The Document Strategy Forum just celebrated its fourth birthday last week. This event is unique for its focus and its size. The focus on transactional documents brings together an audience with a common need: how to keep up with all the changes in regulation, technology, and customer demands surrounding transactional communication, which is at the center of every business’ interaction with its customers. The organizers stay tuned in to what is of interest to their audience, with an example being this year’s addition of both a track and an exhibit floor pavilion for SharePoint. The narrower scope and smaller venue, as compared to the mega-events such as Graph Expo or On Demand, leads to superior interaction opportunities for both attendees and the solution providers.

The focus and size in no way limit the value and learning opportunity provided. There are six tracks and over forty-five sessions dedicated to providing information and insight. The best part of the sessions provided is that they often lead to very interactive discussions amongst the speaker and the attendees, leading to a sharing of perspectives across different functions and industries. I attended a session on Managed Print Services where I was reminded that when speaking about anything with documents, it is a good idea to set the stage by explaining whether you are referring to internal business documents, business-to-business documents, or business-to-customer documents.

The opening keynote presentation by Forrester Research, “The State of the Document Processing Services Industry 2011”, provided great background and thought provoking information for the rest of the conference. The presentation states it is time to change our process approach. We think we’ve got it all under control and we do to a certain point, but firms still struggle to manage untamed business processes: customer onboarding, claims processing and invoicing process. “1998 – 2009 marks a lost decade consumed with packaged apps and leaving enterprises stuck in cement, unable to rapidly change, compete and innovate. 48% will invest in collaborative technology to improve app performance.

Another part of the Forrester presentation described Customer Communication categories and primary applications. They defined the categories as: structured, interactive and on-demand. Key industry concerns include: enterprises trying to get rid of a big headache – aging structured output systems, the ability to quickly comply with new regulations; rapid movement to on-demand and interactive transactions and archaic fulfillment process.

Another unique take away I got from this year’s event was to remember that when talking about “multi-channel”, (and who isn’t?), we need to not only think about the broad variety of output channels with print, email, web-hosted, social media, mobile, etc., but we also need to focus on the breadth of the input information channels from multiple administrative, transactional, marketing, and yes, even customer response sources. As a process-focused individual, this suddenly seemed obvious; you need to look at the inputs, tasks, and outputs in any process to be effective, I do not think I have experienced any other time which highlighted the input side.

I believe that the focus provides superior interaction and networking opportunities. The attendees are mostly high level individuals with 45% of them holding C-level or Director/Department Head Positions. 28% of the companies represented generate 3+ million outbound transactional documents per month (and 13% of those are generating 10+ million per month). I personally have met and established ongoing relationships with many key contacts through participating over the past four years.

This event may be one of the best kept secrets in the industry, and I am looking forward to what the show organizers will do to keep improving for their 5th anniversary event in 2012.

For more information on transactional document solutions, visit Océ Production Printing – Transactional Resources.

Recently, I had the chance to spend some time at the DMA 2011 conference in Boston. While I absolutely enjoyed my time at Graph Expo, I was excited to attend a show that primarily consisted of marketing agencies and in-house marketers. I was looking forward to seeing what topics were trending, what challenges were being hotly discussed, and what technologies and channels were being debated.

It’s certainly very important for all of us that are associated to the printing industry to understand what marketers are thinking and talking about. Thus, I’d like to share some of my observations from DMA 2011. I hope that you find them helpful!

1. Marketers are absolutely in need of integrated solutions:

One theme that seemed to exist in many of the conference sessions was the need to break down silos and to integrate marketing efforts. As more and more marketers move to reach their customers and prospects through multiple channels, many of them have fallen into the trouble of storing and managing multiple databases. Those databases might store conflicting or simply varying bits of information about their contacts. This harms a marketer’s need to try to communicate with their audience in real-time. It also prevents a marketer from truly delivering one-to-one and relevant messages.

Thus, service providers (especially those that are committed to offering marketing services through multiple channels as opposed to only print, mail, or fulfillment) have a tremendous opportunity to promote and offer solutions of that nature to their customers to help them solve those challenges.

