We are expanding our sales team for our digital signage products and services. If you or someone you know would be a good fit. Please have them check out the careers section of our web site at http://www.ElectronicArt.com/careers/ .
As the snow blows and piles up in the company parking lot and the temps dip down to the single digits, I reflect upon the past year and think that it was pure crap! But, I also think of the fact that we are now officially 8 years old as an incorporated company, (and 11 years old total – sole proprietor for the first several years). We’ve seen a lot of winters come and go, and several recessions and dot com bubbles, and survived. We’ve seen the technology change and consumer habits change with it. And I reflect upon the great customers we’ve worked with and cool applications and web sites we have created. It sure has been fun and rewarding.
Our very first web site was for a pyro technics company that fired off fireworks for cities and events. As a younger man I even helped them set off several fireworks shows that year including the big Cincinnati WEBN fireworks on the Ohio river. It was the very first year they used computers to fire the rockets. And that relationship started with their web site and a match.
Relationships have been so important to us over the years and we have worked for some great companies such as RIM/BlackBerry, Verizon Wireless, Sanofi Aventis, GlaxoSmithKline, Charbroil Grills, Kroger, The Freedom Center, Check’nGo, Golden Corral Restaurants, IBM and many non profits and small businesses. The people at these great companies have been what have made the experience fun and rewarding. Building trust and delivering quality tools have been our life blood. I want to thank them for sharing in the journey.
Tim Burke CEO
Most of all, I’d like to thank our wonderful employees who have worked hard on tight deadlines and always come through with good solutions that make our clients happy. Without a talented team of professionals, we would be nothing. Our product is not kiosk applications or hardware, and it’s not beautiful and functional web sites or email campaigns. And our product is not digital signage screens and stunning content… no, our product is our people and our people are our products. I just want to say thank you to each of you, past and present.
While 2009 did not treat any of us very kindly, and it may seem that the whole year was one long cold winter for business… I feel like it has taught many people valuable lessons in business and life. It reminds us to take time to prepare during the good times for the eventual downturns, and to store up resources to weather the cold. It reminds us that we should live within our means and conserve resources. And it teaches us to remember that relationships, both business and personal are the most important things we posses, and we should nurture them at all times. Many people are without jobs right now, and many have to downsize and rely on family and friends to help them get through. They use their personal networks to keep their ears to the track for any opportunities. Let’s all remember those who have helped us along the journey when times were tough. Let’s lavish them with love and kindness while we are young and alive. And in business, let’s be honest, open and trustworthy to our network of customers, prospects, vendors and employees.
Well, I think that our company birthday and scented candles have made me a bit wordy and reflective. Pardon my melancholy and enjoy what promises to be a good ski season this winter. If you are in the Cincinnati area, join us for our open house cocktail party January 14th. Directions on on our contact page. And follow us on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/ElectronicArt or follow me personally at http://www.Twitter.com/KioskGuy, and let us know what you are up to this winter. I hope you have a prosperous 2010 and look forward to a warmer season ahead.
We recently completed a project that needed to have a rather robust tool for dynamically creating and saving reports as PDF files. We’ve done similar things in the past but always wrestled with the dynamic pdf creation tool we were using. We decided to look around at what other tools people were recommending and settled on using ABCpdf from webSupergoo.
Installing it on the server was a breeze, our developers had an easier time getting things working, files sizes were about 10% smaller, and load times seemed slightly faster than our previous tool.
Bill Collins
Last week I organized a panel discussion on digital signage or “digital Out of Home” (DOOH) at the Cincinnati based Digital Hub Non-Conference. This conference was a regional showcase of all things digital with some national keynote speakers. At last year’s event, I was shocked that a digital conference could have no digital signage discussions so I got involved and got on the programming schedule for digital signage. The problem is that I was too chicken to do the whole topic on my own. Its the whole fear of public speaking. So I thought… hmmmm who else can I draft into this? A panel discussion would be much easier for me to stomach.
I know many people in our industry from our many years of experience, and first turned to some of the partners we have in the business such as Samsung. Samsung suggested we use Dayton based Stratacache since this event was a regional showcase, and I have been aware of Stratacache for years, even though we had not yet worked with their tools. Turns out the director of marketing there, Louie Hollmeyer was a classmate of mine in elementary and high school. I hadn’t seen him since. (He looks the same as when he was eighteen years old!) Done! Then I turned to respected national speaker and research analyst for the kiosk and digital signage industry, Mr. Bill Collins. He turned me on to Mike Collette of Healthy Advice Networks. Their firm operates about 7000 screens in their network of patient education content that is placed in waiting rooms around the continent. He would bring a great perspective on how to manage or operate a large network. Done! My connections connected me to new and relevant prospects for the panel. This was working out quite well.
