A Proverbial Who’s Who

We love people watching as you know and it was fascinating over the last few days at #ScreenMediaExpo catching up with old friends and making many new ones. All the regular industry folks were in attendance but like on other booths, we didn’t have that much time to chit-chat during show hours so busy were we all in making new acquaintances.

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Standing room only at many of the theatres

However, some of the regulars we did spot or manage to have a quick chat with included: –

• James Abdool, who is doing some work for MediaZest and he and CEO Geoff Robertson were swamped by interest in their virtual mannequin.
• Mike Blackman (didn’t manage to chat with) and dapper Dan Goldstein (we did chat with about our plans for Orlando)
• We had a nice 60 minute chat with Brian Dusho who told us BroadSign business was better than ever and that most of his DOOH Ad networks were starting to grow (again) now. They (BroadSign) have also won a lot of new clients lately.
• It was really nice to see both Christian Vaglio-Giors and Alexandre de Senger from Neo Media Group over and we managed to catch 5 minutes with them as well.
• New Digital Cinema Media managing director ^[2] Simon Rees was seen looking around
• Florian Goebel from Munich (has renamed his business to DiME ^[3]). Lovely guy and we cannot wait to see what his plans are for Viscom Dusseldorf in October.
• Gary Truman. Target. Chest. Pinned.
• Good to see Phil Tweedy (ex Neo) looking much better after his brush with death and who is now firmly relocated back in the UK (from LA).
• The Padre was there ^[4] as well; fresh from his outstanding work with OpenSplash and ONELAN ^[5].
• Brian Boakes with his John Ryan hat on was there – we managed to shake hands but would have loved to sit down and chat.
• The new Kaleidovision business development manager Lucy Wood was also there with Jacqui French, a long time account manager.
• In the same music field it was nice to catch up with Dianne Whalley from Imagesound. We also spotted Michael Garreffa the new MD for Mood Media in the UK walking the floor.
• No sign of any Invidis chaps having flown over from Munich to join us but great to see from Germany our good friend Thomas Dokter. Thomas came to London early to join our Content Day Unconference ^[6] and was at the show both days and must have sat in on more presentations and seminars than anyone else. He also shared with us some of his plans for the digital signage side of Viscom Dusseldorf which is shaping up to be a great show.
• A show of course would not be a show without the mighty Mike Fabian also being there and there he was on day 1. Shame we missed him.

In terms of prospects and new people there seemed to be loads and loads; we spied folks from Liverpool FC, the Imperial War Museum, Harvey Nichols and we even met some nice people setting up a private members club in Chelsea who visited the show to look at screens and interactive technology. Some booths were saying that they had as many as 100 good leads by the end of the show. Scala ^[7]’s Damon Crowhurst told us that there were outstanding end users at the event, amongst those he spoke with were from the British Airport Authority ^[8], Luton Airport ^[9], Bloomberg ^[10] and Odeon Cinemas ^[11].

It was also nice to see all the major media buyers at the show on day 1 and loads of network owners and OOH folks on both days 1 and 2 – including from Paris Futuramedia as well as networks from as far away as Brazil.