|
Enhancements, Refinements, Trans-Ed, and More from On Demand - By Noel Ward
March 14, 2008 - There was plenty of equipment to be seen at this year's OnDemand show. Konica Minolta rolled out several enhancements to its popular bizhub PRO C6500 color printer. Canon was also not shy about bringing equipement as their new imagePRESS C6000VP took a Best of Show in its category. I'll also talk a bit about Xeikon and Xerox, who both had equipment worth seeing...More
Xplor-ing in Boston – the “Lost” Conference - By Gail Nickel-Kailing
March 14, 2008 -- Feeling a bit like Alice in Through the Looking Glass, I trudged through the Boston Convention Center for miles, heading away from my target in order to get to the Xplor XDU registration desk. If you’ve ever circumnavigated the Convention Center, you know what I mean!....More
Red States/Blue States: Where Is the Convergence? - By Cary Sherburne
March 13, 2008 -- My initial perceptions of the On Demand show may have been unduly influenced by all of the election coverage on CNN, but my first thought when walking onto the show floor was that we had a Red State/Blue State thing going on here. As most of you are aware, AIIM and On Demand shared the show floor. The AIIM side of the show had blue carpet and the On Demand side had a red carpet. There was a distinct line down the middle in more ways than one....More
It’s a “My Media” World and Equipment/Software Providers Get It! - By Barb Pellow
March 12, 2008 -- There are always lots of new products and business opportunities demonstrated at the ON DEMAND show. With 2008 a designated DRUPA year, there will be a bumper crop of new technologies coming to rock the POD marketplace. The key importance associated with this year’s product, solution, and service announcements are that they reflect the impact that digital technology has on the transformation of our industry and our society....More
HP: Changing the Pricing Dynamics of Digital - By Andy Tribute
March 11, 2008 - The build up to drupa continues and in recent weeks some of the major vendors in the industry have introduced their new products. In the meanwhile in Boston we have just had the OnDemand event and this showed how every vendor is keeping their powder dry waiting for digital. In walking the hall I failed to see any significant new digital printing product. I also saw almost no large or super-wide format digital printers....More
Commercial Binders Report Making High-Value Connections at On Demand - By Patrick Henry
March 10, 2008 - On Demand is an exhibitor’s showcase for digital press and finishing equipment manufacturers, dealers, software and systems developers, consumable suppliers, consulting services, trade publishers, and...commercial binderies. Yes, that’s right: providers of binding and finishing services regularly take booth space at On Demand, and for a host of good reasons....More
Printing Shipments Disappoint... Again - Mondays with Dr. Joe Webb
March 10, 2008 - January 2008 printing shipments were very disappointing. On a current dollar basis, they were down -$228 million, or -2.8%. On an inflation-adjusted basis, they were down -$575 million, or -6.8%. What made the report worse was that the initial December report was revised down by more than $200 million....More
Offline UV Coating Systems Lay It On Thick at On Demand - By Patrick Henry
March 7, 2008 - Toner-based digital prints aren’t as thick-skinned as litho, flexo, or gravure sheets—that’s just the nature of the process. Prone to scratching and scuffing when ungently handled, toner prints often bear the scars of the rough ride they must take through the unforgiving everyday world of print consumption....More
The Bump Factor, Ricoh Makes Waves, and More - By Noel Ward
March 6, 2008 - The bump factor seems kind of low. That's the number of people you bump into as you rush across the show floor on your way from one meeting to the next. That's not to say there aren't a lot of people here, it's just that there doesn't seem to be a lot of them on the show floor here in Boston. The stands of the print engine companies seem pretty well populated, but the aisles are easy to navigate and other booths have moderate traffic at best. All the vendors I've talked with say traffic seems light, but some say they are seeing decision-makers and key influencers, which are the folks you really want to see. So maybe On Demand 2008 will be OK.....More
Postpress Exhibits Remind Why Digital POD Has Its Foundations in Binding and Finishing - By Patrick Henry
March 6, 2008 - This year’s edition of On Demand is a powerful reminder that the “on demand” nature of short-run digital production is as much about the binding and finishing as it is about the printing....More
Preview: Talking to the CMO Keynote Address at On Demand - By Barb Pellow
