DSrupted Digital Signage Conference: 4 of 5 Speakers Set

May 27, 2014 by Dave Haynes

It took a little bit, but the majority of the speaker line-up is now in place for DSrupted, the first conference focused on disruptive technology and digital signage.

If you missed it, the event was announced last month and is set for Sept. 17th in Toronto. Tickets are limited to less than 200, and the price has been kept down to a level most companies and individuals should be able to manage.

Registration is here, and with 80% of the speakers set, it’s time to make a little noise about it.

ALL of the speakers are from outside the digital signage eco-system, by design. I wanted people who came at this from a different perspective, and wouldn’t be there peddling their pots and pans hard to a target-rich crowd.

The speakers are:

Paul Vincent, CEO of the start-up Neuranet. Paul is expert-level on HTML5, and will focus his discussion on where that markup language is at and where it is going — and why digital signage people should care. They should, by the way, care a lot.

Vidya Nagarajan is the Google product manager, working in the Chrome for Business group, looking at applying the tech giant’s web/cloud services and its ChromeBox devices to digital signage. Obviously, a LOT of people have been wondering if and when Google would get involved in this space, and this will be among the first detailed discussions about what the company is doing and where it sees opportunity.

Matthew Milan is the CEO and co-founder of Normative, an interactive agency that focuses on leading-edge interaction design and strategy, service design and mobile systems. Milan knows his way around ARM, Arduino, Pi and all the software and hardware being applied to new ideas. His talk is titled The Programmable World.

This morning I confirmed Doug Thompson, who writes the BEEKn blog, which is THE reference and hub for looking into and talking about Bluetooth Low Energy beacons and related technology. Thompson is also CEO of a firm, dot3, focused on these rapidly-emerging devices. He’ll talk about how beacon technology is emerging as the gateway to the so-called Internet of Everything.

I am working on three different people for the final slot. Hopefully one will be free that day and game to get involved. Thank you various companies within the industry who have offered up speakers, but I really like the idea of outside voices. Thanks as well to the sponsor offers. We’re nicely covered there.

I expect it will sell out, so my advice is don’t put off getting tickets for too long. There is a hard cap on seating, so last minute grovelling (part of the deal with running the Preset Mixer) won’t work here.