Rise Vision is the #1 cloud-based digital signage software that makes it easy to create, customize, and manage dynamic content across any screen—boosting engagement and communication for schools, businesses, and organizations. With over 560 customizable templates, seamless cloud management, and free expert support, Rise Vision saves time and transforms your displays into powerful, real-time communication hubs.
This episode of the SourceForge Podcast features a discussion on digital signage with guests Jennifer Jennings, Growth Marketing Manager, and Robb Price, Customer Success Manager at Rise Vision. The conversation covers Rise Vision’s expansion from the educational sector into industrial markets, highlighting their digital signage solutions that include over 600 templates, screen sharing, and emergency alerts. We discuss the benefits of their all-in-one platform, which integrates with tools like Google Workspace and Canva, and their new hardware offerings, such as media players and all-in-one displays. The episode also touches on cybersecurity measures, customer feedback, and future trends in digital signage, including AI integration and retail media networks. Jennifer and Robb emphasize the importance of customer feedback in shaping their products and services and discuss the company’s culture and values.
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Show Notes
Takeaways
- Rise Vision started in education and is expanding into industrial markets.
- Digital signage helps keep frontline workers informed and safe.
- The platform integrates with popular tools for easy content sharing.
- Emergency alerts are crucial for safety in schools and industries.
- Rise Vision offers over 600 templates for easy content creation.
- User-friendly hardware solutions enhance the digital signage experience.
- Cybersecurity is a top priority for Rise Vision’s platform.
- The software is compatible with various operating systems and devices.
- AI is becoming increasingly important in digital signage solutions.
- Integration of tools simplifies the tech stack for organizations. Retail media networks are expanding in various sectors.
- Schools are using digital signage for advertising and funding.
- Emergency alert systems integrated with digital signage can save lives.
- Dynamic lunch menus improve student engagement in schools.
- Digital signage can enhance communication with parents.
- Company culture at Rise Vision values every employee’s voice.
- Customer feedback directly influences product development.
- New features are continuously added based on user requests.
- Partnerships with companies like Amazon enhance product offerings.
- The future of digital signage will focus on human connection amidst AI advancements.
Chapters
00:00 – Introduction to Digital Signage and Rise Vision
01:38 – Expansion into Industrial Markets
03:40 – Features of Rise Vision’s Software
06:20 – Ensuring Seamless Functionality Across Industries
08:39 – Success Stories in the Industrial Sector
11:59 – Hardware Offerings and User Experience
16:39 – Cybersecurity Measures in Digital Signage
20:20 – Integration and Compatibility of Rise Vision Software
22:43 – Current Trends in Digital Signage
25:27 – The Rise of Retail Media Networks
26:26 – Innovative Use Cases in Education
31:29 – Company Culture and Core Values
35:25 – Customer Feedback and Product Development
39:10 – Partnerships and Future Collaborations
41:04 – Getting Started with Rise Vision
44:54 – The Future of Digital Communication
Transcript
Beau Hamilton (00:01.07)
Hello everyone. And welcome to the SourceForge Podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I’m your host, Beau Hamilton, senior editor and multimedia producer here at SourceForge, the world’s most visited software comparison site where B2B software buyers compare and find business software solutions. Today we’re focusing on a topic that touches everything from classroom announcements to workplace safety alerts and that is digital signage. And we’ve got a couple of great guests to help break it all down for us. We’re chatting with Jennifer Jennings, Growth Marketing Manager at rise vision and Robb Price, Customer Success Manager at Rise Vision. And if you haven’t heard of them before, Rise Vision has for years been helping schools communicate on screens all around school campuses. Think morning messages, event reminders, and emergency alerts, stuff like that. And now they’re expanding into the industrial space too and rolling out some pretty sleek new hardware like their media player and all-in-one displays. We’re going to talk about how they’re making it easier for organizations to get really important messages out fast.
We’ve got a lot to cover. And I think you’re going to walk away with a new appreciation for the screens you pass by every day. So to talk more about the company, let me introduce Jennifer, Robb, welcome to the podcast. Glad you could join us.
Robb Price (01:14.525)
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Jennifer Jennings (01:16.118)
Thanks, Beau. It’s great to be here.
Beau Hamilton (01:16.334)
Absolutely. So, Jennifer, I want to start with you. Maybe you can just kind of tackle the question of like what sparked the decision, first of all, to expand into different markets? know, obviously you started with the educational sector. How has the shift into industrial markets been going so far?
