Podcasts about daktronics

Join us as Justin and Matt dive into the latest Daktronics projects and product updates from April 2025. They break down multiple installations, including new LED video displays for the Akron RubberDucks, Chesapeake Baysox and UNC Wilmington. They also cover the massive upgrade at Allstate Arena, a groundbreaking partnership with the Tennessee Titans' new Nissan Stadium and a cutting-edge esports setup at Syracuse University. Plus, they introduce Live Switch, a new video production tool aimed at high schools and small-scale productions. Whether you're a sports tech enthusiast or just love seeing how digital displays transform fan experiences, this roundup episode brings you all the highlights.   Tennessee Titans - Nissan Stadium Rendering   Links: Allstate Arena Lights Up for Audiences with 30 LED Displays from Daktronics Daktronics Introduces Live Switch, a New Video Production Switcher for High School Marketplace Tennessee Titans Bring ‘Ring Of Fire' to Game-Day with 37-Display Super System at the New Nissan Stadium UNC Wilmington Bringing LED Video Experience to Brooks Field from Daktronics Improved Baseball Experience Headed to Chesapeake Baysox with Daktronics Installation Akron RubberDucks Improve Stadium Experience with Daktronics Displays Direct-View LED Video Walls from Daktronics Bring Esports and Gaming to Life at Syracuse University

As our Creative Services team expands, we've added Keith Haeberle as Production Manager. We spoke with him earlier this year to hear about his previous experiences and how they relate to his new role with Daktronics, including a focus on processes and operations.   Links: Daktronics Creative Services Website: daktronics.com/creativeservices

In this quick episode, we take a look back at all the news releases from March. From exciting project announcements to tech upgrades and upcoming events, we cover everything you might've missed. Tune in for a fast-paced recap and stay in the loop with the latest from Daktronics.   Links: Daktronics Women In Sports Online Event Set for April 2025 Webinar Registration Link: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/events/women-in-sports Daktronics Delivers LED Displays for Three Pakistan Cricket Stadiums New Generation of Outdoor High-Resolution Display Available from Daktronics  

With Syracuse University looking to deliver the ultimate gaming and esports experience, they selected Daktronics for two massive video displays. To hear about all the aspects of the project and the entire gaming space, Justin and Matt visited with Joey Gawrysiak, Syracuse Executive Director of Esports, and Sean Kelly, Syracuse Director of Esports Production and Outreach. They shared the intention of the space, how it operates and how the displays help bring it to life for audiences.   Links: News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/direct-view-led-video-walls-from-daktronics-bring-esports-and-gaming-to-life-at-syracuse-university  YouTube Video: https://youtu.be/N8L8wWh7HpA?si=TcWBHi2d0yvTP3in  Syracuse Esports Website: https://www.syracuse.edu/campus-life/sports-recreation/esports/  

