From the Editor: Fall In-plant Festivals
It's been a very active Autumn for in-plants. After all the September in-plant gatherings, like the ones at PRINT 13 and then the SUPDMC conference, October brought even more meetings for managers.
First there was the Rocky Mountain College and University Mail Services conference. Then the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association kicked off a series of six regional meetings all over the country. In the midst of this, the Texas Association of College and University Printers (teaming up this year with the Southwest Association of College and University Mail Services) collected about 40 print and mail managers down in Lubbock, while the National Government Publishing Association pulled in slightly fewer (actually, a lot fewer) to its conference in New Haven, Conn. (Didn't we once talk about consolidating this cornucopia of conferences?)
The odd thing was—and I know you won't believe this—I attended none of them. (Hey, I have to rest occasionally, don't I?) But I talked to people who did and looked at photos from many of the events.
The IPMA meetings seem to have gone very well. This was a first-time effort by the organization—a way for managers who don't get to travel to the national conference to gather locally and meet one another. From my perusal of attendee lists and photos, I noticed a number of managers who have never been to conferences, so in this respect alone the meetings were a success.
Each one included an in-plant tour, where managers told me they had great conversations with the operators about the pros and cons of various machines. (One manager, on the hunt for a garment printer, told me she got invaluable information on the drawbacks of a certain printer being used in the shop she toured.)
The IPMA meetings in Fort Worth, Texas, (Freese and Nichols) and northern California (University of California-Davis) seem to have drawn the biggest crowds, with about three dozen managers at each. A van load of Oklahoma City managers helped build attendance in Texas, while the Stanislaus County Office of Education in Modesto brought its entire production team to the UC-Davis meeting.
At the TACUP/SWACUMS conference in Texas, print and mail managers mingled, got acquainted via "speed networking," toured in-plants, visited a very active vendor showroom and attended powerful presentations. The highlight (other than the murder mystery dinner) seems to have been Peter Muir's enthusiastic three-hour keynote in which he offered managers ideas to drive positive change in their business.
And with that, I can safely say, the in-plant events are over for a while—at least until the Association of College and University Printers conference gets underway on April 6. See you there.