2. The Primary Discussion was Digital — But Print Still Has a Place in the Marketing Mix!:

I won’t lie – many of the discussions at DMA 2011 centered around online marketing and other digital marketing initiatives. But there were still a number of great case studies shared that involved print and direct mail components. Some of the main reasons why I heard marketers share why they still chose print as a channel included:

• It is tangible.
• It can be personalized.
• It can create a deeper emotional impact.
• It can be a very effective way to drive people to online content.

3. When it comes to social networks, businesses have a lot to learn:

Judging by the attendance of various sessions, many companies are still striving to learn how to effectively use social networks in the B-to-B space. Here were a few of the tips that I heard that I’d like to share:

• Twitter’s search features can be one of the most powerful websites for companies to utilize. It enables us to really listen to what’s on the minds of customers and prospects.
• Facebook’s dominance in the social networking space is truly astounding — thus, we most likely all need to invest more resources there. They have 800 million users! Nearly half of them log in each day.  30 billion pieces of content are shared there each month! Those numbers clearly dwarf the activity that other social networks can share. With that much volume, it’s certain that some of the content being shared and discussed has to do with companies and products. In order to capitalize on the opportunities there, business of all shapes and sizes must be on Facebook too.
• People love video. It’s true. Video is being used more and more by marketing agencies and other companies to tell their stories. I truly think that many service providers can utilize video to do the same thing

4. Mobile and QR Codes Were Huge… and Growing:

There were a ton of QR Codes at the conference. They were on posters, signs, collateral, and clothes. While that is a good sign to me when it comes to printing, I also noticed that most of the QR Codes were not used 100% properly.

• Primarily, most of them seemed to point to non-mobile websites. I truly think that there is a tremendous opportunity for service providers to grow their business by doing more than just providing or printing the QR Code; but rather, to also offer the building and hosting of the mobile website or mobile landing page.

In February Iwrote about my confusion on the re-branding of the On Demand Conference to Publishing Exchange.  I attended the On Demand Expo and the Publishing Exchange Conference and my confusion continued. Like the many other comments which have been written about the event,  over all I am concerned and was disappointed.  Some other comments regarding the event were:

 “I think the lack of turnout was because prospective attendees could not figure out who the target audience was for this content”- Chuck Gehman; “  

 “The challenge for On Demand is that it must keep the print providers (and vendors) and add the publishers and new media types” – Charles Corr.

On the one hand there were some excellent sessions. On the other hand – there were  just not enough of them.  The print industry and digital print experts continue to talk about reinventing and finding ways to improve print but, the whole first day of the conference was pretty much dedicated to Publishing which in my opinion itself was being redefined. 

As a consultant I find all of this very interesting, however as a former print operations executive I long for the old days when I could hear from customers and supplier resources about what they needed and how I could meet their needs.  I question whether those providing equipment or involved in the print industry will spend their discretionary funds for conferences and expositions in the future.  Many have already started offering their own events for their customers and prospective customers.

What drives the choice to attend?  

Personally the amount of content I have to choose from is very important.  This year Publishing Exchange had less than 40 conference sessions while the co-located AIIM Info 360 had over 100 and Xplor over 60 plus 2 facility visits. I want to have clearly defined tracks and a good selection of sessions in each. I want the information to be useful in the near term, if we don’t pay attention to the near term performance and profitability we will not survive to the future. 

With so manyevents both in the spring and in the fall my question to you is how you choose which ones to attend? What are the most important factors for you and your company?  

I have already stated my bias for content, but more importantly if I am paying to attend an independently produced event, I expect the content to be balanced and independent not slanted to the sponsors. If interested in a specific supplier you would be better off in seeking out a service or equipment suppliers free educational offerings.  Interestingly, many of the former sponsors of these shows are now producing their own events and bringing in top notch, independent speakers. They may in fact be more concerned about not appearing biased at their own events than at those they pay to sponsor.