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT All kinds of people in this industry are very aware that while there is lot of dodgy stuff, there is also lots of well made display technology available from Chinese manufacturers who have zero brand recognition outside of that country. Buy potential buyers don't tend to have the time or resources to make the big flights over the Pacific to visit China and directly source reliable manufacturing partners. And they really - if they're smart - don't want to just order stuff, and then cross their fingers and toes hoping the stuff shows up, lines up with what was ordered, works, and then meets necessary certifications. Jacob Horwitz saw an opportunity to create a new company that functions as something as a boutique digital signage distribution company that sources, curates and markets display and related technologies that its resellers can then take to market. Horwitz will be familiar to a lot of industry people for a pair of installation companies he started and ran the U.S. - IST and later Zutek. In both cases, he sold the companies, and he could have just retired ... but he didn't want to retire. Nor did his wife, because a Jacob with too much time on his hands would make her crazy. So he started Illuminology with a longtime industry friend and business partner Stephen Gottlich, who for many years ran the digital file for Gable. I caught up with Horwitz to talk about the origins and rationale for Illuminology, which is just spinning up but has some big plans. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Jacob, it was nice speaking with you. You have started a company called Illuminology, which sounds like you started a cult, but I think that's not what it is.  Jacob Horwitz: Not yet, no, We hope it will be at some point, a good following, but first off, Dave, thanks for having me. It's been nine years since you and I first chatted on a podcast. I don't know if you realize that. It was December of 2016, and we had just finished, I think maybe the nationwide rollout of Burger King, you and I had a chat about that, and it's hard to believe nine years have gone by.  This was when you had IST?  Jacob Horwitz: Installation Service Technologies was a nationwide installation and service company, that was sold in 2018 and then a year later, I restarted a company called Zootech, and I was approached by a customer who was looking to be entrepreneurial and that company is now owned by Karen Salmon. It's a woman-owned business mow, and her father was the founder of Powerpoint of Sale. I took a couple of years off. I have a person that I have worked with for 30 years, my business partner, Stephen Gottlich. I think you've met Stephen, and he has been working with Gable Signs for the last 17 years and I think what Illuminology is now is a culmination of really two parallel journeys. Stephen took a traditional sign company 17 years ago down a path of innovation, and Gable went from a bending metal traditional sign company to a visual solutions company my background, which has been installation and service for the last 20 years, brings together two people who are a little bit older than when you and I first talked nine years ago.  It was probably 60 pounds ago when I talked to you for the first time. I'm a little gray or a little wiser and a little bit older. So the two of us come from really parallel journeys in different areas of digital signage, and we wanted to create something a little different in the United States. We'd seen some business models and other parts of the world that seem to be working. So we wanted to create a marketplace that would expand digital signage to companies interested in expanding their scope of business. So we focus a lot on traditional sign companies other technology-type companies, and installation companies. They all have some type of footprint in the verticals with technology but they're not carrying digital signage.  So we thought, how do we expand digital signage to reach a lot more people? And we've come up with this business model.  So for people who are completely unfamiliar with it, how do you describe it in your elevator pitch? Jacob Horwitz: The easiest way to describe it is to think of us as a traditional distributor of digital signage to authorized resellers. Much like a Blue Star, B&H, except that we're very boutique, and we're very focused, and we're very passionate. Stephen and I are not, we've been fortunate in business. I'm 65, Stephen is 70-ish, so we know we don't have a lot of time to build something that's going to take years and years, but we wanted to build something special.  So you would be like, an Almo or those kinds of companies, but much more focused specifically on digital signage?  Jacob Horwitz: … And being able to support them differently. So take a digital traditional sign company, next month, we'll be at the International Sign Show in Las Vegas, the USA, and a lot of those people are digital, but it's amazing how many fast signs, and banners to go, those types of places that are selling digital signage today and have no idea what digital is. They're very old and traditional.  I think of it if you sold typewriters or telephones a couple of decades ago and you didn't evolve in the IP phones and computers, you're probably not in business anymore. So we're taking a lot of those types of sign companies. We have a course called Illuminology University. We take them through an 8 to 10-week course. These are live training classes and curricula we put together to train them about what is a sign in digital singage, what's LED, what's LCD, what is GOB versus COB, just really teaching them about the industry and they have a lot of reach in the verticals that traditional people selling digital signage today don't have. The other thing that makes us unique. When you go to traditional companies like Blue Stars, you don't have everything available under one distributor. We have an experience center that's opening next week in Kansas City. It's a supermarket of visual solutions, so you'll be able to see not just LED or LCD, but you're also going to see light boxes, you're going to see different kiosks, you're going to see where AI comes into play with digital signage, you're going to have a good understanding in our experience center of the programmatic side of how things can be monetized with a digital retail network. I think that because of the 30 years that Steven and I have been involved in technology and in the last twenty in digital signage, we can be much more of a boutique to help people with a wider range of solutions, not just a traditional 55-inch monitor, but LED posters, you had on your blog a few weeks ago that digital desk, which is part of our showroom, so I think it's about innovation. I think it's about a wider range of solutions, and it's hopefully in our last chapters of life, having a lot of fun with our partners.  So I assume if I call or contact one of the larger distributors who do unified communications, do all kinds of different things, and I start asking them about it, I'm a POS company, I have a customer who's asking me about menu boards and things like that. I don't know where to start.  If you talk to a larger distribution company, they have a sheet or a system that lists all the stuff they have and they can rattle off, here's what we have, what do you want, whereas you're saying because you're much more focused on this area and you have an experience center, people could come in and you can try to find something that's tailored to their needs as opposed to what we have.  Jacob Horwitz: Yeah, I think that all those traditional distribution models are very good at taking orders and taking money. A couple of them even have some departments where they're trying to help you with that consultive part of the business but I think at the end of the day, from my installation side, conservatively, we installed well over 400,000 displays in every kind of vertical you could imagine when I owned IST.  We did the new SoFi Stadium. We did all of their point of sale. Arlington Stadium, we did all of their digital assets when Daktronics had contracted us. And Stephen has done every kind of hardware installs you could think of when he was with Gable. So I think that being able to work with a company and be there to hold their hand too, we've already gotten on a plane and gone to sales calls with our partners. You're not going to get that from a traditional distributor. We work and do the RFPs with them. We work with them on pricing and quotes. So it's a little bit different than just trying to take an order so I think that's what makes us unique and the education and our school of hard knocks, you know, god knows, we've made an awful lot of mistakes in 20 years So I think we're gotten pretty good at what we do.  So are you selling strictly third-party stuff, or are there products that fall under the Illuminology brand or a related brand?  Jacob Horwitz: We've been going back and forth for a decade now to China. Stephen and I's first project together, was Simon Properties, 250 malls, and one of the largest media networks for digital out-of-home in the country, we designed the kiosk 10 years ago that they were still using and running in their malls, and that was a factory direct where we worked directly with the factories, built a kiosk, and were able to give Simon an amazing solution, especially where technology was 10 years ago.  So through that experience and over the last decade, we've met absolutely the best factories in China. There are a lot of stereotypes of what a Chinese factory could look like, and until you go and you see the automation and the technology there, God knows you've done it. You've been all over the world. It's not what a lot of people think. So we work directly with factories. We are creating two brands. There are more later on in the year, we are white labeling or branding our product. There'll be a line of displays called LightScapes, and then there'll be a line of kiosks called EasyOSK. So these are part of our longer-term business plan to have a brand. So you're not just saying, well, we bought these from some factories in Taiwan Korea Vietnam and China. We work very closely with the factories. We work very closely with people like AUO who are on the display side, and the panel side, and we will have some things that are unique within that brand. It will not just be the same product that everybody can buy. But because we're doing factory direct because we've got ten-year relationships with these factories, and they know Stephen and me well. We've been going except during COVID several times a year to China. I think that we're able to buy from them at incredibly good pricing and pass those savings on to our resellers. So what if you had a Chinese manufacturer that's strong domestically in that country and has a lot of them trying to come to the U.S. or over to Europe and say, here we are, and not get anywhere, would you sell their product under their brand or would it have to fall under one of your brands? Jacob Horwitz: No, we sell generic products as well. So for example, that desk that you talk about, I was in that factory last month. The person who owns that factory is a very small equity owner within Illuminology because we've known her for ten years and anything that comes from any factory out of China, she will go do that quality check before it ever hits the container to get over here. So she's a very instrumental part of our business over there, but we sell some of the stuff out of her factory as a generic product. It's not necessarily branded with LightScapes. It might be branded with Illuminology, but when you go look at the certification tags and serial numbers, it's still her company name on it, whereas LightScapes and EasyOSK are true white-labeled products that are going to be unique to us. Does that get around any regulatory issues in terms of what can come over from China if it's coming through you?  Jacob Horwitz: The regulations that are driving everybody in our industry crazy right now are the tariffs. But, to us, I think some of the big things that you don't see out of Chinese companies are the right approvals. We're very focused right now on our products being a UL or UL equivalent. There are five or six laboratories that are like MET. That is exactly like UL. It's UL-approved. We had a very large factory send us apart to test and they looked at it yesterday and we already rejected it because the power supply was not a UL-approved power supply. We said, we're not even going to test it.  So I think that those are things that are not regulatory from the U.S., but they're important to us, from a safety side, especially when you're working with enterprise tier one customers, they, have to have the right certifications, but I think the only thing that's causing us headaches is not the regulatory side, but, trying to figure out the right pricing with tariffs and how we handle that. Cause it's changing by the day.  Jacob Horwitz: Every time I look up, I'm afraid to look at the TV to see if it's higher or whatnot, but all of our pricing that we post to our dealers today is a landed cost from Kansas City. So it's including if we had inbound shipping or we had tariffs, we don't want our resellers to have to worry about that and they know that this is the pricing and if the tariffs go away, then we can lower that price. But if it goes crazy, they need to be prepared. We're working closely with some factories right now in Taiwan, Korea, and others in Vietnam so that we have a backup solution because right now the lion's share is coming from China.  If it's touched in Taiwan or touched in Vietnam, but with Chinese components, does that make a difference? Jacob Horwitz: Yeah, we just had that problem. We had ordered some stuff that came in from Canada, and this was before the Canadian tariff of 25%. This was two-three weeks before that, and we got a bill for tariffs, and we were talking with the U.S. Customs and the experts at DHL and UPS, and it turns out, if you're buying something from, for example, the great area of Canada, where you're sitting at home, but the company we bought it from manufactured their part in China when they ship it to us and their commercial invoice to U.S. Customs asks the company in Canada, where the country of origin it was manufactured and even though I bought it from Canada, had no idea that the part I ordered was not manufactured in Canada, we got hit with that 20 percent tariff on that product, and that surprised us. We didn't think it through or understand and the hard part is even when you talk to the absolute top people at U.S. Customs at the borders that are doing this, they're not even sure hour by hour what the rules are. So it's been hard.  We had another container come in and we had, I think, a $7k or $8k tariff. This is when it was 10%, but it landed in the U.S. before the tariff started and they still would not release it without us paying the tariff. Two days ago, we got that money back from U.S. customs. They realized they shouldn't have even charged it. It was before the date the tariff started. But unfortunately, by the time we released it, they held it hostage for a bit. So it's a hard situation, but we're going to work with other countries and I think that everybody's in the same boat, and I think in terms of pricing, our distribution model is much like the traditional guys. It's on a very low margin. So we have to have a lot of resellers that are looking to expand their business. So I'm curious about markets like Vietnam and India, which I keep hearing about, having gotten into electronics and being alternatives to Korea, Taiwan, particularly China, is that industry, particularly on the display side, mature enough now to buy products from there?  Jacob Horwitz: Since September, I've visited sixteen different countries across the world, I think on three or four continents and getting ready for the right factories and the right things and just enjoying travel at the same time, and the one thing that surprised me is how far behind the U.S. is compared to a lot of parts of the world and how much digital signage you see. Also, when you talk to these people what they're paying for digital signage throughout other parts of the world is far less money than the U.S. customers paying us companies for digital signage. The margins in Asia and Europe are much thinner than the traditional margins that resellers have been getting in the U.S.  Our motto, and you see it across our website, is “The Best for Less”, and we have tried to find the best factories in the world and be able to give it at a price that is not greedy. That's a win for us, for our resellers, and most importantly for the companies that are trying to buy and put that digital signage into their business so they can inspire and tell a story to their customer. And I think that even in the smallest towns of Vietnam, you still see digital outdoor LEDs on the sides of buildings and you go into the shopping malls and it's far more digital than you see here. So that was interesting to me as I've got to travel the world in the last four months. Is it a function of cost or awareness?  Jacob Horwitz: I'm not sure, but I'm assuming first it's a function of cost because where they're working on margins that are so much less, it allows that to get into people's businesses, and when you're charging $1k for a 55-inch commercial grade LCD, 500 nit monitor, it's a barrier to entry. So we're trying to brand something and bring something to the market where we can be 20% less to the end user than a lot of the traditional things, and we think we've accomplished that. The tariffs hurt us a little bit, but they hurt everybody by and large. So I think that's really why the U.S. is slower. I don't want to use the word greed. I own businesses, but people have tried to get margins that I don't think you can get anymore, and I think that you're going to have to find other ways to monetize your business through the installation side, through the content side, and I think that it's also helping companies. It's a big part of what we do. I think of Chris at Stratacash, he has a whole area where he helps monetize their solutions and it's helped, and we're looking at that closely. We're working with three or four companies right now where we can have our resellers work directly with them and educate their end users on how they can monetize the solution, through advertising in certain verticals. Not all verticals are conducive to digital out-of-home, but most are.  So that's an important part of how we're going to help move products into places that normally maybe couldn't afford to put the right solutions in. I assume that there are all kinds of people in North America, the U.S. in particular, who are aware that they can buy stuff via AliExpress or whatever. But they've heard enough to know, yes, you can pay substantially less, but you have to cross your fingers when it shows up.  Is Illuminology positioned as a safe harbor way to do it? Like we're doing the sourcing, we've figured that part out so we could pass on those savings without all the worry. Jacob Horwitz: Look to me, those sites are a lot like a box of chocolates. You never really know what you're going to get when that product shows up. As I said, even with the sample we got from somebody yesterday not being the right display, UL, and approvals, we're not going to be a website where you can buy whatever you want. It's going to be very focused on innovation. It's going to be the same factories. As I'm sure you've seen I get if I get one I get at least three emails every day from some Chinese factory trying to sell you whatever and everyone is a nickel cheaper than the other and I think that's just Pennywise and quality foolish.  So we're not going to be that it's going to be the best for less, and if we can create this supermarket of visual solutions, and it's a great product and the pricing can hit the street to an end user, double-digit, less expensive, and we are distributing through companies that have reached where the traditional resellers aren't touching, then we think that will help expand digital signage across the U.S.  So these would be reached to like the sign companies you mentioned, maybe the point of sale technology companies, those kinds of companies?  Jacob Horwitz: I have a guy I talked to a couple of days ago who sells medical devices. Nothing to do with digital signage. He's out there every day selling blood pressure machines or whatever medical devices he's selling and in the last few days, I've probably talked three times to him now about the opportunity he has to do stuff in the medical world because he's already out there calling on places to put in screens and some LED posters. And, so I think it's all kinds of places that maybe haven't even thought about incorporating digital signage into their end-user business, and these people are now educating why being able to tell a story through digital is so much better than a static sign.  So yeah, it's been enlightening to see all the different verticals you can all of a sudden make inroads that you never thought about. Yeah. So many companies are just going down the same familiar path of chasing QSRs, chasing retail, and I've always advised people to look at those other kinds of companies that already have established trust with your target vertical who supply other things to them and partner with them. Jacob Horwitz: Yeah, it's been interesting. When I was doing the installation side, we did a lot of QSR, McDonald's, Burger King, Sonic, Del Taco, that type of stuff, and a lot of them have seen a few of the first initial posts we've done and they're calling and asking more of what we can do and I'm excited just about window technology whether that be an LED, a double-sided LCD hanging in the window of a fast food restaurant is so much more effective than printing two breakfast sandwiches for $5 and shipping it out to the store, hoping the manager puts it in the window during the promotional time. Half the time, three weeks after the motions are over, they still have that digital thing in there saying breakfast sandwiches or the static poster thing, and then at 10:30 when breakfast is over, they're still talking about breakfast sandwiches instead of talking about Value meals or other desserts or other things they could be buying during dinner. So it makes nothing but sense to have those assets in there.  But the people who are buying their outdoor digital menu board don't even offer that product. So we feel that a supermarket with a full set of solutions, in a C-store to be able to do a stretch screen and a gondola and still do their monitors over their register and doing their digital menu board and having things that inspire people to walk in from the pump into the C-store, we have that full range of product where a lot of people just don't have a full range of offerings to that.  When you say a full range of products, is it purely display technology, or does your supermarket have other things?  Jacob Horwitz: We do light boxes, which are just an aluminum extruded frame that hangs on a wall with backlit LED, but it's a fabric, you see them in every airport. So we do a lot of light boxes, and that's a very affordable and very effective solution. It's a static display, but it pops.  We are doing music. We have partnered with CloudCover. CloudCover is owned by SiriusXM, I believe, and Pandora, because we think that it's part of the whole experience, it's touching all the senses of when you go into that business, we think music is a really important part of branding your business. So there are several out there that are there. We've hitched our ride there on the software side. Because we have to support the dealers, we have, we offer two software platforms, and it's because of relationship and stability and they're the best. There's a saying, if you're the smartest guy in the room, you're in the wrong room and so we've partnered with people that make me where I am not even close to the smartest guy in the room. We love working with Navori. We think Jeffrey Weitzman is amazing. So we offer to our partners and we've worked aggressively to have a good distribution model in Navori to our partners and potential end users. So if I'm sitting in a room with Jeff Hastings, I'm not the smartest guy in the room anymore. So we offer BrightSign, and BrightAuthor, and the players we go with are either the Navori or the BrightSign players, and we offer that CMS. They're not. The cheapest CMS, you had a great interview with Alistair and what they're doing and I listened to you last night. So there are a lot of options, but we have to support the dealer network. So to be able to have a dealer that wants to go off and do a different CMS, we support that. They can send us software and we'll test it to make sure, particularly if it's going to be SOC, that what they're using is going to run properly on that version of Android. So we'll support them that way or just before we order the product, we'll go into our lab and throw that on, but we can't support that dealer network on how to use the CMS. We have BrightAuthor and Novori, and we're good, and then we have two full-time people thatwho NOVA certified. So on the LED side, we're no, we have NOVA-certified experts, so we can help them with Novastar. So we can support that, but we can't support every CMS. So we encourage them, especially if they need a 4-a-month CMS, then I think that Alistair is a great solution, and there are a lot of those types of companies out there. But that won't be us. We'll have a couple of CMS, we'll have the music solution and we hope we can create a visual experience and a sensory experience that when they walk into an end user that's bought a product through one of our resellers, that product's inspiring consumers to spend more money. You and Stephen are hands-on with this, but how many other people do you have working with you?  Jacob Horwitz: Oh gosh, I've tapped into a lot of my old employees in a lot of years, so Stephen and I have known each other for 30 years. For us, it's more passionate at this age. It's certainly not about really the money. This is because your wife said you need to do something.  Jacob Horwitz: After years of being in the house and driving her crazy every 10 minutes, she made it clear I will either go find a job, or I'll have to support her next husband. So that had a little bit to do with it. But Stephen and I are wired the same way. It's about quality. It's about good solutions. It's never been about trying to make money on this. I think it's helping people. The people that I've brought in, I have a Project Manager who worked for me starting 15 years ago, and now she's ahead of our marketing, Becca, and she's been with me for a decade and a half. The girl in my accounting department has been with me for over 15 years. I have a fragment in the house Legal who is my full-time in my old business and they've all been around at least 10 or 15 years. My CIO has been with me since 1999. So he was in college when he started. So we've got a good, like Stephen and I, that these are not newbies to this industry. One of my Project Managers started with me when we first talked nine years ago when she was a Senior Project Manager for Burger King. So, everybody that I've surrounded myself with so far, there's been at least a decade of hitting the shows, doing the installs, and that school of hard knocks. So have you got 20 people, 40 people? Jacob Horwitz: Right now, we're a team of maybe ten or eleven people. I have three people coming in next week for interviews after the experience center is open that are all industry veteran types and we're just getting started. The idea started in September. I went to Infocomm and then maybe I saw you and just started feeling the waters. We were going to launch in early January or February. We're a month old. The container of our showroom sat in Long Beach for six weeks before it got. It took longer to get from Long Beach to our offices than it did from China to Long Beach. So we're just getting started. But we're going to stay in a boutique. We don't want to be all things to all people.  Right, and they can find you online at Illuminology.com?  Jacob Horwitz: Illuminology.com and there's an online brochure of the product and we thank you. And Dave, I said this to you the other day, but I want to say it again. I need to thank you because, for everybody I've ever hired for the last decade, the first thing we have them do is go through your podcast and your blogs and learn about the industry, and what you do for us is so valuable and I mean that with all sincerity.  Thank you.  Jacob Horwitz: We hired a new sales guy and he started a month ago. He called me yesterday and said, Do you know this Dave Haynes guy? He didn't know, he did not know I had a podcast today. He goes, I am learning so much from him. And, I go, yeah, I'm chatting with him tomorrow. So thank you for what you do as well.  Thank you. That's very kind.  Jacob Horwitz: Very well deserved. So thank you for the opportunity to share our story and we look forward to working with the people in the industry, to help and expand digital signage into places that can be more like your Europe where it's everywhere. All right. Thank you!

