Digital Signage News

POPAI has posted a couple of quick surveys to study the size of the marketing at-retail industry (which includes many flavors of digital signage), and to figure out how much we all get paid (probably way too little).

They'll of course be releasing the results of this information to members later this year, so I highly recommend you take a few brief minutes to fill one or both out, depending on how much you wish to share. Here are the links:

POPAI Compensation Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q9P5R5X

POPAI Size of the Industry Survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Q56FXRW

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Repurposing vacant storefront windows as giant pedestrian-level digital signage is all well and good.  But what about those times when you want to be seen from more than just a few feet away? Well, if you're pharma giant Bayer, you just cover your entire ex-headquarters building with LEDs and turn the whole thing into a gigantic digital billboard that can be seen from miles away. Pics and videos courtesy of Engadget's article on the matter:



(here's the YouTube link for anyone viewing through Bloglines)

... and if you're fluent in German and tech, here's an explanation of how the whole thing was put together:

(youtube link)

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As Andrew Neale posted on DailyDOOH yesterday, they decided to try and use our entry-level Digital Signage EasyStart system to power a Christie Digital MicroTiles 1×5 column that will be in the DailyDOOH Blogger Lounge at ISE2010 in Amsterdam next week. Since nobody on my team had yet seen or worked with MicroTiles, we were rather curious to see how easy (or hard) integration would be. And having worked with all sorts of weird display formats, video distribution systems, and matrix splitters for video walls, I was a little bit worried about hooking such a display up to a product who's driving design mantra is to hide all of the low-level tech stuff from the end user.

Still, Andrew and his team are experts, and perhaps more importantly, apparently Christie's MicroTiles just work. Configuration was literally as easy as plugging a DVI cable into the controller powering the stack of MicroTiles, clicking the "detect monitor and video card" button in EasyStart, and then picking the right resolution, which in this case was an improbable 720x2700.

While I don't normally bother expounding on every new whiz-bang technology that crosses my path (and as Andrew pointed out in his post), I am greatly impressed when you can just take something out of its box, plug it in, turn it on, and have it do what you expect. And that's precisely what happened with Christie's brand-new, high-end and (currently) low-volume offering, which is particularly remarkable since that combination of adjectives is like the unholy trifecta of excuses for why so much stuff in our industry (and the AV industry in general) doesn't just work when you plug it in and turn it on.

So, my hat goes off to Christie Digital.

If you are at ISE2010, a tower of MicroTiles powered by EasyStart will be on display at booth 10N118, so you can check it out for yourselves. Unfortunately I won't be there this time around, but I'm sure Andrew, Adrian and their cohorts will take good care of you :)

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Per last Friday's pre-announcement (which I got yelled at by Dave Haynes for), the Preset Group is now taking all comers for their digital signage mixer, which is scheduled for Tuesday, February 23rd from 6-8 at Lavo (a restaurant in the Palazzo/Venetian complex).

There's room for about 150, but there are only about 50 slots left as of the time of this writing.  So if you want to go, I suggest you RSVP now.

Sponsors will be picking up the tab for the first round of drinks covered and some some food. Many of the digital signage cognoscenti (which I think is an oxymoron) will be in attendance. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not, but I'll check it out first-hand before passing judgment :)

If you're interested, you can sign up here: http://dslvmixer2010.eventbrite.com/

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I'm stealing this directly off of Dave Haynes's blog for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it's a good cause:

A series of very simple hi-rez video spots are available now for download that help continue to drive awareness and donation for the relief effort in Haiti. Network operators can use to help direct funds to Red Cross groups in the US and internationally.

The downloads are available here: http://www.presetgroup.com/downloads/index.html

Landscape and portrait versions are available, and there are a few different file formats. We also left the Final Cut Pro file up there for producers to download. (That alone saves them 2 - 3 hours of work).

ANYONE can have these, including other networks, any end-users. You can even download the Flash versions and resize for your website, if you so choose.


