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Now safely back in the UK we aim to wrap up our #dse2011 coverage with a couple more posts. Here’s some random thoughts on what we felt and saw…
- The conference sessions on the Tuesday were MUCH better than we thought or had actually hoped for. The Ad Summit was sold out and there must have been 150 people in the room, many hanging out at the back of the room and in the doorway. Some folks we spoke to who tried to get last minute tickets couldn’t. Alan Brawn’s Digital Signage Certified Expert Program (DSCE), was really very good (our AHN spent all day in attendance and as a techie himself with something like 19 years experience was thoroughly impressed with the whole event). Again there must have been 85 people in attendance. Even Stephen Pratt’s session had 60+ attendees and our ‘sleeper’ who attended was also impressed.
- If it’s true that representatives from NanoNation were refused entry to the show (as we heard) then (a) we think that’s perhaps a little silly and (b) it didn’t stop lots of other software vendors walk the floor under assumed company names. We don’t get all this cloak and dagger stuff.
- Easy (we think) to figure out that Subway have selected Neocast from Real Digital Media (RDM) for a massive rollout. There was Subway content all over the RDM stand. We rumoured in May 2010 [2] that RDM had won a 100 site pilot. This bigger rollout will see RDM go global and outside the US we believe Australia maybe first BUT bottom line, wherever you see a Subway it may soon have Neocast behind the screens. Watch for a press release next week
- Lawrence Dvorchik from JD Events was allegedly escorted from the show floor and one rumour was that David Drain (Digital Screenmedia Association [3] of course) was also refused entry. Again this tit-for-tat pettiness does little for the industry we feel (we will have a bigger post on trade shows up next week).
- TruMedia continue to talk utter rubbish – seemingly talking up their business as if it was worth millions and they had 1,000’s customers. They are not believable and how they survive is absolutely beyond us. They managed to exhibit on the Cisco stand. Maybe they figure that cos’ Intel bought Cognovision, Cisco might be stupid enough to buy Trumedia … wait a minute … they could have a point!
- The Intel stand is great but perhaps they have been sipping from the bottle labelled ‘DRINK ME’ – their stand this year seems to be getting smaller every time we see it. At NRF it was huge, at ISE large and at DSE not so tall or as wide. We are going to have to go away and check the floor plan at #ScreenMediaExpo to make sure it doesn’t shrink down to nothing. At this rate of shrinkage, by the end of the year they will be exhibiting in a 2 x 2 meter square booth!
- There were far too many conference sessions during the show opening hours. This resulted in far too many conflicts. On the first day we had an excellent (and I mean excellent) press breakfast with LG but that ran on past nine so we missed the Standard’s panel presentation; Ken Goldberg, Mike Smith (standing in for Gill Berba) and Dirk Huelsermann. That in turn when it started at nine o’ clock had NO-ONE in the room as the Keynote had also run over. About half way through the Standards folks managed to get 12 people (out of the 18 who had registered) in the room but far too many sessions and far too many conflicts meant that the crowd it deserved never materialised (and this was repeated in many other sessions throughout the two days).