Podcast appearances and mentions of jeff hastings

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!

In the 3rd hour of the Marc Cox Morning Show: WashU professor under fire for posting anti-Semitic tweet Genevieve Wood, Senior Advisor at The Heritage Foundation, joins the Marc Cox Morning Show to discuss the dramatic intervention needed to cure campus dysfunction Kevin Scott, General Manager of Security at Metro / BiState, joins Marc & Kim to discuss the Metro Link Taskforce summary that shows the number of incidents are up, but Mr. Scott explains why that summary might not show what you think Coming Up: Rep Chris Dinkins, Charles Payne, and Jeff Hastings

Jeff Hastings joins the Marc Cox Morning Show, to ask for support of The Flagman's Mission, by looking for volunteers that will help line the streets with flags for a fallen service man, in Wood River Ill.  He is meeting at the Pitchford Funeral Home on hwy 111 off 255 at 1pm.  They are lining 6 miles with flags.  And also need help on Sunday at the same location to take the flags down.  Details are also on flagmanmission.org

In the third hour of the Marc Cox Morning Show: Are the group of mercenaries that brought the Russia Uprising still active? Real or Fake News with Carl Chanel Rion of One America News Network, joins Marc to discuss the failed uprising in Russia and if there was more to it than what was being told to the public RFK Jr wants the Government to legalize Pot Coming Up: Rep Jason Smith, Jessie Jane Duff, Tom Ackerman, and Jeff Hastings

