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Virgin Entertainment, Delta Air Lines and Ricoh Americas Corporation among Presenters at 2009 Digital Signage and Kiosk Shows in Las Vegas

Wednesday 14. January 2009 - Educating audiences on the techniques, technologies, complications and solutions emerging from both the self service and digital signage arenas, KioskCom Self Service Expo and The Digital Signage Show have announced the keynote and session rosters for this year's co-located events taking place at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center in Las Vegas.

New to the conferences, which take place from May 6-7, 2009, will be the highly sought after SPEED Program, a strategic workshop addressing digital signage project planning, deployment, success and supplier capabilities.

Designed to help businesses plan for all phases of their customer-facing technology deployment from pre-launch strategy to budgeting and measuring ROI, organizers combined The Digital Signage Show and KioskCom Self Service Expo to provide attendees with all of their technology solutions under one roof.

“In addition to significantly cutting costs and improving business efficiencies, ensuring customer satisfaction is now more crucial than ever to a company’s success,” explains Lawrence Dvorchik, General Manager of the events. “Customer-facing and engaging technologies like self-service kiosks and digital signage are increasingly being implemented all over the world and our shows are helping to bring buyers and suppliers together to make that happen.”

Dvorchik adds that more than 80 percent of attendees from the last show stated that they will be buying in 2009 from an exhibitor they met in 2008, demonstrating a clear connection between audiences and a sense of urgency for implementation.

With representatives from a diverse range of industries – including retail, finance, hospitality, tourism, healthcare, government, gaming / entertainment, and restaurants / QSRs, attending annually, organizers continue to present an equally diverse keynote speaker offering with each passing year.

Opening the 2009 shows on Wednesday, May 6 will be Robert Fort, CIO and Vice President of Information Technology for Virgin Entertainment Group. Fort’s presentation, Efficiencies Through Customer-Facing and Customer-Engaging Technologies, will shed light on how Virgin uses CFTs to improve both employee productivity and customer satisfaction, which has translated into controlled costs and rising sales of core merchandise.

Joshua Weiss, Managing Director of Web and Self Services for Delta Air Lines, will present Thursday morning’s keynote with a presentation entitled, Full Service Self Service. The presentation will showcase how self-service at Delta Air Lines has evolved into a far-reaching, multi-channel, multi-lingual strategy that aims to put the customer in control of their travel experience. Weiss also will discuss how Delta has advanced the adoption of self-service technology through new product development, application redesigns and facility changes.

Thursday’s closing keynote will be Why Ricoh Went Eco: Going Green with Environmentally Friendly Digital Billboards, presented by Ron Potesky, Senior Vice President of Corporate Communications, Products / Solutions & Channel Marketing for Ricoh Americas Corporation. Potesky?s presentation discusses Ricoh?s strategy, technology and implementation challenges, impact on the brand, cost and environmental savings, along with future challenges in “Going Green” with digital billboards.

New to the 2009 line-up will be SPEED – Structures for Planning, Explanation, Excitement and Deployment. Presented by Lyle Bunn of BUNN Co., SPEED offers practical, accelerated training for potential and new end users, suppliers, advertisers and investors to improve business and project planning, launch and deployment, as well as the application and use of Digital Signage and Digital Out-of-Home media. Taking place on Tuesday, May 5 from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m., program participants will receive complete SPEED training through a 4-hour session for only $99. Registration is available at www.thedigitalsignageshow.com.

The program consists of six modules, each addressing subjects that enable a digital signage opportunity or deployment to be initialized and continually advanced. The modules offer an industry overview and network description, an in-depth look at initiatives past and present, how to sell and advance your opportunity, various business models that supplement your chosen initiatives and a look at different resources that can assist you along the way.

“We provide executives and decision-makers with the most thorough “start-to-finish” business resources available,” said Dvorchik. “The SPEED program offers an impressive, information-rich course that will give our audiences a solid foundation of knowledge and practice to fill the information gaps between making the decision to employ digital signage and selecting and maintaining the tool for maximum utility.”

Boasting an equally impressive list of presenters, including key figures from BMW, ConAgra, The Palms Hotel & Casino, HBO Latin America, Target, Indigo Books & Music, The Bar Channel, The Nielsen Company, The PCI Security Standards Council, and other educational sessions, this year’s shows look to be the best yet. Among the sessions highlighting the 2009 offering are:

So You’ve Already Deployed Kiosks: What’s Next? Planning, Measuring and Justifying 2nd Generation and Beyond
Analyzing Customer Behaviors and Understanding Your Data To Improve Sales Lift and The Customer Experience
Ad-Pay Networks That Deliver ROI: What You Need to Know
Employee Communication: Using Kiosks and Digital Signage to Communicate to Internal Customers