Podcasts about nanolumens

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT When Terminal C was opened at Orlando's sprawling main airport, I was intrigued from a distance by the experiential digital features integrated into the new space. They got my attention because they were genuinely interesting, but also because they were put together by a company completely unfamiliar to me - Gentilhomme, from Montreal. In the time since that project went live, and won numerous awards, Gentilhomme (which is French for Gentleman) has also delivered experiential work for Nashville's airport. And the team is in the middle of a job for Houston's airport, and another airport on the US east coast that's NDA'd for now. I've been trying to organize a podcast chat with founder Thibaut Duverneix for a while now, and we finally got it together recently. We spoke about signature projects, and the ideation and design process. But we also get into the background of the company, which has roots in things like rock band tours, and has some direct ties to a couple of very well-known Montreal companies that are also all about experience - Cirque du Soleil and Moment Factory. NOTE - This interview was recorded before ISE, where the company picked up an armload of trophies at the global Digital Signage Awards. Subscribe from wherever you pick up new podcasts. TRANSCRIPT Thibaut, thank you for joining me. You describe Gentilhomme as an Earth-based multimedia studio. What does that encompass? Because you guys are into a whole bunch of things.  Thibaut Duverneix: Hey David, It's a really good question. The idea is that the studio was built around my own practice as an artist and as a multimedia director at first, and I come from fine arts and computer science, so I like to do all things that are very different and, it's been very hard to describe what the studio does because the studio was built using that philosophy, and most of the time people would ask you, don't you want to specialize in anything, like video content and I was like, no, I don't, we like to do a lot of different things and they go from interactive sculpture or inflatables to building placemaking for airports and content for rock shows.  So I guess the best description was, around that, we want to create experiences, and the medium doesn't really matter.  So when people come into the office, they never quite know what they're coming into, right?  Thibaut Duverneix: Pretty much, but luckily, the casting at the studio is very broad, and everybody's like a Swiss Army knife.  How and why did it get started? Thibaut Duverneix: This is my second studio. I had another one before, and we were doing a lot of the first experiential work on the web in Flash at the time.  I had forgotten about Flash, for a good reason.  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, exactly. But I was also doing music videos and rock shows, and eventually, I wanted to focus more on directing and doing things in real life with people. So I went my own way, and I built Gentilhomme more like my holding company in a way for what I was doing, and one-day Cirque du Soleil called me, and they had this show in France they wanted to do it for a theme park, which was a multimedia show while heavily relying on multimedia and I thought I was just going to direct it. but then they were like, no, we have five weeks, and we need turnkey. Can you also just make it happen? So I built a pop-up studio to do that, and then they said, Hey, do you want to do our next big top tour? And I said, yeah, and then I had a choice of do I keep doing my director work or do I build a studio with the people that I want, and do it the way I want it because it's never a one-man show, you need a team to do that, and that's what I did because I wanted to capitalize on my knowledge.  And Cirque is in Montreal as you are.  Thibaut Duverneix: Exactly. We're all children of Cirque du Soleil in Montreal.  Yeah. I was going to ask about that later, but we might as well get into it. What is it about Montreal, because, in my world, in multimedia digital signage world, there's Jean Théon, there's the big guy, Moment Factory, and there's also Arsenal Media and so on, and there's a real creative community in that city and it's particularly strong when it comes to the digital signage place-based work.  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, absolutely. I always say it comes from Cirque, I don't know if I'm right. I think it's one reason Cirque du Soleil was the first to push the boundaries of what can be done, and it created a lot of side studios, people that actually build highly complicated stages and animatronics and stage equipment, but also people like Moment Factory, who started doing parties for Guilherme Liberté and stuff, and then, they turned out to be who they are now, but, I believe like Cirque was a big part of it and also all of the tech, there was like, a big tech ball, it started with the web and engineering, and now it's a lot of AI, and tax credits help with that a lot too, and there was a big VFX industry also. VFX is part of it. There are a lot of gaming companies in Montreal, right?  Thibaut Duverneix: VFX and gaming, yeah. Ubisoft is here, and all of the big VFX shops are here, too.  So at one point, for a while there, you were working with a Moment Factory. How long were you there?  Thibaut Duverneix: I was never there. I was always freelancing and part of the family. My first project with them was when I was the Interactive Multimedia Director for the Nine Inch Nails show when I was 28. I think that was the first time we started collaborating together., and I helped them with a lot of projects.  So when did you start Gentilhomme?  Thibaut Duverneix: 2014.  And where are you now with it? Is it still a freelance collaborative, or is it like a full company with offices and full-time staff and all that stuff?  Thibaut Duverneix: It's a full-on operation now. We are about 25 people full-time, and we expand depending on the projects. So obviously, when we do airports and things like this, we could be 80 on the project, but I like to keep it small and do only a few projects at a time. Everybody is very senior here. So that was my idea of the studio being small with highly competent people and doing only a few projects at a time. Yeah, it was, I went to Moment Factory's offices about, I'm thinking six years now, pre-COVID and I met with the folks there, and one really interesting comment that they made was they were so busy that they couldn't even deal with all the inbound opportunities that they had. So they were quite happy to pass along work for jobs that they either just didn't have the bandwidth to do, or weren't really in their wheelhouse or whatever. I'm curious if your company collaborates at all with your former contractor at Moment Factory.  Thibaut Duverneix: It's been a while, but we're always happy to collaborate. Montreal is a very small community.  Let's talk about some of the work that you do. We could talk about music videos and Cirque du Soleil and all those sorts of things, but given this is a digital signage podcast, we should probably talk about that. The projects that come to mind for me that I'm most familiar with would be Orlando Airport and then Nashville Airport. Can you describe both of them or describe one of them?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, absolutely. It was a game-changer for us. We entered the pandemic, we were finishing a stadium tour for Fall Out Boy, Weezer, and Green Day, and obviously, that got shelved in March, at the same time we won the RSP for the Orlando Airport Terminal C which was very big for us. For anybody, it would have been big, but especially for us, and yeah, we went full-on with it. We created more than five hours of content that's across all styles of content, there is a lot of live-action content, a lot of computer-generated content, and a lot of interactive content.  So, we designed and created all of the multimedia content across those three giant media features. I think ultimately they only built two, but there is one that's called the Movement Vault, which is a double-sided circular media feature. Each panel is about 4k inside of it, and outside, it's 4millimeters so I think they are about two gauges, and so outside it's only video, and we wanted to create that sense of place and oasis, something very calm and the trompe of a wall that would transform into a garden to invite you to get inside of it, and inside of it, we created a full 360 degree, interactive scenery in Unreal, that's using AI body tracking, so basically the people would use their movements to interact with the scenes, and we also created a lot of underwater 360 degrees, live-action footage of manatees and landmarks, from central Florida. On the second media feature, it's three giant flat LED screens that look like windows in the corridor, and here the idea was to create something that looks like a window with a lot of live action. So we created those trompe l'oeil effects where you really feel like you're looking through a window, and again, we wanted to showcase more the unknown of Orlando than the known. So we didn't really focus much on amusement parks and entertainment, and we really focused on nature and things that people don't necessarily expect from Central Florida.  Was there a brief of any kind or, like, how did you arrive at what was done there? Thibaut Duverneix: Oh yeah, for sure. So they had a multimedia architect, Marcella Sardi, and she was in charge of the vision, and the RFP came after. So she designed the media features, and she had a vision for what the content should be. As an architect, basically, the brief was the known and the unknown of Orlando, right? And so we went with that, and we collaborated with her very closely, and it turned out pretty good, I think.  It's challenging working in airports, is it not?  I'm assuming the lead times involved, but also some of the nuts and bolts stuff like getting access into post-security areas and so on. Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, it is, but it depends on how organized you are and how good of a relationship you have with the stakeholders. For Orlando, we did this through the pandemic. So that was already a challenge, and we went pretty far with it because we actually had our own servers hooked up to the airport's whole system. So we could work only using laptops and small workstations over our own WiFi. So we could work directly on the media feature in real-time. So getting all of that access was pretty intense because you need to get into the firewalls, the server rooms, and the badging. But it's all about organization and relationships and getting clearance. But yeah, it's a challenge, and you follow construction. So that's the hardest part because we work very fast and construction doesn't work fast so you have to align.  It sounds like the work that you and your team do is obviously driven by creative thinking and execution, but you couldn't just be multimedia producers. You need quite a bit of technical acumen, right?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, engineering is a big part of it because we do a lot of interactivity and so we have C++ programmers and now we work a lot in Unreal, but still we build our own pipelines and plug-ins.  You've had to do that because you're inventing experiences. When you go into these things and this is not functionality you can just buy off the shelf from existing software?  Thibaut Duverneix: Well, sometimes you do, but like we have our own tracking solution. For that reason specifically, not that we didn't want to buy it to build it. It just didn't really exist at the level we wanted it. So when it doesn't exist, you have to build it, but yeah, we're not necessarily a tech company, but we do develop tech out of necessity.  One of your, I don't want to call them competitors, but fellow companies that are doing that kind of work. Flopper actually came up with their own media servers because they had to design this stuff. Have you found the same thing where there's a technology that you've developed, or you could think, well, maybe we could remarket this? Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, it's always been a discussion. We talk about this a lot actually with Alex and they went into the Real Motion thing very early in the game, and now it's like they can't really go back, they're already pushing this, but we are not into the product business. We're a creative company. Basically, we have two products, if you want to call them that. We have a show in Montreal for interactive installation, and we have a tracking system, but we are trying not to sell that as a product. We would license this for projects and we would give it to friends or other artists that need it because It's boring to build that, but we don't want to be in that business because it's a very different business. Yeah. You're going to very different kinds of trade shows and things, if you're going at all.  Thibaut Duverneix: Exactly.  Can you talk a little bit about the Nashville airport? Because that's also very experiential, but quite a bit different from what you did at Orlando.  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, absolutely. So the Nashville airport, they actually built that huge screen, on top of security, TSA, and they didn't really know what to do with it. Once they built it, they knew they were going to use it for signage and for feeds and stuff and advertising, but then they were wondering, should we do something experiential? And they reached out, and we started thinking about what we could do, and we actually did this very quickly because they were very far in the process and they never really thought about the strategy about content. So I think we did that in 11 months, probably from strategy to delivery, and so we have them doing all of the strategies about placemaking and identity and what would make something compelling for Nashville.  But also, you don't want to create a bottleneck because it's TSA. So we wanted to create some form of engagement and identity but not break the flow of TSA.  So you didn't want people stopping and watching for 10 minutes.  Thibaut Duverneix: Exactly. Also, we had to incorporate all of the signage stuff, such as the feeds, the widgets, and also the advertising. So we designed grids, systems, and branding guidelines. So they would have everything that they need to do all of that, right? So it's not like you just do a full takeover, and then they have the other stuff we wanted to make it. It's integrated as an ecosystem, so we also had them design their media system because they didn't really have something strong in place. So we worked with the engineers to recommend some solutions for them. It's interesting. I've heard this story many times through the years, and it's still a little bit surprising that you have organizations that will make a very ambitious and expensive capital investment in a big video wall, and they're well along the way with it, and then they start thinking, okay, what are we going to put on this thing? Thibaut Duverneix: It depends, right? Now we're working with the Houston airport, and they bought it pretty early in the process. I think people are getting better at it because they see what other people are doing, and they're like, we should not wait until the last minute because these things take time, and people get educated about it. So that's good, but yeah, for sure, sometimes they go on with the program because the program follows construction.  They just go step by step. They know they need a video wall. They work with the architects, they work with the engineers, they build it, they design it. It's state of the art, it's beautiful. It's Nanolumens, two millimeters, whatnot, but then yeah, they would think about the content strategy at the end. Because you've now done a couple of airports and you're working in Houston, have you found that the simple fact that you've done these leads to other opportunities to do other airports? Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, absolutely, and also, we want to do those because I think we got pretty good at it because we understand the problems on the technical side, but also on the user experience side. So it's something very interesting for us, and we really like to be immersed in different cultures, and that's what I love about Apple because that's the first thing you know when you enter a city, and that's the last memory you get, and if we get a chance to create something unique for every airport, I think it's very interesting, and you get to work with local people and to understand their community and who they are and what the city is about and I think it's very exciting. I assume airports are also a good kind of client to have just simply because they have billion-dollar budgets for terminal expansions, and they can work your component into those kinds of budgets in a way that maybe a retailer or a commercial property owner who also putting up a big video wall, they might look at the process and the overall cost of doing what you guys do and turn white, like, there's not that many end-user clients who can do what Nashville and what Orlando did, right?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, it's also very different because the problem is volume because, if you're doing airports, you need to create a lot of content, enough content so it doesn't feel repetitive because people stay there a lot, and there's a lot of dwelling time and we like to do high-end content. We don't want to do shit content. So the challenge is how to maintain production value across the board because the budget might seem big, but it's not because you have to do so much at such a high resolution because the screens are becoming crazy like you get 1.8 millimeters across the whole corridor so it's like a lot of pixels to push.  So the challenge is maintaining quality and quantity, whereas when you do retail, you might spend the same amount of money for a couple of minutes, right? So it's just a very different approach.  What's the process, and as you said, the approach, when you get engaged in a big project like this? Where do you start, or what are the first questions you're asking besides, “Do you have the budget for this?”  Thibaut Duverneix: Well, usually, they do have a budget most of the time, and you retrofit it within their budget. But not always, no, we're trying to find the identity, what are you about, and what do you want to communicate? Then, we can start building a strategy around placemaking and identity. So that's the main focus, and that's something you do very closely with the clients, and they, usually, they have never done this before, or maybe they've done it, but on the marketing side, so it starts from marketing most of the time, and we try to understand better the mission and build from that. I've seen some of the airport projects when there's PR issued about it, there's talk about how this is highly experiential and gives people the sense of joy that they're flying and so on. It all gets very ethereal at times, and I wonder how you define experiential, what it means, and what you're trying to deliver in these kinds of environments in terms of a feeling. Thibaut Duverneix: It really depends on where the media feature would be because, again, if you are TSA, you want to make sure that you get things flowing through, and you want to try to create this sense of place and identity, but not go too far on entertainment and engagement but if you are post-security waiting for your flight, then you're trying to get a lot of engagement, especially if it's around retail. So you get people excited and feel good about waiting for their flight, and if you do that, they are more likely to go into the retail store. So, to me, that's the KPI. It's like if we can calm people and make them feel good about being there because it's very hostile, the environment, and if you do that, you help the airports greatly.  Yeah, I've certainly heard a number of times people talking about the dynamic of gate huggers and people who get through security and then they go immediately to their gate, and they don't want to leave the gate because they irrationally think if I leave, the plane's going to board and leave without me. And that doesn't happen, and the airports want them to go shopping if they've got 75 minutes, go get something to eat, or go experience the Moment Vault if they're in Orlando.  Thibaut Duverneix: Exactly, and that's our own KPI for the Moment Vault, I want people to miss their flight. That's what I wanted. I wanted people to forget what time it was. I don't know if it happened yet. I should check.  You want to be careful about that, they'll sue people about anything in the United States.  Thibaut Duverneix: No, but the idea was we wanted to create good engagement so people forget about time and have fun with it. But we were very careful about how we designed it. Even with the engagements, we made sure that all of the interactive stuff wasn't always playing. So you don't have that problem, actually, of missing the flight. Do you have a sense at all of what works and what doesn't in terms of creativity on a big screen?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah. When speed scales, colors, and blinking stuff, like it's to me, when you design for spaces, it's the opposite of doing a rock show, actually, it's the complete opposite job. So you want to make sure that everything that you create feels architectural, at least we do. So we work very closely with the architects and we want to make sure that all of the lighting that is physical would match what's virtual. So we don't want to think about those screens as screens. We want to think about it as a part of the architecture. So whatever we create, we're trying to be very careful about that, which makes it the opposite of doing a movie. So, you're most likely, if you're shooting live action, your camera is not going to move. You want to make sure that your perspective feels accurate in terms of scales; you want to do things slowly enough so it's not distracting. So yeah, we're trying to really focus on those techniques to make it compelling within the space. Yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't have thought in those terms, but I guess if you're coming off of doing all the backdrops and everything for Fall Out Boy, and there are all kinds of things happening behind the band, you can't do that in an airport or an office tower lobby.  Thibaut Duverneix: Well, no, that would be crazy because that's the thing when you do a rock show. You would use your surfaces as lights most of it is a canvas for set extension, but it's also a light. So you can play with it in that way. But when you're in space for a permanent installation, you need to think like an architect. So it's very different.  Yeah, I've written a lot about how LED technology is maturing to a level that it can now be an architectural design decision, like this can be the full bulkhead of an airport area over the TSA screening area, that sort of thing and I'm curious if you watch how that's evolving and you're intrigued by things like LED embedded in glass and so on.  Thibaut Duverneix: Oh, yeah. We went to all those trade shows, and we came to work a lot with those elements on the past projects and on the future projects, and that product is evolving so quickly. And that's how they think. They think about any LED as part of the architecture, and I think their product is becoming very stunning, it doesn't look like a picture anymore. It really feels cinematic, and it's not aggressive. The light is very diffused, and it feels really soft and nice.  I know you reference how you're now working on some aspects of the airport in Houston. Are there other jobs that you're working on that you can talk about?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah, there is another one on the East Coast, but I can't talk about it yet. Another airport?  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah.  Interesting. So the same kind of idea as the other ones. Thibaut Duverneix: This one is a bit different, but they're all different. But yeah, high-end content, placemaking, but different types of media features.  All right. If people want to know more about your company, how do they find you?  Thibaut Duverneix: I've not been very good at that. You've managed somehow anyway.  Thibaut Duverneix: Yeah. We are trying, but we're small and not really good at marketing. Hopefully, we will get more known, and we want to get more engaged. So yeah, our website is a good place to start, and we are doing more and more Trade shows and events, and we're going to be present in Spain also next week, and we're trying to be at all of the events and make sure that people start to know us more.  Right, and they can find you at Getilhomme.com. I will put the link in the blog post so people who can't spell Getilhomme for the life of them will be able to find it that way.  Thibaut Duverneix: Thank you. I appreciate it. I appreciate your time. That was terrific. Congratulations on the work you've done to date. It's turned a lot of heads.  Thibaut Duverneix: Thank you so much. That's what we want to do.  All right. Take care.  Thibaut Duverneix: You too. Bye bye.  

