In-plants Converge on On Demand Show

Though the number of exhibitors was noticeably smaller than last year, the AIIM/On Demand Show attracted larger than expected crowds to Philadelphia this week. Among the visitors were a number of in-plants. IPG ran into at least 20 managers on the show's first two days, mostly from Pennsylvania universities, but a few from farther afield.

Volcano-realted flight cancellations in Eurpoe had some impact on the show, preventing a few vendors from staffing their booths. In at least one case, technicians couldn't make it to the show to start up equipment, so it could be viewed but not demonstrated. But such cases were rare, and for the most part the show was bustling.

The Icelandic ash cloud brought at least one unexpected in-plant attendee to the show: Andrew Scott, of Glasgow Caledonian University (we profiled him last month in IPG) found himself stuck in the U.S. for an extra week after attending last week's ACUP conference. So he made the most of his extended visit by coming to On Demand. ("I never expected to be back in Philadelphia," he told IPG.)

Some of the buzz on the show floor was about the demise of Graphic Arts Monthly, long one of the chief commercial printing trade magazines. It was shut down by its owners just days before On Demand.

So close to IPEX (a large graphic arts show taking place this month in the U.K.), On Demand featured few major product introductions, but there were a couple. Xerox debuted the Xerox Color 800/1000 Presses, which print at 80 and 100 pages per minute (ppm) respectively and have a smaller footprint than an iGen4—a characteristic sure to interest in-plants. Going after the iGen market for the first time was Konica Minolta, which debuted its bizhub PRESS C8000, printing 80 color ppm.