Jeff Hastings with Heroes Down Flags Up, joins Marc to ask for volunteers to help take down flags at 4pm today Immaculate  Conception Church in Mapelwood on Marshal road, and tomorrow they will head to Waynesville to line a funeral route with Flags.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT If you are going to the big InfoComm pro AV trade show, coming up very soon in Orlando, you'll undoubtedly see a very busy BrightSign stand, and a crowd around CEO Jeff Hastings. I've spoken with Hastings a couple of times now for this podcast, but it had been a while ... and I wanted to catch up and get his perspective on the state of the industry, as well as find out what's new with his company and its little purple boxes. The Silicon Valley company is pretty much its own category in terms of media players - as I hear and read about solutions providers weighing decisions on whether to use PCs, smart displays, set-top boxes ... or Brightsign boxes. The company now ships about 1,200 units a day - based on its reputation for having a range of durable, reliable devices that hit different price points and meet needs from simple to sophisticated and powerful. In this chat, we get into the state of the digital signage market (It's growing across segments, but not at 2022's pace), how the characteristics of end-user buyers has changed, and the role of AI in BrightSign's business, and more broadly, for the industry. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Mr. Hastings, good to chat once again. We've done a couple of podcasts, but you're a big shooter in this industry. I need to talk to you regularly.  Jeff Hastings: I don't know if you can call me a big shooter, but I'm definitely hooked on the world and live it seven days a week, but it's good to check in with you, Dave. I'm just sucking up. I'm not sure why, but I am.  So where is the industry these days? I'm just curious because when I talk to people, they will uniformly say everything is awesome. While you can say that too, you're different in that you're supplying stuff to all kinds of different companies, so maybe you get a better sense of what's really happening out there. Jeff Hastings: Yeah, I think one of the things that we do that's a little bit different is that BrightSign is really a horizontal platform, as I call it, so we work in pretty much every vertical market that has a display that's used. So we see from the broad market what's going on.  Last year was a great year of growth for us with over 20% growth. This year has honestly started off to be a little bit slow, and I think most people are reporting that. It's definitely been a little bit slow at the start of the year. I think a lot of things are going on with the interest rates and people being a little bit cautious about the recession, but overall, the industry is still growing. It's not growing as fast as I think most people predicted after last year. But it's a very solid market. We see more and more what people call digital transformations, I'm not a super fan of that word, but essentially it means people are putting in more digital signage and retail continues to be a great segment. People investing in retail to create better experiences after the whole pandemic of people wanting to get back out and people see the investment in that kind of real-world experience paying off.  Yeah, I guess you could call it phygital. Another term that I would be happy if I never saw again. Why do you think retail's growing? Is it just simply that they understand the whole experiential thing and that you have to do more in a store?  Jeff Hastings: I think a few points. First, the whole idea that we're going to buy everything online and just stay in our house, I think most people realize, yeah, there's a lot of things that work that way, and I can just have it delivered. But the reality is we are social animals. We want to interact with people, and just being stuck in our house is not what we like to do, and I think most people are now seeing that with the results of the pandemic that, being stuck in your house is we're not built for that. It's almost akin to being in jail. A lot of people comment on that.  So getting out is important for us as humans and having that social experiment and getting out and shopping and actually being in retail, part of it is actually physically buying the goods, but a lot of it is social. People just wanna be out in the environment. So now that you take that as a fact that people wanna be out in the environment, if you create a place where it's exciting to be in, and there are other people that are there, guess what? More people's gonna come to your establishment. So we really believe that's the fundamental basis of why people are investing in retail. That's the main reason.  If you look at a secondary reason. A lot of the big retailers, their businesses boomed. During the pandemic, a lot of people talked about how online boomed, but actually, a lot of the bigger retailers boomed and they got a lot of new customers. I think you look at folks like Walmart, lots of people come into the stores, but during the pandemic, they had a dramatic increase of people coming into their stores. As we start going back to the normal world, folks like Walmart wanna make sure that they keep those people coming to their stores. Back during the pandemic, maybe they were the only stores that were able to be open so they got new customers, and now what they wanna do is create an environment where they keep those new customers. So I think there's a lot of that going on of stepping up their game. Before it was just about price. “Okay, we'll just go there cuz it's got the best price.” Now people are like, “Hey, I wanna go there and I wanna enjoy my experience.” So that is playing into this investment in digital science and kind of digital experiences in retail.  Are you getting a sense from all the companies that work with you, that they're starting to open up new verticals? I've wondered when healthcare was finally gonna start happening.  Jeff Hastings: Oh all the verticals are growing. I don't know of any verticals that are not growing right now. They're all growing and some of them are growing faster. I think ironically, which I wouldn't have predicted, the corporate sector is actually growing very rapidly right now. I think people are coming back to the office, maybe not a hundred percent, but they are investing in it the same way that retail is investing in the experience. People are realizing that an office is no longer a place where they have to come work, much like in retail, where you have to go there to buy a product, but you want to get people in that environment for the social aspect of it and the collaboration aspect and if you create a nicer environment, more people come to work. So there's a lot of investment in that going on also.  And how does that manifest itself, like what are they doing? Big-ass video walls in the lobby or is it more kind of the operational side of it? Jeff Hastings: It's literally all aspects of it. One, they create an impressive environment. So lots of LEDs, and lots of video walls going into these places to create a more exciting environment versus just a bunch of cubes. Secondly, more communications which are just kind of standard displays, ways of communicating with employees and more, I don't like the word infotainment, but infotainment, where they've got interesting things, are displayed to communicate with employees, but it's also a bit fun. These are things of just celebrating employees. We see a lot of that going on and kind of recognize the employees' communication about what's going on in the company.  This whole idea of an intranet I think most people realize that, guess what, when they have an intranet, no one actually goes to that website. So that was a great experiment. I think a lot of money on intranet sites which ended up being a massive failure, so the ability to communicate with employees is very important, and what they're finding is, guess what, if there's a display up there, and it's interesting, people will look at it and now you're getting across a message, and that could be whether it's a benefits program or you name it, you're able to communicate with employees and engage with them in a way, especially with the younger crowd, that the younger crowd doesn't want something kinda forced on them. They want to be able to kinda opt into it and the displays actually allow them to kind of opt-in in this passive fashion.  Has the buyer profile changed at all? We were chatting at some trade show or other, and you were saying how your guys are spending a lot more time talking to IT people than perhaps they did in the past. Jeff Hastings: It's very much changed. I would say when I look back 10 years ago, maybe 10% of the deals that we did involved the IT group. I would say today, any large deal, the IT group is involved with, and this has to do with understanding how they're gonna maintain them because it's now moved from whoever was wanting to “buy” the digital signage, whether it's the marketing group or the HR group, that they're quickly realizing that the IT group is gonna own these things in terms of making sure that they're working every day, not putting the content on them.  