You walk in to Olympia 2 and down the steps, 5 booths to the left and circa 10 to the right and then 3 rows deep.
Probably no more than 5 Digital Signage vendors but loads of Kiosk stuff – this was the self styled ‘European Digital Signage Show [1]‘
Remote Media agreed with us that the Samsung stand was the best exhibit, we quote from their blog [2]…
“Samsung were the stand out exhibitor at the (very small) Kiosk and Digital Signage Show at Olympia 2, London. Their stand was both the largest and busiest by far … “
To us the only other interesting exhibit was Protouch and their new Mall Kiosk offering.
We were probably correct in chortling at the billing of the European Digital Signage Show.
3 Comments To "We Were Right To Chortle At the Kiosk Show"
#1 Comment By Lawrence Dvorchik On 1 October 2008 @ 22:37 @984
Chris:
Having spent the last 13 years leading the charge for customer facing technology as well as involved with trade shows, perhaps you may not value my opinion or experience in this area.
However, the exhibitors that continue to gain quality leads and business differ with your opinions and “insights”.
Digital signage was prevalent throughout the show, highlighting its stand alone nature as well as it’s integration with other customer facing technologies. However, your pre-judgment and biasness was clearly prevalent in your assessment of the show.
The attendees are the true measure of a tradeshow, and the real reason any company would look to exhibit. And the European Digital Signage Show and KioskCom once again delivered a critical mass of quality buyers of customer facing technologies – both digital signage and kiosks/self-service.
It appears that once again you have failed at the DOOH to understand the true value of a tradeshow. In the entire time I have been reading your “blog”, i have yet to see one positive comment about a tradeshow. It’s simply a shame that an uniformed writer, who does not understand how to really build a successful tradeshow for all stakeholders and who did not take up show management’s invitation to understand everything would make such bold and brash statements as you have made.
However the exhibitors at the show seem to have a difference in opinion with you, as they continue to speak highly of the show and the quality attendees that came to the show.
Perhaps once again I should point out that anyone feeling that digital signage deployments should not pay attention to kiosk and other previous customer facing technology deployments is a person that refuses to look at all of the data and research to make deployments successful.
#2 Comment By Adrian J Cotterill On 2 October 2008 @ 06:03 @293
Lawrence, the point was that 5 or so DS vendors hardly makes it a ‘European DS Show’ – we are pleased your exhibitors are finding it useful. We are often asked as you know by our readers which trade shows to spend their money at – someone has to have an opinion
[3]
#3 Comment By Lawrence Dvorchik On 3 October 2008 @ 15:06 @671
Adrian:
What makes it a digital signage show is when digital signage is on display.
You say only 5 digital signage companies were displaying, yet I could point to many more companies displaying that showed digital signage solutions.
There are many more companies displaying and selling digital signage products than you, or your colleagues, may be aware of. Just because they don’t fit YOUR mold of digital signage companies does not mean they don’t have extremely valuable solutions for companies.
Because they sure do.