Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
Many people told us that a ‘Digital Signage Week’ needed its own dedicated event, focussing on the technology and its uses. We listened, we acted and so we have it – the first ever GLOBAL DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONFERENCE takes place Thursday May 11, 2017 as part of London Digital Signage Week (May 8-12, 2017) and it’s already looking like being a truly thrilling affair.
We’d like to thank BroadSign, NEC Display Solutions and Scala for stepping up to the mark and sponsoring this inaugural event, as well as thanking the over-arching sponsors of London Digital Signage Week; Digital Signage Expo (itself, the world’s largest and longest running conference and trade show exclusively dedicated to showcasing innovative digital display and interactive technology solutions for customer and employee communications), NEC Display Solutions, the Retail Digital Signage Expo (an event took place earlier this week on Monday and Tuesday) and Scala.
We always like to remind people, especially the out of home folks, that without Digital Signage there would be no Digital Out of Home but without this technology there wouldn’t be as much innovation in a number of industry verticals.
We’ve assembled, what we think is one of our best speaker line ups ever, and in doing so, have tried to cover the software side of things, AV and IT, architecture and design, retail, employee communications, thrown in a little bit about the future of hardware appliances and content, as well as the obligatory digital out of home.
Unlike many other conference organisers, we are not in the events business, we are in the business of INSPIRING PEOPLE and we think that if you look at the list of prestigious speakers we have, peruse the presentation titles and read through the short abstracts that try to do the speaker and subject justice, we think you will agree that this will be one of our best events ever: –
08.45 REGISTRATION & BREAKFAST
09.30 Welcome | Adrian J Cotterill
09.45 Music Led Me to Digital Signage, Then It All Went Wrong | James Abdool | Head of Digital Experience | Arcadis
James Abdool ‘discovered’ the digital signage industry whilst building a very successful business streaming music into the retail, hospitality and leisure sectors. After selling the company he immediately made the mistake of focussing too much on ‘digital signage’ and not enough on the problems it can solve – so here’s what he did next!
10:15 Mobile Devices, Integrated Systems, and the Spaces Between | Rob Badenoch | Associate Principal | TAD Associates
This is a tour through the world of technology consulting, where the devices in our pockets increasingly impact the bricks-and-mortar decisions of modern building infrastructure and the surrounding media landscape. The worlds of consumer electronics, architecture, and IT continue to collide, producing opportunities and pitfalls alike. This will be a discussion of technology design for the modern workplace, where our users bring expectations from the consumer electronics and entertainment industries, rather than the office. This has led us to design immersive media, augmented reality, and maker spaces into the enterprise work environment, while extending our expertise to include content and experience design. What does this all mean for the digital signage industry?
11:00 COFFEE
11.30 A Fireside Chat with Eben Upton CBE | Founder | Raspberry Pi Foundation
Eben Upton CBE is one of the founders, and a former trustee of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, and now CEO of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd., the wholly owned subsidiary which runs the engineering and trading activities of the Foundation. He’s the man responsible for the overall software and hardware architecture of the Raspberry Pi device.
There has been intense interest in the use of the Raspberry Pi for digital signage for several years but all of the excitement around it reached a crescendo late last year when NEC Display Solutions revealed that it had spent the previous 18 months working on a collaboration based on the latter’s OPEN MODULAR INTELLIGENCE or OMI, being built into a number of their displays.
This fireside chat, moderated by DailyDOOH’s Editor in Chief Adrian Cotterill, will dive into more detail on the collaboration (which clearly showed NEC’s confidence with the Raspberry Pi’s ability to provide a platform that can be used in a variety of environments) and what it might mean for the digital signage industry.
12:00 Pride and Prejudice | Giovanni Flore | Digital Signage Project Management | Benetton
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a retailer in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of digital signage. Is that true? Fashion brand Benetton has continually been at the forefront of retail innovation – both with and without technology. Benetton’s Retail Digital Signage Project Manager, Giovanni Flore will explain how digital signage has played its part in the growth of the brand. Giovanni Flore has delivered incredible retail experiences with an experimental, and often, a non-commercial focussed process and during his presentation he will take a look at some of the best and worst practises he has witnessed and will also warn the audience about the use of technology for technology’s sake.