Jennifer Jennings (01:38.454)
Yeah, so this is a great place to start. So Rise Vision for many years was really focused on helping schools communicate better with digital signage, screen sharing, and emergency alerts. And that’s still a really big part of what we do. But early last year in 2024, we started noticing a trend when we were looking at our customer base, a large segment stood out, and that was industrial companies. So that’s for industrial for us, that’s manufacturing, warehousing, trucking and transportation, construction. It’s really big bucket, but these are businesses with a lot of frontline workers who don’t necessarily have a corporate email or they’re not necessarily sitting at a desk. So this was really interesting because not only were these customers growing faster than most, they were also super loyal. So they had been around with Risevision for many years and their satisfaction scores were higher. So that was a great thing to see. So when we stepped back and we thought about like, why is that? We realized that Risevision was just, was the platform was working for this audience and these customers. Digital signage was helping keep people safe. was keeping them aligned on the company goals and their production goals. And it was keeping them informed of like all the going ons within the company. So we decided instead of waiting for the market to grow on its own that we would really lean into it. So we made some adjustments on how we market, we built some more templates geared towards this audience in the industrial use. And then we just dialed up our focus on helping these teams feel more connected without making it harder to use digital signage technology. And so far the feedback’s been really positive and we’re seeing great momentum in the industrial segment.
Beau Hamilton (03:22.318)
That’s great. Yeah, it seems like a natural segue there. What are some of the primary features of RiseVision’s signage software? Can you paint us a picture of maybe what the software looks like, how it’s designed to help organizations just get their message out as quickly and easily as possible?
Jennifer Jennings (03:40.256)
Yeah, so this is great because it gives us a chance to reintroduce what Rise Vision is all about. So when we started, we were really about digital signage, but now at our core, we’re an all-in-one platform that combines digital signage, screen sharing, and emergency alerts, all with the goal of helping institutions, businesses, schools improve their communication, collaboration, and safety. So on the digital signage side, we have over 600 templates, so content is super easy.
But we also have integrations with a lot of popular tools like Google Workspace, Canva, Power BI, different social media platforms. So whatever the goal of the institution or the company is, we make it really easy for them to share that message and get it in front of the right people at the right time. Our other software features, we have screen sharing. So this makes it super easy to share content from any device to any display without having to use clunky hardware or a dongle.
So it’s perfect for classrooms where we’re really seeing screen sharing be used, but it’s also great for meeting rooms where people can just like rock into the meeting and start sharing their display without having to like fuss around with connecting different cables and kind of, you’ve been there, you know the struggle. And then we also have emergency alerts. So we integrate with common alerting protocol systems. We call them cap alerts, but these systems, you know,
These have been around in many industries. So when you get like an amber alert comes to your phone, like that’s a common alerting protocol system. So Risevision integrates with these platforms and we help organizations push out critical messages to displays when it really matters. So this could be inclement weather, it could be a lockdown, it could be some sort of medical emergency. And in schools and in businesses, it’s also really beneficial for like active shooter situations.
So what makes it really powerful is that it’s all in one place. With Risevision, don’t need separate vendors and logins. It’s secure, it’s easy to use, and Risevision works on pretty much any hardware. So it’s fitting in with our customers where they’re already at.
Beau Hamilton (05:53.804)
Yeah, so speaking along the same lines there of the all-in-one platform, obviously you mentioned some great features like screen sharing and emergency alerts, like with the Amber Alert you just provided. I imagine there’s obviously some challenges that come up when you’re dealing with all these different industries. How do you ensure that the features you offer just work seamlessly across different sectors?
Jennifer Jennings (06:20.278)
Think the biggest thing with making sure that it works is that everybody, whether it’s education or industrial setting or corporate setting, everybody is looking to basically do the same things. They want to increase their communication. They want to make sure that people are safe and they want to, you know, create the space of connection and collaboration. So leaning into the industrial setting, the challenges that people or these customers are really focused on, there’s three main goals. Like I said, they want to increase the communication with their employees who aren’t necessarily in an office or out of a desk. They want to support their safety initiatives. And for industrial customers, they really want to improve productivity. So digital signage is a simple but effective way to keep everybody in the loop, whether the workers are on the factory floor, whether they come to the garage and get trucks and then go out to the field.
It’s just a way to keep everybody connected. then safety is a huge goal for these customers as well. Industrial settings are more high risk. There’s moving machinery, there’s cars, there’s just higher risk. So using digital signage is a way to keep safety protocols top of mind and push out safety reminders so that safety is always front and center. And so that’s one of the biggest things we’re seeing with industrial is pushing out safety reminders and then productivity. We want to support our customers with their business goals and being able to display real time data really helps them and really helps employees make decisions based on that information.
Beau Hamilton (08:13.26)
Yeah, the industrial side of things is so broad. What are some of the specific, I guess, industries or companies you worked with, organizations you’ve worked with that could use your platform? Outside of just maybe the education institutions, because obviously that was your bread and butter for a long time, what are some of the new industries you’re focusing on in particular?
Jennifer Jennings (08:39.062)
Yeah, so we’ve seen some really powerful success stories come out of the industrial space lately. I have a couple of examples that just come top of mind, but Crown Cork and Seal, they are a production company. do plastic packaging and they’ve seen real improvements in both their safety and culture by having digital signage. So their health and safety manager, Jeff, he has been a real champion for getting Rise Vision across the organization.
