremy Jacobs: So in 2008, I started a company called IconicTV, and it's had many offshoots with verticals. I've been one of those guys when I see a vertical, I'd make a very precise product. We helped build a C-store DOH network called C-store TV. We had a school product called, school menu guru. We had a lobby product called lobby Fox, it does visitor management and so one of those products we noticed early on was digital TV menus, and so in 2009, I formed a deal with Sysco foods and they have 30 offices across the country that would distribute my digital signage, digital TV menu products to their restaurant tours. And so I hired these vice presidents in each of those areas to partner with those offices as Sysco calls an opco, and so Sysco would have reps and my reps would go do ride alongs, and so they would ride along with these representatives and go in and meet these restaurant tours at work and stuff. One of them, the guy in Denver, Colorado, Ted Tilton's name? So Ted called me one day and this is right before cannabis goes legal in Colorado, which was the first state to legalize recreational cannabis, Washington and Colorado voted on it basically at the same time. But Colorado was the first actually who implemented, and he calls me, he says, Hey man, I got this idea and I said, what is it? He goes, these TV menus we’re selling through Sysco. I said, yeah, he goes, what do you think about making some for marijuana? I said, what are you talking about? And he says I've got these buddies opening this dispensary called DANK, and it'll be the closest dispensary to Denver International airport and I got this feeling as soon as weed was legal in Colorado, a lot of people are going to be coming into DIA and this place is going to be really busy since it's the closest one, and he says, and I was like, what would be the difference? And he said, essentially we put up marijuana buds instead of chicken sandwiches. And I said, I'm in.

I've been a big advocate of cannabis for a long time. At one point, I was even the executive director of Kentucky NORMAL, the division of the national organization for marijuana legalization. It's the Kentucky chapter. I've been a big advocate of it. I've been a self prescribed patient for many years. It was an interesting opportunity to take a couple of things I was very passionate about both cannabis and digital signage and went to do some real work on two things I care about. So we dove in. 

Has the profile of the operator changed? 

I remember talking to another person who's involved in this space and actually being out in Denver and he was saying that there’s two types of operators. There's a business people who see this as a growth opportunity, and they've already had some experience in retail or in investing or whatever, and then there's growers and growers who are turning into retailers and he said the challenge with the growers as they're growers, they're not business people and they don't really understand retail, and I'm curious if in the early days you saw a lot of them stories of dispensaries that would start up and then drop off because they didn't really know what they were doing? 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, and I'll take that example. Your friend gave you a pretty good insight there, but to expand on that, I don't even think it's just growers though. It's I think just very weed passionate people, like they're very passionate about it. Whether it's consuming it or making concentrates or growing it or whatever. So I would just call them plant passionate people versus business people, and it very much exists, and it doesn't today to the degree that it used to. In the beginning, someone that's a senior executive vice president of Abercrombie is not going to go start a dispensary, like during the first couple of years, we were all wondering if everybody opened these things, were all gonna go to jail. I'm sure everybody in America is going everybody in Denver is going to do it, just wait, and if all my friends at open dispensaries were sitting around, I would have conversations with the night and they're like, I'm just wondering if tonight, the DEA raids my house, and so nobody wanted to be under that scrutiny except plant passionate people.

But as time got on and the federal government sorta started to take a position, even if the position was, “we don't have a position”, that's still a position, and so they're not taking an aggressive stance on it then you began to see real business people start to come into the environment and at this point, you have organizations like Cresco who just bought Columbia Care, and these operators have over a hundred stores and they're doing hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in retail cannabis sales. These are not the type of marijuana dispensary that I think most people have in their mind. These people have entire floors of IT teams. They have entire floors and marketing teams. They do in-depth customer insight studies, and that influences every tiny nuance of their packaging and their store layouts. These are real operations, but I can still take you to Oregon right now and  walk into the shop or Nancy and Megan who are best friends and they have tie-died things up on the wall and they're very whimsical people that are just very passionate and who also have a successful sotry. Now they're not going to sell hundreds of millions of dollars to cannabis, but they're also successfully operating. 

Think of it like liquor, for example, Liquor Barn exists and that's a big corporation. But, in the town I live in, everybody wants to go to Chuck's Liquors when Chuck was alive, because Chuck was just the coolest guy ever. So you went to Chuck, so they both have a place. 

Yeah, I've certainly seen the same thing. I remember being an Amsterdam for ISE and, you'd stick your head into one of these coffee shops, and it was just a hole in the wall and weird but out by the hotel where I was staying, there was a dispensary that looked like an Apple store, like it was very slick. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Interesting you say that. So there's this place called Euflora and Jamie Perino was one of the owners at the time and it's at the 16th street walking district in downtown Denver. This is the big street with the old piano outside and everybody wandering around a very touristy area and so we did the first project for them that I remember getting a call from them and they're like, “Hey, we open in 11 days and we've got this crazy idea where there'll be a touchscreen kiosk and it's sitting next to a jar of marijuana, and this kiosk has all this interactive stuff on it with everything about that strain of marijuana. We needed in our stores in 11 days. Can you guys do it?” And they said, oh yeah, and our budget is X, and I just laughed, and I said X is missing a couple of zeros, especially for 11 days, what are you talking about? And they're like, can you do it or not? And I said I can, but I shouldn't but I'm going to, and so we did, because we wanted to be part of the exposing of this whole thing.

And so we took it on, and so when you would first walk on your floor, you can dig up some old video files from the news channels from eight years ago, it very much looked like an Apple store cause we had Apple iPads on every table next to a jar of marijuana and you can scroll up and down and see what the euphoric effects would be and does it make you sleepy, happy, hungry, horny, what's it going to do? And, in what genetics, where did it come from? And just all this interesting stuff, and people would come into that store fascinated, and so it was very Apple-esque. 

How did you end up in digital signage? Cause I was looking at your bio and you've got patents in Magneto, hydrodynamics for energy exploration, drilling and everything. How did you get here? 

Jeremy Jacobs: What the hell happened? Early in life I realized I didn't really like formal education. So I think I'm like nine hours from a college degree, but I dropped out and became entrepreneurial. So I became an investment broker and I worked on several different fundraising deals, most of them were driven around biodiesel. That was very active at the time when I dropped out of college, nearly two thousand, biodiesel was a thing, a lot of different technologies. And very quickly I got interested in alternative energy technologies and energy efficiency technologies, and just anything that was energy related, and technology related, and so I had an operation with about 20,000 acres of natural gas wells in Eastern Kentucky that were clean natural gas wells using advanced technologies like hydraulic fracturing.