Now, the reason they call this a Non-Conference is that while the keynotes are held in the main ballroom of the local Hyatt Regency hotel, the breakout sessions are held in local pubs and artsy venues. The attendees walk the 3-4 blocks to the venue that is hosting the session you are interested in attending. Our session was held in the Lodge Bar on 7th street in Cincinnati. The decor is very log cabin ‘ish with deer heads mounted to the wall along side of fishing paraphernalia and similar sporting trinkets. Certainly interesting when your session attendees are drinking a Gin and Tonic during your talk! The problem with the Non Conference idea is that the day of the event, there was a large rain storm that started right at the time our session started. So our attendance was low at first, and the room filled up more as the wet and dripping new media types “poured in”.
Samsung had provided two LCD panels for our use at the event (Thanks Guys!) and our firm, Electronic Art provided the stands and media players. Stratacache brought a sample reel of Digital signage content and so did Healthy Advice Networks. Bill Collins brought a great PowerPoint deck with some good visual examples of signage installations and his take on definitions and metrics. Some folks noted that the content from Stratacache had localized data in it that was set to Nebraska (and we are in Cincinnati), but they need to understand the lack of internet connectivity and amount of setup needed for this short 45 minute session. I think everyone understood the scenario being shown. (The Twitterati can be so picky!) There were discussions about the reasons to use commercial grade hardware and the reasons why, the slow adoption of signage by retailers in the past and how this has been changing. We also discussed how traditional agencies have been slow to understand the medium and how interactive agencies (like Electronic Art) have been providing a lot of the content and consulting. And we talked about the benefits such as localization, day parts, and how the content can be specific to the viewer.
In all, the event was a success. We could have gone on for another hour but sadly these were short sessions. We knew that going in which is why we titled the session “Digital Signage 101: – Networks, Components, Media and its impact on traditional media.”. I heard a lot of people ask for more of this content next year. We hope to be able to provide a longer session and incorporate more signage into the event overall for way finding and sponsor promotion.
The keynote speeches of the event are available online as PodCasts at http://cms.screamingbob.com/content/null-dhi09/podcasts. To see some of the Twitter posts on the overall conference, look up the tag #dhi09 on Twitter. And here are some photos from our session at the Lodge Bar.
I have the honor of assembling a panel on digital signage for this week’s Digital Hub Non-Conference in Cincinnati. http://www.digitalcincinnati.org This conference is where marketers, communicators, PR pros and techies from all over will meet in Cincinnati to learn, discuss and explore All Things Digital. In doing so, the Non-Conference will promote Cincinnati as the strong “digital hub” that it is. Last year’s event did not have any digital signage or kiosks involved, so I made it my mission to get involved early with the steering committee in an effort to add this technology to the conference this year. And in a spirit of collaboration I contacted several industry professionals to be a part of the panel.
Our panel on Friday Sept. 25th at 1pm is titled: “Digital Signage 101 – Networks, Components, Media and its impact on traditional media.” Panelists will include myself as the moderator and these fine speakers:
Bill Collins Principal, DecisionPoint Media Insights http://www.decisionpointmedia.com
Mike Collette President & CEO, Healthy Advice Networks — http://www.healthyadvicenetworks.com
Louie Hollmeyer, Vice President Marketing – Stratacache http://www.stratacache.com
John Czyrka Samsung Electronics America, Inc., Regional Manager http://www.samsung.com
More about the event in general:
The Non-Conference will be centered at The Hyatt Regency Cincinnati (downtown). Breakout sessions (which truly make this a “non-conference”) are scheduled at some of downtown’s coolest bars and artsiest spaces. The Digital Hub Initiative Non-Conference is set for September 24-25, 2009. Plus, the dates were set to coincide with Cincinnati Midpoint Music Festival (MPMF), with its more than 250 bands performing on 23 stages! So, your registration also includes a 3-day pass to MPMF – including a roped-off reception on Fountain Square Thursday night.
Back at the non-Conference, you’ll have four breakout tracks to choose from, with an extraordinary lineup Breakout Leaders and Presenters from the “expanded” Greater Cincinnati area:
The headline speaker list includes:
Organizing partners for the Non-Conference include: ADCLUB Cincinnati and the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA). Supporting partners include: the Cincinnati Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), the Digital Signage Association, Cincinnati Social Media, the Cincinnati Chapter of American Institute of Graphic Artists (AIGA), The Circuit, The Women’s Circuit and Cincinnati Women Bloggers.