They’re using Risevision to display KPIs and real data dashboards. So those are going out to the frontline employees so they can make informed decisions. They’re also using Risevision and digital signage to improve their safety and celebrate achievements across the board. Another one that really stands out for me is Louisiana Pacific. So they have achieved a full year without a recordable incident, which is massive. And so they use digital signage to celebrate that, but also keep safety at the forefront of everybody’s mind. And it just continues to build daily awareness. But one thing I really love with Louisiana is they’re having fun with their displays. So one thing that we talk about all the time is like, how do you get people to look at the content and be engaged with it?
And the thing I tell people is you need to figure out what resonates with your audience. You’re trying to create this connection with a bunch of people. You can’t just assume you know what they want to see or what they’re going to resonate with, but you need to figure out what it is. And they have done it. So at their Wisconsin location, they share different signage about like the biggest bucks and the biggest fish caught during the hunting and fishing season.
So like their workers are obsessed with hunting and fishing. So they just produce, they share content about that. They’re sharing safety, but then they’re mixing in content that they’re interested in and photos from whoever’s hunting weekend and stuff. So that’s great. And I love that example because it just shows how it’s not just all business. It can be really fun as well. And then the last example that I would give you is
Jennifer Jennings (10:59.83)
First Fleet, so they’re a trucking organization with locations across the country, but they have been able to improve their business operations by cutting down driver wait times because they share that real-time dock and dispatch information. So it’s made the operations more efficient and reduce frustrations because people, you can go and sit in the break room and then there’s a screen that shows, okay, your load is ready. This is the dock it’s on and you can you can get going on that.
Beau Hamilton (11:31.534)
Yeah, those are some great examples. I imagine each one, each organization you work with has their own unique set of challenges, right? But I think generally speaking, like obviously you want to work to make the science resonate with those who are viewing them. The fish and wildlife example of the employees at that company is a great one. So thanks for sharing that. Now, Rob, I want to switch our attention to some of the hardware offerings that you are now offering, think that’s really exciting. Can you talk about a little bit about like what they are and how they came to be and just like what inspired their development?
Robb Price (12:08.636)
Sure, so yeah, we have two devices that we offer, the Media Player by itself and the Alden One monitors that effectively have the Media Players built into them. The main goal was to make things easier for users because we would constantly get the questions of, you know, I love the Rise Vision software, this does exactly what I need it to do, what hardware do you guys recommend? And we would get people would find something on Amazon and send it to our support team or to us over here at CES, or they find something from Dell and they send us links like, what do you guys think of this? And we’d be like, you know, looking at it, you know, from a rundown, from readout, it looks good, but we’ve never tested on it. So the hardware that we recommend, all of us in the company, we all have it in our own offices. It’s running behind me right now. We run it 24 seven, we test and we verify all functionality on it and we’re able to remotely manage it for customers. So those reasons alone make it a great option for when we get asked, you know, why should I go with this for those exact reasons. That’s why we need something that we we could, you know, put our money where our mouth is and say, we know it’s reliable.
Beau Hamilton (13:21.55)
Yeah, my mind goes to, you know, my previous background of working with Android devices and iOS devices and product reviews. when I work with like the Android, for example, you have to work with all these different hardware components. And a lot of times, you know, some of the features don’t translate as well, depending on what hardware you’re using versus Apple kind of has like the all in one sort of closed system where they control the software and the hardware.
And I feel like that kind of relates in a way to what you’re offering. Like when it comes to user experience, how do you, how did these hardware solutions, you know, just enhance things like simplicity, performance, integration, when you have control of all the components.
Robb Price (14:10.919)
Well, speaking about the Rise Vision Media Player, the kind of ease of use and why I think a lot of people like it is it’s quite literally plug and play. And in all honesty, you plug it into Power, plug it into your monitor if you got one of the media players to go into a monitor. You use the remote to select your time zone. If you’re selecting Wi-Fi, you use the remote to type in the Wi-Fi password, which if you’ve ever typed in a long Wi-Fi password with a remote, you know it’s super fun.
Robb Price (14:38.331)
And then the first thing that comes up is the activation screen. says, hey, here’s the activation code. You go into Rise Vision, give it a name, type in that activation code, and that’s it. You’re off to the races. So most people, get it up and running in like five minutes. If it’s connected through hardwired, it’s even quicker than that. And it’s funny, in CS calls, I’ll always be looking for feedback. I’ll be like, hey, know, someone will buy like 20 media players. Maybe we hop on a call to do some onboarding, you know, any trouble getting everything set up and say, nope, no trouble. And then there’s just kind of dead air for a minute. I’m like, well, that’s great because they’ve got no feedback outside of it was simple, you know, two things and I was done.