March 5 2008 - Not long ago, the only metric that mattered to corporations was shareholder value. In a challenging economy, however, the concept of accountability is critical in Corporate America. Previously one of the least accountable functions in an organization, marketing is entering a brave new world—one that requires a more strategic perspective of marketing effectiveness and where numbers often speak louder than words....More
Kodak’s New CMO for GCG Speaks About the Business of Marketing - By Cary Sherburne
March 4 2008 - In January, Kevin Joyce took over the reins as the Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak’s Graphic Communications Group in the wake of Jeff Hayzlett’s move to the corporate office. Earlier he had been named as a corporate vice president for Kodak. WhatTheyThink spoke with Joyce in the run-up to On Demand to learn what, if any, different strategies we might see from Kodak during his tenure and to get a view of what Kodak is planning for On Demand and beyond....More
More to See at the BCC, Kodak, Pitney Bowes, XMPie and MindFireInc - By Noel Ward
March 3 2008 - I told you last time what some of the key vendors are doing at OnDemand and I'll add to that here and throw out some more thoughts, even as the big crates are being unpacked, trusses are hoisted, and a myriad of computers and print engines are fired up, connected and readied for a few thousand attendees to find their way across the city to the BCC....More
Broadband: Contributing to a Decline in Print - Mondays with Dr. Joe Webb
March 3 2008 - I admit it, I'm a broadband bigot. For years, I accused others of being so, while I suffered with erratic dial-up service. But now I've got two years of broadband access behind me, and I don't know how I managed without it. For media competing with print, the speed of broadband is critical to their plan (whoever is behind the conspiracy!) of "killing" print....More
Back to the Futura: preserving printing’s past By Frank Romano
February 29, 2008 - The granddaddy of all printing museums is off a large square in the small Town of Mainz, Germany, in the shadow of the great Cathedral. The Gutenberg Museum has several Gutenberg Bibles, machinery, artifacts, and other attractions. It is, for printing afficionados, our own Mecca, if you will....More
GMC Software Technology’s Rene Müller Speaks About TransPromo, GMC Market Position By Cary Sherburne
February 29, 2008 - In preparation for the On Demand Conference & Expo, WhatTheyThink spoke with René Müller, CEO of GMC Software Technology, to find out what is new at GMC and to gain insight into Müller’s view of the future for the company and the industry....More
OnDemand 2008 Print Engine Preview By Noel Ward
February 28, 2008 - Everyone headed to Boston for On Demand next week is hoping that March does not come in like the proverbial lion. But after this New England winter, in which every week brought more cold, snow and ice, the odds are (as much as there are odds in the weather business) there'll be something falling from the sky in Boston, just like the deluge that we trudged through last year. Then again it's New England, and as Mark Twain noted, "In the spring in New England I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours."...More
New CGS CEO Shares Strategic Vision By Cary Sherburne
February 28, 2008 - Last November, Trevor Haworth was elected to the board of directors and appointed Chief Executive Officer of CGS Publishing Technologies International GmbH, Hainburg, Germany. His appointment is part of an organizational restructuring combining the strengths of leadership of both companies in the United States and Germany. Haworth founded CGS LLC in the U.S. in January of 1999 to act as a dealer for the German company, and this most recent appointment was based on the success he has achieved with the North American operation....More
Web-to-Print…A Misnomer By Barb Pellow
February 27, 2008 -- Web-to-print started with the onset of e-commerce. It was defined as a commercial prepress process that bridged the gap between digital content online and commercial print production. Initially, the electronic (“e”) enablement of business processes concerned the marketing, selling, buying, and production of printed products and dramatically changed the long-established order of the graphic communications value chain....More
40 Years of Digital Prepress - Part 3 By Andy Tribute
February 26, 2008 - In these 40 years I have worked through all the changes that have impacted on the printing market. In that time the market has changed tremendously. There are now real alternatives to print, but despite all the soothsayers that defined print as being dead over the past 20 years it is still going strong.....More
Rethinking the Document: Composition, Production, and Delivery By Gail Nickel-Kailing
February 29, 2008 - Skip Henk, President and CEO of Xplor International, who is participating in his 26th Global Conference, has been steering the ship into the future. We chatted with Skip who talked about the past, present, and future of XDU and gave us a preview of the Conference coming up March 3-6 in Boston....More |
Charlie Pesko's Keynote at OnDemand 2008: 