As the madness of March kicks into high gear, we sit down with David Reynhout to explore how Daktronics is playing a crucial role in this iconic tournament season. David dives into the impressive number of venues featuring Daktronics equipment, from cutting-edge displays to immersive fan experiences. He also sheds light on the behind-the-scenes work of our dedicated service team, ensuring every game runs smoothly and every venue is fully supported.   Links: 236 – Preparing for College Football Bowl Games with David Reynhout  

Join us as we recap the latest news from February 2025. From new video displays at Giants Town Stadium, UC Davis and the University of Houston to cutting-edge esports installations at Dakota State University and massive end-wall displays at UConn, we cover all the latest projects and technology. We'll also discuss our new DB-7000 digital billboard technology.   Links: Baseball Experience Gets Upgrade at UC Davis from Daktronics UConn Basketball Turned to Daktronics for Largest End Wall Video Displays In College Basketball University of Houston Completes Season with Second-Largest Display in Big 12 Football from Daktronics Dakota State University Turns to Daktronics for Esports LED Displays Daktronics Unveils the Latest Digital Billboard Technology Giants Town Stadium Opening with Daktronics Video Display

When it comes to college football, Bowl Games are a BIG deal! This year, there's a brand new 12-team playoff as well. With 43 total games taking place, many venues are using Daktronics products and services to support the action on the field. To hear how our team prepares and supports our customers during this time, Justin and Matt are joined by David Reynhout, Daktronics Customer Success Specialist. He shares the total number of games and venues we're preparing for this busy bowl season.

Inside the walls of Daktronics, engineering and assembly of displays isn't the only thing taking place. Every component used in our systems is tested. To hear all about the testing and so much more, Justin and Matt are joined by Paul Gilk, Daktronics Vice President of Quality, Reliability and Serviceability.   Links: Daktronics Lab Services Webpage: www.daktronics.com/labservices  

When it comes to installing an LED video display on the side of a mountain for ski slopes, Auviso and Daktronics come together to find a solution. To hear about this project and the use of helicopters to complete the installation, Justin and Matt sat down with Martin Elmiger and Markus Bucher with Auviso at the Daktronics International Partner Conference in Madrid. They also shared the uses of this display and whether they see it as a trend for future projects.          

