Digital signage that runs itself
Event signage has two modes. There's the printed schedule taped to a foam board outside each room, which is wrong by lunchtime because the keynote ran long and everything shifted. And there's the expensive third-party digital signage platform that looks good but doesn't know your event data, so someone has to manually update every screen when a session changes rooms.
Both are broken. The first is cheap but unreliable. The second is expensive and creates a parallel workflow that duplicates data you already have in your event platform. Neither updates itself when your schedule changes.
ema's signage system takes a different approach: the screens are part of the event platform. They bind directly to live session data. When something changes, every screen that cares about that data updates on its own.
Four surfaces, one system
Not all event screens do the same job. ema treats them as four distinct surface types, each designed for its context.
Room holding slides sit inside session rooms. Between talks, they show the upcoming session, speaker details, sponsor logos, and event branding. When the next session starts, the slide transitions automatically.
Door panels live outside rooms. They display the current session happening inside and what's coming next, so attendees walking the hallway know whether they're in the right place without opening the door.
Wayfinding screens go in corridors and lobby areas. They show the schedule for that floor or building section — a glanceable view of what's happening where, updated in real time.
General signage covers everything else: lobby welcome screens, sponsor content, announcements, countdown timers, and QR codes linking to the event app or feedback forms.
All four types are designed in the same canvas editor. All four pull from the same event data. Change a session room in the schedule builder, and the door panel outside the old room clears itself while the new room's panel picks up the session.
Design once, deploy everywhere
The template system works at three levels. System templates give you a starting point — clean, functional layouts for each surface type. Organisation templates let your team create branded designs that carry across every event. Project templates handle event-specific customisation.
Each template has configurable slots. Drop your logo into the logo slot, your colour palette into the brand slot, and the template applies it everywhere. When a new event starts, you're not rebuilding signage from scratch. You're adjusting an existing template to fit the programme.
Templates are cloneable. Find a system template that's close to what you want, clone it, adjust the layout, and save it as your own. The original stays untouched.
Smart playlists and live data
Static playlists are a relic. You shouldn't be manually adding slides about "Session 3, 2:15pm, Room B" when that information already exists in your schedule.
Smart playlists pull content from live event data. A playlist track can be "today's schedule for this room," or "current session details," or "sponsor rotation for platinum tier." The content populates automatically and updates when the underlying data changes.
Live data bindings go deeper. A single slide can bind individual elements to event data — the speaker name field pulls from the session's assigned speaker, the time field pulls from the schedule, the QR code links to the session's feedback form. If the speaker changes at the last minute, the holding slide in the room updates without anyone touching the signage system.
This is the same philosophy ema applies everywhere: one change, everywhere. Update the schedule, and the app updates, the wayfinding screens update, the door panels update, the holding slides update. No parallel workflows. No manual screen edits.
Cloud and on-site, together
Convention centre Wi-Fi is not always reliable. That's not a controversial statement — it's a planning reality.
ema's signage works via cloud by default, but supports a local on-site server for venues where internet connectivity is uncertain. Screens paired to the on-site server keep running even if the venue's internet drops entirely. When connectivity returns, data syncs back to the cloud.
This matters most during the moments when signage is most critical: morning arrivals, session transitions, and emergency communications. Those are exactly the moments when network load peaks and connections become unreliable.
Operator overrides
Playlists run themselves, but operators need the ability to intervene. A fire alarm, a VIP arrival, a last-minute room swap, a sponsor who paid for a full-venue takeover — these all require pushing content to screens immediately.
Scope-based overrides let operators push content to a single screen, a room, a floor, or the entire venue. Emergency broadcasts take priority over everything. Sponsor takeovers replace the current playlist for a defined window. Session-specific content targets the screens that matter.
The override system is designed to be fast. When something goes wrong at an event, the last thing you need is a multi-step workflow to change what's on a screen.
One change, everywhere
The deeper point isn't about signage. It's about what happens when your signage system is connected to the same data as your schedule, your app, your wayfinding, and your registration.
A speaker cancels. You remove them from the session in the schedule builder. The app updates. The wayfinding screens drop that session from the hallway display. The door panel outside the room shows the revised schedule. The holding slide inside removes the speaker's name. All without opening the signage editor.
That's what "runs itself" actually means. Not that there's no human in the loop — but that the human makes one decision, and the system carries it everywhere it needs to go.