San Diego In-plant Conference Draws Enthusiastic Crowd
More than 60 in-plant managers gathered in San Diego this week for EDU Business Solutions’ 13th annual Print Shop Pro User Group Meeting. I attended for the first time and was very impressed with the sessions, roundtables, and vibrant networking atmosphere of the event, which has turned into a solid in-plant conference. As a bonus, I got to meet dozens of West Coast in-plant managers and learn about their print operations, many of which I had not know about previously.
Bob Neubauer gives the opening presentation
I was invited to give the opening presentation Monday, and I shared new IPI research on the state of the in-plant industry, including stats on which services have grown the most over the past two years. I also related numerous ways in-plants are using artificial intelligence to save time and bring efficiency.
EDU President Mike Strand followed this by talking about the impact AI has had on writing code for the software, speeding up the process by at least 10 times and generating better code than ever.
Mike Strand talks about new Print Shop Pro features.
“I can do things now that I couldn’t do,” he said.
He took a deep dive into new value-added features of Print Shop Pro and security improvements, and ran ideas past the audience of users to get their opinions and suggestions. He also revealed some new features being worked on.
Panel of users
In another session, a panel of users talked about how they use the “order form questions” feature to get crucial information about jobs at the ordering stage. They have added questions, for example, asking whether a job is for an event, if they need a banner stand with the banner they are ordering, or if the job is a copy of a previous job.
The EDU team went over software features that managers might not know about, including enhancements to the approval dashboard allowing account numbers to be updated, the ability to assign jobs to staff members, and the ability to process groups of orders that share characteristics.
Roundtable discussion
Roundtable discussions let managers share their experiences offering new services like promotional products, wide-format, inkjet, and apparel. They also had time for one-on-one training sessions with the EDU team.
I led a panel discussion in which five managers shared how they are making their in-plants indispensable by adding new services, working with purchasing to bring outsourced work back in-house, selling promo items, and getting collegiate licensing so they can sell more apparel items. We talked about non-print services like scanning, shredding, and graphics installation, and managers shared the pros and cons they have faced since implementing them.
The event took place on the beautiful grounds of the Catamaran Resort, a block from the ocean. Attendees enjoyed a luau dinner outside on Monday (where it got chilly enough to send even me up to my room for a sweatshirt). On Wednesday, attendees will tour Cajon Valley Union School District’s in-plant where manager Ruben Pena and his staff will show off their capabilities, including a rather new Mimaki UV-cured flatbed inkjet printer and a Cutworx Apex flatbed cutting system.
- Categories:
- In-plant Events
- Software - Web-to-print
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 200 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.
