KioskCom, The Digital Signage Show blurring distinctions

April's KioskCom Self Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show in Las Vegas expect to have a multipronged focus on leading shoppers down the path to purchase, through self-service and digital signage, says the shows' general manager, Lawrence Dvorchik.

Show organizers also are planning several new features this year, such as themed kiosk tours, and Dvorchik says organizers are playing up the shows' co-location with other significant trade shows — a benefit that is expected to help boost exhibitor attendance.

"What we've done with the content this year is we've gone away from sessions devoted to just kiosks or just digital signage," Dvorchik said. "There are some that are standalone that are just involving those issues, but the focus is five-pronged: It's on customer-engagement strategies; business strategies; digital-out-of-home; IT and technology issues; and operational-deployment and logistics issues – and how the technology solves problems that organizations currently face."

At the top of the new features are the themed kiosk tours led by St. Clair Interactive. The "Kiosk and Self-Service Expert Tours" will be held four or five times over the course of the two-day show, and are free to all attendees, Dvorchik said. Information on other new features will be forthcoming, when details have been finalized, he said.

KioskCom & The Digital Signage Show will once again be hosting the pre-show Customer Engagement Summit, for deployers only, on the afternoon of April 13, and led by Janet Webster and Paul Flanigan. Webster and Flanagan also will lead the show-ending "Pay-it-Forward" panel. (Webster led the rollout of 2,500 Automated Postal Centers for the United States Postal Service, and Flanigan was responsible for interactive media and merchandising programs at Best Buy.)

The SPEED Digital Signage Training Program will be held the morning of April 13 and will focus on improving the planning, launch and use of digital signage, according to The Digital Signage Show's Web site. It's an accelerated "how-to" program aimed at getting deployers, venues and suppliers "up to speed" to accelerate project life cycles. The session will be led by digital signage specialist Lyle Bunn.

The Kiosk and Self-Service Excellence Awards will be held on the afternoon of April 14, and award applications are still open and available online atKioskCom's Web site.

While some areas of the shows will remain divided, Dvorchik says the lines that divide digital signage and kiosks deployments will be less clearly defined.

"The real issue is that these technologies are interwoven and in many cases are complementary, and the vendors do work with each other…So we're starting to see an erosion of that separation."

Studies show that digital signage used in conjunction with kiosks does drive traffic to kiosks, Dvorchik said.

Everything show organizers are doing is designed to focus on the solution and getting to the solution, he said. The specifics of which technology deployers use or how they use it is based on the solution that they need, and many times that calls for both of these complementary technologies to engage customers and spur them to make a purchase, he said.

"The focus of the event is very much on customer engagement strategies," Dvorchik said. "When we met with our Board of Advisers it was recommended that we focus on how these technologies are able to improve customer engagement, improve sales lift and lead down the path to purchase. Based upon their advice, we have developed the conference program and focus to address these issues"