• Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

  • By: Sixteen:Nine
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Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark

By: Sixteen:Nine
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  • Summary

  • This digital signage podcast is the audio extension of Sixteen:Nine, an online publication that's been documenting the growth and filtering the BS of the digital signage industry since 2006.
    Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.
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Episodes
  • Jonathan Labbee, SACO Technologies

    Jonathan Labbee, SACO Technologies
    Apr 24 2024
    The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When I first spoke with Jonathan Labbee about the grand-scale media facades and displays being produced by SACO Technologies, the Sphere in Las Vegas was just yet another over-the-top thing rising up from the desert sands. Two years on, and a few months after the giant LED ball was first switched on, the Sphere is probably the most discussed and photographed digital display on the planet. So I was very happy that Labbee was willing to carve out some time to talk about some of the technical details behind the display side of that project, and more broadly what it has meant for the Montreal company, and for the concept of buildings as media facades and visual attractions. In this podcast, we get into some of the technical challenges and innovations associated with putting together both the attention-getting outside exosphere of the building, but also the mind-wobbling 9mm pitch curved display inside. We also talk about the larger business, and the opportunities and challenges of turning big structures into experiential digital displays. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Jon, thanks for joining me. It's been a couple of years, but a lot has gone on with your company, and obviously, the big thing is its involvement in the Las Vegas Sphere. I know we can't spend all of our time talking about that, nor do I want to, but I would imagine your company's work on that has kind of rocked the industry Jonathan Labbee: It has, and thanks for having me back, Dave. The sphere has been an incredible journey for us. I think two years ago when we last spoke, we were just about to start on our part of the construction, and we successfully delivered that project, which is, I think there were a lot of people and projects that were in the waiting to see if something of this magnitude could be pulled off successfully and now that it has, it has awoken a new level of giant projects around the world. I'm gonna say mostly in the Middle East at this moment in time. Why is that? Is it just about money, or is it also about things like zoning controls and available space? Jonathan Labbee: Well, I mean, obviously, money and budget are always a concern, but I think when you get past the level of installing a giant television on the side of a building and where the building itself is a media medium, but the infrastructure to support that is so significant in your construction budget, I think this is one of the key aspects for these developers and these architects to understand if it could successfully be done. Now from a zoning perspective, I think that a project like the Sphere is quite revealing in the sense of how much control you have over brightness and the type of and quality of the content and secures the knowledge that a responsible owner can display tasteful content in the environment that it's designed to be in. I know that there was a proposal to do a similar project in the east end of London and that doesn't seem to be going ahead, at least at the moment, and it struck me as one of the barriers to it was simply that you're putting up a very bright object within reasonably close proximity to residential and that's a challenge. Jonathan Labbee: Yeah, it is. I'm not a politician by any means, but I do think there's some politics there and also maybe some fear of new technology that could potentially be disruptive if used irresponsibly. Normally, people who spend this amount of money on a venue tend to have a very secure plan to fit within their environment. So what was done for the Sphere was custom. Could you relate what was done on the outside and then on the inside? The inside is particularly interesting to me because your company's pedigree is not so much on fine-pitch large displays other than for touring acts, which are not as fine a pitch. Jonathan Labbee: Well, yeah, so it's actually pretty interesting that this seems to be our persona; the reality is that most of our development is done on fine-pitch products. We just happen to have been doing quite a bit of low-res or wide-pitch products because we've been doing so many iconic buildings, it seems to be what we're known for. But if you take, for example, a lot of the touring acts or some of the video screens that we did for Orlando airport, for example, those are 2 millimeters pixel pitch and all these types of things. So if we go back to the Sphere, the exterior of the sphere, referred to as the exosphere, is made up of these pucks, I would say, that have 48 LEDs, and each one of these pucks is a pixel that is controllable for the client, and that's what gives you that beautiful imagery on the building, and it also has an aesthetic that the architects wanted and the client wanted, where it allows you to see through and see the base building through the exosphere. So, the performance criteria for the exterior was one thing, whereas the performance criteria...
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    38 mins
  • IV Dickson, SageNet

