California Dreaming

• By Sherleen Mahoney
• Sep 23, 2009

We had great fun delivering the crystal engraved awards to the New Product of the Year winners Tuesday. Photos and videos of the winners accepting their awards will be posted on Security Products’ Web site soon. Congratulations to all the winners. The best reaction award goes to Tiffany Ferris, production manager for Dotworkz -- their D3 Outdoor Camera won in the accessories category.

After all the festivities, I met with Steve Ipson, director of advanced dealer development for Diebold, who informed me about the launch of the Diebold Advanced Dealer Program.

The dealer program targets high-end dealers with IP expertise and enable pre-certified security dealers to leverage Diebold's monitoring services. The program was created to expand Diebold's North American network, while enabling select dealers to provide new services to their customers.

Unlike other dealer programs in the security industry, participating dealers won't be required to sell their accounts to Diebold to participate. And the program isn't intended to make existing legacy programs obsolete.

Another interesting meeting was with Steve Artim, CEO of WirelessWERX, who gave me a presentation on SiteWerx, a precise indoor location service for mobile 911 callers. I didn’t realize that most current location technologies can only deliver location information within an area of about 3,000 feet for mobile callers.

This means that first responders can’t pinpoint your exact location if you’re unable to tell them. They will arrive within your vicinity, but then have to search for you. The WirelessWERX solution provides location information within 30 feet. The exact building, floor and room number can be transmitted to first responders, who can then find as immediately as if you were calling from a landline. Please look for a detailed article about this topic in the November issue of Security Products’ Industry Exchange.

Tomorrow is the final day at ASIS and one of the highlights will be listening to Condoleezza Rice’s keynote speech. She will share fascinating stories of her experiences in the White House and provide her opinion on various global affairs. Politics aside, she is a strong, successful female role model, worthy of everyone’s admiration.