Sixteen:Nine - All Digital Signage, Some Snark
00:18:55 · Stefan Schieker, Dave Haynes
[00:18:55] S2: And just coming off of a panel talking about standards in visual designer software, and that became so apparent. It's like there's a hardware silo and even between the different hardware manufacturers all operating on their own or creating their own operating systems or branches of operating systems. Then you go from there, you go to the software CMS silos, you go to the RDM, so remote device management silos. Those guys are not talking to the content guys within the same integrated company. So we still thinking a lot in separate entities and even within companies and different tasks and different, yeah, things to do, ways to do things. So it really goes all the way across and where it hurts a lot is the whole thing of sustainability, There things need to play together. So if a hardware manufacturer offers something, a software company has to support that feature in their software and the integrator and the customer have to actually use it when turning off the screen again. [00:20:14] S0: Yeah, earlier today you talked a little bit about solutions and how important that is and it's something I say to a lot of companies on the software side is, guys, you need to start to develop a solution stack. You can't just be the software part of this thing because the larger companies in particular don't want to buy your thing and have a separate login to do your stuff. It's got to be part of a larger picture and you get out of that silo.
00:20:14 · Dave Haynes, Stefan Schieker
[00:20:14] S0: Yeah, earlier today you talked a little bit about solutions and how important that is and it's something I say to a lot of companies on the software side is, guys, you need to start to develop a solution stack. You can't just be the software part of this thing because the larger companies in particular don't want to buy your thing and have a separate login to do your stuff. It's got to be part of a larger picture and you get out of that silo. [00:20:42] S2: That's again silo and it's not only within the industry, it's also this industry has created high walls. It's online, offline integration. How hard is it to run the same campaign on a mobile device and on a digital sign in screen? It's incredibly hard still. And does it really have to be that way? [00:21:02] S0: Hence the idea of platforms, right? [00:21:04] S2: So no love for green signage, Florian, that's yours.
00:21:04 · Stefan Schieker, Florian Rotberg, Dave Haynes
[00:21:04] S2: So no love for green signage, Florian, that's yours. [00:21:07] S1: Yeah, it's my topic. You know that I told you already this morning, it was so frustrating at ISE. Like last year, everyone was showcasing their green sludge product, you know, lower energy consumption and recycled materials. And this year, there was almost nothing there. And people were hiding it. Last year was on Vogue, you know, everyone was proud of it. And this year many people said, oh, we are developing something, we have nothing to show and I think it's not acceptable. We have to... It's here to stay and especially in Europe, very different to North America by the way. But even at InfoComm and even now, as I said, I returned from InfoComm China, even there, you saw the first product with the green label on it or so. So there's rising awareness around the world, but we need to lead it. We here in Europe need to lead the market because if we don't do it, nobody else does it and that's really important. [00:21:55] S0: Wait till you go to InfoComm in Las Vegas. You'll walk around, you won't see a mention of it. [00:22:01] S1: Yeah, this year InfoComm will be anyway very difficult because it's two separate halls, far away. It will be a disaster, but it's a different story. Yeah, that's true, yeah.
00:22:01 · Florian Rotberg, Dave Haynes
[00:22:01] S1: Yeah, this year InfoComm will be anyway very difficult because it's two separate halls, far away. It will be a disaster, but it's a different story. Yeah, that's true, yeah. [00:22:08] S0: Well, mean, I primarily write about the North American market and that's the people who are coming to me with news and advice and everything else and I never hear anybody talking about that. The only time that I'll get a discussion around green signage will be in the area of energy costs, and that starts to raise some eyebrows. They don't... They're not concerned about saving the planet or anything else, but they're starting to understand that, yeah, their energy bill is kinda high. So if we did this thing and if we were able to bring it down by 30% or something, then they're interested. [00:22:43] S1: Relevant. Yeah. [00:22:44] S0: Yeah. But that's it. [00:22:45] S1: Good. We have to look at the time. Next one, where are the innovations?
00:22:45 · Florian Rotberg, Stefan Schieker
[00:22:45] S1: Good. We have to look at the time. Next one, where are the innovations? [00:22:49] S2: And we're not saying that this industry is not innovating, but it's a lot of pull innovation. So you're listening to your customers, and that's a good thing. But you're probably not listening close enough because what we see is that it's a lot of evolution. It's a lot of things being developed in customer projects. So custom... Developed for customers because they are used. But in other industries where they are more product driven, There are really companies trying to push the limits, and that's... We see too little of this. We see too little really step... Taking a step back from all your your customer projects, cutting across what you're hearing is like really listening to what's being said, not the words that are being said, but what's underlying this need. And then start to develop towards that need and not just on developing, okay, the customer asked for feature X, Y, Z, and we're gonna do that now and we're gonna do that prettier and a bit better, but really listen to the fundamental needs of the... That that the companies are voicing. It's it's like we want... We don't want to go through the hassle of online and digital signage and all of these things. But is there really... And do we see real innovation there from industry? That's something we struggle with. We'd like to see more kind of like, okay, we thought about this and we took a totally different approach to it, and that's how we would solve it.
00:24:28 · Dave Haynes, Stefan Schieker
[00:24:28] S0: To be fair, I mean, we're putting stuff on screens in an order and targeting them to specific screens and all that. I mean, there's a limit to how much innovation you can do on that. And I have a lot of time for companies that are always looking around the corner at what they can bolt on, what's emerging in other industries that they could apply to it. I think that's good, but how revamp do whole way this is done? [00:24:54] S2: There are some things that are generally accepted across the industry and one of them we all accept that we're using the operating system that sits on screen that comes from a manufacturer. Why doesn't anyone question that? Why don't you say, okay, we throw [00:25:10] S0: away I'll give you a name of somebody who questions it every day. Know that example. It's in Dayton, Ohio. [00:25:17] S2: I know somebody in Switzerland who does the same thing. It's raising these kinds of questions because if it's so hard to run mixed fleets of hardware, it's, can I take control? And it's companies like SignageOS looking at this problem and say, okay, then if nobody else solves it, we go ahead and solve it. And that's this kind of innovation that I'm thinking of. [00:25:44] S0: Fair enough.