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Digital signage of the end-user, by the end-user and for the end-user

Platt Retail Institute is hosting the End User Digital Signage Education Forum, co-located with Digital Signage Expo 2011.

February 14, 2011 by Christopher Hall — w, t

It's a digital signage conference of the end-user, by the end-user and for the end-user.

The Platt Retail Institute just announced the final agenda for its End User Digital Signage Education Forum, co-located with this year's Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas. The End User Forum, scheduled for noon-6 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 22 at the Las Vegas Convention Center, is a free educational seminar for end-users and end-users only.

PRI Director of Education and Training Margot Myers, formerly the manager of retail in-store programs for the U.S. Postal Service, said it's important to have a forum for deployers and end-users to network and learn in a comfortable environment.

"The whole idea here is to have something that is limited to end-users," she said, recalling her early days speaking at digital signage trade events and seeing just a handful of end-users in a room full of people. "It's a difficult situation for an end-user to feel like, 'Can I ask my questions without the person who's answering them trying to sell me something?' ... So that's really what we were trying to accomplish here."

The seminar will be on the small side, so attendees should be able to get their questions answered, and the mix of attendees will run the gamut from those band-new to the sector to those who've been operating successful networks for year, Myers said. The opportunity to establish a network of end-user contacts to call and ask for advice, or just commiserate with, is an invaluable one for end-users, she said.

"There's a great deal of value in something like this, or at least there was for me when I was an end-user," Myers said.

The forum will include a foundational overview of the industry and some future trends, according to Myers, and Patrick Quinn of PQ Media will offer a short statistical look at the industry and where it is, e.g. the growth of spending in digital out-of-home, etc.

It will also include two panels, one on retail and one on education, Myers said. The retail digital signage panel will include representatives from Meijer and Lowe's Home Improvement and a former Best Buy executive. The digital signage in education panel will feature three representatives from universities that have deployed digital signage networks and focus on how digital signage can be an effective part of a communications plan for universities, she said.

PRI Director and Research Fellow Stephen Keith Platt will talk about using technology to create and manage content for digital signage, and Myers will present on deploying and operating a network, looking at factors that need to be taken into consideration, as well as factors that end-users might not at first consider, i.e. long-term maintenance, upgrade and content development concerns.

There are still seats available, and PRI will accept registration up until the day before the forum, but anyone who registers after Wednesday, Feb. 16., will likely miss the cutoff to reserve lunch, Myers said.

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