News

Memo to Chris: Fasten your Seatbelt

There's a new editor in kiosk-land, and we've given her the keys to the kiosk news kingdom. But first, here's a few first-week hints.

April 20, 2003

Note to readers: I'm handing over the reins of KIOSKmarketplace to a new editor, Chris Zimmerman. Here's some advice and tips I'm giving for her first week on the job.

MEMO TO: Chris Z.

FROM: Rick R.

RE: Fasten your seatbelt

Chris, I just got back from KioskCom, the industry's biggest annual event, and let me tell you - you're walking into an industry on the move. Get yourself strapped in for a wild and event-filled ride. From this point on, you will be extremely busy tracking down news, information and, well, rumors to an active and interested audience.

This year's KioskCom in Las Vegas was by far the biggest ever. Unlike the dismal and depressing atmosphere of the 2001 show in Orlando, this one had people upbeat and excited, and most left the show with business cards in their pockets and business on their mind. It seemed every time I stepped into the exhibit hall someone was eager to tell me a story about a new deployment or a new product being launched.

KIOSKmarketplace is an established source of information for those in the kiosk business, and your job carries with it the responsibility to accurately and completely report every significant piece of news. Believe me, if you don't, you'll hear about it from a readership base that's not afraid to provide feedback.

The site is just over two years old, but it has quickly become an established resource. I'll bet a dozen people in Vegas told me they check the site every day. When we surveyed our readers last year, we got some great feedback, primarily making the suggestion that we do more of what we're doing - reporting breaking news and trends. We have some avid readers who love our product.

Of course, you've got some great resources to help you get the job done. The first is Craig Keefner, perhaps the best-known advocate of kiosks and a member of our NetWorld Alliance management team. As you focus on writing stories of cutting-edge technologies, be aware that Craig is always ahead of the curve on kiosk and self-service trends. He'll keep you in the loop on what people are really up to. In other words, he gets the goods on the kiosk grapevine.

Rick Redding

But the industry in general is populated with folks who are anxious to help you get your stories straight. You'll want to get to know some folks who can give you opinions and advice on a wide range of issues, starting with Francie Mendelsohn, a kiosk industry legend and owner of Summit Research Associates. Francie has been a speaker at every kiosk event I've been to, and her blunt assessments of projects are entertaining and accurate. She tells it like it is.

In Phoenix, I spent time with Ben Wheeler of Metal fx and Brian Sikorski of Practical Automation, sponsors of our How-To guides to choosing enclosures and printers, respectively. Both are great advocates of the guides and will tell anyone who will listen how much they've done for their businesses. Expect to be creating a new guide in the near future on a topic that's still TBA.

From the reaction I received in Las Vegas, the guides are a big hit with readers. In a packed house for a KioskCom seminar that I moderated, our Printer guide may have been the hottest topic, outside of the debate over the real cost to operate a laser printer.

Here are a few tidbits you'll want to be aware of and follow up on in the next few months.

• Potentially the largest single deployment of kiosks in the world could be announced soon. It's a government contract involving 35,000 kiosks. I heard rumors of other large deployments coming up, so this could be the year kiosks really break out.
Follow the fortunes of Nationwide Cyber Systems, a company whose product, a public Internet kiosk, won one of the awards at KioskCom. According to Pete Snyder of KIS, the company is selling the units like hotcakes to ambitious entrepreneurs through a television infomercial. The manufacturer of the kiosks is KIS, and the software for the project is developed by Info Touch.
At Retail Systems in June, in your home base of Chicago, kiosks.org Association has set up a special display for kiosk-related vendors. It will be interesting to see how well our special section is received.
Kiosks are an international business, so be sure you check regularly the progress of international companies, like the KioskCom award winners from UK-based Marconi Interactive Systems. John Purcell, based in Ireland, is another industry consultant you'll be getting to know. He's producing an industry guide that you'll find valuable.
Trends. Our readers want to know what the trends are, what's hot and what's not. From the show, there was plenty of talk about the Photo Kiosk sector, and Human Resources is an area getting a lot of attention. You may want to drop in at the National Restaurant Association's trade show in Chicago next month to see what self-service ideas are on the menu for the food service industry.
One project to watch is Zaplink, the multi-functional kiosk developed by Info Touch Technologies with Circle K convenience stores. It's been a revenue and ROI success in Phoenix, and they're optimistic that record can be duplicated in other markets. The kiosk's killer app is a bill payment product for wireless phone users that accepts cash.

Chris, I've only scratched the surface here. As a reporter, you're going to enjoy this assignment, and will undoubtedly find more stories you want to write than you'll have hours to write them. Welcome aboard!

[Editor's note: Info Touch Technologies became Tio Networks in April 2006.]