I started inventing Magneto hydrodynamic technologies that's used by Chevron and Exxon and people that. It goes down in oil wells. It's used to eliminate paraffin and that technology has now been adopted by the DoD to make airlines, to make fighter jets fly farther because the fluid systems flow better and a lot of different things, and then 2008 came, so I own a quarry, that's mine and silica for Silicon to make marker processors, and I got a bunch of natural gas, wells and magnetic technologies, and 2008 comes, 2007 comes, the housing crisis collapses, everything and natural gas went from about $14 in MCF, which was a vast majority of the revenue that we were driving to like a dollar and a half in MCF, which is the unit that you produce and sell for, it stands for thousand cubic feet, and I needed $3 to make that make sense, right? And now it's at a dollar and a half. So I went from really cash flow positive to a hundred percent cash flow negative and just a matter of months.

And on top of that, when you own a bunch of quarries, nobody's buying any materials, and so I look up and literally everything I'm involved in just all of a sudden is collapsing and I don't have the payroll to make payroll for this massive bunch of employees. We had several offices in different parts across the country. And surely it was excruciatingly painful fast. Everything had to close, and so here's, here's the reality. I'm at home depressed out of my mind. I've just had to lay everyone off. I've had to shut in all these gas wells. I've had to lock the gates on all these quarries and nobody wants to talk about anything, everybody's going broke and my wife comes to me and she says, you've got to do something. We have kids we have to feed, we have bills we have to pay. You cannot sit here and be depressed, and I had seen somewhere I think it was in a mall. A friend of mine had built a TV screen, turned sideways, and it had Adobe Flash player on it, and it was playing some animated motion graphics that he controlled on a desktop PC inside this big kiosk and I thought I could do something similar to that, and so I literally grabbed a 32 inch Vizio TV out of my living room. My wife goes, where are you going with my TV? I said, I'll bring it back to you. I'll see you in a week, and she goes, you are leaving with the TV for a week? I said, yeah, and you’ll get a bigger one, I promise, and I grabbed the Toshiba laptop that my field hands that would go around, they had to log what parts they use and how long they were on job sites and stuff, and I grabbed one of these old stinky laptops that smells like crude oil and hung it in a friend of mine's restaurant in Clarkson, Kentucky. It was called K's cafe and it was political season, and so I'm going to tell a story about myself here, Dave, and so I go around and build these very animated PowerPoints and I'm changing the files out via LogMeIn at the time. I didn't even have any software, digital signage software. I didn't even know about the digital signage thing.

And so I'm like, I gotta sell ads on this thing, so I go to this guy that's running for sheriff, and I told a little white lie. I was like, Hey man, the other guy that's running for sheriff, he's buying in on my screens. It's in the most high traffic restaurant, and apparently legally, I've got to offer you the same opportunity at the same price. He goes, why what's he paying? And I told him, he goes, I'll take it, and so then I went to the guy that I just told a white lie and said, this other guy is buying. It was, which was actually true the second time. That's how I got started, I had to feed my kids. I had a 32-inch Vizio TV and a busted up laptop and I sold some people aspiring to be politicians, some ads and some real estate agents, and it just grew from there. I look up and I’m in hundreds of restaurants and fitness centers with the DOH network and six months later, a friend of mine says, Hey, can you use one of those silly ad TVs and make a menu on it because the price of salmon keeps fluctuating so much. I got to put these mailbox letters, and so we made, which was one of the early digital menus. I think we'd both agree, 2009-2009 was not the dawning moment of digital menus. It wasn't the precipice of it. That was very early.

And so we started using those and saw opportunities to replace those little black felt directories with the letters you run out of the M, and so you flip the W upside down, it's all bow legged looking, on the little felt boards. We started making digital directories integrated with Google sheets, so you could change it easily and the rest was history, man. I dove in and needless to say, the kids are fed now. The wife is happy. She got a bigger TV. I think it's 70 inch now. So everyone's cool. 

That's a hell of a pivot. 

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, buddy. Necessity is the mother of invention. 

All right. This was terrific. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Jeremy Jacobs: Yeah, man. I was going to start off this morning saying longtime listener, first time caller. I've been watching your website, your blog, your podcast for as long as I can remember. So it's been an honor to finally get to be a part of it, and I really appreciate it. 

Thank you for taking the time with me.

Jeremy Jacobs: I thank you, Dave.

Geoff Bessin, Intuiface

NOTE - Podcasts normally come out on Wednesdays, but as a favor to Intuiface - which is at this week's ISE trade show in Spain - I moved it up a day to coincide with the show's opening day ...

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

One of the big trends in the software world is the whole idea of no code development - the premise that both programmers and mere mortals can create applications without getting their typing fingers dirty and brains fried doing traditional computer programming.

The proposition is that no code development platforms can cut out a lot of time and cost associated with pulling applications together, and also deal with the reality that good programmers are in high demand and therefore scarce.

The French software firm Intuiface is in the interesting position of having offered a no code platform long before no code was a discussion point, so the folks there are a great resource for discussing the implications for the digital signage and interactive display market.

I spoke with Geoff Bessin, the CMO and main voice for Intuiface, about the distinctions between no code and low code development platforms, and how they differ from the simple drag and drop, what you see is what you get user interfaces that are common in digital signage content management systems. We also dig into the benefits, the limitations, and more than anything, why you should know and care about no code.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Geoff, thank you for joining me. Can you give me the rundown first on what Intuiface is all about? 

Geoff Bessin: Will do, Dave, thank you for having me. So Intuiface is a no-code platform dedicated to the creation of interactive digital content. That includes digital signage, but really it can anything in the venue. It could be a museum exhibition, could be a sales pitch for a movie sales team, could be anything at a trade show, something in a real estate office, et cetera. So you create it, you deploy it, you can do analytics with it. It’s all good.

And the company is based in France, correct? 

Geoff Bessin: We are headquartered in a town called Labège, which is right outside Toulouse in France. Although I'm not, but it's funny, my name is Geoffrey Besson, so both my first and last name look French. So people always assume it's French, but that’s not the case. I'm in Boston.

Can you speak a lick of French?

Geoff Bessin: Oui. Yes. 

Good for you! I wanted to talk about no-code software, cause you guys have been no-code before people were even using that term and no-code is one of these trends, just like headless CMS, that seems to be bubbling up and maybe people don't understand a lot about it yet.

Geoff Bessin: Yeah, you could go back to the 80s and find things like HyperCard where you were enabling non-developers to create an application of some sorts. So it goes back a long way, but in terms of a movement, generating notice, gaining investment and having companies spend money on it, it's only been the past few years. 

I can tell you that statistics are now saying that the market size, the amount of money being spent on no-code software used to create apps is almost $14 billion. It's a lot of money being pumped into these apps. And in fact, more than 65% of apps are now created using no-code tools. So more than 50%, more than half of apps are being built with no-code software. It is the predominant means of delivering applications these days. 

What's the distinction between no-code and low-code, because I've heard both terms.