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Nanolumens was an early player in the LED display space - known mainly in its first few years for innovative  display products that were super-light, thin and flexible ... at a time when just about everything else on the market was heavy, thick and solid. The Atlanta-based company was still pretty much known for that kind of product when Ney Corsino was hired on as CEO, at the start of 2020. Experienced as a business transformation and turnaround guy, Corsino has evolved Nanolumens from a company with an interesting niche product to one that has a full range of display options - from conventional video wall set-ups and all-in-ones to transparent mesh displays and the thin, flexible units that first gained attention. Nanolumens has also got more focused on some key vertical markets - arguably the biggest ones being airports and public spaces. Several new air terminals that have been built or renovated in the last couple of years have featured Nanolumens product in its signature public art, messaging and experiential installations. Corsino and I chatted about how he has also put in the hours with his team to clarify how it goes to market, and how it specifically works with integrators and solutions providers. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Ney, thank you for joining me. You joined the company from Barco, so you would've already been well-versed in LED displays. What attracted you to Nanolumens?  Ney Corsino: Thanks for having me. Yes, I came from Barco before Barco, and before that, I was at Phillips, Philips Electronics, a European company, and Barco, also a European company, and now at Nanolumens, a US-based company. But to be honest with you, at Barco we paid little attention to LEDs. We have a deep engineering base in projection there and we venture with click share.  LEDs have been up and down at Barco and at Nanolumens, all we do is LED, so we are pretty much focused here.  Because you knew the business, was there something in particular that attracted you to Nanolumens? Because they're relatively small and US-focused as opposed to a big global entity like Barco. What was your perspective on all that? Why join them?   Ney Corsino: I think for good or bad, I developed my career in improving businesses, transforming and improving turnaround, and I felt that the impact I could continue to do would be more valuable in companies like Nanolumens. So I think it was a good encounter between a company that needed this kind of action and someone that had experience in doing this at a corporate level in many different business units. So now I could come, and exercise all I have learned all by myself and I'm very glad I did that.   When I first got to know Nanolumens, let's say 10 years ago, their calling card, so to speak, was these flexible, almost rug-like displays with removable modules, they called them nixels at the time, and I think they still do.  It was very unique on the market at that point, and those were the early days anyways for LED displays. I wouldn't say they're not still unique, but I don't get the sense that's the kind of the main growth driver for Nanolumens these days.  Ney Corsino: The company has run for about 17 years. It has been one of the pioneers in the LED display market, has been involved in many innovations, and has almost a hundred IPs, but most notably, like you just said, it is the invention of the flex module, which is still called nixel where you can basically do smooth curve wall. So we hold IPs on that. But since then, it has evolved quite a bit especially in the last three years, we continue to do of course very well on the curve. But we have re-engineered and extended the portfolio for cabinet-based modular units, also mesh, all in one. So we now have a very extensive portfolio. Now if you ask about the sales, it's almost half of it. It is still customized, which includes the curved modules, and the other half is more on the standard flat solution. Why do you think it's played out that way?  Ney Corsino: I believe that the brand commands that customization aspect, the DNA of creativity, wow effect, doing things that are let's say complex and difficult, but we engineer to make it possible. So I think that's the inheritance of the brand and continues to be. What we have tried to do, part of my arrival here is to continue that, but create us not a next segment that gives the possibility of of scaling up the business, and that's why, as I mentioned before, re-engineer the flat segment all in one mesh outdoor if it is more on the architecture. It's the one step in the direction of extending the portfolio to scale the business and find a consistent regular growth path for the business.  So if you stayed primarily with these lightweight flex products as your main product line, that would restrict you to being a niche manufacturer as opposed to broadening it and becoming a general manufacturer that would give you scale? Ney Corsino: Exactly. It is very architectural, customized, and therefore you could call it niche. It's a good portion of the market. We do very well there, but if we have bigger ambitions and big plans, then we need to play in other fields as well.  In paying attention to projects that come on stream, and knowing that in many cases the customer doesn't allow the manufacturer to say who it is that's providing some of the technology, I still get a sense that Nanolumens is doing a lot of airports in particular, and I'm curious why that's played out like that.  Why are you guys winning so much of the business in airports? Apart from that, I'm sure you're gonna say because we have great products, but, there have to be other reasons. Ney Corsino: Yeah, that's a very good question and probably not easy to answer. The product definitely makes an important play there. But I would say, Dave, that the airport is one of the most complex and demanding environments. You have the airport itself, you have the airlines, and you have the advertising agencies or companies. There are a lot of things going on in an airport. You have very tight schedules where you can work and when you can't. We have security aspects to it.  I think over the years the company just got to understand how all these cards are played, and then more importantly, we learn and we learn to adapt and not fight the system, but work with the system, right? Whatever the constraints are, wherever the demands are, we translate that into a workable plan that involves product, involves people, involves a process, and there we go.  How much of it does Nanolumens take on versus channel partners and integration partners?  Ney Corsino: I think about the past of the company and then I have seen not only Nanolumens, but also in my past, there is confusion within the company as far as the go-to-market is concerned, and that's not a good thing. It was no different here. Nanolumens from its past behavior has confused the market in terms of whether it is going directly, is it going through the channel partner. So one of the things that I've done since my arrival is basically to clarify that and commit to a go-to-market plan, and it is my strong belief and that's where the company is settled now. We go to market through channel partners. So that's our approach. So there is no more to it. So you don't do direct sales?  Ney Corsino: No, we do have some house accounts, legacy ones but less than a handful, and whenever we have a company that wants to do direct business, we sit with them and we explain all the risks associated with taking a technology company that is focused on creating things and trying to make it a turnkey company that will be distracted with many other things. And through that dialogue, we always introduce channel partners that work with us very well, and I think, I think 99% of the time we end up in a good alignment that we will play through the channel to the end user, and everybody will be satisfied.  One of the things that have come up in LED manufacturers for marketing is because a lot of the “channels” didn't really have a lot of background and experience in deploying LED displays, they didn't know how to specify it, they didn't really know how to sell it or anything else. So a lot of the manufacturers came up with these all-in-one finished displays with fixed sizes and they would come in a kit and everything's there and you just open it up and deploy, and it's a 186-inch big ass TV that sort of thing. I'm suspecting that the channel partners you're working with are beyond that because they're doing mega walls and airports and so on.  Ney Corsino: We do also have these big-ass TVs as you call them. It's part of the working out distribution model for the company. Our channel partners work with them from a very early stage where we train their designers, we train their salespeople of course if they are open and welcoming to it, and most of the time they are. So we actually work together to make them more comfortable with the technology and entertain the prospect of their business, but ultimately that will come back to us and we will engineer the solution as a final project anyways for them.  So it sounds like this is more about getting the right channel partners as opposed to getting lots of channel partners. Ney Corsino: Oh, definitely I mean there are thousands of them out there. We work very well with many, but I think there is a right balance and we try to be very cautious of it.  The marketplace seems to be inexorably moving towards increasingly fine-pitch displays. Are you seeing that or are you still experiencing some customers who understand that the dynamics of the environment we're in 4 millimeters is fine or even 6 millimeters?  Ney Corsino: I would say that the answer is: Yes. For the most part, every two-three years, the volume goes into the next narrow pitch size, right? It used to be the 2.5, and then it went to the, let's say 1.5, and to the 1.2. So it feels like it moves, 3-3+ years, and that is not changing.  However, I think that's very interesting for the LED marketing industry. LED is going in places where nobody would have a screen before. That's number one. So it is growing into something new areas, new applications. The Second is also replacing some of the projection technology, and the third is also replacing some of the old LCD solutions. So it's a market that keeps growing, and I say that because, with that kind of penetration in so many applications, you end up with a need of almost any pitch size, any fine pitch, meaning, the 4mm might be very good for certain applications and the 6mm from some others if it is outdoor or indoor.  I will give you an example. In airports, there are a lot of 2.5 millimeters going, and they say, why is that? Why don't they go finer? It's because terminals and lobbies are usually very big in airports, so the screens are far from the person and therefore you don't need a super fine pitch, a 2.5 does an excellent job.  Is there a kind of a sweet spot, like I was hearing in the last couple of years that seems like the market has settled a lot on, as you were just saying, 2mm to 2.5mm works for most applications if you're getting away from really close end things in retail or museums. Ney Corsino: Yeah. That is right, and I think there is a second trend toward volume on the 1.2mm, especially in applications where people don't want to have a tile LCD solution. They want to have a more smooth, seamless, and large screen. So therefore you also see in that particular part of the segment where people are closer to the screen, the market's moving very fast for the 1.2mm. I was walking around Integrated Systems Europe about a month ago, and looking at displays that were R&D products at that point, or R&D efforts but I saw 0.4 millimeters and I didn't see it personally, but I saw the PR after a Chinese manufacturer saying they had 0.39. So just a hair thinner even and I wonder, are they just marketing, trade shows, eye candy kinds of things? Is there really a demand for the LED to be that tight in pitch?  Ney Corsino: Technology-wise, there is a pursuit for that, that's correct. I think one of the reasons is that you need that kind of super-duper fine pitch to reproduce what LCDs or OLEDs are doing nowadays in the market. Now for the consumer-based screens, you will need to go that low. So technology tips, pushing the boundaries, pursuing that route, no. When you look at the business side of it, the business is run in 0.9mm to above pitch size. Even when you say 0.7mm, many companies are now displaying 0.7mm, is it doable? Yes. Is it expensive? Yes. Are there volumes? No. There will be very, very selected products or screens being made on a 0.7mm at this point.  So I just try to give you a relative situation between a technology that pursues eventually to be in a consumer kind of demand but still is in a professional kind of market.  We've seen in the last few years the emergence of mini LED and then micro LED. Is most of what Nanolumens is doing still for, to simplify the description, conventional SMD or four-in-one LED?  Ney Corsino: Yeah, so we do conventional. Nowadays also moving to COB and therefore going to mini LED. That's where we play. I think the term micro LED is a little bit overused in applications that are not micro LED. I'm trying to be polite, but there is a big marketing push on the use of micro LED at this point.  Do you see your company going to that? If some of the mass transfer challenges and production challenges get overcome, because I keep hearing that when those get figured out, that's really gonna greatly reduce the cost of micro LED and make it something that you could use for something other than just super premium applications. Ney Corsino: Yeah. At that point, it is almost like a process industry. If you don't control the yield it cannot be cost-effective. So they will have to operate at a very high yield. I think the company will go with the market. As part of the transformation from the early days of Nanolumens, we are now very market-centric and we will respond to the market demands in the short, mid, and long-term. So when you say you're market centric, you mean you're focused on certain verticals like airports?  Ney Corsino: Exactly, yeah. We try to translate unique aspects of those segments into the portfolio, and into the design that we will provide. Does that kind of apply to going after larger public spaces, that sort of thing?  Ney Corsino: Yes. So let me also give you a little bit of insight into the business. The largest portion of the revenue mix was on the airport and also in theme parks, so large projects that come every other year. But since then we are now having a very evenly distributed mix where we operate in airports for sure, theme entertainment for sure. But now we also do lots of business with corporate, large venues, but also, especially their lobby and briefing centers. Higher-ed has been investing nicely, Sportsbook, and last but not least, the golf segment. I think those segments are all growing for us, and that gives us a more evenly spread mix in the top line. Why are all these different segments now investing in LED versus 2-3 years ago? Is this just a function of price and awareness?  Ney Corsino: I think so. I think the product became more affordable. The product became better, therefore it can be applied in different ways, on different surfaces, and I think the previous solutions they had has already depreciated, and LED becomes the next technology that's future-proof that provides a more immersive experience. And I think not to overplay the word immersively, but there's an enormous trend in an immersive experience, and when can you achieve that? And I think LED from a screen technology is very capable of doing that.  Yeah I've certainly seen this emergence, particularly of these experiential venues where they're using projection, and I love what some of them do. I've got a good friend who has one in Montreal, but I just wonder if that's a technology that's gonna be taken over by LED with time, because you've got more flexibility, it doesn't have to be a darkened room and you're not confronted by some of the environmental issues. Ney Corsino: True. I think my belief is that no, the technologies will coexist. One technology opens up a new application like those new kinds of museums u or experiential centers that you mentioned. Eventually, some of them will move to LED when they find it is appropriate to have an application to do so. Projection will still stay there. So I think they will coexist, but they will find a new balance in terms of sharing the market.  One thing I believe your company has expanded into in terms of broadening the product line, is some of the mesh LED products that are both for indoor and outdoor use. Are you seeing a lot of activity there? Ney Corsino: Yeah, we started that more than a year ago. We installed the big landscape here in Atlanta, the TKE building. I think that got a lot of media exposure. It's a large surface up high in the building.  It's an elevator test facility, right? Ney Corsino: That's a test and showroom facility. So there's a lot of elevators going up and down. The building has a glass facade so people could go into the elevator and yet see the stadium down there and see the city, and they didn't want to block that view so we engineered a match solution where you go through the elevator and you still see through and enjoy the same view. However, if you are on the road, in the stadium and you look back at the building, you have this beautiful branding screen there, and that was designed about two to three years ago. It was delivered about a year plus ago, and since then we have seen the pipeline increase. People became aware of it and the possibilities of it, especially the architects and consultants are very interested to see what the new possibilities are, and we've been engaging more and more in those conversations, and with that, the pipeline keeps growing.  I assume that one of the reasons there's a lot of interest in that is because it's pretty lightweight, and as you say, it doesn't block light coming in, in the way that a solid kind of cabinet-based system would do. Is that a big attraction? Ney Corsino: Yeah You mentioned earlier working with the channel and with integrators. Are you also trying to circulate and drive awareness amongst the design and architectural communities because I kind of see LEDs becoming a building material.  Ney Corsino: Yeah, we have a separate group within the company here that deals exclusively with the AUC group and we have lots of certified material for training. We do lots of hands-on learning, and we find out that, although we are a very known and improved and growing brand, there are still a lot of people that need to know us better. So that's definitely one aspect of importance for us and we enjoy it because it's not a sale conversation. It's more of a solution conversation in many cases.  You're based in Atlanta, you do your design, all the specifications, and everything in Atlanta and like everybody else, you get some of the manufacturing done overseas. You're competing with a hell of a lot of companies that have sales offices here and maybe some degree of support, but most of what they do is on the other side of the Pacific. Is that a kind of a key marketing plank that you are based in the US and somewhat designed and assembled in the US versus the others?  Ney Corsino: A hundred percent. We are very proud of it, and let me quote a customer the other day. The customer, it's a new engagement channel partner and he asked, “When we deal with your company, we actually don't need to use Google Translator. Is that right?” I replied, “No, we don't need Google translator. We are here. We have the full skills here. We are very easy to do business with. We respond very quickly, and we are very adaptive.” At the end of the day, if you put everything into Excel or into the papers it is more cost-effective to have it this way.  And are you finding just generally that the people you're working with, they are familiar or they've had enough experience in the marketplace to understand that you can have a Chinese manufacturer that has a sales office over here, but support everything else is overseas and that becomes problematic? Ney Corsino: True, and Chinese manufacturers knock on my door every single, and they offer me, and of course, they offer many other people out there. So then the question is, what's the value proposition? What's the uniqueness?  So we are very tied with our supply chain. We have made improvements in the last two years. They are paying off nicely, and our channel partners working with us have appreciated all the value that we have been bringing to the table, and once we go through that experience, a hundred percent of the time, it's becoming repeatable and the repeatability of it gives me the comfort that we are adding value to their business, and we can do that in a profitable way for the industry, including ourselves.  Where are you at as a company in terms of headcount and are you public or private? Ney Corsino: We're a privately owned company. Therefore we don't share business metrics.  But do you have 50 employees, 100 employees, or 5k employees?  Ney Corsino: Around a hundred.  Okay, and is most of that in Atlanta?  Ney Corsino: I would say 70 to 80% in Atlanta, and the remaining part spread. For your manufacturing, do you have people over in China or wherever you get some of your product made or components made?  Ney Corsino: Yeah, so we work with a contract manufacturer but we have R&D and a supply base in China.  If people wanna know more about your company, where would they find you online? Ney Corsino: Nnanolumens.com. We have refreshed the website and brought a lot of tools into it, making the experience a lot more user-friendly and that's where we'll find us.  Great. All right, thank you for spending some time with me.  Ney Corsino: It was my pleasure. Dave.

