ACUP a Huge Success

The Sunshine State proved a great location for last week’s Association of College and University Printers conference. More than 125 higher-ed in-plant managers converged on Clearwater Beach, Fla., for the 44th annual event.

IPG Editor Bob Neubauer had the honor of being the first speaker. His state-of-the-in-plant address drew data from a major IPG industry survey, and ACUP attendees were the first to see the results. (They also learned other interesting facts, like which manager has appeared on the most IPG covers.)

Other key sessions:
• Purdue’s Chuck Tuttle and Thom Roylance of Brigham Young University took turns discussing the challenges and benefits of merging mail and print operations.
• Next year’s ACUP host Richard Griffin, of Central Piedmont Community College, gave a session on justifying equipment and software acquisitions.
• In her talk on customer service, Denise Mercier, of Florida State University, stressed the importance of getting employees to have only positive interactions with customers.
• To give U.S. in-plants a global perspective, three in-plant managers from the U.K. offered their observations from abroad, including the results of a major benchmarking study that revealed in-plant savings to be much greater than anticipated.

Though the warm sun lured some away from sessions and into the pool, the shop talk never seemed to end, not even in beach chairs. Managers swapped stories and gave each other advice. Hot topics seemed to be Web-to-print systems and digital color.

ACUP was organized by Jennifer Bowers, director of Printing, Mailing and Postal Service at Florida State University, and Tully Burnett, associate director of Auxiliary Services at the University of North Florida. The event included a vendor show featuring almost 40 vendors.