Adrian J Cotterill, Editor-in-Chief
The Digital Screenmedia Association (DSA) claims to be the voice of the digital signage industry, we quote from their web site “The purpose of the Digital Screenmedia Association (DSA) is to advance the growth and excellence of the global digital signage, interactive kiosk and mobile community through advocacy, education and networking.
The Digital Signage Federation also claims to be the voice of the digital signage industry, we quote from their web site “Supporting & promoting the common business interests of the world-wide digital signage industry, the interactive technologies industry, and the digital out-of-home network industry”
As one well respected industry analyst told us at #dse2012 last week “If we have two associations purporting to represent the industry there is, by definition, no SINGLE VOICE for the digital signage industry!”
Whilst we have reservations about the love-in, of many of the DSF’s board with certain consulting individuals (quite simply that needs to be stopped), in our humble opinion the DSF seems to be doing much the better job between the two. Here’s our quick take…
- What should we make of the DSA allegedly still spending USD 300,000 a year with Networld Alliance for the services of David Drain? (and one hopes, administration back-up or that is one hell of a salary!)
- How many people seriously care about kiosks?
- The DSA will never be the association of record for mobile so why try?
- Surely the DSA must rue the day when the, then leadership of the DSA (Stuart Armstrong and Charles Ansley) “screwed the pooch”, got greedy and tried to pull one over on Angelo Varrone (ExpoNation owner of DSE) several years ago? That of course led to the ultimate formation of the DSF!
- The DSA didn’t choose Customer Engagement Technology World (CETW) as their official trade show partner they simply got stuck with it (see point 4 above)
The DSA needs to figure out if it WANTS to be, what it wants to be, what its purpose is and perhaps where it wants to go (if anywhere).
Personally I think that they should leave digital signage well alone – much like KioskCom did when it was last good (we have fond memories of visiting KioskCom at the Mandalay Bay resort in Lost Wages at the same time as NAB back in 2010).
The DSA vs DSF is akin to a corporate media backed entity vs an independent entity, an unfocused entity vs a focused entity,
There is so much wasted energy and wasted potential by having two associations / federations and whilst the DSF does need to fix a few things, we believe that it is finally executing on a strategy and offering real value to its members and the industry as a whole.
March 16th, 2012 at 16:15 @719
Your journalism (ha ha) is a joke. You guys and your buddies at DSE and DSF are clowns.
I can’t believe i wasted my time reading your garbage.