But for users that aren’t using the Rise Vision Media Player or they’re a Windows environment or they’re a Google environment, we have detailed documentation on if you run in the Google domain, you would manage all these machines through like an organizational unit. If you’re running Apple TV, you can manage it all through Apple School Manager or through Jamf Pro. Windows and Linux users, they can create an image. We’ve seen a lot of users do this. They’ll create an image on a single machine and they’ll just roll that image out on every single machine that they have. you know, regardless of what you’re using, the goal is we, goal at least is to make it simple that all you got to do is you fire it up, you get activated, you schedule your content. that’s the goal that we, that’s how simple we always want to make it on whatever device you’re
Beau Hamilton (16:07.392)
Now, one area that I was thinking about is cybersecurity, right? Because we’ve probably all seen examples of signs that have been hacked to, I don’t know, display various unwanted messages or images or to push an agenda or just whatever it might be. And I feel like anything digital and online has that vulnerability, especially when it’s public facing and carries a message. It can just be a target for bad actors. So I’m just curious, like, what measures have you taken and ensure your platform and your devices remain secure.
Robb Price (16:39.409)
Yeah, so cyber security, it’s a big focus for us. And it’s great to hear and see the customers make it a priority to rise vision. We’re sock to certified, we’re TX ramp certified, we’re built on the Google app engine. And we have been since the start of a vision. We run annual penetration tests. We follow best practices to keep data and, and, our database and displays and everything really secure.
So, you know, the short answer is security is effectively built into every part of these media players, the whole platform, everything in regards to Rise Vision. Everything really has a security mindset around what we do because we know that’s important to all of our customers so they can trust that their networks and their content is secure and protected.
Beau Hamilton (17:26.232)
That’s good. That’s good. You’re prioritizing that because I think it is a, is definitely a, could be a potential issue, right? Now.
Jennifer Jennings (17:32.308)
Yeah, and both just sorry just to piggyback off that and security you had mentioned like, you know, the nefarious characters are actors out there that are trying to like take over content. We have seen that like Rob, that’s a that was a thing was it last year where it was maybe even last year, it was a big scandal in K 12 where these students had like hacked into a system and it’s because they were reading like the subreddit and they found out all this insider information and ended up being students but
Jennifer Jennings (18:01.974)
We hear all the time, especially in schools, students unplug the media players, they figure out how to override the content and share their own YouTube videos or their podcasts or whatever it is. And it even happens in professional settings where people unplug the media player and hook up their PlayStation to the TV and stuff. But that kind of thing is tricky to stop. But with the Rise Vision Media Player and the Abacor all-in-one display. Those devices are locked down to Risevision, so you have less chance of people taking them over and sharing their own content because that’s what their purpose built to do that. So a little added layer of security.
Beau Hamilton (18:45.366)
Yeah, no, I think if I were in grade school, I’d be I would be trying to tap into those signs in all the wrong ways. I mean, just just as a as the troublemaker I was, you know.
Robb Price (18:57.971)
Yeah, that’s one of the things I talk about when I’m in onboarding calls and we discuss screen sharing is like, know, if you were anything like a student like me and you saw the option for screen sharing, you better believe I’m going to do something with it. So we have extra added security for people that want to screen share where, you know, you’ve got to type in a select pin that we always recommend only that one teacher, one industrial person knows. So they’re the only ones that can screen share to it.
Beau Hamilton (19:21.794)
Right. Yeah. And also you have like so many, just kind of like almost how to guides on how to kind of hack into these systems and so much information out there, especially with, with some of these AI chatbots and tools we have. mean, I just see it just yesterday. Actually, I was, just using prompts to get really granular, kind of controls and configurations with some, just some pretty obscure open source software. And it was, I was amazed at just like how accurate the instructions were and how capable, how far I was able to go just from some simple prompts, you know? So I think from a security aspect, like you gotta, you gotta definitely stay on top of things in today’s, in today’s AI world. Rob, I want to just hammer down, like again, the kind of integration and, and kind of capabilities with the hardware offerings you now offer. Can you just like, again, elaborate on some of the compatibilities of RiseVision software with other devices that are out there already exist and just maybe how this flexibility benefits organizations.
Robb Price (20:32.243)
Sure, yeah. I mean, our media player didn’t come into existence, I want to say, mid last year. And Jennifer, can correct me if I’m wrong on that. But you know, and Rise Vision has been around since 92. So there’s a long history of us having to be hardware agnostic. know, we were, we started when Android didn’t even exist. The ones that people were using 99 % of the time was Windows. So being hardware agnostic, we run on pretty much everything.
We know a lot of users are really specific on what they can use. So we work on Windows, Linux, Chrome, Pi, Android, Apple TV, Smart TVs. Even if you just got something where all you want to run as a browser, you could use that for a Rise Vision display. So these are all common devices, right, that people are going to use out there for digital signage. Another thing, too, that we’ve seen with a lot of people is they’ll have existing hardware, existing monitors. Remember back there was a, when COVID all started, there was a huge boom for huge grants of money that were given to teachers to put, they’re called IFPs, interactive flat panels, to put those into their classrooms. And now they’re three or four years old and they’re like, what can I, I don’t want to just throw this thing out. It was so much money. And we tell people like, hey, you can still use that for Rise Vision. it’s, you can connect a media player to it. You can load the Rise player through the Android app store, the Google Play store. Like there’s all sorts of different ways to go. Any, pretty much any hardware that you have, if it’s running a supported OS, and like I said, we run it pretty much everything, you can run Rise Vision.
