Xerox Corp.

I was listening to the radio the other morning when a short piece about on-demand book publishing caught my ear. The reporter mentioned a company called On Demand Books that was promoting its all-in-one printing/binding device, which can reportedly produce 20 bound books an hour. The device—called the Espresso Book Machine—wasn’t exactly news to me; the company’s been talking about it for a while, and the World Bank installed one back in April. But this news report was the latest in a series of references to on-demand book publishing that have come to my attention. Apparently, demand for printed-while-you-wait books is on

Charlie Pesko, founder and president of InfoTrends, will deliver the keynote address at the Xplor Document University, to be held in conjunction with Graphics of the Americas/Xplor. Pesko’s address, to be followed with a panel discussion, will take place on Thursday, March 1 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Titled “Cross Media Publishing: Enhancing your Customer Relationships,” this session will explore the development of cross-media publishing strategies that will serve an organization in forging deeper relationships with its customers. Topics to be covered include: • The changing business of document communications • Cost-effective

To find out how Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Xerox iGen3 digital press has been working out since it was installed a couple years ago, we went back and talked with Patrick O’Donnell, manager of Document Production Services. Q: Has the new equipment been helpful in your shop? A: The iGen3 has increased the production output of our five-color GTO by 300 percent. Prior to purchasing the iGen3, we were running jobs for 2,000 or fewer sheets on the GTO and sending out the longer runs to commercial shops. With the iGen3, we can now do the smaller runs on that machine and keep the

PAPER IS the sole opportunity for an audience to hold your organization’s identity in its hands. Paper reaches the target audiences’ sense of touch, and the paper used to communicate your organization’s message influences recipients’ perceptions of the organization. As they touch your letter, sales collateral or direct mailer, the consumer may make judgments about your quality, durability and whether or not you are high-tech. As little as five years ago, digital presses and color copiers could not run all the papers that offset presses could. The Indigo E-Print required special pre-treatment of all papers (otherwise the ink just rubbed off). Xeikon-based

The Copy Center at Salem State College, in Salem, Mass., was the only in-plant to win a Printing Innovation with Xerox Imaging (PIXI) Award this year. The first place prize in the short-run digital color category was awarded to a calendar created by art student Yen Vo and printed double-sided on the in-plant’s Xerox DocuColor 3535.

If you missed the National Government Publishing Association conference in Rochester, now you can get a feel for what it was like in a new video on the IPG Web site (www.ipgonline.com). Government in-plants from all over the country travelled to Rochester for the annual conference, where they not only attended educational sessions, but they visited the facilities of Xerox, Kodak and R.I.T. Bruce James, U.S. Public Printer, addressed the group at R.I.T., and part of his speech is captured in this 3.5-minute video. The video also offers some of the in-plant marketing ideas given in presentations.

The National Government Publishing Association (NGPA) spiced up its recent conference in Rochester, N.Y., with visits to Kodak, Xerox and R.I.T.

THIS ARTICLE will attempt to use the past, as well as the present, to get a clear look at the future of the printing industry. Predicting the future, however, is a slippery slope. Here are some of my favorite predictions, just so I can feel I’m in good company. “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” —Western Union memo, 1876 (By the way, after 145 years, Western Union, has finally gotten out of the telegram business.) “The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would

I SUBSCRIBE to an electronic mailing list for in-plants, and lately I’ve noticed a number of postings regarding various aspects of purchasing a digital color printer. One recent posting asked a very astute question: are you planning to produce digital color for existing customers or do you plan to cultivate new customers? This is exactly the kind of question we pondered long and hard prior to our purchase of a Xerox iGen3 last December. Where would the business come from for our new machine? Would we be “robbing” color work from our offset presses? Is there some big pocket of business out there waiting for

Ted Bailey didn’t need a crystal ball to know that changes were coming. “We saw the trend moving not just to more color, but to more sophisticated variable data campaigns,” says Bailey, manager of Printing and Graphics Services at Boise State University. The 15-employee western Idaho in-plant had done some simple black-and-white variable printing jobs, and its 32-ppm Canon printer was doing its best to meet color demands. But clearly the busy shop needed a faster, more variable-data-friendly color printer. So this past summer, after a lengthy bidding process, the in-plant installed a Xerox iGen3 digital production press with an EFI Fiery server. “I