In-plant Events

Printers showed up in force to see the latest in graphic arts technology and learn how E-Commerce might affect their futures. From all reports, Graph Expo 99 was a huge success. According to the Graphic Arts Show Co., which organized the event, 45,217 people took part—including numerous in-plant managers who stopped to chat with In-Plant Graphics' staff at our booth. All told, the show's 622 exhibitors occupied more than 430,000 net square feet of booth space. IPG spent three days walking the show floor at Chicago's McCormick Place, examining the new equipment and talking to the numerous E-Commerce vendors. Here's what

The 33rd annual Big Ten Printing Managers' Conference took place at Penn State recently, luring university in-plant managers from across the country. University in-plants are perhaps the most social of the in-plant industry segments, judging by the number of times their managers get together at conferences. In addition to the major Association of College and University Printers (ACUP) conference held each spring, two more sizeable gatherings take place in the fall: • The Southeastern University Printing and Duplicating Managers Conference (SUPDMC), which was hosted this year by Catherine Armitage at North Carolina State University. • The Big Ten Printing Managers' Conference, held at

NSPA members were warmly welcomed to the prairies of North Dakota for an enlightening and unforgettable gathering. Though Bismarck, N.D., may have seemed like an unlikely site for a national conference, members of the National State Publishing Association left their recent 23rd annual conference full of praise for the state capital. Forty-two government attendees from 39 states gathered in Bismarck to discuss common in-plant issues and attend educational sessions. The conference got underway after an emotional welcome from Linda Kapp, wife of the late Jim Kapp, director of North Dakota's Central Services Division until he passed away last year. Mr. Kapp, a long-time NSPA

With a balance of educational sessions and networking, the conference in Minneapolis was a huge success. As in-plant managers drifted into Minneapolis for IPMA 99, they gradually caught wind of a startling piece of news that seemed sure to affect the entire conference: Larry Aaron, executive director of the International Publishing Management Association, had resigned just a week before. Despite some early concerns, however, IPMA staff and volunteers worked tirelessly to bring the 40th international conference and exhibit to a successful conclusion—and one that left attendees with a positive outlook for the future of the organization. Aaron's departure—which was followed by

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