Podcasts about infocomm

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT The next plus-sized pro AV trade show on the annual calendar is InfoComm, coming up in mid-June in, yuck, Orlando, Florida. I'm always curious about what will be new and different with the show, and that's particularly the case in 2025, because there's a new person running things. Jenn Heinold joined show owner/operator AVIXA late last year as the Senior VP Expositions, Americas, so for the last several weeks she's been in drinking-from-the-firehose mode as she learns more and more about the industry, ecosystem and how people think about and use InfoComm. Heinold is a lifer in the trade show business, and while she has run tech-centric trade shows, pro AV is new to her. We had a really good conversation that gets into her impressions and thoughts about the industry, her perspective on ISE, the AVIXA co-owned sister show, and plans for what will be her first InfoComm in June - including what will be different and new. We also get into what, if anything, will be affected by all the trade and geopolitical turmoil that's bubbled up since the US presidency had its four year shuffle. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Jenn, thank you very much for coming on. You've been on the job for how long now?  Jenn Heinold: I've been with AVIXA for just over three months. I joined in December as the Senior Vice President of Expositions for the Americas, and I'm over InfoComm in the U.S., which will be June 11th through the 13th in Orlando, Florida and then I'm also responsible for our new InfoComm America Latina launch event, which will be in October in Mexico City.  Did you know anything about the Pro AV sector before you got involved?  Jenn Heinold: No, honestly. I ran the largest satellite technology show in the U.S. for 15 years. So I've worked in technology, but Pro AV is different and I find myself now everywhere I go looking for display screens and how audio sounds. It's so fascinating how quickly you become immersed within the industry and you notice that it's everywhere and it makes our experiences better.  You'll be a display nerd in no time.  Jenn Heinold: I'm working on it. So have you always been in the trade show business?  Jenn Heinold: I have, yes, I dedicated my career to trade shows. I am super passionate about what happens in a face-to-face environment. I love the serendipity of it. I love that what I do helps businesses grow. The community aspect is amazing, right? Bringing people together with a common goal or challenge. The education that we can provide at trade shows. You can do a month's worth of meetings in three days. You can do a trip around the world in three days in some cases, right?  So I just love the format and really believe in what it can do for businesses and I'm excited to produce InfoComm. Because you had some background working with technology trade shows, has there been much of a learning curve? Setting apart the obvious that there are different companies and all that, but I guess their needs aren't all that dissimilar, are they?  Jenn Heinold: No, I think the commonality in working on technology shows is that you have the same structure where there are channel partners that are working to sell and integrate products, but then you also have all of the end users who use a specific technology. So I think it's important for us to be a forum for both Pro AV as well as our end-user audiences, and make sure that they each are fulfilled and feel welcome at the show and find value in the show.  You went to Integrated Systems Europe a few weeks ago, I saw you there. That was your first big Pro AV trade show, I assume, and I'm curious about your impressions.  Jenn Heinold: Oh, gosh, I was blown away by ISE. How could you not be? But for me, I was just so impressed by what the exhibitors did on the show floor. They really pulled out all the stops for ISE and the energy is amazing. It was so valuable for me to see the technology all together in real life, and then also to be able to meet with exhibitors here directly to know what are your strategic priorities for 2025 and beyond. Who should I be focusing on making sure that I have at the show, so it's the best for our exhibitors and our attendees alike?  I'm sure you were walking around with people like your boss Dave Labuskes both at ISE and InfoComm. Did you get some sense that ISE is its own thing? InfoComm runs differently. Yes, there are the same vendors and everything else, but apart from the obvious of Barcelona versus Orlando or Las Vegas, it does do things differently in some respects, at least. Jenn Heinold: Yeah, absolutely. I unfortunately don't yet have the comparison for InfoComm. I know what our plans are and what we're focusing on. ISE clearly has an amazing global footprint and InfoComm, while it is international, does skew a little bit more to North America just based on the location.  I think we at InfoComm have a much more training program and educational offering, which I really think is valuable. We need to not only nurture our current workforce and make sure that they have all the tools they need to succeed, but focus on the next generation as well, and I'm really proud that InfoComm does that. One of the things about ISE, as you said, there's not as much of a focus on training, there are certainly conferences and things like that, but it's more aimed at end users.  Do you find that you're getting exhibitors and other people saying, hey, it would be great if we had more end users if there was more kind of focus on that part of it, as opposed to, I sometimes refer to InfoComm is something of a gearhead show, and I don't mean that negatively, but it attracts the people who are going to go look at things like cable connectors and mounting infrastructure and so on and stuff that maybe somebody who's an experiential designer for a creative tech shop maybe doesn't care that much about. Jenn Heinold: Yeah. I will say that for 2025, we definitely are emphasizing the end-user audience. They are a key segment for us. Actually, one of the first things I did within my first week, Dave, was look at our end-user segments and compare what groups naturally grew when we were in Orlando versus Las Vegas, right? Just who organically was coming to the show and what I saw was a big increase in education when we're in Orlando, house of worship, retail, restaurants, and hospitality. None of this probably surprises you, but as we built out our marketing campaign, we've decided to really double down our investment on those segments that are organically growing in Orlando. I grew up in trade shows and marketing, so this has really been a passion project for me. Making sure that we have the right audience in InfoComm 2025 is my number one priority and I had to prioritize when I started at AVIXA so I had six months to really execute the show. So if there is one thing that I'm focused on day in and day out, it's the audience at InfoComm this year. When you say audience, are you hearing from exhibitors that they want to see more I end users or they want to see more partners because I think of an InfoComm as being a hyper-efficient way for a manufacturer to have a touch with a whole bunch of existing and potential resellers, and maybe not as worried about having like General Motors or some big retailer walking around.  Jenn Heinold: I hear both, Dave, and I think distributors and integrators are a super important part of the ecosystem, just as the end users are. We are putting more end users on Stage on the show floor this year, as well as within our conference program and I think, having the end users talk about how they are using AV technology only drives more end users to come to the show. That's what they want to hear, right? Uses cases of how they had successful installations, and how they have better employee engagement because of their conferencing and collaboration tools. We've got some retailers actually who will present how they're deploying AV technology in their stores, and what it's doing to improve their business. So we are making a real focus on that piece along with, of course, all the traditional content and certification we offer for the gearheads, as you said. I assume that's a bit of a tactic as well in, that if you invite, the Head of Digital for a big bank or big retail or whatever it may be to the show to do a speaking gig, there's a decent chance he or she is gonna bring some other people with them and then you've got people with big bank on the name tag walking around the show and you're able to talk about, look at the kinds of companies we're attracting. Jenn Heinold: That's absolutely a tactic. The other tactic is when we market to these end-user segments, and they go to our website, perhaps cold, having not really known much about InfoComm, and they see like-minded people on the website speaking, they realize it's an event for them too.  When you got involved, was there a discussion about how are things working right now? The old line about, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? Or were there things that you were told that are where we would like to grow, here's like where we would like to change things, that sort of thing?  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I mentioned some of the deep dive I took into the show data when I first started. I also read the last five or so years' Exhibitor and Attendee Surveys. In reading those, one thing that bubbled up was just the onsite experience overall, and it is hard when you compare a U.S.-based show to an ISE at the Fira Barcelona is lovely and the food options are really healthy and great, and, unfortunately, we're a little bit behind in the United States on those things, but we are making  It's mind-blowing.  Jenn Heinold: It is a little embarrassing sometimes, but, I will tell you, I have already met with the team in Orlando. I actually was there about three weeks ago and talked about how we want to upgrade the food and beverage experience, have healthier options, and have more seating. So you will see an upgrade in the onsite experience as well.  That's something that we've done mindfully. When you have a better experience, you want to spend more time on the show floor, right? So, there's definitely another strategic priority for us.  Might as well talk about it now, I, people like me would be very happy if we never went to Orlando or Las Vegas again, and in the past, long before your time, InfoComm did move around a little bit. I remember the first one I went to was in Anaheim, and then it got in this rota of, back and forth between Orlando and Las Vegas.  Is that a finite thing or is that just how things are going to be?  Jenn Heinold: I don't think it's finite. The reality is InfoComm can fit in about five convention centers in the United States based on its size and Orlando and Vegas are two of them. Chicago could be an option, Atlanta, and New Orleans might work, but there are just not that many venues that can hold a show of our size, and also where the cities have the infrastructure to host us, so we are a little hamstrung that way.  I'm not opposed to looking at other cities. I think when we look at different cities, of course, we look at the cost structure. We look at the audience that is within a couple of hundred-mile radius and how accessible it is for air travel and everything else. I'm not opposed to it. We do have quite a few years booked already for Orlando and Las Vegas, but it's definitely something that I'm looking into.  If you come to the show, you'll see a lot of questions about our future cities and where we might be in the post-show survey, because it's something that I'd like to look into in the future. You've only been with AVIXA for three to four months, so you don't have a reference point for last year, but I'm going to ask anyway, what's going to be different this year with the show?  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I mentioned our focus on the audience. That is a big priority for us. We always do local tours where you're able to see Avian Action. But this year I'm really proud that we're in Orlando. We've got a few new tours added to the schedule. One is, the Cirque de Soleil show behind the scenes in Disney Springs. We are going back to the University of Central Florida. We're also doing a large mega-church in Orlando for a house of worship tour. So we've added some fresh content there.  We also have a brand new panel discussion that we're launching this year called 2030 Vision. It will be moderated by Dave Labuskes, and we've got three visionaries from our industry, plus an end user up on stage to talk about what Pro AV look like in 2030, and what are the factors shaping our market. Our visionaries will be from Shure, Crestron, and Diversified. I'm really excited about having some different content models at InfoComm.  