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The Preset Group is having a free digital signage industry mixer on Tuesday, February 23rd at Lavo, a restaurant in the Palazzo/Venetian hotel between 6 and 8 p.m. They expect a good turnout, and have promised to provide a vendor-neutral, hype-free zone (as much as that's possible in our industry, anyway).

The sign-up sheet goes live on Monday, so check back here to find out how to sign yourself up.

See you there!

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Adrian Cotterill of DailyDOOH fame sent this over to me this morning, and I'm posting it because:

a) as a blogger, I hope he does the same at DSE so that I might not have to pay $7 for crappy Starbucks coffee outside the expo hall, and

b) he said that if I wasn't nice to him, he wouldn't vote for me for digital signage man of the year

So, without further ado, here's the good news for digital signage bloggers who will find themselves in Amsterdam next month:

Comfy Couches and Espresso Machines Lined Up for Blogger Lounge at ISE
2010 AV Trade Show

DailyDOOH news portal and blog for digital signage sector arranges
industry-first new-style press room for bloggers on hall floor of
major European technology show

LONDON - Bloggers have re-written the rules on how industries are
watched and analyzed, and now a leading technology and media blog is
changing the way trade shows are covered by these new-style
journalists.

Bloggers at next month's Integrated Systems Europe show in Amsterdam
will have comfy couches and chairs, free high-speed Internet and a guy
on hand making them all the espressos and lattes visitors can sip.

The Blogger Lounge, organized by digital signage/digital out of home
business DailyDOOH, is thought to be the first of its kind for such a
large AV show. While press rooms for mainstream and trade press are
typically hidden away far from a trade show's action, the DailyDOOH
Blogger Lounge will be located right among the booths and attendees in
the trade hall.

"We wanted to put together an area that was comfortable and relaxing,
and would allow our own writers and our friends who cover the industry
to sit, write, meet and catch their breath," explained Adrian
Cotterill, UK-based DailyDOOH's Editor in Chief. "This is going to be
the place where a lot of the buzz around ISE will be created and
relayed to readers all over the globe."

Cotterill added his hopes that the lounge attracts not only the
digital signage crowd, but writers more focused on the AV and systems
integration sector.

"People tend to not always realize the influence that bloggers and
social media in general has on how companies, and the industry as a
whole, are viewed," noted Dirk Huelsermann, the president of OVAB
Europe, whose booth will be next to the Blogger Lounge. "We're going
to see blogging and social media right in the middle of the event, and
that's fantastic."

The International Systems Integration show runs Feb. 2-4 at Amsterdam's RAI.

The DailyDOOH Blogger Lounge will be located in hall 10 at stand 10N118


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I've been catching up on my reading lately, and last night found myself looking at the September issue of Shopper Marketing. As I read Executive Director William Schober' editorial, I learned two things: first, there's a PBS special where Elmo (yes, the lovable Muppet) teaches kids how to cope with the financial crisis.   I kid you not.  Second, and more in tune with the theme of this blog, there's a good chance that the economic crisis may have shifted the way that people shop -- and this, in turn, may have shifted where digital signs need to be located to get optimum draw and have the biggest impact.

I don't know if other people have pointed this out and I'm just late to the game, but I admit I had to sit and scratch my head for a while after looking at the data.  While it sounds a little crazy to say that a recession could change where we need to put digital signs -- they're just pieces of equipment, after all -- when you step back and look at the way the media is consumed, it starts to make a lot of sense.  And that's precisely what happens if you look at the data from Nielsen's now defunct P.R.I.S.M. program. Steve Frenda, the managing director of strategy and member development for the In-store Marketing Institute threw together a little chart to illustrate a pretty significant trend in shopping behavior:

The reason for this shift to "deeper" shopping in the aisles by many consumers is because they're cutting back on more expensive dining options like eating out or getting take-out in favor of cooking more meals at home.  Cooking full meals requires a greater variety of groceries, which typically forces shoppers to do more in-aisle shopping, instead of simply picking up the old standards in a quick race around the perimeter.  When these shopper traffic patterns shift, so do in-store media consumption patterns. And while a store manager could use this data to move static POP displays and posters around pretty easily to regain some of the impact lost around the store perimeter, for many digital signage networks that have screens bolted into location, this is a bigger problem.