Beau Hamilton (22:14.99)
Wow, yeah, I love all the different applications. That’s great. And so you’ve been in operation in business since 1992, right? Obviously, yeah, you mentioned that’s before Android even existed. Obviously, there’s a lot of technological shifts that have happened in the last handful of decades since that time when you were founded. I don’t know a lot of the lore and background and the shifts in those specific digital signage industry. And maybe you can talk to that talk on that point, Jennifer, but I’m just curious, like, what are some of the current trends that we’re seeing in this in this sector, and maybe even specifically within the education sector? What do you what are you doing to like, stay stay relevant and on top of them?
Jennifer Jennings (23:03.318)
Yeah, for sure. I think I, I, I’ve only been in the space. So I’ve been at right by rise vision for the last two and a half years. So digital signage was kind of new to me, but from everything that I’ve seen, everybody that I talk to, like I talked to customers, so many customers every week and, digital signage is really becoming like the standard now, especially in schools. gone are the days of printing out posters and bulletin boards and that kind of thing. There is a really big push to having digital communications in schools and especially for things like the emergency alerts and the cap alerts, that added level of safety is just like a must for schools. overall, mean, digital signage is really evolving. We’re seeing a couple of big trends in this year and kind of like going forward.
First, I would say is integration. Customers want to connect all of their favorite tools so they can create content once and then share it everywhere. So especially in schools, things like Canva, things like pulling in a Google spreadsheet or some kind of integration so they can share like the bus schedule. That’s been huge and that’s a really big focus for us is just finding those integrations that people want and then creating them for digital signage.
Second, people are all about the all-in-one solution. they’re kind of, you know, they’re tired of piecing together software, hardware, things from different vendors. They don’t want to buy hardware from one company, software from one company, screen sharing from somebody else, emergency alerts from somebody else. They just want one platform that can simplify their tech stack and then it’s just easier for the IT team or whoever’s using it, because everything’s in one place. The big one, of course, right now is AI. Everyone’s talking about it. There’s AIs everywhere. We even chatted about it in this call. There’s huge potential with AI and digital signage, from creating content to monitoring your hardware and your displays health and keeping everything online. So I think AI will be a huge focus for everybody in the next year, and even just the coming years.
Jennifer Jennings (25:27.328)
Yeah, it’s just a big shift. And then the last one I want to mention is we’re seeing a lot of growth and a lot of expansion in retail media networks. So basically, people are trying to turn their displays into a way to generate money and turning them into revenue generating tools. It’s really taking off in retail, but we are seeing it in higher ed and even real estate.
But we do see it in education as well. So this is a way for schools to essentially pay for their digital signage is by having advertisements from maybe, you know, the local pizza shop has an advertisement at lunch or, you know, you can have ads from the community centers or whatever it is. You’re just, bringing in that information for students and for parents, but you’re also just making a little bit of money off of it. So, those are kind of the main things we’re seeing right now.
Beau Hamilton (26:26.648)
Yeah, the advertising aspect is huge. can just picture, you know, some of the time lapse over the years of like Times Square and all the digital signage in Times Square and how it’s evolved. It’s only, you know, getting more and more just saturated with screens. And I think, yeah, I think the digital signage, the advertising aspects is big, right?
Jennifer Jennings (26:50.176)
It’s huge, yeah, you’ll never, we’ll never get away from ads. They’re going to be everywhere. They’re be on social media, but they’re also gonna be, you know, possibly at your work. Why not? Yeah.
Beau Hamilton (26:59.246)
true. Now, you mentioned, so obviously a lot of the integrations are attractive features. And you mentioned how like a school might, you know, want to pull a bus schedule and post it on screen. Some of these like specific use cases. But I’m curious, do you have any other like particular maybe success stories or use cases that you’ve noticed, whether it’s from schools or industrial clients?
