UBC Communications & Marketing has provided these PowerPoint templates to allow UBC departments to create high-quality materials to help inform the UBC community of upcoming graduation events through the UBC Digital Signage network.
Please read the packaged instructions before using the UBC Spring Graduation Digital Signage Templates. If you have questions about the templates, please contact Jamil Rhajiak (jamil.rhajiak@ubc.ca).
Template Preview:
We wanted to see what would be involved in using the many digital signage screens across the UBC Vancouver campus to promote Alumni Weekend 2012. This was done because during normal operation, despite being on the same network, the digital signage screens across campus operate as individual nodes that serve the units that purchased them. We wanted to see if we can leverage the enterprise infrastructure that exists to enhance the experience of Alumni Weekend 2012 participants.
The opportunity to add to a cohesive experience for our alumni and friends wouldn’t have been possible without the help of:
Another source of great content has been student photography. From the start of January 2011 we’ve had pictures from two student photogs – Rabi Sun and Tim Blonk. (Photo Credit: Rabi Sun (Top Left, Top Right, Bottom Middle), Tim Blonk (Top Middle, Bottom Left, Bottom Right))
Here are a few words from Tim on why he’s into photography:
“For me photography is all about freezing the present and defining a moment in space and time. When that satisfying ‘click’ of the shutter is heard, I know that no one else will ever be able to make that exact same picture.
Since I was 8 years old I always wanted to get my hands on my parent’s camera, though they rarely allowed me to even come within a metre of it. Three years ago I bought a point-and-shoot camera, and in February of 2010 I decided it was time to upgrade to a DSLR. It opened a whole new world to me, and within a couple weeks I had watched hundreds of ‘how-to’ YouTube videos all about photography.
Today I am a photography-addict and there is no changing that. There is so much to learn about photography and there are so many things to try out, making it a truly infinite hobby. I hope to start a project soon in which I can sell my own pictures and donate part of the returns to charity. Photography allows me to express my experiences and ideas in the form of 10MB .JPG files.”
-Tim Blonk
Collectively, the Digital Signage team recognizes that the quality, variety, and interestingness of content that appears on displays will be what determines wether they attract attention, or are ignored as background noise. Of course, we want to see each display have a connection with its environment and the people who work, live, and study in those spaces.
As we move forward with the project we want to work with the UBC community to generate and try new types of content. In this series of posts I’ll share the different things that we’re trying out.
Over the past few months I’ve had some really good interactions with UBC Film Production Associate Professor, Chris Gallagher around some ideas for the large outdoor sign at University Boulevard and Wesbrook Mall. Specifically, we thought that it would be really great to involve the students in his FIPR 233 class and some of their project work.
We ended up adapting around 10, 1 minute pieces from an assignment to create a 1 minute short film. Some of the pieces didn’t quite work without audio, but the students were pretty accepting of the limitations that the large outdoor sign poses. I had a chance to visit the class and the students were really happy to learn that their work would be showcased in such a prominent way – what was more exciting was heading out to the sign in the evening after I had visited the class to see a few of the students watching the clips. I distinctly remember one student on the phone with his friends, urging them to come check out his piece…that’s some really encouraging stuff to hear.
The videos played for the entire month of November. They were interspersed between our regular content at the top 15 minutes of each hour. This was done to avoid inundating passers by with non-stop video content as well as to see the “shelf-life” of the content extended.
Overall, I feel that this experiment with using students’ for-credit assignments was a success. Not only did we have more interesting content displayed at a major traffic hub on campus, we also bridged a gap between the operational and academic sides of the University. We also engaged students in a way that really enriches both their experience at UBC (normally these clips would only be marked – not showcased in this manner) and adds to the community at large (yes, i’ve been brushing up on Place & Promise).
Stay tuned…there’s more to come about our partnership with Chris and the Theatre & Film Dept.
Sincerely,
Jamil
After spending the last few months testing, trouble shooting, and running around to make sure content was displaying properly we were finally at a point where we could share the results of our Digital Signage pilot with the Communication Cardinals group (communications professionals from UBC).
The presentation went fairly smoothly, I didn’t trip up on my words as much as I normally do – the nods of approval from the audience really helped. I guess when you’re sharing that you want to help make communicating easier to a bunch of communicators it’s not going to be an uphill climb. Some of the points that I shared were:
One question from the audience was, “How do you define success?” I kept my answer simple and along the lines of, “High quality content that’s presented through a network of signage and the satisfaction of our user base – that’s you.”
I’m looking forward to the next couple of months!
Cheers,
Jamil
Some users have been unable to preview content within the CoolSign Network Manager. To help resolve this, please follow these simple steps.
If you have any questions about the procedure outlined above, please email us at digitalsignage-systems@lists.ubc.ca.
We will be providing four small-group workshops for digital signage managers in December. The workshops will cover the areas of content creation and content scheduling using CoolSign.
Dates:
If you are interested in attending a workshop, please RSVP here.
We will be conducting a planned service upgrade to UBC’s Digital Signage service. The service upgrade will take place on the following dates and times:
During the upgrade window, service availability will be affected as follows:
If the above service window conflicts with any planned signage requirements at your location please contact us at digitalsignage-systems@interchange.ubc.ca.
The service upgrade is being done to:
The service upgrade affects you if one of the following applies:
If you have any questions and/or concerns with regards to the service upgrade, please contact us at digitalsignage-systems@interchange.ubc.ca.
The migration of display nodes to the new digital signage infrastructure and software should, for the most part, be transparent – i.e. no action needs to be taken on your part.
The following scenarios will prevent the migration of a display node:
If a player node is not migrated to the new infrastructure the display will no longer appear in the signage network and content administrators will not be able to assign/schedule assets (content, channels, playlists) to this display.
Units/department with display nodes that do not have the .NET4 pre-req will be contacted on an individual basis prior to the migration window.
Units/departments with display nodes offline during the migration window will be contacted on an individual basis the week following the migration.
Please contact digitalsignage-systems@interchange.ubc.ca if you have any questions with regards to the above.
As a digital signage content administrator, you should already have the following software installed locally on your computer:
After the service upgrade, you should no longer use any of the CoolSign applications installed on your local computer to access the UBC Digital Signage service – the software is not compatible with the new release of CoolSign running on the back-end servers.
After the service upgrade, the CoolSign Network Manager and Content Wizard applications will be accessible on a central server. You will need the following to connect to the central server:
UBC Communications & Marketing has provided these PowerPoint templates to allow UBC departments to create high-quality materials to help inform the UBC community of upcoming graduation events through the UBC Digital Signage network.
Please read the packaged instructions before using the UBC Spring Graduation Digital Signage Templates. If you have questions about the templates, please contact Jamil Rhajiak (jamil.rhajiak@ubc.ca).
Template Preview:
Believe it or not, digital signage can be more than just an electronic version of an events board. Understandingly, it’s difficult to find the time to create content that engages your campus community. In my daily browsing of all things digital signage I came across this blog post that nicely packages a few ways to engage your audience.
Enjoy!
-Jamil Rhajiak
Communications Coordinator, Digital Info Channels | Communications & Marketing
The University of British Columbia | Vancouver Campus
We have experienced an unforeseen outage with our servers, the issue has been resolved and we expect display nodes to come online shortly. We apologies for any inconvenience.
If you have any questions, please contact us at info.digitalsignage@ubc.ca.
Sincerely,
Digital Signage Team
UBC IT will be performing maintenance on the CoolSign servers on November 15, 2013 at 6:00PM for approximately 1 hour. CoolSign management functions will not be accessible during this service period. We expect no interruption to the digital signage endpoints.