While endcaps and the racetrack are still going to get navigated and shopped (you still have to walk on them/past them to get to your desired aisles after all), it's possible that this traffic shift will reduce the premiums that networks currently charge for media on or near them. It's also possible that an increased demand for in-aisle marketing will increase the number of projects utilizing shelf-edge and in-aisle screens (Walmart and IBN already do in certain cases). However, considering the cost of adding infrastructure, it's equally likely that stores and network owners will take a wait-and-see approach to decide whether this new shopping behavior is going to stick around after the economic recovery revs up a bit more.

Tags: digital signage, shopper marketing

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pie? cake? tart? I don't know how that expression ends.

Regardless, Happy New Year!

No, this blog isn't dead. I just had a much busier than anticipated end-of-year, and frankly there wasn't that much digital signage news worth talking about (and plenty of other folks do a good job of covering the news anyway).

This is just a quick update to note that a) yes, I'll continue posting in 2010, and b) I'm enabling comment moderation on posts older than 2 weeks, because some asshat has been spam-commenting on this blog for the past couple of days in what appears to be a , very amateurish attempt at search engine optimization.

So I'm sorry if that inconveniences anyone. Obviously I'm not going to mention who the spammer is, since that would just draw attention to them, which is exactly what they want, the jerks.

Here's to a happy, healthy and prosperous new year.

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... in videogames :)

What... do you think my headline was misleading?  Did you not notice the "..."?


Anyway, according to Technology Review, "A team of European and U.S. researchers found ads displayed along with violent scenes to be more memorable to players than those shown with nonviolent content, even though players spent less time looking at them. The results are contrary to expectations stemming from research on television, where violence has been shown to decrease attention to advertisements. Developing a better understanding of the way advertising works in games could help game companies enhance their advertising strategies."

The researchers discovered this outcome by getting subjects to play one of two versions of a driving game.  "Those who played a violent version of the game, where the goal was to run down pedestrians, resulting in a blood-splattered screen, demonstrated significantly better recall of advertised brands than those who played the regular version. The researchers presented their work at the International Conference on Entertainment Computing last year."

Cries of desensitization notwithstanding, I can't imagine that these results would carry over to real-life scenarios, since there is plenty of well-documented evidence that memories formed during truly traumatic periods (such as witnessing an accident or act of violence) quickly become altered and/or suppressed.  Still, you just know there's some evil ad exec out there, sitting behind a desk, reading this article, stroking his white cat and thinking "Hmm...."

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... is that anybody can make one, nobody has to check whether another similar group exists, and there's no good way to manage them together if you're a member of many of them. Don't think it's a real problem? Check out the non-exhaustive list of digital signage groups that I belong to:






Seems a little crazy, doesn't it? There must be a better way.
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I haven't heard much news from IBN lately, though John Morgan and I trade emails every now and again to say 'hi.' But he just let me know that the firm is looking to step up their retail game by hiring one of the true retail media experts, Bill Lynch, formerly of PRN fame. Here's a bit from their press release:
Rob Brazell, CEO of InStore Broadcasting Network, said of Lynch’s hiring, “Bill is one of the most respected and admired people in the in-store media business. We are excited to welcome Bill and leverage his industry expertise throughout our growing business.” Rob Wolf, who held the head sales position for IBN since 2007, will assume new responsibilities as Executive Vice President, Research and Shopper Insights and will remain a member of the IBN board.

Lynch was most recently Executive Vice President of Sales with Premier Retail Networks (PRN) where he managed the National Endemic Sales Force. Prior to PRN, Lynch was Group Sales Manager for News America Marketing, where he managed and sold in-store advertising and couponing products.
While living through a global economic slowdown does suck, it also means that strong companies get the chance to realign themselves, try out some otherwise risky strategies, and make talent grabs and strategic acquisitions. Hopefully Bill will invigorate the folks at IBN and help them blaze a path out of any recession-related slowdowns that they might be feeling.