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT Airports and airlines were early adopters of digital signage technology and the whole idea of data-driven messaging - using screens to tell travellers about arrival and departure times, and the status of flights and boarding at gates. But digital signage is becoming central to communications not only for passengers, but also for staff. A huge upgrade of Delta Airlines facilities and passenger experience officially opens today at LAX, with the focal point a 250-foot-long horizontal LED ribbon behind the check-in and bag-loading areas at Delta's relocated and renovated terminal. Similar work is being done by Delta for another busy airport in bad need of sprucing up, LaGuardia in New York. I had a chance to speak with Ryan Taylor, who is managing the digital signage side of these projects for Delta. We get into the thinking behind them, and how they'll be used, but we also have a broader chat about other ways digital signage is being used in airports by Delta. You have maybe heard of FIDS and GIDS displays, but did you know about RIDS and even SQUIDs? Listen and learn! Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT Ryan, thank you for joining me. Can you tell me what your role is at Delta Airlines and how that's evolved?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Dave. So my role now is exclusively digital signage. So I run a lot of the digital signage that you may or may not see. Some of our stuff is in the airports and increasingly so now, but a lot of our stuff that I do is the back of the house employee communications. We do a lot of dashboarding and other things. So yeah, I am full time digital signage for Delta Airlines right now.  Wow, is there like a department or are you the guy, the one person?  Ryan Taylor: Our team is growing, so it's me and a couple of other people and a whole lot of people that support us tangentially, of course. But right now there are several other teams that do digital signage. Most of what you see in the gate areas is another team, and then like I said, my responsibilities are some of the airport areas and then mostly back of house. So right now I manage a network of about little less than 1800 screens somewhere in that range. Oh, wow, and does that include back of house and workplace and so on?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so a lot of the employee communication stuff. So we're in break rooms where employees congregate, lobby areas and then of course there's a lot of dashboarding that we do for various groups to help them navigate the operations and specific things to their work groups. We're very data intensive, so it's not all the nice, pretty pictures. Some of it's just pulling data from various systems and giving people and work groups the information they need to do their jobs effectively. Where are you hived out of, the IT group?  Ryan Taylor: That's correct. Yeah. So I'm IT and so we manage the infrastructure, the software and build the experiences for customers, whether they're internal or our actual customers. It's interesting because when you talk about data, you could make the argument that airports were probably the first venues that really adopted the idea of data integration, and they've been doing FIDS displays and GIDS displays for 20+ years.  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, and you can imagine that an airline generates a lot of data, right? And data has a how's the shelf life, especially in real-time 24/7 operation, getting that data to people that need it is critical and making sure your flight is not delayed and it's on time and it's going where it needs to go, and everybody that needs to be on it is on it, and so yeah, we do pride ourselves on playing a really active role in putting that data in the hands of people that need it. I like to think of the dashboards that we do, they're really heads up displays. The ramp people that load the bags and service the plane and everything, we have our RIDS displays out there for them that give them a whole lot of data on that flight, you know, they don't have access to computers. So having a display on the ramp that shows where that flight's going, how many bags left to be loaded on, how many passengers. All that data that helps the operation run is really front and center for them and has a really positive impact on how the airline operates. So something that we're really proud of. Yeah, that's interesting. Being a consumer passenger, I'm sitting on the plane or I'm sitting in the gate and all that, the only screens I ever see in those areas are big, almost analog LED displays that just say, which gate, or maybe it says, 867 BOS, cause the flight's going to Boston or something. But, as you're describing, there's more displays that we would never see that are mission critical to the folks trying to get the plane out on time.  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so you can actually see these RIDS displays if you're in one of our larger hubs. Sometimes they're a little hard to see from the window seat, but they are there and we're pushing a whole lot of information to them. A lot of the data probably doesn't mean much to a passenger, you know, just looking at it but it means a whole lot to the ramp guys and even the pilots rely on it even though they have different systems, it's so visible that they become Kind of integral to the operation, which is great. It's a great place to be when the stuff that you're doing is that valuable.  Is that a new application or have those always been there and I just didn't know about them?  Ryan Taylor: They've been there for a couple of years now. They're about maybe two years old, so pretty new, and I can send you some pictures if you're interested in seeing them, but they're really a cool success story. They do serve a very vital role in the operation. Yeah, it was going to be my next question: you've had two years of these in action, have you been able to measure the impact and assess the impact of them?  Ryan Taylor: That's a very good question, and it's one that I wish I had more data on. I believe we know that they are having a positive impact. It's a source of frustration for me, because I would love to get more data on the before and after, on everything we do really. I don't know if everybody's plates are already so full that going through and coming through the data and gathering it is just another task that people don't feel is necessary at this point, but everything from the employee communication side of things, I've always wanted to do before and after survey to see how better informed they are after we put these screens in their break rooms even, do they know more about what the company's direction is and things like that. We do signage in the Sky Clubs, these are actually iPads that are on the bars that show the drinks that are on offer the premium drinks. We know that they do have an upsell effect in that the bars that have them do sell more premium drinks, we just don't have the hard data to back it up because we can't get anybody to provide it for us. So it's things like that. But yeah, I would love to be able to point to some positive ROI stories because it's always hard digital signage, right? Because sometimes it's not readily apparent. Unfortunately, we don't get that much information.  But anecdotally, and just inherently, you would know that down on the ramps and all that, just simply enabling the workers to know where they're at, what the status is, how much time they have, how many more bags to go or whatever, must be huge for them? Ryan Taylor: It is. Yeah, we know from talking to them and from the leadership, and just from the investment they've made in it. These went from a, like everything, it starts out as a small POC, and once they see the value, they either hit the gas or they hit the brakes and they hit the gas on those RIDS very quickly. We went from pretty much 0 to 200 of those deployments and in about six months.  So they're maybe not standardizing on them, but they're becoming a fairly normal sort of piece of the landscape?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, in the airline world, we have leeway to put these in some of our larger hubs where we have more of a presence and in some cases, we're not allowed to put them in a common use environment, but we have in pretty much all our largest hubs, which is great to see.  Yeah, I guess in airport terms, there are airports where you have gate licenses to be there, but there are other airports, like obviously Hartsfield in Atlanta and Salt lake City where you have your own terminal and everything else, right?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah. If we're the terminal operator, we basically have pretty much free reign to do what we want in terms of the technology and everything else that we put on, and like in a smaller station where we only have a couple of flights or a handful of flights, or we're sharing gates with other airlines, that's obviously not as easy to do. Digital signage and airports have been around for a long time. Obviously there have been two main activities, there have been the flight information displays and the gate information displays that are traveler focused and are just saying, “This flight's going here at this time at this gate and so on”, and then a fair amount of new digital signage has gone in from media companies, but it seems in the last 2-4 years that airports are really, and airlines are making an investment in kitting out the pre-security areas, doing things at check-in and elsewhere, using digital signage that gives them a lot more flexibility and the ability to do messaging and everything else and I was intrigued, and the reason we connected was the work that's going on at LAX. Could you explain that? Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So this is probably the most exciting thing that I've ever been involved with in my work life, so we do the LIDS and everything airport digital signage needs, your flight information displays, so FIDS or LIDS, as you mentioned. So really LIDS have traditionally been just a single screen behind the counter where you show, checking in the main cabin or this is for sky priority, segmentations. When they started redoing the LA airport, we kinda got involved with our corporate real estate partners, ACS, which is the airport customer service team that runs the gate counters and everything and we wanted to do something that was different that allowed for more than just your normal screen behind the counter. And that's where we started talking with NanoLumens about putting it in a digital back wall that was continuous using direct LED technology, and it grew from there. So as far as we know, this is the largest single back wall in any airport in the United States. I know Orlando has a much longer one, but it's individual LCDs. Yeah, it's a whole bunch of tile narrow bezel LCDs.  Ryan Taylor: Right, so this is the longest, continuous one that we're aware of. So we're going to claim it. We're going to say, we have it, but yeah, it's 250 feet long. So beyond just the normal, for main cabinet or oversize baggage, this allows us to put a whole lot more information, and branding. The whole idea was to create this wall that had a calming effect in the airport. An airport can be a very chaotic and sometimes intimidating place, like LAX can be daunting. So this gives us a whole new avenue to promote the brand, but really inform and maybe change the mood a little bit in that check-in process.  So what you'll see is an addition to the LIDS information, we'll have flight information, so there's actually FIDS embedded in there. There's an innovative new meter for the sky club to tell you how busy the club is before you even set foot behind security. So you can play on, “Hey, the club is busy. There are two clubs, so you can choose between them.” So that's a really cool data point on there, but just the imagery and the videos that we'll be playing behind it will kind of have a sense of calm. It all works together on this really huge, beautiful back wall that stretches the entire length of the ticket counter, which is pretty impressive. I'm really happy with the way it turned out, and we're really excited.  The really cool thing about it is there will be a sister to this wall coming online very soon in LaGuardia, and it will be the next one to get it when they open up in early June.  These are two terminals that could badly use any sprucing up they can get, right?  Ryan Taylor: Absolutely, yeah. If you've ever flown out of either one of them, you'd know how much they needed investment and it is a big investment and we're happy to be a part of it.  So with the 250 foot wide LED ribbon, are you running a single piece of content at times across the whole swath of it or is it segmented?  Ryan Taylor: It'll be segmented and most of that, I guess from the user end, it'll look like it's one piece of content. It's actually two PCs running the wall. So there are two PCs that split the wall in half. So one side is driven by one PC, it's actually a 4k resolution. So everything's being reassembled onto the wall and in that linear fashion, but it will look like one piece of content.  The only reason why we don't have one continuous landscape shot would be just because it doesn't exist. We couldn't find anything longer than 4k width to put up there.  So you'd have to come up with custom creative and maybe somewhere down the road, you do that, but to get going this'll do just fine?  Ryan Taylor: Yep, absolutely.  And the LAX job, it was previewed recently, but it's not actually live yet, right? Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So LAX is going to open April 20th, that's when passengers will start being directed to use that space over the old terminal to check in and that one will be renovated for another airline that I believe. But yeah, that will be our new home, terminal three in LA come April 20th. This is why you're going back and forth a lot between Atlanta and LA?  Ryan Taylor: That is, yeah. We had a media event a while ago. As you can imagine, there's still a lot of last minute details to take care of. So we're just making sure that all the I's are dotted, T's crossed and ready to go for April 20th. In terms of the LED wall itself, did you have to do some testing and everything else around what pixel pitch was going to work for viewability? These are not just ads and not just visuals, you've got to have text on there. I would assume you have to be pretty careful to make sure the legibility is there so that  people aren't wondering, does that say 130 or 730? Ryan Taylor: Yeah, this was definitely a learning curve for us. This was our first foray into using the LED technology and you mentioned the pixel pitch, which is spot on. I think we're using 2.5 millimeters on this wall, so there is some trade-off right? The resolution is pretty good, especially when you're standing at a distance. Customers will be about 10 to 12 feet away from this when they're actually at the check-in counter talking to an agent. So you have some distance, but it is still relatively close. We did a lot of testing on the legibility. When we're actually putting data out there, it's really good. Some of the images, depending on how fine they got, tended to not be as clear. So where we could, we defaulted to actually printing and texts from the software instead of putting up an image.  I'm curious if what you're doing will extend into the automated baggage loading areas. I don't know the technical term for that is, but one of your rival airlines that rhymes with United, in Denver, had a new area open up recently where those conveyors or whatever, where you do your own bag tagging, and then you drop them on a conveyor and they go into something, they were using LED walls there to segment the different stations and say, this one's open, this one's closed or whatever, or this is for a business class, all that sort of thing. Are you doing that or looking at it?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, so, there's an express baggage lobby in Atlanta, and I believe there's one coming or already in Detroit. We did a pilot because of the layout of the one in not Atlanta. There's four kiosks for the self tag bag drop. So we did use some sensors to feed a digital display that was in the queuing area that would show you which one is occupied and which one is available. Unfortunately it didn't really pan out. It was either too sensitive or not sensitive enough because it was basically looking at an area in front of the kiosk to tell somebody was standing in front of it and if they moved out of that fence off the virtual area, if we set it too sensitive, as they're moving around with their bag, it was flickering, between open, closed, occupied, and then if it wasn't, if we dial down the sensitivity, then it was somebody would leave and for too long it would look like somebody was still there. So we abandoned that aspect of it, but our screens are still there explaining the process and wayfinding and directionally, where you go after you drop the bag off.  Yeah, I assume in airports, just like in retail, particularly given what's happening in the last couple of years that I've been saying a lot that digital signage is even more important than prior to the pandemic, because there's more of an emphasis than ever on self-service, more technologies being introduced and whether it's frictionless shopping or whatever in retail, you need screens that explain, “This is what you do. This is how you do it. This is where you go”, all those things.  So I'm assuming that the journey that starts at check-in, you guys are thinking about the full journey, all the way to the boarding ramp for passengers and using digital signage to guide them. Ryan Taylor: Yeah. I think you nailed it. You really do have to look at the whole experience from a passenger perspective, from curbside to a baggage claim and on, so there is a lot of emphasis and there's a whole team that does look at that experience, not just from a digital signage perspective, but from every aspect of that traveler's journey and so we're partnered with them to make sure that we're aligned with how we want that passenger to experience Delta and digital signage is a key part of that. I guess it's one thing when Delta owns the terminal or has blanket rights to it or whatever, versus ones where you're a tenant in it, how difficult is it to coordinate with all the different systems and displays and data sources and everything else that may be in like a secondary, I'm pulling one out of the air here, let's say Kansas city, Missouri, or something like that, where maybe you're not a hub but there are all these systems that you need to work with?  Ryan Taylor: That's a good question. I don't know that I have an answer for that because I haven't really had to deal with that piece. Generally, we are brought in after they've already sorted those kinds of details out. Yeah. I was supposed that regardless of whether new digital signage is in there, they've always had flight information displays and that sort of thing?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, and I don't really do the FIDS, but I know that some airports, they like to use their own FIDS and their own data feeds and then, areas like Atlanta those are FIDS, they're managed by us so and obviously we're just showing our flights there because you're on our concourse.  So it definitely depends on what the airport wants or allows us to do, versus you know I think in our view, we would want to have all our stuff, be owned and operated by Delta.  In the sky clubs, the frequent fire lounges, are you doing anything beyond FIDS display?  Ryan Taylor: Yeah. So in the sky clubs, we specifically manage our team on the outside, the ladder boards, affectionately called the SKIDS for sky club information displays.  I've learned about RIDS and SKIDS today.  Ryan Taylor: Oh I'll tell you all about it, we've got more “ids” coming. LaGuardia is getting SQUIDS. Okay. I have to ask what that is.  Ryan Taylor: SQUIDS is security and queue information displays.In LaGuardia, there'll be these freestanding totems that will let the passengers know that this line is for general boarding. This one is for precheck, so that segmentation. So those will be actually very cool. They are about 12 feet tall, and they're kind of, I call them monoliths, because they're triangular shaped and they'll have LED screens on two sides of them. They're very striking. They're going to be a really cool different looking digital signage, right? Not your normal 16:9, and not to bring up your brand, I do feel like there's going to be a lot more digital science that comes out, especially with the LED technology that breaks that mold of the ratio, which I think is great because it's become so ubiquitous. I'm definitely going off on a tangent here, but I think the challenge, especially in an airport environment is there is a proliferation of screens. If you're looking in the gate area, there's so many screens hanging down for your attention and if we could rethink that and figure out a way to make it less cluttered and clean up the gate area, I think that would help with some of the chaos of visual stimulation that you can become bombarded with. Yeah. I think that the chaos and reducing that has gotta be the biggest goal of any of this sort of stuff in something like an airport, and I really appreciated it when I think it was Orlando airport, they started using flat panel displays at the TSA screening areas, that would say, this line is for business class and so on, and if things changed and a new aligned open up or whatever, the screens would automatically reflect that, and just anything like that operationally that makes the journey a little easier and a little less irritating, I think is amazing.  Ryan Taylor: Yeah, I wholeheartedly agree. I think there's a lot that can be done to inform but also, make it just a little more palatable. I think one of the dangers with digital signage is it's easier than ever to put up a screen. The cost has come down and especially with these large format LED screens, even in your city cityscape, you're running the risk of saturation to the point, I mean, I don't think it's there yet, but in certain places that can be where you're creating that future mystic Blade Runner scenario, where there's a screen on every building and you're just overwhelmed with stuff.  So we definitely have to be thoughtful on how we deploy and what we're putting on there and is it useful, right? Is it serving its purpose? Or are we just adding to the clutter and teaching people not to look at these things? Cause that's what you don't want to do.  Yeah. I think that's the great example of why airport digital signage is so good because of all those “ids” and they all have a point except maybe the advertising, which I know you guys don't do, but all those other ones serve some express purpose. Ryan Taylor: Yes.  All right, Ryan, this was terrific. I learned a lot today, including about SQUIDS.  Ryan Taylor: Yeah. If you ever get to New York, I'd love to show you around and if you're ever in Atlanta, we can host you here if you're interested. There's a lot of stuff we're proud of and we can show you the RIDS, we can show you SQUIDS.  There's nothing more exciting than going to LaGuardia. Ryan Taylor: I know, right? By the way, our back walls are affectionately called BFLIDS, which stands for Big Friendly LIDS. You can choose another word for friendly features, but that's how we refer to them.  I'll have to start coming out with my own “ids”.  Ryan Taylor: You can get creative with them.  All right, Ryan. Thanks again.  Ryan Taylor: Thanks, Dave. It was good talking to you.