So the IT group is now very much involved in that because they know they're gonna own them, so understanding what the cost of maintaining them is gonna be. And then secondly, security is just an enormous thing today. I mean pretty much every large deployment we do we go through large amounts of security reviews. The great thing for us is that it is kind of the backbone of our product is security, and we've built our own proprietary OS. We have put in the ability that the security is super high. Our devices are used on navy ships on the most secure network in the world. So it's a thing that actually benefits us, but just the interaction with the IT involvement, any large deployment goes through literally months of security review and if you can't pass that, it doesn't matter what the other organization from a content perspective wants to have, it'll never make it.  When you're dealing with IT and IS people, when you say it's our own proprietary operating system, does that present a problem or are you able to say it's derivative of Linux or whatever, and it's fine? Jeff Hastings: Yeah, so at first, a decade ago, we would say that, and it would just make the hair stand up on their back rise up. But now what they've realized is there are a lot of these devices really classified as IoT devices, and they now understand how they fit into the environment, and it's not oh my God, we can't maintain it unless it's a Windows device. It's interesting that they now are able to classify these devices as kind of IoT devices with proprietary operating systems and understand how to run them. It's also that the larger corporations have now figured out how to understand the cost of a classic kind of PC. Not that's what everyone uses them, but they now really understand that and most of the companies are now, they use a number of around $300 as the cost to just have a PC in the work environment. They now understand what a cost basis really is for maintaining these and for us, they're giving much lower numbers in terms of being able to have one of these on the network. And a lot of it has to do with the ability of these devices, if you're using Windows or Mac, these things are constantly updated, and each time those operating systems get updated, there's a percent of things that fail, and those are support costs. With our device, we don't do that, so it actually saves them a lot of money operationally at the same time, keeping the security level high. So what happens when you do have a firmware update?  Jeff Hastings: So on our system, the first thing you can do is you can test those, and most of our customers do actually test those to make sure that they're not going to get a failure with their system. That's very different from something that gets shoved down the pipe automatically to maintain your security level. So by doing that, it's a very controlled rollout, and typically it's a very rare exception on our platform that something has to go out because a security fix came out immediately. A lot of it is just because of how our operating system is first cryptographically signed, and secondly, that people can't put random applications on our platform. Those two things raised a security bar really high so that when you need an operating system update, a firmware update, you can be controlled about it, you can test it and roll it out, and that really is where a lot of the savings comes in, because most of these operating system updates, it's not that the actual operating system is causing problems, it's the whole ecosystem of applications that people use. And one of those applications breaks, and guess what, they get hundreds of calls coming in to fix it. Each one of those has to be fixed and dealt with, and that's where kind of the burden of cost really comes up, and if you think about digital signage, 99% of those new features in the operating system are never, ever used in digital signage. In fact, most of them are actually being defeated. People don't want them. You don't want a desktop in digital signage.  Yeah. Is digital signage with the people you're dealing with now or your business partners are dealing with now, are they seeing it as a mission-critical application now? Jeff Hastings: It's definitely moving towards that. I wouldn't say it's completely there. Some of them are mission-critical. We have folks in the F1 world that use our devices and I will tell you, they view our devices as mission-critical. The Navy uses our devices. They view them as very mission-critical. Some of the marketing folks, maybe they don't view them as mission critical. They view them as very valuable, and anytime there's downtime, it's important to them. I'd say it's moved from a place where people would be like, oh, displays always go down, and they don't worry about it either. Hey, those things should be working all the time, and that plays to our advantage.  Ten years ago when the first system-on-chip displays came out from Sony and Samsung and then LG and on, they weren't very powerful, they didn't do a hell of a lot. They could do the basics. They could show a menu, that sort of thing, but they've been around for a decade now. They're pretty powerful. I hear people saying they're pretty darn good.  Do these smart commercial displays now present a challenge that perhaps they did in the past? And are you looking at embedded solutions? I know you already do that with Bluefin, and you did a little bit with NEC Sharp back in the day.  Jeff Hastings: Yeah. So, the way I look at these is the range of devices that can create this experience. You can look at a $35 raspberry pie that's going to do a bunch of powerful things. So the whole content side of it, I really focus less on that. We have a whole range of players from simple to very complex with the new XC product, and it's interesting to look at the content, but what we see more and more from our customers is the ability to maintain these and control these because the long term cost is really what comes into play. So it's becoming less and less about. “Oh, can this play this piece of content?” Because that's being more and more commoditized over time, and what we're seeing is, as we talked about, like the IT organization, the ability to maintain these, the sustainability. There's a lot in sustainability, what's the power consumption, what's the lifetime of a display? And one of the things that we actually see, which is a vulnerability in the built-in displays, is that their storage is fixed. It's soldered down on the motherboard, flash memory is a consumable, and it has a limited lifespan. So that's one of the things we're seeing with our players, you can replace that media with a display that has it soldered down. Once that memory wears out, which it does, then you have to throw away the whole display. So that means that all of a sudden you're taking, instead of a tiny little SD card that weighs a few grams, now you're going to throw away a whole display that's going to go to a landfill. So we push a lot on sustainability. Clearly, in North America, it's a little bit behind Europe, but in Europe, that is a big deal of sustainability. The bottom line is that the built-in definitely has some advantages. The operational ability to deploy it is simpler, but it's not the panacea. There are still lots of things out there. The manageability of it, the ability to update and control things remotely, and the ability to change the SD card when it wears out are very important. And I love to make jokes about that. If I bought a car that I couldn't change the tires when they wore out, I'd be really bummed to have to throw away my car because I can't replace the tires, and that's the same thing with flash memory. It's the same thing as a tire. It's going to wear out. You'd hate to throw away your car. So with the Bluefin, I know they have a range of displays now, and they're not just little shelf-edge ones. They go up to, I think, 40-inch plus or something. In those cases, when you've got an embedded display that's got a BrightSign inside, is it swappable or upgradeable?  Jeff Hastings: Yes. So there are a few things about those displays. So the first is that it uses the same architecture. So we'll use an SD card as the storage mechanism so that you can do that. Secondly, it's actually slotted. You can open up that display and can actually replace the player.  So it's like the Sharp NEC ones going back Five years or something? Jeff Hastings: Exactly, and so we standardized on a different kind of connector to really make the form factor very small. So both the media is replaceable, and the player is replaceable. We've even had some customers already do that, upgrading their platform from an earlier one to their next-gen, and they're all backward compatible, so they'll fit into the same slot, and you get the newer performance. So yeah, we see that, as a market there's a class of customers that want to see more and more people, and at every show, if you stop by, we have more and more people who are doing the BrightSign built-in, and you'll see that trend continue. You'll see it continue as more and more people realize that's a really good solution. The platform, the ecosystem, the upgradeability, and the remote management are really important, and they want to add that to their displays.  