Finding your way around an airport and enjoying your time while you are there can all be helped with LED technology. To hear all about this marketplace, the trends we're seeing and the opportunities for the future, Justin and Matt spoke with Kevin Palmeter, Daktronics' airport market manager.   Links: Daktronics Airports Website: www.daktronics.com/airports Denver International Airport: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/photos?k=denver&project=130049-002&media=WP-025777 Los Angeles International Airport: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/photos?k=LAX&project=141628-003&media=WP-18195  

We recently hosted our High School Video Summit to expand and grow video system experiences. To hear what it's like to attend the summit, Justin and Matt are joined by Willie Thomas, Director of Media Integration for Robinson ISD. He shares his experience as well as the great things he's doing with his video display productions and AV Department in Waco, Texas.   Links: Daktronics Video Summit Webpage: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/events/standard-video-training Robinson ISD Website: https://www.risdweb.org/

Applications Engineers at Daktronics really figure out how to take ideas and make them work using our video displays and technology. To hear all the behind-the-scenes information, Justin and Matt are joined by Michael Cruz, longtime Daktronics Applications Engineer. He shares his experiences and what it's like to be putting video displays to work for our customers.   Links: YouTube Interview: https://youtu.be/PNfpT1jQYbA?si=dtIs9Ixes3BYDxZ1

In our special NACDA series, we recorded from our booth in the trade show exhibit hall. To kick things off, we spoke with our President and CEO Reece Kurtenbach to hear about our history with NACDA and the college marketplace. We then spoke with NACDA's Dana LeRoy about the convention, their mission and Daktronics. Finally, we talked with our own Eric Cain, lead sales for the collegiate space, to hear more about our company's approach and trends we're seeing at that level of sports.

In a career, experience with a company goes a long way. To hear about experiences from marching band to field services to becoming the OOH and On-Premise Service Market Manager at Daktronics, Justin and Matt talk with Sherman Dugas. He shares his journey of working at Daktronics and how he leans on those experiences in his recent change in roles at the company.   Links: Daktronics OOH Webpage: daktronics.com/ooh Daktronics On Premise Webpage: daktronics.com/commercial FrameWrx by Daktronics Website: daktronics.com/framewrx     

