AVIXA Details Its Digital Signage Plans For InfoComm In June, Including A Sixteen:Nine Mixer!

April 14, 2023 by Dave Haynes

AVIXA, the pro AV-focused trade organization, has released its digital signage event and programming plans for the 2023 edition of InfoComm, June 10-16 in Orlando. Among many things is a version of the Sixteen:Nine networking mixers that have been part of big digital signage events for the past decade or so.

The Sixteen:Nine Digital Signage Networking Mixer, hosted by AVIXA will bring together integrators, designers, content creators, and other members of the digital signage community on the evening of Tuesday, June 13. This event takes place at Vū Orlando, which features a 155′ x 26′ immersive LED Volume. The big curved video wall at Vu is among the largest permanent LED volumes in the United States, and while it is there mainly for virtual film and TV productions, it also gets used after-hours for events.

This networking event is a bit different from “normal” Sixteen:Nine mixers, in that it is being organized and managed by AVIXA. Usually, I do all the planning, booking and other grunt work to pull these things together, but when I chatted with AVIXA’s folks at ISE in early February about possibly doing an event in June, I was all mixer’d out, having done two (DSE and then ISE) in less than three months.

So we worked it out that Sixteen:Nine would promote and host the event, but AVIXA would pull together and run it, including venue selection, registration and sponsor sales.

That worked for AVIXA, which has put a lot of time and effort in the last few years in developing a significant focus and community around digital signage. One of the key aspects of that is having a social event at a big trade show, which attracts a lot of diverse interests and tech vendors, that is JUST about digital signage. Like the Sixteen:Nine Mixer.

Other events through the week may serve a bunch of different market segments and technologies, like event lighting and audio. So you could wander around a social event chatting with people and never run into a fellow digital signage person. That’s just fine, socially, but not so much when you’re at a trade show with a mission and finite time to meet the right people.

InfoComm will also have what it calls a wide-ranging digital signage program, featuring in-depth workshops, the D=SIGN conference, and show floor tours.

“InfoComm is the premier trade show for the digital signage community,” says Rochelle Richardson, SVP of Expositions and Events at AVIXA. “At the show, you’ll learn from the top minds in the digital signage space, see solutions up close, and build professional connections to help you build a winning digital signage strategy.”

From AVIXA’s PR:

The D=SIGN conference, produced in partnership with the Digital Signage Federation, takes place on June 13 through 15, and will examine the solutions, innovations, and big ideas around digital signage.

The D=SIGN session “Is Your Legacy Digital Signage Network Ready for an Upgrade?” will explore various pain points for network operators and strategies to approach the inevitable reality of upgrading a dated system, how to navigate the process, and how to identify cost considerations for a reasonable solution. On Tuesday, June 13, join this discussion with Heather Best from Diversified, Filipe Ho from Google, Pamela Lobaton of Spectrio, and Lance Hutchinson from Alpha Video and Audio.

On Wednesday, June 14, the D=SIGN session “Touchdown! Interactive Branding Across Sports and Stadiums” will explore how sports organizations are using new visual technologies to transform the fan experience, amplify brand awareness, and cast a new spin on team history. The session features Peter Beck from Forty Nine Degrees, Steve Bayer of Daktronics, Ryan Lenocker from the Dallas Cowboys Football Club, and Lee Summers from Creative Realities.

On Wednesday, June 14, Florian Rothberg of Invidis Consulting will host the Market Insights Lunch: Digital Signage. He will share exclusive market data from Invidis covering global trends and drivers, and their impact on the North American digital signage market. He’ll also discuss how multi-channel retail, sustainability, AI, and the experience economy are shaping digital signage solutions. 

Editor: I’m doing that session with Florian.

The D=SIGN conference is sponsored by Google and Samsung. View the full conference schedule.

Alan Brawn, CTS, and Jonathan Brawn, CTS, of Brawn Consulting will lead the full-day workshop “Digital Signage Certified Expert (DSCE),” on Sunday, June 11. This workshop takes a business-oriented approach that allows attendees to master the formulas for successfully planning a digital signage network, including design, hardware and software selection, deployment, content creation, and ROI/ROO for digital signage rollouts. They’ll also host the full-day workshop “Digital Content & Media Expert (DCME)” on Monday, June 12. This workshop examines the impact and relevance of content, emphasizing the need to begin by clearly articulating the objectives. The workshop will review examples of the costs of content production, and various options for outsourcing.

To view the full schedule of the digital signage program, visit www.infocommshow.org/event-info/digital-signage. In addition, the Technology Innovation Stage (booth 2260) will host free presentations Wednesday through Friday that will cover critical pro AV topics, including trends in digital signage.

On the Trade Show Floor

The InfoComm 2023 trade show floor will feature a digital signage pavilion showcasing content creation and digital signage software, direct-view LED displays, projection technology, and much more. Join fellow AV education professionals to take digital signage-focused tours of the show floor from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, June 14 and Thursday, June 15. The tours will provide an overview of the equipment, technologies, and considerations critical to ensuring a successful digital signage strategy. In addition, the Digital Signage Federation will have a presence on the show floor at booth 409.

This mixer will be interesting for a bunch of reasons:

It’s a very different event space, and we’re going from a venue we hope has some screens to recognize sponsors, to a venue that is one ginormous screen. I have a couple of creative shops pulling together material to run on this beast, and would welcome a third. I don’t have budget to pay for creative but there is, I think, a ton of value in being able to show what can be done on a huge canvas, and be able to say “We did this” on that monster screen.

Ticketing will be done through AVIXA, as are sponsorship sales. Instead of dedicated name badges, attendees can just use their InfoComm badges. I believe there will be the capability to print out badges on site if people are coming to the event direct from the airport, or driving in from around the region.

Attendance has a hard cap , and a lot of the tickets are already committed. When people registered for the trade show in recent weeks, there was an opt-in on a “Digital Signage Reception” – which was/is the Sixteen:Nine Mixer. So if you want to hit this mixer, register soonest or re-visit your existing registration and add that on (I THINK you can do that).

The usual drill of e-mailing me and sheepishly asking for spare tickets won’t work this time, as AVIXA is managing registration.