Successful first ECA standardisation training

The event was held in the fine premises of Holland Casino, in the city of Utrecht, in the Netherlands.

The training was given by Ethan Tower, Director of protocols at GSA. The GSA is an international trade association that creates benefits for gaming manufacturers, suppliers, operators and regulators. They facilitate the identification, definition, development, promotion, and implementation of open standards to enable innovation, education, and communication for the benefit of the gaming industry.

Ethan Tower presented various types of standards and their effectiveness in the current market developments. He illustrated the benefits of the standards in a very illuminating way and generated a lot of interaction and lively discussions between the participants.

During the training it became clear that as IT becomes increasingly important for the gaming industry, the development of IT standards is a necessary prerequisite. Without such standards, the communication between slot machines and casino management systems or between casino management systems and financial systems or CRM-systems has to be developed on an individual basis by every casino operator. This is of course a very expensive and time consuming IT-development system.

In an ever more interconnecting world, it will create a deadlock between the need to interface and the costs involved. The future developments of the casino-ICT were also discussed during the training, and insights generated through the training material presented by Ethan supplied valuable directions for all participants.

“The training was a huge success, extremely instructive and fun,” explained one participant. “It provided us with new directions for the developments of our respective organisations”, said another, adding that “it will be brilliant to implement different standards with these lower costs, particularly looking at the time savings”.

Ron Goudsmit, ECA Chairman, commented on the ECA trainings, explaining that “the ECA and its members actively promote the development of skills and expertise,” adding that “we believe that as an association it is important that we deliver high quality training targeted at raising professionalism in Europe’s casinos and ensuring the excellence of our services. The ECA training events offer opportunities to explore latest industry developments and the topics and trends that will influence the industry in the years to come. With this series of trainings, we believe that the ECA creates an environment in which our members’ staff can come together with other casino industry experts to network, share best practices and learn from each other.”

The ECA is delighted to announce that this is yet another successful ECA training session, which will be followed by more ECA training events in the future. Potential topics for these events include: security issues, fraud detection, getting the fun back into the games, as well as CSR, or compliance issues. The next ECA Slot Summit will be organized on 20-21 March 2012 in Hanover, in Germany. More details will follow shortly.