And it's a little thing, but the simple fact that if you can put up a display in an hour instead of 90 minutes or something if you're doing a big rollout, it adds up. Jeff Hastings: It does add up, and like I said there's the upfront and then the ongoing. So yeah, there are absolutely benefits to it, but you have to make sure that you don't end up with a car that you can't change the tires on. What about Apple TVs? There are three or four companies, at least CMS software companies, who heavily market Apple TV as their solution. Is that not a concern, but do you see it as real competition or almost like a novelty? Jeff Hastings: I see it mostly as a novelty. It's on the border of a consumer kind of operating system. It's a little bit different. But still, you're dealing with many of the same things. You're fighting the platform. Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire, they're essentially all very similar. They're built for consumers. They're not built for commercial use, and what that means is that you're kind of fighting the platform. I routinely see people using the Roku TCL TVs, and they have their little digital signage application, and then when it reboots, it comes back to the home screen, and people are trying to beat that. So if you look at large-scale deployments, that's where you get into this manageability and controllability, and those things are not optimized for that. It's not like I'm saying it, they're worthless. It's just in large deployments, it's difficult to deal with the little idiosyncratic consumer devices. It's interesting when you talk about Roku because I don't think that many people know that BrightSign is, in effect, a spin-out of Roku, right?  Jeff Hastings: Yeah, the BrightSign business was originally part of Roku, and in 2009, we spun out for them, and actually the core operating system is still very similar between the platforms, although we've taken it in the digital signage direction and added a lot of features and capabilities in digital signage and obviously the Roku guys have taken in their direction of streaming. But yeah, at the core of it, yeah, that's where the technology came from.  Is there still any kind of sharing of ideas or anything between the companies, or are they very much different tracks and you share DNA but that's about it? Jeff Hastings: It's really that we share DNA and that's about it. I'm still on the board of Roku, so I actively participate in their business, but yeah, there's no official sharing. But yeah, with me being on the board, we get kind of informal sharing.  Yeah, I mean, you're sitting there actively listening and they say, we're developing this, and you're thinking, “Yeah, that's interesting. Maybe I could apply that.”  Jeff Hastings: Yeah, and the same thing goes in the other direction. Some of the stuff that we work on is pretty interesting, as we do a lot of out-of-home advertising. Their model is built on a big advertising model in-home. So there are definitely things we share that also.  You have high-end players that can go up to 8k. Are there customers using 8k or are they just buying those boxes with the idea of, okay, we're future-proofed? Jeff Hastings: Yeah, the way I think about those players: 8k is a feature. It's not the only thing that you can buy those for. Most of the people are not using 8k, and honestly, it's just a marketing thing because very few people actually use 8k. Most people buy them for the power of the experience. So very high-end experiences that people would've classically used PCs, for now, can get our device with the reliability of our operating system and maintainability, yet the power of a PC. So that's kind of what we see most people buy 8k for. The applications that we're seeing right now are kind in two sectors. One is people with consumer manufacturers of consumer TVs that wanna create an 8k experience that has all this interactive and all the great features they use. They're using our products and that, and then LEDs. So LEDs are probably the biggest area where we've seen the 8k as a single output. Those are very interesting cases because as the density of LEDs has come out and, folks like Nova Star now have 8k sending units, we can now plug in ak and instead of having multiple boxes of content rolling in, they can just have one big 8k pallet that they can split out to anywhere they want on the screen. That's a big market.  Then the last segment that we see AK being used in is having content that spans over video walls. So if you think about a four-screen, 4k LED wall, right? 8k is perfect for that, and with the hiring unit, it's got four HDMI outputs. So you can just plug four TVs and adjust the bezel compensation, and now you've dramatically simplified having a video wall. So those are the areas we see people using our XC product which does 8k.  I can't open an email list or go to any kind of technology site without seeing a couple of stories or a couple of pitches about AI. How do you see AI fitting within what you guys do? Jeff Hastings: o first, AI is super interesting, and especially with ChatGPT coming out, I think there are a lot of areas that you're going to see AI, at least in our world. So I see it as one, on the internal side, so helping our developers become more efficient. When you're writing software, there's a lot of what I would call mundane writing software that is done, whereas now, that can be automated. Actually, there's GitHub CoPilot that generates a lot of software inside Visual Studio for doing simple things. Then using ChatGPT to do some of the basic frameworks that work really well. So those are tools that I can see, and maybe on the support side, being able to use AI to get a much better quality first-level support request. So I see those things as on the operational side of the business. And then, when I look at the digital signage side, what are things that are going to be changing the world on the outside of digital signage? I think the biggest one that I see is content generation. I don't know if you've played with any of the tools on content generation. Let's be real. Many people need just kind of simple videos and imagery, and with these new content tools, you can tell it what you want. I was playing with one the other day and said, “Hey, I want an image with a hamburger in a retro look”, and it generates an image for me. If you think about what that would've cost to have a graphic designer, do that., I think the package I've paid for, it's 10 bucks a month. That one image would've probably cost a few hundred dollars for a graphic artist to do. So I think the content side is coming up there, and then the last part, which we're working on a little bit, it's still early, is for our integrators to be able to describe the experience they want and create a presentation out of it. So that is one that I think is, it's the same way that you think about, giving our programmers and our software engineers a big head start, I think this is going to be the next step. So an integrator, instead of having to say, how do I use which tool to create this? They basically put this into an AI and say, here's what I want it to do, and it gives me the experience back. And at the simplest level, it's already working, which is, for doing some simple presentations, not that it's an enormous amount of work, it's just the learning curve. We've got it working where you can just tell it for a simple presentation, it'll put it together for you. So I think, and we're just at the early stages of AI, so I think it's going to have, over time, a profound impact on basically making digital signage easier and lower cost to do a lot of things.  Yeah, I've been saying to people that, yeah, the generative AI stuff is cool, and the ability to generate images from prompts, as you were describing, is really interesting. But I think where this is really going to get used is behind the scenes for things like you were saying with coding, generating marketing materials, doing smarter monitoring, all that stuff that an end-user customer may never see, but is going to, as you say, make doing this business easier.  Jeff Hastings: When you just look at it, all of these things lower the barrier to entry to having a deployment, which is just good for our industry, and I think the AI tools are just at the early stage of creating these experiences and content that just lowers the cost of doing it. So all of them are exciting for us.  So you're going to be at Infocom, which by the time this runs will be imminent. It already is, but what are you going to be showing? I know you've got new players, new Series 5 players.  Jeff Hastings: Yeah, we'll have the whole lineup of Series 5 players. They've been dribbling out since the end of the year. So yeah, we'll show the new XT5 for the first time in our booth, which will complete our whole Series 5 lineup. So all of them will be on display.  We'll have more of the, as we talked about, BrightSign built-in displays in different form factors. Some interesting ones will be there. If anyone's out there, stop by our booth, the new XT product will be out there, and it will be exciting, and more of these built-in displays will be there. That kind of plays in that segment of the market.  What's your booth number? Jeff Hastings: I don't know our booth number. I knew you wouldn't, but I had to ask.  Jeff Hastings: Those things are not on the top of my list. We're in the digital signage section, and you'll see the power of purple being out there. Just look for the crowd?  Jeff Hastings: Exactly.  All right. Thanks, Jeff.  Jeff Hastings: Dave, thanks so much, and good chatting with you.