Geoff Bessin: There's no formal distinction. You can't point at it and go, “Oh, this one’s no-code” like you just went over the line. But the idea is that with low-code, there are back doors. There are means to enhance, to extend, to facilitate integration that might involve a little bit of coding. Even that coding could be simplified based on maybe either a scripting language that is native to the tool or a public scripting language like Ruby. 

Whereas no-code is just 100%, you're not going to see code anywhere, and so you are in a way limited to the sandbox provided by the no-code platform, what it is you're able to deliver is limited by what you can piece together with the Lego blocks of that platform. no-code gives you those little back doors to branch yourself out. 

So what does it mean for development? Does it distance or mediate the need for application developers completely, and just any old end-user can produce an application without having to engage developers or is it more something that accelerates the development process and just gets some cost and time out of the way?

Geoff Bessin: I think that question brings us to who's doing it, and why are they doing it? As I mentioned, no-code has exploded recently, and it is due to a set of developments that have driven application development to what is now called the “citizen developer.” 

Trends such as a shortage of developers, it's not that we're trying to get rid of them. It's that there’s not enough. I saw one statistic that back in 2020, there were 1.2 million unfilled developer jobs in the United States, just the US but 1.2 million developer jobs unfilled in the US and colleges and universities were only cranking out about 400,000 developers. There's a shortage. So it's not that we don't want them, we don't have them. What do you do about that? There was also COVID, which has greatly accelerated investment in these no-code platforms, because everything moved online, and when everything moved online, everything needed to be digitized and companies realized we have to move now but we don't have enough resources, so how the heck are we going to digitize these things? 

And then there's also tangential, but influential, the fact that even in our own home, we're not coders, but we are programmers. If I'm working with my Nest thermostat, that's programming. I just got a puppy and they have these apps that you can then program to see how many steps they've taken and how much water they drink, that's programming, and the digital native is used to controlling their environment digitally. There are tools out there that enable them to realize their ideas as an application, and somebody has to build it because there's not enough developers to go around. That's what really kicked the no-code market in the butt.

What we're seeing subsequently is that the developer shortage is being filled by these citizen developers producing applications, maybe for personal use, maybe for internal employee use, maybe for customer us, it depends. Those developers are now being transitioned to work on larger projects, more intricate projects. They have more time arguably to focus on the big tickets stuff that still needs the hardcore development, offloading their responsibility from the simpler things that can now be handled by that citizen developer.

Are there trade offs that you have to accept, to use no-code instead of just doing your own thing?

Geoff Bessin: Certainly. There are obvious advantages, there's speed and there's costs benefits. There's a big productivity boost, but of course there's trade offs. I like this notion of Legos. You have these prebuilt blocks and this is a finite number of block options that you can combine in an infinite number of ways. At the end of the day, you're still limited to those blocks, right? And so if I'm using a no-code platform and I need a block that doesn't exist, I'm stuck. 

Now, I suppose if it's a low-code platform, depending on what I need to achieve,okay, maybe I can put something together if I have the skill, maybe I don't, but if I don't have the skill or if the opportunity with the platform doesn't exist, I am limited, and I think that might be the fundamental challenge is what can I do? What can I realize? Cause recognize that a lot of these platforms are built to be generic, to address sort of breadth, not always depth, and so that can be a challenge. You are also, of course, relying on them to be responsible for performance and reliability. You are handing over that duty, that responsibility to the provider, the no-code platform. I hope they're doing a good job. Because it's out of my hands, I can't control that, and so those are the big risks: can I achieve exactly what I want or am I making compromises? Am I achieving the level of performance? My ability to deploy? My ability to collect data analytics? My ability to manage that deployment? 

There's 150-200 platforms across the spectrum offering no-code and low-code options. You might be making some compromises on the way, certainly are, but as I shared with you, 65% of apps are now built with no-code platforms. So companies have decided it's worth the risk. 

What's the distinction between no-code and what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG) user interfaces?

Geoff Bessin: No-code, I think it's more of a connotation, not a denotation. I think you could argue that a lot of no-code platforms are WYSIWYG. Intuiface is a no-code platform, it's a drag and drop tool. It's a WYSIWYG. The connotation of WYSIWYG, it could be for a developer. It could be for anybody of any skill set. So it's more of a generic catchall for applications enabled to create other applications by dragging components and you can see what they look like at design time and development time. 

No-code connotes the non-developer, the citizen developer that you don't have coding skills and you're not expected to have those skills. So I think that's it. 

You sent me a white paper that kind of goes into this and you're making the argument that while no-code is out there, it's exploding and growing and everything else, there's really no application, I think you called it a ‘no-code blind spot’ in terms of in-venue applications. What do you mean by that? 

Geoff Bessin: So let's define in-venue because that is exactly our contention. In-venue is an encapsulation of any digital deployment out of the home. It could be digital signage, could be all those things I mentioned with Intuiface as well, the museum exhibition, the sales presentation, real estate office, et cetera. It is out of the home. It is not my phone though. It is not my PC. I'm not browsing the web at home. I'm out of my home, I'm in a venue and there is some digital content trying to communicate to educate, to promote, to sell to me. 

That domain has been, I think with the exception of Intuiface, untouched by the no-code movement. For sure, if you look at the landscape of companies delivering solutions to address the needs of the citizen developer, there is nothing out there addressing these in-venue deployments. It's all about web and mobile apps and some websites, that's it. So if you want to create digital signage, if you want to create that museum exhibition, the sales pitch, there is no option out there now, and which brings us David, I know you're going to want to ask this, which is, will, aren't all digital signage platforms, no-code? Which is great question, Dave, by the way...

You are a psychic!

Geoff Bessin: That's a yes, but, it is absolutely true that you don't write code, but there are certain expectations of a no-code platform that the traditional digital signage CMS cannot fulfill, and it's interesting if I take a step back, really by definition, it has always been the non-developer on the digital signage side, hasn’t it? You buy a platform, there's a CMS, the user of the content management system is the content person. They're not coding anything. They're working with the CMS, they're assigning content to zones and they're day partying. By definition from day one, digital signage was always a non-developer domain, whereas web and mobile apps and these sorts of things were always the developer domain. 

The no-code movement was, “Hey, this complicated stuff, we gotta make it simpler. We need the citizen developer involved.” So they brought no-code to the domain that started with developers, which I think is one of the explanations for why it didn't really come over to the in-venue side yet, because it was always non-coder users, but there are certain expectations of the no-code platform, that is not really in scope of the platform delivering in-venue content. A simple example, just to give you one would be the notion of context. To react to the user, react to the environment, in real time in that context, and do something as a result that is inherently this notion of logic. If this, then that. That's coding, right? It's got the whiff of coding and how do you do that? And there's a list of things we can discuss about what makes in-venue unique. But it requires the accommodation of additional concerns that are beyond the scope of what a traditional CMS does and that no other no-code platform does across the no-code spectrum. 