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT There's been a steady stream of announcements in the past couple of years about new sports and entertainment venues going up in the US and elsewhere, and one of the notable attributes about these developments is that they are not just stadiums and arenas - they're big commercial developments anchored by that kind of building but surrounded by retail, residential and infrastructure. They're sprawling, at times, and with that, not necessarily easy to navigate and use. An Australian software company called PAM has a tag line about transforming complex spaces into loved places, and it does that mainly through what people in digital signage would call wayfinding. But there's more going on with PAM than just maps. The company blends that base capability with a digital signage CMS, mobile, analytics, and integrations with business systems, including Ticketmaster. It also intertwines all these components so that they're reactive, with data from one component informing another. The company already has some big name, high profile clients and venues to reference, including SoFi Stadium in LA and the F1 circuit for Las Vegas. Robert Johnson is VP Sales for North America for the company, and he has a deep background in both wayfinding and digital signage. He got into the sector years ago, in the early days of Four Winds Interactive, and I've known him for ages now. So it was great to learn about PAM, but also just great to catch up. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Robert, great to catch up with you. I haven't seen you in years.  Robert Johnson: Likewise, Dave, it has been a while, and we go way back and it's great to reconnect with you.  I knew you from your time at Four Winds Interactive, where we were involved in a couple of pretty big deals. I was on the consulting side, and you were on the sales side when you were doing sales for that company. Could you give a background on your journey in digital signage?  Robert Johnson: Yeah, happy to, and you nailed it right there. You and I had a really exciting, fun opportunity to work on a couple of very large enterprise projects with some big names, great folks, and great clients and yeah, you and I cut our teeth together. That's where our relationship really spawned, but yeah, I was really fortunate, I got to start working with Four Winds Interactive when they were very quite small. I think when I started, there were somewhere between 25, and no more than 45 employees there. Were they still in the house or had they moved out by then?  Robert Johnson: Yeah, I was in the original mansion, the Parkside Mansion, right off of City Park in Denver, Colorado, and that was a trip. They had weddings on the weekends and we sold software during the weekdays in there until we had to break down our desks. But that was a startup life right there.  Looking back is interesting because that was 16 years ago when I took that job with them and looking back, there's a piece of me that says that you can make a Netflix story about the rise of the software company because the economy was crap, it was 2007-2009, and the housing market crashed. I remember my parents asking me like, how do you have a job? How was the company doing?  What on earth is digital signage?  Robert Johnson: Why are people spending money on digital signage? And I remember telling my parents, I was young, I was in my 20s and I was like, mom, dad, this is amazing. People are buying this left and right. It was the kind of product that if you could just demo it and talk about it, you were selling it.  I was fortunate that I got to move up in the ranks and work on a lot of large enterprise deals, selling very complex digital signage solutions with incredible integrations to Delta Airlines and JetBlue Airlines, Toyota, Lexus, Mazda, Staples, just massive digital signage implementations and yeah, we had lots of integrators and hardware involved and it was a ride, man. It was awesome.  So as it happens, people move on and you went to a new company but could you tell me what they were doing?  Robert Johnson: The connection is this: In the world of digital signage, I joke and say, I sold TVs for a decade, but on the TVs, on the screens, you're selling communications platforms, employee communications platforms, retail solutions, touchscreens, and wayfinding. Wayfinding has been a part of my life for a long time. We sold many wayfinding solutions, helping guests navigate stores, retail, malls, airports, and other places. I then moved to a company called Concept3D, which when I started, only had one product: a mapping product, but no signage, and for me, that was a breath of fresh air. I was able to eliminate all the hardware complexities because hardware fails, PCs and displays fail, turn on, turn off, and get vandalized, and for me, this was amazing. I could sell wayfinding without having to implement any hardware, and they have a phenomenal platform, but then their main focus was or is higher education and I was brought on to try to sell into enterprise solutions, and we had a few good deals in there, but then COVID hit and we launched another product for virtual tours and we did a bunch of other things in there. So they actually have five products now, all heavily focused on higher education, but the wayfinding piece always stuck around. We sold maps to anybody who wanted to visualize their space and anybody who wanted to enhance their space. If you're on a college campus and campuses are huge, they're square miles large, and so you need to navigate those environments.  Easy to get lost in them.  Robert Johnson: It's easy to get lost, and a lot of faculty, students, guests, and parents are frustrated trying to make that experience better, and so that was the plug.  So you were with that company and then I think you went on a hiatus or something, and now you're with a company called PAM. Robert Johnson: PAM, yeah, and this is not the cooking spray company. It's not spam. It's not Pam. Funny enough, and this is like an accident, but PAM is actually the word, map, spelled backwards.  Oh, okay. I was trying to figure out what an acronym was. Robert Johnson: Yeah, but that was not intentional. We actually had a customer bring it to our attention. Did you know that PAM is MAP backward? Anyway, it's Project Asset Management. That's actually what it stands for.  But PAM is really unique because it combines the last 16 years of my life into this amazing software platform that has been in development for the last seven years, and so we're still in the ramp-up phase, the startup phase. We're not quite a startup. We're in a kind of launch phase right now in terms of our trajectory with adding clients and growth, but they do a couple of things. We have a digital signage component where we power hundreds and hundreds of screens for large entertainment districts, sporting facilities, stadiums, and arenas and we specialize in interactive wayfinding.  We don't go to market as really either one of those. We go to market as a smart navigation platform helping cities, visitors, bureaus, and entertainment districts have a more frictionless, guest experience, and as in your world, Dave, the frictionless experience can be anything from how do you get parking? How do you find something? How do you get information on screens or your mobile device? We touch a lot of different communication mediums. It's a perfect fit for me. I've been there for two months now, and it's just been super exciting.  Were you looking around, or did they come to you?  Robert Johnson: A little bit of both out there when you've been in the space for a while, as we chatted before, you get approached by people, and certain things become a fit and, every day on my, on LinkedIn and stuff, I'd probably get hit up by a recruiter every day for something, or you get someone reaching out to you. So yeah, this just came across my plate. We chatted and chatted for a while. It wasn't one of those light switch things where you just turn on and jump ship. When you're our age, my age, your age, everything's pretty calculated at that point.  We're not our age. 'cause I'm way older than you.  Robert Johnson: Yeah, you're older than me.  I could be your father.  Robert Johnson: Fair enough.  I could even be your grandfather.  Robert Johnson: Yeah, wife, kids, all that stuff, and play, and I'm never just like making a brash decision to just jump because the technology is cool but yeah, it was a calculated decision, but once I got to dig into the software and see what these guys are about. Hindsight's 2020 and I'm just super, super glad I made the change.  This is an Australian company?  Robert Johnson: They are headquartered in Sydney but have an office in LA. Right now, I'm heading up the North American sales efforts, and they are very, very, hyper-focused on sports and entertainment districts. So yeah, we are taking a smart city, smart district approach.  It doesn't really happen as much in Canada because it's much, much smaller, but from what I can tell, any new sports venue that goes up is not just an arena, it's a district with residential, retail, dining, hotels, the whole nine yards. Robert Johnson: Yeah, you nailed it. Like I joke and tell teens, yeah, you might be on a football team or a baseball or basketball or hockey team, that's fine. But you're actually in the business of pro entertainment. You just happen to have a hockey team associated with you or a basketball team associated with you and if you're football, you only have 8-10 home games a year. If you're basketball, you've got 40 and hockey 40, but there's another 200 to 300 days a year that you need to be putting on events.  So if you Google, there are 200 stadiums currently being built, planned to be built, and contracted to be built in the next 24 to 36 months and if you just follow a few of the blogs online every week, every month, there's a new stadium that's being announced or a new district that's being announced to be built, and all of these are now very integrated in the city. They're very much funded by voters and the city council and the visitors bureaus. It's a fully integrated approach these days.  I would imagine they pretty much have to say this is a commercial property development, and not just a stadium for that very reason, with the exception, maybe, Texas, where there are high school football stadiums that will see 20,000.  Most cities don't want to spend 200 million or whatever the number is on something that's only going to get a handful of days of use. they really need to justify that. This is going to create a whole bunch of other jobs.  Robert Johnson: Yeah. Nowadays, when a stadium is being built, they look at the entire infrastructure. Do we need to bring internet lines? Where's transit? Where's the parking? Where's the bus situation? If that stuff isn't considered, then the project just won't happen. It's a fully integrated approach, and there are Oakview Group, Legends, and Populous, and there are these massive architects and developers out there who are building these for them, they're managing these event centers and stadiums for the teams and the cities, and it's a huge business.  That's actually the way that PAM approaches the market. We go one to one and we sell our software and platform to the teams and the arenas. But we also are working the angle very heavily with the architects, and so we're talking to these projects right when they're breaking ground years ahead of time.  Yeah, I assume that what's important to them is that they may understand they're going to have digital signage, directories, and some degree of wayfinding, but they don't want a gallery of different technology providers to do it for them. They would likely greatly prefer that there's one service provider that can do the screens but can also do the wayfinding, the phone app for navigation, and everything else, right?  Robert Johnson: Yeah, a hundred percent. We work with Gable and we work with Daktronics. We work with ABI SPL, the tech providers so that when ABI SPL is recommending a solution, that way they have one wayfinding provider that's for mobile, that's for web, that's for the digital signage, and when they would need to make an update and communicate… I use this example on some of my calls, I don't know if a year or two ago, Dave, you were up in this area, the Buffalo Bills at the end of one of the games had a massive brawl and there was a fight, and that's like an incident, right? So immediately safety, security, and people like that are trying to get involved, and if you need to communicate to 50,000 people leaving the event that there was an incident taking place, you don't want to update your text message provider, your mobile provider, your web provider, or get on the phone with your web management team security. You want to be able to go into one place and update. All your digital signage, all your communications, your mobile, everything with a click of a button, and that's the kind of stuff that we have the capability of doing. Just as an example, there are so many other things. Another cool thing that our software does when you think about planning and working with these different technology solutions is we have this really amazing data analytics platform where if there's an event happening on a Saturday, we can then show you this heat map that actually shows you all the dead zones. So if there's a dead zone on the South side of the entry and there's no internet right there, we'll actually be able to show you on the heat map that shows, as somebody was walking, there's a dead zone here and you may want to actually put additional, WiFi connections or routers or enhance the call-up Verizon or AT&T, your provider because there's a dead zone right there. So, our platform has the ability to do all these different things, which makes it really unique, and again, one of the reasons I'm grateful to be here.  Does the fact that you're working with stuff that's going to be on mobile phones as well, give you some sense of analytics as well, in terms of how people move around those kinds of spaces? Robert Johnson: Yeah, that's one of our value propositions, which is the ability to provide data crowd management so that you can make a better decision. So think about this: I live in Golden, and I'm actually going to do one of the playoff games on Monday with my wife. We're going to go to the Denver Nuggets game. If I open up the Denver Nuggets app and I get a no before you go message, and it's, hey Robert, you have prepaid parking at this lot over here, and I pull up my app and I use the PMA app to get there. The PAM app will then show that Robert Johnson because I'm logged into the, I got my profile set up with the Nuggets. It'll say that, Robert left his house in Golden via car, or Robert got on the train, went to Union Station, and got there. The team can then take that information back and say, look, you had 18,000 people at a sold-out game, and 4,000 of them took transit, they took a train to the game. You can take that back to your sponsors and your advertisers and Lexus and Toyota and those guys and say, look, you need to be advertising between the hours of five and six o'clock to all the people coming to the game and letting them know about the merchandise, food, beverage, coupons, parking, all of these things. So yeah, our platform can give that data to the team so they can make literal, actual business decisions that drive revenue and sponsorship revenue and value to their sponsors. It's really cool. I have been in the wayfinding space for 16 years, and none of the companies I've seen have the ability to do that. Yeah, I've always liked wayfinding, but the challenge I've always had with the stuff that you find on touch displays in shopping malls and so on is that you look up what you want, and it'll show you how to get there, but then you walk 10 paces and you can't remember where to turn or anything else. The next step is to put it on a phone, which gives you a little bit more, but it still seems a little disjointed from the rest of what goes on in a big space.  Robert Johnson: You'll like this, Dave, and I think you can probably validate it, as we're the only mapping platform that integrates with Ticketmaster and Ticketmaster Ignite. So again, using that mobile example, if I'm leaving the Nuggets game and I just had an amazing time and there's another game because there will be another playoff game. If I'm like, honey, let's do it, let's buy the tickets for Wednesday night's game. Right there. I can do that transaction, and if it starts on the map and I say, yeah, I want to buy tickets right here and get my parking, we can follow that journey, go back to the Nuggets at the end of the game, and say, look, you had 4,000 people buy tickets, and their journey started on the map.  There goes 600 bucks.  Robert Johnson: Exactly, there goes 600 bucks. But, like that's the thing that I, as a sales guy and sales professional, have always wanted to go back to my clients with and say, look, the map is generating revenue. We can see that people scan these hotdog coupons. We can see where people came from. You can go back to your sponsors. All of this and more, Dave, just makes PAM; it's the belief inside me that knows that PAM is going somewhere pretty spectacular in this space.  Yeah, I'm sure that, some of the entertainment districts and so on that look at this, and say, the experiential side is very nice that this helps people get around, but if you can take another couple of hops and say, and it'll generate incremental revenue for you or boost the average attendee profile in terms of what they buy and so on, then that gets them a lot more interested. Robert Johnson: It goes from a map turning into a really nice thing to have to, hey, this is something we really need and it provides value and impact.  So you mentioned that the company is ramping up, but I'm looking at the website and I don't want to rattle off names in case they're not accurate, but you're deployed in some fairly significant familiar areas, right? Robert Johnson: Yeah, I'd say the company has really been fortunate in the last 24 months. The Australian Open was massive. It covers a huge ground in Melbourne, where the city is almost shut down for that event. Hundreds of thousands of people come in. We've been contracted with SoFi Stadium since the stadium's inception and went live. That's the big one in LA for people who might not know that.  Robert Johnson: Yeah, they've got the Rams and the Chargers playing out of that stadium. Plus, it's a venue that hosts FIFA and the Super Bowl. I didn't realize this until a couple of months ago. The Super Bowl was just there, and the Super Bowl was the highest revenue-generating Super Bowl in the history of the Super Bowls because of the capacity and the venue drove so much revenue; the Super Bowl is going to be back there, not this season, but the following season. It is not normal to have back-to-back Super Bowls within two or three years of one another at the same facility. And yeah, we're powering the navigation experience for that as well. Our relationship with Formula One is super strong. We just knocked it out of the park with Las Vegas, and yeah, before this call this morning, I just had a call across the world with another Formula One venue because of our relationship with Vegas. So yeah, it's been a gift. I appreciate that you kept on giving.  Yeah. Let's talk about Vegas because that's an interesting one in that it's a facility that's built for three to four days as opposed to a fixed venue that, if you like, you might go repeatedly. If you're a season ticket holder, you know your way around. But with this, everything was somewhat temporary, with the exception of the PADEX. How did it manifest itself? What would be the PAM experience if I went to that I wouldn't because I just wouldn't want to deal with all the crowds,  Robert Johnson: Yeah, you nailed it. There are a couple of them out there. Miami is similar to Vegas because it's a semi-temporary structure. There are now some permanent structures at both venues, but there are a few of them out there, in the world, but yeah, Vegas, in particular, was really unique, and they had a lot of challenges that they were very proactive in trying to solve this. You had to walk through Caesars Palace. You had to walk through the Bellagio. You had to walk through some of these hotels to navigate to your seat, to your area, maybe the party, or the venue that you needed to get to.  I didn't have the ability to attend the event, but I know, for example, the Formula One Las Vegas hat sold out. It's an interesting fact that they didn't make enough. They didn't realize that, but that was the one piece of apparel that everybody wanted to buy.  Probably because it was the one thing they could afford.  Robert Johnson: It's the one thing that they could afford, but everyone wanted to walk away and wear their Formula One hat, and as a takeaway for the event, they're like, okay, we need to put more hats around, we need to allow people to buy this apparel easier, we need to help people get to those locations easier.  I think you'll find this interesting too, Dave. I talked a little bit about the data, the heat maps, and the journey maps that we provided a second ago. That was a huge win for Formula One and the casinos. We were able to go back and show them. I'm going to make the numbers up because I don't have them in front of me, but let's say throughout the weekend, 50,000 people needed to navigate through the Bellagio or the Caesars Hotel to get from point A to point B, and we showed it, we could visually show them people were going and why they were going there and what the places they searched for. But because it was the race's first time, we didn't do any interiors for the Bellagio or Caesars. We just had the exterior of the building.  So now we've contracted with those properties to do the interiors so people can more easily navigate those facilities and get to where they need to go because they were like, we spent way too long trying to get through this hotel. We didn't know how to get through.  Yeah, and Las Vegas is a textbook example of where navigation is incredibly valuable. I've been to Las Vegas 40+ times, and if I go into something like Caesars, I'm going to get lost. There are no straight lines.  Robert Johnson: Yeah, there's no straight lines at all. Our integration with Ticketmaster also played big into that one as well, again, if you're Dave and you bought a pass for you're going to be sitting at Turn 12, you're going to have parking around Turn 12. Your entrance is only going to be at Turn 12, and so when you want to scan your QR code or you want to get directions, our integration is going to say, we know Dave, bought parking here. We know he's staying at this hotel. We're going to get him to his property. Again, that integration with Ticketmaster was a really big value-added feature for the curated content experience.  So, how does the digital signage component work? Typically with a wayfinding application. It's a file that's going to sit in a digital signage schedule and that's how the two kind of sync up with each other. but I'm thinking it's probably a little different here.  Robert Johnson: Yeah, it is a little bit different. As you would expect, we have a content management system that allows us to manage the content on the map and the digital signage as well and so if you have a non-interactive sign, we can control the content on there. We can control the content if you have an LED parking sign. But there's a connection between the two, an integration between the two, where if parking lot G gets filled up, we can say it's full, and we're going to go ahead and let the digital sign or the LED board say it's full. We're also going to provide that update on the map as well or the interactive kiosk so that all of that content is married up into one kind of seamless user interface.  So it's all integrated as opposed to, I'm going to do something with the mobile app and the wayfinding component of this, then I'm going to back right out of that and then launch the digital signage piece and do other things. Robert Johnson: Yeah, exactly. The name of that platform with the digital signage is called 360 Live. That's what we call it. It's like a full 360 experience, but that's the idea. You don't have to go into two or three different systems. We don't have multiple content management systems. We've got one that has its parking application. We've got one that just handles navigation. We've got one that handles the digital signage, but when you make an update on one, it updates across all of them. You mentioned Daktronics and Gable. I'm assuming you guys avoid the hardware side of it. Robert Johnson: Yes, thank goodness. We do. I would have nightmares if I had to get back into the hardware game. So yeah, we work with those guys to partner with them on the hardware piece.  So is it something that you license via SaaS, or is it an on-prem thing?  Robert Johnson: Yeah, it is SaaS. We're a software as a service company. We have managed services as well, but yeah, like a lot of companies nowadays, we have an ongoing recurring annual software fee that includes software support, maintenance updates, all the features we roll out. We've got initial set up fees for us to build out the beautiful artwork set things up and get it integrated. but once it's up and running, our clients can manage it on their own.  Formula One's done a great job of that. SoFi has done a great job of that. But a lot of these teams have really small marketing teams, and they rely pretty heavily on their vendors and so we do a lot of hands-on management of their applications for them.  We've known each other for a long time. One thing that I've noticed on LinkedIn in the last, I don't know, two or three years is a lot of posts by you about something called the Robert Johnson project, and it seems like you've been on something of a personal journey and the undertone of, it seems to be that you realized I was working my ass off and maybe not paying enough attention to my family.  Robert Johnson: You nailed it, Dave. You really did, and that probably just comes from years of experience that you have ahead of me. I've always been big in professional development and training and things like that and I started working very closely with a coach and coach, Townsend Wardlaw. I don't, Townsend Wardlaw. A good friend of mine, who I have known for 20 years, came back into my life, and yeah, I spent a lot of time working with him, I used to think that the number one thing in my life was work and success and money and getting up the food chain and I did a lot of that and I, and there was a kind of a cost to it, and the cost was a lot of travel. What you and I did together on occasion, a lot of it was late nights and dinners and president's club and all that stuff was awesome.  I had two kids while I did all that, and man, it's tough because without having done all that, I wouldn't be the person I am, and I wouldn't have a lot of the success maybe that I've had, but I pumped the brakes as I got close to 40. I joke, Dave, and I say I could write a book called 38-39-40, and when I was about 38, this all kind of came to a head, and I realized, the number one thing in my life is my kids, my wife, then sales and me. If I can work on all those things and put my family ahead of everything else, everything else will follow, and I'll still be able to have a really successful life. Yeah, I posted a lot about that on LinkedIn, and I still do occasionally because it's a big part of what I'm doing. Now when I think about LinkedIn, I've got three kinds of things or passions, and one is my life. One is sales. I love posting about just sales, and then one is PAM and those are like the three buckets of things I enjoy talking about and posting about, and I don't have to try to do it. It just comes out naturally. So a lot of people have that journey and realize, you know what, I need to pay more attention to my family and not be so obsessed with work, but they don't call it a project, and they don't put it up on LinkedIn. That's not a criticism in any way. I'm just saying I'm curious why you did that.  Robert Johnson: Wow. Why did I do it? Everyone's different, but for me, when you say something, you hear it, and you put it out there, it just becomes real. It becomes really tangible and real, and it becomes something that you live by, you wake up, and you know it is there, and you can come back to it every time something bad happens, you have a bad day, or if something didn't go the way you wanted it to. When you go back to what your purpose is… I have a purpose and my purpose, it goes, actually goes in this order. I misstated earlier, but it's my wife, it's my kids, it's me and it's sales. Those four things are my purpose on LinkedIn. I've got another mission statement, and it's to connect with, motivate, and inspire as many people as possible. I come back to those things. If anybody asks, what are you doing on LinkedIn? And I said, look, I just. I just want to connect with people. Why do you want to connect with people? I want to see, if maybe I can motivate somebody. Maybe I can help somebody. Maybe I can inspire somebody. It hasn't been quite two years, Dave. I started my journey. It was like September, almost 18 months ago, and man, I helped a friend. I said, now she's a friend, a woman at the time who really wanted to get into Formula One, and I made a couple of introductions, and literally about four months after I made some introductions to her, she was on a plane to the UK and gave a live in-person talk about UX and UI design to Silverstone. And that's inspirational and motivational to me and it all started with a connection, and LinkedIn serves a lot of purposes. That stuff just makes it exciting and fun, and I'm going to keep doing it as long as it's still exciting and fun.  As you know, running a podcast and stuff can sometimes feel like work, and when it becomes work, and it becomes really hard, and it's not fun anymore, I'm sure that you would probably just turn it off and walk away if it became really painful and crappy.  All right, Robert. You talked about connecting, and it was great reconnecting with you. We need to stay in touch more. Robert Johnson: Yeah, Dave, really appreciate the reconnect here. This has been great, man. I'm just so happy for you with your business and everything you got going on and, yeah, thanks again for having me on. 

