On Demand Conference

Certainly that was not headline news to printers, who have been hearing about—and practicing—printing on demand for years. Nevertheless, more than 18,700 people jammed the Javits Convention Center in New York recently to learn about the latest print-on-demand developments.

Pello's consulting firm, CAP Ventures, the show organizers, picked three themes around which to mold this year's conference: personalization, the Internet and outsourcing. This last theme, unfortunately, may have soiled the show for in-plant managers, who have spent years fighting the takeover attempts of outsourcing firms. Such firms had many opportunities at On Demand—including the opening keynote session—to rave about their services, while in-plant managers silently stewed in the audience.