Article
Digital Signage Tech Summit: Don't make emergency alert an afterthought
Speakers from the education sector take conference attendees through the trials and tribulations of installing digital signage.
June 16, 2009
Perhaps it was the fact that it was the first topic covered in the day, or perhaps it could be attributed to the 14 delegates from universities, but its safe to say that emergency notification emerged as the theme of yesterday's second annual Digital Signage Technology Summit. The conference was held in Orlando, Fla. in conjunction with the InfoComm expo, which runs all this week.
The day began with Chad Gillenwater of AVI-SPL giving the some advice from systems integrator standpoint on emergency alert systems for digital signage:
1. Who are you trying to communicate with, and who controls the alerts?2. What are you trying to communicate?
"The matrix of possibilities to communicate is so large you have to know exactly what you want before considering technology," Gillenwater said. "It's not just digital signage, its part of a system. The holistic approach to the system has to be taken into consideration."
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Glen Kelley of UTEP addresses the Strategy Institute conference yesterday. |
Digital signage is just one part of UTEP's total alert system, which includes SMS, email blasts, Twitter/Facebook/RSS messages, sirens and phone broadcast, where each room has a tech support phone in that the VOIP team can broadcast messages to.
UTEP: Why digital signage?
After some new construction, UTEP wanted to avoid the "paper signs in pretty building" syndrome, according to Kelley. Initial costs were high, but after some planning the university found that it could use student labor and staff expertise made project feasible. Also, the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007 acted as a catalyst for the project, alerting the staff that it needed a more adequate system for instantly reaching staff and students.
Kelley outlined what the university was searching for in the project:
• Content creation tools • A nice onscreen product • Room scheduling database hooks • The ability for future integration with SMS messaging, desktop messaging • Emergency alert/broadcast mode
Most useful from the UTEP case study was their key takeaways from the project. Kelley said they learned that the police department, which had to be able to access and control the digital signage network on campus, is an information-rich environment. Control and dispatch rooms are littered with informational screens, so they found that dispatchers don't have time to access and tweak content on campus digital signage screens.They also found that remote monitoring capabilities needed to provide real-time display of exactly what is on the screens, as well as training sessions for operators to manage the network.
One concern that arose among several of the education sector speakers is that emergency notices can take up to 15 minutes to be shown on the screen once they are triggered. Kelley said his network can often take up to five minutes to display a message. He said the reason for this is that many digital signage vendors add emergency alert to their systems as an afterthought. (The UTEP network runs on Visix digital signage software.)
Having been through the process, Kelley outlined what he thought were some tips to ensure a successful implementation in the education sector:
• Spend a lot of time understanding the process that organization will follow during an emergency.• Audition system against list of requirements.• Get digital signage architects involved with the emergency management committee before looking for a solution.• Include training/pre-production environment in initial budget. (It's hard to find money for this after initial installation).• Understand how the system works to better improve it (response time, etc.).• Make sure there's an SDK or API for future customization.• Sit down and hang on!
"Digital signage for daily use is a luxury," Kelley said. "Digital signage for emergency is a utility. Hopefully we never have to use it, but when we do we'll be prepared."
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