I talked earlier about the upgraded experiences. Again, we're really being mindful about making the event more comfortable and enjoyable to be a part of. I think in the last couple of years, AVIXA has really put a push on AVIXA Exchange and AVIXA TV. So I get a sense there's a lot more effort to educate the ecosystem and also use very modern ways to do it. It's not just the written word and case studies and so on. You're doing a lot of proper broadcast studio on-site at ISE and I assume probably something similar at Orlando.  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, absolutely. We'll have our AVIXA TV studios. The coolest thing about that, beyond being able to watch some of the interviews as they are recorded live, is that you get to see a fully functional broadcast studio on the show floor, right? You get to see how technology converges. It's not about just one box. It's about the whole solution and being able to present the whole solution is really special for us.  We've also got three stages. You mentioned AVIXA TV, that's more of a campfire format, right? So huddle around, and talk about different challenges that we're facing. We have our technology innovation stage which is really about highlighting new products that are coming to market and then we have our innovation Spotlight Stage and with the Spotlight Stage, we will have some exhibitors presenting thought leadership, but we also have some content partners there like Digital Signage Federation Plaza. We'll talk about lighting and staging. IABM will focus on the broadcast market opportunity and specifically the intersection of broadcast AV and IT. And FutureWorks who will talk about content creation.  Are you getting into some areas that - I saw at ISE that I didn't have enough time to really get over there and look at any, but it's enough just to get through those four days - but things like drones?  Jenn Heinold: We don't have a dedicated section of the show floor for drones. But certainly, there is some content about the use of drones projection mapping, and other applications.  What about the digital signage side? Through the years, AVIXA at InfoComm has tried to do “digital signage” pavilions, zones, and all kinds of things, and then in the last two to four years, I'm not sure of the number, you've worked with the Digital Signage Federation on a conference day called D Sign. Is that being replicated this year?  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, that'll return and we also have some content with Invidis who will cover a lot of digital signage as well so it's still a huge focus for us as part of the show. One of the attempts has always been to try to create an area thematically around it, but I've always told people that's super difficult because there are exhibitors who've been at that show for 10-20 years, and they have their spot. So it's hard to just say, okay, all of you digital science companies, you go over here, the audio people maybe do. Jenn Heinold: Yes. We don't have a dedicated pavilion for digital signage, but it gets back to our conversation earlier, Dave, I think it's a little bit less about one very specific piece of technology and more about the larger application and I think that's where our industry is going, and that's why really we can't box in those digital signage providers, right? Because they're doing so much more than just just a digital signage display.  Yeah, and that applies to just about any discipline these days that everything is cross-pollinating.  Jenn Heinold: Yes. So I think you'll see certainly some applications come to life at InfoComm 2025 and it'll be an even bigger part of our event design for 2026 where we are already having those conversations around what Infocomm 2026 looks like, which is really exciting. There was some noise at ISE around some of the major exhibitors, like notably Samsung, suggesting that they're not going to be at the show, that they're pulling their big stand, and this and that, and those were swatted down at the time, but I'm curious where that's at.  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I personally speak to Samsung about every other week and they will be participating at InfoComm 2025. Will it be in the large booth presence that they have had in the past? Quite frankly, no, but, they will be there. They will have products on display. We welcome them and we're working with them to find the right marketing solution for what their needs are today and into the future as well. I find that weird because they had a massive presence at ISE and you would think they want to be there and if they're just doing whisper rooms, that sort of thing, it seems an odd decision. Is there something behind that? I read stuff about Korean politics or whatever, Korean government stuff that may be in the way of it. Jenn Heinold: I think that's a better question for them to answer, certainly, but they will do more than just a whisper room. They will have a presence at the show and we're working with them very closely on that. And they've been great partners. We want to continue to partner with them in a way that's mutually beneficial to both. Of course. Are you seeing some new exhibitors? Again, I respect that this is all new to you, but, some significant exhibitors coming into the InfoComm that maybe didn't do in the past.  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I'm seeing, some more kiosk manufacturers. We're hearing more and more about that. Retail seems to be a really big end-user segment. That's a priority. We Just signed up AWS and they're bringing their equivalent of the Fire Stick for digital signage to the show. So those applications are fun to see and new for us.  We are always looking at a little bit of AI technology, we're always looking to make sure that we're introducing new and innovative technology to the show floor and one of the most fulfilling things for me is when you see those new tech come in and they might come in a 10 x 10 in the far corner of the hall and then they work their way there, work their way up, and have a bigger and bigger presence. Does your team do much coaching for some of the overseas exhibitors?  I'm particularly thinking about Chinese LED manufacturers who show up at these shows and it's always been a source of frustration and bewilderment for me that they'll spend a lot of money to bring all their tech over and bring a bunch of people over, and then when I wander into their booths and start asking questions, they don't tend to have many, if any people who can speak much in the way of English. So do your people coach them by saying, “Guys, if you're gonna do this, here's our advice!”  Jenn Heinold: We do.  It doesn't necessarily work?  Jenn Heinold: We do and we also try to help our exhibitors with their marketing campaigns and how to promote their presence at the show, and how to save money. A lot of the services are deadline-driven and talk through all of those things.  Yeah, we do that. We partner with sales agents as well that are in the country and we encourage them to work with their exhibitors as well as to coach them on exhibiting. I don't know if that is not necessarily working, but I do think it's a longer process because there are so many elements that tie into that. Yeah, and it's not easy to if you're in Shenzhen or Beijing or whatever, you just logically don't have a whole bunch of English-speaking people, but, I guess it's not that easy either to hire interpreters to come over and get questions thrown at them about chip on board and pixel pitch and things like that the interpreter is not going to understand either.  Jenn Heinold: That can be a challenge. We hire some interpreters for our own staff to help interact. And, yeah, it definitely can be a challenge. I do think we are so close. You travel internationally. I travel internationally and with Google Translate and so many new AI tools, I feel like we are so close to really having some breakthrough moments with that though. It's so much easier now.  Like the Facebook glasses, and there's some other ones out there where they can do real-time translation and it'll just show up on the lens, which would be amazing for just about anything I do once I leave this country or leave this continent. Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I see it too. I'm hopeful that'll really transform our shows.  I have to ask about the current political and economic climate with tariffs and everything else. How are AVIXA and InfoComm navigating their way through some of that?  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, I think it certainly comes up quite often. I mentioned that was doing a trip in South America, Mexico last week, and I think it's a concern for our exhibitors, and what we can do is just help support their efforts. I feel really confident that our exhibitors know how to run their business and know how to do it well, and they will pivot and make adjustments I have studied the AV industry over the last few months, having joined AVIXA and having seen how our industry navigated COVID and having worked for an organization that had multiple trade shows prior where I saw a lot of industries not navigate COVID as well as the AV industry, I'm super impressed with how agile and smart our exhibitors are.  I think this is just another challenge that we face. I have every confidence that we'll be able to navigate this too.  Do you have any sense of companies deciding, given everything that's going on, really don't want to travel to the U.S. right now?  I'm Canadian, so I suspect there's a whole bunch of people north of the U.S. border who are having second thoughts about, okay, do I really want to go to Florida right now or in June with all this stuff about Canada being the 51st state and so on. Jenn Heinold: Yeah, so right now, we haven't had a lot of pushback on traveling to the United States. We have been able to maintain the exhibitors on our show floor, but it's certainly something that I'm watching very closely.  As a show organizer, I do think it's our job to make sure that everyone feels welcome and that's what I'm focusing on.  Yeah, I think most Canadians like me, I've got a bazillion friends in the U.S. and I would miss them and everything else and I don't think they're the ones who are stirring the pot here. So it's just unfortunate.  Jenn Heinold: Yes, absolutely.  We'll just leave it at that, right?  Jenn Heinold: Yeah.  So tell me about Mexico City. I'm curious how you guys, not really rationalize that, but you have to counterbalance that. Okay. If you do a show in Mexico City for LATAM, does that siphon away some of what is in InfoComm US?  Jenn Heinold: I wasn't part of the initial launch conversations, but I will tell you having managed regional portfolios of shows, in my past life and now being part of a regional portfolio show, I really think that all ships rise with the tide, Dave, and having an event in the country and more specifically, the In the native language and being able to serve that community who may not be able to travel will only lift up and put calm in the U.S. as well. So I'm really excited about it.  The pride that the local community feels to have InfoComm in their backyard is really palpable and energizing. I'm proud that we're able to do the regional event, and I do think that it'll feed even more of the audience to InfoComm in the U.S. because in many ways it's a great introduction to the brand and we can say, now you experience this and please come to the U.S.  show as well.  Finally, I'm curious how things are tracking. I know that with ISE, I heard probably eight weeks out or something like that, it was going to be very busy, probably break records, and so on. I'm curious about what you're hearing or tracking for Orlando and also for Mexico City although I know Mexico is well out.  Jenn Heinold: Yeah, so for Orlando, our show floor is about 95 percent sold. We're targeting around 410,000 net square feet of exhibit space and for registrations, we're targeting 40,000 which is back to pre-pandemic numbers. Right now we're pacing really well. I'm watching it very closely, of course, and I'd love to check-in with you a little closer to the event and be able to share since we still have a few months to go. But all the indicators are really good for InfoComm in the U.S. We actually just added some hotel room nights because we were getting full with the hotels we're seeing our website traffic, pretty significantly year over year. We have to look at the full picture, but there are some really positive early indicators for InfoComm.  It's probably a bit too early to know much about Mexico City, right? Jenn Heinold: Mexico City's registration will open up in June, actually at InfoComm in the U.S. We've sold about 80% of the show floor. It's a much smaller show floor than InfoComm in the U.S., but I'm really happy with the early interest from exhibitors and support from the local community. We're hoping for about 5,000 attendees in Mexico City. All right. Thank you very much for giving me an update.  Jenn Heinold: Thank you. I really enjoyed our conversation.

