Looking Ahead To ISE

January 13, 2016 by Dave Haynes

ISE-DS-area

I’m starting to get my head together for what will be my first time at Integrated Systems Europe, which is in Amsterdam in less than a month.

Flight booked. AirBnB place arranged. I’ve even scoped out how I could maybe go see a Dutch pro football (soccer) match – PSV Eindhoven v FC Utrecht, if anyone else interested.

On one of those days at DSE where you run around all day and don’t stop to eat, the Net Display Systems guys saved me a couple of years ago by sending my tired, hungry butt off from their booth/office with a bag of Dutch waffle cookies. These are syrup-soaked OMG good cookies.

So … I am repaying that favour by speaking at the Dutch signage CMS company’s pre-ISE partner conference – giving them 45 minutes on signage strategy. It’s a private event, but if you work with NDS, contact them about an invite.

iselogoThat’s the Monday. Tuesday, the show formally opens, and I am now poking around the exhibitor list and floor map to see what all is there. The show is Europe’s version of Infocomm, though I am told it’s bigger and has some different twists from the annual pro-AV show that cycles each June between Orlando and Las Vegas.

Outside of Digital Signage Expo, I find a lot of digital signage “pavilions” and designated zones at industry shows (like in the sign industry) are kind of feeble. This one is big – like a whole building big. The RAI Amsterdam complex appears to have a number of show halls and buildings, and the signage area appears to fill one of the biggest ones.

Search the exhibitor list using “digital signage” and you get more than 400 companies. A healthy number of those will have only a fleeting involvement in the business, but still …

There are some North America-centric companies like Four Winds, Scala and Broadsign over for the show, and lots of familiar Europen firms like Navori, Spinetix, SignageLive and Smartsign, but there’s a long list of European and Asian companies that I know little or nothing about … and that’s going to be great. There are at least 25 companies with Shenzhen at the front of their titles, as well.

I’m going purely as blogger guy – no clients in tow – so the plan is to write and tweet quite a bit. If you are going, safe travels and see you there.

 

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