Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark
00:17:24 · Dave Haynes, S3, Antonia Hamberger
[00:17:24] S0: Yeah. Spent a week in Taiwan in October. [00:17:27] S3: For over a decade, Screenfeed has been the reliable choice for beautifully designed licensed content such as news and weather. We handle over 27,000,000 requests a day to deliver dynamic content to 200,000 screens across the globe. Now we bring you Screenfeed Connect, a no code solution that makes complex content projects easy. Projects that used to take our designers and developers weeks became a to do we could complete before lunch. The easy to use browser based tool leverages pre built data connections and ready made widgets to give you the power to design with data. Create team member profiles, schedules, tenant directories, progress boards, featured products, or anything that leverages your data. Discover how Connect empowers you to complete projects faster at screenfeed.com. [00:18:14] S2: So what was your, like, the best road trip you had during all that time?
00:18:14 · Antonia Hamberger, Dave Haynes, Balthasar Mayer
[00:18:14] S2: So what was your, like, the best road trip you had during all that time? [00:18:19] S0: Best road trip? Well, the best best trip I had was probably... Did a consulting gig for... Extended consulting gig on digital signage for a mobile carrier, a telecoms company in South Africa, I went down there three times. I never would have went to South Africa. It's very expensive. It's a long flight and everything else. But I was there for, I think, six or eight weeks. I forget now. And so I spent a lot of time in Joburg in Cape Town. Nice. That was absolutely fantastic. It was just something I never would have done otherwise. I would say the the most interesting stuff has been going to Asia just because that's where it all emanates. And I think the second time I went to Hong Kong when LED was really starting to come out, that it was a a kind of a big moment for me in that I I don't like to go to tourist places, although all of Hong Kong is really a tourist place, but I like to go kind of off the beaten track where you don't see all the people with their cameras and everything else. And I was just walking this district and saw over a nightclub entrance a very large billboard, LED billboard that in North America would be a press release. There'd be all kinds of buzz about it because look at the sun. [00:19:34] S2: And in Germany, let me tell you, that will be the breaking news, the news of the year. Talk [00:19:41] S1: of the Digital Signage Town. Yeah.
00:19:41 · Balthasar Mayer, Dave Haynes, Antonia Hamberger
[00:19:41] S1: of the Digital Signage Town. Yeah. [00:19:44] S0: But there it was just there and it really kind of told me that, this is where this is gonna go, where it just becomes commonplace because it already was there and when you go to Asia, it's a little, I shouldn't say it's a little, it's way over the top from what I've seen from a distance in China. I've been to China, but I haven't been in in several years now, pre COVID, where you see entire skylines that are just... They've LED lighting, whether it's mesh lighting or they've got larger lighting that's illuminating the whole building, but you see entire skylines that are synchronized. I don't really want that in whatever city I live in with all the light pollution and I I... It it it looks kind of amazing, but it's it's not appealing in another way. But it's it's it's a China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Seoul. All those areas really kind of are instructive as to the possibilities as well as Dubai. But Dubai is just insane. Yeah. It's it's like, I don't think that's a marker or instructive of anything. It's just a crazy place. [00:20:55] S2: No. It just also has tons of money, that place. [00:20:59] S0: Yeah. They build entire skyscrapers on a change order. [00:21:03] S2: Dave, was there ever a particular moment where you realized that your blog really has influence? Because I know like almost everybody in the North American Pro AV digital signage industry knows you and reads you. But that has taken a while. So was there a moment where you [00:21:22] S0: Oh, was immediate. [00:21:23] S2: When you said, yeah? Oh.
00:21:23 · Antonia Hamberger, Dave Haynes, Balthasar Mayer
[00:21:23] S2: When you said, yeah? Oh. [00:21:26] S0: No. I I I... There are a couple moments when I... Early on, I I said I'd gone from one company over to Broadsign, and I I went up to Montreal to do the interview. They'd approached me, and I was walking the hallways, and one guy came around the corner and said, oh, Dave Haynes. Oh, I read your stuff and [00:21:46] S1: I go, [00:21:46] S0: oh, really? I Did you [00:21:49] S1: did you [00:21:49] S2: This is something we have to achieve still. [00:21:51] S1: Yes. Yes. This this is a big goal for us. Yeah. Yeah. And did you need to sign an autograph?
00:21:51 · Balthasar Mayer, Dave Haynes, Antonia Hamberger
[00:21:51] S1: Yes. Yes. This this is a big goal for us. Yeah. Yeah. And did you need to sign an autograph? [00:21:57] S0: I have signed autographs. Absolutely bizarre. I'm just like, can you sign your business card? Because there's somebody back in the office that'll just be thrown in there. Really? I was like, I don't wanna see it. What's what's gone wrong in your life? But the big thing that has always stuck with me is the number of times that companies have told me that part of their onboarding process now for new employees is, you know, there's the parking lot, here's your parking assignment, here's this, that's your desk, here's your WiFi password and so on. Here's the instructions for healthcare and this and that, but here's what you need to do on a daily basis. You need to subscribe to this thing and you need to be reading it every day to stay current on this industry. And I've had, oh, dozens of people tell me that, that I'm I'm just kind of part of their their workplace operations that they told people as part of learning this business, you need to be reading this every day. And that's always been, you know, really heartening and nice to hear. [00:23:00] S2: Nice. Nice. So apart from reading Sixteen:Nine every day, which is an obvious thing to do, part [00:23:08] S1: of your daily reads [00:23:09] S0: or should be I'm doing it too. [00:23:10] S2: Should be part of your daily routine. What advice would you give to someone just entering the industry?
00:23:10 · Antonia Hamberger, Dave Haynes
[00:23:10] S2: Should be part of your daily routine. What advice would you give to someone just entering the industry? [00:23:18] S0: Learn it. That's the flip side of what I was just saying is I'm always astonished at how many people I run into who've been in this industry for ten years or more, and they had no idea about 69 or anything else that they're not learning about their industry. That just... I'm I'm flabbergasted by that. Like, how can you work in an industry without investing any time to learn, you know, emerging technologies and trends and everything else. So I I would say just, like, invest the time, make sure you invest the time to to read about it and look at things with curiosity, but also with a degree of skepticism. Because as you guys well know, there's a lot of trade press and a lot of PR that's just cheerleading. It's just shaking the pom poms about, you know, this is amazing and, you know, this the this is the world first and all that. And, you know, I've spent eighteen years calling bullshit on things that's not the world first and if it is, like who cares? Can be the world's first but this has no business application, it's just eye candy. So spend the time to look at stuff, try to get your head past the wow factor and the eye candy side of things because we collectively go to trade shows and we will see people at certain stands, I won't name them, but you just see them slack jawed staring at this technology, there's oh my god that's amazing and I'm looking at it going [00:24:50] S2: Did hear the word hologram just now? [00:24:53] S0: I didn't say it