Keywest Technology Digital Signage Adds Spice and Substance to 28th Annual World Series of Barbecue

Identifying and working with other volunteer technology partners, Keywest Technology provided the digital signage expertise to keep the American Royal Barbecue cooking.

Add one part smoke, two parts your favorite meat, 510 master barbecue teams from around the world, 70,000 hungry visitors, and what do you have? The 28^th Annual World Series of Barbecue, commonly known as the American Royal Barbecue , held Oct. 4-7 in Kansas City, Missouri.

What else do you have? Until this year, thousands of people -both contestants and visitors- meandering around acres of parking lot surrounding Kemper Arena and the American Royal -as well as in and out of the American Royal building- looking for scheduled events, activities, transportation routes, and musical acts --generally just things to do.
However, the 2007 edition of the event was much different thanks to a volunteer effort on the part of Keywest Technology, headquartered just a few miles from the venue in Lenexa, KS, and several other high-tech companies that contributed their time, technology and effort to install a temporary world-class digital signage and projection network.

To keep the crowd and barbecue competitors current on a schedule of events that changed every 15 minutes, Keywest Technology put in place a network of five 42-inch digital signs, including an interactive digital sign visitors could touch to retrieve the information, and two projection screen locations in high-traffic areas used to traverse the span between the main barbecue areas.

Many companies contributed to make the digital signage application a success. AccelerOptics of Carthage, MO, supplied three XL-a-Vision high-gain projection screens as well as three video projectors for the high-traffic locations. Proprietary AccelerOptics technology allows projected images to be viewed on the screens even in full daylight.
Flat panel display manufacturer Olevia (Syntax-Brillian) supplied five 47-inch LCD panels. Strategically placed around the concourse on stands from Peerless Mounts of Melrose Park, IL, the LCD displays presented event schedules, details on musical acts and other attractions, transportation information, including routes and bus pickup times, and other information.

HOTMETAL Creative , a Kansas City, MO, creative design agency specializing in electronic, print and interactive media, designed much of the content in keeping with the American Royal Barbecue's theme of "Show Them." Using a mix of Wild West fonts, fresh-off-the-trail earthy brown tones and other western design elements, HOTMETAL Creative advanced the Old West look and feel through the modern medium of digital signage.

Keywest Technology provided five MediaXtreme players as well as its I3 interactive digital signage software to schedule, control and playback content for the event. The company took a leadership role, identifying and organizing companies to contribute the technology needed, installing panels, projectors and screens, putting in place and maintaining the temporary IT network used to tie the LCD screens and projectors into an integrated system, and updating content played back on the network as schedules changed.

When the American Royal -a non-profit volunteer organization with an extremely limited budget- decided it needed a way to communicate a schedule of events that literally needed to be updated every 15 minutes, it struggled for a practical solution, said Pat Meads, a volunteer with the organization.

When it found Keywest Technology, the American Royal could not have asked for a more responsive, enthusiastic volunteer to take on the responsibility for building a digital signage network, she said.