Digital Signage SaaS

Last week, I was in Chicago for the Strategy Institute Building Your Digital Signage Business. This is the fourth Strategy Institute conference I've been to and it was another solid conference.

If you are interested in a conference "play by play" both myself and David Drain tweeted throughout the show. You can follow along at #BuildDSBiz.

Though there was a sort of a good news/bad news situation with the show. The good news? MediaTile had a 32" Digital Sign in a Box set up there which generated a lot of questions through the two-day show. The bad news? I couldn't always pay full attention to each of the speakers.

Here are some of my thoughts and observations on the show...

I was really interested to hear from Tom Campbell, Healthy Advice Networks. I had heard so much about their digital signage network but never really knew the details. He said they use a reverse "Field of Dreams" approach. Meaning, they let the customers (doctors & patients) dictate if a screen is put in place. Health Advice has been around for several years but it was surprising they use dial-up to deliver content to the screens. But if that's what works, then it's working well for them.
Later on, Pierre Richer, NEC, spoke about overcoming some of the current industry challenges. He said that the current glut of content management systems (CMS) is making ad buys harder. I'm guessing it's going to stay this way until there is some great consolidation within the digital signage industry. I don't see anybody stepping aside to help other vendors.
Later in the afternoon, the debate around SaaS versus a hosted solution took place. I've blogged about it several times here before, but both Greg Argyle, GoGo Cast, and Sanjay Manandhar, Aerva, spoke about the pros and cons of each choice. It seemed to me that the choice might simply come down to a company's culture or appetite for SaaS. if they use it in other areas, then they'll likely use it for digital signage.
Bill Collins, DecisionPoint Media Insights, closed out day one with a highlight of 2009 developments. I'm still a little peeved at Bill for calling corporate communication networks "vanilla" (at the Digital Hub Initiative) but I'm sure I'll get over it.
OVAB's ears must have been burning during the show. They were mentioned so often attendees could have turned it into a drinking game.
I feel one of the more informative sessions was led by Tom Kunka, University of Illinois, and Michael Hoffberg, Villanova University. Both gave a brief review of their networks and it was interesting to see how each school has approached digital signage differently but both appear to be successful with their implementations. And even in the education market, the debate of SaaS versus hosted software rages on.
The conference switched to content, but from unique areas. Manolo Almagro, Show & Tell Productions, focused on user generated content (UGC). I think this was extremely helpful for the audience because there are so many sources for this and Manolo did a great job at highlighting the key sources and provided tips on how to best use them.

Then one of our customers, Chris Bias, Eli Lilly & Company, reviewed his global communication network that he's installing at Lilly locations around the world. At a corporate level, Chris is able to deliver the broader messages to employees around the world, but then give local administrators access to add in their own unique local messaging. This feature is key for any company looking at a larger corporate communication install.

As I wrote earlier, I would have liked to have been able to pay more attention to all of the speakers, but I also had a chance to meet a lot of new people and answer their questions about the MediaTile solution. At last year's conference, which also took place in Chicago, we were one of four companies exhibiting. This year, we were the only one. I'm not sure why we were the only one, but others missed out I think.

I scoured around looking for other conference recaps and found this one from AdSemble's Matt Olivieri, who was also in attendance.
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P.S. On a side note, I'd like to personally thank and congratulate Keith Kelsen on his new ventures. I've known Keith for several years, first as a customer when I was at Rolls-Royce and Keith was MediaTile's CEO. He is now moving on to bigger and (maybe) better and I wish him all the best. Four years ago I told him MediaTile had the perfect corporate communication solution and he gave me a chance to prove that. For that, I will be forever grateful.