Pastor Jeff Hastings - Dysfunctional, Compromised Church (Senior Pastor Reset Church, Marysville, WA) / Andrea Walters - Victim / Walking through Fear 2023-03-31 (Shortwave Air Date) World Ministries International Dr. Jonathan Hansen - Founder & President Rev. Adalia Hansen (360) 629-5248 WMI P.O. Box 277 Stanwood, WA 98292 warning@worldministries.org Visit our website http://www.worldministries.org/ and subscribe to Eagle Saving Nations https://www.worldministries.org/eagles-saving-nations-membership.aspx  Sign up for Dr. Hansen's FREE newsletters http://www.worldministries.org/newsletter-signup.html  Support Dr. Hansen through your financial gift https://www.worldministries.org/donate.aspx  Order Dr. Hansen's book “The Science of Judgment” https://www.store-worldministries.org/the-science-of-judgment.html

Pastor Jeff Hastings - Dysfunctional, Compromised Church (Senior Pastor Reset Church, Marysville, WA) 2023-03-23 (Radio Air Date) World Ministries International Dr. Jonathan Hansen - Founder & President Rev. Adalia Hansen (360) 629-5248 WMI P.O. Box 277 Stanwood, WA 98292 warning@worldministries.org Visit our website http://www.worldministries.org/ and subscribe to Eagle Saving Nations https://www.worldministries.org/eagles-saving-nations-membership.aspx  Sign up for Dr. Hansen's FREE newsletters http://www.worldministries.org/newsletter-signup.html  Support Dr. Hansen through your financial gift https://www.worldministries.org/donate.aspx  Order Dr. Hansen's book “The Science of Judgment” https://www.store-worldministries.org/the-science-of-judgment.html

