From the Editor: Redefining Your Purpose
I was walking the venerable halls of the U.S. Government Printing Office last month with a few university in-plant managers—getting a close look at the web presses, digital printers and even a pair of typesetting machines—when a discussion broke out about the importance of print to the government.
Acting Public Printer Davita Vance-Cooks had just given the keynote address for the Interquest Digital Printing in Government and Higher Education Forum (held at GPO) and explained how GPO has transformed from a printer to a provider of information via mobile apps, e-books and other digital methods.
Yet print is still a critical part of GPO's mission, we agreed. One big reason is the need to archive documents in a format that will be easily accessible decades from now.
"Why not PDFs saved on a CD?" ask the skeptics, forgetting that CDs are merely today's version of a 5-1⁄4˝ floppy. (Tried to read one of those lately?) And can you be absolutely sure future versions of Adobe Acrobat will still open the PDF files you're saving today? So print remains a crucial way of preserving government documents.
Still, the voices calling for less printing are loud, as you well know, and people continue to replace printed invitations and brochures with e-mails (and tweets) to save money. Some of them, after seeing their response rates take a nose dive, have been smart enough to return to print. But clearly print alone is not enough in today's world. Smart in-plant managers are finding ways to blend paper and digital communications.
"Put a QR code on an invitation, and now I have a map to get me to the event," observes Richard Beto, director of Document Solutions at The University of Texas at Austin, giving one example of how print and digital can work together. By linking a printed piece with online resources, QR codes add value to the piece. This also means designers no longer have to cram lots of information onto post cards and flyers, since the QR code links to those details. This allows the piece to be more eye-catching and creative. Advise your customers of opportunities like this and they'll start to see the in-plant as a provider of solutions, not just printing.
"We are a resource to the campus," declares Beto, who was with me on the GPO tour. "We are the experts who can save customers thousands of dollars if they plan ahead, prepare files correctly and tell us what they want to accomplish."
This is exactly how all in-plants should be defining themselves: experts helping their customers be successful. Beto points to the GPO as a model for redefining and transforming itself to remain relevant.
"If the GPO can transform their organization into an organization that has relevancy then we are charged to keep changing ours," he says. "We may not keep up with the commercial sector, but it is our responsibility not to fall so far behind that the decision is easy to shut the doors."
Bob has served as editor of In-plant Impressions since October of 1994. Prior to that he served for three years as managing editor of Printing Impressions, a commercial printing publication. Mr. Neubauer is very active in the U.S. in-plant industry. He attends all the major in-plant conferences and has visited more than 180 in-plant operations around the world. He has given presentations to numerous in-plant groups in the U.S., Canada and Australia, including the Association of College and University Printers and the In-plant Printing and Mailing Association. He also coordinates the annual In-Print contest, co-sponsored by IPMA and In-plant Impressions.