Get ready for a tech-filled and fun episode of the All Things Techie Podcast!*   We kick things off with a look at the exciting Sandbox VR launch in Dublin, where we experienced immersive virtual reality adventures, including a zombie scene and even met Ireland's first robotic bartender! Hear about the thrilling body tracking technology and the social fun had by all.*   Then, dive into the hilarious world of 2025's best April Fool's tech pranks! From AI-powered text-to-bark for dogs  from 11 Labs, to Curry's automatic chicken wing debone , Nothing's ridiculously long 50-meter wired headphones, and the Razer Skippidy, the intelligent Gen Z slang translator, you won't want to miss these creative and sometimes cringe-worthy gags.*   Finally, get the inside scoop on my upcoming attendance at InfoComm 2025 in Orlando, Florida! Learn why this is the largest professional audiovisual trade show in North America and the premier event for cutting-edge pro AV technologies. Find out about his participation in the Higher Ed AV Summit with HETMA. #AllThingsTechiePodcast #TechPodcast #AVTweeps #Techie #Gadgets #Gizmos #Technology #TechPranks, #AprilFools  #11Labs, #TextToBark, #CurrysDeboner, #NothingEar35mm, #StreamDeckDesk, #DuolingoCruise. #SandboxVR, #VR, #VirtualReality, #Gaming, #Dublin. #Infocomm2025, #AVTech, #ProAV, #Orlando.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT The UK-based research and advisory firm Futuresource Consulting sends a big team every year to the ISE trade show in Barcelona, and then a few weeks later releases a big report that serves as a technical recap for the pro AV community - both for people who could not attend, and for people like me who did, but didn't have anywhere near enough time to see everything. The 2025 report is out now and the good news is that it is a free download - a departure for a company that produces detailed reports that are typically paywalled and tend to cost at least four figures. In this podcast, I chat with Ted Romanowitz, a principal consultant focused mainly on LED, and Morris (or Mozz) Garrard, who heads the pro displays file and looks more at LCD and OLED. We get into a bunch of things in a too-short 30 minute interview. You'll hear about mass-transferred Chip On Board tech. Where Chip On Glass, also known as MicroLED, is at. And we also get into LCD, OLED, e-paper and projection. Have a listen. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Ted and Morris, thank you for joining me. You guys are from Futuresource Consulting.  Every big trade show, like an ISE or an Infocomm and some other ones as well, but those are the ones I'm most familiar with, Futuresource sends a whole bunch of people to these shows. I'm curious how many people at Futuresource are on the pro display file, and why do you go to trade shows like ISE?  Morris Garrard: Dave, I'm glad to jump in. Thank you again for your time today, and looking forward to tossing with you. Overall, we took nearly 20 analysts and business development people to ISE which shows Futuresource's commitment to the trade show and our clients, specifically the Pro AV, we took four analysts, and I'm on the consulting and advisory side, so we had a really good representation across all the technologies: projection, flat panel, interactive, and LED.  I assume the reason that you go is it's a very efficient way to see a whole bunch of new stuff and touch base with a whole bunch of companies under one roof in a matter of days. Morris Garrard: Oh, absolutely. For me, it's just always, you walk in and you hit that Hall 3 where a lot of the display companies are, and it's just. Like that first impression you go, oh my gosh, here we are. How am I gonna do all this?  It's always nice. I always start at the Lang booth because they always do a nice job of having that big wow something right there at the major intersection. Yeah, they've done well with that. One thing about Futuresource is that the great majority of the material you put out is understandably paywalled. That's your business, you're producing subject matter expertise reports and selling them. So I'm always a bit curious about a complete 180 with these post-show reports. They're very detailed, there are many pages, and it's almost boy, that's more than you needed to do. Morris Garrard: Yes, I think it's, this year was something between 40 and 50 pages to cover the many, different areas of our practices, but, yeah, we think it adds value to our clients to see the latest and greatest, what's happening and not just a reporting of this product announcement or that product announcement, but it provides the context of what's really happening the undercurrents and the, big stories, the technology transitions, if you will, that are happening that are driving shifts in the industry. That kind of helps us open doors with clients to have deeper Engagements with them based on our unique insights.  Ted Romanowitz: I think just to add to that as well is we don't produce these show reports solely for the benefit of our clients. We also work with an extensive research network that benefits from these show reports, as well as other industry bodies that we work with, like trade associations, for example, and our channel partners as well.  It's a way, obviously, that you're getting driving awareness of the sort of work that you guys do and what is possible behind the paywall.  Ted Romanowitz: Exactly that. Yeah. It's a brilliant opportunity to raise our profile and also to raise the profile of the analysts working within these product sectors as well. So we're already four minutes in, and I've got about half an hour to chat with you guys. So we should dive straight into some of what you saw and came away with, and I would say that the biggest thing is probably LED in the context of pro display, anyway. So let's skip past audio and some of those other areas. You talked a lot in the report about mass transfer chips on board. Can you, first of all, describe what that is? Because we're in an industry that's overwhelmed by acronyms and why they're important, and what's the distinction? Why are you saying mass transferred when you're processing COB with mass transferred? Ted Romanowitz: Yes, and not only are there a lot of acronyms, Dave, but the problem is that terms are being misused, and I've heard you talk about that a little bit. It's a really strategic inflection point that's happening right now, literally right in front of our very eyes at ISE, where you're shifting from packaged LED technologies that have driven the industry for 20 years where the LED: red, blue, green are packaged and then picked and placed onto a PCB. That's shifting to package list technologies where the individual chiplets are red, blue, and green and are being mass transferred. So instead of one pixel at a time, they're doing thousands, and when you think about it in context, a 4k display is over 8.2 million pixels. So if you can transfer thousands at a once instead of one by one, you save a lot of time, and so this package list technology is like a chip on board where the backplane is a PCB and it's a passive driver and then chip on glass or what we call micro LED. Truly micro LED, that is, sub-100 micrometers mass transferred onto a TFT black backplane with an active driver. So at ISE, you saw this crazy tidal wave, I'm going to go with that term, this crazy tidal wave of companies that are announcing COB, and the biggest thing is that they're coming to the fruition of manufacturing processes so that they can mass transfer instead of pick and place. So the cost is going to be a lot less to make them, first of all, because you don't have to package first, then pick and place, and then secondly, because you can mass transfer.  So we expect, and this is going to, within maybe the next 12 months following, this could drive up to a 50 percent decrease in the ASPs, average sales price of 1.5 millimeters and below. It's just truly amazing. We've been hearing about this for several years, Futuresource has been writing about it, and now it's happening right before our eyes.  With COB, there are other inherent advantages as well, right? The first one would be that as they're manufactured, the finished modules have some sort of protective coating on them. That's just fundamental to how they do them, right? Versus SMD, it's the older school packaged LED displays where they're unprotected unless they've got this glue on board coating, and they're more prone to damage.  Ted Romanowitz: Yes, exactly, and those processes have been perfected over the last two to three years. So not only can you do a nice job of encapsulating it, but they can repair the LEDs as well, even after encapsulation.  So that's a major thing that's happening, and one of the things that I saw at the show was i5LED actually had a double difficult display that they did in the sense that it's a corner, an inside corner, which is difficult to do with LEDs to get, so there's not any seams or anything. But then the second thing they did is they put a touch overlay on an encapsulated COB display so you could touch. It had multi-touch on it. So again, really interesting to see the future of what's happening.  Yeah, because touch and LED were different worlds for the longest time, and it's only been recently where you start to see IR frames around displays that would make them interactive, and you wouldn't want to touch a conventional SMB display because it was going to damage it.  Ted Romanowitz: Exactly, especially when you get to 1.2 millimeters and below. The joke has always been that you needed to put a little tray underneath the LED wall that you were touching to capture all of the LED pixels that were falling off. But now, that's improved with all these new manufacturing techniques.  Are there benefits as well to COB in terms of energy consumption or brightness, things like that? Ted Romanowitz: Yeah, and the answer is yes. It's really incredible to see. Early in the LED market, if you've got 600 nits that was a lot, now you're seeing indoor displays at a 1000 or 1500 nits, which allows you to put them in a high ambient light situation, room that has Florida ceiling windows, like an office or an atrium, or even in a store window or of course outdoors in a kind of a kiosk or a standalone LED display. So this package is like technology; the chips are getting so small that you're filling in the space between the chips with an ultra black covering. That increases the contrast ratio and makes HDR content sing.  Yeah, it's like the old days of plasma displays and how their big benefit was deep blacks.  Ted Romanowitz: Exactly.  Yeah, so one of the things I came away with from ISE, and I had the impression in earlier shows as well, but really amplified this year with all the talk around micro LED and how it's coming, and that's like the ultimate super premium display.  I would look at the current product line of manufacturers who are doing COB and think, okay, that's more than good enough. I don't know that the world needs to get to micro LED video walls for us to finally have good-looking LED video walls. We're already there.  Ted Romanowitz: That's true, but really, it comes down to a cost basis, and this is where we've modeled. Working with some of the biggest OEMs and ODMs in the world, we've modeled the volume that they're going to be able to produce over the next several years, and the quality that they'll be able to deliver in mass quantities, and basically, the outcome is that by the early 2030s, let's say a 77-inch or 80-inch micro LED display chip on glass will be $4,000 or less and so that brings it into mass adoption and really makes it useful for, not only does it enable the close up viewing that chip on glass does, or chip on board, but it enables a price point where you're going to see it broadly deployed in meeting rooms and corporate, you'll see it in classrooms and education, all across stadiums, venues, hospitality, every different market vertical is going to be impacted by a price point of LED that's comparable to LCD today within the next several years.  Why wouldn't that happen just with COB?  Ted Romanowitz: It's the cost basis of being able to do things on a PCB is more expensive versus a TFT backplane. Over the long run, it has to shift towards a TFT backplane, a glass backplane.  The barrier to that happening right now is unlike COB, where mass transfer appears to have been worked out. It's still a work in progress on the chip on the glass or micro LED side, right? Ted Romanowitz: It is. There are a few other roadblocks that have to be overcome for chip on glass to be in volume with high quality, high yields, and when that happens, then you'll start seeing the volume ramp and the price really starts to drop.  So there will be a day, early in the next decade, when chip-on-glass micro LED displays have the same dimensions, same resolution, everything else would be at price parity with LCD. Ted Romanowitz: Yes, with LCD today. What Moss has been looking at with the rest of the team is what's gonna happen with flat panel LCD, interactive LCD, and projection. What are the unique instances where those need to be implemented, best-fit applications and what they're doing to drive price down and add value, differentiate to keep extending those product life cycles. Moss, is there much runway still for LCD? I'm also very curious about OLED, which keeps getting better technically but is still pretty narrowly defined, particularly on the pro-AV side.  Morris Garrard: Yeah. I think there are a few nuances here that we need to consider when we're talking about the LCD product lifecycle.  How we looked at this in our recent strategic market outlook was to split the market into three parts. So first, looking at the video will market, then looking at the digital signage market, and then looking at what we define as the presentation market, so in front of classroom, front of boardroom devices. Video wall, I think it's no real surprise that it is certainly being cannibalized by LED the fastest. We're already seeing that kind of impact happening at, I think, back in 2020; even LED overtook LCD as the main contributor to market value in the video wall market. If we then look at digital signage, which obviously would include screens that are sub 100 inch, which typically would have the price per resolution advantage over LED. We're already seeing LED making inroads to that market as well, so it's actually in 2025 that we're expecting LED to overtake LCD as the main contributor to the market value. Then, looking at the presentation market, which is very much dominated by the likes of interactive flat panel display, but then also obviously nontouching in many boardrooms as well. Obviously, there is still that cost consciousness when it comes to presentation displays. However, in the more narrow pixel pitch segments, as Ted mentioned, that price attrition that we're expecting over the next few years, it's going to rapidly increase the adoption of LEDs within the boardroom, especially the boardroom, and perhaps less so in K12, which obviously makes up the bulk of the education segment. But we're expecting by 2028 that LED will overtake LCDs and market value share by that point. That's not to say necessarily that the LCD market is going away in volume terms. I think the key point is in terms of value. Prices are continuing to erode to really race to the bottom on LCD. And then obviously, yeah, with volume starting to flatten out, LED is making inroads quite rapidly.  