Final day of KioskCom NYC 2007

Yesterday was the final day of KioskCom. It was a bit slower than the first day which gave me a chance to walk around the show and talk to potential partners, see what my competition has been doing since the last time I saw them, and see what is the latest cool offerings for our industry. Here are a couple of them:

Innovative - Flexible Monitor Mounts

These guys have some cool mounting solutions for kiosks and screens. There are many times that you need to mount an all-in-one kiosk onto a wall or an existing enclosure, and you want the ability to tilt it up or down depending on the height of your guest viewing the screen. These guys have what you need and have the unique ability to make custom modifications for special needs projects. Since they sell direct, you can request this sort of change if you need it, unlike some of the existing similar products on the market. Check them out at : http://www.lcdarms.com/

StacoSwitch - Tactile Touch Screens

This product is amazing. Imaging touching a button on the screen and feeling it depress like a real button would feel? That's right, its not just a flat screen, it is truly interactive. Their product integrates with a touch screen monitor and has a software developer kit (SDK) that allows you to use their amazing tools. A small hardware component behind the screen sends a pulse to the surface of the screen when you touch it that makes your brain think you just depressed a 3 dimensional real world button. I love this product and hope to be able to use it on some future projects. It doesn't integrate with all products such as many all-in-one kiosks like one of my favorites (the IBM AnyPlace) but does work with many open frame screens. You have to experience this product! http://www.tactiletouchscreens.com/

IBM - Rooster Kiosk

IBM has done it again and innovated the industry with their new Rooster kiosk. This kiosk will sit and stare at you until you believe it is a real chicken little. Its so compact that I cannot find the screen, but I think its somewhere inside of those glass eyes. I just don't dare go close because it might peck me in the face. They have even chosen to use the claws of the rooster as input devices instead of a traditional mouse. Man... those guys are amazing.

Okay, it's not a kiosk. While tearing down the tradeshow, it suddenly appeared on top of a crate staring at us while we worked. Freaky! Where did it come from? Nobody knows. Who's stuffed chicken was this? We can't be sure. But everyone was a bit un-nerved by it and was afraid to touch it in case it was booby trapped. I left before it met its final resting place... But I think one of the tech guys from Raleigh may have taken it home for dinner that night.

The show was great and a lot of fun. The next show is in April and back at Mandalay Bay Las Vegas. We will have our own booth again like last April and be showing some new software and some of our own exclusive new enclosure designs. If you were at KioskCom or have questions about it, comment on these blogs. I'd love to hear what you have to say. If you want more pictures or more thoughts, let me know.

KioskCom Day 1 evaluation

Well, I'm back after a long day of trade show work. Lots of talking and hand shakes, explaining our offerings over and over, sometimes in different ways just to keep it interesting for myself. The show has had very good traffic from an exhibitor point of view. Today I spoke with several big brands such as Sprint, Best Buy, Lowes, Georgia Power, and several others. Many expressed interest in having further discussions or creative brainstorming on some of their efforts. We are showing our healthcare patient self check-in application, and actually met with a few healthcare organizations.

We also had many opportunities to talk to potential partners, vendors and even fellow IBM staff that can help us make the right connections. A new ISV partner in IBM's booth next to us had an "inventory management" tool that is used in retail clothing. They are "Fitting Room Central" and have just launched their kiosk controlled management tools at Macy's department stores this past week. Nice guys from Montreal Canada, with a nicely designed and built application.

We saw lots of glamorous hardware, sexy software interfaces, etc. Its really fun to see what brands our competition has been doing projects for since the last time that we all exhibited together. I also had a prospect client from Cincinnati suddenly appear at the show, he was in town and found out at the last minute that the show was going on and dropped in to see it.

Our three UPS packages finally arrived early this AM including the one that they said that "we had not shipped" which translates to "We've lost your box and don't really know where it is just yet". I guess that is there way of giving their customers "surprise and delight" when something that was thought lost... suddenly appears. Ugh. So I ended up setting up our hardware offering at 20 minutes till show opening time and sweating like a horse. Nothing like some stress first thing in the morning to get the blood flowing.

At the end of the day, IBM sponsored the happy hour on the show floor, and we put back a couple of glasses of red wine with one of our new clients, and prospect clients. IBM even had an ice sculpture of their logo. (Excess is never boring). I left and had dinner with my sister who lives in Manhattan, along with two friends of hers: one a packaging structure and design consultant and the other works for Loreal hair care. A glass of Malbec at Merc Bar on Mercer (great atmosphere) and a wonderful dinner at Cento Vini in the SOHO area on West Houston street. I highly recommend both places if you are in the area. Cento Vini had a truly exquisite atmosphere and talented wait staff as well as a great selection of wine. I will definitely come back on future trips.

Okay, tomorrow there is an early IBM breakfast and then tear down at the end of the day, pack & ship everything back to the office... it will be tiring. But there are lots of opportunities throughout the day to make new connections, hear new ideas and make new friends.

