In-plant Events

Digital printing will surge to a $35 billion market by 2003. At the recent On Demand Conference, in-plant managers learned how to prepare. Every year at the conference he started back in 1994, Charles Pesko presents the crowd with figures predicting the tremendous growth of on-demand printing. Even so, when Pesko, managing director of CAP Ventures, announced this year that digital printing will surge from $13.3 billion in 1998 to $35.1 billion in 2003—a 21 percent per year growth rate—the crowd at the On Demand Digital Printing and Publishing Strategy Conference and Exposition was duly impressed. Nearly 20,000 people arrived in New York

The weather was warm but the sessions were hot as more than 300 college and university print and mail managers got together in sunny Scottsdale, Arizona. College and university in-plants are thriving, and nowhere was this more apparent than at the recent Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference in Scottsdale, Ariz. This year's event, which marked ACUP's 35th year, broke new ground by partnering with the National Association of College and University Mail Services (NACUMS). As a result, a record 325 people attended the event, which was hosted by Arizona State University (ASU) and organized by Bob Lane, ACUP president, and

On-demand printing may not be as cutting edge a topic as it was in the early '90s, but that didn't stop nearly 20,000 people from descending on the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York for the recent On Demand Digital Printing and Publishing Strategy Conference and Exposition. The conference, now in its sixth year, featured 275 exhibits along with daily keynotes and conference sessions. In-Plant Graphics moderated several sessions and attended many more. (Our full report will appear in a future issue.) Personalization seemed to be the big topic this year, with several vendors combining variable data with color printing to

The leaders of the digital graphic arts industry converged in Boston recently to display their latest wares. Seybold returned to Boston this year after a two-year stint in New York—and what a homecoming it was. All the leaders of the digital graphic arts industry were on hand to show off their new technologies. Adobe, naturally, took a lead position at the show, as the father of PDF. Adobe President John Warnock and CEO Charles Geschke laid out their collective version of publishing for both print and the Internet during the exposition's opening keynote. Both Adobe executives stressed that publishers in the near future

State government printing managers gathered in Washington recently, not to discuss politics, but to chart courses into the future. From Web sites to electronic forms, the talk at the recent National State Publishing Association conference centered largely around digital technology and how government in-plants can put it to use. Hosted by the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) and organized by Andrew Sherman, director of the GPO's office of congressional, legislative and public affairs, the 22nd annual conference took place in Arlington, Va., just across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. It featured several of GPO's most knowledgeable employees giving presentations on CD-ROMs,

Despite falling just a month after IPEX in England, this year's show drew more than 44,000 visitors—and the vendors didn't let them down. When graphic arts industry representatives from all over the world arrived in Chicago for Graph Expo recently, Xeikon decided to shock them a little bit. At a press conference, the Belgium-based digital color press manufacturer contended that digital color production costs are now comparable with offset at runs of 1,000 units or more. Based on a study Xeikon had commissioned, which used real costs and time factors in actual production environments, the company insisted that digital color presses have

From all over the South—and beyond—university printing managers came together to share ideas and learn from each other. With a large dose of Southern hospitality, Auburn University recently welcomed the 23rd annual Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference to its Auburn, Ala., campus. Despite his Midwestern roots, Auburn Printing Service Director Harv Dahl had no trouble providing a warm Southern welcome to the more than 40 attendees, whose ranks were slightly lower than expected due to the approach of Hurricane Georges, which kept almost a dozen managers home. One of the most helpful sessions featured a panel of managers discussing their

Cloudy skies did not obscure the illumination coming from the many educational sessions at the IPMA 98 conference, which drew 620 people.

The show was built around a trio of themes: personalization, the Internet and outsourcing. This last theme, however, may have proved a bit overbearing. As Barbara Pellow put it in the opening minutes of the 1998 On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing Strategy Conference and Exposition, "The digital opportunity isn't coming; it's here, it's today and it's now." 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

This year's meeting was a Major League event. One of the most well-attended ACUP conferences to date, it even drew three attendees from England. It was a conference where laughter was a scheduled event, foreign accents spiced up the air and cutthroat betting on autographed basketballs soared into the millions of dollars—all in a city known mostly for baseball bats and horse racing. With a louder than usual roar, the annual Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference landed in Louisville, Ky., recently, its record 150 attendees waking up the quiet Ohio River town. Dozens of new schools were represented this