It’s Saturday morning, back at home after most of the week away in Amsterdam (Sunday to late Thursday for most of our team) and time to dwell on the conference and exhibition.
I will start off first on the conference which started the day before #ISE2010 proper…
- #DOOHBizConf on the Monday and part of the Tuesday was good and well worth attending. I’d maybe disagree slightly with our Paris correspondent Russ Curry who summed it up earlier in the week [1] and say (personally) that I didn”t think it was as good as last year though.
- #DOOHBizConf attendance was probably lower this year (maybe 100) whereas last year was more like 120 (and that was in the ”recession”) although more people may have paid for their seats this year (controls on entry were somewhat lax last year I seem to remember).
- On the first day of #DOOHBizConf there was only one truly awful presentation (that’s enough mind when you have paid EUR 800 to attend) but a lot of the speakers repeated the same stuff over and over and I thought there was too much technology – seriously DOOH folks do not want to hear from new entry upstarts Intel and Microsoft – no matter how big their brands may be (neither of them know a single thing yet worthwhile knowing about our media business).
- #DOOHBizConf gave networks and media owners a good reason to be at #ISE2010. This is great for exhibitors (see separate post).
- The #DOOHBizConf drinks mixer at the end of play on Monday was a nice initiative and had all the (digital signage) exhibitors in Hall 12 finished building their stands it would have been even better but it was a great idea and drinks and socialising are always welcome at events.
- With a bit of thought and a bit more work by OVAB Europe, #DOOHBizConf at #ISE2010 in Amsterdam in February combined with the other OVAB Europe Conference in Munich in October (#DOOHBizKonf perhaps?) could easily be ALL that the DOOH industry needs in terms of a European conference programme.
- The organisers listened to our gripes about doing a conference properly and pretty much everything we asked for on behalf of the press, bloggers and indeed audience was there. Free wi-fi, CAT5 internet access for press power users, good sound, good projection system, nice room and a TwitterFall screen in the room as well, However, it’s unacceptable in this day and age that the presentations are not online as the speaker takes the podium but even having said that we were served up the best technology at a conference in the last few years.
- The pre-agreed hashtag #DOOHBizConf worked well and many outside Amsterdam followed the conference proceedings and indeed interacted with some of those in the audience in this manner. This is exactly how it should be and thanks also to Ronni Guggenheim for doing such a great job with twitter during the two days of the event.
- The hashtag #DOOHBizConf needs to be part of the event marketing and branding for the conference.
- It was surreal to see folks on the way to Amsterdam (Jason Cremins from signagelive and Alex Hughes from Amigo Digital in particular) twitter using the hashtag on things that were being said in the conference room appear on the TwitterFall screen also in the room. Surreal but perfect!
- By the way we are serious about the organisers using #DOOHBizKonf for the next OVAB Europe konferenz in Munich later in the year đŸ˜‰
1 Comment To "#DOOHBizConf – Observations"
#1 Comment By Chris Heap On 6 February 2010 @ 13:04 @586
Hats off to Invidis Consulting for putting together another highly professional event.
The conference did however lead me to ponder whether there now needs to be two streams of event on a more regular basis to reflect two types of need.
The first is our internal market for experts/practitioners/developers in the DOOH marketplace who are developing and refining products and services to meet the needs of existing network owner/operators and the internal integrator/vendor marketplace. This it seems is currently well serviced.
The second (and the one in my opinion we need more of) talks more broadly about the features, benefits and opportunities presented by the medium from a marketing, brand and commercial perspective for those to engage CMOS, COOs and CTOs who may know they need it but not sure why or what benefit it would bring, or for those who quite simply don’t know they need it, yet.
In terms of the latter, it is still the case that any CMO looking to assess the opportunities developing a digital network will have to work hard to identify a ‘landing point’ in the marketplace.
In its various guises, programmes such as expert-tours in some way offer a bit of an answer but these are predominantly founded on introducing people to technical competences and components not solutions providers, whereas, for example, our (Imperatives) orientation & education programmes provide that private landing point from which commercial objectives and needs can be reconciled with CMOs and CTOs first to provide a clear market engagement strategy before they start the purchasing process proper.
Once they have clarity, they are better informed to engage with the DOOH marketplace in order to reconcile the ‘fit and finish’ of their chosen approach and the product, services and suppliers they reach out to. A summary of this programme can be viewed here [2]
Additionally, Screen Media Expo in London (May 5th-6th, London) will use some of its speaking tracks to provide both new customers and expert practitioners with a range of programmes designed to reduce the gap between marketing and technology perspectives, as reported earlier on DailyDOOH here: [3]. By all means let me know if you’d like to get involved.