The academic world has a concept for scientific events called a “poster day” where grad students and post-docs get to setup a single poster that represents their research. The booths in startup city seem to be a similar idea where you have a VERY limited space in which to convey your message. The knee jerk reaction is to cram as much information as you can onto that poster board and you end up with an eye crossing mish mash of tiny fonts and headache creating stuff.

So let’s turn this model inside out and put the art back into booth art. What I’m proposing is to have your poster info be simpler and then embed digital picture frames into the poster board. Imagine this, a simple posterboard with your logo and pertinent KEY product information, but someplace on that board you embed a large digital picture frame (like those 22″ jobs now available) and that can be cycling through powerpoints. Then you sprinkle a few cheaper 7″ digital picture frames that might be cycling through specialized features.

Got the idea? Very simple, easy to transport, cheap and still eye candy. We’ve used them for scientific symposia, retirement parties, window displays, signs in hallways and even made three sided columns with digital picture frames in them to help direct people from place to place.

Here are the gotchas that we’ve found over the years:

1. Try to stay with a single brand of digital picture frame so that the power supplies are interchangeable and label those power supplies.
2. You don’t always need an AC outlet, one of those emergency car starter/power supplies and a small inverter will run a pair of digital picture frames for a couple of days straight.
3. Look at the back of the digital picture frame, sloping sides means they’re hard to mount. Piximodo has a superb straight sided electronics box that makes mounting simple. They have a wonderful speaker outlet and AV outlet but they refuse to add in a video looping feature. So the video will only play once and then go back to the main menu.
4. NOT ALL digital pictures frames can play video clips, and almost none of them will loop around after it plays the last clip. So far the only one I’ve found that will play a collection of video clips and then loop around and keep playing is from HP and that doesn’t have an external speaker plug so you have to drill it and solder in a speaker outlet.
5. Don’t block the vents, or your display will slowly turn black and die
6. Tape over the SD/flash card slot to avoid grabby fingers

Why did I go through all the hassles for something so simple….easy, PC rental costs a king’s ransom and ordering extra power adds up VERY quickly. Not only that, transporting a whole bunch of PC’s gets expensive and at a heavily unionized convention center like the Javits in New York, you’re not supposed to carry in your own gear. So that adds up too. However, a small benson box (shipping container made of corrugated plastic and super cheap) can easily be created to carry a half dozen of these displays in a single box smaller than a case of paper.

Well I think you folks get the idea….not something I’m going to put into a million dollar booth, but the moving images on the poster might just be that little bit of extra eye candy that drags a potential customer into your booth. Good luck to everyone in startup city.

/brian chee

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