Setup day at KioskCom

If you've exhibited at tradeshows before, you know that its a lot of work and a lot can go wrong. My day started by leaving a very nice hat my father gave me on the Delta airplane at LeGuardia, which I remembered in the cab into midtown manhattan. I was in a cab because the shuttle service was late after waiting 45 minutes! Even worse, there was a cab strike starting today, so the few cabs running had to take multiple people to multiple locations.

When I got to the Javitz convention center, they were not ready for me to setup yet at the IBM booth, and UPS had not delivered the enclosure I had shipped yet. So I left for lunch. When I returned hours later I found that UPS had delivered only 1 of the 4 box shipment. Thank goodness I brought the software in my carry on luggage just for this reason! I simply slipped the hard drive into one of the new IBM AnyPlace kiosks and we were up and running. The guys at IBM, Maz & David lent me their extra kiosk stand until mine arrives (IF it arrives, they still can't find one box). If I wasn't typing this blog on my BlackBerry... I'd elaborate more on the lack of accountability... But I digress.

The one day setup has been smooth for some vendors, rough for others. All of the usual players are here, KIS, Nanonation, Olea, PFU, and a slew of printer manufacturers, screen manufacturers and other ancilary component vendors and software products. Some really interesting stuff! But this fall show is much smaller than the Vegas show in April, perhaps half the size or more.

Interop is next door so I'm hoping to get a chance to drop in on that show while I'm here.

I've got a few pictures of the show which I'll try to post. There are lots of interesting things I hope to share. But for now, I'm trying to figure out how a lost and found kiosk would help get my hat back!

Tim Burke


Sent from my CrackBerry device... yeah, its that addictive! See for yourself at http://www.blackberry.com/select/ask/

Preparing for KioskCom tradeshow next week

This has been a hectic week as we prepare for KioskCom NYC on October 23^rd & 24^th at the Javitz Convention Center in mid-town Manhattan. If you are not familiar with it, this is the largest kiosk industry tradeshow. We exhibited last April at the KioskCom in Las Vegas which was huge! This was the first time we exhibited at KioskCom and we had a new booth made just for this show. We had previously exhibited at the “Self Service and Kiosk Show” in San Antonio Texas the year before, but that show was bought by KioskCom and is now the NYC show next week. Interesting how these competing tradeshows buy each other out rather than compete for traffic. But there’s a little history for you.

I fly into NYC on Monday for setup of our kiosk hardware: The EasyShip, and our healthcare kiosk software: The EasyAdmit. I’ll blog from NYC and tell you about all of the busted knuckles and lost shipments (oh God, please no!) that can make a tradeshow setup interesting. During the days of the show I’ll tell you about the interesting speakers, vendors and best of breed hardware and software that is being exhibited. We tear down on Wednesday and prepare to ship everything back to our main office in Cincinnati. Hectic, but always interesting.

As I mentioned, getting ready is a lot of work. But luckily the work has been mostly on the shoulders of our expert IT administrator who has been imaging hard drives for me to take to NYC and our software developers making small tweaks to the software. We are showing off the new 2^nd generation IBM AnyPlace kiosk with dual core processors and lots of other nice features. Our company was given a pre-release version to work with for current high profile projects (a secret right now, but I’ll tell you in future blogs) and to integrate with our hardware. When we received the IBM APK it had no OS on it and getting a Win XP installed along with proper touch screen drivers was a bit of work, but our IT person figured it out. He always does, he is great. All of this he is doing while having to move our collocated web hosting servers which need to be moved by Oct. 31^st! Yeah, he is a bit stressed this month, and working hard. But in the IT industry that is what it takes to make a business run. Sales and IT are so important to a company. Times like this remind you of that fact.

Come to KioskCom if you can make to NYC next week! And look me up in the IBM booth.

Welcome

Welcome to my new blog that discusses the roll that kiosks play in our world.

I am the owner of Electronic Art LLC, an interactive agency specializing in kiosk and web applications. We have built kiosks for Verizon Wireless, Sanofi Adventis, GlaxoSmithKline, and many more. We also sell / rent kiosk hardware including the IBM AnyPlace kiosk and our own exclusive kiosk stand that works with panel pc style kiosks like the AnyPlace, Pelham Sloane, and many others.

So yes, I have good knowledge of the industry and am involved all of the time. We are traveling to NYC next week to be a part of KioskCom.com, a bi-annual trade show for the industry. Last April we exhibited with our own booth as well as a part of IBM's booth. Next week we are only showcasing our EasyShip kiosk and EasyAdmit software as a part of IBM's booth. We'll do the full booth again in April 2008.

I often see interesting kiosks online, and in the real world. I try to take pictures of kiosks I see out in the public and I'll post many of them here, for discussion. I hope to provide a somewhat unbiased perspective to the discussion, but you know I'll always have an opinion. And occasionally I'll make blatant promotional comments for my company,... but hopefully always blatant.

So, give me a short while to get the technical bugs fixed in the blogging tools, and I'll try to keep this current. Contact me if you have a particular topic you'd like discussed.

Tim Burke