I guess what you're saying in certain respects is you can develop a playlist, do all the basic functionality of a digital sign, you can target content and everything else, but the moment you get into a request to do something different, that's interactive, that as you say, maybe responds to triggers and so on, that gets a lot more complicated, and at that point you're putting in, if you're an end user, you're putting in a request to your reseller or to the software company directly saying, can you do this? And they'll say, yes, we can, but it's going to take this amount of time, this amount of money and, we can't get this to you for six months cause it's off of our roadmap or whatever… Is that one of the arguments you'd make? 

Geoff Bessin: I would say that for sure. You see, a lot of companies have libraries. Here's our template library, here’s our plugin library, here's our integration library. Oh, you want something we don't have? We can build that for you. Here's the cost. Here's how long it's going to take. That's one example.

I can tell you that from a Intuiface perspective, we don't have any libraries. We haven't really prebuilt anything. Our paradigm is to enable integration with any web service, to create any UI, to integrate with any content management system, to have that ubiquity, which means that we don't have to build anything for our clients. The customer can do that. But it also means that, well, you better have a good idea and you better need to know what you. Because you're starting with a tabula rasa, but yes, that is certainly one good example of how you fulfill these sort of unique needs you might have thought about. I'll give you another example, which is retail point of sale. How would you build that thing? To me, that qualifies as an in-venue application. That's in the venue, right? I can order through a website, but do I want to put a website on a kiosk? It's a different domain. It's a different paradigm. It has different design requirements, different expectations, different issues about security, about being able to run potentially offline. But having to work with peripherals, having hyper-local context dependence, there are all of these concerns that will impact that user experience in the venue that may not be relevant or at all to a web experience. If I want to build that thing, how much flexibility am I going to have? Now there are companies like Grubber, which are pretty much pre-built everything, right? All you do is you push your menu into their back office system, and you're good to go. You just have to hope it does exactly what it is you want because you're constrained within the confines of what they offer for design, with the offer for business process, what they offer in terms of context, awareness, and reaction and if you need to make any kind of changes, you're dependent on them to make those changes, and that has a cost and a time penalty to it. 

What kind of skillsets do you realistically need to use a no-code particularly in the context of Intuiface? I'm assuming the proposition is anybody can sit down, but you still have to plan out, you have to have some methodical thinking about what you want to do with what the decision tree is on all that stuff, right?

Geoff Bessin: You do, and that gives me an opportunity to give you just a brief history of Intuiface because we were never a no-code company, that wasn't how we were oriented. The company was actually founded back in 2002. It was founded by a couple of PhDs with expertise in touch technology. And from day one, it was about bringing user experiences to a lot of it was, believe it or not, the defense industry, but also retail, touch-driven user experiences for something, to accomplish something. The company was always about the user experience. 

At the end of the day, as great as your touch technology might be, nobody cares if it's not usable. If it doesn't make it easy to achieve some goal, and so Intuiface, when it was born it was all about the user experience, and in fact, most of its early hires were focused on that, on how to make something intuitive and that where the company name comes from, an intuitive interface. To make intuitive user experiences that we're driven by interaction like touch. What happened was we were servicing all of these organizations, again, a lot of defense, Intuiface is headquartered just outside the Toulouse, as i mentioned. So you have the big aerospace and defense industry located in Toulouse like Airbus. So a lot of those clients, but also retail, commerce. Focused on user experience, and it was hard to scale the business because you had this deep technical dependency underneath because it's driven by touch and we’re going back 15 years, so expensive hardware, challenging technology, and at the same time, trying to come up with these really intuitive user interfaces, it was a challenge, and we decided internally, I say we, but I wasn't here yet. Intuiface decided internally that we need to come up with something that can accelerate our ability to deliver good user experiences on top of this touch technology.

The company builds something called Intuikit, it was used internally by user experience experts, designers, and people good at aesthetics, people good at thinking about the customer. They were not developers. Ultimately, we decided this thing called Intuikit is pretty awesome, maybe that's our business, and so we're. It's a short story about how the software platform Intuiface was born. We were always about the user experience. It is our expectation that our users are experts in the users, creating intuitive interfaces, not In having any necessary knowledge about development. So that is our expectation, and that's what we think is appropriate. You need to be creative. You need to understand the user. You need to understand the domain. You don't have to worry about the platform you're building it on. That should not be your problem. You should be all about solving the customer's problem.

I realize you work with a bunch of industries, but a lot of your activity is in digital signage. If I am an end-user and I'm using ACME digital signage software, can I use the Intuiface with it? Does it plug into it or are there restrictions? Do you have to go through door number one or door number two, you can't use both doors?

Geoff Bessin: Probably, you can't do. Typically the content management system used by the DS platform is proprietary. It's a closed system. It doesn't have a published API. So we couldn't read from it. Intuiface conversely has its own runtime as well. We can run side by side. In fact, on Windows, we have the ability to run side by side with other applications, we have had customers who are not ready to transition off their existing DS investment. So they were sort of a cohabitating interactive Intuiface based content at one part of the screen and traditional DS content and others were cohabitating that screen. But normally no, that wouldn't be how one would do it. 

Certainly Intuiface is positioned around interactivity. We believe that by definition, once you introduce interactivity and the need to be responsive and context, and to accommodate not just touch, but sensors and voice and computer vision, when you need to account for all of these things, you need to be very good at that if-when, right? And that notion of conditional responses to events which are completely typically outside the realm of the traditional DS platform. That's where we start, and then clients can decide, do I want these Intuiface to co-exist with this DS platform? Or do we need to make some sort of transition.

If I'm an end-user and I start with Intuiface and have a series of interactive screens that are doing some sort of functionality, whatever it may be and then I decide, I want to also have an expanding network of “dumb screens” that are just running traditional digital signage content in some sort of a sequence. Can you do that too? 

Geoff Bessin: Sure, the content doesn't know it’s in a dumb playlist, right? The content is fine. Certainly you can do that. The Intuiface was born, solving the interactive problem. And it's interesting, Dave, because in the early days of selling our platform, digital signage was something else. You didn’t touch signage. So our communication to the marketplace was not interactive signage. There wasn't such a thing. There was interactive content for kiosks. That was the world when we first walked in, you were touching something such as a table or a kiosk. There were touch screens, very expensive touch screens. You could be bound on a wall, never a perceptive pixel from a million years ago. Like those CNN screens and that sort of thing. You spend $2,500, you can have a touchscreen, but bylarge, it was kiosks and that sort of thing. 

What happened was that they had this largely commoditized, digital signage space, hundreds of companies offering traditional digital signage and customers had iPhones in their pocket and they had iPads at home, and they started thinking about interactivity. They see the voting coverage on CNN and people tapping screens. So can you do that? That's why we started getting questions about traditional digital signage. Can you fulfill that as well? We were like yeah, we can, and over the years we developed additional capability to accommodate it. 