Jennifer Jennings (27:26.72)
Yeah, so we talked about the industrial customers. They’re doing great things, but I really love what the schools are doing. And obviously, I’ve talked to hundreds of schools, but they’re doing some really amazing things. So one of the first ones I want to mention, because I think this is like, it’s just so amazing. So Nassita schools in Wisconsin, they integrated their RiseVision digital signage with their emergency alert system. So like I said, common alerting protocols, there’s many options out there, but it’s becoming really big for school safety. So they integrated Rise Vision with their emergency alert system and they cut down their lockdown response time in half. So they can lock down their entire campus in under 30 seconds. So that doesn’t just have to be the worst case scenario of an active shooter, but Chris, the IT director over there, he was telling me, if a student, you know, student has a medical emergency, maybe they have diabetes and they they have an episode, they’re able to lock down the campus and have everybody stay in their classrooms so that they can deal with, you know, that one situation and not have students, you know, wandering around the halls or, you know, they can just they can focus on that. So it’s not just about efficiency, it’s potentially life saving that you can lock down a school in under 30 seconds. And they say like, in an emergency or in an active shooter situation, the first 30 seconds are critical for how that situation gets handled. So that’s just one of the most amazing stories that I’ve talked to schools about is being able to lock down that campus. And then a couple other examples of just more like everyday levels of how we can improve operations and communications. Redwood City Schools in California,
So they have, I think, nine schools and they manage all of their lunch menus from one location. So Abigail, she manages all nine schools’ lunch menus from one spot and she’s able to make them dynamic, so students are looking at them. They share nutrition information about making healthy food choices. So there’s lots of content for kids to see around nutrition.
Jennifer Jennings (29:50.914)
And then we also, mean, engaging with older kids, I think is so much easier, obviously, because they can read and you can have a lot more like dynamic content because, you know, their reading comprehension and stuff is higher. But now, Naunta, I’m probably not even pronouncing that right, but Naunta Primary School. I thought this was a great example because they are a primary school, so their kids are younger but they’re using digital signage to create student readers and like build up excitement about reading. But then they also communicate with parents through pickup and drop off signage. you know, we shared that schools will share like the bus schedules so that students know like which bus is loading and that kind of thing. But they’re also communicating with parents. when parents are, you know, hanging out waiting for their kindergartners or their grade ones to come out of the school, there’s signage there that’s telling them, you know, here’s a reminder about this event or whatever the case is. So just a great example of how to get even parents involved.
Beau Hamilton (30:59.276)
Yeah, those are all great examples. I’m a very visual person. So I appreciate just the illustrations of different use cases. know when you’re dealing with messaging, there’s just an almost infinite number of different ways you can use these products and your services. So yeah, that’s great. Yeah, from the emergency standpoint to something more positive and uplifting with the community reading, I think that’s great. Now, obviously, talking with you guys, I don’t know you guys personally, but you seem like great, very articulate. You know a lot about the industry and it seems like you guys work well together. I’m just curious, like some of the, maybe the core values of your company culture and maybe how that is reflected in your products and services. Rob, can you maybe like just talk about that? Like what’s, what is your company culture like and has it had an impact on what you guys do?
Robb Price (31:57.041)
Yeah, sure. So I know Jennifer mentioned that she’s been here, but between two and three years, I’ve been here for 20 years. So I was around in Rise when we were in office of just like, what was it, like 10 of us. And now, you know, there was an office of 10 of us. Now we’re all over the globe type of thing with a whole bunch more of us. But the one thing that has stayed since the very first day I started with Rise is regardless of, what department you’re in, who you work with, if you’re customer facing, not customer facing, everybody gets a voice. So if anybody see, the whole see something, say something, you see something, no, you know what, I don’t think this is the right way to do this. Anybody can bring it up as long as they’ve got something worthwhile to bring up. And we don’t just blindly follow anything. when a trend comes up, we’re gonna say, okay, let’s start doing that. Like we really try to think about what we’re doing and make sure that it works for us and our infrastructure and how our customers are going to use it. In that kind of ideology of we don’t just blindly follow and everyone gets a voice. If they see something, they say something. That goes to how every team works together from me working with support to support working with development to development working with our product management team. We all kind of work that same way together. It’s how we train people to use Rise. It’s how we support Rise.
One of the things that has been around since day one is whenever we’re asking for feedback, it’s not just kind of lip service. Like I’ve had long two hour conversations with people where it’s like, okay, here’s exactly how I need rise to work. And it’s not like, okay, we’ll just blindly do that. It’s like, why do you need it to work that way? Have you considered this way? Where is the game in doing it this way versus this way? So we, we, we try to find out if someone, if we, people have feedback for us, what purpose does it serve? How is this going to make your day-to-day work with Risevision that much better? We’ve got customers that have been with us for years, like who have been here as long as I’ve been with, with Risevision. So, and their feedback that we’ve asked for, and then they realize, Hey, these guys really listen to it. That’s guided new features, new changes, new hardware options. That’s, that’s really, I think the, the real core values that, that drive Rise Vision. do listen and implement feedback and everybody who works in the company, even people who have been using for a long time, they get a voice and shifting how what we turn in.
Beau Hamilton (34:27.736)
That’s great. Yeah, that’s great to hear. know. I think that’s the testament to how long you guys have been in business, right? I think you have to, it starts with a you know, conducive company culture. Communication obviously is huge, but just being able to like, feel like you’re being heard and listened to in every aspect of life, but especially with, with a business is, is important. And it also like is reflected obviously in the product and it just like is reflected through the customer service aspect. How would you say this translates to like a customer facing feedback, you know, offering that you guys have? Because obviously, like, when you’re dealing with software, and now hardware, there’s going to be some like tech technical difficulties, troubleshooting, you’re have to like walk through. How do you, how do you like provide this, this sort of feedback and improvements for customers?
