“I’ve Been Conned” Digital Signage Zone
Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
We think the acronym for IBC, especially with regard the IBC Digital Signage Zone in Amsterdam these last few days is wrong, it’s obviously not the International Broadcast Convention it’s actually “I’ve Been Conn’ed” because you would have been if you didn’t listen to us and booked space as an exhibitor in the so-called DIgital SIgnage Zone.
Overall IBC 2009 was once again a very poor event, traffic was not good, the show overall has definitely lost its focus and it’s not just the pointless addition of a Digital Signage Zone that helps drag the whole event down.
The so-called digital signage zone was empty pretty much most of the time (we have supplied the BEST pictures we took above) and consisted of about 10 vendors who should be demanding their money back: –
- Panasonic
- Bell Micro
- Stinova
- 1080dots Digital Signage
- MultiTouch Ltd
- Zero creative
- Brightsign
- Future Software
- AOpen
- Spinetix
We are not alone in thinking the event was a disaster, Ronni Guggenheim, CEO Minicom Digital Signage Division, talking to the guys at Invidis said “Dass jeder Show- und Event-Veranstalter versucht auf den Zug aufzuspringen, führt zu einer Verwässerung der Thematik. Die Besucher werden bei dieser Art von Veranstaltung mit mehr oder weniger relevanten Informationen abgespeist.“ – basically show and event organisers have been jumping on the digital signage bandwagon with little or no thought AND writing on their own Minicom blog told the organisers, “IBC do it right or leave it“.
One of the other problems with the IBC event as a whole (not just the DS Zone) is that the show is dominated by big broadcast related vendors and what little customers there are in attendance, do not seem to want to wander away from the main aisles of the show.
IBC needs a major re-think for next year and it needs to focus on what it used to be good at.
September 16th, 2009 at 03:36 @192
Not a surprise really. This is a broadcast show, not a signage show. The overlap is in the media prep — and only lightly so. There ia long history of “other stuff” going on around broadcast shows as newer industries strive to find a home. Agree that IBC is not it for signage…
September 16th, 2009 at 13:49 @617
Pleased we gave it a wide berth as I visited last year and was far from impressed with the DS zone. From reports of this year, it has not moved forward and if anything was worse.
There are far better ways of spending thousands of £$€ to generate quantifiable business opportunities, so trade shows/events have to be something special to attract interest from vendors.
Unless a show is truely focused on Digital Signage/DOOH, I for one will continue to keep my hand in my pocket.