The paradigm is still different. We don't have a traditional notion of a playlist for example, but you can create a playlist within Intuiface. We're using our Lego blocks, not just to build interactive content, but non-interactive content as well. You can do both. 

So it was something you could do, but it's not your focus? 

Geoff Bessin: I would say, we’res interactive first, but the traditional broadcast signage, and I don't mean this in a judgy way, it's not typically that complicated. So if it is a playlist of stuff, images, videos, documents, it's very easily done, but people very rarely come to us, Dave, with traditional first. They're coming to us because they need to solve an interactive need, and oh, by the way, long-term you can transition to traditional content as well.

I agree that, the conventional side of digital signage, the meat potatoes, run this stuff at this time and these locations and all that is commoditized and pretty simple, and I always say that the complicated stuff is behind the scenes, the device management, the API integrations and all that sort of stuff. Are you at a level now where you can provide the building blocks, the Lego blocks to do the interactive piece, but also enable the end user to monitor and remotely manage all that? 

Geoff Bessin: We do offer that, and in fact we offer both of what you mentioned, cause you also mentioned the API integration, we can accommodate that as well.

On the device management side, certainly we have an awareness of the devices in the field and you can set up notifications if things are going wrong, that sort of thing, you can see what's running on those devices. On certain platforms, you can remotely update on runtime, that sort of thing. We're not averse to working with a device and platform management options, to collaborate with them in a deployment, but we do offer some of that. And with API integration, we've actually offered for six years. It's been a long time and it's one of those things, Dave, where, as I said, we weren’t born with no-code. We were born worried about user experience and we realized we looked in the mirror and wen, oh, we're actually no-code. 

We've been offering a software called API Explorer.  You can automatically create an integration, an integration with a web API without writing code And it is a real time integration reading from writing to that web API. It could be a back office system, ERP application, CRM application could be a database wrapped in an API, could be a device on the internet of things, all of these options can be integrated with a running Intuiface experienced by a non-developer, using API Explorer. So we've offered that for some time. 

We now have our own CMS but you don't have to use it. Our original value prop is to use whatever you want. We have API Explorer, you can plug into whatever you want. We have now introduced our own because depending on the scenario and the requirements of the project, it just makes better sense to use ours. But we still have customers that would rather use that other thing, or Dave, they’re integrated with the ERP application. They're building a retail point of sale application with Intuiface, and they have integrated with the ERP system, they need to work with the API and you can do that.

Who would you describe as your kind of core end-users, core customers? 

Geoff Bessin: I would say 50 to 60% of our customers are agencies and integrators. So we can discuss with the actual user might be, but I would say more than half of our installed base are agencies and integrators with their own clients. And there is a spectrum of reasons why they're using Intuiface. Some of them, they don't have the development skill, but they want to offer interactivity. Others have men and women on the bench with the skill, but they don't have the scale. That's the problem with people is that they can work on one thing at a time.

And what we find is that a lot of the integrators in particular will be taking Intuiface so they can scale. They can take on a larger volume of maybe small and mid-sized projects that they can do with Intuiface, and then put the men and women on the bench onto the bigger high value projects. We find that customers are saving 80% of time and 60% of costs versus customer that don’t use Intuiface. So it's very easy for them, and it's an easy pitch. Conceptually, if you can build an interactive application, doing exactly what you want with a no-code platform is probably cheaper and faster than if I wrote code, so it's an easy idea to wallow and it is what our customers experience. So that's what you'll find. I would say the majority 60%-55% agencies and integrators, the rest are the small and midsize museums, schools, retailers, sales offices, marketing, and sales teams, they want to do it themselves.

And do they want to do it themselves because of cost or control?

Geoff Bessin: Often it's because of cost. They have ambition or they've been bitten, Dave, where they have outsourced it. You don't see this going in, but you meet an agency. You tell them what you want, they agree and deliver something in two months that doesn’t resemble what you wanted, so you ask for revisions, and this cycle continues while you pay for the time. It's not an agile process, and again, I'm not casting aspersions at the agency, they are our customers. But their sales pitch is we use Intuiface so we can deliver what you want faster than the other guys that do exactly what you want, and by the way, if you don't like the work we did, you can take it with you.

If I pay an agency to write custom code and I'll be dissatisfied, I'm starting from zero with another agency. So you have that kind of portability benefit as well. So yes, a lot of the small and midsize, it's budget driven or based on their experience, they have limited budgets. They outsourced it, and they were just satisfied. We do have the occasional large enterprise. They want to have maybe an interactive sales pitch. So the marketing and sales team is driving the creation of the collateral, hiring a developer to make. I could use PowerPoint. Why am I hiring? It's hard to justify this pay developers to code a sales pitch, I can just use PowerPoint. Hold on a second, here's this thing called Intuiface. I can build an interactive sales pitch for my Salesforce. I'm still using the tool. I'm the creative team on the marketing sales team. But I'm creating something that is far more novel and engaging than a PowerPoint.

When the pandemic hit, I speculated and I'm sure many people speculated that this was going to be a difficult time for people who were in the touch and interactive business. What happened instead is that touch actually went up in demand and self service applications became very much a big development initiative. Have you seen that happening in the last couple of years? 

Geoff Bessin: We have, and then ultimately it turns out people are more afraid of other people than touch screens. And our business has rebounded quite well. What we were hoping for, and it seems to be the case is that demand didn't drop. It got stuck behind a wall. There was a dam and the demand was building behind the dam, and you couldn't open the dam cause nobody was out of the house and the waters were rising, people are finally out of the house, and you opened up the floodgates. So we're seeing a really nice rebound that is complimented, not just by the building interest anyway, but the kind of renewed interest in facilitating a non-human interaction, which sounds horrible culturally, in their place of business or what have you.

And again, it's not just touch. Yes, I think probably most people would rather take a little Purell. They're fine with that, but still some people are not, and maybe they can use their mobile phone or scan a QR code. 

But it's also a labor issue. It's harder to hire people and if you can use self service, then you don't have to worry so much about staffing.

Geoff Bessin: There's that whole other thing too which is the cost of staffing and training and enabling and equipping and there's that as well. So for sure, there is certainly a perceived increase in interest, and interactivity of any kind and Intuiface has always been focused on any kind of interactivity, not just touch, and certainly this ability to use my mobile phone to interact with content is an increasingly interesting example, using gestures to interact, using voice to interact. So I'm not touching but I'm still working with technology directly rather than mediating through somebody else. So all of that is going on. 

Last question: you guys have certainly in the last few years had a presence at ISE and at other trade shows, what are you doing in the next few weeks and months? Is Intuiface going to be something that people can walk up and get demos for? 

Geoff Bessin: We will be at ISE, so that'll be our first trade show in however many years we'll be there. So you and I are speaking on April 26th and that's why I say in just a couple of weeks, we will be there with a booth, and we certainly hope we'll see others there. 