Storytelling connects the parts of people that other communications don't typically reach. The way we engage, excite, and educate people about technology is to make it meaningful for them. People can see the impact of your technology and make a decision or take an action in response to the story. In this episode of A View From The Top by NanoLumens, Host Brandy Alvarado-Miranda talked with Yiannis Cabolis, Director of Technology Innovation at Electrosonic, about the intersection of storytelling and technology. With over 15 years under his belt, Cabolis has filled many different roles at Electrosonic. In his current role, he connects the dots between various aspects of technology the company uses from their vendors. He also focuses on things they can produce as part of their innovation initiatives. When it comes to innovative and disruptive technology trends, Electrosonic keeps its ear to the ground, particularly in the immersive and experiential spaces. There is quite a bit going on in the space, according to Cabolis. “Ideally, what we're trying to do, in terms of disruptive technologies, is to look at ways where the environment can be as aware as possible, of itself and the viewer,” Cabolis explained, “a person we're trying to connect, provide that storytelling and entertain.”

Storytelling connects the parts of people that other communications don't typically reach. The way we engage, excite, and educate people about technology is to make it meaningful for them. People can see the impact of your technology and make a decision or take an action in response to the story. In this episode of A View From The Top by NanoLumens, Host Brandy Alvarado-Miranda talked with Yiannis Cabolis, Director of Technology Innovation at Electrosonic, about the intersection of storytelling and technology. With over 15 years under his belt, Cabolis has filled many different roles at Electrosonic. In his current role, he connects the dots between various aspects of technology the company uses from their vendors. He also focuses on things they can produce as part of their innovation initiatives. When it comes to innovative and disruptive technology trends, Electrosonic keeps its ear to the ground, particularly in the immersive and experiential spaces. There is quite a bit going on in the space, according to Cabolis. “Ideally, what we're trying to do, in terms of disruptive technologies, is to look at ways where the environment can be as aware as possible, of itself and the viewer,” Cabolis explained, “a person we're trying to connect, provide that storytelling and entertain.”

NanoLumens invented curved and flexible LEDs — that's its unique differentiation, too. But, in a sea of different LED providers, how does NanoLumens stand out? What are its other strengths? In this Rants & rAVes episode, Kurt DeYoung from NanoLumens tells you why he thinks you should consider this company first as your LED vendor. […]