When a massive direct-view LED video wall is installed to make a completely immersive experience, teams collaborate to make sure it's a successful project. To hear all the details of this project for Flogistix, Justin and Matt are joined by Ali Sylvester, Director of Business Solutions at Flogistix, and Kyle Kempf, CTS-I Director of Commercial Audio Video at ImageNet Consulting. They dig into the vision for the space, the architecture that went into it and everything else that brings the project to life.   Links: Daktronics News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/imagenet-and-daktronics-deliver-led-video-wall-experience-for-flogistix Flogistix Website: https://flogistix.com/ ImageNet Consulting Website: https://www.imagenetconsulting.com/ Rand Elliott Architects Website: https://randelliottarchitects.com/ Daktronics and ImageNet Podcast: https://podcast.daktronics.com/e/143-imagenet-consulting-with-kyle-kempf/

The National Sports Forum (NSF) is hosting its Spring Summit – a virtual event that is now FREE thanks to a Daktronics sponsorship. To hear about this event and what attendees can expect, Justin and Matt spoke with Will Ellerbruch, Daktronics National Sales Manager. He's a long-time attendee of NSF and will be hosting one of the sessions during the event.   Link: Registration Link: https://keap.page/nsf/spring-summit-registration-2024.html NSF Podcast with Ron: https://podcast.daktronics.com/e/46-a-conversation-about-the-national-sports-forum-with-ron-seaver/

As we continue to innovate and expand the capabilities and uses of our All Sport Pro, Justin and Matt are once again joined by Chris Johnson, Sport Show Product Manager for Daktronics to hear all of the details. This includes what's new for our customers, how it streamlines the integration and much more.   Links: All sport pro website: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/products/software-and-controllers/all-sport-pro All Sport Pro Product Specs: https://daktronics.widen.net/s/6lhnkjggdl/cutsheet_all-sport-pro Video Highlight for All Sport Pro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HcYxaiVsZw All Sport Pro Brochure: https://daktronics.widen.net/s/6lhnkjggdl/cutsheet_all-sport-pro (All Sport Pro is being used as a lap counter for gym class at Sioux Valley, HS)   (Chris Johnson, Sport Show Product Manager for Daktronics)

As digital signage applications expand, the technology that supports those applications is advancing as well. To hear how Daktronics is providing powerful solutions for these digital signs, Justin and Matt talked with Bill Hadsell, Daktronics control system product manager, and Lisa Silveira, Daktronics digital signage business manager. They share details of our Quad Player, how it came to be and the flexibility if offers end users with their digital signage strategies.

