ACUP Is Nearly Here! - In-plant Impressions

By Ray Chambers

Wow! The Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference, being held in Albuquerque, N.M., April 10 – 14, is just over a week away. It seems like only yesterday that ACUP’s Education Committee (EdCom) started studying feedback from the 2015 conference and planning the educational content for this year.

Last year was ACUP’s 50^th anniversary. Our goal then was to make our 50th conference special, and feedback from attendees told us that we were successful. The good news was that educational sessions were informative, well attended and challenging. The bad news, if you want to call it that, is that ACUP 2015 set a pretty high bar for future conferences.

I’d like to think that ACUP 2016 rises to the challenge. EdCom members worked hard to develop a curriculum that meets your expectations. We went back through topics and questions raised on our discussion lists and social media, we perused In-plant Graphics and other print publications to see what they were covering, and we asked our customers to identify the topics they were most concerned about. The preliminary screen developed a list of about 30 areas of interest.

Next we surveyed our potential attendees — ACUP members and higher-ed print managers — and asked them to prioritize the list of topics. Using a prioritization tool, multi-voting, respondents identified their top five choices.

Twelve topics rose to the top of the list, and all will be included in this year’s curriculum. They include:

Justifying Your Shop
Benchmarking
The Value Proposition
Strategic Planning
Justifying New Equipment

We will also offer sessions on copier/MFD fleet management, pricing, selecting digital envelope printers and wide-format printing. Sessions will be led by experienced managers who have successfully managed the topic and are willing to share their experiences.

So, if you work in the education space and you haven’t registered for ACUP, you still have time. ACUP 2016 will be well worth your investment in both time and resources.

As EdCom Chair, I couldn’t be prouder!

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Ray Chambers, CGCM, MBA, has invested over 30 years managing and directing printing plants, copy centers, mail centers and award-winning document management facilities in higher education and government.

Most recently, Chambers served as vice president and chief information officer at Juniata College. Chambers is currently a doctoral candidate studying Higher Education Administration at the Pennsylvania State University (PSU). His research interests include outsourcing in higher education and its impact on support services in higher education and managing support services. He also consults (Chambers Management Group) with leaders in both the public and private sectors to help them understand and improve in-plant printing and document services operations.