What about OLED? Morris Garrard: OLED's an interesting one. I think the key stumbling block for OLED in the professional displays market has been the price, as opposed to LCD. We're looking at around about 1.5 to 2X differential, which within the cost conscious mindset, especially in signage, but also in presentation displays as well. It has presented an obstacle to adoption. So OLED, we're looking at around 1% of volumes across the global market in terms of volume, and really that's stayed quite stable over the last few years, hasn't ramped as perhaps was expected a few years ago,  One thing that was intriguing to me was reading some of the stuff coming out of CES and then going to ISE, and I went to the TCL booth, I believe and they had a 120 or 125-inch something, giant TV, and I was thinking, okay, that I know what they're doing with these things. There's local dimming and everything else, and the visuals coming out of these displays are stunning. They look borderline OLED quality and at that form factor, as costs come down on manufacturing those things, they are starting to approach, very close in size to all in LED displays that a lot of manufacturers have in their product lines to simplify things for meeting spaces, conference rooms and so on. Do you see these LCDs getting some traction, supplanting the all-in-one LEDs?  Morris Garrard: Do you know what, Dave? That's a really interesting point because we had a number of conversations at ISE about the opportunity for larger than 100-inch LCDs. I think my answer to those individuals was that there may be an opportunity for now. I think the price attrition that we're seeing on all-in-one LEDs will bring those displays into, maybe not into price parity, then at least, within the same kind of ballpark.  But I think the other key issue with, let's take 120 inch LCD, for example, is the logistics of it. If you're in a boardroom and you're on the fifth floor, and you've got to fit a 120-inch LCD into a lift, then where we're based in Europe, that's absolutely not going to happen. Maybe in North America where you guys have your freight elevators and whatnot, but I think in terms of being able to install the display itself. You're not carrying that on the stairs.  Morris Garrard: Exactly, and let's say someone does crack it on the floor as they're installing it, then you've got to replace the whole thing. Whereas with an LED wall, it's just one module that needs to be replaced. I think there are those challenges as well that will limit the opportunity in that segment.  Are you seeing much innovation when it comes to LCD and OLEDs?  Morris Garrard: I would say in terms of the commercial LCD market, over the last few years, the key points of innovation have been, as you say, OLED initially, 8K resolution, 21:9, and then high brightness and kind of outdoor displays lumped into one. Those have really been the key points of development.  In terms of market adoption, though, they haven't really taken off. I would say high brightness and outdoors are probably the best examples, accounting for around 2 to 4% of market volumes, whereas the rest is still lingering around 1 to 2%. There was a lot of buzz and quite a bit of activity at ISE around electronic ink products, e-paper products, particularly on the color side. They've gotten bigger. There were 75-inch versions there. I had seen them earlier when I was over in Taiwan, and I thought, okay, this is interesting, but it's really early days, and this is a proof of concept more than anything else because yeah, they didn't look bad, but they didn't look good.  Morris Garrard: Yeah, I think e-paper is an interesting one and I think it presents a fantastic opportunity to the pro displays industry as a whole I think there has been a bit of maybe industry confusion around the purpose and the intended use case for e-paper and I think the point that really needs clarifying is that e-paper is not here to replace lcd I think in many ways it's there to complement LCD. Yes, it's there to replace print.  Morris Garrard: It's there to replace print, exactly, and one of the key conversations around that exact point is, would using the 16:9 aspect ratio be the most appropriate? Obviously, for signage customers that are used to digital signage, then yes, but for those end users that are replacing print signage would actually like the A Series, for example, be a more appropriate sizing range to use. I think that this market segment is still figuring some of those things out. But yeah, definitely a lot more, A lot more on on show at ISE this year, which was fantastic to see, and even new brands as well, not only kind of new models from those brands that were already active in the space. As I say, it's the early adopter phase at the moment, but I think certainly a lot of industry potential.  It was interesting, though, because, with all the buzz around it, I don't know that many people because they don't have a reason to be paying that close attention to it. They don't understand that all of these color e-paper displays are coming from one manufacturer, and whether it's Samsung Sharp or Agile Display Solutions, they're remarketing and tweaking E Ink's product. Is there any other manufacturer out there that you've run into that's actually coming up with something that is also color e-paper? I'm aware of some ESL manufacturers who are not using E Ink, but that's monochrome stuff.  Morris Garrard: Yeah, I would say really the pioneer is obviously E Ink. I have seen some Chinese facsimiles, but I would say, generally, the major brands that we work with are working with E INk.  Tearing through stuff here out of necessity, but I wanted to ask about projection.  Morris Garrard: With projection, I think, there is a tendency within the industry to focus on all of the innovation that's happening in LED especially, and thinking that projection is going away silently, but we're still expecting the projection is going to be a very robust component of market value by the end of the decade. We're still looking at a multi-billion-dollar industry by 2029 or 2030.  I would say the conversation within projection has shifted; it's a very mature product segment, of course. We're not really seeing the kind of product revolutions anymore in terms of feature sets or whatnot, the conversation has now shifted more towards the applications for projection. So where can projection be used where other display technologies may not be appropriate? One of the key applications, of course, that's grabbing a lot of headlines is projection mapping, for example, being able to scale an image at a massive scale onto things like historic buildings, for example. You're not going to be doing that with led in, historic cities in Europe, for example, it's just not going to happen. But finding other applications as well, for projection where the other technologies just wouldn't be able to be deployed basically.  When I go to a giant show, like an ISE, I will run into folks like you two and lots of other industry people who've been around for a long time, and we'll always have the conversation of: so,  what did you see that? I need to go see that as well, and I have my own thoughts around that, but I'm curious if there are technologies or particular manufacturers who you came across and thought, “Oh, that's interesting”. Ted Romanowitz: I'll jump in and say, both the chips on board, the wall at Samsung and the LG magnet at their booth looked fantastic, and then you saw chip on glass actually demonstrated in a large format, 136 inch at LG, as a kind of a TV kind of format. Samsung had the transparent micro LED, which I think shows they're starting to evolve their thinking. It's such a cool technology, but I think everyone's struggling with what the killer application for transparent micro LED is just because companies have been struggling with the idea of a transparent OLED. Where does it really fit in? Those are some of the killer things that I saw.  The waterfall at Lang booth. I thought it was incredibly cool, as was the kinetic LED display facing the LG booth. Not practical, but it's cool.  Yeah, and that one, I was impressed by a lot more than previous kinetic LED walls that I've seen because this was more like a game show spinning tile thing where you didn't have all this, very tight synchronizing of modules to make it look good, and I saw another kinetic LED wall I was talking to an old industry friend who said, yeah, this thing's cool, but it's breaking down every half an hour because his stand was right next to it. So it's handled with care.  Ted Romanowitz: Yeah, I thought the other cool part of that kinetic display at LG was the fact that they drew in a social media aspect where you could, upload your picture and they do a little AI magic and all of a sudden you can see Dave Haynes right up there in the middle of the LG kinetic wall. Yes, you could, but I tried that, and it turned me into a guy going through a gender transition, which I'm not quite sure how that happened.  Ted Romanowitz: We love everybody. So that's good. We love you for just who you are, Dave. That's all I'm gonna say about that. It's a side of me I hadn't thought about, but some people said you look good like that. I don't know. Okay, sorry, but it ain't happening.  Moz, how about you?  Morris Garrard: Yeah, we've already touched on it. Compared with the conversations I was having around e-paper at the end of last year, I was amazed to see larger than 32-inch form factors, let alone 75 inches. I think it was at the Dynascan booth. I was just impressed purely with the progress that technology is making in such a short space of time. So yeah, that, for me, was the takeaway.  All right. This has been great. We could have easily spoken for three hours, but we had limited time somehow or other. I appreciate you guys jumping on the phone with me.  Ted Romanowitz: Thanks so much. It's a pleasure, and we're headed over to Taiwan and Korea, so maybe we can talk again and give you some feedback on what we saw at Touch Taiwan with some of the big OEMs and ODMs in Asia.  You gonna have some Soju? Ted Romanowitz: I will definitely have that.  Alright, thanks, guys.  Morris Garrard: Thanks so much, Dave.

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!

InfoComm 2025 registration is open! Yes, we just finished ISE. Yes, the ride never ends. We look at emerging trends in the home video space. Which streaming options are customers looking for? An anecdotal lesson in customer experience. And finally, robots. Robots specifically in your household. Is it smarter living, or the next nightmare?Every week we look at the topics that surround the residential AV space and what integrators need to know. Joining our expert panel this week is Taft Stricklin from Just Add Power and Mitchell Klein of CEDIA.Host: Matt ScottGuests:Mitchell Klein – CEDIATaft Stricklin – Just Add PowerLinks to sources:CE Pro – InfoComm 2025 Registration OpensCE Pro – Emerging Trends in Home StreamingResidential Systems – Enhancing Customer ExperienceResidential Tech Today – Home RoboticsSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How do you pick the perfect conference to further your skills and networking? We run through the list of conferences to consider in 2025, the various reasons to go and end on some tips to pitch for budget to attend. In this episode you'll hear: 1:00 Toby causing chaos at SALT and the Amplio Golf Tournament 10:45 How did Jerod get into church production ministry? 12:24 Planning and Budgeting for Conferences18:30 NAB and InfoComm conference 29:37 Maximizing Conference Benefits for Church Techs27:30 What will you takeaway from a church production conference?32:00 How do you get invited to the after conference hangouts? 33:30 How many church production conferences should you go to each year? 38:42 Conference Attendance Benefits and Tips41:45 Church Tech Disaster Story Resources for your Church Tech Ministry Does your church have used gear that you need to convert into new ministry dollars? We can make you an offer here. Do you need some production gear but lack the budget to buy new gear? You can shop our gear store here. Connect with us: Follow us on Facebook Hang out with us on Instagram See all the ways we can serve your church on our Website Get our best gear sent to your inbox each Monday before it goes public via the Early Service

In many ways, electric vehicles today are where mobile phones were in the early 2000s. It's December 2002. Mobile phones have entered the market, but the average Indian is still pretty sceptical. Cell phone connections are patchy and more importantly expensive. Devices themselves were unwieldy, limited and again…expensive. Basic services like sending a text, or a voice mail, or call waiting were considered ‘add-on services' and they needed to be purchased separately. So most people thought it just wasn't worth the investment. That was until Reliance came in and changed everything. Back then, Mukesh Ambani launched Infocomm. The idea was to make telephone calls in India as cheap as sending a postcard. And it worked. Slowly, as costs started to drop, more and more people saw sense in adopting mobile phones, and eventually abandoning landlines altogether.This episode is by no means a history lesson. But that context was important. Because India is almost exactly where it was back then. Except, the device they are on the fence about is now electric vehicles. And the company in question now is JSW MG Motor. Funnily enough, the solutions that JSW is coming up with are eerily similar to the Reliance strategy back then. It's biggest proposition? A subscription plan for your EV battery.Tune in. Daybreak is now on WhatsApp at +918971108379. Text us and tell us what you thought of the episode!Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India's first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