    IV Dickson, SageNet
    Apr 17 2024
    The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When I first spoke with industry lifer IV Dickson about his move from software to the managed services firm SageNet, the company was still in the relatively early days of getting itself organized to chase and then service digital signage opportunities. Five years on, digital in environments like chain retail and QSR are a core, what he calls consequential, part of the Oklahoma company's overall business. SageNet's role has evolved from being an IT-centric managed services company that was adding digital signage to its deployment and network management capabilities, to having a main service line called SageView. It's a full-meal-deal suite of solutions and services that run from the ideation stage all the way through deployment and ongoing management. These kinds of turnkey, all-in solutions are relatively common now in the marketplace, but the SageNet twist is its deep roots, experience and acumen in the hard-core aspects of networking design, connectivity and cybersecurity. Dickson started out at SageNet as the digital signage guy, but as business has grown, and with it the staffing and skillsets associated with that work, he now has a role as SageNet's Chief Innovation Officer - looking more broadly at all the technologies that have a role in or influence customer projects. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT IV Dickson, how are you doing, sir? IV Dickson: I'm doing well. Thank you, Dave. How are you this morning? I am good. We haven't chatted in a while. We did a podcast back in 2019, so I would say it's time for an update. IV Dickson: We did. A lot has happened in five years, if nothing else, a pandemic, but also just a lot has happened in the SageNet, and SageView world for us. Yes. The last time I saw you, we were walking up a very long hill to the Barcelona Football stadium, and you're probably keeping a wary eye on me to make sure I didn't have a heart attack. IV Dickson: Yeah, I don't know. It might have been mutual there, Dave, but I do know, though it was worth the walk. I will say that it was worth the walk. Every little bit of it. So over those five years, quite a bit has changed with your company. I would say the big thing from my perspective is five years ago, SageNet was starting to get heavy into digital signage, but it was one of the things that a larger company did. When I look at the website now, I kind of see SageNet leading in certain respects with what it does in terms of digital experience and digital signage in general. Is that a fair assessment? IV Dickson: It is a fair assessment. And, by the way, my marketing team will be very glad to hear that because I think that's a position that we want to take and have taken. But we've also positioned ourselves in the market to be that, but also executed in the market to be that, and I think if I think about five years ago, one of the things I think I probably even said it five years ago in, in this podcast was we're a managed service provider in an integrator world. That really hasn't changed in many respects. There are still great integrators out there. However, what really has changed for us is the way people are now coming and looking at digital experience, digital engagement, and pure digital signage, right? Call it passive or a kind of consumable digital signage. It's become more important today than ever to manage that in an ongoing fashion, and management is not just content. It's everything. Is the screen on? Is the player running? If it's broken, or when it's broken, how are you getting it fixed? And that's a big piece of the puzzle, and over five years, we've grown a lot. I mean, we've grown exponentially to be honest in this area. We were a few customers with a few thousand devices out in the world, and now we're north of a hundred thousand devices that are under management in that digital experience realm. So, as a managed services company as a whole, what do digital signage and digital signage-sih activities represent for the company? I don't need an exact percentage, but I'm curious. IV Dickson: That's a great question because it's something that actually was a driver for me in my previous role at SageNet as the VP of digital signage and digital experience: to make it a consequential piece of our business. And so at this point in time, whereas five years ago, it was just a mosquito kind of on the sideline of our portfolio. It is now one of the pillars of our organization. So if you look at our organization, historically, we still track the traditional managed services of circuitry and router switch firewalls. However, now, the idea of IOT and IOT management, digital experience, and digital signage management kind of lined up in three pillars for us. I have heard a few times now that one of the things that's really changed in the last five years or so again is how, historically, the first meetings that you ...
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    39 mins
  • Nick Johnson, NowSignage

    Nick Johnson, NowSignage
    Apr 10 2024
    The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When I asked an industry friend, whose opinions I respect and trust quite a bit, what CMS software he'd looked at and been impressed by, he rattled off a few companies I was expecting to hear about, but also mentioned the platform developed and marketed by a smallish UK company called NowSignage. He'd seen a lot of different options, but these guys he said, had something that was very modern and nimble. I finally got my act together and scheduled a chat with founder Nick Johnson. Now's roots are in pushing social media messaging to big screens at live events - like concerts and big games. Requests started evolving, both in terms of what could be done with screens and how long they'd be used - which led in part to him concluding the future business was in permanent installations and revenue that was recurring and predictable, versus periodic. Now markets its product as being affordable and not focused on a particular market segment, like QSR, workplace or whatever. That generalist approach tends to worry me, because buyer decisions tend to get focused on price, as in who costs the least. But in my chat with Johnson, he explains that their market focus is on what he calls multi-screen management - networks with a lot of locations and a lot of screens. Most companies would also say they want that and do that, but as Johnson explains in our chat, that's easy to talk about, but much harder to do well. I also had to ask about the Frankenstein'd Rolls-Royce that was the eye candy for the NowSignage stand at ISE in Barcelona. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Nick, thank you for joining me. I know NowSignage reasonably well. I suspect a lot of other people do as well, but could you maybe just give me a rundown on the background of the company, what it is you do, what's distinct, that sort of thing? Nick Johnson: Yeah, sure. Cheers for having me on, Dave. And, yeah, nice to be here. Yeah, so NowSignage, for those who don't know who we are, is a UK-based business that has been around since 2013. A lot of people thought we launched a market and were in a big whirlwind storm about six years ago, but actually, the tech has been being developed since 2013 now, and then we really honed in on the permanent signage market around seven or eight years ago, really. In terms of signage, we position ourselves as a multi-screen management platform that allows our users to effectively and efficiently manage large networks of screens. So, we don't really focus on a specific vertical specialism. So, with IE, we're not a specific sector, like a corporate sector outright or anything like that. Our specialism is really around meeting the needs and demands of projects that have multiple screens, often in multiple locations or multiple sites, so those large-volume projects are our specialism. Now, I would imagine most software companies would say: we can fully support large enterprise level, big footprint projects across multiple locations and all that, so that doesn't immediately hit me as a distinction, but I'm guessing you're going to tell me that it's easier said than done? Nick Johnson: Exactly. So normally, as you say, with CMSs, and we found it ourselves in the early days, we had an eye on those bigger projects, but in reality, as soon as it got above 50 screens, that becomes a challenge for a CMS. It's got a different thought process that needs to go into the CMS from an intuitive nature, but also, your platform needs to be built to kind of balance those enterprise features alongside the simplicity, flexibility, and scalability of the platform. So yeah, there are some nuances that, for sure, where if you want to manage those large scale projects, you really need to nail the ability to make it as easy as possible for those end users to target specific screens with specific promotions or specific content and that's quite a powerful and hard to achieve thing within a CMS. It's all about bringing those features to enable that functionality. So, if I'm an end user or even a reseller integrator looking at different options out there, what's my sniff test (or smell test) to determine who can genuinely support large-scale networks like that? Is it data integration, you know, is it elasticity, at the server level? What are those things? Nick Johnson: Yeah, both of those, obviously, come into consideration. The way we position our product is that we ultimately want it to be self managed by the user. So if it can't be easy to be managed by the user, then you've got a problem, and to make it easy to be managed by the user, you do need those features in the platform like very advanced targeted tags or roles and permissions for locking down areas of the platform. The targeted tags will allow people to target localized stores with localized messages based on the tagging functionality. I'd probably say the most important thing...
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    37 mins
Economics
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