12:30 What Have We Learnt In Thirty Years of Digital Signage? | Peter Cherna | Chief Product Officer | Scala
Scala started life in 1987 whilst Peter Cherna was still a student at McGill University. After graduating, he spent almost five years at Commodore Business Machines before joining Scala in 1993 as a software engineer. If anyone can be best described as a ‘digital signage pioneer’, it’s Peter. With a lifetime of roles as VP Engineering, Senior VP of Technology, CTO and currently Chief Product Officer he knows the Scala platform and the wider digital signage industry inside out.
There is no-one better suited to talk about the prehistory of digital signage, explore the promise of technology encountered along the way (both fulfilled and otherwise) and share insights as to what experience has taught us about success in the digital signage industry.
13.00 LUNCH
14:00 Communicate, Collaborate, Utilise (But Guess What? It’s Not Digital Signage) | Sarah Joyce | Managing Director | Electrosonic and Paul Louden | Sales Director | Electrosonic in conversation with Adrian J Cotterill
Electrosonic, an international audio-visual company that provides systems integration, technical design, project management and support of AV products and systems, has always been focused on providing the best collaboration tools and services to help businesses improve communication, increase productivity and lower operational costs.
They build an extraordinary amount of innovative environments using business critical technology and create tailored, state-of-the-art solutions for a wide range of markets and applications including museums, theme parks, video conferencing, meeting rooms, control rooms and video walls.
Rarely though do they use the term digital signage with their customers and DailyDOOH’s Editor in Chief Adrian Cotterill aims to find out why.
14:45 Collaboration in the Context of OOH | Gina Kuck | Manager of Commercial Creative Services | Daktronics
Collaboration is far from a new idea, but the way it’s leveraged in multiple digital signage verticals has evolved to just the right state that it’s worth revisiting. An acknowledged LED content expert, Gina Kuck manages Commercial Creative Services for Daktroncis and she’s very focused on providing content and solutions for LED display optimisation. Gina believes that all of the verticals can and should learn from the follies and triumphs of each other.
15.15 TEA/COFFEE
15:45 The Future for Digital Signage – The View From The Outside In | Josko Grljevic | Chief Technology Officer | Exterion Media
Josko Grljevic is new to the world of digital signage but with a solid background at Tesco.com, Trainline and Barclays, not to the world of technology. As Exterion Media’s new CTO, he has been tasked with leading the UK media owner’s transition into a digital media company – all powered by data!
The OOH industry is ready for change and Exterion’s Hello London partnership is an example of this innovation, but we are told, that there is much more to come. Josko’s view on our digital signage industry is a unique one, he believes that the future for digital signage is bright BUT he will tell us what types of change that we should expect and how we can all accelerate transiion in the right direction.
16:15 Anything Is Possible. How To Create Retail Theatre And Sell Ads With Digital Signage | Guy Cheston | Media Sales Director | Harrods
Guy Cheston is Media Sales Director for Britain’s best-loved department store. There are few places in the world that, once visited, are never forgotten – Harrods is certainly one of them and it has become a must-visit for anyone in London. Guy is probably the world’s foremost authority in retail related media sales and one of the best practitioners of retail digital signage (so good in fact, that you won’t notice the technology in the store, just the ‘retail theatre’). Guy will explain how it all started, the lessons he’s learnt on the way, how his team works, why he brought in-house their own magazine and technology people and how he seamlessly sells media campaigns and more!
17.00 Closing Remarks | Adrian J Cotterill | Editor-in-Chief | DailyDOOH
17:15 Close
Registration is now open and can be found here.
London Digital Signage Week takes place May 8-12, 2017 and as with its counterpart in New York, the week is for anyone involved with digital signage and interested in retail, employee communications, smart cities, digital out of home and of course digital signage!
Follow DailyDOOH