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Morning, folks. Here's some digital signage-related news for you:

• Arbitron's new Out-of-Home Digital Video Display Study has just been released (for free, no less), and offers a statistical sampling of how America ingests its digital signage. The short version: "Of those who recall seeing digital video displays in the past month, 76% noticed seeing them at multiple venues. Digital video displays in retail locations alone (including grocery stores, large retailer/department stores, drug stores, shopping malls or convenience stores) reach over half (53%) of American adults in an average month. OOH digital video displays at gas stations and movie theaters each reach over 1 in 5 U.S. adults per month." I plan to do a bit more analysis of this on a Digital Signage Insiders blog article later this afternoon.

• On the subject of Digital Signage Insiders, last week we posted a survey on how much YOU think digital signage should cost. We're at about 120 responses so far, but I'd like to get more than that. It takes less than 3 minutes to fill out, and I'll be happy to share the data with you. So get your friends and colleagues to fill it out too!

• The Emerging Media Lab has a neat article on the next generation of touch screens that promise better interactivity and feedback through some kind of tactile interaction (e.g. making it feel like you've pressed a button when you've just touched a smooth, flat screen). Worth a quick read.

• Digital and alternative marketing and advertising, which together will total almost $139.5 billion in 2013, according to market research firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS). These areas will drive growth in the marketing industry over the next 5 years, though it will be mostly cannibalistic (VSS has, "eight out of 20 major communications industry sectors declining, all concentrated in the traditional media, including newspapers, magazines, broadcast TV, radio, traditional out-of-home and Yellow Pages.")

Tags: digital signage, digital signage news

Looking for more digital signage info? Check out WireSpring's Kiosk and Digital Signage blog for in-depth industry analysis and even more news about the digital signage industry. While you're there, feel free to read up on our digital signage software and services

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If you live outside of the US, you might not know that this coming Friday (the day after our Thanksgiving holiday, which always falls on the fourth Thursday in November) is the so-called Black Friday, when retailers pull out all the stops to get you started on your holiday shopping in hopes of moving out of the red and into the black. A typical Black Friday scenario looks something like this:

1. Drag yourself away from the table after stuffing yourself with far too much turkey, cranberry sauce, cake pie, and other holiday goodness.
2. Get in the car at around 10:30 PM.
3. Drive to the Walmart/Best Buy/Target/Macy's or other store that you have picked as your primary Black Friday target after carefully weighing its location versus the population of the surrounding area, and the outside temperature.
4. Wait in line until about midnight.
5. Push you way through hoards of other shoppers to get one of the 5 $199 plasma TVs or $50 Egyptian cotton sheet sets (or whatever else) that the store has been advertising for 3 weeks, but hasn't bothered to stock any more of.
6. Leave with a sense of ultimate victory (if you're one of the lucky few), or, more likely, a bitter taste in your mouth and a bunch of bruises from where you got crushed by the aforementioned hoards.

In short, it's basically a combination of typical holiday shopping and American Gladiators.

The Monday after Thanksgiving Day has now been relabeled "Cyber Monday", as it's the day when everybody (ostensibly) goes back to work after the long holiday weekend, and proceeds to spend the entire day online shopping for deals.  It's the more laid back, refined way to shop like a crazy person, even if its name lacks the pirate-esque panache of "Black Friday."

Back here at HQ we were thinking about how we wanted to approach this holiday season -- normally a less-busy time than the August-November period preceeding it, and decided that consumer products companies shouldn't have all the fun. So we decided to do a Black Friday/ Cyber Monday deal of our own for our Digital Signage EasyStart product.  There's precious little data out there on whether such short-term promotions work on B2B products (honestly, how many B2B "impulse purchases" have you  made in the past 5 years?), but we figured it's worth trying out. Here's our ad:



While I'm not normally a fan of discounting, I have to admit that if I were a business buyer, I'd be pretty psyched about getting a deal by just playing along with some silly American tradition.

In any event, if you or anyone you know does happen to be looking for a digital signage player  or interactive kiosk for small networks, just click on the ad above, file an info request, and finalize your purchase by next Friday, and you automatically qualify for the deal.

