This is a good hire for Scala, something of course we announced late yesterday - maybe, just maybe we forced their hand with the press release?

Anyway here is the news officially…

London, UK, January 7, 2009 – Scala, the leading provider of end-to-end solutions for the digital signage and advertising management markets, today announced the appointment of Damon Crowhurst to the role of Director, Business Development & Services, EMEA.

“We welcome Damon Crowhurst to our team,” states Oscar Elizaga, Scala Vice President, EMEA. “Damon has a comprehensive background in digital signage software technology and services, with significant experience in market development, project structuring, management and delivery.”

Mr. Crowhurst’s successful career includes recognized companies such as AMX, where he held the Market Development Director position for the Inspired Signage product; as well as the UK Sales Director position for Interceptor, Inc. In addition, Mr. Crowhurst was an original member of the Interactive Advertising team responsible for the development of the Interactive Advertising proposition for the NTL Cable TV product offering (now Virgin Media). His responsibilities included the technical specification of the proposition, and its introduction and delivery to the wider advertising market. Additional roles in his time at NTL included management of the Ad Sales agency (24/7) for all ad sales on the ntlworld.com portal and Strategic Partner Manager for cross platform content partners such as British Airways, Thomas Cook and others.

And so the long running saga of a screen hardware company owning a digital signage software provider and knowing what to do with it comes to an end - yesterday Planar Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:PLNR) disposed of the last pieces of CoolSign that it had not sold to Bally Technologies back in November 2007

And the new owner of this piece of business? A recently registered, unknown business called CS Software Holdings LLC. - an LLC registered in Delaware (a normal corporate haven in the US) but interestingly only setup on 15th December 2007.

CoolSign was sold for cash but further terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

As usual we get people’s career moves to you before anyone else and (usually) before they are official or of course announced!!! First off, Damon Crowhurst, ex-AMX / Inspired Signage is set to join Scala in some European role AND secondly BroadSign promised two new employees to cover Europe in January 2009 AND (fair play) two new faces they have delivered (let’s hope that this time around Brian Dusho and friends got to tell Neo Advertising before we did and that the two new incumbents did some research and know what they have let themselves in for).

We believe that Maarten Dollevoet and Paul Farrow are now both officially on board - Maarten becomes EMEA Business Development Manager and Paul becomes Sales Director, Europe.

Maarten was previously Sales Manager for the UK and Benelux at AOpen Computer and Paul worked as an independent consultant for a short while after leaving ViewSonic where he was European Business Development Manager for a couple of years.

“Why, boy, they’re playing our song
Outside where no-one can hear
Why, boy, they’re playing our song
At the start of my new career”

Still a work in progress and horrible it looks as well BUT here’s aka.tv and The Screen’s attempt at an online UK resource for digital out of home networks - see http://www.footfall.tv/

This is nothing but a very thinly disguised version of the DOOHAN directory that we put together a few years ago - it’s horribly out of date mind you - the DSN / Zavvi network went a few days ago when Zavvi went into administration but folks as well like Brightspace Media haven’t done anything for ages and the supplied PDF does nothing for the likes of CBS Outdoor (who don’t even feature!!!), Clear Channel, JC Decaux and Titan.

Welcome to FootFall_Directories directory of Out of Home Digital Media Advertising Networks.

The screen-media advertising sales market is growing steadily as new networks are announced on a regular basis. Whilst many networks handle their own media sales a number of specialist media sales agencies have emerged to represent network owners and operators.

This directory provides details of the various screen-media networks hosting third party paid advertising in the UK together with both the network owner’s contact details and their media sales agents.

As with any directory, information can change quickly and users are advised to contact relevant parties directly for the latest information – the Screen is not able to and does not warrant the accuracy of the information provided.

Manchester Central, the International conference and exhibition centre (formerly the G Mex Centre) has deployed these six optical front projection Supernova screens - spans something like nine metres to display animated audio visual branding, advertising and promotional content above its main reception.

Nikk Smith, Technical Director at Pixel Inspiration who deployed the system told us “The integrated Supernova screens create a high-impact display area on which full animated audio visual content can be broadcast, so that Manchester Central can easily control what content is displayed and when.”

The installation of course enables Manchester Central to offer advertisers and exhibitors high-impact flexible branding packages in order to grab the attention of thousands of visitors and delegates as they enter the conference centre.

Pixel selected Scala’s InfoChannel software suite to streamline the management and broadcast of content and provide flexible, high performance playback across the multi-region, high resolution displays.

Billed as “The World’s First Dedicated Global Awards for a new era of media strategy, innovation and implementation”, the Festival Of Media Awards (the event began as The Venice Festival of Media) takes place in Valencia, Spain 19th to 21st April.