For more information about the Digital Hub Initiative Non-Conference, visit http://www.digitalcincinnati.org
I hope you can attend this fun event, if you do, look me up and say hello! I should be twittering during the event at www.twitter.com/kioskguy/
A new case study was published today on our use of Provisio’s SiteKiosk product with our custom kiosk applications. It highlights two recent kiosk deployment projects that used the SiteKiosk product to secure the kiosk environment and prevent tampering and hacking.
We’ve been using the tool from Provisio for many years, after switching from NetStop Pro back in 2004 and evaluating many other tools. Each new release improves functionality and feature sets. It’s built in customizable browser engine is based on IE and has the ability to whitelist / blacklist URL’s , restrict downloading, set to a full screen and much more. It’s sister product, SiteRemote.net provides a full online reporting suite and remote management tool to enable us to monitor the health of the kiosks deployed across many different networks, restart the kiosks, apply software patches and upload files in the background.
We have a museum client that tell us that our kiosks are always up and running whereas other kiosks are often giving their IT departments busy maintaining them. While we can build apps that run in most any kiosk environment, we know that it is often due to a stable operating environment such as SiteKiosk that keeps our applications looking good!
The case study is also available for download at the Kiosk Marketplace web site.
Provisio’s SiteKiosk web site is located at: http://www.sitekiosk.com/ . As authorized resellers, you can get a 10% discount on any SiteKiosk software licences you purchase through us during the month of September when you mention this blog post at the time of the order.
If you’ve been thinking about implementing a self service kiosk program for your business, but the capital expenditure may not be in your budget at the moment, you’ll be happy to hear that financing is available from IBM Global Finance division for IBM and non-IBM hardware, software, services and maintenance. That means that they could help finance your kiosk hardware, software from Electronic Art and even the installation / deployment and ongoing maintenance contracts. By paying in monthly installments for the entire project, your annual cost to implement the project is much, much less than paying for the entire project out of pocket this year. Now you can’t afford NOT to move forward with your self service initiatives to grow your business and keep your satisfied customers!
Click here to Find out more about IBM financing and for information on their convenient pay system.
As IBM business partners, Electronic Art can help implement IBM’s superb kiosk hardware and provide custom kiosk software programs such as customer loyalty card programs, health care applications, lead generation solutions, retail and hospitality kiosk applications and so much more. Contact us today for more information. 513-321-1771 or use our contact form .
This is an educational topic that I have to teach quite often to prospects and newbies to the digital signage market. People see cheap LCD screens at Best Buy and think that they should integrate that quality into their retail location. A commercial grade screen costs more and people often think too shortsightedly at the initial cost, not thinking about the total cost of ownership. Like replacing that screen in a matter of months because you ran it 24 hours a day, burning in the image and frying your motherboards. And your limited consumer warranty will not cover you.
A commercial screen will often come with a 3 year warranty, is made for 20+ hours of commercial use with fans, lower overall power consumption, and in some cases, technology to prevent burn in (image retention). Many other reasons exist too, and so it was good to see our partner Samsung sponsor a white paper on the topic. It does a decent job of explaining why the initial up front cost will save you much heartache and money in the near future.
We recently completed a kiosk application for Kroger Personal Finance that will allow customers to learn, manage, and apply for several financial products including insurance, mortgage refinancing, and credit cards.
The kiosks are located in the New KPF Money Stores being added to many of the grocery chain stores, one kiosk will be public facing while another will be in office where a representative can help consumers with the offers.
The kiosks are currently in a pilot phase at the newly opened Kroger location in Norwood. If you live in Cincinnati, stop by and check them out.
One of our clients, The National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, currently has a temporary exhibit about an important event in our country’s history and a pivotal point for the civil rights movement. The exhibit is called: The Dawn of Civil Rights: 381 Days That Changed a Nation. The Montgomery Bus Boycott Story tells the stirring history of the very beginning of America’s Civil Rights movement. But hurry, the exhibit only runs through the middle of July 2009.
More information at: http://freedomcenter.org/freedom-forum/?p=1156
And check out upcoming events at:
http://freedomcenter.org/freedom-forum/index.php/events/
If you have not visited, you will be amazed at this experience. If you have, you may be amazed at what has been updated since your last visit, or the temporary exhibit may be a great way to spend a couple of hours out of the summer heat with your family. Don’t forget they have a great deli / cafe on site for when you get hungry.