The 16:9 PODCAST IS SPONSORED BY SCREENFEED – DIGITAL SIGNAGE CONTENT I'm just coming off a bunch of research and writing about direct view LED, so it would be reasonable to think I know my stuff. But this is technology that's evolving rapidly, and when you get into the weeds, there's still a whole bunch to learn and understand about LED. Gary Feather is the CTO at the Atlanta-based LED display manufacturer NanoLumens, which has been an innovator for many years in the large format display space. We've gone back and forth through the years, by email, discussing advances. He offered to put his headset on and have a podcast chat about some of the emerging and changing technologies he's seeing. We go into several things, most notably the rationale and use of displays that have engineered coatings that protect the screens from day to day abuse, whether that's accidental or intended.  Gary has an electrical engineering degree, so acronyms and technical terms roll off his tongue like snarky remarks do with me. The result is a discussion that's maybe a little more technical than normal. But if you are into direct view LED, you'll learn some good stuff over the 30 or so minutes. Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS TRANSCRIPT So Gary, thanks for joining me. I just recently finished a big report on Direct View LEDs. So I think of myself as something of a Mr. Smarty Pants about this stuff, but you sent me an email while you're rattled through a whole bunch of things that are happening in the space, and then I thought to myself, oh I really don't know much about this industry at all. The more you learn the less, so one of the things you talked about it, and first of all, let me back up here and just explain who you are and what you do with NanoLumens.  Gary Feather: Sure. I'm Gary Feather, the Chief Technology Officer at NanoLumens. I've been with NanoLumens for seven years. I left Sharp corporation in the LCD business to get there, and we really had a great opportunity to see the evolution of LED display from discrete devices, SMT devices, and now the new evolutions we're seeing in the market. So one of the areas when I was over in China, about three years ago, I saw the first iterations of LED Display modules that had some sort of an epoxy coating on them, which is since being described in ways like an adhesive onboard or glue onboard. You're suggesting, or at least your email was suggesting that we're going to be seeing a much more of a shift to that sort of thing. Gary Feather: The industry is looking for wider application of LED displays and with that comes durability and reliability requirements. A surface that is coated is going to be dramatically more durable than one that has physical soldered devices. So generally the surfaces become an important aspect for both installations, as well as utilization of the display in active environments. Now, the idea with coating these things is because they're there, the LED chips are soldered on that they can easily be bumped off and they can be extraordinarily difficult to repair. I've seen lots of LED displays wherein the corners a few of the LED chips have been flaked off and other ones have been scraped off. So this certainly protects it. The concern that was being raised, at least in the early days of it was the image quality is not as good and there were worries about how the heat got out. Has all that stuff been resolved?  Gary Feather: Like any problem you're trying to solve, you mitigate certain aspects to make them viable. Let's go way back to the LCD panels space. When LCDs first came out, the reflectivity of the screen was a problem. And so we used what was calLED the triacetate cellulose film on the surface so that it looked more anti-reflective. So surfaces have been an issue we've been addressing in the display industry really since the beginning of the industry. Now we have a really exciting space to work in. We have a surface that we engineer with the materials we choose, Silicons through all varieties of epoxy materials of which then the processing allows a surface treatment to be customized to that, which optimizes the application of the display. So I would suggest while it's not part of the display, it has the capability to greatly enhance display performance now and dramatically improve over time in the future.  Is there any issue with the coating trapping the heat at all or does it go at the back?  Gary Feather: Certainly the coating is an insulator. The management of heat and thermal calculations allow different approaches to get the heat out of the devices. Heat is a product of the efficacy of the LED, How many Candelas you get per watt, and then the brightness of the display is your Candelas per meter square.  So depending on how bright you want the display and what the efficacy of the device is and what the physical size of the device is, management of heat then use those three parameters. That's an interesting aspect as we look at smaller LED dye, going from a standard size to the mini-LED to the micro-LED, the challenges of getting the heat properly out of that device to keep the junction temperatures in the range to ensure the reliability of the dye itself under operation.  The other worry I've heard or at least had raised was the whole idea that because these are module tiles that you put on a kitchen or bathroom wall or whatever that if it's coated, you can't just replace an individual dead LED dye, you've got to replace the whole module. Is that genuinely an issue or a bit of a red herring?  Gary Feather: Most anything can be repaired. The question is trying to monetize the value of that. So do you have an LCD or an OLED television?  I do.  Gary Feather: And how often have you repaired that? Let me count: zero.  Gary Feather: Okay, so we know where we want to go, and so the red herring maybe is to live in a world where we repair things as a starting point. So we design it to be repaired. We design it to be disassembLED and we design it to then be worked on. That generally adds dramatic cost to a product. So as the maturation of the systems reach the levels that we know they will hit, a philosophy of repair has to be disregarded and you have to look at the fact that solutions will last for the life of the product and meet the customer's requirements.  I don't want to downplay this as an issue. I just want to say we know the destination and we know we've moved magnitudes on that from the past where people were repairing things daily to monthly to yearly, and now sometimes never repaired at all. And these transitions we're talking about, they are critical to building a sustainable competitive market where LED if you will, Inorganic LED is able to rival any of the other display technologies that are out there.  So when I first started seeing these glue onboard or hardened LED modules and cabinets, I thought, okay, this is the way the industry is going to go, and I've been watching it for three years now and I've seen a number of smaller to midsize Chinese manufacturers come out with products, but I haven't seen any of the major manufacturers come out with anything with the arguable exception of the microLEDish products from the big guys like Sony and Samsung and LG that have some sort of coating on it, but there doesn't seem to be much in the middle, is that going to change?  Gary Feather: So you're saying other than the leaders in the market with regard to a vision for the future, putting coatings on their boards so that they meet these requirements you haven't seen the other smaller companies, which aren't major players doing it? I think you've answered your question.  What I mean though, is I have seen four super-premium products, like Samsung's The Wall, Sony's Crystal LED, and LG’s Magnit, they have some sort of coating. I've seen from Cedar and CreateLEDs and companies like that, they have coated products, but I don't think I've seen stuff from Absen and Yuna Lumen and Layrd and some of those companies who are pretty big players. Gary Feather: Well, YunaLumen showed at ISE a year and a half ago or so roughly, the coated boards. Everyone has initiated an effort. They have to decide why they are doing it, what purpose are they adding, what benefit do they add to the display and why is this better than the other solution? So let's take a few other areas of why. If I want to wipe down a surface and in today's environment, wiping down surfaces may be an important aspect, I have to have a surface that's solid, that allows me to wipe it down. So now you see displays, LED displays for indoor that have IP5X and 6X ratings on the front. That would have been unheard of just a couple of years ago. So inherently we've increased the moisture capabilities of these displays. In addition to the fact that we've allowed you to have a surface that is cleanable, and that may be for dust and dirt, but it also may be for germicidal purposes and others related to our current environment with regard to the pandemic. So I think you see a lot of emphases too, as to the durability, you can hit it with a hammer. Not hard, but you can hit it with a hammer. You can try to pick off a part, but you can't. But now, more importantly, you're able to wipe down the surface and moisture condensation. Somebody accidentally splashing something on the display isn't going to have a negative effect because there are no open electrical circuits on the face of the display anymore. So these number of forcing functions will drive to the right solution.  Let's talk a little bit about that surface though, so you talked about: It's an engineered surface and on the early CLEDis product or Sony micro-LED, in 2017, if you looked at it off, you could see dimples in the process they use to coat it. That was what they were using at that time. But the idea was you, if you realize you can have a shiny surface or a gloss surface, you can have a matte surface and these have been demonstrated at shows or you could have an engineered surface because within an epoxy material, over Silicon, which is much softer, but with an epoxy material, I can then go back and re-engineer that surface to accomplish a number of things with regard to the viewing and potentially optical effects of that surface to optimize the operation of the device. So I think the coding in general and the terminology used of glue onboard is probably not a good descriptor, but an engineered coated surface has a significant potential to change the way that adds value to the LED display. Yeah, the whole description of glue on board just seems to cheapen the product in a way.  Gary Feather: I would agree with that, Yes. It sounds like a hack and I know that's not really the case. So is the whole idea of an engineered coating to be table stakes moving forward, like if you're going to have a large format display you really should have that? Gary Feather: Only in particular configurations. Outdoor displays, which still use coat. SMT devices and discrete LEDs, because they're adequate for and allow the performance and durability for the environments. There isn't a good reason to coat that display because the characteristics we're talking about achieving aren't necessarily even used in that application. They may have louvers for coating, to cover the sun. They have their own maintenance approach that they take to those displays. So I think you focus on mostly indoor display applications and those in which are in close proximity to people and/or in atrium areas where you're going to have weather conditions resulting in condensation and others and you want to build a more robust indoor solution for an atrium class area. NanoLumens did this gorgeous long LED video wall on a walkway at Charlotte North Carolina's International Airport, and that's going back two-three years now, I assume that doesn't have a coating on it, but that would be a good example of something that would benefit from that because of all the people walking along with the roller bags and everything? Gary Feather: Absolutely and that falls into that category of durability, and you want to be integrated with the display as some people have put films on the surface of the displays to result in that. It's literally a peel and sticks either by the tile or by the display, and that tends not to be, when it's not integrated, not to be a good solution for the durability, reliability that we talked about. Yeah. I've seen some of that. It didn't look very good. So tell me about Flip chips and SMT.  Gary Feather: As you know, we're probably in what I call the fourth generation for LED exploitation into digital signage and as you highlighted early with the Magnit projects and others with LG, we have commercially moved into a space where LED inorganic devices for displays actually will move into the classic space we see with LCD type solutions in OLED. The transition though is, we started with all these monochromatic LED almost tubes at one point and in the first generation and all of us saw lots of signs that were either the yellowish colored signs or whitish colored signs that were monochromatic and then moved to the discreet LEDs in a triad position and that's your generation too. And it's a great solution mixing the colors with RGB and then that migrated to a more svelte designed with SMT, sticking them all in a flat package and soldering them down to the board.  In all those cases, you are taking a dye, putting it in a package, testing it and statistically picking out the good from the bad, throwing away the bad ones after it was finished and determining what is then good for the next level of assembly. So you can see we're integrating things a little bit more each step. Now from SMT, we've got a two-step we're going to do here. SMT parts, if I don't have high confidence in pre-testing my flip-chip parts, then I can mount the flip-chip devices into an SMT package and have an RGB LED in an array to make a pixel in a package, and then I can pre-test it.  Now, the reason somebody does that is if there are particular constraints with regard to the Chroma or the Luma, that is the exact wavelength and the exact brightness of the device, and you stick them down there without pretesting, the likelihood you'll get the performance you want is very small. So by pre-testing parts then you know that they're in the band you want, and what's typically calLED binning in our industry, and you can assure that when you put the whole display together, all the individual elements meet the requirements you have for a particular wavelength, a plus or minus so many nanometers and then a particular brightness or elimination from that device. So with that in mind, you can't jump all the way in. Now, if you can pretest in a flip-chip configuration the devices in what's classically now calLED a cartridge, then I'm able to check the devices before I mount them and then put them down.  