Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark
00:13:08 · Dave Haynes, Antonia Hamberger
[00:13:08] S0: Oh, I saw everything. I don't know. I would say more than anything else just that you could see that whereas in the early stages it was something that was nice to do. I clearly saw that this was going to be something that was a need to do for a company. It was gonna be mission critical. It was just gonna be fundamental to how retailers and other businesses, when they designed a space, in the same way that they're thinking about their furnishings, thinking about their lighting, their HVAC system, everything else, they're gonna start thinking about, okay, where does the digital fit? And in the early days, was build a space and then look look for empty space on a wall. Okay. We'll put the screens there. Even though in a lot of cases, it wasn't the appropriate place to put it. I'd say the other thing was pretty obvious, and I started writing about this in, two thousand eleven ish, I don't know when, but I could see LED was gonna come and come hard and and start to supplant flat panel displays just because of all the benefits and the flexibility that it had. So I invested a lot of time in Pershoeka in the last few years. I've gone to Taiwan and China and everything else to visit factories and really fully understand what it is as opposed to just writing about it and taking what the manufacturers are saying because manufacturers, as is their way, their marketing people tend to fudge the facts and click pretty fast and loose with what something is versus what it really is. [00:14:44] S2: Well, in a lot of cases, they don't even know what it really is.
00:14:44 · Antonia Hamberger, Dave Haynes
[00:14:44] S2: Well, in a lot of cases, they don't even know what it really is. [00:14:47] S0: This is true. It's it's it's the thing about the digital signage industry. A lot of the companies still are run by technical people, engineers, electrical engineers, software developers, everything else. They're not good marketers. And then they hire people to do their marketing for them. And those people, with some notable exceptions, don't understand a damn thing about the space. So they just parrot what their executives say, which is far too technical and people don't understand it. And I always try to bang on people that if you're going to market your product, for god's sakes, provide some relevance and context and to use my Canadian term, why... Give me an explanation as to why I should give a crap about this. Yeah. Why I should care. [00:15:34] S2: I guess that's a thing that a lot of companies in the digital signage space struggle with, finding those people who also understand their products on a on a technical level. Yeah. But we don't just want a badge on the digital signage industry because there's a lot of... [00:15:48] S0: There's a lot of great things about it.... [00:15:50] S2: Industry. Yeah. So what's your favorite thing about the industry?
00:15:50 · Antonia Hamberger, Dave Haynes
[00:15:50] S2: Industry. Yeah. So what's your favorite thing about the industry? [00:15:56] S0: If we're talking in technical terms, I'm impressed and encouraged and excited by how LED in particular is opening up all kinds of new possibilities to start to think in terms of displays being a building material, being a finish, being the curtain wall glass, being something that's a full exterior of a building. That's... It gets way beyond just this idea of screen on a wall, which is how this industry was defined for a whole bunch of years. Thinking like what the industry is just simply it's a relatively small industry, even though, you know, we tend to think that, you know, it's giant and it's booming and everything else. It's in in pure terms, it's it's very small compared to most technology industries. But that means you get to know a lot of people all over the world. And there there's no shortage of knuckleheads, but I would say, by and large, it's full of really great people. And I've got, you know, because it's a small industry and it gets together two or three times a year at different events, I've got to know people all over the world and develop friendships with people all over the world that I never do and all... And, you know, doing other work, which is fantastic. You know, friends with the Invidis folks, and here I am in Munich having a beer.
00:15:56 · Dave Haynes, Antonia Hamberger
[00:15:56] S0: If we're talking in technical terms, I'm impressed and encouraged and excited by how LED in particular is opening up all kinds of new possibilities to start to think in terms of displays being a building material, being a finish, being the curtain wall glass, being something that's a full exterior of a building. That's... It gets way beyond just this idea of screen on a wall, which is how this industry was defined for a whole bunch of years. Thinking like what the industry is just simply it's a relatively small industry, even though, you know, we tend to think that, you know, it's giant and it's booming and everything else. It's in in pure terms, it's it's very small compared to most technology industries. But that means you get to know a lot of people all over the world. And there there's no shortage of knuckleheads, but I would say, by and large, it's full of really great people. And I've got, you know, because it's a small industry and it gets together two or three times a year at different events, I've got to know people all over the world and develop friendships with people all over the world that I never do and all... And, you know, doing other work, which is fantastic. You know, friends with the Invidis folks, and here I am in Munich having a beer. [00:17:10] S2: Yeah. And we're always glad to have you. But you've also did a lot of... You've also done a lot of trips over the years. Right? You went to Taiwan, visited visited some display manufacturers just, I think, last year. [00:17:24] S0: Yeah. Spent a week in Taiwan in October.
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.