#dse2010 – Las Vegas Industry Mixer

All the pieces are in place for the big digital signage industry mixer in Las Vegas Feb. 23rd

If anything, it is over-subscribed, so if you are figuring you didn’t register online and you’ll just show up anyway, please don’t. It’s not that we’re trying to be exclusive, at all. It is simply that the place has capacity limits, and we were at them within 24 hours.

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Between registrations through EventBrite (great service, by the way) and discretionary invites by sponsors, we are at 200-plus people, representing roughly 95 companies.

We have about three-dozen people who are president or C-somethings at their companies, not including the 1-2 person start-ups where you get to be CEO just by, well, fogging a mirror. Been there.

The event was organized by The Preset Group ^[2], a consulting group I helped found about six months ago. We help companies companies get quickly up the curve with their efforts and step in with clients to help them work through particular challenges. Happy to say we’re busy.

However, this post is more of a way to plug and thank the event’s sponsors. We wanted to secure a nice location for the mixer, on the strip and close to the LVCC. We settled on a club in the Palazzo hotel and casino that looks beautiful and has an outdoor patio area overlooking the strip. If the weather is nice all the Canadians and people from the midwest and northeast, who have been hammered by snow this past month, will be out there. But nice places on the strip don’t serve $1 beers. Drinks cost a lot at this place, and the first round’s on us plan needed ALL the help we could get from sponsors.

Anyway, getting several companies to chip in made all that manageable, and part of our appreciation is giving them a little profile.

In alphabetical order:-

• Adcentricity ^[3] – If you are in the DOOH space, you likely know this company – which started in Toronto and has expanded and started to take off in the US.

  In the company’s words: With a talented and passionate team, ADCENTRICITY eases the pain and complexity of the buying and planning process of digital out-of-home media by providing a strategic solution to media agencies and brands. As digital out-of-home media strategists, ADCENTRICITY provides a high-touch service supported by an advanced media platform and in-depth supporting research. Our capabilities enable complex hyper-targeting to deliver advertiser messages only to the venues and screens that meet the target audience profile and campaign objectives, effectively and efficiently.

  Founders Rob Gorrie and Jeff Atley plan to be at the event.

• Arsenal Media ^[4] – Based in the suburbs of Montreal, Arsenal Media is one of the top digital content creation and marketing shops in this fast-emerging sector. You have read a LOT about Christie Digital’s MicroTiles, and the great majority of the gorgeous content that has been developed for the launch and first clients was either produced or at minimum directed by Arsenal. They have a lot of clients in Quebec, but also work further afield. Arsenal is also one of the founding members of the Digital Content Circle and one of the key builders and drivers of the industry in Quebec.

  Founder Denys Lavigne – for you Brits, a HUGE Arsenal FC fan, hence the name – will be at the event.

• DailyDOOH ^[5] – Not a lot of introduction needed, but DailyDOOH is among a handful of truly influential and international blogs and news portals in this space. Editor in Chief Adrian Cotterill is no shrinking violet and will tell you it is THE site … but I am staying out of that debate. The DailyDOOH crew will have several people at DSE and the 2010 list of the top software vendors in the sector will be released – which will generate all kinds of mixed reactions, depending on whether a company makes the list or not. Sometimes media sponsors are just that, and have no skin in the game with events. But Adrian opened the wallet and is a paid sponsor like the others. Much appreciated.
• Diversified Media Group ^[6]– After a decade in this space, I have met an awful of people, but I have not yet met anyone from DMG, and don’t know the company all that well. I do know they are a busy bunch. In its words: Diversified Media Group (DMG), founded in 2001, was spun off to address this need and is a pre-eminent, managed network provider that designs, engineers, implements and manages private video, rich media, and digital signage networks to viewers in corporation, consumer retail and public venues. DMG also implements managed networks for corporate communications, business distance learning, and aggregates broadcast and cable programming to private television networks and the corporate desktop. DMG currently supports both large and small networks ranging from a few sites to over 1,000 sites globally.

  DMG will have several folks at the mixer.

• POPAI – Point of Purchase Advertising International is the only global, non-profit trade association dedicated to the advancement of the marketing at retail advertising medium as an effective method of reaching consumers at retail, where more than 70 percent of buying decisions are made. The association is very active in the digital signage sector and recently released an excellent and mercifully balanced piece about privacy guidelines.

  New president Richard Winter will be at the event.

• Thinxtream ^[7] – Probably the least known of the sponsors, but one to pay attention to. This is a Singapore-based subsidiary of a very large Indian company, Celstream. The branding is new, but Thinxtream has had a digital signage product on the market for more than a year, called PointMedia Pro. Its capabilities are in line with a lot of the big guys, but the interesting thing about Thinxtream is the deep experience it has doing software and hardware product engineering for Fortune 500 companies and a talent pool of some 350 applications engineers, on staff, who can be tapped to do customization for enterprise-level accounts. Most DS software companies have small developer teams working to a roadmap, and major customization either takes months and months or can’t be done except through outsourcing. Putting the arm on 25 people to bridge some systems and apps is no biggie when Thinxtream has access to hundreds at the Bangalore head office, most of them coming from technology universities that are said to rival MIT.

  Celstream’s CTO, Ranga Raj, will be at the event.

The event runs from 6 to 8. I have suggested to a number of people that with various commitments we expect many people will drop in for an hour and then get on to dinner with clients or head to their rooms and the email pile. But I expect there will be lots of people still around at 8 and well beyond if people want to come by then. I know the Toronto mixer tends to last a good three hours, and it is Vegas. That said, I have a breakfast meeting and will be a good boy, for a change.