ISE Amsterdam - Successful Launch, Against All Odds

The ISE show in Amsterdam was a big success. The Alioscopy 3D screen on our booth was very effective at stopping people in their track, helping us initiate discussions. The picture was very sharp, and we were able to successfully show combinations of 3D movies and interactive, multilingual contents.

Naked eye interactive 3D: the next big thing in digital signage?

Despite the size of the show, there weren't that many 3D screens. Tao Presentation's interactive 3D that you can see with the naked eye was something new and eye-catching. We had visitors from all over the world, from education to retail to advertising. Many of them told us this is something that the market is waiting for. Clearly, Tao Presentations hits a sweet spot in the emerging 3D market.

New Doremi products explained with Tao Presentations

In addition to our own booth, Tao Presentations had another nice spot on the Doremi space, with a 42' glasses-free Dimenco/Philips screen. It's a very different technology compared to Alioscopy, with very different trade-offs in terms of viewing comfort and image quality.

Doremi told me that they were quite pleased with the effect on visitors, and that the application ran smoothly. It had taken a bit of tuning, but the picture was extremely easy on the eye, despite the surrounding lights. The depth effect was really stunning, animations were smooth. Overall, it worked exactly the way it was supposed to for three days in a row.

I love it when a plan comes together

Everything was not as rosy on our own booth. The show didn't start too well for us. The day before the show, we sent our keyboard and mouse to storage by mistake, so we couldn't start our computers. I quickly went to the local MediaMarkt to buy replacements, but I couldn't return on time (the show floor closes at 6PM sharp, excuses not accepted).

The first day of the show, when I connected the new keyboard, our primary demo machine refused to boot up. Windows complained that I had tried to change the hardware, then refused to boot, then offered me a "repair" option which I couldn't activate because it wouldn't recognize my new wireless keyboard and mouse. It took a couple of hours before I was able to have a demo running. Tons of stress, fiddling with graphic cards setup, re-seating connectors. It turns out the root cause was the front USB ports, which seem to be dead.

We had backups, of course, but they were laptops with more limited graphics capabilities. One of them,which I had used at the Startup Week-end in Nice, also has a weak HDMI connector, with a lot of noise in the picture. Noise is bad enough in 2D, it's nearly unbearable in 3D. We started using our Mac laptop on the third day of the show, in addition to the main PC, when it became very clear that running on Macs and Linux as well as PCs was a big selling point. Also, we discovered during that show that the AMD graphic card in our newest demo PC is very fast for a single 3D application, but becomes sluggish when two of them run simultaneously. The problem seems specific to that card, we didn't observe it on systems equipped with Nvidia cards.

At the convergence of 3D and interactivity

On the end of the first day, before I was really done with repairing the whole setup, we had a visit from a journalist. This gave us a nice opportunity to explain what we are doing.

Of course, we had the usual "demo effect". I was trying to speak holding the mike with one hand and using keyboard and mouse with the other. It worked most of the time, except for that one moment where I sent the "Google" page spinning wildly and then would change pages a bit randomly trying to get back on track. Lesson learned. This was practically the last "glitch" of the show. From then on, things were much smoother

3D works, with or without glasses...

During the second and third days, our systems worked flawlessly and practically without interruption. Of course, I couldn't resist tweaking the demo here and there (yes, I know I shouldn't do that).

We had a number of visitors from all over the world: Korea, Japan, Russia, United States, Israel, Egypt, Sweden, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy, France, to name a few. A number of industries were also represented, from 3D hardware manufacturers to contents providers and event organizers.

Overall, the reaction was quite positive. Many visitors commented that our product addressed a real market need. And indeed, we were at the convergence of the two big trends on the show. The first trend was 3D, with 3D screens everywhere, including big 3D video walls from Philips (without glasses) or Hyundai (with passive glasses). The second trend was interactivity, with multitouch tables (Samsung, Philips), video sensors (Fraunhofer institute), touch tablets (almost everybody). But the combination of the two was hard to find. The only other interactive 3D application I saw was a demo for 3Di screens, and it was much more limited in its capabilities than Tao Presentations.

Off-site meetings

We also had very interesting after-hours meetings, notably with manufacturers of 3D screens. Amsterdam is really a beautiful place, with amazing canals, impressive architecture, and cafes all over the place. That being said, the weather was against us. At -10°C, you can call this "chilly" (that same week saw snow in Nice and the south of France).

Overall, the three days were exhilarating, exhausting but also wildly productive. See you next year!