IPMX is threatening to make 'compatibility issues' as extinct as the dodo. Tech giants are arm-wrestling to bring you video calls so realistic, you'll forget what 'IRL' means. And that office you've been using as a glorified coffee station? It's about to become the nerve center of your entire organization.Joining us this week are industry experts to break down the latest in commercial AV! Explore how Panasonic's NDI support is transforming live streaming, why FlatFrog's gesture-pointing boards may revolutionize meetings, and insights into Shure's ShureCloud platform. Discover how AV interoperability is reshaping the industry by enabling seamless integration between diverse systems and technologies.Host: Tim AlbrightGuests:Andrew Evans – ExtronMark J. Pescatore – SCNWillie Franklin – Willie on LinkedInLinks to sources:AV Network – IPMX Provides Interoperability for AV over IPrAVe Pubs – Project StarlineAVNation – Connecting Employees in Office & RemotelyNotes:AVNation studios production equipment provided by Shure and Vaddio.AVNation has interviewed IPMX & Macnica at ISE 2024, InfoComm 2024, & InfoComm 2023.AV Network has covered IPMX in several different articles.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When I was buzzing around the InfoComm trade show earlier this year, I stopped at one stand for a chat, looked at the next stand over, and saw some familiar faces from Poppulo - the rebranded name for a company long known in digital signage industry circles as Four Winds Interactive. I went over and got caught up on what the company was up to and why it was showing at InfoComm, as I had grown in recent years to regard Poppulo - right or wrong - as being primarily focused on omnichannel workplace communications. I was mostly wrong, though I think it is fair to say that in the wake of a private-equity backed merger of Four Winds with an Irish company that did employee communications, there was marketing more noise for at least a while on the workplace side. David Levin, the co-founder and longtime CEO of Four Winds, stepped back from that role almost a year ago now, and I had been wanting to do a podcast with new CEO Ruth Fornell, whose background was well  outside the signage and workplace comms industries. After a preliminary chat, and me saying I'd poke away at her about digital signage stuff, she suggested I'd be in better hands with Joe Giebel, who has been with the company almost 20 years and is its Senior VP of Digital Signage. Joe and I get into a bunch of things in our chat, including the journey of blending technologies and culture, and the shifting needs and profiles of customers. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Joe, nice to catch up with you. It's been a while. Can you tell me what your role is at Poppulo?  Joe Giebel: Yeah, absolutely. My current role is Senior Vice President of Digital Signage, which is a fresh title for me. I'm coming out as a vice president of sales for America's role, where I've been fortunate to lead a number of our sales teams. For those who don't know Poppulo, there, a lot of the digital signage folks will probably know you or know the company more as Four Winds Interactive, but that changed, what about five, six years ago now?  Joe Giebel: That's right. I think we did that in 2021. So not too long ago, but, yeah, let me give a little bit of a history.  Four Winds Interactive was founded in 2005 as a digital signage company and remains so, but right around 2020, we started looking at different opportunities to enhance our offering, and made a couple of acquisitions. One of those was a company called Poppulo, which was the best-in-class enterprise, internal communications tool. So we brought them into the mix and when we did that, we started to look at the names, like how do we go to market and how do we want to do business as, and so we started doing market studies and it turns out that the name Poppulo, which loosely comes from a Latin term for the term “people” resonated and we decided to change the name to Poppulo. Four Winds Interactive serves as a parent company. We do business as Poppulo and the name Four Winds Interactive was always interesting and people wanted to know what's the origin of that name and its significance, and there wasn't a big story there. So I think we were open to considering a new brand and look and feel, and that's the story, Dave.  Yeah, if we go way, way back to almost 20 years ago, Four Winds kind of got its start with those little semi-electronic touch panels that you would play back samples of music, right? Joe Giebel: That is correct, and they were dealing with specialty media. So there was a company called, Four Winds Trading. That company was dealing with specialty media and a lot of it had to do with native tribes. So the Four Winds related there a little bit more. During that business, they started to think about how do we get loyalty around the distribution of our media titles and different things that we're distributing, and of course, screens were new at the time and media in an interactive format is very engaging, and so they were looking at how we merchandise this with technology?  And out of that was born the concept of digital signage and Four Winds Interactive. You go back, I believe right to the beginning to the rented mansion house in downtown Denver, right?  Joe Giebel: I actually predated the mansion where we had a corner of the warehouse, for our sister company, in Arvada, Colorado, and, yeah, that was in 2005. I think I was certainly a single digit, I think I was the fifth employee in the company and I got to be there from the beginning and started to see what markets will digital signage be valuable in and, where should we target people and it was an incredible time.  So if we go to today, I bumped into the Poppulo stand at Infocomm, and admittedly, and I said it at the time, I was kind of surprised to see the folks there because you being a little bit absent, I would say from the trade show circuit, or at least from the circuit that a lot of the other CMS software companies show at, so it struck me as almost like the company was getting back into digital signage a little more seriously, but I was told, and I suspect you'll say the same thing that no, we never left.  It's just that, maybe we're kind of amping up marketing again.  Joe Giebel: Yeah, I would agree with that, we never left. When we went through our acquisition period, we had a lot of great new tools and we were looking at how do we adjust what we're putting to the market and what are the right arenas to play in. Distracted is not the right word, but it's probably close. We were dealing with a lot of things and not to lie about trade shows following the pandemic. We're a little bit quieter and I think potentially we were being smart with our budget and certainly had some areas to apply it.  We missed the trade show circuit, and this year, we're jumping back into it and it feels good.  My impression, and you can correct me was post-acquisition of Poppulo and kind of merging the companies. It seemed reflected in part in online marketing and so on, or what I would hit on the website that you were focusing more on workplace experience and, maybe not making as much noise around digital signage, perhaps because that was established. Joe Giebel: Yeah, we brought in these new channels. We started to look at the workplace and the way we communicate with employees in a broader sense, and I think you could look at one of our major focus areas is the workplace and employee experience, and we started to say: as the world moves to remote work, and then we've kind of swung back to hybrid, and it looks like, there have been some big splashes in a full return to office by some major organizations, digital signage was a channel that we think is extremely effective in pushing a message, but we wanted to be able to reach people in more ways, and we do that now through a multi-channel approach, which includes the ability to reach employees by email, the ability to land messaging and collaboration tools, and still maintain the scale and governance that you want from an enterprise tool. So I'd say we're multi-channel. Digital signage is near and dear to my heart, and I think we're about to see a major pushback into how we drive that employee experience through digital displays, as more and more people come back to the office, it becomes a mandate.  Was it a little worrisome because of the whole idea of, okay, everybody's just going to work, from home from now on and I saw lots of software companies doing the equivalent of desktop screensavers, ways to push messaging to people who are now working at home instead of coming into an office.  So did you guys have to kind of look at things and go, okay, this could be a problem if we're not kind of broadening our offer? Joe Giebel: I think we saw an opportunity and, one, we saw an opportunity to make the digital signage for those frontline workers and the people that didn't have that option to go home even stronger, and at the same time we always had that question. How do we better engage people who aren't in the offices where we are putting our displays, maybe their field workers, maybe they travel constantly, or maybe they work from home? I think that really brought it to the forefront. Luckily, we were in the process of figuring out how to extend or create extensibility within the platform, ahead of everybody leaving office buildings. So we felt like we had a good foot forward, and we're all in on how to provide the best possible platform to reach your audience now. I struggle to say we're entirely workplace-focused because we also have a lot of people doing customer-facing things. So it truly is understanding your audience, what are the things you want to enable or shape their behavior with and what's the best way to reach them, we really want to be that platform for our clients and it's about value, you know, what is it you hope to affect or inform and what's the best way to do it.  When you say customer-facing, how do you define that?  Joe Giebel: Yeah, I need to get information in front of people who may purchase from me or interact with my solution. So I look at my clients and you know the classic use case is a retail environment. Obviously, you've got customers coming through a retail environment. What I don't think always gets thought of is that lobby of big headquarters. Many of our clients are bringing customers and. partners through their spaces that are customer-facing as well or major delivery centers. If you've got people building very expensive items, they often have delivery centers where they bring clients in both pre-sale and post-sale, to understand here's that product you're going to invest in over the next two, three, ten years, through that partnership, and then you look at things like executive briefing centers, very similar.  How do I bring my client base and prospects into an environment where I can show off what we do? In the market, I want to be able to show that in a number of ways. Digital, obviously, is an outstanding way to show use cases and product information, and really shape an experience when you have your customers in your space. Tell me if that was a good answer for what you were hoping to define. You did fine. Since more and more in the marketplace, larger customers, whether you want to call them enterprise or choose a name, are looking to slim down the number of vendors that they have, and they would like one vendor to do multiple things. Have you found that with some of your established clients that maybe you started with the workplace communications piece that they've then asked about doing large video walls, things like that, and on the flip side, maybe, whether it's an airline or an automaker, I'm thinking of some of your clients, more established clients. Have they said, yeah, we'd now like to also do workplace communications. Do you do that?  Joe Giebel: Yeah. First of all, if we make our clients successful, naturally, those teams that manage whatever solution they're implementing are getting questions from their peers on, how do I do that? You know, can you help me, and, who's your partner making this possible? So we see expansion across the products they own and new use cases. As you mentioned, maybe they're doing employee comms on screens and then it becomes large video walls and experiential things, maybe it's facilities related to meeting room signs, wayfinding, et cetera.  To the other element of your question, they're also saying if that partner is making us successful, where else can we use them? They do want to consolidate solutions to one vendor that they have success with. That's the biggest question that comes up with my clients. If I invest in you, how are you going to guarantee this solution is successful? And my team sees an ROI and it's not another tool that goes unused. So without a doubt, there's a desire, I believe, by Finance and IT to consolidate technology and vendors, as much as possible, especially if there's a track record of driving a return on the investment and making teams successful. I'm guessing the conversations are very different than they were, 20 years ago, and even 10 years ago, in terms of. I would say in the past, in the history of this digital signage was sold and people were interested in, from the idea of the kind of the sizzle of the screens, the visual elements of it and these days, instead of talking to marketing people, you're talking to IT people and they care about security and they care about data integration, things like that, is that accurate?  Joe Giebel: That is 100 percent accurate and I think you highlight in 2005, when we started the screen had such a sizzle, most homes didn't have flat-screen TVs. We were talking about plasmas back then. The iPhone didn't exist. So the concept of a touch screen and a large flat screen display, made life a real fun for digital signage.  Now the screens are more common. security and value, are kind of the table stakes to get into the game and where you really start to differentiate, you you understand the use case and how that is going to benefit a company, whether you're increasing productivity, reducing risk, and is that apparent? And do they understand how you're going to deliver that? And then on the security side, you almost don't get to pass go if you don't have a security posture that can scale globally, and, provide a safe feeling. I don't even think they have worries, right? You just don't do business with a vendor that's going to create worry, they've either got the security you need or you move on.  Yeah, and I mean, at least historically, I'm not sure where you're at right now, but historically you had a very large casino group and you had a very large Airline and those are two companies that have to be like, everybody has to be concerned about security, but they really care about security.  Joe Giebel: They do. It's paramount, obviously it presents a ton of risk. If you don't have that secure environment that matches their standard and those two examples, especially within the gaming world, those are tremendous partners of ours that kind of walked us through: Here's where you need to be, and we're so fortunate to have worked with them, and been able to develop that security posture with them in real world scenarios.  If you haven't set up gaming integrations and received gaming licenses. That is an in depth process that most of your leadership gets to go through and they get into personal stuff, they do a great job of remaining secure  So if you're going to work with those kinds of whale clients, you got to be prepared for a lot of hand holding and a long process?  