I am less concerned about the location, however the cost of transportation, hotels and food is important as these easily add up to more than the conference cost itself.  Is having more detailed information of the presentations in advance important to you and what about full copies of all session presentations being available after the conference?  Do we find more narrowly focused offerings or broad sweeping events more valuable? The conference organizers are struggling to keep pace with changing dynamics of our industry and making their organizations successful at the same time.  Telling producers more about what is important to us before the events rather than offering a critique after might be helpful.  Having a venue to do this across multiple venues as well as the possibility of a show guide comparing all of the options for different events would seem very beneficial to all parties.

If we want better events to attend we need to speak up on what we want and make sure to give credit when someone gets it right.

In the last couple of years, full color production digital printing has become a cost-effective reality for many applications. Many more marketing departments are considering adding color to transaction documents or making their color direct mail pieces more dynamic (rather than printing black over color shells). This led me to ask some of my colleagues at agencies, marketing services providers and plain old printers for their two cents.

I asked if they felt that it was critical to be able to offer clients exact Pantone or PMS color or if it was more important to be able to offer color consistency from run to run. I wondered if their marketing clients were asking for a standard that the recipients of the mail don’t care about. Within the context of delivering a full-color, white paper solution to customers, what are the “must haves” and what are the “nice to haves.”

After a lot of discussion and debate among some pretty knowledgeable industry professionals it boiled down to the following key points:

• Marketing departments have a lot invested in branding, and color is a key component of branding. With that said, any marketing department that chooses to deliver multi-channel campaigns is, by definition, making compromises on color. Color will not be consistent across email, web, mobile phones, various papers, signage etc. That is an important discussion to have, and can set the baseline for color consistency tolerance.
• Most recipients of mail have a much higher tolerance for variations in color than the business professionals sending them. If you were using a spectrophotometer and running a test in a lab, a color variation measured as a Delta e of 1.0 is generally considered to be barely perceptible to the human eye. Outside of the lab, a Delta e of 3.0 to 5.0 may go unnoticed by the average consumer.
• Setting expectations on color capabilities, educating marketers on variations in color across substrates (something they should know but often don’t) and agreeing on acceptable and MEASURABLE tolerances is critical to success. Don’t just let them tell you that they are looking for “luscious.” (Shout out to the Off Register folks.)More research on how consumers view color (real quantitative studies folks) would make it a lot easier to reach reasonable compromises with marketers. Sponsors wanted!
• If you have the ability to print CMYK plus 1, 2 or 3 Pantone colors, you should be able to charge more for it as long as you have the color management and color measurement tools in place to back up the promises.

At the end of the day, it is the design (information transfer not pretty pictures) and the content (information to be transferred) that should rule – not AT&T orange (probably not allowed to call it orange) or Coca-Cola red (they probably think they own the term “red”) or Luscious pink – but we all know that if we want the business, we need to be able to give the customer what they want.

 How much color is enough? How much do you want the business? How much is the client willing to pay?  So, ask them, agree on measurement for color tolerances and set prices accordingly. There needs to be a “pain and suffering” charge at certain levels of color management and client management. Enough is enough!

I’m going to be presenting a webinar on the business issues related to transitioning to color next Tuesday, March 1 at 2 pm EST. You can register here. I’ll be sharing some more thoughts on the myths and realities of moving to color and DST Output will also be sharing some of their “lessons learned” from transitioning to color. Let me know if there are some key points you’d like to hear about.

Has anyone else been confused when trying to find the On Demand Conference? I have been a regular attendee for years and received the call for conference papers last year. When I hit the link to “Conference Info” and “Register for the Program” on the web site and ended up at Publishing Xchange I was sure I must have done something wrong. I went back to the home page and saw the separate information at the bottom of the page on Publishing Xchange and that it was now co-located with On Demand and Info 360. So I scrolled back up to the On Demand section and clicked on the highlighted phrase in the text, “new conference program”. I again ended up at the Publishing Xchange web page. After clicking around the site for awhile, FINALLY I found a link that said “Attend the Print-Centric Sessions Produced by WhatTheyThink”, and clicked through to . . . the Publishing Xchange Conference-At-A-Glance page.