If not, it's OK, I still like you.  Just not as much as before.

So happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the US. And to everyone else, happy rest-of-the-week!

Technorati Tags: digital signage, digitalsignage

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I'm having trouble deciding whether this is brilliant or insane, but it's definitely unique.  AdAge reported a few days ago about a decidedly #1 way to promote sports radio:
Canadian sports radio station AM640 wanted to promote its live commentary of ice hockey games. To show fans how exciting audio can be, it installed a poster over a urinal that provides commentary of the person doing their business.

The radio station targeted a toilet it knew would be full of ice hockey fans -- the one at Air Canada Bowl. When a fan approached, an excitable commentary lifted from an ice hockey game -- but one equally applicable to taking a pee -- began to play. Lines such as "He's approaching the bowl" played in an audio clip culminating with an ecstatic cry of satisfaction from the commentator.

This isn't the first time that people have tried to bring some kind of digital advertising to the urinal. In fact, I've have a couple of clients who have been putting up digital screens in men's rooms for quite some time. Heck, we've even seen interactive games where men are instructed to pee in certain places/directions to "drive" a car on a screen. (Ostensibly this was done to test whether the player was too drunk to drive home from the pub, but c'mon, we all know the truth).

Personally, I'm not too sure how I'd react to a play-by-play of stepping up to the urinal.

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... Two, that is. Just a few short years ago our industry was peaceful.  The dulcet tones of myself, Dave Haynes, and a select few others heralded the news of the digital signage marketplace with joy and good cheer. All was well. And then, this guy showed up:



And as they say, the rest was history. In the two years since Adrian and his gang threw open the doors of the digital signage saloon (I know, the analogy is thin... work with me here), things have changed. Thankfully, they've been mostly for the better.

The Daily DOOH crew have become my de-facto source for zero-day news in our industry, and they're one of a mere handful of players that I can count on to deliver un-hyped, un-politicized, and most importantly, un-advertorialized news, gossip and hearsay about everything in the digital signage world. While their no-nonsense approach to reporting the news and predicting the future has ticked off more than a few company execs, their foresight has also proven itself out on many occasions.

So Happy Anniversary, Daily DOOH.  Here's hoping you'll be around for a long while.  A word of warning, though: this industry ages us like dogs, so it should feel like you're about 14 now. I know I definitely feel about 70 years older.

:)

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It's proving to be an interesting week in the alternative out-of-home marketing segment. Here are a few stories to prove it:

• A new company has formed to place logos on the moon that will be visible from earth. They plan to send robots to the lunar surface to carve small impressions out of the lunar soil in such a way that the shadows will form clear shapes. Somehow, according to the website, this will help to save humanity. Alas, there's no word yet on pricing or availability (from Adverlab).

• Walmart is demanding more comarketing funds from its suppliers, according to this article at Adage, with the dual-goals of exerting more control over the store environment and suppliers, and, of course, producing a bit more cash for the retail giant during these troubled times. I'll probably blog on this topic a bit more later.

• Texas State Technical College is proud to announce what I believe is the first even (associates) degree in digital signage. The very thought of this sends chills down my spine -- and not the good kind. However, it does look like the course load will focus on content creation and planning, rather than the core load of hype generation, research regurgitation and wishful thinking that I would have thought to comprise the majority of work for such a diploma.

• Everybody and their brother has blogged about this already, but I'd be remiss in not mentioning that Peoplecount and Adcentricity have teamed up to create a variety of small- to medium-budget research programs for measuring digital out-of-home media, as notes Mediaweek. "The suite of five Research Lite packages are priced between $4,000 and $50,000, depending on the number of venues and markets required for Peoplecount's on-site intercept surveys."

Tags: digital signage, digital signage news

Looking for more digital signage info? Check out WireSpring's Kiosk and Digital Signage blog for in-depth industry analysis and even more news about the digital signage industry. While you're there, feel free to read up on our digital signage software and services

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Morning, folks. Here's some digital signage-related news for you:

• Jeremy Lockhorn at ClickZ has posted a brief on the digital out-of-home landscape, and while not offering much new for those of us thoroughly embedded in the industry, it's a nice summary for non-techies and folks making their way over from other advertising industries. It would have been nice had Lockhorn referenced some newer material, rather than a bunch of studies from 2006 and 2007.
  