So here's where we need to realize that magic just occurred in the system. When we talk about a chip much like your home phone going from wired to your cellular phone being wireless, the golden copper wire bonds are going to disappear in the flip-chip. Now, the reason I care about that is because the number one reliability problem I have is associated with the metalization and the wire bonding, so I lose the wire bonding. I lose the epoxy. I lost all the assembly issues that made SMT dye mount wire bonds may be less reliable. And I moved to effectively weld two-terminal devices down at a surface, with no wire bonds and no chance of breakage. So a dramatic shift in that area, it means I might be able to pre-test the part, I put the part down by welding it, put it in an SMT package and I build something that's pretty much going to endure any kind of environment.  So is the Flip chip and SMT, is this what's more commonly broadly known as a chip on board?  Gary Feather: I think as you wrote an excellent piece the terminology has been used differently by everybody and I just cannot claim that you and I have the same terminology, but let's take this slowly. If the die is pre-packaged effectively into a format where it's bumped and ready to be mounted on a surface, that is flipped chip by definition, forget where it's going, but you're going to flip-chip the part. Now we've been flip chipping semiconductor dyes since the 80s. We bump them in a process, they have little bumps on them. Then we actually flip them upside down rather than wire bonding and reflow the whole device. I ran a facility in Texas instruments that did that very function. So the technology isn't new, but the issue being, you remove wire bonds, which is good. Now, how do I want to do that? As I said before, put them all in one package, just in one package and test it or put it on the whole board. If I put it on the whole board and let's say a typical board size is something like 150x337 millimeters. So I might break that down into a couple of chunks but I'll have 5,000 pixels on any one board. If I can't pre-test stuff, it would be hard to put down 5,000 at one time. So I flipped a chip a package and I tested them, but if I can pre-test them now I put them directly on the board and these are the options that we have today in the world today that go onto a polyamide board material. So you're mounting it right onto what you would classically call a PCB or a printed circuit board and that's good actually down to pixel pitches, probably around six-tenths to four-tenths where you can literally flip chip and then COB. So flip-chip, don't put them in an SMT package, flip chip put them right on the surface of the board. And when you do that, you get a C of RGB LEDs, besides C of RGB LEDs that are welded in place, not wire-bonded. Most of the early Sony solutions there, their particular displays were wire-bonded. So by removing that variable now, and you can pre-test the devices. Now you can put down more than three at a time and get them right. You may be able to put 3000 down and get them right. So the shift from the flip-chip is a methodology. COB is an implementation. You can see OB dye or you can see OB flip-chip. I strongly suggest you see the flip-chip.  Okay. So what does all this mean in terms of manufacturing and for the end-users?  Gary Feather: As we look at the application of the move towards flip-chip and the move towards COB, let's talk about flip chip first. A packaging company that sells LEDs taped in the reel, so you might put 2,500 on a reel will have classically bought a package from a packaging maker, they would have purchased the dye on a wafer from a wafer manufacturer, and then they would have wire bond machines and they would have sealant stations to put an array of these down, put the dye in the package with epoxy, bond the wires out and fill it up with material. So you can see in the supply chain, you have wafer manufacturers, you have package manufacturers, you have packaging companies that put them on a reel and then they send it to a company that does the SMT process. So that would be basically the standard process today. So there's another two step process for this: the company that's selling the taped devices with the LEDs on them wants a better device at a lower cost and by putting a flip chip into the package, as opposed to die, he can increase the reliability, the durability, if he's able to pretest that he can improve his yield and subsequently, he can still sell a package, but it's a flip-chip package as opposed to dye mounted package. So he can win on that. Now, when he does that, what he realizes is he can vertically integrate backward and try to pick up some of what's going on in the dye, cause he needs to know more about that function. And when he does that, he forms relationships with these LED manual factors and the companies building the flip chip devices. Then what immediately happens the company doing the flip-chip devices realizes why don't they just build the whole solution? Because why are they shipping things off to somebody to put it in this classic package? So from that perspective, the company building the LED might get absorbed quite a bit because he's been taken over by the guy making the die. So that's one area.  The other area is your SMT company. So while they need to put parts on the back, if the front is COB, they really have no idea how to do any of that, they no longer can take flip-chip devices, put them on a board because it's not an SMT part anymore and build an array of those nd then reflow all those devices as appropriate and then coat those devices. So companies in the supply chain that classically did one side did the other side and then shipped it off to the company are now in a situation where they have to consider, they have to go somewhere else to have that work done. They don't have that tool and equipment.  So the supply chain is evolving and streamlining as well?  Gary Feather: Right and what you'd expect, and let's move all the way down to let's say LCD TVs, the glass is built with the switch, the optical light switch in it as part of making the solution by a company like Sharp or a company like Samsung or others, OLED fits in the same category. So as you can integrate more of these pieces together, certainly the overall output is improved in yield, the costs go down, the automation increases and subsequently it allows you to build a different model for that. So many people that were doing Parts of this job got absorbed into the totally more integrated solution. In this case, eventually a CPB based solution with inorganic devices placed in a more effective way on a large area board with results that give you the display performance you're looking for, that will result in a large area displays built that a factory, completely not tiLED in the 110, 120, 130 inch range with inorganic LEDs that you buy much like you buy an LCD or an OLED TV today is just bigger than those tech technologies can support and are not tiLED anymore, but completely finished and a finished product at home. And that's what you're seeing with the solutions from the big people, as you highlighted before Samsung and LG.  Does all this make it easier for a company to spin itself up as an LED display manufacturer when they're not really manufacturing, they're just saying they're a manufacturer?  Gary Feather: I list in our internal strategic competitive list 30 key companies that I think are integrated manufacturers. There are about 140 that are out there. So indeed today in LED-based displays, there are many people that are brokering talent from other people to provide solutions to customers and adding very little value to the actual solution. So in one way, it does allow that. On the other way, these companies may decide they want to be vertically integrated all the way to the customers. And so they may not open that up. So we have yet to see how that actually works as they fail. There are factories that are doing many LEDs today and some microLED capabilities, but the new factories built, we're in the 50 to 70,000 square feet, and they allow processing of a lot of materials. So I assume any serious customers will be considered until those factories are full.  Let's talk about costs that have been coming down through the years. And I assume that's a function of buyer volume and manufacturing advances and everything else is this whole kind of shift going to also lower costs? Gary Feather: Absolutely. The integration of these functions will lower costs. Part of the cost is yield. If the yield increases, that's immediate money into your pocket, but let's look at the whole solution. We talk about how we have the LEDs certainly, and we have drivers for the LEDs that support that and then the controlling system that goes with that. The automation of these systems from this, these are mostly now today, pulse width modulation non-persistent displays that are constant current devices. So that's what we build. So basically we build a light bulb that goes on and off fast enough so you see the mixing of the RGB the way you'd like. As we look at the drivers, what's happened with the drivers is they used to be inaccurate and imprecise. And they were almost like analog, even though they're digital from device to device based on lead length drive, performance, voltage, and many other noise factors. So today, if you look at the newest release devices from the leaders in the industry, we have now integrated solutions in drivers that are so much more advanced. So what used to be in a single, it would take, say 64 packages are now in a single package associated with performance. So as you would guess, the cost has dropped as the level of integration has gone up much the same way with Silicon devices. So one of the big cost drivers in this is driver technology and driver technology continues to advance at a level that's quite phenomenal is the ability to control the LED and controlling the LED is absolutely the critical part of being able to create incredible images with LED technology. There's nothing like the speed, the performance, the color of an LED, and with the right driver in an amazing world opens up what people can do with these devices to give the user a perception that you otherwise never felt. Yeah, in doing the recent report I did on LED, I got the sense that the marketplace is shifting from being fixated with pixel pitch, and who's got the finest pixel pitch displays and so on to a more mature market that understands visual quality is everything and you need to have a great control system, great drivers and everything else. Gary Feather: That's absolutely true. Also, let's go back, this is the need, The need of the display initially was a sign and the sign basically is communicating fairly bold things in very large spaces, but the market shifted starting in 2014 to video displays. So what we're trying to do is replace and or meet the kind of performance with an OLED device. They realize it's all about what the user perceives and having worked with creatives In the Hollywood structure with regard to images and within the whole physical sciences, the best stories are told in the dark. So the black are so important for you to feel the life-like nature of an image and we are just now addressing contrast ratios that begin to be a priority to realize very little reflected light of the display results in our blacks because we're off, obviously when we're black, we're not like an LCD trying to hold back the light, so more like an OLED. But once the black is attained and reflected light is mitigated and the contrast ratio. it's higher, the image comes alive.  So that's one factor. The other is a bit depth. As you go down for the brightness, the eye becomes so much more capable to see the black areas and you've got to make sure you don't stair step that, that it's a nice blend because that's what reality is. As you look at things and the result is it's the second area bit depth is accurate and precise. This resulted in images that do appear lifelike and there are about four other parameters, but those two I think is what really brings an image to life and allows for a story well told.  This is all pretty technical for a lot of people. If I'm a reseller or particularly if I'm an end-user, how valuable is it to understand and get into the technical weeds on this stuff? Or is this something they don't really need to know?  Gary Feather: I don't think they need to know it at all. In all honesty, not for any reason other than seeing is believing and you want simple messages to people about simple things. As I said, we're going wireless with the way we connect devices, that's a big deal. We're trying to emulate a lead contrast ratio, that's a big deal. We moved to the control set. You get the right color in the right spaces. No fake colors along the way in color matching across the whole CIE space that you've covered. That's a big deal. People can get that right color, reliable, durable, and looks real. That's probably the message.  The details of that are having the marketing spend to give that information to people. So they get it in a way that's valuable to their customers because when you're done, you want to look at it and be wowed with what and that's the only thing the customer sees. All the technology you and I are talking about is effectively what is behind the product to assure that's attainable  From my perspective, I think it's always good, particularly if you're making a six-figure decision to have at least a decent understanding of what's under the hood matters. Gary Feather: Right and I think we can put together information for people to ask the right questions to basically audit what they're getting to make sure they're not buying last year, the year before last solutions, which will be limiting and they're moving into the solutions that are not limiting going forward. All right, Gary, that was terrific. I think we should do this again sometime. Very insightful.  Gary Feather: It's an interesting market and you're going to see, I think about a hundred million in flip chips this year at retail and probably as much as 500 million in 2022. So this shift is occurring pretty fast in a $6 to $7 billion industry. So I think that elements an important takeaway. Building durable products for long life, that's a great takeaway. And I think maybe the most important element is that LED now we'll begin to stand side by side in a larger format for what we've seen in the past with LCD and OLED.  Okay, Gary. Thank you. Gary Feather: Thank you, Dave. Appreciate it.    

