Scala Goes to London for 2014 Conference

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Scala London

Scala held its 2014 Conference at the Timber Lodge in the recently opened Olympic Park as part of London Digital Signage Week.

A smaller scale event from last year's conference, proceedings were opened by Scala CEO Tom Nix with a straight to the point keynote on the digital signage industry's top vertical-- retail. According to Scala retail is top signage driver, taking over 45% share of a "great" 2013.

As Nix puts it, digital signage not only allows retailers to emulate the Amazon online experience within brick-and-mortar outlets, it also provides a "tsunami" of valuable data.

What to do with such data? Partners use it to build a strong ROI case for maximized, optimized campaigns, of course. In other words, "omnichannel makes money."

The next speech came from Scala CTO Peter Cherna, who introduced the "Next" Connected Store ("a retail-focused, data-driven cloud-based platform which connects and optimises platforms and devices to create meaningful experiences that engage audiences", currently in beta form) before laying down the company roadmap for the near future.

Enterprise, currently on version 10.2, is set to see 2 updates in 2014-- "Daytona" sometime on H2 2014, and "Indy" on Q4 2014. Further on the roadmap are projects involving gesture control, content management integration, data and touchpoint integration APIs and application development SDKs.

Scala Westfield

The rest of the day featured case studies involving (obviously) Scala products. These include Pixel Inspiration's work with Argos, the ambitious broadcast solution-slash-digital signage network employed in the Danish Jyske Bank, sensor-driven demographic analysis by BlueSight Systems and the large-scale (London Stock Exchange, Embankment Place, RMG Networks Briefing Centre) installations by Amigo, as well as the Scala-powered work frm Beaver Group, Danske Bank, Telecine and Espirit Digital.

Concluding all was a tour of the large-scale Scala installation found at the nearby Westfield Stratford City mall, before a visit to the near-wholly Scala-powered videowall at Piccadilly Circus.

Go Scala Conference EMEA in London