• Seth Godin has an excellent post called The CPM gap which explains why we're OK with spending $1,000,000 CPM to attend a conference (and with some of the conferences I go to, it's probably even higher than that), but we balk at "high" online CPMs of $25, or "high" DOOH CPMs of $50.  This is an argument that I make -- and continue to hear made -- so often, and just another reason why I always try to steer my customers away from CPM-based pricing if there's anything better or more appropriate for them to use instead.
  


• Ad Lab has a neat little post on 3D signage that isn't digital. It seems to be a large-format poster with some kind of embedded lenticular lens or something. I haven't yet seen the effect in person, but I imagine in the right environment it could look pretty cool.
  




• Hmm... where oh where have I heard about this before? "The Australian government established an information and communication center called NICTA who is working on a project which will represent a transition from dynamic to responsive technologies. They are trying to develop a device that once released to the market will revolutionize the way businesses reach out to their consumers. It is a combination of a digital screen and a camera that will analyze the customer’s physical characteristic and provide the customer a personalized advertisement." The fact that it's being sponsored by the government brings an extra dose of scary to the party.
  


• And of course, if you're a privacy zealot, you've probably already seen CBS News's latest coverage of the "ads are watching you" argument.  If not, Dave Haynes has a good recount.  I've talked about this issue a number of times in the past, and don't think I need to add anything at this point.
  

Tags: digital signage, digital signage news

Looking for more digital signage info? Check out WireSpring's Kiosk and Digital Signage blog for in-depth industry analysis and even more news about the digital signage industry. While you're there, feel free to read up on our digital signage software and services

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While the guys at Intel and MIT are struggling to figure out how to wirelessly power a 60-watt lightbulb without giving us all cancer or microwaving small animals, a little company out of Korea has taken a different approach to powering useful electronic gadgetry: "solar" power from indoor lighting.

While that idea in itself is nothing new, their particular application is: Electronic Ink displays, designed for shelf-edge POP promotion, that have built-in photovoltaic cells that can generate enough power from the run-of-the-mill fluorescent lighting found in most retail shops:



While the prototype is still a bit crude, and the typical limitations of E-Ink still apply, this is a pretty clear indiciation (to me) of where things in the digital signage market are headed, and why sometimes the "green" initiative can produce seriously practical and useful benefits.


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After reviewing Wireless Ronin's quarterly statement yesterday, I noticed that they're down to a bit less than a year's worth of cash -- at least their current, totally ridiculous burn rate of something like $700K/month.

Consequently, I was not at all surprised to see this announcement pop up that they're now seeking an additional $6.7M by selling new shares at $2.90/apiece to an anonymous investor.

What I want to know is, honestly, who's going to invest in them at this point? Their model is broken, as is evidenced by the fact that they're getting further and further into the "consulting" by doing software development and content production projects. And believe me, there's nothing wrong with that at all. But that's a very different business than the digital signage game, one that's very hard to scale, and (amazingly) one that's even more crowded with competitors than the digital signage software space.

Still, I'm jaded to the point where I expect this round of funding will close, the firm will get a stay of execution, and will once again not have to make the difficult decisions, like:

1. Really slashing their headcount. RNIN ought to be able to get by (on those revenues, at least) with a headcount of 15-20 people, not 4-5x that number. It's not fashionable to talk about layoffs these days, I know. But as a publicly-traded entity RNIN is accountable to their shareholders first. Which is why they probably out to think about...

2. Going private. Yup, it's also not fashionable, but at this point I have to imagine that RNIN's ticker symbol is hurting more than helping when they go to pitch big deals. Admittedly, being public (and apparently having a totally genius financial adviser) gives them the ability to back for money over, and over, and over, and... well, you get the picture.

3. Giving their cash to me. There, I said it. I'm certain I could put it to good use :)

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