Some industry churn, a few small but interesting moves, and AI that might finally be doing something useful. A quick scan of what’s happening in the industry – and what might be worth more than a shrug.
Haynes Column: Stratacache Layoffs, Useful AI, and Other Things That Don’t Need 1,000 Words
The intent of this guest column is to knock something out week to week on a specific topic, but sometimes there’s a bunch of stuff that could use attention but doesn’t need 800-1,000 words to relay news or make a point.
So … here’s a bunch of things worth noting:
Changing Roles
I’m not sure what’s up with Stratacache and its acquired companies (like Scala, Real Digital Media and X2O Media), but there have been significant layoffs and departures lately. I sent a note to CEO-Founder Chris Riegel, but have not heard back. He’s insanely busy in the best of times, so not surprised responding to me is a lower priority.
What I do know is there are some good people on the job market and that execs at a number of companies in the ecosystems are seeing lots of ex-Stratacache empire CVs dropping in to their email inboxes.
One person not really looking is Ken Goldberg, who ran Real Digital Media for 22 years, staying on after Stratacache acquired the SaaS CMS firm. He retired in March when the decision was made to wind RDM down.
Now he’s open to consulting and paid board positions, and enjoying life in west coast Florida. Smart, measured guy. He wrote a periodic blog about the industry for several years but wasn’t nutty enough to try to make that a business (like me).
Enjoy slowing down, Ken. It’s an adjustment, but as the months go by, priorities and interests evolve. I’m curling (look it up) for the first time in 40+ years, and meeting a pile of people outside my longtime, too isolated bubble.
Other folks: Another super-smart person has also made a change after many years, with Jackie Walker joining Creative Realities after 16 years with Publicis Sapient, where she was the Retail Experience Strategy Lead (North America) and Global Lead for Connected Spaces. She guided and advised on the digital screen strategies and implementations for many of the biggest QSRs out there.
Really good pick-up for CRI’s CEO Rick Mills. Jackie is now the company’s Chief Experience Officer.
Related kinda sorta to CRI, as well, Beth Warren was for a bunch of years kind of the face, so to speak, of CRI for speaking engagements and the business-public side of that company. She left to go back to her NYC agency roots, but is now looking around for her next thing or things.
A lot of North American industry people know and love Beth, so if anyone needs help in marketing strategy, demand-gen, those sorts of things, she’s looking for FTE or fractional gigs.
One more: Another well-known, much-loved and respected industry vet is back directly in the mix. Laura Davis is now VP Marketing at NYC-based Videri. She’s been around digital in retail media for 20+ years and even wrote an early book on it, called Lighting Up The Aisles.
Evolving Tech
I continue to see and read stuff about software platforms rolling AI into their offers by adding image generation or functionality like voice recognition and multi-language support. Which is great. But it is almost baseline, table-stakes stuff now. I’m not sure the particular value of being able to generate images from an LLM from inside a CMS as opposed to just using the big LLM, but it’s not wrong to do it, either.
Much, much more interesting and relevant to me are the sorts of behind-the-curtains capabilities that AI can enable and drive.
I’ve been a fan of what the Boston-area company Netspeek has been up to with the AI platform it first started talking up a couple of years back. It is all about the boring operational stuff that still doesn’t get enough attention or respect in digital signage planning and execution.
The company’s AI bot Lena was first positioned as a way to help the people who staff and/or run network operations centers resolve trouble “tickets” quickly, by using the AI machine to sift through knowledge bases and old tickets in seconds to find likely causes and known or advised fixes.
When I saw the Netspeek guys at ISE back in February they hinted at how the next release was angling towards autonomous troubleshooting and resolutions, and that’s what it announced a few days back.
With AI-driven troubleshooting, Lena can now:
- Detect issues across devices, rooms, and platforms;
- Diagnose root causes using real-time system context;
- Guide or automate resolution to dramatically reduce time to fix.
I know, boring. But for visual communications over networks, uptime is everything.
On a vaguely related note, at a more personal scale, a guy I’ve known for a few years now has used AI (presumably vibe coding) to build a mobile app tuned to his very specific day-to-day operating needs.
Robert Edlund of the Nordics integrator Zetadisplay runs the LED business unit and was longing for a tool that could control and troubleshot LED screens directly from his phone – specifically installs that used Novastar controllers (Nova has 80%+ of that market).
From Linkedin: AI it wrote the code for me in minutes. I used more time installing and configuring Android Studio than copy/paste code. In 30 minutes, the app was done, tested and working.
And the best part about building an app you’re making purely for yourself? You don’t have to think about how the GUI looks. It’s a spin-off of something else I’m working on, so it will not win any design awards. But it works perfectly!
I know the visual presentation stuff possible with AI is interesting for digital signage, but it’s these sorts of things that can help and change businesses.
Dave Out
No column for me for a bit. Traveling to Belgium and Normandy to visit and pay respects at Canadian military sites like Ypres, Passchendaele, Vimy Ridge, Dieppe and Juno Beach.
I’m told the French aren’t bad at wine, and food, so we might get into that, as well.
Once back home, a couple of days later I get back on a plane – to Munich for Digital Signage Summit Europe. If you are going, I’ll see you there.
DSS Discount for invidis readers
Use code dss2026-invidisrd during registration to get 30% off the regular ticket price. Click here to register.
If you are not, and particularly if Munich is just a train or short flight, it’s a great event for both education and networking.
And weissbier.
And giant pretzels.
And Nuremberg bratwursts.
Sigh …