There are a number of award categories that we expect you will be interested in - including but not limited to the ‘Out of Home Media Owner of the Year‘.

This is a global Awards ceremony – open to campaigns (in 2008) that have run in single markets, as well as international and pan-regional work.

There are 29 categories available to enter (19 Campaign Categories and 10 Media Vendor Categories) with a further six awards at the discretion of the judges.

The timeline for the whole process is as follows (note that the entry site is open first thing tomorrow)…

• 7 January 2009 - Entry site opens
• 7 February 2009 - Deadline for entries
• 2 & 3 March 2009 - Shortlist judging
• 5 March 2009 - Shortlist published
• 3 April 2009 - Reels required
• 10 & 17 April 2009 - “The People’s Award” Consumer voting
• 18 & 19 April 2009 - Final judging

All award winnners will be announced at the Festival of Media on the 20th and 21st April. Jury awards and “The People’s Choice” will be announced at the Festival of Media Gala Dinner on the 21st April.

The Entry information pack supplied by C Squared Events Ltd. who are putting all of this together is one of the best award documents we have seen for a long, long time and it’s well worth a read.

C Squared is proud to launch a global benchmarking project that genuinely captures the radical changes happening in the communications industry and is grateful to the many agency CEOs and global clients that have encouraged it to use the platform of the Festival of Media, in its new home of Valencia, to be the place to launch this global celebration.

We reported rumours yesterday and the Scala press release came out today confirming their new presence in Düsseldorf, Germany

Scala Extends its Global Footprint to the Germanic Digital Signage Market

Düsseldorf, Germany January 6, 2009 – Scala, the leading provider of end-to-end solutions for the digital signage and advertising management markets, today announced its new Germany office has been established in the prestigious Prinzenpark in Düsseldorf, Germany, dedicated to servicing the Germanic region (Germany, Austria & Switzerland), widely recognized as one of the strongest growth markets for digital signage in Europe.

Heading up the office will be Scala veteran Helge Haarig, who has extensive strategic account management experience and who has been responsible for both the Germanic and BeNeLux regions at Scala for nearly a decade. Mr. Haarig is recognized for his experience with over 300 digital signage projects and is uniquely qualified to expand Scala’s presence in the Germanic market. Mr. Haarig was recently elected Deputy Chairman of the POPAI D-A-CH Digital Signage Workgroup for 2009.

The Scala Germanic office will serve end-users and Scala Partners with German speaking sales and technical support personnel. This new venture will strengthen Scala’s already strong market position in the high-growth EMEA digital signage marketplace.

“The Germanic region is one of our strategic growth markets in 2009 and beyond,” says Oscar Elizaga, Vice President of EMEA. “Having a dedicated sales and technical team in Germany is fully justified in order to ensure Scala’s continued leadership in the region, and to better serving our clients and partners.”

Whilst a couple of industry execs have told us they will be walking the floor at Consumer Electronics Show this week, no one else in the industry apart from GestureTek has told us thay will be present.

GestureTek Inc., the pioneer and world leader in gesture control interfaces for interactive displays and electronic devices, today announced that the company will demonstrate its pioneering, multi-patented 3D tracking and control innovations at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) at the Las Vegas Convention Center from January 8th to 11th. GestureTek’s exhibit will be located in Central Hall, Booth #15523.

GestureTek’s gesture recognition technology enables a user to control a television, set top box, display screen or any camera-enabled consumer electronic device by using simple hand motions instead of a remote control, keyboard or other touch-based interface. The system tracks full-body movement and subtle gestures in complete 3D space, translating those movements into specific computer commands.

The system can be programmed to recognize virtually any pose or gesture, including hand waves, pointing or any combination of recognizable motions. For example, a hand wave can turn on a television set or activate a multi-media presentation. Circular hand movements can adjust volume, and hand swiping motions can control menu selections. Other applications include full body avatar control, two-handed and multi-touch control and hand tracking for 360º navigation control (replacing a joystick).

“What makes GestureTek’s depth based tracking solution so impressive is its real time modeling and identification of the user. The software isolates the person interacting with the system, regardless of how many people are moving around in the environment,” said GestureTek’s Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Francis MacDougall. “Whether it’s a living room, boardroom or busy mall, the system’s control and responsiveness remains unaffected by light or background movement.”

Lifelike 3D Virtual Reality Experiences

Using depth sensing cameras to measure ongoing changes in positioning and distance between the various parts of a user’s image and other elements in the scene, GestureTek’s depth sensing system repeatedly and reliably tracks a user’s unique movements. The system can even capture people’s real-time full-body video image or their full-body 3D avatar onscreen, enabling users to see themselves as they interact dynamically with computer-generated characters, objects and icons in a three-dimensional virtual world.

