In-plant Events

DÜSSELDORF, GERMANY—It’s official: drupa 2008 will break all previous records. With some 170,000 square metres of net exhibition space (roughly equivalent to 40 soccer fields) and exhibitor numbers topping 1,800, the print media fair to be staged from 29 May to 11 June 2008 will be the biggest ever in its more than 50-year history. This will entail the use of the Düsseldorf Trade Fair Center’s full capacity, including all new additions. There were already indications of this trend last year, shortly before the official close of registrations on 31 October. Increases to leading international technology suppliers’ space requirements, plus larger-scale joint presentations from

In-plant managers from around the country are about to start packing their bags for Oklahoma City. The In-plant Printing and Mailing Association is holding its annual conference June 6-9 at the Renaissance Oklahoma City Convention Center. The event will feature a full schedule of educational sessions, ample networking opportunities for managers, a vendor fair and a tour of one of the country’s premier in-plants: University of Oklahoma Printing Services. The $12 million, 100-employee operation has two five-color presses and a full-service mailing operation in its 45,000-square-foot facility. Evening events include a ballgame at the Bricktown Ballpark and the much-anticipated IPMA awards banquet,

Muller Martini and Nipson America recently hosted an open house at Muller’s headquarters in Hauppauge, N.Y. With the theme “A New Day Dawns for Book Production,” the event included live demonstrations of digital book manufacturing equipment and presentations from on-demand experts. A complete digital book printing and binding workflow was shown in action, consisting of a Nipson VaryPress 400 duplex digital printing system along with components of the Muller Martini SigmaLine OnDemand solution. The workflow included two Nipson VaryPress 400 digital printers with EMT unwinder, StarCut sheeter/stacker from FME, a Shuttleworth Star Roller conveyor and a SigmaBinder perfect binder, SigmaTower cooling tower and Esprit three-knife

I JUST got back from a coast-to-coast excursion that took me from San Francisco to Boston. I flew out to California in mid-April to attend the Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference. The event was packed with more than 130 in-plant attendees from 33 states and four other countries. It was wonderful to see so much interaction between managers from such geographically diverse places as New Zealand, Mississippi, Alaska, Scotland, Maine and Florida, to name a few. Attendees fell easily into conversation about their mutual challenges, sharing stories and laughs as if they had been friends for years. ACUP was very well run,

THIS YEAR’S AIIM/On Demand Conference & Expo certainly had some obstacles to overcome in its first year at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. With the Boston Marathon running on the show’s opening day, hotel rooms were at a premium. Then a storm assaulted the city, discouraging some from driving in. And as if that weren’t enough, the show had to compete with other industry events, such as the Association of College and University Printers conference, taking place at the same time in San Francisco, and the PrintFest trade show, which kicked off later that week in Long Beach, Calif. Despite all

The On Demand Conference & Expo completed its 2007 run last week at the Boston Convention & Exposition Center. Changing locations has been part of the story with this event since the move from its home in New York City to Philadelphia and now on to Boston through 2008. While the facility was striking, exhibitors were speculating that show floor traffic was lighter and more regional than last year (attendance figures have yet to be released). Weather woes on the East Coast and complications caused by the marathon on Monday may have dampened attendance. Close to 200 exhibitors participated in the On Demand section of

Sustained economic growth and smart adoption of technologies to create new value-added services have helped put the U.S. printing industry in its strongest position in many years. That was the consensus of the speakers at the first NPES Industry Summit, held recently in Chicago. It provided an optimistic view of print’s current and future prospects and a preview of the world’s most promising future growth markets. The Summit, presented by NPES The Association for Suppliers of Printing, Publishing and Converting Technologies, combined the 26th edition of the PRINT OUTLOOK economic forecasting conference with the NPES Spring Conference and the Spring meeting of PRIMIR, the Print

More than 130 in-plant representatives from 33 states and several countries attended ACUP 2007 in San Francisco last week. The Association of College and University Printers conference, which had the theme “We’re Not Just Printers Anymore,” was organized and hosted by six in-plants in the University of California system. In her keynote address, Ursula Burns, president of Xerox, urged in-plants to collaborate with their schools’ admissions departments and to come up with new ways to add value to their universities. Two sessions covered digital color technologies and featured in-plant users of digital presses discussing why they picked the presses they did and the benefits that

Two upcoming SGIA Imaging Symposiums, one in Denver and one in Atlanta, will help you tackle the issues associated with growing a successful digital imaging operation. The Denver symposium will take place this coming Wednesday, April 25. A few weeks later it will move to Atlanta on Wednesday, May 16. Sessions will cover such topics as: • Opportunities in Established & Emerging Digital Imaging Markets • Adjusting Workflow & Job Management for Maximum Production Flexibility • How Companies Successfully Grasp New Opportunities • The Elegant Art of Digital Imaging Equipment Purchases • Maximizing Your Investment in Ink-jet Imaging

With ACUP 2007 set to kick off in just over a week, college and university in-plant managers around the country and from as far away as New Zealand and the U.K. are preparing for the trip to San Francisco. The conference’s theme will be “We’re Not Just Printers,” and topics will focus on the need for college and university in-plants to become business and creative solution providers. Keynote speakers will include: • Stan Morrison, director of Athletics at the University of California Riverside. • Ursula Burns, president of the Xerox Document Systems & Solutions Group. Being held concurrently with ACUP, INTERQUEST is conducting a forum called “Personalized Communications