This Hour- Jeff Hastings, President of Flagman's Mission joins us to talk about an amazing mission to honor those that have worn the uniform! Craig invites Will to Goat Yoga? Are we “restarting” the feud with WEEK 25 News?!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This Hour- Jeff Hastings, President of Flagman's Mission joins us to talk about an amazing mission to honor those that have worn the uniform! Craig invites Will to Goat Yoga? Are we “restarting” the feud with WEEK 25 News?!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

For the last few decades, few communities have produced more Olympians than Norwich, VT. In 1984, Jeff Hastings came within an eyelash of the first U.S. ski jumping Olympic medal since 1924. Today, Hastings continues to give back to the sport as a behind the scenes leader. His longtime commentary for NBC brought the sport to millions. Ticket to Fly host Peter Graves catches with Hastings on the eve of the 2021/22 Olympic season to look back at Sarajevo 1984 and to look ahead at the future of ski jumping in America.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT QSR has always been an interesting and very active sector for digital signage, with chain restaurant operators being early adopters of the technology for menu displays. But the pandemic has shifted digital screens from being a better, more cost-efficient way to manage menus to being mission-critical to many operations - particularly when in-store ordering and dining was shut down in many places and the only way to do business was in the drive-thru lane. Global Display Solutions (GDS), which makes outdoor displays for situations like drive-thrus, had an online panel session recently that explored the digital transformation of QSR. I was asked to moderate - a job made easy because I had really great panelists. Along with Robert Heise of GDS, I chatted with Jackie Walker of Publicis Sapient, Dana Stotts of Arc Worldwide and Jeff Hastings, the super-smart CEO of BrightSign. There was no presentation to sit through first, so what you have with the audio version of the session is about 60 minutes of insights on what's happening with digital signage in QSR. In short - lots!  Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS  

