Date post: | 26-Jul-2015 |
Category: |
Technology |
Upload: | zach-phillips |
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photo credit:Stefan (Flickr)
Loud and Clear!Internally Focused Digital Signage
Jeremie King & Zach PhillipsWestern Carolina University
Inception – The need for communication• A team retreat brought about the idea – We need
new ways to communicate
• The need as requested: Publicly Visible Global Availability (at least to our immediate team) Low Complexity
Turning the idea into a functional product• The idea couldn’t really be considered new if it
mirrored existing communication platforms
• The product had to stand apart from: Email Instant Messaging Phone
Initial Thoughts• Something we could display on a large screen
within our office space – 32” displays and up
• Something quick and informal – Short messages in the vein twitter
• Global access – Something web based to allow for easy transmission – Low technical requirements on the client
• Something hosted on the campus network to avoid the possibility of public access to our messages
Finding The Solution
Surely we can find something that’s
FREE$$ $$
Open source options• Lots of half baked options
• We found that StatusNet met our needs fairly closely
(http://status.net/)But didn’t work out in the end….
If you want something done right…• After a week of complaining about the open source
software market, we broke down and decided to build our own tool.
• The goals were the same as before, but with a focus on:
Readability from a distance
A focus on the final product being displayed on a large screen
Making it as easy as possible for people to post to the boards
A work in progress• This Blabber 1.0
• For our team it meets the needs that were set in our initial planning
• Blabber has been running in our organization at this capacity for about 3 months
Lessons Learned• Students really like the system
• Being public has a way of dragging people into the conversation
• Just like traditional digital signage, content is still king. However, content has different goals.
Informative – Redistribution of traditional communication Fun – Team members exchanging thoughts and ideas Open ended questions – Broadcast messaging with no obligation to
follow up
Expansion• The time to realize the initial goal was shorter than
expected
• The system was expanded with several unplanned features that make it work better in our environment
• New opportunities present themselves as good uses for the system
Future Additions• Release the project as open source on Github
• Syndication of existing content
• Mobile App
• Introduce new technologies to improve graphics/ reduce overhead
• Whatever great ideas present themselves
To us, Blabber has emerged as a form of
Social Signage