ISE Updates: Mixer Status, DSS Conference Agenda, And A Key Tip On Getting In To The Show

January 5, 2024 by Dave Haynes

I was out walking with my wife Joy late yesterday, trying to march off some of unfortunate tummy expansion incurred in holiday eating and drinking, and saying, “Holy crap, we head to Barcelona in three weeks!”

That trip and show came up fast, and I am now heavily into pulling together a variety of things related to the big pro AV trade Integrated Systems Europe. Here’s an update on a few things …

The Mixer

Registrations for the big mixer went up in mid-December and were sold out in just a bit more than 24 hours, but I have had a buncha people emailing me, asking when ticketing would go up, or saying they missed the window, but still wanted to attend. Unlike the Sixteen:Nine Mixer at DSE each year, at a venue that could handle 800 if need be, there is a hard cap on capacity for the Barcelona venue, and it is capped even more because there is an open bar … versus the two-drink ticketing done for DSE. So I can’t just wave people in and tell them they’ll need to buy their own drinks (which can happen at DSE).

There IS a waiting list, and I do expect some slots will open up because travel plans change or booth builds take longer than expected on the day before the exhibit hall opens. So you can join that list and you can see what happens. The sponsors – logos below – also have ticket allocations to use, and some may not need all five – so you can sweet-talk them.

The other way in is by buying a seat at the global Digital Signage Awards, which will be presented upstairs in the same venue, immediately following the mixer. The mixer doubles up as the reception for the awards and people who have tickets for that also have access to the mixer. However, just in case this isn’t clear, registering for the mixer does not mean registering for the awards dinner – which has separate registration and a fee attached.

I am told there are some 140 people already signed up for the awards dinner. The awards were revamped this year, and as head judge, I can say better and broadened categories have resulted in better, broader entries – including some fantastic work that would win for reasons other than huge budgets or Wow Factor.

Profiles of sponsors for the ISE Mixer should start popping up in a week or so, and work is underway for everything from screens on site (like last year, sponsor Videri is bringing in a pile of its super-thin screens) and custom sponsor recognition content developed by Screenfeed, another sponsor. My friends at the Portuguese interactive tech firm Displax are putting together check-in kiosks, which should streamline access and get people to the bar and into good conversations more quickly.

If you were quick enough to get a ticket, I will be emailing out (probably a week ahead) a set of instructions on how to find the venue … or more accurately how a taxi driver can find the venue. It’s in a beautiful park between the city center and the convention center, and some taxi drivers struggled in 2023 to get their fares to the right drop-off point. My ride over earlier in the day, to see how preparations were going, saw me dropped off up a hill from the venue, so I had to walk through the woods to get there. The instructions will nicely get you where you need to be.

We’ll also at least attempt to arrange for taxis to come up that way as the event winds down. Uber, I found, was so-so in Barcelona.

Digital Signage Summit

The Invidis team behind the Digital Signage Summit half-day conference on-site at ISE have now published an agenda, with me ensuring people will pack up and leave on time, as one of the people on a wrap-up/look-ahead panel.

This is what’s planned for the event, which runs at the sprawling ISE exhibition hall, in one of its second-level meeting spaces.

Getting In To ISE

If you went to the show a year ago, you will know it was more than a bit of a clusterf@ck to get in to the hall, with the kinds of line-ups you see for airport screening ahead of major holidays. That got fixed and improved as the week went on, but Day One was messy because of the process set up for getting people through the turnstiles or whatever was used (can’t totally remember).

This year, the deal is that after you register online, you should hold on to that confirmation email, because you’ll need that. Come January 18th, ISE will put its show app online in the Apple App Store, Google Play and Huawei AppGallery. You download the app, use your credentials to activate your registration, and then email a copy of your show badge to your home or office email account. You then print the badge yourself, and bring that to Barcelona.

You then show your printed badge to enter the venue. Once inside, you can pick up a badge holder and lanyard.If you go to a lot of trade shows there is a decent chance you have old badge-holders and lanyards kicking around, which might be my pro move to skip around some logjams.

If you DON”T do that advance work, I suspect there will be people to help and process you, but that will very likely mean getting in a long line … at least on the morning of Day One.

This page gets into the process …