The emphasis on publishing was not what I expected from On Demand; cross media communication, yes, but publishing? The Corporate sponsorship of the different tracks was also a surprise. In past On Demand conferences, the sessions provided opportunities to understand how technology, suppliers, and customers came together to solve Business Communication issues. I wondered what drove this to change from what seemed to be a very useful and well attended format. There was no communication beforehand that the title, format, just about everything had changed. Where do I go now to get information on postal issues like IMB, and on fulfillment or distribution or the many other business communications topics that On Demand was known for?

Finally after looking a couple more times and reading more of the marketing materials I concluded this was the only conference at the ON DEMAND Expo this year. Based on my positive past experience and a bit of curiosity I decided to go ahead and register for the Publishing Xchange Conference. We will have to wait until March to see if that was a smart thing to do. I am still struggling however with how Business Communications (Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Documents) are Publishing. It appears that service providers, suppliers and clients representing a broad spectrum of offerings are being driven together under Publishing, Why?

Have you seen the television show “V”, where lizard aliens look human until they are wounded and you can see the lizard underneath? It appears On Demand has suffered a similar fate. Someone put an On Demand shell over a publishing conference. What’s the message here? When they talk about business transformation and industry restructuring on the On Demand home page, do they mean all of us in Direct Marketing and Critical Customer Communications should throw in the towel and try Publishing? Is it “invasion of the conference snatchers?” Or maybe it’s a Borg plot and “resistance is futile.”

Have aliens taken over ON DEMAND? Should I be afraid?

I just returned from the PODi 2011 AppForum in Las Vegas.  It was a great event and my colleagues and I had an opportunity to meet with many of our customers in addition to many Print Service Providers (PSP’s) trying to find the “silver bullet” for new revenue growth. During my flight home I was thinking about the many attendees that regularly attend events like AppForum and get all fired up about exciting new opportunities for growth and then go back to their business and continue to do the same things, day in and day out.  By doing so they miss out on the success that others enjoy.

I thought about this and I identified a possible reason that Print Service Providers (PSPs) don’t “embrace change” and continue to use the same approach for their business.

I call it – The Fear Factor!

Let me explain.  During this year’s PODI AppForum there were many excellent presentations where PSPs demonstrated how they had embraced new solutions and were growing their business in many new, exciting areas of opportunity.  Several Print Service Providers (now Marketing Service Providers) introduced example after example where they had generated millions of new printed pages (higher value pages with new services) as a result of embracing change in their business and building new capabilities.

Was it easy – NO!  But is it possible – absolutely!

Why is it so difficult to embrace change?

Here’s a short list of PSP Fear Factors that have been shared with me over the years:

• The FEAR of failure
• The FEAR of change on their business
• The FEAR of change on their customer
• The FEAR of their competition
• The FEAR of change on their employees
• The FEAR of a new technology impact in their organization
• The FEAR of commitment to something new and the learning curve
• The FEAR of “can the sales team sell new offerings”
• The FEAR of any change on core offerings

Every one of these concerns is valid and worthy of further analysis.  Rather than viewing these concerns as threats what if we viewed them as opportunities? As executives continue to face the fear of the unknown they will just as quickly tell you that they are working hard for business improvement. The executives I have spoken with will typically tell you that they would like to achieve improvement in the following areas

• Grow top line revenue
• Secure new customer wins in new areas of opportunity
• Improve shop floor efficiencies
• Lower production costs
• Grow bottom-line profit
• Grow the business with new capabilities

If executives seek business improvement, but at the same time, fear the changes that drive it, what should they do?

Here’s a short list that might help answer that question.

• Identify market opportunities that complement your business capabilities
• Identify services that are an extension of your business
• Build capabilities that your customers are investing in
• Seek market opportunities that are generating significant growth
• Invest in the necessary resources for success
• Make the time to meet with others that have made the journey successfully – learn from them
• Identify partners that have the means to help you achieve success
• Do the research, embrace the change and develop a plan for success

There are just too many examples of new growth in our industry to not pay attention to how this is being accomplished and to learn from it!

In closing, there are a number of significant growth arenas available to every Print Service Provider in the industry.  The growing number of successful companies achieving business transformation is a reality!  Fear is good as a guide to what you need to plan for but not if it leads to paralysis.  Embrace the growth opportunities in front of you, learn from others and find the right partners for success!