I've done a podcast interview with Jeff Hastings in the past, but there's a lot going on with BrightSign and it was time for a catch-up with the CEO. BrightSign will ship about 300,000 little purple digital signage players this year, at a clip of something like 1,200 units a day. The players have become their own hardware category - as in, "Are you planning to use PCs, smart displays or BrightSign boxes?" In our chat, we talk about why BrightSign devices have so much traction in the marketplace, and why so many software and solutions companies are signing on now as integrated partners. We get into the thinking behind a service called BSN Cloud that is now coming out of beta testing and into wider release. And we talk broadly about what CIOs and IT managers need to think about when they start looking at large, scaled digital signage networks. The IT guys I used to refer to as the Dr. No crowd are now very much on board with using special purpose devices that just work, and don't bring the headaches of full PCs and their operating systems.   Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS    

Jeff Hastings is the founder and Executive Director of Warrior 180 Foundation. Warrior 180 is a Christ centered organization that has been established to reach military, veterans and first responders and their families who are dealing with suicidal issues, PTSD and depression. Jeff’s heart is to come along side of those who are hurting and offer care and compassion as well as equip others to reach out to those in need in their community. Jeff has witnessed many who have returned home from deployment and begun experiencing life troubles. It also became evident to Jeff that first responders on the home front are suffering much the same. Keep reading...