We used to actually have our user conference in parallel with ISE, in-person and the pandemic put the kibosh on that. We've done virtual user conferences every year since then, and we like that because you don't have to travel, and so our user conference will be forever more be virtual. We actually have our user conference in three weeks that people are welcome to join. It's free, it'll be online, but we plan to be at ISE. We plan to be a DSE in the US and I think it's now November, and we'll be participating when your colleagues at Avitas are running DSE in parallel and ISE will be participating in that as well. So we're starting. We're treating this as back to normal. It's interesting, Dave working on my travel plans, flying into Spain. But you can’t just get on a plane, you need to jump through certain things because of COVID. But it looks as of today, they're not even requiring masks onsite. That doesn't seem to be a requirement. Just the honor system that you are vaccinated or recovered and we'll see how that goes, but we're excited to be there. We'll have a big booth and about eight of us, we'll have a lot of people there. 

And where can people find Intuiface online? 

Geoff Bessin: Dave, thank you for asking, Intuiface.com. They can also just contact us. You are listening to Jeff Besson. You can just email me bessin@intuiface.com.

The product can be tried for free, Dave. No credit card required. People can poke at it and see if what we're saying is true.

 All right, thank you.

Geoff Bessin: Dave. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Justin Lachovsky, Telecine

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

When I first heard the longtime digital signage solutions company Telecine was getting into subscription content for screens, my first reaction was "Hmmm ... pretty crowded and established market to shoehorn into ..."

Then I got the details, and the logic and applicability were a lot more apparent.

The Montreal company has set up three very customizable sets of pre-packaged feeds that would run in parallel with the products already out there, as opposed to being alternatives.

There's a weather feed that's all about context, like one letting runners know if this a good day to put in some mileage.

There's a banking industry feed that solves a big pain point of developing messaging that is fully compliant with finance regulations.

And there's an interesting air quality feed that marries on-screen content with a small, included device that does real-time air monitoring in buildings.

I spoke with Justin Lachovsky, Telecine's Director of Sales & Marketing, about the new services. We also talk at the start about how the company has adjusted to the sudden loss last year of its much-loved and respected founder, James Fine.

Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS

TRANSCRIPT

Justin, thank you for joining me. Let's get something out of the way right away, because you guys, and the digital signage world in general, had a big shock last year when your founder, James Fein unexpectedly passed away. How have you guys adjusted to that? What have you done and how are things?

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. Definitely a huge shock and something that we're still battling through, of course, something that shocking doesn't go away easily. But we've luckily had the opportunity to really just continue focusing on what we do best and that's helping our clients with producing excellent digital signage content for their networks, and frankly, that's I think something that James really would've wanted us to do.

So we're all really holding onto his memory in that regard of just doing everything that we can to continue pushing forward his vision, obviously, it was a shock. It's a tough loss, but he's really laid the groundwork for our management team to step up now and help just continue pushing forward all the great stuff that we do here at Telecine. 

Yeah. One of the new things I learned is that he set you guys up with a succession plan so the shift wasn't that difficult.

Justin Lachovsky: No, and you know that's something that some folks might not know, but for the last, I'd say six plus years just before I joined Telecine, James had been doing about six months sailing sabbaticals across the world and some management oversight in that regard, but most of the day-to-day operations and client management stuff was handled by our management team so while it's a deep loss and obviously we're still deeply upset by the loss of James, he put this company in a perfect position for us to continue going forward, and I'm very grateful for that.

Yeah. It was fun to hear how he would be in the south Pacific with Chantal sailing and he would get on a sat phone and call in.

Justin Lachovsky: Yes. I can't tell you how many conference calls I've had with James, where he's like, “I'm in the middle of the water. There's no land in sight, but somehow I'm able to jump on a phone and talk to you all the way back in Montreal.” It's very cool to see how far technology has come. 

So we've done a podcast in the past, it was with James, miss him a lot, but for those people who don't know what Telecine is about, could you just give a kind of a quick rundown of what you guys do? What's your focus on? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, for sure. So yeah, Telecine is a 35 year old media and software company. We've been doing digital signage, I think since before digital signage was even really an industry and really our main focus is to help our clients solve their communications challenges and using digital signages, that medium, to help deliver effective communications to their audience, and we do this by leveraging all sorts of cool content pieces, dynamic data sources, and then just internal databases of information that these corporations have that they don't leverage enough to create that all encompassing communications platform. It's not just email, it's not just social. It uses your screens to effectively communicate that message, and we do that with them by helping produce really nice digital signage content. 

You being services based through the years, you don't sell specific pieces of software, you don't manufacture displays or anything else. So services are in your DNA, but I found it interesting that you guys have added on subscription content capabilities. 

I think of a handful of companies like ScreenFeed who sponsors this podcast that do that sort of thing, but you've got into it, but it's not the same sort of thing, right?

Justin Lachovsky: No, and that's right. We work with the ScreenFeed guys all the time and all of the other providers within the digital signage space. We couldn't do what we do without their support and the things that they provide to the industry. But we did notice an opportunity for us to help end users with providing our services from the high end production of digital signage content and finding a way to offer them ready-to-go content without the high production costs that sometimes involve these larger projects. So it's something that actually James coined as “prêt à partir” content, which in English just means ready-to-go content. 

So what have you done? What are you offering? 

Justin Lachovsky: We've launched three new product lines in the last quarter. The three products are Fin Facts, AQ (Air Quality) and Lifestyle. All three of these products are HTML5 based so totally software agnostic, they'll work with any digital signage system, which is really what our main focus was in developing these, and the other thing that's interesting too, is they all have specific use cases, but it's a friendly piece of content. You don't have to worry about anything negative popping up there. They're friendly, that's the term I'll use for them. 

Yeah I found it interesting for the financial one that you guys are providing, that could be quite complicated and labor intensive to figure out what are those messages that are relevant to banks and what are those messages that can be used and your work around was just using the content from the FDIC so that it's already vetted and approved and not going to get anyone into trouble by using it. 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, that's exactly it. As you're aware, we do offer our services quite a bit in the financial space, retail banks, insurance brokerage firms, stuff like that. So I actually had this idea while talking to a client about three years ago. Every time we had to produce a piece of content for them, it had to get run through their compliance department, and had to have some FDIC disclosure on it, and I said, why can't we just take information that the FDIC already puts out there. We know that it's a trusted source and find a way to create a compelling database of banking facts. S

o that's exactly what we did. We went right to FDIC, started sourcing facts right off their website, and we came up with Fin Facts, which is this fun, engaging and informative database of digital signage content which, like I said, works great for banking environments, behind the teller desk, all that area is FDIC approved and not only does it, I think, works just for the banking space, but any sort of corporate office as well. 

