On Monday November 9th in NYC the Digital Signage Association held its 4th and final board meeting for calendar year 2009; many thanks to KioskCom / The Digital Signage Show for their support in furnishing a meeting room for DSA to hold its board meeting.
The association’s board of 41 member companies is at approximately 10% of our nearly 400 members and represents the 5 constituency groups of End Users, Vendors/Researchers, Integrators/ProAV, Networks, and Agencies. This broad industry representation enables DSA to drive decision making that takes into consideration the full value chain of a digital signage network from design and launch through on-going monetization of the network whether it is an ad-based, retail/venue-owned, corporate communications or a hybrid.
This perspective brings enormous value to the key initiatives that DSA are taking on such as industry education, ROI measurements, and content efficacy. As the current president of the DSA I was very pleased with the level of enthusiasm, passion and participation … in short the ownership … that the board members have assumed around these topics.
However participation didn’t stop there; as a matter of fact the most passionate discussions were around the topic of the DSA’s 3-year planning process. More specifically, how does the association continue to offer tremendous value to its membership and ensure that we contribute to the growth of a sustainable industry? Tantamount to where we are going is the question on how fast we can accomplish our goals. The discussion quickly moved to a fundamental question. What are our future sources of revenue that will ensure we have the requisite financial and staffing resources needs to serve our membership and the industry at the desired level?
Participating in the building of this plan will be some names that you are familiar with:
- Dick Good, DSA Chairman (CEO, Networld Alliance)
- David Drain, DSA Executive Director
- Stuart Armstrong, DSA President (President, EnQii North America)
- Jeff Porter, Committee Co-Chair Education (Executive Vice President, Scala)
- Margot Meyers, Committee Co-Chair Education (Direction of Education & Training at Platt Retail Institute)
- Keith Kelsen, Committee Chair Best Practices (Chairman of the Board - The MediaTile Company)
- Tim Burke, Committee Chair Marketing and PR (CEO / Owner, Electronic Art)
- Greg Masingill, Committee Chair Membership (President at Seneca Data)
- Steve Nesbit, Committee Chair ROI (COO & President at Reflect Systems, Inc)
Additionally several other board members have expressed an interest and will be included in the planning committee.
I am thrilled about both the process and the outcomes of this planning process. We will be meeting as a planning group for the first time in a conference call within the next 4 – 6 weeks following for first in person meeting in late January / early February 2010 for a full day session. As plans and details unfold I will keep you up to date as part of my DSA blog contributions. Keep an eye out for some interesting updates in the months to come.