Along with applications for exciting 3D and 2D interactive experiences on everything from personal computers to game consoles, mobile devices, digital signs and digital picture frames, GestureTek has already deployed successful commercial 3D tracking solutions in interactive displays worldwide. At the Beijing Olympics, for example, GestureTek’s hand tracking technology powered a spectacular interactive flight simulation attraction that allowed individuals to explore the province of British Columbia in a virtual airplane that was controlled by tilting and moving their hand.

“GestureTek is leading the way to a fully gestural touch-free user interface for all camera-enabled consumer devices,” says Bill Leckonby, CEO of GestureTek. “Our award-winning, intuitive and fun gesture control technology is already used in interactive game systems, digital signage networks and millions of mobile phones worldwide.”

“GestureTek has created many other exciting applications with our gesture recognition technology, including motion controlled mobile games, web browsing, text messaging, interactive exercise programs for physical therapy and interactive storefront windows,” says MacDougall.

CES participants are invited to visit GestureTek’s exhibit in Central Hall, Booth #15523, where the company will showcase its latest innovations in gesture control interfaces for mobile phones, PCs, interactive multi-touch tabletops and other consumer devices. “Visitors will be treated to eye-popping demonstrations of the many ways in which motion control interfaces are being used by consumers and business,” says MacDougall.

A lot of vendors are sniffing around BroadSign’s existing customer base and you don’t necessarily have to be in Canada to do that but maybe, just maybe it helps if you have a Canadian operation (who knows?).

Interesting then that our spiders and crawlers should have picked up a signagelive web site with a Canadian top level domain; take a look at http://signagelive.ca/ca/

It’s obviously not a production site yet and oh! how we wish people would realise that MS IE is not the only browser in the world and would take more notice of web standards etc etc. but STILL we think the site being there gives the world some notice of signagelive’s intentions!!

Yearly habits like this are particularly heart warming - following on from Jonathan Southcombe’s open letter to us in 2008, here’s another one for 2009…

Dear Adrian

This time last year we gave your excellent blog an update on the progress of abc media group in 2007. I thought it might be useful to do the same for 2008.

We have continued to progress and grow and have seen a clear shift in credibility for retail and DOOH media. We think it’s a very encouraging picture, particularly in comparison to the general media outlook.

abc media sales revenue grew by 30% in 2008, making it another record year. This was achieved consistently throughout the year, including the final quarter. The measurability of retail media seems to be helping it to buck the media trend.

We managed to win or re-new contracts with The Co-operative Group, Spar, WHSmith and Martin McColl. We are very confident of extending the number of retail clients both in the UK and internationally in 2009. We booked all of the major FMCG brands and encouragingly increased media agency bookings by 75%. Digital retail media is now on the media agency agenda. We also booked a record number of retail media campaigns, up 25% on 2007.

Where possible we continue to use EPOS sales and research data to analyse campaigns and demand for this information has increased three-fold. We are working with commercial partners to expand this further.

In July we launched The new Co-operative Media Centre (CMC) – an on-line retail media portal to research, plan and book retail media within all the Co-operative Divisions. Over 120 brands and agencies attended the launches in London and Manchester. We believe we have created the UK’s leading retail media centre. We now have over 500 regular users and bookings are significantly up on 2007. As you recently reported, The Co-operative have the largest digital network in Europe.

We followed CMC up by launching Europe’s first ever multi-retailer retail media on-line planning site – PlanMyMedia.com. 70 brands, agencies and retailers attended our launch at The Charlotte Street Hotel in October. It makes researching, planning and booking retail media just as easy as other established media channels. It was a major investment and a big step in retail media credibility.

In November we launched a new retail media content agency – Alphabet London. We were already creating digital and POS content for major brands such as PepsiCo, Unilever and Coca-Cola and we will be expanding this in 2009. The creative quality of retail media and digital content has been inconsistent but will improve quickly and we intend to be at the forefront based on our unique insight into what actually delivers results. Over Christmas Alphabet London even created political adverts for ‘The Independent’.

We have tried to spread the retail and digital media message and have spoken at various POPAI events, ‘Interactive Marketing’ and at ‘IGD category management’. We will also be speaking at the Retail Business Show and the Amsterdam DOOH conference in the coming weeks.

Everyone involved in retail and DOOH media seems to be working hard to give credibility and coverage to these growing channels and we will continue to support this objective. By working together, we believe that in 2009 retail media can become a truly established media channel that delivers results.

All of us at abc media group are looking forward to 2009. We know budgets will be tight and marketers cautious but we remain confident that a focus on results will give us another record year!

Wishing you and all your subscribers a prosperous New Year.

Yours faithfully,

Jonathan Southcombe

Chief Executive

See http://www.abc-media.co.uk/