What a great way to educate — and sell — License Plate Enabled Parking

I attended a seminar today on License Plate Enabled Parking. Four companies (T2, Digital Payment Technologies, Park Mobile and Genetec) were the presenters, USC here in Los Angeles was the venue.

This is really a great idea. Its is a Roadshow.  They started in Dallas, hit LA today, then they are off to Newark and will end in Miami at the end of the month.

The four companies first described their role in the combined operation using pay by license plate at a multi space meter (Digital Payment), pay by cell phone (Park Mobile), License plate recognition and enforcement (Genetec) and the pulling of all the data and information together, plus enforcement, (T2).

The companies were great at not pitching their product more than pitching the concept. When they were asked if anyone had put all four together they were honest.  Not yet, however a number had used three of the four in different combinations.   Someone asked one of the presenters a hard question about the flexibility of software dealing with University Business Rules and got a reality based answer.  Sometimes we can, sometimes we can’t.

They then had a ‘live’ presentation where attendees could ‘become’ parkers with sample license plates and could enter their plate numbers, pay by cell phone, be scanned by enforcement vehicles and see all the information corralled in a central database.

It was a great program and a great idea. If you are in the Northeast or Florida and are interested in this topic, go here to find out more information. They will be in your area next week.

JVH

PS — its not a new idea — a group of noncompeting companies in the UK put on a similar roadshow a few years ago, inviting folks into hotel conference rooms across the sceptered isle. This event focused more on a specific issue and how it is solved by the vendors. It seemed to be of most interest to Universities and some cities.