We made it! Day Two of DSE and LDI. If you were at the show(s) this year, you may have noticed some familiar faces video shooting on the show floor this time. That’s because it was entirely our full-time staff! We each had a video section, and I was humbled by the fact that I am actually not that great of a video shooter. (Perhaps I could stand some training.) That leads me to say that on this day I had the pleasure of walking around LDI and getting to know different exhibitors as I asked them to shoot their videos. Here are a few of my favorite products that I got to see firsthand!

I have to say, it’s difficult walking around and asking strangers if they’d like to shoot a product or solution video, even though I know that I’m simply offering a type of media coverage. It doesn’t make it any less difficult to walk up to a stranger — so I have a renewed respect for my colleagues who do this at every trade show.

At LDI, I learned so much about live event technology, and I thought it was a blast. I would gladly push through all the smoke and fog I breathed in to continue walking around and seeing behind-the-scenes glimpses of everything that powers the concerts and live events I love so much. If this is something that you’re also passionate about, I highly recommend checking out this show.

While I spent a lot of this day over on the LDI side, I did spend some time over at DSE catching up with David Drain, Questex’s director of event programs for DSE. We chatted in an episode of rAVe [TV] about what he thinks of this year’s show, and he was optimistic!

I think that leads me to finalize this column with some thoughts on DSE as a whole. Yes, the show was small. I don’t think there was any way around that. The Questex team is currently facing an impossible task of not only building a trade show back up after COVID-19 attendance dips but also with new management and a rebrand. I do think that the team will face some decisions about next year that include how big they want it to be and how ingrained with LDI they want to be (a few attendees mentioned to me that they wanted to see the two shows even more tightly interwoven — because live events desperately need digital signage and need the information and support on content creation). There are so many opportunities for DSE to continue to grow. Next year, I want to see more digital signage hardware (this year had mostly software and CMS options on the show floor). I want to see companies that are just recently getting into creating things like wayfinding kiosks. LG, come on in and bring Miss CLOi. Bring in local artists who can partner with a CMS to create beautiful content for your customers. Maybe even bring in the advertising community so they can have a better understanding of the tech that powers DOOH.

I ask all of you to believe in this show the way I believe in this show. While I didn’t ever attend DSE prior to its Questex ownership and don’t really have anything to compare the 2022-2023 shows to, I know the power of digital signage and the opportunity that it has to bring in new people to our industry. In fact, I believe digital signage will be a key component in getting young people into the AV industry. The quicker everyone else sees that too, the quicker we can help build an even bigger, even better DSE in 2024.