Joe Giebel: That is correct. They're going to look at everything. I mean, they will find if you've got an NFL pick thing going on internally and you somehow put that interface onto a website, they're going to find that and they're going to ask you questions on why you're running a gambling ring. It goes that in-depth. They will see your resumes, they're going to do background checks on most of your team. So, there is a process to it. it takes some time and they leave no stone unturned.  It's been a few years now. Was the process of blending two companies, and I believe it's actually three companies that were kind of blended together, was that a bit of a journey? Joe Giebel: It is absolutely. Our company for the early history, we bootstrapped it. We had a visionary CEO that founded the company with one partner and we were a tight-knit family that didn't have outside investors. Taking on outside investment was a journey, and an experience, and then as we acquire, these are new experiences for our teams and so it is a bit of a journey.  There's the whole business operations side of things and how do you get multiple systems to speak to each other? How do we blend processes and then you've got the cultural elements of bringing organizations together, and you have to balance all of that? The people need to remain happy, the systems have to work. So it was a process and if I look at my resume and time with these organizations, what an education it's been for the last 19 years.  Are there kinds of tribes, so to speak? I'm curious if the operation in Cork, Ireland, which was where Poppulo, came from. Is that the workplace side and are the people in Denver more focused on digital signage?  Joe Giebel: You know, that's part of the journey and the early stages of the journey you definitely have. I'll stick with your term tribes and people that have knowledge and quite honestly, comfortability with a certain way of doing business. Along that journey, you start to see that tribal element go away, and you start to see the company mesh and become one organization that grows, and so early on, Denver had to be the hub for digital signage. It's a, I don't want to say complex, but if you're used to selling a pure SaaS solution, and then you start to add in hardware and the different elements of digital signage, it's more than you're used to and without a doubt, I hadn't talked about email and corporate communications in that sense prior to the acquisition. So it took me time to understand it.  I would say now, our entire company is so excited about a multi-channel tool, that everybody's leaned into it at this point and we work cross functionally quite well. It extends the workday quite a bit.  I'm sure there was also a bit of a journey kind of massaging and figuring out the right message, because going to target customers and saying, we do this and we do this, and we also do this must've potentially left them a little cross eyed. Joe Giebel: Without a doubt. I think we've learned along the way, when to talk about. the channel for a client and when to focus on a specific offering, and that's a delicate dance as well to feel that out. Because not every customer understands our vision quickly, and they certainly don't share the excitement that we have over new stuff because it's not at the forefront of what they do every day. So you can absolutely create a ton of confusion, and we probably did that, in the early process of coming together as Poppulo.  It probably feels like you're trying to sell them more stuff.  Joe Giebel: You know, as a sales guy, I'm probably insensitive to that, but, yeah, absolutely. You kind of get that sense when someone's sniffing out a salesperson coming into the room, and I bet we did pass that as well.  At the end of the day, we are trying to sell more stuff, but if we can't illustrate what the value is and why it makes sense to buy more solutions from us, we haven't done our job and we're probably not going to win that. So at the end of the day, we really do want to try to enhance the offerings and drive value to our client base.  You also have an office now in Bangalore, India. Is that a Dev team or a remote Dev team?  Joe Giebel: You know, we've got a number of functions, including development in Bangalore and that's an exciting market. I just saw endless content about how important digital signage is in India, and so we were excited to open that office up. I think it's been open for several months. We held our grand opening last week, but we've got a great team there, including a lot of technical folks and so we're very excited about that expansion.  But it's sales as well? It's not just purely, what would be perceived at least as being lower-cost, software development than what you would pay in North America.  Joe Giebel: Correct. It's not purely an offshoring effort. We see some strategic elements there. We've always provided technical experts to support our clients 24/7. That certainly helps the effort. We used to do that from Denver and have people working through the night. We now have folks in support as well in Bangalore.  The work culture in India, I think opens up a ton of possibilities for any digital signage vendor. That's looking at how do I enhance the workplace and employee experience within an office. I think that's going to be a tremendous market.  Yeah. I mean, it's a vast market. I suspect the challenge is based on the emails and pitches I get from people that the expectations on cost for SaaS licensing, software, and so on are somewhat lower than they are in North America. Joe Giebel: It's interesting, and some of the organizations there, that's a tough game if you don't have scale in what we're talking about, oftentimes though, if an organization is looking at this correctly, they're looking to roll out at scale and obviously we can build in better commercials that way, to better understand that, but without a doubt, as we look at a number of our clients are truly global, you do feel that pressure, as you go region to region, and that's an interesting thing you've got to handle, and try to solve for.  Do you have a client who you're allowed to talk about, because often the larger ones, it's difficult to get any permissions, that kind of really reflects the full meal deal of what you can do in terms of workplace, venue-based, customer-facing digital signage, maybe staff facing digital signage, like the whole shoot and match?  Joe Giebel: You know, I think Delta Airlines is a great client that takes advantage of most of our solutions, and then especially within digital signage, they've got so many use cases that they deploy both employee-facing, above wing for the passengers and below wing for the employees. So I think that's a good client that, we're fortunate does a lot of speaking about the solutions and is someone we can discuss.  Yeah, you've had them for a long time, right? Like, at least a decade.  Joe Giebel: That is correct. Long-term client. They started out with employee comms, and they've won a number of awards in the industry for some of the innovations that they do. I believe last year we started rolling out passenger-facing applications broadly for flight information displays.  Yeah. I did a podcast with Ryan Taylor going back about three years or something, and I've been seriously impressed by what Delta is doing. Because they totally get it, you can use screens really help inform the passenger journey and from the moment you walk into the check-in area all the way post-security. What was really intriguing was what they were doing, as you said, below the wing with, ramp information screens that are talking to the guys who are heaving bags into the planes and everything. Joe Giebel: Yeah, that's right. It's heartwarming when you see them roll out, one Ryan, leads a team that focuses on a number of things. Digital signage is a large part of it and they all understand what use cases and applications we can leverage digital screens for to help our customers and our employees. But when you see images of a 30-year pilot pulling up to a gate, and the ramp information display is saying, thanks for your work and dedication to Delta, and you know, that pilot's retiring it. That's a cool use of the technology, and it feels good that they think that's helping them build their culture and recognize people. It's awesome to see that in use, and in context like that.  The industry obviously has evolved quite a bit over 20 years. I'm curious about what you're seeing these days that you're seeing more and more customer demand for, I suspect it's things like data integration.  Joe Giebel: Yeah. I think data integration is the key and trying to understand, how do we make these things real?  The industry is asking for, it's odd when I hear it, I want consumer grade. Because I think 15 years ago you wanted everything to be the commercial grade which seemed to mean Strength quality, you know now they're thinking about the experience and consumer-grade is the goal. Consumer grade meaning I want it to react and be as simple As you know, maybe a social media app, and what I experienced on my personal devices need to be intuitive and need to be smooth. There can't be a need for training on how to interact with this thing. So, part of that is data integration. Is the data automated? Is it near real-time, and accurate? And are we putting the right data in front of people that they want? And you've got to have flexibility on that integration side because oftentimes, we'll see things get deployed and we see behaviors driven and it's like, wow, we didn't predict our clients and us and our project teams will say, we didn't predict those results. Let's tweak this and this to get back towards what we were driving and that flexibility and data integration, I think is the cornerstone of being able to deliver that experience. You have a platform you call Harmony. Is that the piece that kind of stitches together the different components versus, yeah, I just want the digital signage thing or I just want the email marketing thing?  Joe Giebel: That's right. So as you start to think about all these channels coming together, we call that platform harmony and it is a multi-channel, omnichannel approach to putting content really, I want to say communications, but, let's say getting content in front of the right people at the right time, and it gives you that ability to broadcast across every channel, or maybe you're using our analytics to say, “Look, we know these disconnected workers are not looking at the email, so we don't need to address them with email, that's creating too much noise.” So that concept or that name of Harmony, is the concept of all these channels coming together in harmony within an organization.  Without giving away business details, I'm curious, what percentage of customers are using Harmony versus those who still just want the traditional workplace comm stuff and those who just want digital signage for their retail environment or whatever it may be? Joe Giebel: Yeah, we've got a massive client base. So I would say about 10 percent of them are taking advantage of multi-channel, and on what I would just define as the Harmony platform, and I would say we've probably had serious conversations with about 80 percent and are working with them on plans for which channels might make sense. Oftentimes you've sold one solution to a team in the past, and that team's not going to necessarily handle that full digital strategy. So then it becomes a process of meeting the other stakeholders, showing them the value, and then planning how we roll this out. Because these are so highly visible, both digital signs, email, what we call feeds, putting messaging into collaboration tools, it's so visible that you have to be thoughtful on how you roll that out, how you plan it. So it takes a little bit of time.  I'd say 10 percent are the early adopters and taking advantage right now and it's certainly something we evangelize across the client base.  I suspect the leadership team likes that situation because there's a lot of growth potential there.  Joe Giebel: Yeah, we absolutely love it. The question then becomes, and what we've been working through quite honestly, for the last two years. How hard do you push on a platform play? And then how hard do you focus on nurturing the existing solutions and making sure that the teams that originally bought them aren't getting flooded with, “Hey, here's a shiny new toy.” And they're getting the adequate focus from us on how we make you most successful, within what you own and what are your expansion plans for that singular solution.  So there is a balance and, honestly, it might come across as a little disrespectful, if you don't pick up on what the client needs in the moment and we don't mean it that way. But you got to have your ears open, and stay customer centric, as you kind of navigate those waters.  All right. This is great. Good to catch up. if people want to know more, they'll find you just at poppulo.com?  Joe Giebel: Poppulo.com is the best place to reach us and you'll start to see all those solutions, both from an individual, description and promotion, as well as here's how all these channels play together. All right, Joe. Thanks again!  Joe Giebel: Dave, great catching up. Thank you.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode 265Pure gold with every answer! Michael Gunderson, ITS Support Specialist at Highland Community College in Northwest Illinois joins the show to discuss his role as a one-man band at the school. He also talks about his career trajectory and what he gets out of shows like InfoComm. Oh, and wait until his takeover minute! Take a listen! Connect with Michael Gunderson:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gunderson-cts/ Connect with Joe Way: Web: https://www.josiahway.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josiahway X (Formerly Twitter): https://www.twitter.com/josiahway Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josiahway Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josiahway  

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode 264"The Lost Episode: Best of InfoComm 2024"A LOST EPISODE?!?!? Yes! Relive the best of #InfoComm24 with Joe Way, BC Hatchett, Erin Maher-Moran, and Ryan Gray. They discuss the best finds, best moments, and the incredible experience for the higher ed and HETMA family. Oh, and there are a few hidden gems and cameos. Take a listen!Connect with BC Hatchett:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bc-hatchett-88746312/ X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/bchatchett Connect with Erin Maher-Moran:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-maher-moran/ X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Smearin_Off_Ice Connect with Ryan Gray:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanagray/ X (Formerly Twitter): https://x.com/Ryan_A_Gray Connect with Joe Way: Web: https://www.josiahway.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/josiahway X (Formerly Twitter): https://www.twitter.com/josiahway Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/josiahway Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/josiahway  

