The (very) abbreviated DIGI list

October 17, 2008 by Dave Haynes

So based on a suprisingly nasty email, considering the source, that descibed me as “wounded, whining, spoiled and undisciplined”, I guess I am not ever going to get the full list of winners for the DIGI Awards.

How I earned this grand slam title for suggesting it was stupid that I could not get or find the winners list, well AFTER the awards had been announced, I’ll never know. I am deeply, deeply hurt by this, but the cans of Caffrey’s I have in the fridge will fix me right up.

In the absence of basic information (and I just tried Googling yet again at 4 PM Friday to get ANYTHING on this), here’s what we do know:

Toronto-based Omnivex and Hatteland Vision of Norway won the award for Excellence in Technology – Best Digital Signage Rollout in a Public Venue for their installation at Fjord1 Song Billag, in Norway. Hatteland was able to design an installation for the bus system that uses GPS data to trigger which content the software shows, based on the location of the bus. By highlighting points of interest and displaying information about the local area, content is always relevant to the passengers on the bus. Additionally, the digital signage is used to display real-time images of bus locations to people waiting in the station. This helps to ensure that people have a clear indication about when the next bus will arrive at the station.

Information on bus screens that is both relevant and useful – fabulous. The GPS thing should be pretty much an automatic for any transport-based network.

Stratacache and AT&T got a nod for a deployment in AT&T’s Corporate Briefing Center – 17 digital displays that inform and direct visitors while creating a personalized, ultra-modern environment. Utilizing digital signage, AT&T was able to create a branded visitor experience that parallels the high-tech look and feel of the AT&T Global Network Operations Center, which houses the CBC. The result is a facility that is uniquely personalized and ideal for hosting AT&T’s business customers and global constituencies. 

Finally, and here comes my whiny, spoiled side, I guess, Artisan Complete (Toronto) got a nod for Best Audience Measurement product. That was for the digital nCap products that combined Artisan merchandising, design and content work with Toronto-based CognoVision’s biometric face-tracking capabilities and Montreal-based BroadSign (my vested interest) signage software. 

Well done, all. Great installs benefit all of us. 

If your company was recognized, and you want some sort of a nod outside the awards thingdoodle, let me know. I know from a terse press release that Kitchener-Waterloo-based Digital Display Group won three awards, and nods also went to Scala, C-nario, OpenEye Global, Reactrix Systems, NEC, Acceleroptics and Admira.

What did they win for? Beats me. Apparently that’s classified.