News

The Kiosk Show promises bounty of self-service solutions

August 17, 2004

Imagine customers' reaction if they walked into your store for a Coke and had to choose their syrup, carbonated water and ice separately. While there's something to be said for choice, there's a lot to be said for simplicity too.

That's the idea behind The Kiosk Show, an event designed to let someone interested in self-service walk up to a booth and potentially leave with a complete solution.

"I had participated in the KioskCom show and other larger events in the kiosk vertical," said show founder Lief Larson, group publisher for Voyagi Inc. "I found that many times these events had an open market feel. I realized that being inundated by component level technology would confuse the process a little bit. Attendees wanted a full, turnkey solution."

At the Kiosk Show, component manufacturers aren't allowed to exhibit unless they partner with other suppliers to present a full-service kiosk solution. This policy ensures that attendees will find exhibitors offering complete solutions, rather than a plethora of partial solutions with some assembly required. In addition, for the benefit of the exhibitors, all attendees are pre-qualified as end-user/buyers of kiosk solutions.

"We find this to be a win-win situation, where the attendees are able to find a type of kiosk system that can be easily evaluated for their business, and - from the full-solution, provider/integrator side - find a customer base where they knew these were all potential end-user customers," Larson said.

Seminar opportunities

The show also provides seminars for new and advanced users. The in-depth educational sessions are designed to help cut the learning curve and ensure the greatest possibility for success with attendees' kiosk programs.

Twelve concurrent seminar sessions will be held the day of the event: three introductory-level sessions, six sessions designed for moderate users, and three sessions for advanced users. All of the presentations will help attendees discover how to best implement the technology to enhance the customer experience, generate and increase sales and create returning users.

As part of the show plan, seminar attendees are invited on a TechnoTour. The tour's format relates to the presentation topic covered and allows attendees to investigate and experiment with kiosk solutions. Attendees will leave the show having been educated by experts in this field, and will have collected the process and product information necessary to launch their own kiosk programs.

"The show went over really well," said Brad Mateja, Best Buy. "It was definitely worth the time."

Larson recently sold The Kiosk Show and Voyagi Inc.'s other kiosk-related properties to NetWorld Alliance, publisher of this executive summary. Larson is serving as co-producer of this year's show with Greg Swistak, a NetWorld Alliance senior vice president.

According to Swistak, "There has been a rush both to sign up to attend the show as well as for exhibit space, and we are far ahead of our plan for attendees and exhibitors." Potential exhibitors and attendees should act quickly if they're interested in the show, he said.