Professional digital signage has undergone a dramatic transformation, from once only displaying static images to now providing immersive experiences. How has this shift manifested itself company to company? On this week's episode of the Pro AV podcast, we looked into one AV player, BrightSign, and had CEO Jeff Hastings share how his company continues to pioneer advancements in digital signage. According to Hastings, most people hadn't heard of digital signage ten years ago. BrightSign was one of the first entrants into the space and frequently executed deployments of a hundred media players. These days, the company routinely does deployments of up to three thousand. But what's really notable is the change in content. Gone are the looping graphics of old. “Today it's about creating an experience," Hastings said. BrightSign is a pioneer in interactive technology, working early on with retail stores, museums, and aquariums to go beyond simple communication by creating something truly engaging and memorable. Hastings said BrightSign got a head start in the space and maintains its position ahead of the pack while competitors have trouble engineering interactive technology. “We are the market share leader," Hastings said. Where a lot of digital signage goes wrong is in its software, largely due to the use of operating systems such as Android or Mac OS developed for consumers and not enterprise digital signage deployments. But Hastings explained that BrightSign OS was built from the ground up to be incredibly reliable, robust, and designed specifically for digital content delivery. Plus, it provides a high level of security to better safeguard against hackers. BrightSign also collaborates with other hardware and software providers in creating digital signage solutions. Hastings lauded a recent partnership with Mimo Monitors in developing a small display with a miniaturized BrightSign media player built right into the design. “Think of it as a commercial tablet with touchscreen capability built into a single package,” he said. It's innovations like these that keep BrightSign at the top of the crowded Pro AV field.

HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:Shaun Micallef joins the team for a chat and to play a round of ‘On this day in history’ – Susie’s friend had a pet chicken Henny Penny but life was short for the chicken – Jeff Hastings has invented a way to make milk last for 60 days plus avos that don’t go brown, so we had to chat to him – The Lego masters kid Matt also chats to the gang about his love life – Plus Susie’s explains everyone’s personalities on the team based on what order child they are See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jeff Hastings has invented a way to make milk last for 60 days plus avocados that don’t go brown, so we had to chat to him See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

On Digital Signage Today's first podcast, Jeff Hastings, CEO of BrightSign shared tips on how first time digital signage users can successfully deploy their systems.

Apex PeakFest with Apex Festival Commission chair Jeff Hastings by Peak City Podcast

We are previewing Digital Signage Expo 2018 in Las Vegas March 28 and 29. On this AVNation Special, we talk with Matt Neutra from Bose and Jeff Hastings of BrightSign about what their companies are doing to create unique digital signage inventions. Host: Tim Albright Guests: Jeff Hastings – BrightSign Matt Neutra – Bose Links [...]

We are previewing Digital Signage Expo 2018 in Las Vegas March 28 and 29. On this AVNation Special, we talk with Matt Neutra from Bose and Jeff Hastings of BrightSign about what their companies are doing to create unique digital signage inventions. Host: Tim Albright Guests: Jeff Hastings – BrightSign Matt Neutra – Bose Links [...]

Jeff Hastings knows all about the good intentions that pave the road to success. He has been in our shoes and experienced great triumphs and tribulation and has lived to tell the tale. As a small business owner, he developed one of the largest and most productive sales teams in the Farmers Insurance Groups of […]

Jeff Hastings knows all about the good intentions that pave the road to success. He has been in our shoes and experienced great triumphs and tribulation and has lived to tell the tale. As a small business owner, he developed one of the largest and most productive sales teams in the Farmers Insurance Groups of […]