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On November 24, 2021, a long-awaited event took place, for which we have been actively preparing for several months! "Look Event. Autumn Edition 2021" was held in the format of an online show, where 7 speakers representing various departments of our company, incl. those located in different countries, have told our customers and subscribers about functional innovations and other important news from Look digital signage service.
An event was opened by our company’s CEO, Ilya Zorokhovich. In particular, he started with:
“Today is quite an exciting day for us, since this is the first event of this format in our history, and we sincerely hope that it will be dynamic, informative and with the maximum benefit for each of you! The last two year have been a real challenge for all of us! Both personally and in terms of business. But that taught us a lot! This is exactly the time when it is necessary to show true strong character, and determination and, in spite of everything, move forward, step by step, day after day! And I'm proud that the Look DS team showed these qualities to the fullest and, despite all the difficulties, incl. the distance between our three offices in Hungary, Russia and the US, remains a single team that gives a high-quality result! And today we would love to share this result with you!”.
After that Ilya gave the floor to Dmitry Tupikin, CTO at Look, who told us about one of the key novelties of this year - a software player for devices running Windows 10 and higher.
“It's not a secret for any of you that Android has always been the main client platform in the Look. Because we believe that this operating system is the future due to its extreme flexibility and functionality. Precisely because of our focus on one OS we were able to create a truly reliable and effective solution that helps many of you in your daily work. However, times are changing, and we understand that in order to meet your needs better and become an even more versatile tool for your projects, we must move forward and expand the line of our software players. And today I am happy to present you a completely new Look Cross Platform Engine along with a software player for Windows-based devices! Its main purpose is to give our customers’ an ability to power their digital displays using robust and powerful Windows-based devices, like, Intel Compute Stick or Intel NUC”.
Besides, Dmitry shared our closest plans for the Look’s cross-platform development:
“I would call this player our firstborn on the way to full cross-platform, because similar products for Linux, OSX, Tizen and Web OS are already on the way. And according to our estimates, this will allow us to cover up to 90% of the digital signage hardware market, which, in our opinion, sounds positive and extremely promising!”
Following Dmitry, our Head of product design, Alex Makhalov, took the floor. With the help of our Quality assurance specialist, Gabor Orosz, he presented two more important and very interesting service’s innovations, starting from the Layouts 3.0 feature:
“To put it simply, this is a new, more advanced version of the Layouts already existing in our management system. For those who are not yet familiar with it, I will explain literally in a nutshell: this function allows you to create playback layouts by dividing the screen into several areas and adding different content items to each of them. In addition, your layout can be designed multi-layered using various interactive elements”.
Gabor in his turn has shown on the real use case how to create beautiful interactive scenario right in the Look CMS without writing a single line of a program code.
After that, Alex spoke about another completely new feature:
“Next in line is another, this time completely new, function that takes Look's possibilities for external integration with third-party resources to a completely new level. We call it Actions! To put it simply, Action is the ability to temporarily or permanently change the state of the layout (data of widgets, layers, or location of new content) by execution of the requests or by integration inside of the Zapier platform”.
To make the opportunities this functionality brings more obvious, Gabor showed us in real time how to create a scenario with a change in the price on a digital menu board using Google sheet and the Zapier service. Then, Gabor also talked a little about the less significant updates, such as a screenshot, a new weather app, and others.
This concludes the presentation of functional novelties and it was the turn for news from the sales and marketing department. First of all, its Head, Roman Filyakov, told the guests about what his team is currently doing in order to facilitate the choice of compatible hardware for our customers. Specifically, he reported:
“I'm sure many of you are constantly faced with the problem of selecting hardware for a particular software solution, or vice versa! How not to be mistaken? How can you make sure that the software and hardware parts of the comprehensive solution will interact with each other perfectly and will not let you down at the most crucial moment? That's why, in order to make it easier for you to choose hardware within your local markets, in recent months we began to actively cooperate with many Android-based hardware manufacturers and arrange stress testing of their devices here in our lab in Budapest. Thanks to this, we can guarantee that this hardware will work perfectly with our software and you will have absolutely no problems with such a solution. Based on the results of the most interesting tests, we film detailed video reviews, which you can watch on our official YouTube channel. So, among the hardware we recommend, you can find such widely distributed options as Android TVs by Philips and Sony, Nvidia Shield, Google Chromecast, Xiaomi Mi Box, Amazon Firestick and many others”.
Roman also recalled that Look offers its customers reliable and affordable media players of our own production and especially drew attention to the flagship model:
“Also last year, we presented our flagship 6-core HD-2218 PRO with True 4K support, which has proven itself around the world over the past year as the perfect solution for complex projects with multi-layered layouts and 4K videos”.
In addition, he noted that recently we have developed our online store, where our customers are able to purchase test samples or small batches of our media players in self-service mode. Then he introduced Victor Morozov, who is responsible for interaction with the global network of the Look partners in our Sales Team.
In his turn, Victor told us about the current conditions of the Look Partner Program, especially focused on its White Label level:
“The current program has 2 levels: Standard and White Label. The first option will be an excellent choice for partners who are just trying their hand at the digital signage market or are integrating complex projects based on products from various manufacturers and vendors. In its turn, the WL level will certainly be more interesting to those who are already promoting or initially planning to promote a set of services and solutions for their clients under the umbrella of their own brand. Taking this option, you will get a CMS interface with your logo and main color on your own domain. At the same time, all this will still be hosted on the Look servers. This option, in fact, allows you to launch your own digital signage service without any significant investment in development and support and sell it to your customers with any value added, while also using the increased Partner discount we provide”.
Next, Roman has suggested viewers to take a look behind the scenes of our wonderful support chat, the operators of which help our clients solve emerging problems around the clock and get to know one of them! He has introduced Jane Kaminsky and ask her to share some details of her daily work.
“We conduct on average from 10 to 30 dialogues per day. Basically, we are approached by users who are not clear how this or that functionality works and how to make one or another action. Most of the issues are resolved within a few minutes. However, there are more complicated cases. For example, my longest chat lasted more than 3 hours, but lucky me, we still managed to solve the client's problem. After all, this is why we are here! By the way, recently we have added the Knowledge base section to our website, where you can find out details on the operation of any feature in our service. Really comfortably! However, in my opinion, for our users it is important to know that at any time they can get help here and now, without mailing support and waiting for responses for several days. Well, for us, of course, the main thrill in work is when a person manages to help without creating a ticket for our tech support guys” – said Jane.
In a final of the event Look’s CEO Ilya turned to the guests of the show again:
“This is all for today! Hope you’ve enjoyed it, guys! Please, do not hesitate to share your thoughts concerning such kinds of events in the comments to this live or via email. This is really important for us, because we’re going to arrange our shows on a regular basis and your feedback will definitely help us to make it better! Thanks for watching! Bye and take care!”
Also, Ilya has mentioned that most of the listed novelties will be available in our service since the very beginning of 2022.
See you on the next Look Events in the upcoming year!
