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Digital Signage Expo continues to broaden horizons, cut across verticals

President of DSE organizer Exponation gives a look ahead at what to expect at this year's edition of the digital signage industry's signature trade show and expo.

February 16, 2015 by Christopher Hall — w, t

The annual Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas is right around the corner, so Digital Signage Today recently sat down to talked with Chris Gibbs, the co-founder, president and COO of DSE organizer Exponation LLC, about what attendees and exhibitors can expect from this year's iteration of the digital signage industry's signature trade show and expo.

First, after a year's relocation to the Sands Expo & Convention Center, this year's show is back at the Las Vegas Convention Center, where it'll be for at least the next three years, Gibbs said.

Second, the show has made a shift in its educational curriculum as well as its location. This year's educational sessions will feature "Idea Exchanges" in addition to traditional lecture or panel presentations. The Idea Exchange sessions will feature a collaborative peer-to-peer learning experience. Each day participants will start off with a morning seminar, then re-convene in the afternoon for smaller, roundtable-format discussions on the seminar topic.

"We did this in New York recently with our DSE One product and we got really good response from it," Gibbs said. "While people love to learn in a classroom setting, they also get a lot, lot of information from more that immersion kind of learning when they have other peers around them, other people around them, where they're speaking in a more intimate setting. So we're excited about that."

DSE organizers also have moved the show's annual Apex Awards presentation from its usual Wednesday evening slot to a new Thursday morning slot — which has resulted in more people signed up already than attended last year, Gibbs said.

The show also will have a dedicated Spanish-language track for International and North American attendees this year, in addition to its Digital Signage Experts Group courses in Spanish. "We're going to test that this year to see how that plays out, because we want to continue to grow our international attendance," he said. "We're getting a lot of interest from Latin America because those markets are growing."

DSE also will host a three-day event presented by Ragan Communications designed specifically for corporate communications professionals. Co-located with DSE at the Las Vegas Convention Center, Ragan’s Best Practices in Digital Employee Communications Summit will be held March 10-12, and will offer three days of educational choices for corporate communicators but will also allow event attendees admittance to the DSE show floor.

Also co-located at the show will be a full-day event presented by the Society for Experiential Graphic Design designed specifically for professionals involved in creating built environments such as architects and interior designers.

"That's continuing to grow just because of the architectural influence of digital signage," Gibbs said. "Digital signage is getting specified in the built environment from the ground up … Now architects and builders are saying, 'OK, let's put this light here, we'll put this flooring here, and in that wall we're going to put a digital screen.' So it's really cool that this stuff is getting planned before buildings are getting put up."

And more than 60 new companies will exhibiting at DSE this year, Gibbs said, including Toshiba, which is returning to the show, and Google. "That to me is always exciting," he said. "It adds a lot of new faces, new products, new innovations to the industry."

Google and Toshiba will be among a field of more than 200 exhibitors, Gibbs said. "We'll have our largest show yet … We're still taking orders," he said. "Square footage-wise right now, we should have our largest show to date ever, and attendance is tracking in a very positive way. Hopefully we'll be breaking records all the way around."

Keeping the DSE show fresh and new each year is "a big challenge," Gibbs said. In addition to evolving its messaging to attract new attendees, creating a sense of community for end-users from the various verticals attending the show is another significant challenge.

"The hardest thing about a show like DSE is it crosses so many verticals; it’s very hard to establish a sense of community amongst the entire show when there's so many disparate different vertical markets," he said.

A restaurant industry member may not have the same interests as a representative from the retail industry or the educational space, so the show is working to bring attendees together with their counterparts in their own verticals.

"So what we're doing this year is we're putting a kind of a haven in the middle of the floor called the End-user Networking Center," Gibbs said. "And then throughout both days of the show we're going to have kind of meet-ups among these different industry verticals to get these people to meet each other and speak with each other… so they can learn from each other."

Speaking of industry verticals, Gibbs also addressed how the DSE show competes with vertical-specific shows such as the annual National Retail Federation or National Restaurant Association shows.

"I think the big difference is that a show like NRA or NRF may be that industry's trade show. And you're going to have a lot of people there that have a lot of things to do," in addition to looking at digital signage, he said.

From its inception that's been an issue DSE has had to face, since it cuts across verticals, Gibbs said.

"That was always one of the things that we had to address: 'So I'm going to GlobalShop or one of these other events, why do I come to you?' The first obvious answer is because there's no other place on the planet that has this many solutions strictly for digital signage; this is where the industry comes together," he said. "So that’s the obvious answer. The second answer is, when you go to an industry vertical show — and I've been to a lot of them; most of the ones that are out there I've been to over the last 12 years — is you have that digital signage typically is not the forefront reason they're coming to that show."

People going to the NRA show might be looking for timekeeping solutions and kitchen concepts, while people going to the NRF show might be looking for POS systems and back-end solutions, he said. "What DSE offers is, everyone who walks in the door — everyone who walks in the door — is there for a reason, and that’s to see digital signage solutions because we're called Digital Signage Expo.

"So last year we had 4,000 people, we'll see how many people we have this year, but every one of those 4,000 people are there for a solution. They bought a plane ticket for the most part, or they drove in from California … so they’ve made a significant investment to be there, so they're qualified attendees, they're much more likely to buy in my opinion than maybe someone who's at another show where there's a whole myriad of different products, and digital signage is one of many of them. So that’s the real difference in my view."

DSE isn't really competing with those shows, Gibbs said, because for those shows the core competency is vertical specific, while DSE cuts across many verticals.

"They're a vertical show, and this is more of a solution-based show," he said. "That’s the real difference; they're not apples to apples; they're much different animals," he said. "We cut across different industry verticals, and that’s what makes it unique. That’s why we've continued to grow every year, I believe in certain regards, is that we do that and we do that very effectively."

DSE 2015, co-located with the Digital Content Show and Innovator Zone, is scheduled for March 10-13, with access to the Exhibit Hall March 11 and 12 at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas.

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