Founded with a mission to create a digital wallpaper that would transform the way audiences engaged with their surroundings, NanoLumens pushes the limits of media architecture further and further each year. We’ve found that as digital display technologies grow more prevalent in all facets of daily life, audiences not only expect to see screens in just about every room they enter but also to see these screens integrated into the very fabric of a building’s architecture. Working with renowned content creators like the digital sculptor Refik Anadol and the experts from Second Story and Moment Factory, NanoLumens has helped some of the world’s most sophisticated clients in transportation, communications, and commercial real estate evolve their space from simply a building into an immersive, future-proofed digital environment. We’ve written in this space before about the degrees of freedom in design NanoLumens grants each of our clients but its worth briefly touching on the media architecture successes of a few installations because each represents a remarkable achievement in thinking outside the box.To read the full blog post, click here.

Not everything is in the cloud. In fact, businesses that handle sensitive data such as financial records, medical records, and travel documents must maintain higher network security than ever before. That's sent these businesses off the cloud and back to on-site hosting for their digital display management systems. Until now. NanoLumens just launched a locally-hosted version of its AWARE digital display management system. Its development was inspired by NanoLumens customers who'd asked for a one-to-one version for local hosting. "We've been asked a few times from clients 'hey is there a locally hosted version of this?'," said Brice McPheeters, Director of Product Line Management and Customer Service, our guest on this new episode of NanoSessions, a NanoLumens podcast. "We made sure we created a true one to one interface. The exact way you interact with the cloud version was one to one with what we reproduced in the locally hosted version." McPheeters says ease of use is important because digital is everywhere and used by everybody. It's not just integrators or AV professionals using display management systems. "Everyone throws that term around but we've actually gone head to head with our competitors," he said. "We're just extremely easy to use as an operator, IT manager, or anyone who's having to educate new users."

Without a background or steady base of knowledge of Pro AV, it's honestly hard to keep up with all the advanced digital display technology that NanoLumens puts to work in its state-of-the-art displays. Micro LED versus LCD, pixels, pitch, curved display... for a new customer or someone new to the industry, learning and understanding all the terminology is no doubt a challenge. On this new episode of NanoSessions, a NanoLumens podcast, host Sean Heath welcomed senior copywriter Robert Simms to discuss the learning curve and how he goes about writing copy that'll get read. "When you're learning how to learn something, first you have to accept the fact you probably don't know anything about the space you're getting into," Simms said. "That was certainly the case with me. When I came to the industry, I had almost zero understanding of how the technology and the industry worked and how people in the industry communicated with each other." But lacking a background in engineering helped Simms approach learning complex technology with an outsider's or layman's viewpoint. "My background in communications helped me take a complex subject in engineering and translate it into more simplistic ideas that people without an engineering background will understand," Simms said. "If I had my druthers, I'd write as informally as possible because I've found the most natural way to communicate is to write as you speak."

By their very nature, inventions are the first of their kind. That's exciting for someone like Ted Heske, Director of Intellectual Property for NanoLumens who has devoted his life to emerging solutions. On this new episode of NanoSessions, a NanoLumens podcast, host Maggie Shein welcomed Heske to discuss patents and the intellectual property they work with when creating state-of-the-art display technology. "When you buy a NanoLumens display, that's a significant bundle of unique intellectual property that collectively provides a lot of advantages to our customers," Heske said. The Georgia-based company is known for creating large-format LED displays such as JFK International Airport’s Terminal 4 digital display that measures 30-foot wide by 10-foot high as well as other first-of-its-kind creative technology displays. As a former inventor of consumer products himself, Heske said patents and intellectual property are interesting because it's uncharted territory. "If an idea is worthy of a patent, that means no one has done it before," Heske said. "That's a constant source of novelty and a problem solver myself, I'm always interested in understanding how new things work." Heske also discussed the most significant patents in NanoLumens' arsenal of intellectual property and what makes those pieces of display technology so important.

When an outdoor LED board caught fire in New York's Time Square earlier this summer, experts turned new attention to fire safety and flame resistance of LED screens. On this episode of NanoSessions, a NanoLumens podcast, host Daniel Litwin welcomed Adam Dixon, operations director of electrical engineering for NanoLumens, to give his perspective on designing fire retardant LED displays. That fire "raised some eyebrows" among experts like Dixon because health and safety in public spaces where LEDs are often displayed are of utmost importance. "For any environment where the LED display is considered the building material, such as equipment in a transportation space where large crowds of people in small spaces, health and safety is a concern," Dixon said. NanoLumens has been well ahead of the curve in flame retardant LEDs. For about three years now, Dixon has been helping design and test fire retardant LED displays in collaboration with fire research companies and institutions. "Fire dynamics are incredibly complex," Dixon said. "We explored some uncommon or never previously used material combinations for the LED package itself as well as the air board construction." By looking at published research data about how homogenous materials hold up against fire and conversely how different combinations of materials react to fire, heat and smoke density, NanoLumens developed a well-researched and tested solution that could become a standard. Dixon explained, "We felt the best approach was to minimize combustible mass, so if you have less material to burn theoretically you're going to generate less radiant heat."

On today's episode of NanoSessions, host Sean Heath sat down with Joe' Lloyd, NanoLumens vice president of global marketing and business development about the company’s recent study on competing value propositions of LED vs. LCD display technology and shared what the future looks like for LED display. “The weird and the wow, we sometimes call them,” said Lloyd. “We’re the company that people come to with a paper napkin drawing and a really amazing idea, and they’re looking to bring that to life.” The Georgia-based company is known for creating large-format LED displays such as JFK International Airport’s Terminal 4 digital display that measures 30-feet wide by 10-feet high, among others. But NanoLumens tackled a new challenge with this industry-wide survey, conducted over three months with 450 integrators, direct buyers, architects, and end users of LED and LCD display products. While price and size often lead the conversation, serviceability and hours of use are two important factors that consumers said they consider when considering LED versus LCD. “This survey jumps into the value proposition,” Lloyd said. “From an upfront spend perspective, LED display is going to cost more up front. But we’re diving into the total cost of ownership and what does that investment look like over time.” For example, enterprise-level LCDs have gotten larger with much smaller bezels, while bezel-free LEDs have improved with smaller pixel pitches and longevity with 100,000 hour diodes. Also in this episode, Lloyd revealed some of the surprises found in the survey as well as a discrepancy between users’ perception and reality.

I sometimes get white papers and research that a vendor hopes I report on or talk about, and then decide against it because the information is hopelessly skewed in favor of that vendor. It's a bit like those recipe pamphlets that suggest you don't just add a cup of this, it has to be specifically the vendor's "this." That's not the case with an interesting total cost of ownership report that looks at the perceptions and attributes of LED vs LCD video walls. The report was put together by the Atlanta LED manufacturer NanoLumens, but you'd barely know Nano made the big effort to put this together. It's an interesting read, and a free download - albeit with the understanding the company wants to capture who all is grabbing it. I spoke with Joe' Lloyd, NanoLumens' Global VP of Marketing and Business Development, who put the survey together and got it out the door. We get into the why of the survey, and what turned up in results from more than 400 respondents.   Subscribe to this podcast: iTunes * Google Play * RSS  

Join host Corey Moss as he welcomes his guests: Artists who used Christie technology at the Digital Graffiti Festival: Jes Van Zee – Media Designer + Producer at AOA Tamiko Thiel – Media Artist Using Christie technology, Artists wow guests at the Digital Graffiti Festival with immersive AR experiences -and- NanoLumens LED display total cost of ownership: Joe’ Lloyd – Vice … Continue reading Christie – Artists Wow Guests at the Digital Graffiti Festival, & NanoLumens – LED Display Customers Better Understand and Appreciate the Total Cost of Ownership, New Survey Shows →

As part of the $200-million renovation and redesign of its Concourse A, Charlotte Douglas International Airport has partnered with NanoLumens and media artist Refik Anadol to now offer video walls featuring mesmerizing patterns driven by actual airport data  The work that’s currently completed in terminal A is fitted with a 1400-foot by 10-foot digital sculpture and two 40-foot digital paintings, with all of the movement being translated from airport data such arrival times, departure times, ticketing information, etc.  On this episode of Digital Signage Stories, NanoLumens’ Director of Strategic Business Development Brett Farley joins us to get into the details behind this data-driven art piece. For more case study information about this project, which took home an APEX Award at DSE 2019, click here. 

There is such an impressive digital display at JFK International Airport’s Terminal 4 that it’s become an iconic piece of content and likely a favorite among first-time visitors to the Big Apple. On this new episode of the Nanosessions podcast by Nanolumens, Dana Michaelis, vice president of sales for Nanolumens shares how a digital display project comes to life from concept and what’s really possible with Direct View LED at the world’s largest airports. “What has happened in other cities around the country, if not around the world, is that the bar gets continually raised,” Michaelis says. “It’s all about the passenger experience, and visualization is a key component of that.” The double-sided 30-foot wide by 10-foot high NanoLumens Nixel Series LED video board displays flight information for arriving flights, the time, news and weather information, as well as marketing messages from advertisers, on the convex side for travelers inside the terminal. On the other side, directly opposite the door from customs, is an iconic welcome to the city that never sleeps: “‘Welcome to New York,’ it says” Michaelis says. “It’s the type of display that generates such a wow factor, people stop and take photos of it.” The LED display creates an immersive experience that makes digital signage more effective than static images and opens a wide opportunity for stunning new forms of content, Michaelis says.

LED screens are no longer just in the box. With sophisticated technology, digital displays now have the ability to become digital wallpaper, and that’s exactly how NanoLumens thinks of their displays. To discuss this topic today is expert Joey Commander, Senior Business Development Specialist at NanoLumens. Joey’s role at NanoLumens has grown since he started there four years ago, and he’s found that his unique educational background made the company a great fit. “I have a business communication background as a PR major in college, and that has helped me be able to communicate well in this sometimes-complex sales process. With a film and video minor, this fit right into the AV world, as I already had an understanding of video production and the hardware involved,” Joey shared. He was able to parlay his education and experience, now guiding clients through projects, as he did with an installation for Nestle. “The project with Nestle is a great example of how we think about direct view LED. We consider it as a digital wallpaper with any surface able to become a digital display. We can create unique sizes, shapes, and curvatures. The Nestle project was a lobby area that had curvature, so we used or patented flexible screen to match the radius of each space. Three offset displays create a ribbon that flows around the ceiling of the space. It’s a dynamic experience for all that enter the space,” Joey said. The future of LED screens and where the technology is heading, the options are basically limitless. Joey commented, “You can think of our displays and what they can offer in the same way you’d consider what color to paint the wall. It can be anything with a digital screen, as subtle or as engaging as you wish, all changeable at any time.”