By providing these factoids to their staff, the message that they're conveying is, we don't just care about, offering you corporate information and telling you about what the company is doing, but we care about your financial wellbeing. So we've taken this information from the FDIC and said, look, this is topical. It applies to everybody, everybody's got to do banking. So for me, it was just a cool way of saying to, end users in the audience that we don't just care about delivering messages for messaging sake, we care about your financial wellbeing as well.

I'm going to assume the FDIC was quite happy that they have a new distribution channel for this information. 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, absolutely, and that's the really cool thing about the program is, there's three steps to the way that the content is shown. There is the fact page, so we'll tell you the topic of what we're talking about. So for example, like mortgage planning tips. One page with a nice little factoid. The second page gives you a use case, and then the final page actually gives you a QR code where it'll link you back directly to the FDIC website where this information was sourced from, and actually what we're doing with one of our banking clients is we're using that QR code to actually measure audience attention. So it gives us that additional layer aside from just providing information.

We're giving the banks and other clients the opportunity to capture information and say, okay, you know how many people are actually looking at this stuff. 

The capability is there so if somebody snaps the QR code with their phone, it hits a specific target URL, and you get the analytics off that to say that in the past month, X number of people hit this target URL? 

Justin Lachovsky: That is exactly correct. 

So if I'm a financial institution in the United States and I want to use this and I'm using Brand X CMS, it's just a matter of scheduling a URL into a playlist and off you go? 

Justin Lachovsky: That's exactly it. 

And you subscribe to it, right? 

Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. So we're in the process of figuring out the best way to deliver that to clients but right now, if you subscribe to the product, you'll be able to select from a list of topics ranging from youth savings to mortgage tips and general savings, credit cards. You'll be able to select those topics. We'll provide you with a URL that will deliver all that content directly into your CMS. 

Is it tailorable, customizable? So in other words, you've got regional savings and loans in Oklahoma, and they want to use Oklahoma state orange because that's their corporate colors. Can you change the background of that? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, of course, that was really what our intentions were with building it. The way that we've done it is, well, we love to do custom content. So even with our product offering, it was important for us to offer that customizability and flexibility for clients, as opposed to just saying, this is what you get. You have the full capability to changing the colors, fonts as well as any integrations or logos or other branding elements that are needed. 

You and I are both in Canada. So, if you had a Canadian bank that you're working with FDIC stuff stuff, there's probably lots of elements of that crosses borders quite nicely, but you can't brand it as FDIC. So what happens if I'm the Royal Bank and I come to you and say, we want to use this too, but we need Canadian stuff? 

Justin Lachovsky: I'm glad you asked that question because we're actually in the process right now of doing a Canadian version. In Canada, we have the CDIC, which is a governing body similar to the FDIC. So we’re in the process of doing a similar approach with CDIC information to offer that to Canadian clients as well, and as part of that roll out, we're also looking to provide some interesting quizzes using both the FDIC and CDIC information, so you'll have a database of FDIC facts, a database of CDIC facts, and then coming soon, we'll also have a database of quizzes from both databases. 

So that's now available? Have you onboarded some customers already or you're just starting to spread the word? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So it was launched a week ago, but we've already had a client who was beta testing this for us for about six months now and we've just gotten the go ahead to roll this out to all of their branches. 

I'm going to assume that the people who work at banks of varying sizes in the United States, who are charged with feeding the content beast all week and all month long are probably pretty happy that this sort of stuff will become available to them.

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, they are. They're actually quite thrilled. One of the things that we encounter often, especially with financial clients, is they're hyper concerned about safe content, and that was really our approach to this is that FDIC is a safe, trusted resource and it delivers that way for digital signage content. So it's exactly what you said. These bankers are quite happy that they now have a safe resource that they can display in their bank branches without any hesitation. 

Yeah, because if you're running news feeds and those are pretty carefully curated anyways, but I suspect if I asked the ScreenFeed folks or some of the other companies, they would say, you wouldn't believe what upsets people, and I could imagine, like the Oscars thing, where Will Smith  alpped Chris Rock, that's a story that got a lot of attention, but there's probably some bank and some customers that say, “I don't like that there. I'm offended by that. Take it off!”

Justin Lachovsky: Absolutely. I've lived through that experience a couple of times. So I'm happy now that we can offer something where I can deliver it to a client with peace of mind, that that kind of scenario won’t occur. 

How does it work in terms of scale? Do you just subscribe to the service or do you subscribe per media player?

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So the way that it runs, it's a similar model to the way the other folks have run it. It's a per player subscription, obviously, depending on the size of the network and the amount of facts that people are looking for, there is some flexibility there, but it is a typical per player pricing model at the moment.

And because it's HTML, this stuff you're harvesting from FDIC, so I guess in most respects you would say it's canned, it's already done, but because it's HTML, can you update on the fly if things do change? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, we do have a process in place to continually monitor the FDIC website so that if things change, we're able to make those changes to our content, but also, they add more and more articles over time so we're looking to continue growing the database, but also make those amendments if they are needed. 

Okay, so that's the financial one. You said there's a lifestyle one and an air quality one as well, am I right? 

Justin Lachovsky: That's right. So obviously folks have become hyper aware about health and wellness over the last couple of years. I know that I have that for sure. So one of the cool things that we did was develop this set of lifestyle content that really speaks to activities. At this point, seeing the weather forecast in digital signage is fairly common to put it mildly, and everybody's got weather in their pocket these days.

So what I wanted to do, and the rest of the team wanted to do is find a way that we can contextualize that a little bit more. Like you said, it's so easy to get a three-day forecast, but let's say you're going into a bank one day, or you're going into the office one day, and you know you've got something going on this afternoon. You're supposed to go golfing with a couple of teams. What we've done is using the backend for weather information, we've developed a set of indexes that will tell you about activity-based information, whether it's appropriate to do that or not on a given day. As an example, I was talking about golf. So we have a golf index that'll tell you, based on relative humidity, the weather outside. It'll provide you with an index saying, is it a good day to go golfing? Yes/No, and then there's a forecast that's associated with that, but that also comes with a handful of other data points, things about driving difficulty, pollen in the air. You have dry skin today. This one was my favorite, hair frizz. Fairly straight hair, but you never know what humidity can do that kind of thing. So really what our goal there was just to add that additional context to the weather by saying, “It is probably a good day for you to stay inside. Don't go outside” or “Don't go golfing today. Maybe pick tomorrow” 

So it was really important to just help boost people's awareness for those activities as we're going in and out of places more. For the longest time, these outdoor activities were our saving grace and he was the thing we were only able to do for close to two years. So I thought it was a great way to just have a set and forget the piece of content in your signage system that goes with the weather, but also works in just a variety of places. From banking to retail, to corporate, everybody's out and about doing activities to that these days. That was our goal.

I'm assuming apart from the financial facts one, which was pretty straight forward, that this would be much more of a challenge to visualize and for people to look at and immediately get it because you can't just write out, “This isn't the best day to go golf”? 