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Feeding the content beast is an endless challenge for most companies who have invested in digital signage technology for their venues, particularly when the messaging mission is not data and pricing, but material that informs, educates and generally occupies the time of viewers. There are a few companies out there with suites of free streaming content channels, curated and sorted by interest areas. But free means ad-supported. So the action channel a bar owner might have up on screens has digital OOH ads, just like linear TV. A start-up called Stream is coming at this from a different angle, producing custom content that looks like cable TV news channels and is sorted by interest areas, like channels for medical and dental offices. The big differences are no ads and low-cost monthly subscription fees. The service puts people on screens, but AI is also used to what Stream calls augment the videos. Started just a year ago and just coming out of side hustle/stealth mode, the founders are going after what they say is a gap in the market for this type and style of content. But in meeting with prospective customers, they've also uncovered hidden demand for private label TV channels for larger clients. I chatted recently with co-founder Anthony Nerantzis. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Anthony, thank you for joining me. I knew nothing about your company, Stream, until the other day I got an email, I looked at it and I thought, this is interesting, who are these guys? And I asked a couple of questions and concluded that perhaps we should have a chat. Can you give me a rundown of what you do? Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you so much for having me on your program. A big fan. My name is Anthony Nerantzis, and I'm the CEO and co-founder of Stream. Stream is in a unique space and we think of a new space in the digital signage industry.  What we're doing is producing really premium, but low-cost and customized content solutions for CMSs, network operators, and so on to put what is a premium content product and deliver premium content product to their end users. Our whole content model is based around on unique streaming channels. So we have both plug and play, but also these white-label custom channels that we produce for brands and organizations that want to get their messages out in a contextual way to drive engagement with their customers and their viewers and we're really excited about it.  So if I'm looking at one of your content channels, what does it look like?  Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah. So what we did is the founders of Stream come from media and comms backgrounds. So what we're the best at is telling stories, visual storytelling, narrative storytelling, audience engagement, and what we identified is that a broadcast news look and feel with a host, with that graphic representation of messages, people are drawn to that. People want to engage with that sort of content. It's a premium, high-level content, think ESPN or CNN. So all of our content is based around that broadcast news style, look and feel.  What we do is for different, contextual environments, different venues, we create content that's relevant to those venues. Think of a broadcast news channel for a doctor's office. Think of a broadcast news channel for the C-Store. It's really contextually relevant content for those different environments, and it's delivered in that nice look and feel of a news broadcast.  So it's audio-driven? Anthony Nerantzis: We do offer audio solutions, but what we've found for the digital out-of-home environment, typically, there is no audio, and that's for a few reasons. First, our file sizes, just as far as the handshake and the transfer, with our partners, a smaller file size, easier to transfer, easier to upload. But second of all, a lot of the end users that we've worked with, especially on the white-label channel side, don't want noise pollution in their environments. They're just looking for that visual component. So that's where our focus is.  We obviously do audio, but our bread and butter is, that visual aspect, brilliant visuals, that draw people in. So if it looks like broadcast news, is there a reporter or a host or whatever you want to call it, on-air talent, talking, but you subtitle it or is it more visuals with supporting, titles or captions?  Anthony Nerantzis: It's a great combo of both. So we do have our lineup of Stream hosts that we utilize for our production and our development and then they do appear on the screens, and yes, with a subtitle delivery of those messages, but we have graphics of messages, headlines, subheads. You wouldn't turn our broadcast stations on your TV after a long day and sit down on the couch, but if you were to do that, it does appear as if it were a CNN, ESPN, or Fox News sort of broadcast look and feel.  That sounds expensive. I mean with on-air talent and everything else and the news resources that you need for that, having some experience in that in my old newspaper days and everything else, and there's a little bit of rxperience with broadcasting. On-air talent and everything else costs real money. How do you get around that? Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely. So, as I said, we come from the media and the comms space. So we do have that production value, that know-how of the space. What we've done is we've integrated some neat, really revolutionary, AI augmentation, to our displays and the content. So not only does that accelerate. our production process but it also helps us keep our costs, you know in check And allows us to provide what is really low-cost content to our end customers.  Obviously right now we're priced to scale. it's not cheap but we're excited, you know comparatively to a lot of the other options content out there. We're able to come in comparably, if not in a lot of cases lower, but still delivering a premium product.  Are these AI avatars, are they generated hosts as opposed to real on-air talent?  Anthony Nerantzis: So not generated. So we call it augmented because they are our host, they're on payroll and we work with them for a number of different creative, creative situations and use cases. But yeah, so one of the ways that we're really able to within our tech stack drive our costs down is  through the rendering process. Again, augmenting our hosts rather than it's not what we're doing is not fake or avatar generated in that capacity, but we are using our, real life host talent and then using them as AI generated through and to deliver them across our streaming channels.  It sounds like there's two ways to go at this, the standard sorts of channels that you already have, and there are custom channels. If it's a standard channel that's going into a doctor's office, what am I subscribing to? What roughly am I going to pay? I'm sure there's and it depends on there, but, also just what's the refresh cycle? Is this something that's refreshed daily, weekly, monthly?  Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question. So I think a doctor's office is a really great example of where we show up in a way that current content options aren't quite there. What we're doing, I would say on the plug and play side, we have several channels. We have Med One, which is a catch all healthcare sort of channel of healthcare infotainment, and then we also have a dentistry channel, and then we also have a dermatology channel and we're looking at other avenues for other use cases within the medical field. But what these are doing is they're showing really interesting infotainment content that's relevant to those spaces. We like to say contextually relevant. They're sharing news from around the industry, news from across the health landscape across the US. It's all G-rated. We use the four year old test. If you're a mom in a waiting room, what would you be comfortable with your four year old seeing? So it's not gory. It's just health tips and interesting stuff. That's going on studies hey a new study came out that lifting weights after 60 is good for bone density, things like that, and then our custom channels, if you are a bigger network and you own a network of, several hundred screens across, dentists office, we can really get really custom on that white label space with corporate branding, corporate messaging, and really for those brands, taking the exact messages that they want to deliver to their customers in that really unique five to ten minute waiting room experience, and getting them off their phones and having them focus on the screens, with relevant content. As far as pricing goes, that's where we're really excited and probably most proud. So for our venue channels, that's our kind of our second tier. Those really environment specific channels such as healthcare, those can MSRP run anywhere from $10 at the high-end and $5 at the low end. So compared to what it would cost for a CNN Health with through a cable subscription, it's really nice, it's obviously a fraction of that. But it's also a step above rotating PowerPoint slides, with messages that say, “Go get your flu shot”, which after the third or fourth flip, people are tuning out.  From a cost perspective, it's extremely competitive. And then the white label channels, that's also really exciting for us because we're able to deliver those brand specific channels at a really affordable cost.  I suspect that's definitely a “it depends” thing on how much they want and everything else. But if you had a typical, private label channel, would that be like a hundred bucks a month a thousand bucks a month? Anthony Nerantzis: That's a great question So it depends on the end point and you got me with “it depends.” It does depend but for now, i'll give you an example. We have a network with a hundred end points and that they ask for a white label channel and you know with regular updates, it's not daily updates, but with regular updates, we're able to deliver that at 50 bucks an end point so considering the value that you're getting, the brand itself is getting their very own broadcast news channel.  When our CMS partners put us in front of these folks, and they say, hey, this is something new, this is something exciting and you can have your own broadcast news channel. The end users are thrilled. Going from rotating powerpoint slides to something like this is such a value add as far as customer engagement. We've really found an enthusiasm for that sort of new age content.  Are there personalization options out of those private label ones? In other words, can the dental office in Cincinnati versus the one in Cleveland inject their own kind of messaging like, “Please welcome our new hygienist, Sarah” or whatever? Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, and it's actually funny you say that because the network that I just mentioned previously, they have a network of doctor's offices across the state of North Carolina, and each one of those offices has their own little, news, notes, updates, awards that they want to highlight that maybe might not be appropriate to share across. Someone in Winston, Salem might not care about what's going on in Carova, so we can make it really specific based on the location, obviously at scale, but yeah, we can get really granular as far as how tailored we can make it to each specific location. This is different from the streaming channels that companies that I see out there like Atmosphere and Loop and that. Those exist for the purposes of having content supported by advertising. You're not doing advertising at all, are you?  Anthony Nerantzis: That's a really great point, and no, you're right. We are not doing advertising. We are all about content forward, grabbing that audience's attention and giving them the content rather than diluting it with ads. I think that we're different, from that fast TV space in a few ways, very low cost subscription model, not ads. We're not necessarily a walled garden. We work with CMSs and we work with operators and distributors as a puzzle piece to what they're doing and really being allies to them so they can go in to their partners and their end users and say, we have this really cool puzzle pieces that we can fit within our system. So we're trying to be allies in that way. We don't have a player we're not a walled garden and then I would just say third of all we are at the end of the day, we're producing that premium content. We're not licensing it from other folks so we can control that messaging.  We can control what's showing up on the screens, make sure it's G-rated, make sure what these brands want in their locations and environments and venues is really tailored to them, not a lowest common denominator loop-based sort of system.  So you've got a content team that's paying attention to the news wires and just the general run of news out there as well as press releases and everything else, industry reports and so on to pull together your stuff? Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, and that's really our strength. Our team, the founders specifically, we come from some of the biggest media and comms companies in the world. So we understand that space. That's where we think our biggest value is, yes, tracking the news, but also identifying these brands and organizations. What are the best messages to connect with your core audiences? How do we drive this forward? Especially infotainment, but also in a retail media space where it's about conversions, driving action. That's our specialty and that's where we've been really able to flex our value with our current client book. You mentioned, you work with CMS companies as opposed to them. How does your stuff plug in? Anthony Nerantzis: CMSs are our best friends. If there's a North star for us, it's really being partners with the CMS is because they're so powerful in the sense that they have the distribution, they have these relationships and they know what their customers want. So when we talk about integration, we are coming to them in two ways. First, a simple integration of our plug and play apps within their app store. So when a customer has their interface template up, they can plop us in, and then our content is really seamless. The handshake is very seamless between us, and then our content can show up on their screens. Is it streamed straight from your servers or the host that you use for streaming or are the CMS getting a file and it's stored locally on the player?  Anthony Nerantzis: That's a great question. How it typically works is that HTML5 is our best friend. We provide the content feeds through that, they plug into the CMSs, and then the CMS from there distributes that URL through their app store. So when someone selects us out of their app store, it plugs in basically they're given access to the license through the URL. We can get as simple as we've had clients come to us. End users specifically if we're working right with the end user and they're like, we just want an mp4 file, so we'll just drop an mp4 file in there in their Dropbox and they plug it into their CMS template and they're off and running. We pride ourselves on universal connectivity. We'll meet you where the customer is  So if you have an end user who says I don't want a CMS. I don't want that additional monthly cost or whatever. Can I work just directly with you? Can they do that?  