The South Bend Cubs are on their third Daktronics display dating back to their first installation nearly 20 years ago in 2005. To hear about the evolution of technology at Four Winds Field, Justin and Matt are joined by Chris Hagstrom-Jones, Cubs Assistant General Manager of Marketing and Media. He shares his history with the team, his experiences with LED video technology in previous roles and much more in this episode all about minor league baseball.   Links: Daktronics News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/upgraded-led-technology-coming-to-south-bend-cubs-from-daktronics Daktronics Project Highlight: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/photos?k=south%20bend%20cubs&project=114946-001&media=WP-025213

As the college basketball world prepares for the madness of championship tournaments, Daktronics also prepares to support multiple games at facilities hosting the tournament. To hear the details, Justin and Matt talk with Brandon McRae, Daktronics account manager for live events. He shares the preparation, on-site support and other activities the company does to be ready for college basketball in March. Daktronics Services Phone Number: 1-800-325-8766 Daktronics Support Website: daktronics.com/mysupport    

Chris Pankonin recently joined our team as an Event Production Supervisor and he has a great deal of experience in the live events industry. Justin and Matt sat down with him and heard about his previous journeys from Nebraska to Oregon to Daktronics and everything in between.   Links Daktronics Professional Services Website: www.daktronics.com/professionalservices Daktronics Event Production Website: www.daktronics.com/eventproduction

When it comes to signing up for an internship, JaeLeigh Mittelstaed suggests taking the leap! She joined our team as a sales intern in 2023 and shares details of how her internship was different than she initially expected including how she worked with multiple different markets the company serves and some life skills she took away from the experience.   Links: Daktronics Internships and Student Employment: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/employment/internships-and-students  Available Internships: https://careers-daktronics.icims.com/jobs/search?ss=1&searchRelation=keyword_all&searchPositionType=21749&mobile=false&width=920&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-360&jun1offset=-300 

When BSN Sports Construction and Varsity Brands toured Daktronics this fall, they sat down in our studios for a conversation about their business, how they work with schools and how they work with Daktronics to bring new technology into those school's facilities. Joining Justin and Matt for this conversation are Julie Jackson, Vice President of Varsity Brand Impact Program and BSN Sports Construction, and Erik Rios and Brandon West, Project Managers of BSN Sports Construction.    Links: BSN Sports: https://www.bsnsports.com/ 

When it comes to signage standards for transportation applications, there are terms such as ITS, NEMA and TS4. Justin and Matt talked with Jason Morrison, Daktronics market manager for ITS, Parking and Public Transport as well as NEMA Committee Chair, to understand the meaning of all of those terms. They also discuss the new TS4 standard that was recently released and what it means for Daktronics and those in the ITS industry.   Links: https://www.nema.org/ Blog post: https://www.daktronics.com/blog/new-nema-ts-4-standards-explained 

When it comes to delivering an amazing fan experience using the latest and greatest Daktronics technology, Abbey and Jen at Gillette Stadium know all about it! Abbey Thistle is the Director of Event Presentation and Fan Engagement and Jen Gahan is the Manager of Game Entertainment and Fan Engagement for the stadium and sat down with Justin and Matt after a big win to discuss everything that goes into controlling their game-day experience as well as the largest end zone video display in America.

Mt. San Antonio College, commonly known as Mt. SAC, brought home the Daktronics Cup this past year and their Dean & Director of Athletics Joe Jennum joined Justin and Matt to share the details of their victory. He covers the sports they play, the ins and outs of their program, emerging sports and much more.   Links: SAC Website: https://www.mtsac.edu/ Daktronics Cup Final Standings: https://nacda.com/news/2022/2/8/natycaa-daktronics-cup-fall-standings-announced.aspx

When it comes to athletics at two-year colleges, one of the ultimate prizes is the NATYCAA Cup! Shane Larson, Director of Athletics at Iowa Western Community College, joins Justin and Matt to share all the details of the competition and how they were able to bring home the cup in 2023.   Links: Iowa Western Community College Website: https://www.iwcc.edu/ NATYCAA Website: https://nacda.com/sports/natycaa 

When it comes to brightness, we turn to our resident experts to help study and set standards. Justin and Matt talk with Shannon Mutschelknaus, Daktronics reliability lab expert, to hear how we keep our displays within the set standards for emitting light. He also shares a specific project where this lighting information was critical to the success of the installation.

Courage & Conviction Investing shares why small cap investors should stay hungry and foolish (2:50), why he's never been longer on Advanced Emissions Solutions (13:50) and strategies around Red Robin, Farmer Brothers, Daktronics and Yield10 Bioscience (33:35).Subscribe to Courage & Conviction Investing's Second Wind CapitalTranscripts on Seeking AlphaShow Notes:Small Cap Alpha, Commodity Danger And Advanced Emissions Solutions With Courage & Conviction InvestingAdvanced Emissions Solutions, Inc.: The EPA's Significant PFAS Policy Proposal Is A Massive CatalystRed Robin: Another Beat And A RaiseFor full access to analyst ratings, stock quant scores as well as dividend grades, subscribe to Seeking Alpha Premium at seekingalpha.com/subscriptions.

Daktronics is unveiling a new product offering that integrates with Show Control and Venus Control Suite. To hear all the details about how it works and how it elevates the live event experience, Justin and Matt are joined by Bill Hadsell, Daktronics Control System Product Manager.    Links: News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/seamlessly-integrate-with-and-control-digital-media-networks-with-daktronics-live-channel  Live Channel Website: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/products/software-and-controllers/show-control/show-control-live/live-channel 

Esports' rising popularity is highlighted by some major installations in Saudi Arabia. To hear more about how Savvy Gaming Group is covering walls in LED displays, Justin and Matt talk with Tyler Husby, project manager, and Chaker Joanne, field service engineer, both covering the Middle East region for Daktronics. We talk about two projects in depth, the displays and how they use them, and how they set up the future for the egaming marketplace.   Links: The Zone News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/daktronics-delivers-immersive-environment-at-e-games-vov-the-zone Riyadh Front Mall News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/daktronics-delivers-seamless-video-wall-for-electronic-gaming-infrastructure-company-s-riyadh-front-mall-esports-location Daktronics Narrow Pixel Pitch Webpage: daktronics.com/npp

When the Denver Broncos looked to upgrade their video display experience at Empower Field at Mile High, they made it the tallest main end zone display in the league at 72 feet tall by 225 feet wide. But that's not all, they upgraded their auxiliary displays and concourses with new technology as well. Justin and Matt sat down with Nick Schultz and Pat Jordan to hear all about how they are using this technology to build energy for the team and their fans.   Links: News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/denver-broncos-add-to-game-day-experience-with-24-500-square-feet-of-led-displays-from-daktronics-in-2023  YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnlVKdrj7WU&t=1630s 

When the Space Foundation needed a new creative sign with a digital marquee, they turned to Sign Shop Illuminated and Daktronics. Justin and Matt talked with Louis DeSantis, Managing Partner, to hear all the details and how they made it look like a space shuttle launch. He even shares a few other projects they've worked on in the area.   Links: Sign Shop Illuminated Website: https://www.signshopilluminated.com/    

We're set to host the inaugural Women in Sports online event on July 25! What is this event all about? We talked with Sarah Rose, Daktronics vice president of global services, to hear all the details, including information on the keynote speaker, Desiree Reed-Francois.   Links: Women in Sports Webpage: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/events/women-in-sports Women in Sports News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/daktronics-connects-women-in-sports-with-online-event Previous Podcast with Sarah: https://podcast.daktronics.com/e/40-a-high-level-view-of-daktronics-services-with-sarah-rose/

Our Creative Services team has been cooking up some great content over the past few months and we wanted to catch up with Diane Gonzales, Executive Producer at Daktronics Creative Services to hear all about it. She joins Justin and Matt along with new team member Buddy Rose, Creative Account Manager at Daktronics. Buddy shares his new role with the company and some exciting things he's already been able to work on.   Links: Diane's previous episode: https://podcast.daktronics.com/e/122-getting-creative-using-digital-signage-with-diane-and-mark/ Daktronics Creative Services Website: daktronics.com/creativeservices

#PlaybyPlay Podcast: Daktronics Partners with Denver Broncos and ClashTV Using Alpha Metaverse's Platform for NBA2K Tournaments

When details are critical and information needs to be as accurate as possible, Daktronics delivers. Justin and Matt are joined by Tye Dato, AV Channel Sales, and Phil Reyes, Senior Director of Government Systems and Channel Management, to hear about the company's approach to government and military clients. They cover everything from the detailed level of assembly to installation, service and support.   Links: Daktronics Military and Government Webpage: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/markets/transportation/government-and-military Daktronics Narrow Pixel Pitch Webpage: www.daktronics.com/npp

Our control solutions are always advancing, and that includes the expansion of All Sport Pro Baseball. To hear about the details and how it makes life easier for game-day production staff, Justin and Matt talked with Chris Johnson, Daktronics product manager for All Sport.

