Masters Series: Review from Wednesday's event in TO

August 19, 2010 by Dave Haynes

Both Lyle Bunn, who organized, and Dmitry Sokolov, who attended, have sent along their reports from the  Digital Signage Masters Series event held in Toronto Wednesday.

I couldn’t go, but saw a pile of Tweets from Dmitry (Ingram Micro’s DS guy up here amid the ice floes and polar bears), about the proceedings.

My first impression – there’s no future in photography for Lyle.

Bunn, a well-known industry consultant, puts this event together and attracted about 90 people to listen to Cathy Stauffer’s, EVP of Business Development role at PRN. She spoke at length, Lyle reports, about ROI/ROO, business models, network planning, ad sales, playloop structures, operational considerations, measurement and other key elements.

“The presence of representatives of firms such as Adcentricity, LG, Omnivex, Convergent, Telus, Ingram Micro and others assisting in adding a Canadian context to the sound principles and approaches that have been developed, refined and proven in countless ways by PRN. The dynamic in the room added value through each question and comment. The diversity of interests and expertise enabled a very broad scope of applicability,” reports Bunn.

More of these events are in the works in the coming months.

“Unlike other Digital Signage Events,” notes Dmitry, “it was great to see a high number of end-users in the audience. Canadian Tire, LCBO, ScotiaBank and a few others were most notable, considering they all have some sort of RFP or RFI floating around the digital signage circles.”

“Cathy Stauffer, Executive Vice President, Market Development, PRN delivered a strong presentation, well received by the audience. The interest and attention of the audience was evident by the high volume of questions at times almost derailing the presentation. As always however, Lyle Bunn managed to bring the conversation back on track to push forward the day’s agenda.”

“It was interesting to note the audience’s fixation on network-level content delivery preferences (Wireless, DSL, 3G or Satellite) and dynamics of ad-funded digital signage (pricing, CPM, ownership) – two topics that dominated the question periods.”

“As we look forward to more events in this series, we are excited to see a Canadian forum to bring end-users closer to the realities of digital signage and help shed light on other first-hand accounts of implementing Digital Signage.”

Two down and I have not yet attended – otherwise occupied. Been a nutty summer. Maybe the next one. As Dmitry notes, the presence of Tier 1 retailers is intriguing.

Thanks for the summaries, guys.