Anthony Nerantzis: As I said, our most important ally in the space are these CMSs. So we respect that relationship. So if we're working with a CMS and there would never be a situation where the client would be like, see you later, CMS, we're just going to plug in the stream. We value our long term relationships more than any sort of, short term gain of an individual network. And then beyond that, and this came up the other day, we're working with the CMS and their client has a few dozen screens and there might be a few hundred other screens on the horizon in the next few months. We make very clear, we were brought onto the project by the CMS. We're not going to expand past the boundaries of where their players are plugged in. We respect those relationships and I think that's really the key to our success.  Yeah, and I think the end user community, if you want to call it that, is also more knowledgeable than they were for a good long time, where they understand that having a proper content management system with device management, monitoring, all those other things, the ability to scale and all that are really important versus just, finding some server player that can call a URL. Anthony Nerantzis: A hundred percent and I think that's what we're recognizing, and we really can only go as far as our CMS partners, media players. We're not going to give individual URL feeds to a thousand screens. We rely on them for that distribution.  Maybe my mind blanked or something, but did you talk about the typical frequency of content changes?  Anthony Nerantzis: That's a great question. So for our flagships, our news and sports, obviously that's quick hitting news and that needs to be updated throughout the day, which it is.  For our venue channels, those are mostly environments, for example, a doctor's office, you might really only be in a doctor's office once every six months, and you'd think that we'd say, we just need to update those channels every six months. What we really go for is, perception is everything. So if that venue owner isn't seeing it updated that often, they're going to think they're not connecting those dots. We're there to connect those dots for them. We're there to consistently fresh content. So when they're walking into their place of business, they're not like, wow, this is the same thing that was playing two weeks ago. So for our venue channels, we do updates at least two or three times a week to keep that content fresh, relevant.  Our biggest fear is stale content. That's what we want to get rid of. That's what we want to move past and we want to show up well for our CMS partners that their end users are happy with the content that's being displayed. Obviously with white label, it really depends on what the client wants, but again for us it's all about going above and beyond and being proactive in that sense to provide fresh content so that's kind of part of our bread and butter.  When you were developing the business plan for this, were you thinking white label was a big part of the business or is that something that you landed on as you started talking to customers or potential customers? Anthony Nerantzis: White label was not part of the plan at all whatsoever. That was born out of really, I would say a listening ot users. So pre launch, we were meeting with a lot of folks, and they were thrilled about and saying, hey, these plug and play options are great, compared to our rotating PowerPoint slides. Let's get this going.  But what we noticed was there was incredible demand, really desperation for tailored content. Obviously now everything's going to be tailored, customizable, and contextual. Not only in the infotainment space, but in the retail media space. So we're ideating, Hey, what if we make these custom channels? What if we can go to a brand and say, Hey, whether you're just trying to entertain your customers, let's entertain them with news and updates about the company? And then if you're trying to sell a customer on something, why don't we drive action through content and messages, that will achieve those goals. What we did was, we obviously went through a pretty big development phase on what we did is we put these samples in these productions in front of folks and the reaction that we got was incredible, and it really showed us that this tailored content and this white label content is really where things are moving away from the lowest common denominator and really going towards contextually relevant brand centric content. I assume that was a pretty happy discovery because you're able to, in rough terms, 10x the monthly subscription fee from an endpoint.  Anthony Nerantzis: We were very fortunate to be in a position where we were already tracking towards it. So yes, it was a “whoa” sort of moment, which was cool. I don't think we could have imagined the reaction that we've received from it, and transparently, we really used InfoComm as our major kind of launch point to get our name out there, and we were expecting to show up, shake hands, get to know people, meet people.  We brought, obviously, a little tablet. We were showing people what we were doing, and the reaction, specifically for these white labels… We were on our flight home, from Vegas, with huge smiles on our faces, I don't think we could have imagined how much these white labels, channel offerings, how much interest that would have generated. So you were at Infocomm and I walked right by, apparently.  Anthony Nerantzis: I guess so. I'll have to catch you at the next one. I think it's in Orlando next year, right? Yeah. It's starting to ring a bell now that when I walk around, I take photos of stands thinking, I don't know anything about them, I don't have time to stop right now, but I'll look this up later.  If I go through my photos, I bet you there's one in there like that and my apologies for not stopping, but, I get swarmed that week.  Anthony Nerantzis: I'm going to let you off the hook. We did not have a booth. We were just walking around. Maybe a booth next year. Maybe you can take a picture of a booth next year. But we were just on the ground getting to know folks, trying to make the most of it.  And you're able to do that just by having chats with people?  Anthony Nerantzis: Yeah, we're really fortunate. Obviously, the founders are from outside the digital signage space and someone who's been a huge mentor to us is Bob Ratcliffe. I don't know if you're familiar, but he runs, really, what we found to be an incredibly consultancy and, he's really been our mentor and also guided us around the show floor, and introduced us to who we needed to know. So we're fortunate for Bob and he's obviously a great partner with us.  Yeah, subject matter, knowledge and contacts and all that are invaluable. So how long ago did this start? Anthony Nerantzis: As I said, we usde Infocomm to put our name out there. Transparently though, I would say since June of 2023 is when the idea was first born.  Oh, so this is like real new?  Anthony Nerantzis: Yes. I think I mentioned earlier, but we thought we had an idea, we thought we had something, but what we did was we did a lot of listening. We met with partners even before we really put our name out there publicly. I can't tell you how many Zoom meetings, in person conversations that we had with people in the space, CMS operators. What are you looking for from a content perspective? What are you missing? What's your current situation? The production and development process, obviously, of our software stack, took a long time, to optimize it and get it up and running to what we wanted it to be, to show up in a way that we were proud of. So I'd say, yeah, about a year and a little before our one year anniversary, we came out to the world and timed up perfectly with Infocomm.  So what's the state of the company at the moment? Is it like a full time company or is it a side hustle for you guys?  Anthony Nerantzis: So we are just breaking out of our side hustle, which is amazing. The last month and a half have been an absolute whirlwind. We are in a full growth stage right now. We're incredibly proud of that. So We're going full on and we're fortunate that we were able to get so much excitement right from the jump that we're able to make this decision. So we're definitely in the growth phase. I think the next three, six, twelve months are going to be extremely exciting. We have a lot of really cool stuff coming down the pipeline, not only with product development, but with partnerships. So we're excited about where we're at. Actually, just last week, we were accepted into NVIDIA's Inception program for early stage startups. So that gives us a whole suite of tools that are going to propel us, even further forward with our capabilities. So we're really excited about that.  Yeah, that's how I got wind of this and I, admittedly, didn't know a darn thing about NVIDIA's inception program. What does that do for you? Is it funding or is it just support or connections? Anthony Nerantzis: I think a lot about the last one. So it really integrates us directly within their partner network of VCs of developer support. So I would say just from apartner in a network standpoint, that's going to be the biggest value add. The second really huge boon for us is going to be access to some advanced features within their software suite. Obviously we're always looking for ways to level up and optimize our production processes. And with Nvidia, with their help, and being part of this network, we're going to have access to a lot of the really cool things that they're doing behind the scenes. So we're really excited about that and hopefully over the next month or two here, we're going to be able to roll out some things that are a direct result of that, being within that network, so a huge opportunity for us for sure.  So that gives you access to a whole bunch of computing power, particularly on the graphics side, which I'm sure it is intriguing. Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely. That's the name of the game right now. We need it and just to have a partner like that is pretty awesome. If people want to know more about your company, where do they find you?  Anthony Nerantzis: So we're a few places. I think our channel of choice is for sure LinkedIn. go ahead and follow us on LinkedIn. We're Stream, and then our website is streammedia.news. So we kicked .com to the side because we want to really show that we're news, we're content forward. We're not streammedia.ads. We're focused on that content with the news. With the news portion. So I encourage everyone to check us out.  I suspect streammedia.com was also gone many years ago. Anthony Nerantzis: Dave, you're exposing me.  As was the stream.com, probably gone in 2003 or something.  Anthony Nerantzis: I would imagine, yes.  Or 1993, I don't know. Alright, Anthony, that was great. Thank you. Happy to learn more about your company and best wishes with all this, and I guess I'll see you in Orlando next year. Anthony Nerantzis: Absolutely, Can't wait. Thank you so much. We really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you to all your listeners and we really had a lot of fun.  

On this week's show: After a long two weeks the HomeTech Team checks in with Seth's updates from Infocomm in Vegas, TJ reviews a number of Aqara products, Apple talks about AI and less about the home, Alexa may not be getting the AI, Arlo brings tapping to the home, two new universal remote options are on Kickstarter, Govee adds to their outdoor lighting products, SmartThings goes Pro, a pick of the week, and the summer projects have begun!

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 257InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with CrestronCrestron drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV Podcast Episode: 258InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with Bosch Integrated Audio BrandsBosch drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 259InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with AtlonaAtlona drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 260 InfoComm 2024Day 1 with AVI-SPLAVI-SPL drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 261InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with InogeniInogeni drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 262InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with EpiphanEpiphan drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 263InfoComm 2024 Day 1 with XTEN-AVXTEN-AV drops by the HETMA booth to discuss what they are showcasing at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 249InfoComm Preview with Panasonic ConnectDarryl Krall joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Panasonic Connect at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 246InfoComm Preview with BoseNancy Blanchard joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Bose at InfoComm 2024.Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 247InfoComm Preview with Atlona    Steve Botart joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Atlona at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 248InfoComm Preview with Crestron     Joel Mulpeter & John Hulen join us for a preview of what to expect to see from Crestron at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 250InfoComm Preview with SonyRich Ventura joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Sony at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 252InfoComm Preview with SharpKristin Spiewak joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Sharp at InfoComm 2024.Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 253InfoComm Preview with Computer ComfortsFrank Kolavo joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Computer Comforts at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.https://computercomforts.com/products/hideaway-lcd-tablehttps://computercomforts.com/products/configure-it-lecternhttps://computercomforts.com/products/transformer-lectern

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 254InfoComm Preview with NurevaAdrian Doughty joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Nureva at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 255InfoComm Preview with AudinateKathryn Taub joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Audinate at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 256InfoComm Preview with Bosch Integrated Audio BrandsNicolas Betancur and Anthony Papamichael joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from Bosch Integrated Audio Brands at InfoComm 2024.     Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.

Higher Ed AV PodcastEpisode: 251InfoComm Preview with PTZ OpticsPaul Richards joins us for a preview of what to expect to see from PTZ Optics at InfoComm 2024.    Connect with BC on X, @bchatchett.