Building a connection with your audience might be as easy as collecting a database of existing and historical pictures and information. To hear how this database can be leveraged in different ways for schools, universities and even businesses, Justin and Matt visited with Roger Imhoff, national sales for TouchPros. He shares his path to working for TouchPros and how the product has delivered an interactive Hall of Fame as well as bringing it to light on Daktronics video displays.   Links: TouchPros Website: www.touchpros.com 

Integrated Systems Europe (ISE) is once again being held in Barcelona and Daktronics is excited to attend. Heading into the show, Justin and Matt spoke with Ben Aesoph, Daktronics International Market Manager, and Judd Guthmiller, Vice President of International, to hear all about it. They share their personal experience at the show, the presence Daktronics has planned and what attendees can expect to see from the show as a whole.     Links:  Integrated Systems Europe Website: www.iseurope.org  Daktronics ISE Webpage: www.daktronics.com/ise  

We're making Team Player Podcast history for a 6th week in a row as we welcome our 1st ever guest from the Mitten as well as our first ever baseball coach! He was also a former HS Athletic Director, but now he calls our beloved Daktronics home, welcome Sean Maloney to the show! - Growing up in Livonia, MI (the same hometown of Coach Kovo's wife by the way) and playing against a guy at the AABC World Series who you may have heard of, oh just Ken Griffey Jr, and attending the famed Orchard Lake St. Mary's who has been racking up NATIONAL baseball titles in recent year. - Coaching stops at Bowling Green, Eastern Michigan, and returning to his alma mater at hometown Madonna University before becoming an AD. - Talking "going up North" and the natural beauty of Michigan, as well as him having some beers and playing some golf with 2 of Coach Kovo's all-time favorite Lions linebackers!! - Reminiscing on old Tiger Stadium and talking about the beautiful ballpark that stands on that site now, as well as the very brief uniform atrocity that his beloved Tigers very briefly rolled out in the mid-90s. - Finally we end with Coach giving us his Lions and Tigers Mt. Rushmore's as well as an RB legend Start/Bench/Cut with names like Sanders, Harris, and Payton! Join the Team Player Revolution! The biggest help is to leave a 5-star rating. This is what moves us up the rankings so more people can hear the stories of coaches changing lives Follow on Twitter @coach_kovo Hit us up at teamplayerpodcast@gmail.com - we lift up our own inside Team Player Nation, all guest suggestions/feedback is welcome! Art for the Team Player Podcast was created by Kaiser St. Cyr Music for the Team Player Podcast is from the single One More/Good Enough by Avrion - available on all platforms --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

When stepping into a space with video and audio that blows you away, there's intention behind the scenes that give you that feeling you're experiencing. To hear about those intentions and experiences, Justin and Matt are joined by John Coovert, Solutions Engineer at Dimensional Innovations (DI). This conversation covers John's background and what he gets to work on at DI. But it also digs into a few projects where Daktronics and DI partnered to bring a space to life and deliver those desired experiences.   Links: Dimensional Innovations Website: https://dimin.com/ Cook Children's Hospital News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/cook-children-s-hospital-adds-digital-element-with-daktronics-led-video-wall UCONN Hall of Champions News Release: https://www.daktronics.com/news/daktronics-and-dimensional-innovations-partner-for-successful-led-video-integration Naval Academy Project Highlight: https://dimin.com/work/naval-academy-athletic-association Daktronics AV Partner Webpage: https://partner.daktronics.com/ Daktronics Video Wall Webpage: daktronics.com/videowalls

We're making Team Player Podcast history for a 5th week in a row as we welcome our 1st ever guest from the Land of Lincoln (you can take the boy out of Illinois, but you can't take the Illini out of the boy) as well as our first guest to work with Coach Kovo at Daktronics!! This guest has a resume that would make the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World blush!! He is a former collegiate basketball coach and now he sells video displays and scoring systems across the Hoosier State and the Midwest, welcome Steve Carroll to the show! - Growing up in Urbana, Illinois the sister-city to Champaign where the University of Illinois is located, along with being the hometown of REO Speedwagon - Roll with the Changes is Coach Kovo's favorite! - After a stellar career in basketball crazy down-state Illinois, Coach continued on with successful stops as a grad assistant with the Illini complete with a Big 10 title and an Elite 8 appearance, along with stints playing basketball abroad in the Phillipines Basketball Association - After a successful career as a coach, Steve hung up the whistle to pursue a career in sports marketing including stops with branding the Reebok Pump with Shaq and Dominique Wilkins (ALL 90's kids remember this shoe!), Jordan Brand, Red Bull, and even publishing books by legendary coaches like Bob "The General" Knight and Dick Vitale - Coach Kovo does his best Dickie V impression - that's AWESOME BABY!!! - It's one thing to be buddy-buddy with REO Speedwagon, but Kid Rock??? Really?! Listen to the jaw-dropping story of how Steve befriended Robert James Richie (better known as Kid Rock) and here's a hint - you NEVER would have guessed how this happened! - Finally we end with letting Coach put on the whistle one last time to roll out his all-time University of Illinois Fighting Illini starting 5. We also play some fun Mt. Rushmore's including one with his beloved St. Louis Cardinals. Coach is known to always wear either his trademark Illini or Cardinals ballcap and his fandom shines through with the quality of his picks. I-L.....I-N-I!!! Join the Team Player Revolution! The biggest help is to leave a 5-star rating. This is what moves us up the rankings so more people can hear the stories of coaches changing lives Follow on Twitter @coach_kovo Hit us up at teamplayerpodcast@gmail.com - we lift up our own inside Team Player Nation, all guest suggestions/feedback is welcome! Art for the Team Player Podcast was created by Kaiser St. Cyr Music for the Team Player Podcast is from the single One More/Good Enough by Avrion - available on all platforms --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Do you ever wonder what happens behind the scenes of a video wall installation? To hear those details, Justin and Matt are joined by Kyle Kempf, CTS-I Director of Commercial Audio Video for ImageNet Consulting. He shares all about ImageNet, how they started working with Daktronics, a recent install in Texas and much more. Daktronics LED Video Wall Webpage: www.daktronics.com/videowalls  ImageNet Consulting Website: imagenetconsulting.com ImageNet's AV Solutions Webpage: https://imagenetconsulting.com/products/audio-visual-solutions/ Kyle's Email: Kkempf@imagenet.com

When it comes to a video display at your school, there's a lot that goes along with it. To hear how Daktronics prepares schools and students as well as helps to build future careers, Justin and Matt are joined by Kyle Sydow, Daktronics HSPR market manager, and Will Ellerbruch, Daktronics national sales manager. They talk about the Daktronics Classroom, what it entails and how it builds skills for the next level. Daktronics Crew Connect Webpage: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/markets/sports/high-schools/crew-connect Daktronics High School's Project Gallery: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/photos?k=High%20school&f=%7B%22pt%22%3A%5B%22Video%20Displays%22%5D%7D

Ahead of the MLS All-Star Game being hosted at Allianz Field, Justin sat down with Cole Mayer, production engineer for Minnesota United FC, and Chris Johnson, Daktronics product manager, to hear all about the game-day production capabilities being used at the stadium. The conversation covers opening a new soccer-specific stadium, the details of implementing All Sport Pro Soccer at the venue and what it can do, and other interesting bits of information from behind the scenes of the Minnesota United FC game-day production. Minnesota United FC Website: https://www.mnufc.com/ All Sport Pro Webpage: daktronics.com/allsportpro

For a number of years, decades really, Daktronics has been involved with or attended the IDEA – Information Display and Entertainment Association conference. This year is no different. To hear about the show, our involvement and what we will have in the booth, Justin visited with Daktronics representatives Sarah Rose, Diane Gonzalez-Ferranti and Greg Fleischbein. Daktronics Webpage for IDEA: https://www.daktronics.com/en-us/events/idea IDEA Website: ideaontheweb.org