I posted Fans and Foes of Fonts awhile back about the fanaticism and activism that is out there related to the use of fonts (seriously.) I recently saw a video on design:related promoting submissions for this year’s Type Directors Club competitions. This video talks about being a “type snob” and being darn proud of it!

I would just like to say to Matteo Bologna – with great mustache comes great responsibility. If he takes typography as seriously as his mustache, the man is very, very serious.

If you think you have typography worthy of submission – the deadline is next week. Finalists and winners may be included in the TDC Annual (#32) which is quite an honor. Are you a type snob?

Yesterday, the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA)  unveiled a new name, tagline and logo for their trade group: MPA – The Association of Magazine Media. By keeping the well-established initials, MPA, as the organization’s formal name and dropping “publishers” from its tagline, MPA is underscoring the fact that magazine media content engages consumers across multiple platforms, including websites, tablets, smartphones, books, live events and more. One could say that they are embracing new media – or one could say that they are distancing themselves from print.

“Magazine media companies are rapidly embracing cross-platform business models that incorporate print, digital and other ways of providing content to consumers,” said Jack Griffin, incoming Chair of MPA, and CEO of Time Inc. “MPA’s new identity expresses our strong belief that, together, all of these forms collectively express what it means to be a magazine media company.”

Added Nina Link, MPA President and CEO, “The essence of what consumers love about magazines – the immersive experience, the curated content, the sense of community and the award-winning photography and design – is now being enhanced by technologies and devices that support high definition imagery, video animation, mobile e-reading and Web access. The future of magazine reading is undergoing a transformation; audiences and advertisers now interact with magazine brands on so many different levels and platforms. MPA’s identity simply had to reflect this fact.”  

MPA will officially launch its new name and logo to its membership at the annual American Magazine Conference (AMC) on Monday, October 4, in Chicago – the same week as GraphExpo descends on Chicago.

MPA will also premiere a new series of videos at AMC called “Magazine Media Minutes.” Produced by the editors of various magazine titles, these mini-documentaries spotlight how innovative magazine titles are creating content and brand experiences across a variety of media platforms.  Participating magazines include Food & Wine, Glamour, GQ, Men’s Health, More, Natural Home, People, Popular Mechanics, Real Simple, Runner’s World and Yoga Journal. The videos are available on a special MPA YouTube channel at www.magazine.org/mmm. Most of these videos talk about how new media is better than print – can you find me one that doesn’t?

“In defining our business as magazine media we are explicitly focusing MPA’s leadership agenda on promoting magazine brands and their unique relationships with consumers across all platforms,” said John Q. Griffin, outgoing MPA Chair and President of National Geographic Publishing Group.

All platforms, including print? Hmmmm. Maybe we should take a bunch of GraphExpo folks on a  field trip over to the AMC next week . . .

For years, Steve Reynolds donated his time and energy to raise funds for his favorite charity – LIVESTRONG. Every year, Steve and colleagues would participate in a 100 mile bike ride to raise funds for those afflicted by cancer and awareness of the challenges they face with rising medical costs.  In June he found himself facing a grim diagnosis: stage 4 colon cancer.  On Wednesday of last week, Steve succumbed to the disease.

Steve was a senior analyst at Lyra responsible for Lyra’s analysis of office copier/MFP and production-level devices and markets as well as the managed document services sector. He was a major contributor to Lyra’s Hard Copy Industry Advisory Service (IAS), Commercial Ink Jet Printing Advisory Service (CIJ), and Managed Document Advisory Service (MDS). With more than 20 years of market research experience in the information technology and printer industries, Steve was well known and well respected in the industry.

Friends and colleagues have joined together to organize a LIVESTRONG fundraiser and celebration of his life on October 2^nd in Chicago. Activities are as follows:

4:30 PM

1.5 mile walk begins at House of Blues - 329 N. Dearborn St. Chicago, IL 60654

7 – 10 PM

Reception & Dinner Buffet – D4 Irish Pub & Café The Streeter – 345 E. Ohio Street Chicago, IL 64106

Everyone is welcome to join the dinner regardless of whether they participated in the walk. An RSVP and a $25 minimum contribution to LIVESTRONG are requested.