Justin Lachovsky: That's exactly correct.

So what we did is we used the same approach that most people do for weather. Most people can quickly look at a digital signage screen and get a quick understanding of, okay, this is the location I'm at, this is the high and low for the day, and this is what the forecast looks like for the rest of the week. So we use that same visual approach for this, where you'll have, again, I'll use the golf index. It'll tell you the golf index for Los Angeles, California. It'll tell you what the current weather is, but also on a scale from 1-10 what the quality of golfing would be that day. 

So if you look at the screen, you get the current weather forecast, you'll get a three to five day forecast that'll tell you from 1-10 what the next few days of golfing quality looks like.

So your suggestion would be that this can run in tandem with the more “conventional” weather stuff that might be on a digital signage network? 

Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. One thing I've noticed is a lot of these digital signage screens where the use cases effective for this piece of content is, retail banks, stores, those are places where people are either in the process of doing an activity or going between activities. So for me, it felt like the best possible place to put this information because people are, like I said, either going to do something or on their way back from doing something. So that seems to be the best place to deliver this information to them. 

So could you also handle customer requests? I was just talking to a guy a couple of days ago, who lives in Syracuse, New York, and that's on the wrong side of lake Ontario, so lake effect country, and he was saying they had a pretty good winter for snow. They had four feet less than normal. So I'm wondering in terms of a lake effect or tune up your snowblower warning or something.

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. I think we have 10 indices right now, if I'm correct, but it is something that's continuing to grow as customer requests come up and they're like, I'd to know if it's a good day to mow my lawn. These sorts of things come up all the time, so we'll continue growing that library for sure. 

And then the other one that I believe you're working on or have released, has to do with air quality and is very much sensors-driven? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, air quality is another interesting one. Again, folks have become hyper aware of their health and wellness and that obviously speaks to air quality. So what we've done is we've got an air quality sensor, which is a very small, low profile, little sensor. It looks like one of those air diffusers that you would just buy and have your oils diffusing on your desk, and what it does is it measures a handful of different parameters, things like the indoor temperature, humidity, air pressure, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, ozone, and what it does is it sucks in all this information, and we deliver a dashboard of varying levels of what these parameters are at, and then we've come up with our own measure of taking it all in and delivering an air quality index. 

So it'll tell you, based on the information that I just mentioned, what the level of air quality is in a given space.

So there's hardware associated with it? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, that’s correct, but it's all done through subscription. So you subscribe to the product, you get the air sensor with it and we deliver the dashboard at the same time. So there's no need to purchase any large hardware, it's just the sensor that comes with the subscription of the content.

And is it a smart setup? Let's say the sensor reads that carbon monoxide levels are higher than what is safe, would it trigger something on the screen? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. So that's a custom piece that we work on with clients, obviously on a case to cases basis, but yes, we've done things like when you've got certain levels of high carbon monoxide, we can have a different kind of graphic trigger on screen, just letting people know this. It really came down to wanting to show more transparency on the health of our clients' spaces. We work with a lot of folks in the corporate environment. We've got clients that are corporate real estate landlords. So it spawned out of a request that we got early on in the pandemic. Somebody said, I'd love to know what our air quality is like so our staff feels comfortable working in space during the pandemic, but also in the future. 

When the return to office stuff comes into play, we'd love to continue reporting that, and in fact, we did a project with a client out in California, they're a large real estate client. They were actively going after a well building certification and what that is, it's similar to a lead building certification, but it's focused more around the health of the building itself. One of the very pertinent aspects of that certification was providing information on air quality. So we were able to integrate these air sensors into, I think they've got six floors in their space, and we reported that on the digital signage screens, which allowed them to go and get a platinum well building certification, which is quite unique because there are only one of three buildings in all of California that have this certification right now.

So it becomes almost a leaseholder retention sort of thing, saying, “Hey, here's in visual terms how “well” a building we are”? 

Justin Lachovsky: That’s exactly it.

With those displays, is it the sort of thing that runs in a content schedule or do they tend to allocate one or multiple displays or screens that are just showing that?

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, we've seen both use cases. We've got some customers that just want it mixed in with their regularly scheduled content. But we've got other clients that actually just have a straight reporting dashboard. You walk into their lobby and right on the lobby desk where you would typically go to sign in if you were a guest visitor, it would just tell you right off the bat, this is what the air quality is like, and I think that it gives, like I mentioned, the staff a peace of mind, but also visitors coming to this space because that's certainly coming back. It gives those visitors peace of mind that they're in a healthy space.

So for larger buildings and particularly newer ones, I suspect that they're using Honeywell, or some big giant company that has HVAC systems and monitoring and everything else, and probably has APIs that you could tap into to also get that kind of information. Do you do that or is it just simpler to use this little device?

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah, and that's actually something we've been doing long before the pandemic happened and these air sensors came into play. That's our bread and butter. Telecine, loves to get their hands on APIs and data and figure out a cool creative way to display that. So yes, we definitely integrate with those types of sources for customers.

Okay. So the device that you guys make available is the little hurdle for those companies to say we don't actually have those APIs, or that would be a son of a gun to pull all that together, so just use this? 

Justin Lachovsky: Exactly. It depends on the customer space, obviously new buildings, it's a lot easier to get that stuff available to us than it is abuilding that's been around for 15+ years. Sometimes to avoid the hurdle of waiting six months for a customer to figure out who their HPAC provider is, who owns the contract, where can I get the data from? We wanted to offer this cost-effective sensor and display package that is very easy to just get in front of a customer in a variety of spaces. 

So you've done these three services, is that it? Or is there other stuff on the horizon that you don't have to give me the details, but are you done?

Justin Lachovsky: We're never done. There's always something on the horizon. We've got a couple of really interesting projects coming up. I can't share those with you yet but as we continue to firm up those details, I look forward to jumping back on a podcast with you and sharing them. 

So we're all hopefully coming out of a crazy two and a quarter year, how have things gone now, setting aside the shock of losing James? 

Justin Lachovsky: Yeah. Things have gone really well. One thing that Telecine does really great is client retention. A lot of our clients are getting close to a decade of working with us. It's really important for us to just focus on the customer experience and that's what I think we've done really well in the last couple of years, as we've all experienced challenges with the pandemics our clients have as well.  So our focus really has just been helping them in any way possible, and focusing on that communications message through digital. 

All right. So if people who are listening to this want to find out more, how do they find you and how do they find this particular set of products? 

Justin Lachovsky: We've got a product website for all of them. You can find them under our main website, telecine.com. If you have any questions I'm always available, you can just reach me at justin@telecine.com and we've got those product websites just listed on our main website. You'll be able to find all the information. 

All right, Justin. Great to catch up with you. 

Justin Lachovsky: You as well, Dave, thanks so much.