On Wednesday I’m on a panel at DPAA talking about convergence.

The sexiness of cross pollinating mobile, social and DOOH is a hot topic. The coexistence of these technologies is often characterized as “Convergence.”

But convergence is a myth.

What is more important is interoperability.

If my device/network can’t interoperate with an audience’s device/network, it might as well be dead to the world. Media will be less measurable, less actionable, less engaging, less immersive, less… everything if it cannot interoperate. And when most people talk about convergence, they actually mean interoperability.

Convergence leads us down the wrong path - we do not need to build neighboring technologies into our devices/networks, we need to build connections and interfaces into them so that they can communicate with each other.

That’s why our DOOH screens, players, CMS, networks etc need to display tweets, checkins, Facebooks fans, text messages… because if they can’t they are like yesterday’s newspaper - old news.

Our DOOH screens need to co-operate with the outside world - and each other.

Interpretability is the word.

I’ve received a number of emails about an article in MediaPost titled “Twitter Comes to DOOH” by Erik Sass, posted on Friday, August 12, 2011.

The article concerns “a new offering from Visix, Inc., a digital signage software provider, which recently unveiled a “Twitter Board” and “Twitter Bulletin” among its new DOOH options and creative services.”

The article’s title and Mr Saas’s comments that the combination of Twitter and DOOH “never really occurred to me before I saw it done the first time” leave the reader with the clear impression that Visix’s product is an industry first.

I first want to congratulate Visix for doing the right thing. DOOH + Social media is a great strategy to encourage audience engagement, but I’m sure Visix know that they are not the first to do this.

It might seem petty to proclaim that LocaModa did this first, but here are a few facts:

Since 2008, LocaModa has been running live social media streams on some of the largest DOOH networks in the world, including Clear Channel, RMG, Zoom Media, Ecast and JCDecaux.

Our platform is agnostic - it runs on any digital signage software including Scala, Broadsign, X20 and a multitude of DOOH networks’ proprietary content management systems.

Over 70,000 of our Twitter screens have been used by schools, conferences, events.

We’ve received awards (including one from MediaPost over a year ago) and published dozens of article and white papers about the use and best practice of Twitter/Facebook/Foursquare and DOOH.

And finally, it’s also in the public domain that we have an intellectual property portfolio covering the use of web-based social media on DOOH with one granted and four pending patents with priority dates going back to 2003 (pre Twitter in fact).

So I’m surprised that a Mediapost journalist, especially one who’s written extensively on DOOH and Social media could look at Twitter coming to DOOH in 2011 and think it’s a news story.

LocaModa’s very own Greg Stellato tells me that if you get a chance to visit the windy city this summer, you should check out (and check in) Miller Lite’s use of LocaModa fullscreen foursquare in select bars. If you do, you could win some epic prizes like an LA flyaway, Yacht Charter on Lake Michigan or a private yacht that hops around the Virgin Islands!

This is one of the greatest photo captures of a LocaModa app ever! Thanks to Gabi Porter at Metromix NY for nabbing this awesome photo at the Foursquare Mayors Ball at Thompson LES in NYC. The event proved to be a gathering of today’s Bright Young Things of Social Media, and the venue certainly provided a fitting backdrop to the action!

Thanks to our friends at BMA Engage for sending us this pic of our Wiffiti + Foursquare app in action at their 2010 National Conference at the Swissôtel Chicago. The speaker in the background is GE’s CMO, Beth Comstock.

You can also join the conversation remotely using the commands below. The conference runs through Friday, with a full agenda here.

Txt @BMAengage + your message to 87884 or email your photos to [email protected].
[full screen version]