Robb Price (35:25.063)
Normally what happens is, so I’m always on-boarding, having on-boarding music with people, people wanna hop on a call, hop on a Zoom call, phone call, Whatever feedback that comes back to us, we’ll kind of, every Monday we have a company-wide meeting that we refer to as the Share and Learn meeting, where any feedback that the support team has gotten, any feedback the CS team has gotten, we’ll bring to the entire company. And again, we don’t just go with hey, this person said they want this, so I’ll bring it up. It’s got to be something that we think is worthwhile to bring up. So we collect as much feedback as we can from people. One of the most common requests we get is, hey, I’d like a presentation that does this. We get the from industrial, from schools, from everywhere. I’d love a presentation that would do this. That goes straight toward a creative team. And majority of the time, creative team starts working on it.
Beau Hamilton (36:20.556)
Now, Jennifer, you had so many great examples earlier on how education institutions use the signage. Do you have any particular examples of client-based input and how some improvements have been made based on that?
Jennifer Jennings (36:38.87)
Yeah. So like Rob said, we take customer feedback really seriously, even from marketing. I talk to customers every day all the time. And when I hear feedback, we share that with the team. one of the biggest things, and Rob, correct me if I’m wrong, but I think screen sharing was a popular request that we were getting from schools. They were looking for a super simple way to present. They had IFPs in the classroom. They had a TV or some sort of display in their classroom. They were using it for digital signage. So how can we make use this even more. So that became a major focus for us and we launched screen sharing late last year in Q3 2024. But it’s not just even like big software offerings like screen sharing, it’s little requests. We hear a lot about font customization. So, you know, we have these 600 plus pre-built templates that, you know, they’re professionally designed and animated. But people are like, no, I want my own, I want my branded font or I want to choose, they wanted that flexibility. So we rolled out font options and just offering better design flexibility. And then we hear from people, especially in schools, so they’re sharing their digital signage content, but then they’re also sharing content on Facebook or Instagram. They wanted to be able to integrate that and make it super simple to share back and forth. So we took that feedback and now we have the meta social media integration. So Facebook and Instagram, you can pull your feed from your school’s Facebook or your business or whoever it is. So you can pull that feed into your digital signage or you can pull the real live like follower count and encourage people to follow you on social media and all that kind of good stuff. it really just depends on what people are asking for. But it really makes Rise Vision better for everyone because we
do take that feedback so seriously.
Beau Hamilton (38:40.492)
Yeah, I imagine you’re just constantly adding new features and updates as you receive the input, right? You mentioned Canva, screen sharing, all the different templates you offer, Google Drive support, and the list goes on and on. I’m curious, are there any new partnerships or collaborations on the horizon that will expand some of the offerings and reach within maybe the education sector, but also just with some of the industrial use cases as well?
Jennifer Jennings (39:10.56)
Yeah, so we were actually acquired by AUO a couple of years ago. They are like a major player in a lot of things, but being part of the AUO group has really opened up a lot of doors. So that really brought out the, with AVOCOR, so that they’re part of the AUO family. So they’re well known for different collaboration products like IFPs and in more the enterprise and corporate world. But we worked with them to create the AVOCOR all-in-one display with Rise Vision. So that’s the purpose-built digital signage display. You plug it in and it runs Rise Vision. So that’s really been a game changer for a lot of different schools, but also businesses because you don’t have to buy a TV and a media player separate. It’s just all-in-one. But we do have some really exciting partnerships happening. One of the ones that we’re really proud of is with Amazon.
So we were one of the first digital signage platforms to support the Amazon signage stick. It’s a super affordable, reliable signage stick that we’re seeing out there that people really love. Cause you can really just add it to your cart on Amazon, two day delivery. And then we’re also working with some companies in the K-12 space to expand our product to more devices and just offering schools a more complete platform for their displays, whether it’s in the classroom or in the hallway or the gyms, the cafeterias, but I can’t share all of those secrets yet.
Beau Hamilton (40:43.118)
More to come later, yeah, stay tuned. So first, I know we have a lot of prospective customers listening right now who might be interested in signing up and working with you, no pun intended. For schools and organizations interested, what steps should they take to begin the process? And Rob, maybe you can tackle this question.
Robb Price (41:04.883)
Yeah, getting started with RISE is super straightforward, which is again, a lot of our customers really appreciate because once they know they want to use digital science, they want to start using it right now. So the first step is you just go to risevision.com. You’ll see a start free trial button there. If you’re already an existing customer, you’ll see a login button too. But you could start that free trial that gives you instant access to explore the platform, see how it works, see all the different presentations, all that sort of stuff.