Much of the focus on LED technology has been about resolution, but there comes a point where screens may have a sharper resolution than what the eye can see. In this episode of NanoSessions, Dan Rossborough, Director of Strategic Projects with NanoLumens, explains that the Pro AV industry has reached this peak, but at the end of the day it's all about perception. “Resolution is directly tied to pixel pitch or the density of pixels in an area. Resolution is also in the context of viewing distance. So, yes, we’ve come to a point where resolution is probably at its max, but what we’re most concerned with is helping architects and designers find the appropriate products based on viewing range and resolution,” Rossborough said. While in most scenarios, LED screens are flat, NanoLumens began to look at screens from a different perspective. “LEDs have been traditionally flat. But if you look at the roots of NanoLumens, the company’s foundation has always been around R&D. We have many more engineers than sales professionals. We really wanted to revolutionize the industry," Rossborough said. "LEDs were initially used outdoors. We didn’t just want to take the outdoor solution and bring it indoors. That’s when we started looking at the screen as a material, one that could be flexible," he said. NanoLumens screens can now fit any surface, and they are moving toward compound curvatures that are nonlinear. It all started with the company's first direct view LED display in 2012. “Coca-Cola came to us in 2012 and had a hallway that they wanted screens all down the hallway. They originally spec’d 60 plasma screens. The catch was that these screens had to be front serviceable. So, we started developing a product and created the first fully front serviceable direct view LED. We installed them, and they are still running today,” Rossborough said. This first foray into customization has become the specialty of NanoLumens. “Most of the products we have now started from a customer needing something that didn’t exist. Everything we build is application specific and bespoke. Why? There are not two architectures that are identical, so why should displays be the same," Rossborough said. For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Pro AV Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication. A new episode of the Pro AV Show drops every Thursday. Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B! Twitter – @ProAVMKSL Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Price is always a factor in every purchase. Every business wants to ensure they stay within budget, but, of course, cheaper is rarely better, except for the pocketbook. Professional LED display solutions are no different. While LEDs are widespread today, they aren’t all equal. So, the question becomes, is the price worth the value? Discussing this topic with us today is Eric Techo, Director of Global Marketing & Sales Operations for NanoLumens. “Price always comes to the forefront in AV. Everybody’s always looking to save money, but it’s critical for buyers to consider the return on investment. It’s not just the screen itself; it’s the service, the warranty, and more,” Eric said. At NanoLumens, they consider their products to be high-end, which means they cost more than most LED screens. “First and foremost, we try to educate our customers about the value of the screens. We want to know what they are going to be doing with the screen; will it play HD content or text or something else? We provide recommendations, and even if we are outside their budget, we’ve given them valuable information. Proper advising is part of our culture,” Eric relayed. However, Eric says he’s seeing a shift away from the price being the determining factor. “In the global market, there’s a new trend shifting away from just being price conscious. Top tier customers need top tier products. Changes are happening in the AV market. People want high-quality products that make the customer happy and coming back for more product,” Eric shared. Even when customer sometimes can’t increase their budget, they often find their way back. Eric said, “We’ve unfortunately had many folks come back to us when they’ve chosen a lower cost product that breaks. We’ve had situations where we were more expensive but offered a longer warranty and higher quality product. The customer decided to go with another company, and things went south. The product just wasn’t the quality as represented. So, we’ve been there to help those companies as best as possible.” Learn more about the reality of price vs. value in LED screens by listening to the podcast.

Some wow-inducing digital displays are going up in a most surprising places: Airports. On today's episode of the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast, brought to you by Marketscale, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with Brett Farley, director of strategic business development for NanoLumens, to discuss how digital displays range from everyday way-finding signage to dynamic art and spectacular displays. "Everything from emergency alert systems, to dynamic signage from different CMS', dynamic airport displays are both functional for safety and way-finding, and spectacular for art displays," Farley said. Farley pointed to large format digital display technology making some amazing installations possible at airports worldwide. Places such as Toronto Pearson Airport, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and New York's JFK International are leading the way in digital installations. On the podcast, Farley went into detail about the particular innovation happening at the Changi Airport in Singapore, which has evolved from an airport to a true destination for people. "It's an airport, an amusement park, a destination, all-in-one," he said. Farley also shared what innovations NanoLumens is working on next, and what the future of airports could be. These changes represent a re-imagination of the modern air travel experience. An experience, he said, that is getting better all the time.

This podcast originally aired on the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast. Some wow-inducing digital displays are going up in a most surprising places: Airports. On today’s episode of the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast, brought to you by Marketscale, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with Brett Farley, director of strategic business development for NanoLumens, to discuss how digital displays range from everyday way-finding signage to dynamic art and spectacular displays. “Everything from emergency alert systems, to dynamic signage from different CMS’, dynamic airport displays are both functional for safety and way-finding, and spectacular for art displays,” Farley said. Farley pointed to large format digital display technology making some amazing installations possible at airports worldwide. Places such as Toronto Pearson Airport, Charlotte Douglas International Airport, and New York’s JFK International are leading the way in digital installations. On the podcast, Farley went into detail about the particular innovation happening at the Changi Airport in Singapore, which has evolved from an airport to a true destination for people. “It’s an airport, an amusement park, a destination, all-in-one,” he said. Farley also shared what innovations NanoLumens is working on next, and what the future of airports could be. These changes represent a re-imagination of the modern air travel experience. An experience, he said, that is getting better all the time.

The most innovative uses of digital dvLED technology being implemented across the world, from airports to public stadiums, are made possible by the best possible tech — not the cheapest. “The key is educating the consumer so they can make the best possible decision,” said NanoLumens Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development Joe' Lloyd. Lloyd understands that customers are looking for the highest quality solutions that truly meet their needs today as well as for years to come. That is why understanding the jargon and technology in an LED solution will help buyers make the most informed buying decision possible. On today's MarketScale Pro AV Podcast, Lloyd breaks down her thoughts on quality versus price. She offers an interesting analogy for the connection of price and quality in technology, likening LED solutions to mobile phones that have risen in quality and price commensurately. NanoLumens' quality is on display throughout the world, but one of the most impressive examples is in the arrivals area of Singapore's Changi Airport, where NanoLumens helped implement one of the largest indoor LED displays in the world. “We've had a lot of fun with the Changi Airport, helping them put together something that is just so unique and exciting, and the size of a football field, no less,” Lloyd said. “It's a cultural example of what it means to be there in Singapore.” Lloyd explains why that project wouldn't have had the impact it did if Singapore went for a cheap solution rather than a quality one.

This podcast originally aired on the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast.The most innovative uses of digital dvLED technology being implemented across the world, from airports to public stadiums, are made possible by the best possible tech — not the cheapest. “The key is educating the consumer so they can make the best possible decision,” said NanoLumens Vice President of Global Marketing and Business Development Joe’ Lloyd. Lloyd understands that customers are looking for the highest quality solutions that truly meet their needs today as well as for years to come. That is why understanding the jargon and technology in an LED solution will help buyers make the most informed buying decision possible. On today’s MarketScale Pro AV Podcast, Lloyd breaks down her thoughts on quality versus price. She offers an interesting analogy for the connection of price and quality in technology, likening LED solutions to mobile phones that have risen in quality and price commensurately. NanoLumens’ quality is on display throughout the world, but one of the most impressive examples is in the arrivals area of Singapore’s Changi Airport, where NanoLumens helped implement one of the largest indoor LED displays in the world. “We’ve had a lot of fun with the Changi Airport, helping them put together something that is just so unique and exciting, and the size of a football field, no less,” Lloyd said. “It’s a cultural example of what it means to be there in Singapore.” Lloyd explains why that project wouldn’t have had the impact it did if Singapore went for a cheap solution rather than a quality one.

Digital signage in the sports market has reached ubiquity, meaning applications are getting more creative. Whether it's for interactive stations to bring fans to the stadium, jumbotrons that display real-time social media feeds, or LED art displays that inspire and put local retailers in the eyes of fans, applications seems limitless. To get perspective on this market growth, we sat down with Patrick Jackson, Senior Business Development Specialist at NanoLumens. Patrick is a business development veteran in the audio-visual world and has helped bring visions and goals to life in the signage market. On this episode he'll talk about how digital signage has changed arena design and construction, why it's been so successful, how it can convert a “dead space,” and about some of his favorite digital signage solutions in different stadiums and arenas. “Once people really started seeing some of these dead spaces, these little utilized spaces, get turned into revenue generating spaces, it really started to take off,” Jackson said.

This podcast originally aired on the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast.Digital signage in the sports market has reached ubiquity, meaning applications are getting more creative. Whether it’s for interactive stations to bring fans to the stadium, jumbotrons that display real-time social media feeds, or LED art displays that inspire and put local retailers in the eyes of fans, applications seems limitless. To get perspective on this market growth, we sat down with Patrick Jackson, Senior Business Development Specialist at NanoLumens. Patrick is a business development veteran in the audio-visual world and has helped bring visions and goals to life in the signage market. On this episode he’ll talk about how digital signage has changed arena design and construction, why it’s been so successful, how it can convert a “dead space,” and about some of his favorite digital signage solutions in different stadiums and arenas. “Once people really started seeing some of these dead spaces, these little utilized spaces, get turned into revenue generating spaces, it really started to take off,” Jackson said.

This podcast originally aired on the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast. With the ubiquity of digital signage on the rise, new frontiers like the convergence of AV and IT and the explosion of VoT are on the horizon. Larry O’Hagan, Inside Sales Associate for NanoLumens, joined us this episode to talk about why AV and IT need to learn from each other, why he thinks VoT devices are the future. “This makes a visual impact statement upon people,” O’Hagan said. He gives us some examples of how digital signage is evolving and innovating in different industries. In addition, Larry also opens up about why color spacing and flexibility are given such great focus at companies like NanoLumens. “Typically, it’s the first time they’ve seen something like this [and] they tend to remember the content that’s being displayed to them, simply because it’s on an unusual background, whether they consciously realize that or not,” O’Hagan said.

With the ubiquity of digital signage on the rise, new frontiers like the convergence of AV and IT and the explosion of VoT are on the horizon. Larry O'Hagan, Inside Sales Associate for NanoLumens, joined us this episode to talk about why AV and IT need to learn from each other, why he thinks VoT devices are the future. “This makes a visual impact statement upon people," O'Hagan said. He gives us some examples of how digital signage is evolving and innovating in different industries. In addition, Larry also opens up about why color spacing and flexibility are given such great focus at companies like NanoLumens. "Typically, it's the first time they've seen something like this [and] they tend to remember the content that's being displayed to them, simply because it's on an unusual background, whether they consciously realize that or not," O'Hagan said.

This podcast originally aired on the MarketScale Pro AV Podcast.University campuses are constantly looking for new and fresh ways to stimulate learning and encourage growth in their students. As the needs and expectations of students change, campuses have to adapt along with them. Increasingly, universities are turning to pro AV and LED screens to help create experiences that foster learning and community within their spaces. Bob Haefke, Senior Business Development Specialist at NanoLumens, joined the Pro AV Podcast to explain how they’re working to meet the AV needs of these institutions of higher learning. “Well we try to understand what the client wants…and what their vision is, and then try to interact with our technology to make sure we can bring it from a concept to a reality,” Haefke said. He says LED screens are frequently used as tools to communicate messages to students about events and other opportunities on campus. They’re also frequently used in the classrooms as tools to further learning and in common areas for gaming development. For the latest news, videos, and podcasts in the Pro AV Industry, be sure to subscribe to our industry publication. A new episode of the Pro AV Show drops every Thursday.

University campuses are constantly looking for new and fresh ways to stimulate learning and encourage growth in their students. As the needs and expectations of students change, campuses have to adapt along with them. Increasingly, universities are turning to pro AV and LED screens to help create experiences that foster learning and community within their spaces. Bob Haefke, Senior Business Development Specialist at NanoLumens, joined the Pro AV Podcast to explain how they're working to meet the AV needs of these institutions of higher learning. "Well we try to understand what the client wants...and what their vistion is, and then try to interact with our technology to make sure we can bring it from a concept to a reality," says Haefke. He says LED screens are frequently used as tools to communicate messages to students about events and other opportunities on campus. They're also frequently used in the classrooms as tools to further learning and in common areas for gaming.

TD Editor-in-Chief Tom LeBlanc steps in to discuss how to use technology like digital signage to help with company branding with Joe' Lloyd of NanoLumens.

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Don Panoz is the Chairman of Braselton, DeltaWing Technology Group and managing partner of DeltaWing Racing Cars. They provide a wide range of design, engineering, manufacturing, and transportation technologies solutions committed to delivering fuel efficient, emissions-reducing technologies that benefit everyday drivers and commuters. He is also chairman of the board of NanoLumens, designers and manufacturers of large-format LED display solutions. In 2013 Don became the 29th inductee into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame. In 2014 he was the recipient of the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America’s Bob Russo Heritage Award.

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Seems like everywhere you turn, someone wants to throw money at you if you have a great broadband app that takes advantage of gigabit networks. Are you going to step up for a chance for mo' money, mo' money, mo' money?   John Wilson, Co-founder and former president of flexible display maker NanoLumens, Inc., and coordinator of Chattanooga's Gig Prize, gives the lowdown on the city's latest entry in the programming-for-dollars sweepstakes movement. We'll compare and contrast this contest with Kansas City's Gigabit Challenge that we talked about on the show two weeks ago.   Chattanooga's [up to] $350,000 Gig Prize contest (made possible in part by a grant from Alcatel-Lucent) is open to anyone in the world with great ideas. It's focused on creating apps using a gig network that's already operating and serving as the test bed. Particpants therefore get real world feedback in real time on their apps' effectiveness.   We also discuss how cities and counties can run similar contests that are focused mainly on the local communities. This is an effective way to boost local small business broadband adoption.