Please RSVP to event organizers:

Jan Daley-Austin (310) 782-6640  Jan@analystadvisors.com

Pete Basiliere (603) 672-2347  Pete.Basiliere@gartner.com

Lyra has also established a fund to benefit the Reynolds family following Steve’s battle with cancer. Donations will be accepted at the event. Please also share your memories of Steve.

Hopefully this past summer represents more than great vacations, and marks an inflection point for our industry from the hunkering-down strategies during the recession to optimism and planning for future opportunities.

The timing is perfect to explore these opportunities as the conference and trade show season starts to heat up. While webinars are a great way to take an intensive look into specific topics, the trade shows allow you to take a deep dive and learn best practices from your peers, explore new technologies and new and exciting business models. Some events are more invested in conference sessions while others focus on the show floor – some do a pretty good job of balancing both.

For example, print providers and application owners alike may consider attending the Document Strategy Forum in Chicago (September 13th – 15^th). This show will help you understand the changing requirements for mission critical business communication – mostly oriented to transaction printing with some multi-channel communications sessions. This event is more conference and less tradeshow and is a good place to network without being overwhelmed.

The favorite in the printing industry is Graph Expo, which is being held October 3^rd through 6^th at the McCormick Place in Chicago. Most of our industry segments are represented at this show, including graphic arts, books, newspapers, direct mail, transaction, display graphics, and labels and packaging. The event has a big conference and a big tradeshow – there is a lot to see and learn across all of these segments.

For a deeper dive into the specialty market, SGIA 10 in Las Vegas might be the right show for you (October 12^th through 15^th). If you want to learn how to produce images that end up on retail floors, vehicles, textiles, ceramics, and bathroom sinks, then this is definitely a must attend show.  If you want to take an even deeper dive into the textile market, perhaps you should attend the IFAI Expo Americas 2010 show in Orlando.

Or, the photography market might be beckoning you. PhotoPlus Expo will be held in NYC (October 28^th – 30^th). This is a perennial favorite for the professional photography industry.

Many of our industry associations also have niche conferences and I suspect that attendance at these events will be much higher than prior years. Often attending these conferences enables discounts on membership and future events and webinars. Supporting these industry associations also tends to pay dividends for our industry. That’s one of the many reasons that Oce supports them. For example, Oce is sponsoring the Pacific Printing and Imaging Association’s fall conference (www.pacprinting.org), and the PINE (www.pine.org) Print Management Conference in Newport, RI (October 16^th – 19^th). Printing Industries of America (PIA) will be hosting their Converge conference (November 6^th – 9^th). This is a good show to explore the latest in new technologies and cross-media trends.

These are just some of the industry events that I’m considering attending. If you haven’t been to any of these events before, I highly encourage you to look into them. For those of you who are regulars, I look forward to reconnecting. I’d also be interested in hearing feedback on these shows and recommendations of others that do a particularly good job on either the educational or tradeshow aspects of the event.

By Pete Basiliere

What do you do when a family member is stricken with cancer?

You offer support in any way you can. Encouragement. Prayer. Help with the chores, pay a couple of bills. Whatever it takes to help him or her focus on the fight at hand.

The same holds true for your extended family, doesn’t it?

You offer support in any way you can. Whether a lifelong friend, a neighbor, a colleague at work, you naturally want to help.

As part of Team Centurion, I’ve joined with colleagues from around the globe to raise money for LIVESTRONG, the cancer foundation started by cyclist Lance Armstrong, on behalf of our good friend and fellow printing industry analyst, Steve Reynolds.

Steve selflessly raised money on behalf of other cancer victims by riding in three LIVESTRONG “Century” (100 mile) events over the last three years. This year’s ride would have been Steve’s fourth ride except for his June diagnosis of Stage 4 Colon Cancer. Despite the advanced stage and extreme seriousness of his situation, Steve is rising to the challenge and has begun his fight.