Robb Price (41:35.195)
From there, you can either use your own hardware, if you’ve got existing media players and monitors that you want to use, or you can see what our recommended options are, which are fully optimized for Rise Vision. And then once you’re set up, the software is super intuitive. You can start creating presentations right away. We have 650 plus different templates that you click Add Presentation. You can scroll through all them, you’ll be there till the cows come home going through all of them. But you can find the ones that, this is perfect, this is what I need. You can start pulling in content from exactly like Jennifer was saying, know, Canva, Google Slides, Microsoft, PowerPoint, like everything. You know what mean? There’s a bunch of different options that are in there. If you do run into any trouble, we offer free training every Thursday. We have a live free training.
And I always, whenever I’m talking to people about it, they always like to bring up that it’s live. So you’re not just watching like a recording that we recorded how many months ago. It’s live done by our support team. So anybody has a question, how do I do this? What about this? What about, they can answer it right during that live training. We have really fast technical support. I’m really proud to say I was with our support team for a very long time.
Our SLA for getting back to people is one hour, one business hour, and we don’t just get back to you with like, yeah, yeah, we’ll look at this in a second, like, you know, we’ve seen how many times from a lot of other companies when we have an issue, but we actually, within that hour, look at what the issue is. Okay, here’s what I would suggest. A lot of our customers love that when we respond back to you, either through CS or through support, we’ll record, we’ll use Loom to record like little videos. Hey, here’s what you do, and check this out, and here’s how can do this. So it’s one of the things that really, really make our support team really stand out and really get people started up. Our goal is to make sure that you’re up and running quickly and confidently You know what you’re doing. You’ve you’re like, okay great I understand everything I can do here and and you you you go to town with it so, you know whether you’re a school or a business or Manufacturing facility you don’t need a big IT team. You don’t need to be super technical We built rise vision to be really simple really really flexible and kind of ready to go when you
Beau Hamilton (43:47.406)
That’s great. just love how like, you know, engaged you are with this subject, obviously, with working with customers. I think just based off how knowledgeable you are in your answers here, it really just speaks to that. And the live Thursday, you know, kind of customer support days, that’s really neat. I’m gonna have to tune into one of those, one of these days. But it sounds like yeah, it’s pretty easy to get on boarded. Go to rise vision.com right?
Robb Price (44:18.451)
Yep, exactly. Risevision.com and up in the top right you’ll see start free trial. You’re good to go.
Beau Hamilton (44:24.758)
Awesome. Well, before we sign off here, I just want to, maybe kind of open it up and, and, leave the listener with one final kind of looking off into the future of, digital communication. Like just looking on the horizon, like for risen rise vision, for digital signage as a whole, like, where do you see, where do you see this going? And, and just, where do you see your role in particular, in shaping this, this digital future we’re headed in?
Robb Price (45:03.379)
Well, think one big thing that, know, even as, you know, and I know we keep on going back to AI, even as, AI becomes a part of what we do every day, at least in Rise Vision or every element of our lives. One of the key things that I see continuing with me in Rise Vision and continuing for Rise Vision as a company is users always want to be able to have somewhere to go to. Hey, here’s an idea I have. Hey, here’s what I’d like to see in the system.
Hey, I need some training on it. We’ve got some new people where, Hey, we want to roll out rise vision in this new part of our industry. As long as we are always there to, basically be able to train people and be able to make them understand, Hey, here’s how you, here’s how you make it work for exactly how you’re looking to make it work. I think that’s really the future. That’s a lot of that’s going to be automated as part of automated onboarding on AI support and that sort of stuff. But I think that will be where we really shine as we continue to shine is making sure that we’re there for people to hear what they want it to do and making sure that we can train them once we’ve introduced that functionality on how.
Jennifer Jennings (46:11.094)
Yeah, I would I would kind of echo that Rob is with the world of AI and moving towards more AI rise vision is really dedicated to and I want to continue to ensure that it’s where people and where people supporting people. So, you know, maybe we do have some AI onboarding or some kind of, you know, AI tools and functionality to make things easier. But at the end of the day, we’re still people and we’re still here for you and we’re here for you.
Beau Hamilton (46:44.376)
I think that’s a great takeaway. Yeah. I completely agree. think everything is all, everyone’s concerned with AI and embracing automation, but I think there’s going to be a real kind of awakening and shift back to the human side of things and the human element, which kind of gets lost in this whole transition we’re in. at the end of the day, it’s us, it’s the human connection that kind of keeps us all connected. And yeah, I think that’s great.
Well. It’s been a pleasure chatting with you. I definitely have a newfound appreciation for digital signage. So thank you both for that.
Robb Price (47:20.211)
Yeah, thank you for having me.
Jennifer Jennings (47:20.674)
Thank you so much for having us.
Beau Hamilton (47:22.766)
Thank you all for listening to the SourceForge Podcast. I’m your host, a Beau Hamilton. Make sure to subscribe to stay up to date with all of our upcoming B2B software related podcasts. I will talk to you in the next one. Cheers.