Article

Betting on corporate communications at DSE

A partnership between Digital Signage Expo and Ragan Communications, with support from STRATACACHE, is launching the first Best Practices in Digital Employee Communications event at this year's DSE.

January 15, 2015

By Chuck Gose, Vice President and Subject Matter Expert, Corporate Communications, STRATACACHE

The first time I attended Digital Signage Expo was in 2008. Having come straight from a corporate communicator's role, I was shocked at the amount of attention given to consumer and retail networks. And internal networks? Hardly a whisper. I understood this discrepancy but didn't agree with it.

Since then, I've worked with event organizers to increase the amount of and improve the quality of corporate communication content at the event. The fact is that internal networks for digital signage are a key market in the industry and for the industry.

A complaint has been that corporate communicators don't attend because resources are limited and the value hasn't always been there to attend DSE compared to a corporate communications-focused event.

That changes this year.

With a partnership developed between Digital Signage Expo and Ragan Communications, and supported by STRATACACHE, this year launches the first ever Best Practices in Digital Employee Communications event.

"Employee Communication networks continue to be one of the largest growing sectors within digital signage," said Chris Gibbs, president and COO of Exponation (organizer of DSE). "The co-location of Ragan's event at the Las Vegas Convention Center during DSE is the perfect fit. All Ragan attendees will be given a free exhibit hall pass allowing them to see and touch the technology while they are learning about it!"

"Ragan is always looking to bring the best and most innovative communications training to our events," said Frank Bleers, president of Ragan Communications. "That is why we have partnered with the DSE for this year's Best Practices in Digital Employee Communications Summit. We see this partnership as a way to help communicators find the most effective ways to engage with their employees."

While attendance at DSE continues to strengthen, it's the hope that by providing more educational content for corporate communicators that these same communicators will then immerse themselves more into the digital signage industry.

The three-day event will hone in on the new technologies that power digital employee communications. It's not just digital signage, because a communicator's life encompasses more than that. It's social. It's mobile. It's intranets. And yes, digital signage.

Attendees will get to hear real case studies and best practices from communicators at Microsoft, Farmers' Insurance, SAS, Zappos, The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas and many more from the communicators on the job.

Attendees will learn how to:

• Get buy-in on mobile strategy by execs and participate in building strategy;
• Boost employee engagement by removing obstacles, uniting shared services;
• Build metrics, data and measurement for digital signage content;
• Wage attention-grabbing, behavior-changing campaigns on the most boring topics: 401k, open enrollment, keeping the resort clean;
• Embrace employee-generated content on your intranet;
• Create a newsroom that lures media, boosts news site visitors and readers;
• Incorporate video and compelling visuals in your intranet;
• Take these key steps to get the biggest bang for your buck when you launch mobile in your organization; and
• Develop routine corporate messages into popular digital signage campaigns.

From my experience attending at speaking at internal communications-focused events, there has never been one with such an intense focus on the technology that impacts employees. And it runs right alongside Digital Signage Expo. Anybody who registers and attends the Best Practices for Digital Employee Communications event gets a free registration to Digital Signage Expo.

The event kicks off with three optional, but recommended, workshops. One of these is being led by Jennifer Arani, the internal digital signage coordinator for Farmers Insurance. She'll lead this two-hour workshop and create high-quality internal content as part of it. ROI is always a question around internal networks, and Jennifer will discuss that along with ROO (return on objectives). Attendees will learn to create and build attention-grabbing digital signage content.

The other two workshops focus on communication audits with Jim Yisela and creating internal video with Drew Keller. Video is an area that many communicators know is important but aren't quite sure how to manage it. Drew will provide tips on using production calendars, understanding your audiences and working with executives on camera.

The remaining two days of the event (March 11 and 12) are structured so that attendees will have plenty of time to learn from speakers but also be able to check out everything Digital Signage Expo has to offer.

The official start of the event begins with a morning keynote from Jon Wolfske, the cultural evangelist for Zappos (right there in Las Vegas). Zappos is world-renowned for its culture and employee engagement and Jon will pull back the curtain for us all to see.

The event closes with Shel Holtz, who is one of the best known and thought-of speakers on internal communication. His closing keynote is focused on introducing the customer's marketing experience into the workplace, what he calls the "work experience." Companies study every step of the "customer journey" to ensure great experiences but rarely do the same for their own employees.

In between these, attendees will get to hear about intranets, digital signage, mobile, the digital workplace and videos. This is not just a digital signage event. It's an all-encompassing internal communications conference that focuses on the technology that communicators are tasked with owning and managing. It's a chance for communicators to learn from and network with the best of their peers.

STRATACACHE is a proud sponsor of this first-time event. And it's our hope that it becomes a central part of Digital Signage Expos to come. Keep up with the event's conversation on Twitter at #raganinternalcomms.

(Click here for registration details and more information on the event.)

Chuck Gose is vice president and corporate communication subject matter expert for STRATACACHE, a provider of digital signage, content distribution and enterprise video acceleration technologies.

(Image courtesy of Christopher Chappelear.)