My colleagues are normally competitors with each other and Steve, but we’re united by something much more powerful than commerce – hope, courage and a determination to crush cancer. I will be joining colleagues and friends the afternoon and evening before Graph Expo opens in Chicago on October 2nd to show our support for Steve.

People who have been Steve’s customers and competitors will take a spirited 1.5 mile walk to show our support of his personal fight against cancer. We will gather at 4:30 at The House of Blues in downtown Chicago during which we’ll stop to toast Steve at two pubs.

Then, at 7:00 PM, we’ll arrive at the D4 Irish Pub & Cafe for a reception and dinner buffet sponsored by AR Advisors, Oce, Ricoh and Xerox. Everyone, whether a walker or not, is welcome to join us at the dinner. A $25 minimum contribution to LIVESTRONG is requested. Join us any time during the evening that’s convenient for you, but please confirm your attendance in advance if at all possible.

Coincidentally, October 2nd is “Livestrong Day,” so named because on that date in 1996 Lance Armstrong was diagnosed with cancer. Or, as he put it: “The day I was diagnosed with cancer was the day I started to live.” Lance realized he had to grab hold of his life and take nothing for granted. He made a decision to face his illness with courage, strength and dignity. On October 2, Lance Armstrong became a survivor.

The money raised in Steve’s honor by Team Centurion will go to support LIVESTRONG’s programs and services, which inspire and empower people affected by cancer. If you or someone you know is diagnosed, these resources will help them to face the challenges of cancer, head on, and live life on your own terms.
Please support Steve and help make a difference in the cancer fight.

Come to the events in Chicago to demonstrate your support. If you cannot make it, no problem. Simply visit the Livestrong website to make a contribution

Thank you!

The PODi AppForum is this week (January 25th-27th). WhatTheyThink is there shooting interviews:

PODi President Rab Govil on the AppForum Conference in Las Vegas

Dave Erlandson of Caslon on Day 1 of PODi

The 2009 edition of InfoTrends’ popular TransPromo Summit is right around the corner: August 13-14 at the Hyatt Regency Boston. The Summit is the place to be to beyond the hype and buzz of TransPromo and see real world applications and discuss TransPromo applications with print service providers, marketers, and vendors.

InfoTrends Road Map 2009: TransPromo Service concluded: “The year 2009 will be an exciting one for TransPromo and will likely include everything from implementation discussions to sales force education to potential mergers and acquisitions. The continued delivery of new inkjet production color devices will certainly have an impact on the TransPromo opportunity, as well as its appeal to marketers. Reductions in overall customer print spend will encourage service providers to get creative with higher-value applications. Effective applications can deliver the return on investment of which customers are becoming ever more conscious.”

According to InfoTrends the market for TransPromo communications printed in full color will reach 12.8 billion impressions by 2012. Their market research found 95% of statements are open and read with an average of 2 to 3 minutes reviewing their statements, with 20% spending more than 5 minutes.

More information about the TransPromo Summit is available at http://www.transpromosummit.com

If would be foolish to dismiss the doubt leading up to the ON DEMAND show. Chalk this up to declining advertising spend, economic uncertainty, or a shrinking manufacturing sector. Many industry suppliers commented that the show attendance was better then expected and that a majority of the attendees were closer to making purchase decisions (the show management has not released attendance numbers yet).

Jim Hamilton, Group Director at InfoTrends has a roundup of what technology was and wasn’t seen at On Demand 2009: What If People Actually Showed Up? A Report from ON DEMAND 2009.

As Jim points out in his blog post the finishing vendors brought a lot of hardware, while the print engine vendors that did attend slimmed back on hardware and concentrated their software offerings.

So the question is: was On Demand 2009 the tipping point in terms of workflow playing a more important role in on demand print production. Or was there simply less printing hardware on the show floor because our current economic environment? I think it a matter of both.

We are seeing incremental upgrades among the current digital printing systems on the market. Complex software systems are now needed to control the flow of information from the customer to the printed sheet. And while we have seen workflow the focus of previous shows, a level of maturity in these information systems has finally arrived that allows the printer to do amazing things with a data feed and a printing system.

That’s where I see On Demand. A place were best practices in new information-rich print applications can be discussed and demonstrated.